My heart no longer lives inside my chest. It jumps into puddles, bumbles through playgrounds, and falls asleep on my knee. It runs around corners I don’t see and goes places I can’t follow.

This, I’ve learned, is what it means to be a parent: to watch your most fragile joy live outside of you, in a world you cannot control.

I’ve never loved this wide and this deep – until the two of you. You taught me what it means to love without conditions, without end. To love someone no matter what, no matter when.

With love comes its shadow: worry.

I watch my heart cross busy roads, sweat from fever, fall and sob so hard their faces turn red. I worry about the obvious things – sickness, accidents, growing pains – and the harder ones – climate change, AI, war.

But I didn’t bring you into the world because it was safe. It never has been.

If I could, I would guarantee you both long, healthy and happy lives. I would make the world kind, fair and forgiving. But I can’t. Nobody escapes life alive, after all.

My parents lived through Singapore’s uncertain independence and the cold threat of nuclear annihilation. Their parents had to survive World War II and the occupation. And their parents fled war over treacherous seas on unsafe ships. It goes on and on; parents watching their hearts stumble through fire and ice and storm.

Still, they chose love. And hope. Because life has always held both darkness and light. Grief and joy. Worry and wonder. If the future is unpredictable, it could just as well turn out better rather than worse.

So I, your natural-born pessimist of a father, chose hope, too. Is there a better option?

My only regret is meeting both of you so late. I wish we could have had more time together.

My heart no longer lives inside my chest; it lives on in two beautiful people I’d trade my life to protect. Take care of yourself and each other. Be kind and keep striving.

And remember – wherever you are, whatever happens, wherever you go, my heart is always with you.