“Let’s go, Sweets,” I say.

“I’m comin’, Daddy,” my daughter answers.

Around here there are many signs of approaching spring, everything from the return of the robins to the spousal ducks waddling around our house. But nothing quite says spring like tilling the garden and planting what will become, with plenty of sweat and prayers, future groceries.

I like planting a garden. Like getting into the dirt. Especially on a cool Saturday in May when the sun’s out and there’s a gentle breeze blowing off the mountains.

I generally do very well keeping my priorities in line. I know what comes first and what doesn’t. The problem is that very often those priorities shift according to both season and day, which is a fact that certain small members of my family cannot comprehend.

For instance. A Saturday in March will revolve around a trip to Charlottesville or pizza with my folks. But a Saturday in May will revolve around one thing and one thing only: baseball. And when that Saturday afternoon game features the Yankees? Let’s just say I’m focused and leave it at that.

And yet here, now, my focus is not just on the game. It’s on the fact that the game started ten minutes ago and my daughter is taking her sweet time planting the beans.

I stand watching her, swinging the hoe in my hands like a baseball bat and tapping my boot into the dirt in the hopes that my aggravation will drain out of my foot and into the ground. She is crouched in front of me, slowly placing one seed a time into the furrow, then gently pressing down on it with a small finger.

“Honey,” I tell her, “you don’t have to do it that way. You sow beans.”

“How can you sew beans?” she asks.

“Not sow, sew,” I answer, then realize how absurd that sounds. “Like this.” I take a handful of seeds and wave my hand from side to side, spilling them into the dirt.

“I don’t think that’s right, Daddy.”

“Trust me,” I say, glancing at my watch. Fifteen minutes late. I’ve missed Derek Jeter’s first trip to the plate. “You trust me, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then whaddya say we do it that way?”

“No.”

“Why? You said you trusted me.”

“I do, but you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Oh. Okay, then.

“Why should we do it your way?”

She rises, dusts off the knees of her jeans, and looks me in the eye. “You’re not treatin’ the seeds right, Daddy” she says. “You’re just throwin’ them. I’m planting them.”

“But we’re gonna just cover them with dirt,” I explain. “Either way, they’re just planted.”

She shakes her head. “No, Daddy. With your way they’re just planted. With my way, they’re planted with love.”

“With love?”

“I take each bean and tuck it into the dirt, like it’s going to bed. And then I kiss it with my finger. And then I say in my head, ‘Please God, let this seed grow.’ Then it’s planted and I can do the next one.”

“So they have to be planted with love?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says.

“But if they have food and water, they’ll grow anyway.” I have her there. Think so, anyway.

“People grow with food and water, too,” she says. “But don’t they grow better with love?”

My foot stops tapping. I swing the hoe around, transforming it on one motion from a Louisville Slugger to a pole to lean on.

I gaze upon this little girl, bundled against a brisk May wind. I am her father. The provider. The food and water to her life. And she is my daughter, the fragile seed I’m coaxing to grow.

But I want her to do more than just grow. I want her to bloom. And I know she won’t with just food and water. She needs love, too.

The sort of love that comes from ignoring a ballgame and spending some time with my daughter in the garden on a cool Saturday in May.

So we stood there, the two of us, planting each bean one at a time until the sun snuck over the mountains and said goodnight.

June 29, 2009

I went out yesterday evening to survey our small crop. The squash is ready, as are the onions. The corn’s coming along just fine, and it looks as though I’ll soon be enjoying some peppers.

And the beans? Well, judge for yourself:

Looks like my daughter’s on to something.

I missed that Yankee game, but I’m certain I watched the highlights. I can’t remember who won, though. Can’t remember how many hits Derek Jeter got or how many innings Andy Pettite went. Can’t remember any blown calls by the umps or all the things the announcers said that I disagreed with.

But I will always carry the memory of a father and his daughter planting four rows of beans, all with love. And I will remember that whatever planting I do in life needs to be done with love as well.

I’ve been a father for seven years now and a father of two for five, but I’ll be honest—I still have no idea what I’m doing. There is no how-to guide for fatherhood, no instruction manual that the doctor hands you just after he hands you a new child.

Yes, the Bible covers just about all we need in the way of raising children. Just about, though. But just as a lot of things were left out of the Bible that in my opinion really shouldn’t have been (what made Jesus laugh? For some reason, I really want to know that), there are a lot of things missing on how to be a dad.

