Letters to Graham

Dear Graham,

You are two years old as I begin this, which means you won’t remember me here—not really. Not this house, not the sound of the ocean just beyond the trees, not the way the air feels heavy and warm even in the early morning. So I’m writing it down for you. Not because it’s important in the grand sense, but because it’s mine right now, and one day it will be part of the story you come from.

I’m living in a small home in Pedasí, a quiet town where the days move slowly and the nights are filled with the steady rhythm of waves. From here, it’s a two-minute walk to Playa Destiladeros. Two minutes sounds like nothing, but it’s just enough time for the world to shift—from walls and ceilings to sky and salt and open horizon.

I come down most mornings before the sun has fully decided to rise. The beach is nearly empty then. Maybe a few dogs, or a few surfers in the water, and the tide doing whatever it wants without asking permission. I think you would like it here, though at two years old you’d probably be more interested in the sand than the view. That feels like the right priority.

You might read this years from now, long after this house belongs to someone else, after the details have softened around the edges. I don’t know what the world will look like for you then, or what kind of man you’ll be becoming. These letters aren’t meant to guide you exactly—they’re not instructions. They’re more like small markers left along a path, proof that at one point in time, someone who belongs to you stood in this place and paid attention.

There are other people reading this too, though you won’t know them all. Friends, family, maybe even strangers who are curious about this corner of the world. They’re welcome here. But you’re the reason I’m writing. You’re the one I’m talking to, even when I wander off into stories about the heat, or the wind, or what I had for dinner.

So this is where we begin: you at two years old, me by the ocean, and a stretch of days that feel simple.

With Love, 

CC