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Seeds to Saplings to Dad and Daughter

When you love someone, and they love you back as much as, if not more than you love them; time disappears. A friendship that has existed for only months or a couple of years reminds you of forever. 

When you love someone, and they love you back as much as, if not more than you love them; you've found family. 

It starts with a seed. Sometimes a sapling, depending on the person. 

With you, I had a seed because I did not know you existed and neither did you know of me. 

Some days, I find myself trying desperately to remember how we planted, we watered, and we grew, but that first year is all such a massive blur. 

I recall the bad days you made better by simply forcing me to laugh at your unoriginal jokes.

And the days when I had had enough of the world and you gave me focus.

What I don't remember is the day you decided to adopt me. 

I don't remember the metamorphosis from stranger and stranger, to teacher and student, to friend and friend, to adopted dad and daughter.

I don't remember how we grew. When we grew. Why we grew.

I don't know why you love me as you do, so effortlessly, so tirelessly, so constantly. So devotedly. Without fail.

But I learned so long ago that you are a man who cannot be evil. Not to the ones who have wronged you, not to the ones who have hurt you...not even to the ones who have done so consistently and mercilessly. There is no evil bone in your body. 

You are the king of giving of your own nutrients to others until you are withered. A king who builds castles for the homeless while he is drenched in the rain.

I am not the only one who sees this, who knows this about you like she knows the back of her hand. 

And maybe this is why we get along so well and so easily.

Both you and then my dad, who held me minutes after I was born, are both so much like this. 

Giving and giving and giving until you are exhausted of all of your own necessary means of life. 

I have learned so many things from both of you, and usually, you reinforce what I have already been taught. By the end of the process, all of the good things are ingrained in my brain.

And my skeleton is wound tight by the strength in your hugs. 

The only thing I haven't learned from either of you is when to stop giving. 

I worry constantly about both of you. 

About how you feel, what you think, how you are, where you are hurting.

I know there is so much on your mind. 

I know you keep thinking about your own blood.

And I pray you never believe you have failed him. 

I worry there is darkness in your head that you won't speak of. 

I worry you are hiding your monsters.

I worry you feel all alone.

I will tell you what I know of you now that you are family.

Now that all of the years are blurring into a lifetime, and I don't know how long it's been since we were strangers. 

Now that I couldn't imagine my life without you in it. 

You love impossibly too much to fail at anything. 

You work too hard at everything to fail at anything. 

And you raised parts of me from the ground, up. 

You planted, you watered, I grew. 

You did not fail, not in the least.