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Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette is a CNN contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Follow him on Twitter: @rubennavarrette

(CNN) -- Why only reach back to right a wrong from a half-century ago? Why not correct a travesty that is occurring right now?

I direct this question to President Barack Obama, who in March will award the Medal of Honor -- the nation's highest military honor for valor -- to a group of 24 veterans, only three still living, who should have been given the commendation decades ago. The men, who served over three wars, performed as heroes on the battlefield. But for 19 of the 24, the nation failed them. They had been passed over because of discrimination in the ranks.

The belated recognition is a wonderful gesture. But there is something more Obama should do.

The nation owes a Medal of Honor to Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a 25-year-old Marine from San Diego who died on November 15, 2004, when, according to many accounts, he smothered a grenade in Falluja, Iraq. He came to the United States as an immigrant from Mexico, and joined the Marines on the day he received his green card.

Absorbing a grenade blast to save other soldiers is the very definition of valor. It all but guarantees the Medal of Honor.

This was true for three other heroes: 22-year-old Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, who died this way on April 22, 2004, in Karabilah, Iraq; 19-year-old Army Pvt. Ross McGinnis, who died in Baghdad on December 4, 2006; and 25-year-old Navy SEAL Michael A. Monsoor, who died in Ramadi, Iraq, on September 29, 2006.

In Peralta's case, before the Marine covered the grenade, he had been shot in the head. And that fact fuels a debate.

There are those who believe that Peralta should not receive the Medal of Honor, claiming that the gunshot killed him instantly, and so he was already dead when he covered the grenade. That would make the smothering of the explosive an involuntary action that would not constitute heroism.

That group includes the last three secretaries of defense.

Recently, the Pentagon announced that it will not reopen the nomination for Peralta. According to a news release, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Defense Department concluded that the evidence did not meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard necessary for the Medal of Honor.

Nevertheless, many disagree. Those who think that Peralta should get the Medal of Honor acknowledge that the Marine sergeant was shot but, point to assertions by a neurologist, two neurosurgeons and the surgeon for Peralta's battalion that the bullet was traveling at such a low velocity that it did not kill him instantly. They assert that he was able to reach out, scoop up the grenade, and place it under his body. That it was a conscious decision to give up his life to save comrades, and that it does amount to heroism.

I've looked at this case for several years and written about it numerous times. I'm in Camp No.2. I believe Peralta deserves the Medal of Honor.

This is also the point of view of the entire California congressional delegation, which pushed the Pentagon for years to reopen the nomination. (Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, himself a Marine combat veteran who presumably knows a thing or two about valor, led the push.) And it's also the view of Texas pathologist Vincent Di Maio, an independent forensic expert who looked at the evidence and reached a different conclusion than the one arrived at by the Pentagon. And, it's the opinion of the Marine Corps, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Central Command.

Furthermore, it is also the point of view of the real experts on what happened that day in Falluja: Peralta's comrades in Alpha Company, most of who joined the campaign for the Medal of Honor. They were there. And they don't need some bureaucrat behind a desk in Washington or some political appointee to tell them what happened. They saw it with their own eyes. Initially, all seven said they witnessed Peralta scoop up the grenade and sacrifice himself, and that it's because of that act of valor that they came home to their families, to weddings and children's birthday parties and anniversaries

W.H. to bestow highest honor to 24 vets

But the Washington Post last week reported that two former Marines who were with Peralta on the day he died have broken ranks with their colleagues. At least one is recanting his earlier statements. The two former Marines claim that the narrative about what happened that day advanced by the other Marines is not true, and that it was concocted by the rest of the squad to honor Peralta's memory.

They insist that the grenade exploded near Peralta but not underneath him. One of the former Marines, 30-year-old Davi Allen, who was close enough to Peralta to be wounded in the blast, spent years advancing the other version, and now he claims the new version is the truth. Was he not telling the truth then, or is he not telling it now?

Both Rep. Hunter and the Peralta family have challenged the Washington Post article, which they insist contains inaccuracies and factual omissions. While admitting in a letter to the Post that the eyewitness accounts "have always differed," Hunter accused the newspaper of ignoring "the full body of evidence" and inaccurately describing the situation that day in Falluja. Moreover, according to Politico, the allegation that Peralta's fellow Marines concocted an alternate narrative had already been reported in the Marine Corps Times. Yet a colonel assigned to investigate the case found no evidence to back up that claim.

