Another Hundred Sunrises

My boys,

Two hundred.

I looked at that number longer than I expected to.

Not because two hundred is important by itself.

There was no finish line here.

No promise that if I wrote enough of these I would finally have said everything I wanted to tell you.

Quite the opposite.

The more I write to you, the more I realize how much I still don't know.

But one hundred entries ago, it was summer.

The days were long.

The trees were full.

The garden was still becoming whatever it was going to become.

You were running outside without shoes.

Doors stayed open.

Evenings seemed to have no urgency about them.

And I was still trying to understand what these letters were becoming.

I thought I was writing down things I had learned.

That was partly true.

I wanted to leave you something.

A record.

A few principles.

Stories you might return to when you are older and I am no longer the loudest voice in your life.

Maybe someday you will read one at exactly the moment you need it.

Maybe you will read them all.

Maybe you will read five and decide Baba had entirely too much to say.

That would also be fair.

But somewhere during these last hundred entries, something changed.

I stopped feeling like I was only writing them for the men you will become.

I started noticing the boys you are now.

More.

The way you leave your shoes by the door.

The questions you ask when you should already be asleep.

The chair you always choose.

The sound of you somewhere in the yard.

The way one of you looks back immediately after doing something difficult to see if I was watching.

The ridiculous arguments.

The backpacks.

The crumbs.

The coats that stop fitting.

The ordinary Tuesdays.

I began writing because I wanted to preserve wisdom.

Instead, the writing began teaching me to preserve attention.

There is a difference.

Wisdom wants to tell you what something means.

Attention is willing to look at it before deciding.

I think I have become a little better at that.

Not good.

Better.

These hundred sunrises carried us through summer and into autumn.

We talked about becoming men.

About patience.

Silence.

Trust.

Work.

Failure.

Discipline.

Time.

Family.

The people who wait for us.

The chairs that become empty.

The doors we hold for others.

The things we cannot hurry.

Then the air changed.

Backpacks appeared by the door again.

The house became quiet in the mornings.

We returned to work.

We counted what grew.

We admitted what didn't.

We shared bread.

Stored things for winter.

Watched the light and darkness meet.

Let leaves go.

Lit the first fire.

Walked into the dark carrying flashlights.

Closed September's door gently.

And now October is turning everything gold.

When I look back across those entries, I do not see a hundred lessons.

I see a season of my life.

I see you boys at these exact ages.

I see myself at thirty-five, still ambitious, still impatient, still building, still trying to become more disciplined, still making mistakes I thought I would have outgrown by now.

Still asking God for guidance.

Still learning what enough means.

Still discovering how difficult it is to be fully present inside a life you are also trying to build.

There are things I believed one hundred entries ago that I would say differently now.

I hope there always are.

I don't want these pages to become evidence that Baba had life figured out.

I didn't.

I don't.

They are evidence that I was paying attention.

Or at least trying to.

That matters to me more now than when I began.

Because someday you may read these and know the ending of things I cannot see from here.

You will know which businesses worked.

Which ideas failed.

Which friendships lasted.

Which worries mattered.

Which problems disappeared.

You will know how old I became.

You will know the men you became.

I know none of that tonight.

I am writing from the middle.

That may be the most honest thing about these letters.

I cannot clean the story up for you because I am still inside it.

I can only tell you what the morning looked like from here.

What I noticed.

What I feared.

What I got wrong.

What I was grateful for.

Where I saw God.

Where I struggled to.

And what I loved.

Especially what I loved.

I used to think legacy was mostly about what remained after you were gone.

Now I think part of legacy is how completely you were here while you were alive.

Did you notice your children?

Did they know you enjoyed them?

Did you listen when the story took too long?

Did you put the work down sometimes?

Did you apologize?

Did you laugh?

Did you make the coffee and sit outside while the morning was still quiet?

Did you thank God before asking for more?

Did you actually inhabit the life you kept saying you were working so hard to provide?

I am asking myself those questions now.

These pages have done that to me.

Writing to you has made me more aware that I am already living the years I will someday miss.

That realization can become sad if you let it.

I don't want it to.

I want it to make me awake.

So I am not going to make Entry 200 bigger than it is.

Tomorrow there will be 201.

God willing, another morning.

Another cup.

Another mistake.

Another thing one of you says that I write down because I don't want to lose it.

Another ordinary day asking to be noticed.

That is enough.

Two hundred entries ago, I thought I was leaving something behind for you.

Tonight I understand that you have been leaving something in me.

You are changing the man who writes these letters.

And perhaps that is the story underneath all the others.

I love you.

— Baba

Question:

If someone you love read the record of your ordinary days years from now, would they know not only what you believed, but what you noticed?

Moral:

Some things we create for the people we love begin changing us before they ever reach them.

This story reflects real experiences and philosophies behind Backyard Brew. It is shared to preserve perspective, memory, and intention.

Author: R. Solace