To My Children
And to their mothers.
Julika. Mattheo. Jacqueline. Denise. Emma. And Sinaida.
And to their mothers.
To the mothers — you held what I did not. The household, the continuity, the daily presence a child requires. You did this, many times, without the partner beside you to build it with.
Susi — you have been the mother Julika needed. Completely, in the years we shared and in the years since. I honor that. I am grateful for it. What you built for Julika is yours — and it is real.
And last but not least — Sinaida — I knew you from when you were four years old. I was not always the step-father you deserved either. That is also mine to carry.
To all of you: I did not co-create the family life with you the way I should have. That is mine to carry.
I have been a father. I am not sure I have always been the father you deserved.
When I was present — fully, without the next thing already forming in my mind — I believe I was good at it. That is not self-forgiveness. It is the honest account of what was actually there when I arrived.
But I did not hold the household together. Not with your mothers. Not with the constancy a family requires. I wanted it to be different. The wanting was real. The sustained action did not follow in the way it needed to.
The acknowledgment, the willingness to act differently, the pilgrimage — they came late. They are happening now, at sixty-four, when they should have been happening at forty, at fifty. I cannot give back the years that ran at half-measure.
And I cannot be a father every second weekend. That is not fathering — it is visiting. A child needs a father in the house, at the table, on the ordinary Tuesday. I knew this. I did not find the way to live it. Now at 64 I have the tools — and I am finally learning to use them. That does not give back what was not given. But it is what I have.
I am asking for your forgiveness. Not because I have earned it. Because naming what I owe is the only honest beginning I have left.
You travel with me. Julika, Mattheo, Jacqueline, Denise, Emma, and Sinaida — wherever this pilgrimage ends, wherever I land next, you are the living root that goes with me. That does not repair what I did not do. But it is true.
I am sorry.
Day 46 — Phase 7 — Word — Bladder — Onyx — Book of Job
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
© 2025–2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan | CC BY-SA 4.0
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