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A few weeks after we found out we were pregnant, we went to go celebrate New Year’s at my friend Dean’s house in the Twin Cities.
Now, finding out that you’re going to be a father is not the kind of news you exactly know how to deal with. The first time you hear it, it’s just words. Even though they’re momentous words, it takes a while to catch up with the enormity of how your life is going to change.
First you’re happy.
Then you freak out.
Then you’re happy again.
I’d been working on a few things to get us established. One of them was to start up a Bike and Ski shop with Dean. We were doing it piecemeal by building a team of athletes first. Our idea was that we’d train and race together as a group. Then Dean would start doing repair work. Then we’d start prepping cross-country skis, and voila, one day we’d have a shop just as a consequence of natural progression.
We’d organized a team that was supported by another shop when we were in high school, so we knew it was a good business strategy.
In addition to that, I also enrolled in a fast track program to get my teaching certificate. I’d been teaching in Peru on just my Bachelor’s degree. I didn’t really want to teach, but when you have a baby on the way you think things like, “AGH! HOW AM I GOING TO FEED THIS BABY!”
I realized I didn’t have a professional certification. Becoming an educator is a good job. There are excellent benefits. You get the summer off. The kids are nice. It’s a great thing to have in your back pocket in case things don’t go as you expect.
The one thing I’ve learned from life is that things never go as you expect.
I got into the fast track program because I had a similar freak out at the end of college. I was closing in on graduation and I started thinking, “AGH! NOBODY’S GOING TO HIRE ME WITH JUST AN ENGLISH DEGREE!”
So, I picked up a minor in physics. I was able to do that since I’d taken 2 semesters of Calculus in my first year. Nothing about my English degree required those classes, but it didn’t feel like school if I wasn’t learning math, and I wasn’t interested in paying for classes that taught me what I already knew.
I was already getting that in English.
I consulted an advisor, he said, “We don’t see a lot of English majors in this building.”
I said, “I guess not.”
Then he tested me with a calculus problem that I had absolutely no idea how to solve.
“It’s been a few years,” I said.
“But do you generally remember how this works?”
“Um... isn’t that the chain rule?” The only thing I remembered about the chain rule was that my teacher used to say DU, DY, DY, DX. So I said that, “DU, DY, DY, DX!”
“Yes!” the instructor said.
I smiled even though I had no idea what he was talking about.
He patted me on the back, said I’d do fine and that it would all come back to me.
I walked out the door uncertain, but he turned out to be right, and getting that minor helped me get into an accelerated program to get certified.
So all that was rushing through my head because I knew a baby was coming. I guess it was my version of nesting. The countdown had started. I had 9 months to turn myself into a provider. The era of accountability had arrived. It was time to stop screwing around. I had a baby to think about.
Oh s**t!
Hooray!
Oh s**t!
Anyway, we showed up at Dean’s house. Dean and I were from rural Wisconsin. We were farm kid rubes who were always looked down upon by the “upper class” residents of Minneapolis. That always annoyed me. I could sense their attitude, and when I get annoyed I misbehave. Here’s a photo that more or less sums up Wisconsin:
There’s kind of a self-delusional hopefulness in that image that I find appealing.
Anyway, when I become emotional I tend to misbehave, but in a good way. It’s the kind of behavior that makes little kids start to laugh, but the uptight become enraged.
I can get away with it because I’m physically big. I’m not NFL lineman big, but I noticed that every time I go to watch my kids play sports, there is usually only one guy there taller and more solid than me. Sometimes there aren’t any. I don’t think of myself as gigantic, but that’s easy to say when you’re often the biggest person around.
Dean’s wife opened the door. She never really liked me and she’d always been rude to my wife so I didn’t like her. As I said, my wife and I had just moved back to the USA. We would come to find out how many people are just impulsively hostile to immigrants, but back then I hadn’t yet learned how to recognize the signs and I felt compelled to tolerate them.
Since then I’ve learned not to put up with people like that, but back then I had a lot to learn. I greeted her, she said nothing. My wife rolled her eyes. I nodded at her as if to say “I got this.”
I think we’d probably brought some Pisco from Peru. We liked to travel around and make Pisco sours. But now my wife couldn’t drink.
“I guess you’re drinking for two,” my wife said.
“Actually it’s three,” I replied, “because the baby can’t drink either.”
“Oh, too bad,” Dean’s wife said. “We don’t have any ice.”
“Don’t have any ice!” I roared! “This is Wisconsin!”
“We’re in Minnesota actually.”
“Pftt!” I cried. “There is no Minnesota, only Wisconsin.”
Dean started laughing. I knew that would get him in trouble with his wife later, so I encouraged it. She was mean to him too. He was allergic to shellfish. Once he had a reaction to food at a restaurant but she refused to give him any medication or take him to a hospital until he stopped breathing. I’m serious.
“We’re literally surrounded by ice!” I cried. “Why, there’s ice hanging off your rooftops!”
Incidentally, there were like six other couples at this house. All of them irrelevant. I was the star of the show damn it! I was about to be a father.
