Carrots are a year 'round item at the Hollywood Farmers Market. But this time of year particularly beautiful carrots can be found in an array of colors, sizes and shapes. I love the little round French carrots; so sweet and carroty. They are the perfect size to pop in your mouth like a little carrot bon-bon, and that’s exactly what I do with them.

So this week I chose carrots for my Market Matters post. Not just any carrot however, I chose a variety of the most unusually colored carrots I could find. Because once you get out of the PigglyWiggly you will discover that there is way more to a carrot than orange. There are red carrots, purple ones, even yellow, white, and two-toned varieties.

You needn’t be frightened of these carrots. They are not some mutinized hybrid with a lot of genetic hanky-panky going on. Nope, most of these carrots are heirlooms.

If there is one thing that is universally true, it’s this: Sons are always trying to be half the man their old man was. Sometimes that formula gets tragically warped and a son spends his life trying to be twice the man his father was.

But this is really two sides of the same coin.

In my case I will have to settle for half the man.

Because my father is a doctor, and not just a doctor, but a children’s heart doctor. And as if that is not enough he also volunteers his time at his local Free Clinic caring for the many of us who have fallen between life’s ever widening cracks. He has even traveled to 3rd world countries where he meets and diagnoses kids with heart defects. Heart defects that would have otherwise gone on undetected and untreated.

People like my father with outsized talents (and undersized egos) are a rare breed. Sometimes being the son of a man like this is a little like climbing a ladder with uneven rungs. It’s hard to know how much progress you are making, and if it’s even worth the effort. But I guess that is part of being a son; to always wonder.