Van Morrison said his mama told him there'd be days like this. Alexandre Dumas said life is a storm. I've come to think of it as a pendulum — and the only way to survive the swings is by finding your way to center. That, and the unspoken brotherhood of dads, communicated entirely through a single, knowing nod.

While there is time, let's go out and feel everything." Steve Winwood wrote that in 1986. I didn't really understand the line until I was an adult — and didn't really feel it until I took my eight- and six-year-old daughters on their first backpacking trip into Rocky Mountain National Park, three miles deep, with a hail storm above the tree line and a forgotten first aid kit.

Tom Petty wrote "Wildflowers" in a single take. At 13,000 feet up a Colorado mountain, wildflowers grow in conditions that should kill them. Down in my backyard garden box, my daughters and I waited three weeks for the first sprouts. Somewhere between Petty's song and the mountainside, I started to see what kind of growth I really want for my girls.