The Front Porch
This year I went to spring training in Florida with my son, which is corny. My son is 18 years old, lives on a ranch on the other side of the country and reads Wittgenstein, and comports himself very often like a grown man. At the same time, he’s not above bringing a baseball mitt to games or trying to catch home run balls during batting practice. Depending on the angle and the time of day, I can look at him and see the young man he might grow into being in his twenties, or I can see the young boy he was when his mother and I split up. Having worked hard at being a good father, my reward is that I get to plan trips centered around some common subjects of interest, like the Alamo or spring training, to express the enormous love for him that I have carried with me from the day he was born. He was my first-born child, and as such a revelation that blew past any of my expectations about having children, which were mostly non-existent. I figured that having children was par for the course …
