It seems so cliché to say that this letter is difficult, but it is; this is the most difficult thing I've ever tried to write—partly because I love you so much and am so proud of you and so badly want to show you off to everyone I meet. But unfortunately parenting is more complex than loving you fiercely; it's difficult because sometimes I feel like my own father when I'm angry at you and that scares me. Because sometimes I have such high expectations of you and know that sometimes that scares you.

Soon it will be your birthday. You'll be 17. I was thinking of what to get you, trying to stick with something you might want; immediately, I knew: the new PlayStation 3 with at least five games, two controllers and some exorbitant memory stick; hell, for what that'll cost, I might as well buy that car with 22-inch rims you were dreamin' about, and damn, if I didn't start getting irritated at you. Typical of me, so easy to flash on you. Then I began to fantasize about what I could give you if I had something like an heirloom to pass on to you from father to son as you move from childhood to manhood.

Like that watch in Pulp Fiction, the one that guy hid up his ass for ten years. But then I remembered I don't wear a watch and neither do you. But there was that story that came with the watch. That's it! Who needs a watch, when you've got a story? Perhaps what I can give you as you prepare to begin your own adult adventure, is the story of your birth, remind you where you came from, what life was like back in the day. But don't worry, I'll buy you something as well.

I was three years older than you are now when I found out I was going to be a father. I remember not even really getting what that means because I had no intention of getting a full-time job or of marrying your mother, though I loved her passionately. I basically had no idea what being a father entailed, what it took, what sacrifices it called for. I was still figuring out how to be myself.

After she peed on it, your mother couldn't look at the little pregnancy test that I tried to steal because we were so broke, but your mama wouldn't let me. She ran from the bathroom and waited on the bed. I lay there with her too for a while until we knew it was time to check. Then, only I went in. There was a moment that I knew she was pregnant, and she didn't yet. I sat in that bathroom and time just stopped; the world seemed so detached. I realized my life had changed even though I had just started my own life. I reinvented myself over the last year from jockey, local Hawaiian boy to someone not afraid to be smart, someone who enjoyed reading, even writing (I laugh thinking I had my best friend's mom write my final senior paper). I was just discovering who I was. And suddenly here I was on a toilet staring at a positive pregnancy test, a woman I just met six months earlier in the next room. The front door stood within eyesight. What to do?

I was not much different than you are now, loved sports, loved being with friends, loved being young and strong and male, not in any sexist way but just in the privilege of believing the world was mine. And then your mother walked in the bathroom, blocking the door, silencing all those questions with a look of both terror and excitement on her face. Your mom, a young woman I was just getting to know, your mom, the person with whom I would become a man, a real man, and blossom into my role as partner, as father, as nurturer, as protector.

Of course, all this would come. But at that moment, I was just hella scared. What was I going to tell my mom and my pops?

But even that came later; initially we talked about abortion, which she didn't want to do. Then we talked about and decided upon adoption. Now, people ask me if maybe your knowledge that we were going to give you up for adoption has had a negative impact on you. I wonder if it has. Dylan, we thought we were doing the best thing for you; we put perspective adoptive parents through the motherfucking ringer. We read their profiles, their stories, their attitudes towards open adoption, and we chose a couple that we both liked who were young, were smart, were a lot like me and your mother, only about ten years older and not pregnant. But then they said one thing. One thing: "You don't really want to see him for the first few years, right?"

Your mom and I sat by the pool the next afternoon in her Reseda apartment building, and I remember saying to her. "You know we can just keep the baby. We could do this ourselves." And we did. And we never looked back.

We couldn't because not three weeks later we were in a room at Santa Barbara hospital. Not a week after finding a place to live, not a day after your mom taught me how to pin on cloth diapers (had I ever even seen a cloth diaper before?). We found ourselves walking the halls at two in the morning exhausted, delirious, excited for you to join us.

Your mother got so high on pain killers she kept using talk of KitchenAid appliances to describe her pain, and as I was so out of it from lack of sleep, I was able to engage her in a dialogue about Cuisinart and blenders as if it all made perfect sense to me. "I know just what it feels like, honey, to have a toaster oven type contraction," I remember saying.

We hehehehe'd and hahahaha'd for a while more and then you joined us; with the smell of womb and the musky amniotic fluid flooding the room, I welcomed you into the world crying harder than I have ever cried in my life.

Three days later, I drove to the store for lunch and stopped just as I pulled out of our driveway. What had I become, what was my life going to become, and who was that person back there, waiting for me, needing me? I decided there in the road that I was now a father; not any father, your father.

After that, I took you everywhere. No errand was too stressful, no place too child unfriendly. I was coming, I was a father, and you were the best motherfucking kid a man like me could ever have. You were (and still are) precocious, funny, crazy, full of life. You were always at my side. I remember changing your diaper on my Feminist Studies teacher's desk, laying in the sand with you waiting for your mother to come home from school, or putting you in a pot with various vegetables sticking out and me, your mom, and a good friend staring at you like you were our dinner for that year's Christmas Card.

Writing this I realize how much of my early twenties were dedicated to you, and seeing you now—17, taller than me, so busy with life, feeling like the world is yours—I am not sure how to both hold on and celebrate your eminent departure.

The other day I was cleaning out my office at school and something was tucked up in this drawer. I pulled it out. It was a gift from you when you were in the fourth grade. It was a memento you gave me to remember you by. You made it one day when I brought you to work. You'd sit beside me. You loved the stapler. You stapled page after page, using staples like glue. Anyways, you stapled your school picture to what I halfheartedly said was my favorite Pokemon character after you pestered me to choose on of like three thousand cards you had collected. Your staples held, for there it was, still together your smiling face and Lickitung. It most be eight years ago you did that.

This letter is my memento to you; it might not mean much now (did I just tuck your gift away minutes after you gave it to me?) but one day, one far away day, you will look at this and smile and remember and perhaps pick up the phone and call your old man.

Dylan here is my small gift to you. May it always remind you of being a kid, of being my son.

Love, your father