Message to Madison

Madison—

You haven’t spoken to me in five years.

I’m not writing that to make you feel guilty. I’m writing it because anything less would be dishonest, and if there’s one thing I owe you now, it’s the truth.

Even with all that distance, there’s one memory that keeps looping in my chest like a highlight reel that never times out.

You were four—maybe five.

We were at your first Atlanta Braves game.

The whole thing felt too big for you: the stadium, the noise, the way the field looked impossibly green under lights that hummed like a spaceship. I remember looking down and seeing your little arm swallowed by this massive foam finger, bright and ridiculous, pointing at the sky like you were personally directing the game.

You were so proud of that thing.

We bought a bag of peanuts because that’s what you’re supposed to do at a ballgame. I cracked one open, handed it to you like I was passing down an ancient tradition.

You had your own ideas.

You would put the entire peanut—shell and all—into your mouth, suck the salt off, then spit it out, throw it on the concrete, and stomp it flat with all the seriousness of a kid doing important work.

Salt. Spit. Smash.

Salt. Spit. Smash.

I remember watching you, realizing two things at once:

This is absolutely not how peanuts are “supposed” to work. There is nothing in the world more perfect than you in this moment.

I could have corrected you. I could have stopped the game to explain the proper way to eat a peanut, the technique, the efficiency.

Instead, I kept my mouth shut and just watched.

Because in that moment, I wasn’t thinking about nutrition, or waste, or any of the fake emergencies adults invent.

I was thinking, She’s here. I’m here. We’re okay right now.

I didn’t know how much I would someday need that memory.

What I didn’t know then

If you had pressed pause that night and told me, “There will come a time when you won’t hear her voice for years,” I don’t know what I would have done.

Maybe I would have held you tighter.

Maybe I would have changed faster.

Maybe I would have still messed it all up in the same ways, just with more fear in my chest.

What I do know is this: I walked out of that stadium thinking there would be more time. More games. More foam fingers. More chances to get it right.

Time is the biggest liar we ever trust.

It whispers, You can fix this later. You can be better later. You can slow down later. You can say what matters later.

Later has teeth.

The season I’m in now

The last few years have not been kind.

Some of it is life being life.

Some of it is the economy and the grind.

But a lot of it is me—my patterns, my avoidance, my belief that somehow things would just “work out” because they always barely did.

Now I’m standing on a fault line.

If I don’t step up—financially, mentally, spiritually, in every way that actually counts—everything can fall out from under me. And I’ve already lived through that collapse more times than I want to admit. I have no interest in dragging myself out of that crater again.

So this is the season where I don’t get to say, “I deserve a break,” even though I crave one down to my bones. This is not my fun season. This is not my vacation season.

This is my no one is coming to save me season.

Not a boss. Not a secret benefactor. Not a miracle opportunity.

If my life is going to change, it’s on me to move, to build, to choose differently—quietly and consistently, without applause.

And yet—this is the part I hope you understand someday—that doesn’t mean I’m alone. It just means I’m responsible.

The monster and the mountain

I write a lot about mountains and monsters because that’s how my brain makes sense of chaos.

Right now:

The mountain is everything in front of me: work that has to get done, skills I have to build, habits I have to change, money I have to make in a way I can respect. It’s steep, it’s late in the day, and I’m starting partway up after wasting too much time at base camp. The monster is the voice that says, “You’ve already failed. You already lost your daughter. You already blew your chances. Just go numb. Coast. Let it all fall apart again; you’re good at starting over from rubble.”

That voice is cruel, but it’s familiar.

Familiar monsters are dangerous.

I carry the weight of our distance. I replay conversations and choices and seasons when I should have been slower to anger, quicker to listen, more anchored, less lost.

I don’t blame you for protecting yourself. I don’t get to demand a relationship just because I’m your father on paper.

What I can do is this:

Climb my mountain. Face my monster instead of feeding it. Build a life that, if you ever look back in my direction, you wouldn’t be ashamed to step into.

Mercy in a foam finger

Mercy doesn’t always look like forgiveness or a second chance.

Sometimes mercy is simply that the memory hasn’t faded.

That Braves game is mercy for me.

The way your eyes lit up.

The way you stomped those peanuts like it was your personal job to redecorate the entire row.

The way the foam finger kept slipping down your arm and you’d shove it back up like, No, this is mine and I belong here.

When my mind starts to spiral—when the fear of losing everything again grabs me by the throat—that’s the scene I return to.

Not because it erases what came after.

Not because it proves I never failed you.

But because it reminds me there was real love and real joy here, not just damage.

It reminds me I am capable of presence. I am capable of delight. I am capable of shutting up long enough to let you be exactly who you are, even if you’re eating peanuts all “wrong.”

What I want you to know

If you never read this, it still has to be said somewhere.

You are not responsible for my rock bottom or for my rise.

You are not the solution to my problems or the reason I’m pushing harder now.

You are not my motivation project or my redemption arc.

You are my daughter.

I’m the one who has to do the work: to stabilize my life, to build something solid, to heal what needs healing, to keep climbing even when the last thing I want is another step.

At the same time, I won’t pretend you don’t matter. You do.

The thought of you—somewhere out there, living your life, hopefully safe and loved—keeps me from giving up when quitting would be easier.

And that’s why I keep writing.

Some of this ends up in pages that look a lot like the bones of Mountains, Monsters, and Mercy—part story, part confession, part map. Some of it lives only in private journals you may never see. But all of it is, in one way or another, a record that you had a father who refused to stop trying to become someone you wouldn’t have to protect yourself from.

If there’s ever another game

I don’t know if we will ever sit in a stadium together again.

If we do, and if you’re grown and skeptical and guarded, I’ll understand.

I won’t try to rewind us back to four years old.

I won’t pretend nothing happened.

I won’t ask you to pretend either.

Maybe we’d just sit. Two people who share a history, watching a game. Maybe there’d be too many words to fit into nine innings, or not enough words at all.

But if that day ever comes, and there’s a foam finger in the mix, I’ll know exactly what it means.

It will mean that somehow, against the odds, mercy found a way through the fault lines.

Until then, I’ll keep climbing.

I’ll keep fighting the cycle I never want to repeat.

I’ll keep building a life I’m not afraid to open the door on.

And I’ll keep that Braves game folded carefully inside me, like a ticket stub I can’t throw away.

I love you, Madison.

More than peanuts. More than foam fingers. More than my own comfort.

Enough to change.

Enough to keep going when no one is coming to save me.

Dad