What sort of a world were you born into, Karl Magnus, what sort of a world, where we hate so, and kill quick and kill slow?

What sort of a world, Karl Magnus, are you going to make of it when you're your father's age? He and I tried, or did we, to make it a good one, to make it a world quiet and kind and with laughter part of the day's work, with love when we got home at night, and music for the heart's good.

I wish that for you, too, Karl Magnus, man for the future, man-child.

Think of us sometimes, Karl Magnus, we who went before you, and made you, and loved you before we knew you and knew we would love you. Think sometimes of your mother Kathleen who went down into the darkness of pain and brought you back, and of her hurt before and long after. Think, Karl Magnus, of your father who was a child once, and had a mother. Oh, think!

I wish that for you, too, Karl Magnus, man for the future, man-child.

It was a bad world so many bad ways. We had such a hard time. People who loved others found love difficult to talk about. My hope for you is that love can be told, and you be the one to tell it, no matter how. Find out all the ways to tell it, Karl Magnus, man for the future, or find it, tell it, for us.

It was a good world, too, Karl Magnus. At Christmas-time, and in January, when the wind blew, and the snow came, and the rooms were cold, still we remembered the green trees, and the sun, and friends.

We had one another, we could trust some, we read books. None of us had all we wanted of anything, food, money, joy, comfort. But it was a good world. Your father and mother had one another, and both had you. It was cold, Karl Magnus, but you made it warm. There would be birds sometime, and a house clean and visited often by friends, and there would be the music always.

It was a good world. There were people in it, Karl Magnus, that I wish you may have the great happiness of knowing, and more like them. All shadowed at your birthtime, yes, but shining. Shining with such eagerness, such strength, such joy. We knew such a world, torn with the streaming black and blaze, when you joined us.

Never forget, Karl the friends of life gave you your life, gave you the world mixed with good and bad, love and hate, pain, and pain, and more pain, and love that outlasts it all.

I am a poor one, Karl Magnus, baby small, helpless, miraculous, to tell you love outlasts it all, all the ugliness of the world we give you. Nor can your father help. Nor can your mother help. Nor can the books or the words, or the body they gave you help, never enough. Nevertheless all this will help you sometime; out of the drift and confusion, out of the contradiction and the fire, out of the anger and the hurt and the contempt, Karl Magnus, and out of the difficult love, you will learn the secret, and so be helped.

We are all poor, Karl Magnus, when we dig into our pockets to find the gold we wish to give. Not all your father's love, already so rich, is enough. Not all your mother's care, and care, and love, so new and intent, is enough. You'll have to dig deep yourself, into yourself and for yourself. We'll try. We'll be with you as long as we can. We'll pay everything we can. But in the end it will be you. Forgive us. Think of us that we cared.

Karl Magnus Armens, child I have never seen, man for a future I shall not see, I give and send you all I have ever known of the best I got from life. Item, I give you your father and mother, their love that lives in you. Item, I give you the slow great painful understanding of a father I learned of my father through my son. Item, I give you the snow quieting the streets, the green softening the houses, the lights behind the windows and all that light falls on. I give you night. I give you day. I give you crookedness, meagerness, anxiety, so that you may know straightness, greatness, calm, when you meet them. I give you yourself in the terrible responsibility of your inheritance, so that you may know other men.

Remember us, think of us, look at our faces in the pictures, Karl Magnus.

Curse us, leave us, look at our lives and laugh if you must, Karl Magnus.

Understand us, thank us, if you can, and oh remember us, Karl Magnus, for we made you, as our fathers and mothers made us.

We gave you the world you'll live in, hoping you'll 11 make it a better one.

We did what we could with it. The going was tough; we turn it over to you in bad shape, but it wasn't much good when we got it. They wanted it better for us than it was, and we want it better for you. But never forget, Karl Magnus, that all we can give you, bad and good, rotten and holy, hateful and through love past words wonderful, was a place we lived in. We managed. We had a good time. We grew up and watched the trees, heard the birds and the music, knew some things we can never tell you about durable wonder, and crazy magic, and silent warm daily caring wordless houseful love.

This is the life I give you, Karl Magnus, and I tell you: make the most of it.

Love it, and loving it understand it. Find the books, the buildings, the pictures great because the men who made them were great. Never go down into darkness and bitterness except to climb to light that blazes richer, for seeing the dark. Think, Karl Magnus, think far into great minds, and thereafter love the most living. Use proudly what men have fashioned in pride of the best, your hands moving in skill like theirs. Reject, hate, destroy both the worst and the half-good, being most wary and savage toward the half-good.

Make the most of it, Karl Magnus, take the best of it. Live a long time.

Leave us some good we never had, and be happy building that good into life.