Like what to do when your three-year-old daughter accidently locks herself in the bathroom and can’t figure out how to unlock the door (what I did: pull a Jack Bauer and kick the door in. Result: louder crying). Or what to do when your four-year-old son manages to shove his peanut butter and banana sandwich into the DVD player just because that’s not where it goes (what I did: “What were you thinking?” Result: “I dunno.”).

I wish the Bible was clearer on those sorts of things. I need the guidance. When it comes to fatherhood, I resemble more a turtle on its back than Ward Cleaver. Every father is like this.

For some reason the women tend to outnumber the men around here, at least as far as the comments go. I’m not really sure why that is, but I’m not going to think about it now. Now, I’m going to use that to my own advantage.

I’m not all that different than any other man, with maybe the only difference being I write down what I think rather than keeping it all inside. So on this Father’s Day weekend, I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking, and I’m going to trust that you’ll know either your father or the father of your children is feeling the same way, even if they don’t always say it.

To the daughters out there:

Yes, we’re protective. And because of that, we’re hard on you. And as much as I would like to say that we’ll change that, I can’t. We won’t. We’ll always subliminally threaten your dates, we’ll always secretly distrust your husbands, and we’ll always think that no man is worthy of your love. We are or were hard on you in high school because we remembered well what we thought about as teenagers and how often we thought about it. We’re guys, and we know guys. That’s why we won’t change. You’re just going to have to deal with it.

We know early on that the day will come when you’ll give your heart to someone else. That Daddy will at some point vacate the pole position in your heart. We know it. It kills us anyway. Because no matter how old you are, in our minds you’re still in pigtails running to greet us at the door when we get home from work.

To the sons:

We’re harder on you, no doubt about it. We expect more, demand more, and need more. There is nothing in the world more difficult than raising a boy to be a man, if only because our culture now demands the opposite. There are a lot of people who’d rather boys remain boys, who believe that the strong, silent types are archaic and hurtful. They’re not. They’re needed. This world needs more men, men who will both love and fight, bend to God but never man, and dedicate their lives to standing for something bigger than themselves. Our country is defined not by its politicians or schools, not by opinions, but by the sort of men who walk its streets.

And to the wives of our children:

We don’t always show it, don’t always act it, but we take being the father of your children with the utmost seriousness. We work hard to provide for you, enduring things at our jobs that you cannot know because we don’t want to bother you with it. Yes, we know we should. But we also know that home is our haven, the one place where we can leave the world we hate for the world we love.

We’re quiet sometimes around our children. Withdrawn. We don’t mean to be. It’s just that they have managed to conjure within us a love we thought impossible, one that has taken us utterly by surprise. It’s a breathtaking love, what we feel for our children. And also frightening. Because we know what the world is like, we know what shadows lurk, and we know we are the ones responsible for keeping those shadows at bay.

Deep down, whether you know it or not, all we want is to be your knight. The one who protects you and our children, the one you feel safe with. All we do in life revolves around that one thought.

We want to be needed.

To be your hero.

To us, little else matters.

I sat on the edge of my son’s bed and tapped the paintbrush against my hand.

I said, “You know Davey, this is why Southerners are stereotyped.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about that,” he answered, “just know I gotta clean this. Gettin’ dark, you know.”

I looked at the sunshine splayed over his front yard and still didn’t know what Davey meant by that. So I said, “Just heard a song on the radio that pretty much summed up what you’re trying to do here.”

“Well, if that song was about some guy sittin’ on his porch cleanin’ his shotgun, then I’d say it’s spot on.”

I nodded and said nothing because there wasn’t anything else to say. So I just sat in the rocking chair beside him and watched his grass grow.

In the country a person learns to decipher the hidden meanings found in the common wave. There are many. Depending upon the angle of the arm and the length of the waggle, a gesture by people from their porch can mean anything from “Stop on in and sit a spell” to “If you don’t keep moving, I’m going to shoot you.”

That’s why when I passed Davey Robinson’s house and observed the angle and the waggle of his wave, I stopped. The invite was there, even if the words weren’t.

I climbed onto Davey’s porch and saw the oil and the rags next to his shotgun. Not an uncommon sight in these parts. We take the second amendment with the utmost seriousness. When I asked what he was doing, Davey simply said, “It’s gettin’ dark.”

Davey’s wife poked her head out of the screen door just then. “Hey, Billy,” she said.

“Afternoon Rachel,” I answered.

She looked at her husband. “Davey, this is the last time I’m going to tell you. Put that stuff away.”

“Almost done,” Davey told her.

“Well, hurry up. Caitlyn’s almost ready.”

“What’s Caitlyn up to?” I asked them.

Davey said nothing. Rachel, however, did: “It’s prom night.”

