read this when...

My favorite Real Simple family feature was the "read this when..." section: letters written to children by their parents to be read at various milestones. "Some are funny, some are instructive, some are bittersweet, but rest assured: All of them will make you want to pick up a pen." It's true.

{I searched the internet for the printed article.. but couldn't find it. I retyped my favorite of the letters.}

to Sloane, age one, to be read on your wedding day
by Rob Corddry
{Rob Corddry is an actor is Los Angeles.}

Sloane!
Hey bug! Who's a bug? Who's a bug? Are you a little bug?
I hope that still makes you laugh. In 2007 I kill with that. Sometimes you laugh so hard, I think you're going to turn inside out. But if you are reading this letter, you haven't. You are still right side in, and you are getting married. I wonder what year it is. When do people get married in the future? Your mother and I got married late compared with our parents. I do hope you're not 75. I understand that you may want to have fun and travel, but 75 is way too old to get married for the first time.
Are you happy? Are you the person you want to be? I hope so. If not, don't worry; you still have plenty of time. I hope this person you're marrying helps you out with that.
Here's a good question: Do you still make "the goofy face"? Let me explain. The other morning, I got you out of your crib (are you sleeping past 6:30 A.M. these days?) and brought you into bed with us like I always do. I laid you next to your mother, and you turned and looked at me with the goofy face. It's a very calm yet intentionally piercing gaze, contemplative in the way you cock your head and purse your lips at me. You don't stare at your mom in this fashion. It's almost as if you know I'm going to say something stupid and you are giving me the requisite look, pre-embarrassment.
"She's making that goofy face again," I said to your mom.
"That's not a goofy face," your mom said. "That's a mature face."
And at that moment everything changed. I saw you as you may look today, reading this letter. I saw a flash of the young woman you may become. And in that flash I fell more deeply in love with you, if that's even possible. I reveled for a second in the relationship that we have barely begun to forge. I can't wait.
I hope you enjoy this day. I hope your mother and I weren't impossible and didn't invite too many of our friends or clients. Then again, I am, most likely, paying for this damn thing.
Have a wonder-filled day and a wonder-filled marriage and a wonder-filled life. I'm trying to raise you with love and just the perfect amount of detachment, for as a wise man once said, "You don't belong to me. You belong to God." Tell your partner that when he gets a little too clingy.
Bless you, Sloaney Baloney. My little girl. My little bug.