What are we Building?

My first fort was a doghouse.

Luckily, it was a big doghouse, and I was just a small eight-year-old at the time. Isn’t it curious how a small building project can sometimes end up having a lifetime of impact?

My dad had made the doghouse of plywood and two-by-fours, with a peaked roof and large entrance door. It’s former occupant, our pet German shepherd Tippee, had passed away some time earlier, and then the doghouse sat vacant in the upper, woodsy part of our backyard. I dragged it over near some bushes, and propped-up some boards and plywood to create a second "room" out front. Some fresh-cut branches from recent yard projects provided some camouflage cover, and my fort was ready for action.

That first boyhood fort was a lonely place, though. I tinkered with it alone, and it didn't last long. But for a little while it was a haven I escaped to and played in -- and a place where I dreamed about the future. A boy and his fort can begin a lifetime of creations.

I left my boyhood home at age 18 and went on to get an aeronautical engineering degree. From there, I joined the U.S. Air Force where I helped design and improve fighter aircraft. I had come a long way from tinkering with the little fort … but I was still a rather lonely guy, struggling to deal with my thoughts and feelings mostly alone.

In my fourth year in the Air Force, I met my wife Grace and we were married within a year. We bought a house, which you might say became a new kind of fort to me as we worked together to improve it. Four years and two houses later (the Air Force moved us a lot), we were blessed with the arrival of our son Christopher. Now the boy in me had another kindred spirit to build things with.

We started, as fathers and sons tend to do, with Tinker Toys and Legos and such. Soon our creative energy focused on designing and building a backyard fort together. It was a joyful experience! Unfortunately, shortly after we finished it we had to move away. But our next yard had some large trees that beckoned us to start building again. So during our first summer there we drew up plans for a tree fort with a balcony and a secret escape door, and construction began again.

The next summer was 2001. That was a year when, as I have written about in some of my other stories, I began to go through a relational awakening, with a lot of help from God. I was starting to see that shared experiences with people, such as building forts with my son and the cross-country drive I went on with my dad that summer, were rich opportunities to grow deeper relationships. With that in mind, I began to plan a camping trip with Chris. I longed to spend more real time with him, and the boy in me longed to build more memories together.

My older brother Jim and his wife Marion owned 33 acres of undeveloped land in the hilly terrain of Upstate New York that they used as a summer get-away place, and this provided Chris and me with an ideal spot for a father-son camping trip. We chose a time when we could have the land to ourselves, and Jim let us choose a spot on the land to start building a campsite. The first trip was for five days, which we spent clearing some brush around a shade tree and building a fire pit to start our base camp. Meanwhile, we spent sunny afternoons fishing and swimming in the one-acre pond just a hundred feet away, exploring the surrounding property and woods, and enjoying all kinds of games and adventures. Before we left, we propped up a huge flat rock and used some bright red paint to christen our site with the cleverest of titles -- "The Campsite."

We returned summer after summer for ten years, tackling a few projects each time to improve our site, and enjoying the resulting camping "luxuries" that accumulated over the years. One year we built a picnic table. Another time we laid some polypipe to bring fresh running water to the site from a natural spring. And our final three outings were focused on re-purposing the roof of a small, collapsed shed from another part of the property to create a camping cabin for ourselves. We used my brother's tractor to haul it to our site and to hoist it onto some 4-x-4 corner posts. Our culminating project was to design and install bunk beds and windows.

Over the years, I came to understand that our projects together were not really about building forts or campsites or cabins. We were building a real relationship. We got to know each other better as we faced hardships together like the late-night storm that tormented and ultimately blew over our tent. Conversations over campfires and fishing competitions gave us time to open up and share about real things. And the memories of the many shared experiences and the rhythm of this 10-year tradition helped forge a bond that helps keep us united these many years later.

On what would end up being our last trip to the campsite, I planned a "rite-of-passage" moment. After a campfire breakfast, I gave Chris a toolbox full of tools he would need to fix things as an adult, and told him I now saw him as a man. I knew a father's words could cut down or build up a son greatly -- so I did my best to encourage and affirm his heart.

As high school summers got busier for Chris, our five-day camping trips no longer fit. New dreams were forming in his heart, as is meant to happen as our children grow up and prepare to launch into the world. During his last two high school summers, Chris went on a church missions trip to help others in an impoverished town in rural Montana, and this began to stir a life vision in his heart.

Chris soon set his sights on becoming a civil engineer so he could help communities in struggling corners of the world, while also learning how to be a spiritual mentor to help others find their way home to God as well. He focused his college years on these two goals, and upon graduating he began working full-time as an engineer, while also volunteering part-time as a minister to students back at his college alma mater USC. It is both wonderful and humbling as a father to watch a son surpass you in so many ways.

A few years later, in a very unexpected twist of fate, Chris invited me to move to Los Angeles and come join him in his work as a civil engineer. Sensing the unique chance to do life together in a wonderful new way, I jumped at the opportunity, and we got to work side by side for three awesome years! Twenty-five-year-old Chris became a key mentor to me, his 55-year old father, as I learned to be a civil engineer. My aeronautical engineering schooling and experience was three decades behind me, and concrete structures and underground pipes are rather different than fighter jets! Fortunately, Chris was a patient teacher.

Together, we helped design the infrastructure for construction projects that added or expanded buildings at several K-12 and college campuses. And in another project we got to design a 3/4-mile water pipeline to provide improved fire protection for a new, 34-story residential tower in West Los Angeles. We had sure come a long way since our forts and campsite days! But in many ways, we were still right there -- especially in our hearts.

As I write this in 2021, Chris is now married, with a three-year-old daughter and a six-month-old son. It is great to live close by and to enjoy being part of this season of their lives. Earlier today my heart smiled as I saw a cardboard fort in their dining room with windows and a slide at the exit door. I am glad to see my son working to build things -- and relationships -- with his own kids.

Just the other day, Chris turned the page to start a new chapter in his life plan. In a few weeks, he will begin working in a different firm where he can learn more about waste-water treatment and water supply. I am sad that our season of working side-by-side has come to an end, but I am excited for him and his future. He is still pursuing his dream, and I expect that one day not so long from now he and his growing family will begin to travel to far corners of the world to build helpful infrastructure and to forge new relationships spanning continents and cultures.

I am so fortunate to have been able to build things with my son -- from forts and campsites to school campuses and city water systems -- and to grow so much in our relationship along the way. Perhaps we will have more chances to work side-by-side in the future -- that would be sweet. But he has his own growing family to attend to, and dreams to pursue, which are all a joy to watch unfold. We'll see what God does as he writes our respective life stories, but I trust that he will continue to weave together more shared experiences that are opportunities for us to learn to know and love one another even better.

As I sit here now and reflect and write, I know I have come a long way since those days when I was eight years old, building that doghouse fort all alone. But I also feel in this moment like I am right back there, in that special place where my own dreams began. And I can't help but wonder … what will we each build next and, more importantly, who will we build it with?

[scroll down for some questions to ponder and some lessons I’ve learned about becoming more real]