Last week I asked for advice, and hundreds of you wrote back. One message, from a grandmother, stopped me in my tracks and completely changed the way I've been thinking about fatherhood. As Leo prepares to start school, this letter became a reflection on the quiet tug of war so many parents feel: building for tomorrow, whilst trying not to miss today.

A lot of people answered the letter from last week. 

Mums, dads, grandparents. People who have walked this path long before us, all writing back with their own stories of childhood/parenthood. 

A mother of three told me about her son's nursery sports day, nearly twenty years ago. He froze too. She said the memory is still hard for her to reach, even now. Her boy grew up inside a culture of team sheets and trophies and being measured, and it took him until university to rediscover the simple joy of just playing.

Another mum wrote about her son, who climbed into their bed every night from the age of two. When he was seven and a half, one night, without any warning, he didn't come in. And she and her husband lay there heartbroken. He is eleven now. The night before his first transition day at secondary school, he asked if she would walk him down. It is a five minute walk he could easily do alone. Of course son, she told him. Every day if you need me to.

But the reply I keep coming back to came from a grandmother. She told me her anxiety arrived when she was exactly your age. Her mother preferred to ignore it. Her father simply sat with her.

"We never said much but I felt safe. He became my safe place."

Sixty years later, she remembers the sitting.

I read that one a few times.

Last week we had an afternoon at your new school. Another opportunity for us to get uncomfortable and work out how I can best support you in these moments. This is all part of life, the pages turn, new chapters get written, and through it all, we get a little older and wiser. 

The school was full of new faces, new teachers, new corridors and surroundings. I could feel the enormity of it, but we kept it relaxed. I made myself a quiet promise on the way in. No steering. No coaching. No script running in my head about how the afternoon should go. I just stayed close, and let you find your own way through it. And you did. 

Everything in me wants to guide you, prepare you, clear the path before you reach it. But I'm learning that my job in these moments isn't to do that. 

It's to be your safe place. The one you can look back at, find, and carry on.

It’s my birthday next month, and somehow the number arriving is already making me think, analyse, and observe from afar. 

Right now, I feel somehow torn. Torn between two men living in your dad.

One of them wants to push. To build, to provide, to protect, to get everything teed up for our family life while the energy is still there. I’m turning thirty-six, but I can already hear forty humming quietly in the background, asking whether everything is where it should be. Is that normal?

The other man wants to slow everything down. To spend this summer, your last one before school, fully present. Teaching you to swim. Going at your pace, letting your imagination design the days we have together.  

I know from the letters I receive that I am not the only father carrying that tug of war around.

I don't have this figured out yet. But the grandmother's letter gave me a clue about where to start.

Her father didn't solve her anxiety. He didn't fix anything. He sat with her. Presence is not about the quantity of hours. It's about where you put your whole self when you're there.

So I’m going to make this summer really count with you.
Because I know in later life, I’ll look back at these times and kick myself if I were focussed on anything else, but you. 

On that note, we need to pack. We have a busy month of travel coming up which I am incredibly excited about. 

First up, a trip to Morocco. Mumma has some work over there, but we’re extending by a few days to make it a holiday. The last time I was in Marrakesh, me and your Godfather were racing 250km across the Sahara Desert that sits on the eastern border. 

Then we have a short trip with your grandpa to Marbella. Long lunches on the beach, endless ice cream and some golf maybe. You can drive the buggy. 

And then, Cornwall - just you, me and your new pals Rocco and Rex. We’ve got a few days on the boat to see dolphins, surf, splash and have fun. 

I've been doing a lot of running along the river lately. Past the old dockyard and along the riverbanks. Just yesterday, we went for a run together post-nursery. I picked you up early, at 3:30; you cycled, and I ran. We clocked 10k with a few pit stops along the way. 

You asked me a question: “Why are those boats on wheels and not in the water”?

I've been thinking about that question ever since. 

A harbour isn't where a boat spends its whole life. But it is where it returns when the sea becomes too rough.

Maybe that's what we're really trying to become for the people we love. Not the captain who tells them where to sail. Not the lighthouse shouting instructions from the shore.

Just the harbour.

I hope, years from now, when the world feels noisy or uncertain, you'll never have to wonder where your safe place is. I hope you'll already know.

Love you always,