You Taught Me How to See

Dad,

You died a couple of weeks ago, and it still doesn’t feel real. Everything looks the same, but it isn’t. There’s a shift beneath everything now, and I keep finding myself tracing it back to you—what you gave me, what you built around me, and how much of my life has been shaped by it.

Today is my birthday. The first one without you.

And I’m realizing how much of who I am—and who I’m still becoming—comes directly from you.

You believed in me before there was any evidence that you should have. I wasn’t a particularly good student, and I didn’t have a clear path. For a long time, that weighed on me. The world didn’t show me that I was capable of something exceptional. But you did. You told Mom, who saw things in a much more structured, exacting way, that I had something in me. That I could be great. You told me, too. I wasn’t convinced then, but I held onto your belief.

You built a world around me that I didn’t totally grasp as a kid. The attention you put into our house and furniture and art; the influence of people like Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Florence Knoll, and your parents’ early experiences with them; allowing artists like John Chamberlain and James Rosenquist to (literally) move through our lives and home—it didn’t occur to me until much later that it was anything but ordinary. It shaped how I see everything. It trained my eye before I even knew I had one. I now know how much of my perspective came from your love of architecture, your instinct for design, the part of you that probably should have been an architect in another life.

When I started my career, there was a moment early on when I wanted to quit. I had a bad client experience, and it shook me enough that I thought maybe I wasn’t cut out for any of it. I came to you defeated, ready to give up. You said: No. That’s not how we do things. And then, more pointedly: I paid for your education. It was not free. You owe me a career. It surprised me in the moment, because you never operated very rigidly. Now I understand that it wasn’t pressure for its own sake, but belief with boundaries. You weren’t going to let me step away from the person you knew I could become. That moment changed everything for me.

As I got older and my business grew, I kept thinking about how to build something charitable into my work. Of course, you had already figured out an easy system for doing that in your own practice. It was automatic and consistent—charge a small amount, donate it, match it, over and over again. I’ve carried that forward in my own way: we donate our consultation fees, we match them, we plant trees at the end of a project. It’s simple, but it’s intentional. That came from you.

But more than anything, what you gave me was your way of moving through the world. You were generous in every sense—with your time, your energy, your resources, and especially your words. You didn’t hold back encouragement. You didn’t gatekeep what you knew. You believed in sharing ideas, knowledge, and opportunities. You believed there was more than enough to go around, and that sense of abundance is something we don’t see enough of.

Since you died, I catch myself quoting you constantly. Sometimes out loud, sometimes in my head: what you would say, how you would think about something, the way you would push me or steady me. Not long ago, you said that you had already given me everything I needed; that you had told me everything I would need to know to navigate the world.

The truth is, I knew that. I knew you believed in me. I knew you were teaching me while you were doing it. I just don’t think I fully understood how much I would rely on it.

Someone once told me that if you listen closely to the people you trust—and actually live by what they tell you—you don’t have to make every mistake yourself. Your life can be easier that way. That’s what you were giving me all along. Not just encouragement, but a way forward. A way to move through the world with a little more clarity, a little more confidence, a little less unnecessary struggle.

You were the person who believed in me when I couldn’t believe in myself. Without you here, that belief doesn’t go away, but becomes something I’m responsible for carrying. The bar feels even higher now that I understand the magnitude of what you gave me. I see how much it matters. I see how powerful it is when someone believes in you—early, consistently, without proof. I see how much that can shape a life.

And it makes me think about how much more of that the world needs. More opening doors instead of closing them. More sharing what we know instead of holding back. More generosity, in small ways and in large. You understood that, lived that, and passed it on to me.

So I will keep trying to do the same: by reminding people there is more possibility in them than they think, to share what I’ve learned so someone else can feel empowered, to not guard the things that could help someone build a beautiful career or a meaningful home. And also to notice. To slow down enough to actually see what’s around me: a detail, an intention, a moment of beauty most people walk right past. That’s something you gave me, too.

Even now, I hear you all the time. And since you have already given me everything I need, I promise to do something good with it.