Can you be with me?: Stories about the currency of time (The Dad Story Project Book 3)

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Can you be with me? Stories about the currency of time, is the third title in The Dad Story Project book series by award-winning author, S. Peter Lewis.
As in the first two books , we find 15 more essays about a man growing up as a kid, growing up with his kids, and being a son and a dad.
Here again we find little drama or excitement, with the exception of a scary little tale about snapping turtles. These are simple, quiet stories about everyday life; and yet somehow Lewis makes us see, and understand, and finally believe, that those small moments in our lives are the most important.
At the heart of Lewis’s stories is the idea that fatherhood and childhood are intertwined such that children and their parents really grow up together—and that wonder will be found everywhere if we just keep our eyes and hearts open.
The stories have been selected from among more than 200 that the author, Peter Lewis, originally published in his column, Views from the Uppermost House, in his hometown newspaper in rural Maine. The column won top journalism awards in Maine every year from 2006 to 2013, and is still going strong—Lewis is a grandfather now, so there is no end to the raw material for his storytelling.
In the hands of Lewis, life’s seemingly ordinary things: shopping for a bathing suit, trying to knock his son off a bicycle, lifting a boat, a daddy-daughter date, losing something at the bottom of a lake, take on a startling significance and somehow become beautifully poignant. It’s as if he really believes that everything that happens in every day can somehow be turned into wonderful.
The book’s central focus is on the family, and most specifically on the relationships that a father has with his children. This is a book that will challenge fathers to see their role as not one of mere biology, not a burden to be borne grudgingly for 18 years and then discarded, but rather the greatest job they will ever have: a joyous calling that just keeps on going and earns dividends that are ultimately not tallied on any earthly balance sheets.
Lewis does what the best storytellers do: he shows rather than tells. These are vivid stories that you can see and hear and touch, and in each of them you may well find yourself thinking, “Yup, that could be me.” Not always the perfect dad himself, Lewis is nonetheless able to show us that teachable moments go both ways and that great good can often be wrought from unlikely circumstances. As he once wrote in a column:
“For fifty-five years I've awakened each day as a son. And each morning for the last eleven thousand days I've climbed out from under the covers and stepped into the shoes of a father; shoes I’m not always certain I can fill. The role of son I was born to, the role of father I was called to; yet I haven’t always played either role well. I’ve often fumbled my lines, on some days I’ve forgotten them altogether, and then there are those weary times when I fear I’ve left the entire script in a bus station in Cleveland.”
The third of a planned six-volume set, Can you be with me? is also a call to action. A simple call perhaps best summed up by the last line from an essay in Lewis’s first book about a man driving through a sleet storm to offer moral support to his son far away at college: “Sometimes being a dad means just showing up.”
This is no trite aphorism, but rather an appeal, an admonishment, even a plea, for men to see the great influence they can have in the lives of their children if they will but set aside their own interests and pursue the wonderful legacy they can leave by always being present and sacrificial in their children’s lives.