Let’s.

Let’s tell her early and often about how we made this choice. Not the way one chooses a piece of furniture or a paint swatch, but the way you choose something that you know will change the very fabric of your existence.

Let’s tell her about her name, and about how each part of her name contains all the vastness and beauty of our motherland.

Let’s teach her everything we’re good at. Like preparing exquisite meals, and making great lists. Let’s teach her everything we’re bad at. Like being the first to apologise, and knowing how to file taxes.

Let’s tell her that our dogs are actually her siblings, and that she should find a way to have secret conversations about us. Let’s not inform our dogs about this development. Let’s see what happens next.

Let’s tell her about her differences, and let’s tell her like it’s a footnote — interesting, worth knowing, but not the headline. The headline is her.

Let’s tell her that her father sometimes cries when he listens to music, and that her mother is the one to call when something is broken (including her father), because she will fix it before you finish the sentence. Let’s let her decide which one she takes after. (I’m hoping it’s both of us.)

Let’s read to her every night. Let’s do all the voices, especially the silly ones. The voices are the whole point of reading aloud.

Let’s watch all the Star Wars films with her at the earliest appropriate age. Because her mom still hasn’t watched them, and I refuse to live with another person who hasn’t such a vital education.

Let’s tell her that it’s okay that we celebrate Christmas and Diwali and Eid and anything else that constitutes a holiday, because we can choose to appreciate and celebrate whatever religion we want. Let’s give her the choice to find her own faith, and teach us about her own beliefs.

Let’s play music everywhere around her. In the kitchen, on the way to school, on happy and sad days. I’ll introduce her to the obscure stuff and you can tell her about the Beatles. Let’s sing and dance with her badly and without apology. Let’s make sure she grows up in a house that has singing and dancing in it.

Let’s tell her that some days mom and dad feel lousy and a little lost and not our best selves, and that’s allowed too. Let’s show her what it looks like to be a person who is still figuring it out but refuses to give up.

Let’s tell her that she’s funny, even when she isn’t. Let’s remind her that her dad is only funny because he “goes for quantity, not quality.” The first time she makes her own joke, let’s laugh until our faces hurt. This is how we raise a comedian.

Let’s teach her how to make a dosa, so that she grows up making us dosas for breakfast. Let’s tell her that all children do this and that those are just the rules. We don’t make the rules. We’ve just been making dosas for our parents our entire lives.

Let’s let her have a phase. Maybe several. Let’s take all the photos and videos of each one like the documentarians we are. Let’s remind her about her phases for the rest of our days.

Let’s tell her about where she came from — all of it — so that she grows up seeing it as a love story. Because it is one.

Let’s tell her that her story is hers. It doesn’t need to be a symbol, a lesson, or an inspiration. Just hers. And that the world will sometimes try to make it mean something bigger than she wants it to, and she is completely allowed to find that exhausting.

Let’s also tell her that when she is someone else’s reason for reconsidering their limits — and she will be, she can’t help it — that’s worth something too. Both things can be true at once.

Let’s eat cereal with her at midnight and watch movies and fall asleep on the couch. Let’s skip work and play board games all day. Let’s give her some memories that have no inherent lesson in them.

Let’s tell her we are going to embarrass her. That this is inevitable, and we have made our peace with it, and honestly so should she.

Let’s tell her how much we love her. Why love matters. And why we choose to love the people we love every day.

Let’s tell her we didn’t know what we were doing. Let’s tell her we were scared. Let’s tell her we were so ready to bring her home, in spite of all that — or maybe because of it.

Because being in love, and being scared, often go hand in hand.

Let’s grow our family.

Let’s become parents.

Let’s raise this girl.

Let’s.

Note: I first read Let’s by Drew Hoolhorst in 2015 and it rocked me to the core. I wasn’t a parent then, but I knew I wanted to be one. Something about that piece lodged itself in me, and over the years I found myself writing my own version of it. Snippets in my notes app, unprocessed feelings, lines I’d come back to and revise and forget about and find again. I didn’t know who I was writing about yet. I just knew I was writing it to my wife. And to myself.

It all made sense the day we matched with our daughter. I managed to complete this piece the following day.

This is a homage to Drew’s original piece. I hope he’d be okay with that.