Azucena watched and smiled and laughed. It was still early in the trip and she didn’t fully understand the dynamics of rural versus city, or Wisconsin versus Minnesota, or Papito versus the world. I’d only just become “Papito.” It would still be months before I’d be called that name, but I was already him.
Dean and I and two of the other husbands who had already come to regard me as an unstoppable force of nature, went outside, got the ladder, and broke off a bunch of icicles. Then we sat down and drank our Pisco sours with gigantic icicles sticking out of the glass like we’d just slaughtered a wholly mammoth.
“Don’t stab yourself in the eye!” I bellowed.
Dean’s wife scowled at us.
“Wait a minute, isn’t your wife a nurse!” I added. “Then go ahead and stab yourself in the eye. Forget that I said not to!”
Somebody emerged from the kitchen with a fancy chocolate fondue fountain. It came with a bunch of long, pointy forks and there was a tray of fruits.
Before anyone could explain how we were supposed to eat the dang thing, I grabbed it and claimed it. “This is for me and me alone! The rest of you are weak!” I screamed. Then I wielded the pronged fork like a sword and stabbed everyone who came close.
“But...” Dean’s wife said.
“WEAK!” I cried. I began to serve myself from the chocolate fountain.
“Can I have some my love?” Azucena said. She approved of the fact that I was antagonizing Dean’s wife because a couple weeks earlier, we’d accompanied the two of them to dinner. Dean’s wife tried to trick Azucena into wearing a dress that was too informal for the restaurant. My wife insisted on changing and she did so because she gets her way. She’s not tolerant of being disrespected and I support her on that.
“Of course you can have some chocolate my darling,” I said, handing her a strawberry. “But nobody else, because you’re all weak!”
So, that went on for a while. I honestly can’t remember the state of the fondue when we went outside to make a fire. I was happy to be outside because it meant I didn’t have to use my inside voice. I said as much, and Dean’s wife quipped, “I thought that was your outside voice.”
She meant it as a rebuke, but I took it as a challenge.
“No, this is my outside voice!” I bellowed. For those of you who don’t know, I’m loud. I’m really loud. I can knock leaves off the trees. I can cause the snow to come tumbling off a roof. I can wake up the neighbors and drown out the howling of their dogs.
“I’m going to be a father!” I cried. Then I stood by the fire and I began to sing. “A la derecha, a la izquierda, a la derecha, swing, swing, swing!”
This was too much for buttoned down Minneapolis to take. But none of them were man enough to tangle with me. They were too weak. I was too euphoric, and damn I was celebrating the fact that my daughter had popped into existence. I knew then she was going to be great. I had to prepare the world for her. I had to keep all the people in line.
“A la derecha, a la izquierda, a la derecha, swing, swing, swing!”
To be honest, in the back of my mind, I was kind of waiting for Azucena to give me a signal to tone it down. But she didn’t. Her eyes were shining and she was laughing, so I kept going.
The people there had never seen anything like us. I was dancing and singing and drinking at a level they’d never witnessed. Any one of the three should have been lethal, but to put them all together was legendary.
The fire went on for a while, then we decided to play football. One of the guys there had these plastic bags that looked like colostomy bags, and we filled them with whiskey and went out onto the frozen lake.
I’m known to get rowdy and frozen lakes are unforgiving. When I came back that spring there were still imprints in the water from where I’d dove into the end zone. We played for who knows long. Then I howled on the streets and tried to get other people to come out and play.
“Hey! You random person walking your dog. Get out here and play football. Yeah you! Don’t run away!”
I was still young enough that I was fast and the bruises didn’t hurt, and I plucked the football out of the night when it was hurled to me and it was glorious.
I never saw the guy with the whiskey colostomy bags again, but Dean said that he talked about that night for years to come.
Eventually we had to go back. Azucena was delighted to see me as I came in the door. Maybe she’d been concerned that I hadn’t found the time to celebrate my impending paternity. Emotions sometimes take time to percolate. They boil up within you and then erupt. I was erupting with the joy of fatherhood! I tend to fret and plan and stress. I like to have contingency plans for my contingency plans. But she approved of the fact that I was happy and loud and rowdy, and that was good enough for me.
“It’s time for Poker!” I cried. “Bring me another chocolate fondue! Bring one for Dean too. He’s no longer weak!”
Dean laughed.
Dean’s wife gave me the stink eye.
Somebody went to go and get chips. The king’s orders had to be obeyed.
I went upstairs to the room that had been set out for us and tried to wriggle out of my wet and frozen blue jeans. I knew I’d left a bag around there somewhere. It was filled with other pants I assumed. But if it wasn’t, I could always declare the party pants optional. I’d done so before. Who dared to stand against me? Only if Azucena gently shook her head no would I relent.
With a smile on my face, I decided it might be nice to warm up for a moment, so I slid under the covers.
“I’m going to be a father,” I mumbled. Then I fell asleep. But I remember Azucena coming up to give me a gentle kiss before the dreams settled upon me. I’d burned hard and bright that night. I wouldn’t regain consciousness until the following year.
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