I looked at Davey and smiled. “You’re actually cleaning your gun for Caitlyn’s prom?”

“It’s dirty,” he answered. “I’d be cleanin’ it no matter what Caitlyn’s doin’.”

Uh-huh.

“Honey, please,” Rachel said. “Put that stuff away. If Caitlyn sees you, she’ll go bonkers.”

“Gettin’ dark,” Davey said again.

Rachel rolled her eyes and went back inside, leaving the two of us alone on the porch.

“Caitlyn’s going to prom, huh?” I asked. “Seems like just a few months ago she was still running around here in pigtails.”

“Don’t I know it,” Davey said, running a cloth through the barrel. “I enjoyed every minute of it, too. Guess growin’ up was bound to happen sooner or later, though. This prom thing has been goin’ through her mind for months. Wasn’t much I could do about it.”

“Who’s her date?”

“Guy named Kevin. She’s had him over a few times. Seems like a good enough kid.”

“If he’s a good enough kid,” I said, “then why are you out here sittin’ on the porch with your shotgun? I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

Davey paused with his rag and said, “Fine, huh? Tell me, what sorts of stuff were you thinking about all the time when you were sixteen?”

I thought about that, then said, “Maybe you’d better load that thing.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Caitlyn came onto the porch just then. Her blue dress shimmered in the sunlight, and Rachel had done her hair up into a bun. I understood then why Davey was so nervous. Caitlyn had always been a pretty girl, but right then she looked almost stunning.

“Hi, Billy,” she said.

“Hey, Caitlyn,” I managed.

“How do I look?”

I had to be delicate here. I couldn’t well gush and say too much, not with her father sitting beside me with a shotgun in his lap. But if I said too little, Davey might shoot me anyway.

“You’re easy on the eyes, Miss Caitlyn,” I said. Davey nodded out of the corner of my eyes, and I let out a happy sigh.

“Daddy,” she said, “what in the world are you doin’?”

“Gettin’ dark,” he said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Caitlyn told him, “but please put that thing down before Kevin gets here. For me, Daddy.”

Kevin pulled up in his parents’ car a few minutes later. He was nervous when he saw Davey and me on the porch. He was more nervous when he saw Caitlyn. By the time the two of them had posed for a dozen pictures for Rachel and left, Kevin had nearly sweat through his tux.

Davey and I watched as they pulled away.

“You know,” he said, “I used to come out here on this porch every evening and call that youngin’ in. ‘Gettin’ dark!’ I’d tell her. Now here she is, going out in that dark. And I can’t call her in. Not anymore. She’s gettin’ older. Becoming a woman.”

“Guess so,” I said.

“But I know this,” he said. “She’ll always be my little girl. And I’ll always be waitin’ here on the porch until she comes home.”

The local Outback Steakhouse is Nirvana to the steak-and-potato sort, of which I am a card carrying member.

It is also a favorite for teenagers on their first date, like the couple who was seated in the booth beside ours last week. Bad for them, maybe, but good for us. It’s not often that regular folks like my wife and I get both a dinner and a movie at the same time.

Sixteenish boy and very nervous, trying in vain to impress his classy date and not doing very well at it:

“Sit me first,” she said.

“Okay,” he answered.

“Do I look nice?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me I look nice.”

“You look nice.”

“Mean it.”

“You look nice.”

“That’ll do,” she says. (He breaths a sigh of relief. This is much harder than he thought it would be.) “Now, I order first, then you. Don’t order for me, though. Some ladies like that. I don’t. Did you bring enough money to pay for my food?”

Silence. Then his confession: “I thought you’d pay for your own.”

“No,” came the exasperated answer. “NO. You pay. Always.”

“Okay.”

“Sit up straight. Don’t fidget. Look me in the eyes. Smile.”

“Okay.”

“You’re going to pray, right?” his date asked.

“Um. I dunno. Should I?”

“You’d better,”

And on it went.

I felt sorry for that young man, I really did. He thought dating would be natural. Take a girl out, have some fun, maybe dinner or a movie, and then drive her home. No fuss, no muss. How hard could it be?

From the small beads of sweat on his forehead, plenty hard. His date was demanding. She offered little in the way of praise and much in the way of criticism. He was confused, frightened, and unsure of himself. All because of her. Why had he agreed to take her out in the first place? he wondered. And even asked. But she merely smiled and winked and said it was the only way he’d ever be allowed to take anyone else out ever.

He knew she was right, and so did I. She had all the power, you see. She’d had it for about sixteen years now.

Because his date, this unimpressed, hard, stringent lady, was his mother.