It comes down to whom you believe. This much everyone seems to agree on: Those in the Corps used to call Peralta "a Marine's Marine." It sounds like it.

There is one more member of the Peralta Fan Club, an expected one: The Pentagon. In 2008, as pressure started to mount, Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered the Peralta family a consolation prize: the Navy Cross. The citation read: "Without hesitation and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, Sgt. Peralta reached out and pulled the grenade to his body.

That's right -- the very thing that his supporters have insisted all along. So the Defense Department adopts different narratives depending on the commendation? That makes no sense.

The Peralta family turned down the Navy Cross, and held out for the Medal of Honor. It never came.

President Obama, you don't have to look back a half-century to find a miscarriage of justice in our armed forces. Here is a perfect example. Now, do the right thing, and give a hero the recognition he deserves.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette.

Editor's note: Errol Louis is the host of "Inside City Hall," a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel.

(CNN) -- There was an important kernel of truth buried in director Spike Lee's recent tirade against gentrification. New York City, like other big cities, has experienced a decades-long economic squeeze in which the cost of housing has soared while wage levels dropped, leaving middle-class families feeling pinched, punished and pushed out.

Lee's 10-minute, obscenity-laced rant about changes in his old Brooklyn neighborhood, Fort Greene, was deliberately offensive and, at times, incendiary (you can listen to it -- uncut -- here). He accused white newcomers to the area of being rude and disrespectful of local culture. And in this defense of Fort Greene, he sounds somewhat neighborly -- New York could always use a few more polite people -- until you think about it for a minute.

Who, exactly, determines what the local culture is? To whom is this deference or "respect" supposed to be rendered, and how? When can the "respect" bill be considered paid in full?

And whatever happened to the idea that law-abiding citizens in a free society should be able to walk their dogs in the park, take yoga classes, sip overpriced coffee at the local café and otherwise go about their business without having their lifestyle choices judged, ridiculed or attacked?

Also, as I've noted elsewhere, it doesn't help Lee's case that he sold his own home for $1 million in the late 1990s and decamped to the wealthy Upper East Side of Manhattan, where he currently resides in a 9,000-square-foot palace that he bought in 2006 for $16 million and recently put on the market with a $32 million asking price. This is a man who made a fortune by promoting the hipness of black Brooklyn, relentlessly and profitably spurring on the very gentrification he now decries.

There was a better point Lee could've made.

The real phenomenon of gentrification worth talking about is a national crisis of housing costs that are climbing faster than the earning power of many residents. It's not confined to black neighborhoods, and it's happening all around the country, not just in New York.

Spike Lee rips NYC gentrification

Spike Lee on gentrification

In a fascinating report, Daniel Hartley, a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, examined metropolitan areas to measure the number of census tracts where the housing prices moved from the lower half to the top half for that area.

Between 2000 and 2007, Hartley found, housing prices made that leap in 61% of Boston -- the most spectacular increase of any big city. Seattle ranked second, with 55% of the city's census tracts with low-cost housing moving into the pricier bracket. New York, came in third, with 46% of the city's cheaper housing turning not so cheap.

Hartley's price-based measurement of gentrification makes far more sense than racially charged anecdotal observations from Lee. Looking at these kinds of hard numbers also reveals that, in many cities, gentrification takes place without an ethnic shift. It's middle-class black homesteaders who are gentrifying the Bronzeville section of Chicago, for example. And South Boston is going upscale while remaining an Irish-Catholic bastion.

What makes gentrification a problem is that earning power for most people isn't keeping up with the rising cost of buying or renting a place to live. In New York, the cost of renting an apartment jumped 8.6% between 2007 and 2011 -- and in those same years, median household income dropped nearly 7%, according to a report by New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate.

That gap between income and rent is the true crisis of gentrification -- and to fix it will require going beyond ethnic and racial finger-pointing.

What we need is a national campaign to ensure that middle-class wages keep pace with the cost of necessities like food, health care and shelter. It won't make headlines like Spike's rant, but it might replace the heat of blame and resentment with the light of solutions.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Errol Louis.

The tea party movement began with loosely knit activist groups, and has become a major player in American politics. It's primarily focused on fiscal issues, but also embraces a range of issues important to conservatives. Click through the following images to learn more about key tea party moments.

