Eating tomato sandwiches...

Many, many, many years ago (maybe not so "many"), when I was in high school, tomatoes made their first impression in my life when a classmate decided to do the "Grow your Plants with Music" science fair experiment. I am sure that by now this project has been done a gazillion times and most likely never been proven a success. The young man created two acrylic boxes to enclose a tomato plant in each of them. In one box a tomato plant was grown in a quite environment, in the other, in addition to a tomato plant he also placed a small speaker that was attached to a recorder that played music continuously. OK, can you figure out the problem with the setup of his experiment? Even though he had bought perfectly healthy tomato plants that both seemed to be just about the same size, he watered them equally and exposed them to the same amount of sunlight, enclosing just about any plant inside an acrylic box will deprive them of precious carbon dioxide which is essential to the well known process of photosynthesis. Sure enough, sooner or later both of the plants wilted and died. My friend obviously did what all kids our age would of done, he took the shortcut and went back to the store a few days before the science fair and bought two brand new tomato plants. This time though, instead of both being the same size he made sure that one was much larger than the other in order to prove his not so scientific hypothesis. In fact, as I recall I am pretty sure he won first prize at the science fair at our school that year. What was the lesson learned, you may ask? First prize at the Science Fair definitely does not mean you are the smartest kid in your science class.

There is a particularly splendid satisfaction that comes from eating something that you have grown on your own. I cannot claim to have a green thumb, since most of the time too much care must go into growing healthy plants and time is by far my least abundant commodity. Years back during a warm southern summer, when I was an engineering student at the University of Mississippi, I remember sharing a trailer home with a dear friend and classmate to save money on rent. My friend was an amazing guy by many standards. He was an excellent study mate, a descent drummer, extremely handy in vehicle repair, hard working as a cook in various establishments while he attended college, and yes, you guessed it, had a green thumb. Starting from seeds in little black cups filled with nutrient filled soil and sitting on the edge of the kitchen window of his previous dwelling he managed to grow at least 10 or 12 tomato plants. By the time we moved in together the hungry for more water and soil plants where ready to be transplanted and soon enough some beautiful tomatoes where on their way to our dinner table. I am not sure if it was the fact that they were so fresh, or the pride of having grown them ourselves (I add myself loosely into the growing part of the story), but they tasted exquisite and delicious! It was during this summer that I consumed my first tomato sandwich. If you have never had one, do not waste your time by trying one out with store bought tomatoes unless you have access to buying them from a farmer's market where they are totally fresh and organically grown. Also, I am not a vegetarian, but in my opinion once you add any kind of meat into making the sandwich, forget about calling it a tomato sandwich. Instead, go veggie only and trust me when I tell you that you will never taste anything else like this in your entire life. You start with the freshest whole grain wheat bread you can find, add some fresh lettuce, a slice of Swiss or provolone cheese, a good portion of sliced tomatoes, add a bit of salt and pepper, and then grill it on a skillet until the bread is nice and toasted and the cheese has melted. Mmmmm, you will be in heaven! What is the lesson? Don't ever write about something as delicious as a southern tomato sandwich when fresh tomatoes are out of season!

You might find it odd or strange, but to me raising my kids has been a lot like the two stories above. In the first one, all the right good intentions were in place when my friend set out to do his science fair "Grow your Plants with Music" experiment. I am sure he did not originally intend to cheat in any way when he set out to prove or disprove his hypothesis. As a father I have always had the best of intentions with respect to everything that has to do with parenting my children. However, not everything I did was correct, effective, and sometimes not even fair. Not understanding what I might of been doing wrong, many times I made mistakes that wilted some of the possible beauty of my children. Divorce, for instance, is by far one of the most written about emotionally impacting events on children's lives. I never set myself a goal to purposely dissolve my marriage after 18 years, yet even with as much as I adore my children I found it essential for my own survival to take that dreadful and painful road. In essence, the original plan of providing my children with a single healthy family environment was eventually replaced with an as close as possible alternate life of separate households. Similar to the young man that concealed the truth about his mistake, I have many times also found myself concealing some of my own mistakes in order to find it easier to live with myself. There were probably more things that I could of tried to do to keep the family together, yet the divorce shortcut was all I could focus on during my own frustrated and failed relationship. Just like the plants that needed a healthier environment full of carbon dioxide to survive, I needed my own emotional nourishment too, so I walked away to find it regardless of the consequences and impact on my kids. This is probably why today I now live in a constant state of trying to be as good a father as I can possibly be in order to make up for any damage my selfish act of breaking the household might of caused. However, I honestly believe that by me being emotionally healthier I am definitely more available to my children and have in fact become a better father too.

You might be wondering how it is that I can correlate my story about growing my own tomatoes and making tomato sandwiches to raising my kids? It is actually quite simple. Remember how I mentioned that my shortcoming as a gardener was tied to my lack of time? As a father, I have learned that giving my children the right amount of time is probably the most valuable and effective commodity in nourishing their well being. I might not have the time to grow my own tomatoes, but one thing is for sure, I need to always have the time to raise my kids. The reason my children "taste" so good to me regardless of the difficulties I have encountered through the years is because I have spent so much of my time growing, pruning, nourishing, feeding, and taking care of them. Some of the people that know me in person and have been privy to my particularly challenging circumstances have commented that they cannot imagine going through it all themselves. "How can you give so much...love so much...care so much?" Easy, these kids are "my" tomato plants...they are mine to take care of as long as I have air in my lungs!

Dad