I manage to get the backstory when her son excused himself to the bathroom. Presumably to flush himself down the toilet, which also happened to be right where his evening is headed.

He’s a good boy, according to his mother. Always has been. And she wanted to keep him that way, too. But he’d gotten to that age when children began to feel a little too sure of themselves. Their world brightened and grews bigger, and they were under the impression that they were growing brighter and bigger right along with it. It was easy to get muddled and begin thinking they were in charge. That it was all about them.

So, mother and father decided that before they would allow their son to start dating, he would do a trial run with mom. It’s important that he knows how to treat a lady, she said. And it’s important to know how to spot one, too.

“Understand?” she asked.

Yes.

We pass onto our children what we consider to be the necessities of crafting a good life—the attributes of honesty and hard work, the values of education and faith. But too often what’s left out is the most basic necessity of them all: how to behave when mom and dad aren’t around.

Too many of us mourn the fact that today’s younger generation is so over-the-top rude. Too few of us take the time to consider the fact that much of the fault is our own. It was nice to see a parent put forth just as much effort to ensure her child got into the right life than she would to ensure her child got into the right college.

Education can get you far in life. Good manners can get you further.

Still, I couldn’t help but express my empathy for the young man.

“This has to be the longest night of his life,” I said.

“Oh, don’t feel sorry for him,” she smiled. “Feel sorry for his sister. She’s fifteen, and her first date is next year. With her father.”

I was about six years old when my father looked at me during an episode of Wild Kingdom and said, “For the love of all that is holy and good, please shut up!”

Not that I was a talkative child. I wasn’t. And still am not. But I was in the midst of something amazing, and it had no choice but to leak out. Before, my universe in its entirety had been comprised of my home, my neighborhood, my church, and the grocery store. Everything else was fuzzy and gray and didn’t really matter. And I was happy.

But then things changed. At some point I sat in the backyard grass one night, gazed up at the stars, and began thinking about what they were and how they hung in the sky. And one day I looked at the mountains outside my front door and thought about who lived there a hundred years ago and what happened to them. And then I looked into the mirror and wondered, in my own childlike way, who I was and how I was possible. My world was creeping outward. Expanding. Suddenly, everything went from fuzzy and gray to bright and sparkling. And I was happier.

I had stumbled upon wonder. And it was expressed in my new favorite word:

Why.

As in, “Why do the clouds look like rabbits and spaghetti, but not clouds?”

Or, “Why does God live up in heaven when all of us are so far down here?”

Or, “Why do some people go to church and some people don’t?”

And on. And on.

This was at first an encouraging sign as far as my parents were concerned. I was waking up to the world and taking an interest in things, which was good. But as the days and weeks wore on and my questions not only kept coming but became more difficult to answer, they came to believe that perhaps my wakefulness and interest weren’t so good. Weren’t so good at all.

They’ve confessed as much to me, so now I understand the whys and for-whats of the day I watched Wild Kingdom with my father.

The episode was about creatures of the deep sea, and along with the requisite slugs and shrimp, they had shown several pictures of angler fish.

I had wondered aloud why there were a lot more fish in the sea than there were animals on land. And I had also wondered aloud why we had to send submarines to the bottom of the ocean instead of people in suits.

Then I asked this: “Why did God make that fish so ugly?”

“For the love of all that is holy and good, please shut up!” Dad said. Which was about the funniest thing I had ever heard. I laughed so hard that I fell off the sofa.

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Tonight I sat with my own son on our own sofa, eating crackers and watching a recorded episode of Planet Earth. After five years of living, his world is beginning to expand just as mine did. And like me, his favorite word is now “Why?”

Sigourney Weaver had just transitioned from sharks and whales to the creatures of the deep sea. Several bioluminescent fish lit the screen, tiny shrimp scurried along the sea floor, and then an angler fish crept into the scene.

My son said through his crackers, “Why did God make that fish so ugly?”

That’s when I remembered that story of Dad and me. And as I had spent the last twenty minutes answering my son’s questions with varying degrees of success, a part of me wanted to tell him the exact thing my father told me. But when I looked down and saw the grimace on his face and the tiny pile of cracker dust on his pajamas, I didn’t see my son. I saw me. And then I doubled over with laughter and fell off the sofa.

Much the same way I did thirty years ago.

My son peered down over the edge and gave me a what’s-so-funny? look.

“Atta boy,” I said, looking up to him.

Because I pray the wonder he has at this world and his place in it never wanes. It’s the sort of wonder that has cured diseases and explored our solar system and invented wondrous technology. And it’s also the sort of wonder that God bids us to have in abundance.

