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

THE BLESSINGS MULTIPLIED

Dear Spike:

Your mom and I have always felt quite blessed. We’re very much in love. We have a wonderful home in a city we adore. We have good careers in fields for which we are passionate.

And now, most of all, we have you.

But this week the blessings multiplied. Your mother received a call to interview at a school just six blocks from our home. The very next day, the principal called to offer her a job teaching kindergarten.

The new job pays significantly better than her current position in the suburbs. It is at a school with many at-risk students, which allows her to help those who need it most. And its proximity to our home means she can walk or ride her bicycle to work, saving about 180 commuting hours a year — roughly the equivalent of an entire extra month of work. And that will allow us both to spend more time with you.

While we don’t always recognize the blessings we’re sent, this one was pretty unmistakable. And it prompted me to begin thinking about some of our more subtle blessings.

Like our garden — which may never produce a single pepper, squash, or tomato, but brings us joy nonetheless.

And the park near our home — where we can go, each spring, to watch the ducklings and goslings as they grow.

And our friends — many of whom seem as excited to bring you into their lives as we are.

And our mountains — which give us a sense of place, direction and humility.

We have been very richly blessed, in ways both subtle and profound. It is important to recognize those blessings.

And then, to make sure we are worthy of them.

Love,
dad

Dear Spike's Friends:
Spike's mom's contractions seem to be getting stronger and more frequent. If you haven't yet picked a date and time in the Spikepool, you may want to consider picking sooner than later. (Just go to "About that Date" — May 20 and post a comment with the date and hour you think Spike will arrive.)
Meanwhile, I'm still holding out for June 8.
Love,
Spike's dad

BRING TO BLOOM

Dear Spike:

Your mother and I spent the weekend turning the dirt in our vegetable garden. When the frost breaks for good, next month, we’ll plant the seedlings that are now sprouting in our kitchen window.

With all the worries you’ve delivered to us in the past seven months, it gives me great hope to think about the resilience of life, represented by those seeds. Out of almost nothing they spring up, each year, nurtured by only a little dirt and water.

I marvel especially at the sunflowers. From a tiny kernel — the size of your little baby thumb — they grow into towering giants, turning to meet the sun as it breaks above the house in the morning and bowing to its majesty as it sets beyond the trees in the evening.

There is another side to this magnificence, of course. As brown-thumb gardeners, it’s a side we know all too well.

Nature is also very, very delicate.

Each year, we kill far more plants than we manage to bring to bloom. Each year, we tell ourselves that this is the year we’ll succeed.

It seems reasonable to assume that we would become better and better gardeners, over time. But last year was the worst year yet.

On Thursday we visited with our friends, Scott and Leslie, meeting face-to-face for the first time with their son, Miles, who came into this world just a few weeks ago and who we hope will be one of your very close friends.

Your mother has never looked happier to me than she was as she cradled Miles in her arms. But later, as we drove home, she admitted that holding him made her nervous for what is to come.

“He’s so small and delicate,” she said. “And we’re going to have one of those soon.”

Indeed we will.

And so one day soon, you’ll find yourself rising to face the morning sun, turning and stretching to meet its majesty, bowing as it sets.

With each passing day, I know, I’ll fret at your delicateness and marvel at your resilience.

And pray that I turn out to be a better father than a gardener.

Love,
dad