As a boy, I would spend countless hours beside my dad, learning everything I could to be just like him. He taught me how to fix cars and repair a washing machine. He watched over me as I painted my first vehicle and gave me a once-in-a-blue-moon nudge of approval on a job well done. When other kids played baseball, I was under the house putting in new pipes and picking up cigarettes that had fallen from his pocket. At the supper table, he was quiet, and when I began to speak of what I had learned that day, he told me to hush because a real man doesn't need to brag about his work. I'm grown up now and was blessed to have a son I could teach as my dad taught me, but I told him to make room for baseball and enlighten us at the supper table, telling us about his day. I see a part of myself in my son, the part wanting to learn and be nudged for doing a good job. The difference between how I was raised is there will always be talk and laughter at the same supper table I helped him make a long time ago. And I've promised myself there will always be enough nudging to go around.

MO