For nine years, on the eve of Father’s Day, I’ve written to you. Sometimes it was all my sentiments in a Hallmark Card that spilled over and onto the back and the front, and then even up the sides, but then I changed things up and made my own cards–and my own ways of tracking the most important memories of our days. And your Fatherhood. I chose to document with my camera what I saw with my eyes, and then I’d write to you in pictures. It’s the easiest form of communication for me. You know what they say a picture is worth…

So here we are again, and it’s your ninth Father’s Day. And yet I know you won’t even bat an eye at that. “I don’t need a day,” you tell me. “Really, it’s no different and nothing on a calendar makes me feel more celebrated. I don’t need ‘a day’.” Oh but I do. I want a set date once a year, where I sit and write to you, and sit and sort thorough the last year of memories with you and our most favorite human: Eli Boy. I love that in a fraction of seconds, I can see a still-frame and remember our whole day. I love having a photographic memory, but I know not everyone has that…and so I keep snapping. In hopes that one day, maybe when you’re old and gray (lucky you, you’re not even kind of gray yet!), you’ll be able to