Home Decoration

Heeey Brother,

Sorry for the hiatus. To be fair, I've been thinking about your question for a long time. If I could travel back in time, and talk to younger me, what would I tell him?...so many options.

"You're going to go to University...I know...I can't believe it either. Anyways...make sure you get your language credits now, or you'll spend your summers trapped in a sad Spanish for beginners room...and when you graduate, you won't even be able to speak Spanish."

Or

"I know jr. chicken sandwiches are delicious. But in high school you played 5 sports, and now you sit on your ass all day, so either go for a jog, or cut back on the late night McDonalds runs!"

Or

"You're going to have to pay those student loans back you know."

In all seriousness, I think I would travel back in time and teach myself a lesson on home decorating.

In an effort to make my apartment feel more like home, I've been thinking about how to decorate my bare walls. I have no interest in spending thousands of dollars on art, and I also don't really want to hang generic IKEA paintings on the wall that I have no particular interest in, just so I have something on my wall. So I've been asking myself, "what do people put on their walls?" I honestly didn't know how to answer the question. I thought about using art from my favourite movies posters and albums. I thought about putting up black and white photographs of some of my favourite sports venues from around the world (the black and white makes it artsy.) I even thought about putting up inspirational quotes like, "Home: Where you treat your friends like family, and your family like friends".....just kidding. I would never do that.

Then one day, I was shopping in a department store and I stumbled into the home decoration section, and I found all of these beautiful frames with stock photos of generic families in them, and I genuinely thought to myself, "oh ya!!! people hang pictures of their families! THAT'S why I'm having a hard time coming up with decorative ideas! phew...that explains it!"

Don't feel bad for me. It's just something I never really spent much time thinking about. 'Family' was always us kids, Mom and Dad. If you asked me, I would have told you that I wanted my own family one day, but it's not something I ever prioritized or pursued. I've spent the last five years moving across the country, focusing on work, and taking an unacceptable amount of time to recover from failed relationships.

Then Grace was born.

I remember the first time I held her. And I'm sure it sounds silly, because the love of an Uncle is pretty low on the totem pole...but it was jarring. I remember thinking, "uh-oh...this is different. I've never loved someone like this...what's going to happen when I have my OWN kids?!?" If I could somehow communicate to younger me the desire to fill those picture frames....and that it wasn't necessarily going to be handed to me on a platter, that's what I would do.

But who are we kidding. We both know younger me wouldn't have listened.

So I guess my question is, what's been the most surprising thing about being a dad?