"It was a gift that took eighteen years to make and no more than a few minutes to give. Was the giving momentous enough? Did my son, Hudson, love it with every molecule in his body? Did I feel it had been worth all of the work involved? What did I expect? I don't think I actually thought through what the occasion would feel like. I definitely joked to myself that it could be a huge flop, or possibly a very polite one."
"To know how a funny, music-making, academically blasé, clothing-obsessed eighteen-year-old might respond to anything is nearly impossible, even if that eighteen-year-old is constitutionally open-minded. When Hudson was about ten, I asked him what his last meal request would be if he were about to be executed. "You can have anything you want," I said. "Sky's the limit!" There was a very long, thoughtful pause, and then he said, brightly, "Surprise me!""
"I had been writing my son a letter every year for his birthday, but, instead of giving him one a year, I had held on to the letters, waiting to give them to him all at once, when he turned eighteen. My son didn't know about the Eighteen Letters Project, as I called it (even though it was technically nineteen letters, the first one having been written when he was in utero). My father, a writer, didn't know about it, and Liz, my older sister and best friend, didn't either. I told almost no one because I figured that it would be a huge bummer to keep this surprise for seventeen and a half years and then have someone accidentally"
A parent began secretly creating a birthday letter for the son before his birth and continued annually, saving them instead of gifting each year. The parent named the collection the Eighteen Letters Project and kept most people unaware to preserve the surprise. The son, Hudson, developed a distinct personality—musical, fashion-focused, academically indifferent, and unpredictably opinionated. The parent worried about Hudson's reaction at eighteen and whether the gesture would feel momentous or fall flat. Anecdotes show Hudson's unpredictability, including his 'surprise me' answer about a final meal and his quick rejections of songs he dislikes.
Read at The New Yorker
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