We Are All Made of Stars

by Rowan Coleman

Dear Son, I worked hard for a lot of your life. It’s what you did in my day. Men went out to work, and came home when the kids were in bed. Your mother took control of the home, and I took control of the money. We had our up and downs, like every couple, but it seemed to work, or I thought it did. I’ve watched you grow up, and do things I could never have dreamt of. Going off to university, starting companies from scratch, not that I really get what it is that you do still, which I know annoys you, because you think that means I don’t care or that I’m not proud of you. But that isn’t true. I do care, and I am proud, I’m just from another age, and I couldn’t understand even when I tried to. You don’t go to work in an office on a cooked breakfast. You work from home. You pick Josie and Stevie up from school. You cook for them, and nurse them when they are sick. And when they were babies, you changed their diapers and stayed up all night feeding them. I’ll admit, it baffled me a bit. But I’ve had time to think, and I was thinking about our last big family lunch, the last one before the tumor changed all the time we had together. I was thinking about the way the children looked at you, the way they love you, the way they laughed, the closeness between you. You are more than their father; you are their parent. And I wished things had been different back when you were a boy. I wish I’d been home sometimes before you were asleep. I wish I’d been the sort of father that you are no...