When I was about nine years old, my best friend got a new blue winter jacket. When I saw Laurie’s new jacket, I wanted one just like it. I needed a new winter coat, but nothing would do. It had to be like Laurie’s. There was nothing special about her jacket. It was dark, plain, and at most, functional. It certainly didn’t have any pizazz or sparkle. Looking back now, it wasn’t a coat for me, but that didn’t stop me from begging my mother to buy me one just like it. In the end

I recently attended a marriage conference where one morning involved separating the husbands and wives into different rooms. The conversations had to be wildly different. We guys even joked about what we thought they were chatting about. Even more mysterious was wondering how they went about talking of being wives and mothers. As Leah would reveal as we compared notes over a lunch, our sessions went very different. The men’s portion about fatherhood began with a request from