When Jonah was born, a friend gave us a small ceramic statue of a big brother standing behind and supporting his little brother.  It sat on our shelf these past 8 months.  Yesterday Luke noticed it for the first time, pointed to it and said “that daddy and Lukie”.   I don’t know how to express the mixure of feelings that flooded through me – love, joy, happiness, fear (there’s always fear in the mix for me, always), sadness and melancholy.  I had a glimpse of how he perceived me in that instant.  I am his father.  I am his support in the special way a man and son are supposed to bond.  I do not see myself as strong or masculine, not in the ways the world defines.  When he first came to us I wonderd how long it would be before I broke his heart for the first and only time ( boys hearts break only once I think, then they armor up for life ), when I would commit that first and final failing that would mature him and close him up forever.  Because never in my life would I have looked at that statue and seen my father and myself in it, or anyone and myself for that matter.  I don’t know when I closed or if I was ever open.  But somehow for him I became the big person in that statue, somehow he finds the openings in me and lives in them.  It is more his strength than my own, more his love that sustains us together and saves me a little bit from what I might become.  I am immeasurably grateful to him for these things he gives without awareness or intent.  I would be that father forever if I could, I will be that father for as long as I am able.