The book
It is not a memoir. It is a record — the deliberate version of a man who did not want his children to inherit only the accidental version.
Two children, both named before they could carry names. Poppyseed, because that was the size one of them was when it occurred to him to supply a nickname. Chickpea, because wonderful things are often birthed from hard things.
Long before either was born, letters to them were being written in hotel rooms and airports across dozens of cities. Those letters slowly merged into chapters, and those chapters into what you see now. Some of the letters are about big things — race, faith, money, death. Most are about ordinary things, because love mostly lives in ordinary things.
It is a bet against time: love as a verb that keeps moving after the noun is gone.
Part I
Who We Are
The two of you, the boy I was, and the adventures we had while you were too small to bank the memories yourselves.
Part II
What I Believe
The values I hope you carry, the failures I hope you risk, and the world I see and the one I hope you make.
Part III
What Endures
Who you get to be — your bodies, your identities, the stories your brains will tell you, and where to look for me when I'm gone.
You are not an afterthought to my life's work; you are the completion of it. The Poppyseed & The Chickpea
Letters across time
Between the parts are letters with dates on them, meant to be opened when you are ready for them.
- A letter for your eighteenth birthday
- A letter for your thirtieth birthday
- A letter for my grandchildren
The author
About the author
airick journey "aj" crabill is a senior practitioner at Effective School Boards and serves as national director of governance at the Council of the Great City Schools. In both roles, he is focused on how societies engage in maximization by accelerating the transition of school systems from being adult inputs focused to becoming student outcomes focused. He previously served as conservator of DeSoto (TX) ISD, deputy commissioner at the Texas Education Agency, and board chair of Kansas City (MO) Public Schools.
He has helped raise seven. This book is for the last two of them.