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I remember, on the day I met my son, the way the fields of wheat stretched on forever. The way the clouds were like something out of a painting, so puffy and perfect and white. Oh, and the sky, it was blue, that deep, special kind of blue, the kind that makes you feel like the tiny thing you really are.

My wife, Martha, she was crying so hard, crying through her own laughter. Rocking him back and forth in her arms. She was so happy, that day. You should have seen her face. You should have been there.

The doctors said we couldn't have children. After we got married, after we'd tried for two years, we got ourselves checked and my wife was told her ovaries weren't suitable. She couldn't give birth. Not if she wanted to live.

Well, she took that pretty hard, let me tell you. She got very depressed. Wouldn't get out of bed. That was a bad time for us, I recall. Things were a little rocky for a while. We weren't sure if we were going to make it. She was questioning everything; who she was, who she wanted to become.

She'd always wanted kids, you see. I mean, we both wanted them, but Martha, it was her dream to be a mother. Always had been.

One night, outside in the snow, she asked me if I ever thought about leaving her. I looked at her, looked her right in the eye, and I said I wouldn't know where else to go.

Martha and I, we've been married fifty-three years. If you ask her, she'll say fifty-two, but it's fifty-three. I've kept track.

During the recession, I took over the farm. It's in a small town just south of Wichita, a few miles off the interstate. This was back before we were married. It was a dangerous time for all of us. Everyone was worried about money. My crops weren't doing very well. They kept coming out too small or too dark or too soft, or sometimes they just didn't grow.

It wasn't inexperience. I knew what I was doing. I mean, I grew up on a farm. My father was a farmer. I remember, oh, this is jumping back quite a ways, but I remember being real young, maybe around ten or so, walking next to my dad in the dirt. He was showing me how to plant seeds.

"Careful," he said. "Easy does it. Scatter the seeds a few at a time. Don't throw them in clumps, let them fall evenly down the rows. Give them enough space. That's the way."

Now that I think about it, that's really the clearest memory I have of my dad. The way the lines looked on his face, the way he was sweating under the sun.

Anyway, when I asked Martha to marry me, I told her, I said, "Sweetheart, sunshine, I'm a very simple man. I wish I could give you the world. You deserve the world. But I'm just a farmer. All I can promise is a lot of milk and corn."

She just smiled and laughed at that, so we got married that July. She packed up all her belongings, bought a plane ticket, and left her life in Idaho to come be by my side through three hard winters and one major drought. Everything that happened, everything we nearly lost, Martha was there through it all. Making my breakfasts. Doing the taxes. Sweeping the floor.

Of course, things got better. The crops started growing full. Business picked up. People started making more money. The whole country felt happier, and everyone breathed a big sigh of relief, myself included.

But I never forgot about the courage Martha had, and the risk she took to be my wife.

So when she stood there, in the field, telling me how badly she wanted to adopt this baby, I said yes. Even though there were risks, even though it was dangerous, I said yes, because I loved her and I owed her and I knew this could make her happy.

Oh, the joy, the light that child brought to our lives. Like he was one of our own. We took him to school in the car and we shopped for baby clothes. We sat him in a little high chair and spoon fed him green mush. The house was littered with rainbow colored toys and little fuzzy things that squeaked. Every Sunday I'd read a bedtime story.

And Martha, she was always humming.

I remember thinking how someday, my son would take over the farm. I remember walking him along the soil, letting him scatter seeds, telling him not to throw them in clumps. I would think, someday it will be him running the tractor and milking the cows.

That's how small I thought the world would be.

The first time we saw him on the news, Martha was sitting next to me on the sofa. It was that dark red sofa, the one we'd bought for eight dollars from a flea market. She was knitting something, I believe it was a sweater, and she was talking about how it was going to rain, when she suddenly stopped in mid-sentence and stared with her mouth open at the television.

"Isn't that our boy?"

He was about nineteen at the time, I think. This is before he was popular, before the magazines and TV specials. It was that plane that almost crashed. They were testing some fancy new plane for the first time, showing it off to the press, and, with all the cameras watching, the pilots lost control and the whole ship started to nosedive.

The cameras caught it all. Every last, exciting second. His face was everywhere. Nobody knew what to do. When it was over, when everyone turned up safe and sound, they mobbed him. The reporters were asking him questions, clawing at his clothes. They all wanted a piece of him.

He managed to slip away before telling anyone his name, but it didn't change anything. Everyone knew what he looked like. Everyone wanted to know who he was. Suddenly he's famous, overnight.

He wasn't ready for it. Not all at once like that. Martha and I, we hadn't seen him since he started college, but after that incident, he came right home. He sat in his room in the dark and he cried, and he told me he didn't know how to handle all that attention. He said his whole life was over because he'd lost all his privacy. All because he'd tried to do the right thing.

I remember saying to him, "That's life, son. It isn't always fair. But a man bases who he is on what he does. You were being tested, son. You were being tested, and you were scared, and you made a sacrifice to save all those people, but by God, you did it anyway, and it was wonderful. And I'll tell you, boy, I've never been more proud.”

That was the first time we really felt what was coming. All of us, even Martha. That was when we knew that our boy wasn't going to be a farmer.

The reason I'm telling you all this, the reason I'm writing these words, is because I want there to be some record left behind, something untouched by all the legends and myths. The world gets so wrapped up in the flashy colors and hype, they forget that first there was once a man behind the symbol. And there was a boy behind the man.

Before all the fighting, before he could do all the fantastic things you're always hearing about, he was just my son.

I remember him giggling on Christmas Eve. The summer I taught him how to ride a bike. Every Saturday, during cartoons, how he'd help make scrambled eggs for Martha before she woke up.

I want others to know him, to love him, the way I do.

Let me tell you about my son.

Let me tell you about Clark.