The Telescope My Dad Never Bought Me — And What I Finally Understood About That
A story about the gap between parents and children, and the things we pass down without knowing it.
I was eleven years old, standing in the doorway of a small antique shop somewhere in our city, staring at an old brass telescope on the shelf.
It wasn't expensive. At least, I didn't think so at the time. It was dusty, golden-colored, the kind of thing you'd see in a pirate movie. And I wanted it more than I'd ever wanted anything that year.
I tugged my father's sleeve. "Baba, look at that. Can we get it?"
He glanced over. He didn't even walk toward it.
"What will you do with it?" he said, already moving toward the door.
I didn't have a great answer. I wanted to look at stars. I wanted to feel like an explorer. I wanted, I think, to feel like the horizon was something I could actually reach.
But I didn't know how to say any of that at eleven. So, I just said, "I don't know. It's just cool."
He shook his head softly. "Come on."
We left. I looked back once through the glass.
What My Father Was Thinking
For years, I carried a quiet version of that memory. Not as a wound — my father was a good man, a hard-working man — but as a small unanswered question.
Why didn't he just get it?
It took me becoming a father myself to understand.
My father wasn't ignoring what I wanted. He was looking at something I couldn't see yet. He saw school fees, a sick relative that year, a business that was barely steady. He saw a child who would forget the telescope in two weeks and move on to the next shiny thing. He was scanning his own horizon — one full of responsibilities I hadn't been taught to notice yet.
He couldn't explain that to an eleven-year-old. And I couldn't explain my longing to a man who was carrying the weight of a whole family on his back.
Two people. The same moment. Completely different worlds inside their heads.
That's the quiet tragedy of families, isn't it? We stand right next to each other, and we're looking at completely different horizons.
The Thing About Growing Up
Here's what no one tells you about childhood longings: they don't go away. They just go quiet.
That eleven-year-old who wanted to peer through a brass telescope — he didn't disappear. He grew up, got a job, had his own children, and started a small business making handcrafted things with his hands.
And one day, while working on a brass spyglass in my workshop — a 15-inch vintage telescope, solid brass, with the words "Be Strong and Courageous" engraved along its barrel — I stopped.
I held it up to the light.
And I thought: This is the one. This is the one I wanted.
What I Learned from Making Something with My Hands
When you make something by hand — really make it, not just assemble it — you start to understand things about objects that you can't learn any other way.
An object isn't just material. It carries intention. It carries the story of whoever made it, and it quietly absorbs the story of whoever receives it.
This spyglass, the one I make now, isn't just a telescope. The engraving on it — Be Strong and Courageous — comes from a very old promise. A man named Joshua was about to lead people into unknown and frightening territory. And the words spoken to him were not "Don't worry, it'll be easy." They were: Be strong. Be courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
Those words weren't for a man who had it all figured out. They were for a man standing at the edge of something vast and uncertain, with no guarantee of what was ahead.
That's every one of us. Every single day.
The Gap That Never Fully Closes
My father is older now. When I visit him, we drink tea together and talk about simpler things than we used to — the weather, the grandchildren, his favorite TV show.
One afternoon, I brought him one of the spyglasses from my workshop. I extended it, handed it to him, and said, "Try it."
He pressed it to his eye. He aimed it out the window at the rooftops, at the sky, at something far away.
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then he lowered it and read the engraving. His lips moved slightly.
He didn't say much. But he turned the telescope over in his hands for a long time — the way you hold something you recognize, even if you've never held it before.
I don't know what he was thinking. He's never been a man of many words. Maybe he was thinking about his own father. Maybe he was thinking about that day in the antique shop, which I'm not sure he even remembers. Maybe he was just thinking about how strange time is — how a child who once pulled at your sleeve grows up and puts something beautiful in your hands.
Maybe the gap between parents and children isn't something you close. Maybe it's something you learn to stand in, quietly, together.
What Objects Carry
Americans have a particular relationship with heirlooms. There's a whole culture built around the idea that the things we pass down carry meaning — a grandfather's watch, a grandmother's ring, a military medal in a velvet box.
I think about that a lot, being someone who makes objects by hand.
Every spyglass I make, I think: Where will this end up? Whose shelf? Whose story?
Maybe it goes to a college kid moving across the country for the first time, packing up his whole life into a car and driving into the unknown. Maybe a mother gives it to her son before he deploys, pressing it into his hands with nothing but a look that says everything she can't put into words. Maybe a grandfather gives it to his grandson, and the boy grows up and gives it to his son, and decades later someone holds it up and reads those words and doesn't even know who first brought it into the family.
Be Strong and Courageous.
It outlasts the giver. That's what good objects do.
The Horizon You Can't Quite See
Here's the thing about a telescope, and I mean this literally: it brings the horizon closer, but it doesn't show you everything. You can see the shape of something in the distance. You can see it's there. But you still don't know exactly what's waiting on the other side.
You still have to go.
That's life. That's parenthood. That's being a child. You're always looking at something you can't fully see, trying to decide whether to sail toward it or stay where it's safe.
My father stayed safe, most of the time. He had to. He was carrying too much to take big risks. But he also got up every single day and kept moving, kept providing, kept believing that tomorrow would be a little better than today. That's its own kind of courage — not the dramatic kind you read about in history books, but the quiet, daily kind that holds families together.
I didn't understand that at eleven.
I do now.
A Note, If You're a Parent
If your child wants something you can't give them right now — don't assume they'll forget it. They might not. But they also might grow up and find their own version of it, and understand for the first time why you said no.
The gap between you isn't failure. It's just time, doing what time does.
One day, if you're lucky, you'll both be sitting together with a cup of tea, and one of you will hand the other something small and beautiful, and the other will hold it for a long time without saying very much.
And that will be enough.
I make handcrafted brass telescopes and gifts — things meant to be held, used, and passed down. If this story resonated with you, the spyglass in it is real. You can find it here.
Written by a maker, a son, and a father — still learning all three.
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