Steven Lewis, Writer

Parenting is a dreamy road trip full of contradiction and paradox, meandering summer lanes behind the leather wrapped steering wheel of a green Alfa-Romeo that become--in a wet sneeze--windy mountain passes slick with ice in a beige Astrovan full of screaming kids; then hellish burdens suddenly transformed into cherubic glider wings. Every time you think you know where you are, you're not there anymore.

For me, becoming a father-- and being a daddy and grandfather--has sometimes felt like getting lost in the New York borough of Queens. You know you're in New York City, but frankly it doesn't look like it's supposed to look--and at least half the people on the street don't speak the same language or dialect as you--and admitting that you're lost to the scowling presence on your right is more than your pride can bear--and, anyway, you're not really lost, you know you're in Queens, so you just keep driving. And along the way you learn a few things. As Tobias Wolff's clueless stepfather says in This Boy's Life, "I know a thing or two about a thing or two ...."

Over the past 36 years as family matters have grown exponentially more complicated and busier with the birth of each of our seven children (and now six grandchildren --  with more on the way), my inner life has paradoxically become simpler and quieter. To the outside world I'm told I sometimes seem to have the wisdom of the sages. To my kids, though, I'm definitely as big a fool as I am a wise man. And to my beautiful wife I am mostly a lovable fool foolishly tripping over himself trying to play the role of the wise father. Yet in the end--as in the end of another day in which I ponder the imponderables of a life with all these kids--I feel like I really do have some enlightened experience to share with other parents and grandparents who find themselves as lost in the whole mindful process as I am.

From the introduction to "Zen and the Art of Fatherhood"