175 cm
Made · this weekOpens · every birthday
The birthday minute
Record sixty seconds of yourself today, tired eyes and all. Say the date, say what this week has actually been like, say one thing you hope for the year ahead. That is the whole assignment.
Do it again on their first birthday, and on every birthday after. The first film is charming on its own. The habit is the real gift: by their eighteenth birthday your child owns a reel of their father growing up alongside them, one honest minute at a time.
Keep it: One take only. The stumbles are the proof it was really you.
5110 cm
Made · year one or twoOpens · age 5
The bedtime story, in your voice
Every family ends up with one book that gets read until the spine gives up. When you find yours, record yourself reading it — page turns, character voices, the yawn in the middle.
A five-year-old can play it on the nights you travel. A twenty-five-year-old will play it for reasons they will never explain to anyone.
Keep it: Audio is enough. A phone on the nightstand during the real bedtime works fine.
10138 cm
Made · the first monthOpens · age 10
The prediction tape
In the first month, sit down with your partner and put your guesses on the record: what their first word will be, what they will love, whose stubbornness they will inherit, what they will want to be when they are ten. Be brave and specific — being wrong is the point.
Lock it in MemoryBoxd for the tenth birthday and watch it together. Ten is the perfect age for this: old enough to grade their parents out loud, young enough to be quietly thrilled that you were wondering about them before they could open their eyes.
Keep it: Specific beats safe. You will love dinosaurs and hate socks ages better than we hope you will be happy.
13156 cm
Made · as soon as you canOpens · age 13
The grandparent tapes
This is the gift people put off, and the one they would pay anything to recover. Sit your parents and your partner’s parents in a chair with good light. Ask about their own childhoods, how they met, what you were like as a baby, and what they want their grandchild to know.
Thirteen is when kids start asking who they are and where they come from. Hand them the answers in the original voices, delivered on the birthday itself. Some of those voices will not be around by then — that is not morbid, that is the reason.
Keep it: One question is enough to start: tell me about the house you grew up in.
18176 cm
Made · week oneOpens · age 18
The letter from week one
Write it before the newborn fog lifts, because the fog is the point. Tell them what the room looked like, what you were afraid of, who you were before they arrived, and what changed the first time you held them. Do not polish it.
Seal it, and write the opening date on the front. An eighteen-year-old about to leave home will read a letter from a man who was closer to their age than to yours — meeting them for the very first time. That is the nearest thing to time travel a father gets.
Keep it: Handwrite it, then photograph it and schedule the copy in MemoryBoxd. Drawers move house; delivery dates keep the promise.
30off the chart
Made · before the fog liftsOpens · age 30
The person you were before them
By thirty, your child will have known you for three decades — entirely as a parent. They will have almost no picture of who you were before, and one day they will want one, usually around the time they are expecting a child of their own.
Record a longer message now: what your life looked like the year before they arrived, what you gave up, what you got back, and what you understand at this exact moment about becoming someone’s father. Then schedule it in MemoryBoxd, far enough out that you cannot fiddle with it. Some things can only be said to an adult, by the exact person you will never be again.
Keep it: Schedule it the day you record it. Twenty-nine years is too long to trust your own restraint.
