I told my dad we couldn’t afford to chip in for his retirement trip, and he brushed it off-“Just your presence is enough.”
But when we arrived at the cabin, he gave my brother and me each a thick envelope.
Mine was empty. I smiled through it. Later that night, I peeked at my brother’s envelope and saw crisp hundred-dollar bills — a lot of them.
My heart sank. I wasn’t jealous of the money; it was what it meant.
Had I disappointed him somehow? Was this his way of saying I didn’t deserve the same?
I couldn’t sleep that night. The cabin creaked around me, but it was the weight in my chest that kept me awake.
The next morning, I quietly asked my brother about the envelope. He looked confused.
“Wait,” he said, pulling it from his bag. “This… this isn’t mine. Look.”
On the corner of the envelope was my name — faint, in our dad’s messy handwriting.
We swapped envelopes and inside mine was a handwritten letter.
Not money.
Not tickets.
Just words.
But they hit harder than anything else ever could.
He wrote:
“You’ve always been the one who shows up, even when you’re struggling. You gave what you could — your time, your love, your care. I wanted to give you something that couldn’t be spent or lost. Just know: you are, and always have been, more than enough.”
I cried quietly by the window, the paper shaking in my hands.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt seen.