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Welcome to Letters to My Kids.

Let me tell you how this site came to be, and why.

For more than 10 years I promised myself I would write something exclusively for my son Michael and my daughter Caroline.  It would be a family history, deeply personal, straight from me to my kids.

My purpose was to show my kids how much they mean to me, how much I remember, how deeply I love each one.  I also intended to leave something behind — an heirloom more precious than any wedding ring, a legacy ultimately more heartfelt and tangible and valuable in its own right than any insurance policy.

After all, I’d already written for just about everyone else – newspapers, magazines and whatnot.  Surely I could manage such an assignment for my own children.

But I never got around to it.  Somehow I just never found the time, only plenty of excuses.  I had a full-time job.  I had a part-time job.  I needed to watch TV every night and play basketball on weekends.  You’ve heard the song.

But then I resolved to do it.  In 2008, I started a journal, one for each child.  Every week I took an hour or so to capture a special memory about my kids and my own life – equal parts celebration and confession, heavy on encouragement but light on advice.

That Christmas I presented the handwritten journals as gifts.  The next year I completed a second set, also given at Christmas.

My purpose was to show my kids how much they mean to me, how much I remember, how deeply I love each one.  I also intended to leave something behind — an heirloom more precious than any wedding ring, a legacy ultimately more heartfelt and tangible and valuable in its own right than any insurance policy.

Now I’m going to publish these journals – more than 100 entries in all – right here.  Anyone and everyone will be able to see every word I wrote for my kids.

It’s cool.  My kids okayed it.

I’m taking this private initiative public for another reason.  It is to urge other parents to start family history journals, too – particularly Dads, who, unlike mothers, tend to be closed books.

Maybe, even, to take a pledge to do so soon, before it’s too late.

If you do – if you so invest in your past — you’ll be in for the adventure of a lifetime.

You’ll discover new truths about yourself and your life.  You’ll also find out just how deeply you love your kids, too.

They’ll find out, too.