Number one on His top ten list of things He wants to hear is “I love you.”

Number two is “Why?”

My friend Jennifer Lee keeps a folder on her desk that’s full of questions she wants to ask God one day, things she’s struggled to answer but cannot. I think that’s a good idea. Not just to keep them, but to add to them.

Because if we want our faith strengthened, it must be tested. And if it’s truth we seek in this life, we must begin with doubt. The Christian faith is unique in that it centers itself upon a God Who revels in both the faith that lives in our hearts and the questions that live in our minds. He challenges us to ask the tough questions and seek their answers, even if some are unsearchable. He knows the great secret: the more we try to prove Him false now, the more we’ll prove Him true in the end.

God cannot be proven in a laboratory, but He can in us. We can know He’s there, that He’s paying attention, and that despite what we think or hear or see, He has something wonderful waiting for us on the horizon. And all He asks in return are three things:

That we hang on.

That we believe.

And that we wonder.

A neighbor down the street has been busy for the last month or so easing his son into what is perhaps the biggest step toward adulthood that a young person can take—getting a driver’s license.

It’s been rough going, the father told me. And maybe a little disappointing, too. Because where his son has been the epitome of intelligence, responsibility, and maturity before, he is now managed to transform himself into a negligent, childish idiot. His words, not mine. Though I do understand what he’s feeling. My father was like that when he taught me how to drive.

The driver’s license is an amazing thing. We don’t have many rites of passage in our culture. There are few elaborate ceremonies to mark the going out of Child and the coming in of Adult. That laminated piece of paper with our picture and vital statistics is as close as we get.

I’ve seen the two of them in the evenings, driving up and down the road with varying degrees of success. The boy always has a look of sheer joy plastered on his face. The father looks as though he is sharing a ride with the Angel of Death. It’s quite comical, really. Until I pause to think that in ten years or so, I’ll be doing the same thing.

The behind-the-wheel part of his son’s education is being supplemented by a little classroom work, too. His father has come up with what he calls the Rules Of The Road. Principles that, if heeded, will keep his son both out of trouble and the hospital.

The Rules are taped to the steering wheel of the battered Ford truck that will soon become his son’s primary mode of transportation. They are also hanging from the refrigerator in the kitchen. And tacked onto the wall beside his bed. There are also pop quizzes.

I gave my own pop quiz to the boy yesterday. Tell me the five rules, I said. He rattled them off like a soldier relaying his orders:

“Be safe because there’s a lot of danger. Keep it slow because there’s always a speed limit. Pay attention because you could wreck and end up in the woods. Check your mirrors because you should always be mindful. Watch for signs because if you don’t obey, you’ll end up in front of the judge. Don’t be impaired because you should always drive at your best. And enjoy the ride,” he said.

This is serious stuff. And I think it’s working.

This boy may not be able to parallel park and will likely never be able to find third gear, but he will follow The Rules. A plus for him, I think. Because following them won’t just make him successful on the road. It’ll make him successful in life, too.

Take rule number one, for instance. Be safe. There is a lot of danger in life. Some of it sits and waits for us to stumble upon it, and some of it is out there trying to find us.

Or keeping it slow, rule number two. We’re always in a hurry, aren’t we? Always trying to get somewhere to do something so we can go to another somewhere to do something else. Better to slow down. We miss too much by rushing along.

What about paying attention? Good advice for the drivers around here, since there are a lot of country roads with potholes and ditches. Don’t watch where you’re going, and you’ll find yourself in the woods. Keep your mind on things that don’t really matter in life, and you’ll likely find yourself in the woods, too.

Checking your mirrors is also important. Since we tend to associate with those whom we share common traits and values, the friends we have and the company we keep are mirrors for ourselves. So, too, are our children. They come into this world as a blank slate, and for the first years parents are the ones who hold the chalk. What they become is often our own self-portrait, just miniaturized.

And as there are plenty of signs on the road—Stop, Yield, Merge—that if disobeyed will and you in front of a judge. But there are plenty in life, too. Warning us, helping us, keeping us safe. Heed them and all will be well. A good thing to keep in mind, since we’ll all have to stand in front of the Judge one day.

Driving while impaired is never a good idea. When driving, that means no alcohol or drugs. When living, that means no hate and fear. Because those things impair us, too.

And then there was rule number seven: enjoy the ride. Put there by his father because he wanted to end things on a high note, and put here by me for the same reason. Because following The Rules isn’t designed to make things less fun, but to make us more happy.

Enjoying the ride is the boy’s favorite rule, by the way.

Mine, too.