#| legacy

….What‘s your favourite place?

I used to think places mattered. The truth is, they don’t — Not anymore. Because I don’t have a favourite place. I have favourite people. And wherever they are, that’s where I belong.

To my family — I’ve stood in places most people will never see. Mountains, deserts, war zones, cities on the other side of the world. I’ve watched sunsets over oceans and sunrises from helicopters thousands of feet above the ground. And yet none of those places ever stayed with me. You did. Home was never a house, never a city, never a country. It's a feeling.

It's Kate laughing at one of my terrible jokes while pretending she didn't find it funny. It's Dawn rolling her eyes at both of us because we're acting like children. It's Lily, Jack, and Reece filling a room with so much noise that silence suddenly feels wrong. It's our little girl kicking from inside her mother's belly as if she's already trying to join the conversation. It’s family movie nights. Messy breakfasts. Arguments that somehow end in laughter. It’s the sound of everyone being home.

That’s my favorite place — All of you.

Because I’ve learned something over the years: Home isn’t where you are. Home is who you can’t imagine living without. And every single one of you became my home a long time ago. So if anyone ever asks me where my favorite place is, my answer will always be the same:

.…There are moments in life that make time stand still, and this is one of them.

When I look at this photograph, I don’t just see the woman I married. I see every road that led us here, every impossible decision, every scar we carry, every battle we somehow survived together. And standing beside you now, with my hand resting on the little life we created together, I realize that nothing I have ever accomplished will compare to this. Watching you become a mother again has changed me in ways I never thought possible. I see the quiet strength behind your smile, the tenderness with which you already protect our daughter before you’ve even held her in your arms, and I find myself falling in love with you all over again. You carry so much with such grace that I sometimes forget how exhausting this journey must be for you, yet you never stop giving our family every piece of your heart. I have always been proud of you, Kate, but seeing you bring another chapter of our family into this world fills me with a kind of admiration that words can barely reach.

And then there is you, little Ileana. I haven’t seen your eyes yet, I don’t know what your laugh will sound like or whether you’ll inherit your mother’s stubbornness or my inability to sit still for more than five minutes, but somehow I already know you. Every time I place my hand where you’re growing, every little movement reminds me that you are already changing our lives long before you’ve taken your first breath. It’s an overwhelming feeling to know that somewhere beneath my hand is a tiny heartbeat that belongs to our daughter. Sometimes I catch myself imagining the first time you’ll wrap your fingers around mine, the first time you’ll smile at your mom, the first time your older siblings fight over who gets to hold you. Those thoughts make me impatient and terrified at the exact same time.

If I’m honest, I’m nervous. More nervous than I ever was before any mission, any deployment or any battle. None of those things ever frightened me the way becoming responsible for another little girl does. Because I already know that the day you arrive, a part of my heart will begin walking around outside my body. And I also know that I would spend the rest of my life making sure you grow up knowing exactly how deeply you were loved before you were ever born.