Bob stood toe-to-toe with Dick. Their voices rose higher in the midevening quiet. They grew shrill and tense.

A window on the second floor of the nearest apartment house flew open. A voice snapped, "Stop that noise down there! Bob, you get up here!" It was Bob's dad. That broke it.

Bob wheeled around and started into the house, Dick right on his heels. On the stairs they struggled. Both boys were athletes, but Bob proved the stronger. He flung Dick off and ran up the stairs. He burst into the apartment, slamming the door and leaning against it. Tears of shame started from his eyes. "I couldn't hit him! I tried to but I couldn't hit him!"

Dad stood quietly a few feet from him. Bob guessed he'd heard the struggle on the stairs. He figured Dad had been praying. He looked quiet.

Now Dad took him by the shoulders, "Don't be ashamed, Son. Be grateful. You reflect God, divine Love. You have the gift of tenderness. That's strength, not weakness." Dad sat down with him to talk and Mom came in. She knew what had been going on. When she joined them, Bob saw she felt for him. As problems came up, they were all used to talking it out together.

They talked of how boys and men think they should express only qualities called "manly," like strength, courage, protectiveness, decisiveness. "Because a father brings these to his family, they are called fatherly qualities," said Dad.

Mom agreed that tenderness, forgiveness, and comfort are primarily the motherly qualities. "But really," she added, "it's a blend of both in each of us that makes a whole person."

"Right," said Dad, "it's a blend. There are times when Mother has to make decisions for us all. And she makes you behave when I am away. Then she needs to express the fatherly qualities." To Bob's surprise, Dad, and Army officer, told how his early promotions had come because of his love and understanding of his men, qualities that might appear more motherly than fatherly.

"You don't have to be a girl to express gentleness and forgiveness. And on the other hand Mother never acts mannish, no matter how firm she might be."

Sometimes confusion about qualities that husbands and wives should express leads to trouble. Mother and Father both told Bob of how their own parents had quarreled. Bob knew that Dad's folks had been divorced. "I was fifteen," his father said, "and it was hard for me."

Bob wondered why he had never heard harsh words between his father and mother. "When we differ," said Mom, "our love and our conscious sharing of the qualities that come from God help us to avoid the narrow and selfish point of view. And we have both seen what quarreling does to families."

"You see," Dad went on, "God is our divine Parent. He's both Father and Mother to us. Even if both human parents fail us, those God-qualities come through to us somehow. God supplies our need. More than that, we are all His children and have everything He gives. You know that."

Bob did know it. He had learned it at home and in Christian Science Sunday School. But he had never thought of a blend of true male and female qualities.

Mom had opened her Science and Health to page 16. She handed it to Bob, pointing to where Mrs. Eddy quotes the first line of the Lord's Prayer. This prayer by Christ Jesus appears in the Bible. ^{See Matt. 6:9–13;} In the Christian Science textbook Mrs. Eddy repeats it line by line, giving the spiritual meaning of each phrase.

Bob read the first line aloud, "Our Father which art in heaven." Then he read what Mrs. Eddy says: "Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious." ^{Science and Health, p. 16.}

He'd heard it so often, but now he stopped to think about the meaning. Why had Mrs. Eddy added "Mother"? It almost seemed Dad read his thoughts, because he said, "Christ Jesus always referred to God as Father. In his day, people didn't speak so much of mothers. But the motherly qualities showed through in his gentleness and forgiveness. It showed through in his care for his own mother, even when he was on the cross."

Bob was looking at the words "which art in heaven." He'd learned that heaven, instead of being a physical place, is the presence of God in our thoughts—being governed by God. It dawned on Bob that heaven, then, is the spiritual atmosphere where the fatherhood and motherhood of God blend in perfect harmony.

Harmony was what he and Dick had lacked just a short while ago. If he'd let himself be governed by God, there wouldn't have been a fight.

Bob felt at peace. He was really glad he hadn't hit Dick. He knew now that his strength didn't show itself in violence. He was more of a man without it.

That knowledge stayed with him. It helped him years later when he became a career soldier like his father. And when he had a family of his own, this understanding of fatherhood and motherhood helped him even more.