Our 3-year-old son is going through a fearful phase. Anything can trigger his anxiety: a stray cat, a noisy lawn mower, a flushing toilet.
Not even his "lovey," a monogrammed security blanket, can completely ease his jitters.
His worries get worse at night. At bedtime, I sometimes lie on the floor, hold his hand and sing "Itsy, Bitsy Spider."
Our older son, now 8, went through a similar phase. Fortunately, with a second child you don't assume every change in behavior is a reason for panic.
Still, it hurts my heart to see my 3-year-old son whimper. Often, he says he just wants to be held. "My Daddy," he says, and wraps his arms tightly around my neck.
I'm confident he will soon snap out of his fearful stage.
When you think about it, most of our fears in life arrive in phases. Like tunnels, these phases swallow us in darkness for a time, only to deliver us later into a more brilliant stream of light.
As a young adult, I was fearful of making friends. Deeply shy and insecure, I was afraid to humble myself enough around others to make them feel comfortable in my company.
Looking back, I think it was time "on the couch" that helped me emerge from this fear phase. Visiting hundreds of ordinary people in their homes and writing human-interest columns about their triumphs and tribulations, I slowly learned to listen. I discovered listening is to fear as sunlight is to germs.
Later, when it came time to think about starting a family with my wife, I went through a withering fear phase in my 40s. As an older man, I worried about whether I would be able to handle young children emotionally, physically and financially.
Two Fridays ago, I read a newspaper report from the Masters golf tournament after 60-year-old Tom Watson shot a first-round 67. Watson credited his young son, who carried his bag, with his surprisingly good play. Watson said of his son, "He said, 'Dad, show me. Show me you can still play this golf course.' "
I got chills reading this quote and later broke down trying to tell the story to my wife. As a 51-year-old father of a 3-year-old, I can make myself feel uneasy any time I want to dwell on the math.
In everything they do, I feel my boys are imploring me, "Show us. Show us, Dad, that you can fight through your fears and lead us through childhood."
On Tuesday night at the baseball park, my older son hit his first-ever home run. It was an inside-the-park grand slam to deep center field; a punctuation point on years of father-son practice in our backyard.
As he rounded third base, where I was in the coaching box, we locked eyes and a big smile spread across his face. At home plate, he raised two fists to the sky and disappeared into a mass of buddies.
It's in such moments that my deepest fears drain away, and I finally feel delivered -- by a higher power -- into a more brilliant stream of light.