Congressional lawmakers were met with a fierce response from constituents in 2009 over Obamacare. Shouting matches and even physical altercations were not uncommon.

The tea party's first big win came in January 2010 when Scott Brown won a special election to fill out the term of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. He was ousted from the seat in 2012 by liberal Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

Sarah Palin headlined the first national tea party convention in Nashville in 2010. Though she criticized President Barack Obama for reading from teleprompters, she was quickly called out for the speech notes written on her hand.

The tea party helped Republicans retake control of the House of Representatives in 2010. In the Senate, Rand Paul won in Kentucky with tea party support. He has since become a critic of Obama administration policies and is considered a possible 2016 presidential candidate.

Tea party favorite Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann made headlines in 2011 with her Iowa straw poll win, besting eight other Republican candidates. Her presidential bid faded, and she's now retiring from Congress.

Republicans lost five Senate races in 2010 and 2012 that were largely blamed on tea party candidates who flamed out in the general election. Democrats held onto the Senate and won the presidency again with Barack Obama's reelection.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul conducted a 13-hour filibuster in March 2013 against the nomination of John Brennan as director of the CIA. He's viewed as a possible presidential candidate in 2016.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz launched a 21-hour filibuster in October 2013 in a bid to link defunding Obamacare to federal spending. The standoff over the issue led to a government shutdown the public largely blamed on congressional Republicans.

House Speaker John Boehner said in December 2013 that conservative groups aligned with the tea party have "lost all credibility."

Washington (CNN) -- Five years ago, not many people knew of Ted Cruz or sequestration or had seen a tricorne hat.

Today, all are familiar in the political arena because of the tea party movement that emerged in 2009.

For better or worse, the coming together of frustrated conservatives fearing American ruin due to rising debt has altered the national discussion to raise the profile of people and policies previously relegated to the right-wing fringe.

Republicans fear tea party challengers in primaries. Democrats complain about the tea party caucus. The fiscal conversation focuses on reducing deficits and even reforming entitlement programs that make up the social safety net.

Here's a kind of "greatest hits of the tea party, volume one":

William Temple (C), in colonial dress, and other Tea Party supporters cheer at the Tea Party Unity Rally at The River at Tampa Bay Church ahead of the Republican National Convention, in Tampa, Florida, on August 26, 2012. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/GettyImages)

IRS controversy revives tea party

1) Protesting patriots

Never in the past 200 or so years have so many worn tricorne hats and other Revolutionary War-era garb to make their political point.

At protests and rallies that began in February 2009 to spawn the tea party movement, the overwhelmingly white, middle-aged and older participants dressed the part of past patriots protesting against taxation without representation.

They also adopted the Gadsen flag of the the 18th Century -- a coiled snake warning "Don't tread on me."

It reflected the movement's link to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 that helped launch the War of Independence, while some note that the word "tea" in the label is a backronym for "taxed enough already."

Top tea party group celebrates five years

Such romanticism ignores the private funding from big conservative donors, such as the billionaire Koch brothers, that helped amalgamate scattered local organizations into a more coherent movement with national focus.

Bachmann, Tea Party against 'Obamacare'

Sen.: Obamacare an inequality Godzilla

2) Obamacare fury

Daily headlines scream with Republican rage over President Barack Obama's signature health care reforms that passed in 2010 with zero GOP votes.

The roots of such fury emerge from the origins of the tea party movement -- conservative anger over the stimulus bill that contained more than $800 billion in tax relief and spending to help the economy recover from recession.

Tea party zealots as well as mainstream Republicans and independents also disliked the auto industry bailouts and financial sector rescue started under the previous administration of Republican President George W. Bush. That anger helped Obama and Democrats win big in 2008.

With control of the White House, Senate and House, Democrats pushed through the stimulus bill in 2009 and the Obamacare bill a year later.

Anyone who attended or watched can't forget how opponents of the health reforms flooded public hearings on the proposal to spew full-throated attacks. Supporters got shouted down, shoving matches occurred, and the resulting perception was that middle-class America would never accept Obamacare.

Today, Republicans and conservative groups try to maintain that perception with mixed results.

3) Republican control of the House

Tea party anger over the stimulus bill and Obamacare translated to a conservative campaign onslaught in the 2010 congressional elections, with private groups freed from previous funding restrictions because of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court.

Cruz angers GOP colleagues -- again

Republicans won back the House by gaining 63 seats in a major shift, with dozens of tea party-backed newcomers joining the GOP caucus.

Advocating showdown politics and brinksmanship over federal spending and raising the federal borrowing limit, the Republican-led House forced a rightward shift on fiscal issues that resulted in more austere policies, more fights between the parties and mounting public disgust with dysfunction in Washington.

O'Donnell: Dems represent collectivism

4) Democratic control of the Senate

"I'm not a witch," declared Christine O'Donnell, a moment that symbolized how the tea party movement doomed Republican chances to gain control of the Senate in 2010.

A conservative activist, O'Donnell entered the Republican primary to fill the Senate seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden. So did former Delaware Gov. Michael Castle, a nine-term U.S. congressman, who was heavily favored to win and refused to debate her.

With strong tea party support, O'Donnell beat Castle by 6 percentage points with strong backing from conservative southern Delaware, but she proved too inexperienced and downright flaky for the pressures of a full-fledged Senate campaign.

Comedian Bill Maher unearthed a 1999 clip from a TV show he hosted in which O'Donnell talked about dabbling in witchcraft, and she responded with a commercial that opened with her flat-out denial.

Senate passes debt-ceiling plan in blow to tea party

It went downhill from there, and Chris Coons easily defeated O'Donnell by 57%-40% in November.

A similar scenario occurred in Colorado, where conservative Ken Buck defeated favored Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in the GOP Senate primary, then lost to Democrat Michael Bennet in the general election.

Two years later in Indiana, Republican Richard Mourdock beat veteran Sen. Richard Lugar in the primary, then lost the race for the seat Lugar had held for six terms to Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly.

Michele Bachmann's political legacy

Ted Cruz on what's wrong with Washington

5) Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann

Who had heard of either politician back in 2009? Today, both are household names after Michele Bachmann used her status as a tea party favorite to run for president in 2012 and Cruz rode tea party backing to get elected as a senator from Texas the same year.

Bachmann railed against Obamacare and federal spending in her energetic but short-lived campaign best remembered for her frequent outlandish and accuracy challenged statements.

She won the Iowa straw poll in August 2011 to get an early jump on the crowded GOP field, but her novelty flamed out and she finished sixth in the Iowa caucuses the following January. Bachmann dropped out of the race shortly thereafter, and now is leaving Congress altogether at the end of 2014.

Cruz is on an opposite trajectory. More than any of the other tea party stalwarts elected in recent years, he has walked the talk by repeatedly taking on the Washington establishment of both parties in Quixotic escapades that gain him notoriety at the expense of GOP clout.

Texas tea partier wants GOP on Cruz control

Last September, Cruz waged a 21-hour filibuster against a government spending extension, at one point reading aloud the Dr. Seuss book "Green Eggs and Ham" to his children back home, as part of his crusade against Obamacare.

His tactics led to a 16-day government shutdown in October that failed to gain Republicans anything but public scorn for the political shenanigans involved.

Undeterred, Cruz recently forced fellow Republicans in the Senate to join Democrats in overcoming his filibuster of a measure to raise the federal borrowing limit so the United States wouldn't default on its bills.

GOP leaders wanted to let the measure pass with no Republican support so they could blame Democrats, but Cruz's filibuster threatened an impasse that could have rattled financial markets and possibly brought a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.

Fearful that Republicans would again be blamed for Washington dysfunction, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell led a dozen aisle-crossers who voted with Democrats to end the Cruz filibuster, then rejoined fellow Republicans in opposing the measure in the final vote that only needed Democratic support to pass.

Afterward, Cruz complained that such political "show" votes hurt the party much more than his ideological purity of trying to wring more spending cuts out of Democrats in order to pass the debt ceiling hike.

In the end, it remained unclear whether such antics will hurt or help the freshman senator considered a possible GOP presidential contender as soon as 2016.

After sequestration: What you'll see

6) New vocabulary

Who had heard of sequestration five years ago? Today it is part of the political-policy vocabulary, thanks in part to the way that the tea party changed the conversation through its laser focus on issues such as the national debt, the federal budget and entitlement spending.

The refusal by tea party Republicans in the House to accept business-as-usual compromises on federal spending caused a series of showdowns with Obama and Democrats.

One brought a compromise that included sequestration -- across-the-board cuts in government spending, including the military. While sparing entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the sequester cuts came closest to the tea party goal of shrinking government to lower deficits.

Now Congress has started undoing the sequestration limits, angering tea party conservatives and putting pressure on Republican candidates in November congressional elections who supported the December budget compromise.

Boehner, the Tea Party, and the GOP

Inside Politics: GOP civil war?

Senate's top Republican in trouble?

7) Poor John

Few sights have been as politically expressive as House Speaker John Boehner repeatedly having to drop legislation he supported because he was unable to get his own caucus to back him.

The ability of tea party Republicans to undermine compromises with Democrats pushed by Boehner demonstrated the GOP split between the mainstream leadership and more extremist newcomers.

Tea Party SOTU Response: 'Obamacare is an inequality Godzilla'

After the government shutdown in October, Boehner adopted a tougher stance by criticizing tea party tactics that harmed Republicans. Earlier this month, he joined 27 other Republicans to vote with 193 Democrats in passing the debt-ceiling hike over the objections of 199 Republicans.

Even Boehner's long-time political foe, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, sounded sympathetic on Thursday, calling on Republicans to "take back your party" from what she described as extremists.

"I think (the tea party) considered it a success when they shut down government and I don't think that was for the good of the nation," Pelosi said, adding that the tea party "hijacked the name Republican."

IRS targeted conservative groups

8) IRS targeting

Without a tea party movement, there would have been no tea party groups for Internal Revenue Service officials to screen out when checking applications for tax-exempt status.

It turns out that liberal groups also were targeted for extra scrutiny, based on specific words in their names, as the IRS tried to figure out if new organizations were trying to skirt election funding limits by claiming they were 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations.

Conservative Republicans continue crying foul, but investigations so far found no deliberate political machinations by the IRS.

CNN's Alan Silverleib, Shannon Travis, Ashley Killough and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

(CNN) -- Even in the Bible Belt, coroners don't use the word "miracle" lightly.

But Holmes County, Mississippi, Coroner Dexter Howard has no qualms using the word for the resurrection, as it were, of Walter Williams, who was declared dead Wednesday night.

Howard received the call from Williams' hospice nurse, who told Howard that the 87-year-old had passed away. A family member called as well, saying the same, Howard said.

Howard and Byron Porter from Porter & Sons Funeral Home in Lexington, Mississippi, drove to Williams' home to collect the body for funeral preparations. Howard checked Williams' pulse about 9 p.m. and pronounced him dead.

"There was no pulse. He was lifeless," Howard said.

The coroner completed his paperwork, placed Williams in a body bag and transported him to the funeral home, he said. There, something strange happened: The body bag moved.

"We got him into the embalming room and we noticed his legs beginning to move, like kicking," Howard said. "He also began to do a little breathing."

They immediately called an ambulance. Paramedics arrived and hooked Williams up to monitors. Sure enough, he had a heartbeat, so they transported him to the Holmes County Hospital and Clinics.

"They were in shock. I was in shock. I think everybody at the hospital was in shock," Howard said.

Neither in his 12 years as county coroner nor during his decade as deputy coroner has Howard seen anything like it. Howard was absolutely certain Williams was dead.

The only reasonable explanation he could think of, Howard said, is that Williams' defibrillator, implanted beneath the skin on his chest, jump-started his heart after he was placed in the body bag.

"It could've kicked in, started his heart back," Howard said. "The bottom line is it's a miracle."

Overjoyed family members are thanking God for saving the life of the longtime farmer they call "Snowball."

"So it was not my daddy's time," daughter Martha Lewis told CNN affiliate WJTV. "I don't know how much longer he's going to grace us and bless us with his presence, but hallelujah, we thank Him right now!"

Nephew Eddie Hester told CNN affiliate WAPT he was at Williams' Lexington home when Howard and Porter zipped up the body bag, so he was more than a little stunned when his cousin called at 2:30 a.m. Thursday and told him, "Not yet."

"What you mean not yet?" Hester recalled asking his cousin. "He said, 'Daddy's still here.' "

"I don't know how long he's going to be here, but I know he's back right now. That's all that matters," Hester told WAPT.

Howard visited Williams on Thursday at the hospital and said he was still "a little weak" but was surrounded by family members and talking.

Mike Murphy, the coroner for Clark County, Nevada, and past president of the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners, said he couldn't comment on this specific case without knowing all the details, but he's read news reports of people returning to life at funeral homes "from time to time."

Asked if he'd ever heard of a case in which a defibrillator played a role in bringing someone back to life, Murphy said he hadn't, "but just because I haven't heard it doesn't mean it hasn't happened."

Editor's note: Philip Lerman is the author of "Dadditude: How a Real Man Became a Real Dad."

(CNN) -- You know, it's not like older fathers don't have enough to deal with.

We have to keep that smile on our faces when the school's reading adviser mistakes us for our son's grandfather.

We have to pretend not to notice how much more hair all the other dads have, how much younger their wives are and how much more well-equipped they are to coach the soccer team. That's because when they were kids, they actually played soccer, while we grew up with more '60s-like pursuits, such as baseball, stickball and smoking dope.

We have to listen to people saying we're too old to keep up with our own kids, and we have to deal with the fact that they're absolutely correct.

But on top of all that, every two years or so, we have to deal with another study saying that we're much more likely to produce children who have Asperger's syndrome, attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder and every other mental illness this side of mogo on the go go. (And we have to deal with the fact that all of the fathers of our kids' friends are way too young to catch W.C. Fields references such as "mogo on the gogo.")

Study: Children of older dads at higher risk of psychiatric disorders

A report published this week in JAMA Psychiatry confirmed this trend. It is a huge study of data about 2.6 million Swedish-born children and reveals that a guy like me, who became a father at 45 (I was 46, actually), would be three or four times more likely to have a child with autism spectrum disorder.

But look.

When Max was born, they told me that because of my age, he was much more likely to have autism than, say, the child of a guy who hadn't had his first prostate exam yet. They ran me through all the other things that could go wrong, which gave me great pause. It's terrible, of course, to think that we older fathers are putting our children's health at risk.

Until you think about the alternative -- not having them at all. Then it gets tricky, doesn't it

Older fathers may be linked to autism

Max has so far managed to survive my dotage and reach the sixth grade. I'm writing quickly because I like to be done with work at 3:30, when he gets home from school, so we can play a little catch or pingpong or even kick around a soccer ball before he starts on his homework. The thought that I might have listened to the scolds who chastised me for daring to think about having a child in my advanced years -- the thought that this boy might not have come into my life -- is utterly beyond my comprehension.

I shudder to even think of Max never having been born -- and because I am a neurotic old Jew, I have to spit on the ground three times for even having written the words, like God will do whatever terrible things to us that we think or say, but then we spit three times he says, "Oh, well, that's much better then." Where did we come up with this stuff?

As it turns out, Max does suffer from some anxiety disorder issues. Did he inherit them from me? Were they caused by my creaky old decrepit sperm, as the studies suggest, or the cultural heritage that had him born to a father so neurotic that he made his son wear a football helmet to go on the swings? Or is it just one of those things?

I have no idea. But I do know this: He is lucky to have me for a dad.

He is lucky not despite my age but because of it. Because I am old enough to be done with the workplace striving that used to keep me in the office until way past what would have been his bedtime, had he existed then. Because I'm content to work from home, for a much lower salary, so that I can be here to have that catch. To play that game of pingpong. And to counsel him and console him and help him come up with strategies when the anxiety gets to be too great.

And yes, because I have worked all my life and am financially secure enough to get him the help that he needs -- to have him in a school that has responded incredibly well to his disorder. To find the best therapist in the world.

And most importantly, he is lucky because I am old enough to give my son what I could never have given him when I was younger: patience.

Older dads are more patient, I think, because we know we will probably never go through all this again. We know that these precious moments -- the bottles that gave way to sippy cups, the swings that gave way to skateboards, the Wiggles that gave way to Daft Punk -- these moments are golden gifts from God, and we understand that in a way that we never could have, in our salad days.

And so we cherish them, and we savor them, and we believe that spending that time down on the floor when they are little, and in the backyard while they are growing, and at the table talking when they need us to be at the table talking, makes all the difference in the world. All the difference in their world, and in our own.

Hey JAMA -- go study that for a change.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Phil Lerman.