A Letter to the Boy Who Wanted Mars

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Would 10-year-old you be proud of you today?

Dear 10-Year-Old Rob,

I have some good news and some bad news.

The bad news first: We haven’t made it to Mars yet. There are no spinning space colonies like the ones in those 70s concept drawings you love so much. In fact, when I look at that 1975 Don Davis painting of the Bernal Sphere, part of me still wants to live there, kid.

The original dream: NASA Ames’ 1975 view of a Bernal Sphere space colony. This is what we wanted.

But here’s what I’ve learned in the forty years since you moved on: the voyage of self-discovery is just as vast as the vacuum of space.

Whether you’re living among the stars or in a suburb of Michigan, you still have to get your personal affairs in order. You still have to find your own happiness.

The Empire of the Mind

I’m sorry to tell you we aren’t going to be rich. Teachers don’t make a hell of a lot of money, and we aren’t going to be millionaires. But you’d be proud to know we finally found “something to be.” We’re an English teacher.

I think you’d be disappointed we didn’t become an astronaut or a filmmaker, but let me tell you a secret: I can’t imagine doing anything else. I fell in love with literature. I love the act of dissecting stories and helping young people understand what they tell us about life. I may not be behind a movie camera, but I’m a writer. I write from the heart every single day. Through the power of reading and writing, I can put myself—or any character I create—anywhere in the universe. In this classroom, the possibilities are still limitless. My imagination is how I still travel among the stars.

The Weight of the Armor

There’s a protection I wear now that you wouldn’t understand yet: Dad Armor. Being a father has become the core of my identity. When the boys are here, I act differently. I have to be the strength they lean on.

That armor looks different depending on who I’m standing next to; it’s shifting now with Kid 1 as he gets older, and it’s a constant shield for Kid 2. It’s the weight of being the man they need, even when I’m still figuring out the man I am. As much as I wish things had gone differently with X1 or X2, I could never put a price tag on our boys. They are the greatest things we ever “made.”

The Loudness of Silence

You’d be stunned to know we have these two boys, but you’d also have a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that we’re divorced. In your 1980s world, that felt like a tragedy. In my world, it’s just part of the “rebuild.”

There’s this thing I call a “kid hangover.” When the boys are here, the house is full of life. But that very first day they go back to their mom’s, the silence that follows is almost deafening. Sometimes I leave their things exactly where they dropped them—a stray toy or a discarded hoodie—just to feel like they’re still in the room.

You wanted to build an empire in the stars, Rob. I’m building one right here on Earth. It’s not flashy, but if you saw the man I am when I’m just “Dad,” I think you’d be more than okay with how we turned out.

Keep looking at the stars, kid. I’ve got things handled down here.

— 51-Year-Old Rob

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AI art created with Google Gemini

The article “A Letter to the Boy Who Wanted Mars” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob