Clara, look at how small you were when you were just five minutes old.
Time flies by and it has been almost a year since you joined the family Mommy and Daddy started some years ago. Watching you grow and become more curious about the world day after day has been the greatest joy Daddy could have ever asked for in life.
Daddy wants to tell you a little story. There was once a wise old sage named Cicero who believed that “if you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Look, Clara, Daddy has already built a garden and a library so based on the wisdom of Cicero, you along with the family that Daddy has been blessed to have would be “additional” to what Daddy truly needs in life. Yes, aesthetics and knowledge are important parts of our life, and family, after all, is one thing over which we unfortunately might not have a complete control in this rather complex world — just consider how many moms and dads break up each year in our modern society today. Yet Cicero cannot not be right because it is, as Daddy believes, exactly the very last missing piece in his wisdom, a bonded family, that makes our life a complete whole. So yes, Clara, you complete Daddy and for that, Daddy is blessed at the very moment of your arrival to this world.
All things, nevertheless, will come to an end one day because, as the wise teacher Keating says to his boy students in Dead Poets Society, one of Daddy’s most favorite movies: “we are all food for worms.” One day, Mommy and Daddy will grow old. One day, you will leave us to start a family of your own. And one day, we will all return to where we came from, the dust beneath our feet. Yet between now and then, we do have time, indeed a very special time, long or short, that Nature has gifted us all upon our birth. So before the day comes, before we return to where we came from, please let Mommy and Daddy be your companion and together we will voyage into the unknowns on this very special journey called life.
Thank you for coming to us, Clara.