TASTE THE COMPLEXITIES

Dear Spike:

I knew our vines had been productive, but I didn’t realize just how much until I began to harvest the grapes, this afternoon.

I’ve never had much of a green thumb, but our garden has done particularly well this year, with lots of zucchini, a few other squashes, peppers, mint, basil, oregano and an amazing crop of tomatoes — so many that we’ve always had several to eat with dinner and then had plenty extra with which to make salsa and pasta sauce.

There’s something deeply satisfying about picking a fruit or vegetable that you’ve grown yourself. Most exciting, for me, are the grapes. I love finding the thick, tightly-packed clusters of berries hidden beyond the broad leaves of the vines that grow on the south wall of our garage.

Wine grapes don’t look or taste like the grapes you find in the store. They’re usually much smaller, rounder and darker, and if you press one against the roof of your mouth, letting the juice trickle over your tongue, you can taste the complexities which give different wines their individual characters.

When the vines had been picked clean of their fruit, there were enough Zinfandel and Cabernet grapes to fill two five-gallon buckets. After the grapes were pressed (you helped — and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit) we had about three and a half gallons of juice. From that, we’ll get perhaps 15 bottles of wine.

Wine isn’t hard to make — just add grape juice, yeast and a few clarifying and stabilizing elements over time — but it’s hard to get right. In that, it’s not unlike many of the other pursuits I find most enjoyable in this life: Those things that take a few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.

Some dads play “go fish” with their kids. We’ll probably play a lot of poker. It takes five, maybe ten minutes to learn the rules of Texas Hold’em. If you can play ‘go fish” you can play poker. I figure I’ll teach you when you’re three. If you’re going to take my money anyway, I might as well make you earn it.

I heard a Harvard business professor today talk about how he encourages his students to learn to play poker. Understanding risk management, risk tolerance, odds, mathematics, aggression and emotional control are keys to success at the table — and in the business world, he argued. “The students who get good at poker, I never worry about how they’ll do in the real world,” the professor said.

I don’t know about that. But I know that within a deceptively simple game — each player is dealt two cards, five more are ultimately dealt face-up on the table, the player who can make the best hand or force everyone else to fold their hand wins — is an intricate, frustrating and beautiful contest.

Same too for the game of soccer. Two teams of 11 players. Two goals at opposite ends of the pitch. No hands. And yet this simple game has the power to halt wars, effect worldwide economies, and bring entire nations of people to their feet.

I wondered today, as I was spreading the yeast over the surface of our grape juice, whether the reason I enjoy being your dad so much is because fatherhood, like winemaking, poker and soccer, is at once so simple and so complex. It's easy to become a father. But being a good dad takes work.

There are, of course, a few notable differences.

If the wine spoils, there’s always another crop of grapes to harvest next summer. When you’re dealt a bad poker hand, there’s always another hand to play. And when your football team fails, there’s always another game, another season, another World Cup.

There will, of course, never be another you.

Given the deep satisfaction I get when picking a fruit or vegetable from our garden, I can only imagine how satisfying it will be to see you develop into an interesting, intelligent and decent adult — one who can enjoy this life in all of its simplicities, all of its complexities and all of its opportunities to grow.

Love,
dad