Dylan Stafford

<< For Father’s Day 2025, I am publishing Daddy Muscles 2. This is an excerpt. Comments welcome! >>

Originally written August 19, 2008

Hi Jack,

I’m sitting at the kitchen table at 10:45 p.m. It’s the second week of the Beijing Olympics. You are asleep in the other room. So is Mommy. After you went to bed, I stayed and read Sports Illustrated and watched the Olympics on television.

Now, I am doing something better, something that will last longer than an evening of sports on TV. I’m writing to you.

Guess what you did yesterday, for the first time?

You gave Mommy a kiss!

You and I were on the back porch, gathering your blanket and lovie, getting ready to leave for daycare. I held you on my hip in the crook of my left arm.

Mommy walked over and put her arm around your back.

“Can I have a kiss?” Mommy asked you.

You leaned forward and put a big, open “O” kiss right on Mommy’s mouth. Just like that. No practice. No play acting. First time success. You answered Mommy’s question straight away with a kiss to her.

Jealous Daddy quickly asked for his own kiss too.

“Can I have a kiss Jack?”

And pow—here came a big wet O-kiss heading right at my mouth.

Smack! Two kisses in under a minute. The first two kisses from our 15-month-old boy, given to your parents on a Tuesday morning on the back porch.

Part of me wants to ponder and pontificate and wax eloquent about life’s kisses to come, and the meaning of kisses, and the tenderness of lips. Instead of pondering, because I’m tired, I will say this: You are a miracle to us. Kisses or no kisses, you are a gift. The best fertility doctors in the world told us we would never get pregnant. Nicely, they said, “Less than a 2% chance.”

But your mommy did get pregnant. And now we have you.

We are grateful to share this life with you.

Thank you for coming and making us a family.

We love you Jack—you little kisser you.