Watching your children grow up is like trying to tune in to a distant radio signal - there are moments of complete clarity interrupted by stretches of loud static.
When I watch our boys, ages 16 and 11, I see flashes of the people they are becoming.
Mark KennedyFor example, our younger son decided last weekend to plant grass in our front yard. We live on a wooded lot, so planting grass seed is a yearly ritual. The seed turns to green fuzz - which raises hopes - but then frost comes and the green shoots wilt and die.
This year our 11-year-old son decided he would go to war against the moss that strangles the grass under the big trees in our front yard. That meant scraping away the moss with a three-tine garden cultivator, spreading grass seed and then covering it all up with straw. Then comes the watering, lots of watering.
The job is time-consuming and hard. It's the kind of thing you'd expect a child to quickly abandon. But he hasn't. When he gets home from school, he grabs his yard tools and gets to work on the moss.
The trick is self-motivation. It's his project, done at his pace. And it shows that he is cultivating an essential adult skill: persistence.
His enthusiasm is contagious, too. The other day his 16-year-old brother joined him without being asked. When I got home from work, the older boy was holding the handles of a wheelbarrow as our younger son filled it with chunks of moss.
(Remember, this is all without any push from their parents.)
Later, I saw them both pile into our older son's Toyota.
"Where are y'all going?" I asked, trying not to break the spell of brotherly cooperation.
"We need a new rake from Ace Hardware; the other one broke," my older son said. "Is that OK?"
"Sure," I said, "get whatever you need."
***
Our older son shows signs of becoming his own man, too.
A couple of weeks ago, he played in a soccer tournament near Atlanta. His team won the championship after prevailing in penalty kicks at the end of the title game. PKs, as they are called, are always emotionally draining. On this day, both teams were weary from playing four games in two days in the Atlanta heat, and the tie-breaking penalty kicks were especially pressure-packed.
Later, during the awards ceremony, I noticed one of the members of the losing team - a group of mostly Hispanic and black teens representing a Christian ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina - sobbing into his game jersey.
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What happened next I will not soon forget. Our 16-year-old son peeled off from his Chattanooga teammates and walked over to the Charlotte boy, giving him a hug and offering soft words of encouragement.
I'm not sure exactly what my son said, but I know how the scene made me feel.
As a parent you live for those moments. It's as if God is telling you that your work is almost done.
... And that everything is going to be just fine.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.