This morning I tried to wake early because I had projects demanding attention. Projects for school, projects for church, projects for friends, projects for the website. I tried to wake early, but the demands of the week had already taken their toll. Halfway through my first cup of coffee, I surrendered, turned off my computer, and started reading to my son.

Man or Mushroom?

For an hour we sat together, reading the last of the adventures of Stuart Little as he searched for his friend Margalo. Then we started The Little Prince (I was pulling for The Princess and the Goblin).

After reading about elephants in boa constrictors and the discovery of Asteroid B-612, we came to the famous discussion of flowers and thorns. The narrator is busy trying to rebuild his plane’s engine so he can fly out of the Sahara Desert and not die of thirst. The Little Prince is busy asking questions about why flowers have thorns. His relentless questions finally exasperate the narrator, who exclaims, “Don’t you see—I am very busy with matters of consequence!”

The Little Prince responds with surprise and anger: “You talk just like the grown-ups! You mix everything up together…You confuse everything…I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: ‘I am busy with matters of consequence!’ And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man—he is a mushroom!”

This simple conversation from a child’s book put my whole morning in perspective. At first, I had been frustrated that my work had resulted in nothing. But the Little Prince’s vehement rebuke reminded me about what truly were the matters of consequence: not my projects, but my son; not my study of fat books, but my wonder at the wide world. This morning I wanted to be a mushroom instead of a father.

Wonder and Companionship

Philip Howard gives similar counsel in his short book, Father and Son. He writes that for the sake of their children, fathers must “keep your boyhood alive, so that you can be a boy worth your boys not in any artificial way, not as a concession, but because you and he belong together.” For me, this means not losing my wonder among my “matters of consequence.” My son has the limitless wonder of a four-year-old, but it needs to be cultivated and encouraged like a zucchini plant in Montana: though capable when young, it can easily be crushed by a rough hand or killed by fierce weather. But given enough care and attention, it will become a formidable fecundity.

Howard continues, “It is a part of the holy intimacy of father and child that the father should learn very early the difference between doing things for, and living with, his boy.” Fathers cannot be content either ruling over their children as taskmasters or pampering them. Fathers must become companions of their children, sharing in their adventures and imaginings and training them in wonder and virtue. As this intimacy between father and child grows, so does the child’s imitativeness of the father.

Howard warns of the consequences of forgetting this: “The father will be too small or too busy to interest the big boy if he counts himself too big or too busy to be interested in the little boy.” Like most true warnings, a great blessing comes when it is heeded. The father who commits himself to become his children’s companion will find his wonder limber and imagination fresh. He will be ready for all the other “matters of consequence” that come his way—and will complete them with that elvish mix of wisdom and wonder that marks a faithful father.