Letter To My Son - The Early Days - Part 1

This personal story I am drafting will be my gift to my son on his 18th birthday in six months' time, this and a video game because what 18-year-old is looking forward to a very long letter from hi
s dad?

Over the last 18 years, I struggled to be a dad, just like my dad struggled before me. I was very lucky to share lots of time with you in the past, but the divorce changed that.

Now that you are an adult I wanted to tell you my story. A story that I wish my dad had told me. Maybe it's too early right now, but you might enjoy it when you get to be old and sentimental like me.

Letter To My Son Part 1

Let me start by telling you a little secret, I thought you were going to be a girl. There was even a girl name: Ella-Chiara and then the doctor guy happened.

He asked if we wanted to know, and as we did not have a lot of money and needed to prepare everything over the next two months we said yes. Well, that, and the fact that we were curious a.f.

What´s up Doc?

"It´s gonna be a boy......"

En Serio???
There I was thinking you were a girl for seven months. For seven months I was talking to a growing belly, giving you the daily Baby Bulletin and calling you Ella-Chiara and now you turned out to be a boy.
Good thing was that I did not buy you any clothes, well except for one second-hand dress you will never wear.

The bad thing, we needed to come up with a new name & I needed some fresh air to deal with the shock.

Walking the streets a song was playing in my head, a song I heard last night during the Wednesday 80s party.
Kyrie by Mister Mister.

I needed something with the same rhythm and feel to it as Ella-Chiara. Twenty minutes later I walked into the doctor's office and said "How about Kyrian-Elijah?" That name you can blame on DJ Tom de Barman if you don´t like it because he was the one playing it.

Your mom was a bit disappointed, that she was not part of the thinking up the name thing....so I told her if she could come up with something better before you were born we could always change it.

21-10-2005

She couldn´t, but she came up with the idea that you needed a name for every element and so your full name came to be:
Kyrian-Elijah, Raven, Osiris, Sorin, Skye...KROSS.

And you took your time, you were 2 weeks late and when you finally started coming you took over 30 hours to be delivered. You were just in time, two more days and you would have been a Scorpio, and those...

You had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days, just to make sure everything was alright but the first night you got home I held you in one hand and you slept against my chest.

When you were born your mom and I were together for about 18 months, and within those months we made sure that 1+1= 3 welcome in this world KROSS, hope you like it here.

At that time I had two jobs, both in the evening as I was a DJ/Barkeeper and I worked at a petrol station. That meant that when I came home in the early morning I could give you your middle-of-the-night bottle before I went to bed.

It also allowed me to frequently put you to bed before leaving for work. You refused to sleep in your crib and we gave up after a week or two. We put your baby mattress in the middle of our bed, and there you slept like a baby.

Getting you to sleep like a baby was quite a challenge, you never wanted to go to bed but your dad had a little trick and a bit of help.
The trick was I would dance with you in my arms, the help came from Robbie Williams as that was the tune we danced to.

I remember how you climbed the stairs in our little rented house in Vught. You must have been 10 months old and you went upstairs, once you were halfway you looked back down and then kept climbing.

I think you climbed at least 10 stairs before you figured out you did not know how to get back down. Luckily someone was always there to keep an eye on you. That was back in the day before parents only looked at their mobile.

If we went out for a stroll you loved to feed the swans and ducks in the pond, and on a good day we would also see a passing train.

From a dad's perspective, it were wonderful but difficult times. I was used to living a sort of rock&roll life and all of a sudden I had to grow up. Become a semi-responsible parent.

I tried, I was able to be a loving parent. I became a bit more responsible, I stopped smoking weed. But working in a bar and being a bit of a local celebrity did not really help in becoming really responsible.

Not that it mattered to you. I never dropped you, and I made sure that I kept my jobs to pay the bills. Even though we did not make enough to pay for everything. We got a little help from your grandparents in paying the rent that first year.

So financially it was a little bit of a struggle but the worst part of that first year was you. Why couldn´t you just talk, write, or text us what was wrong with you?

Just kidding dude, not your fault. It was me who was not prepared, a baby does not come with an instruction manual. That meant whenever you cried we had to figure out why.

Is it food?
Is it sleep?
Is it pain?
Is it poo?

Clueless, I was absolutely clueless.

The best moment for me during those early days was therefore the day you learned the word "Die", which means as much as that.

That was the day I could finally understand you.

Thank you for reading.

Click the next button for the next chapter

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