A Full Ration

When I talked to my dad a few years ago about starting my own family, getting married and having kids, as young as I was (and still am), he was incredibly supportive. I remember taking him out to a Mexican restaurant to get him loaded up on some hot, greasy goodness before he had to listen to his 21 year old son tell him he was going to propose to his girlfriend.

My parents have always been incredibly open and honest with me. It’s one of the things I respect the most about them; no matter what my question was, no matter how old I was, they treated me like an adult.

One of the things I remember most about our conversation that night happened as we were leaving the restaurant. My dad was reminiscing on being a younger man and having me and my brother, and how time goes by. One day you’re holding your own child who can’t even walk, and seemingly the next day they are telling you about their plans of having their own children.

My dad said, “You know, I got my full ration of hugs and kisses when you and your brother were little, but what I wouldn’t give for just one more day of it.”

My wife and I are pretty big nerds. Yesterday we decided that the best way to spend our afternoon was to take turns reading our daughter stories. My wife, being the literary dork/genius read Coleridge’s “Christabel,” and when my turn came I tried to frighten them with some HP Lovecraft. After we put Verokina down to bed, we then proceeded to binge watch Doctor Who for a couple of hours.

So after half a day of supernatural poetry, stories of cosmic horror, and time travel, I had some pretty wild dreams…

Our daughter Veronika is 19 months old, and my wife is currently pregnant, due in January with another little girl. In my dream, we were all in the kitchen, my wife standing next to me. Veronika looked about 4 years old in the dream, and her little sister was about 2. I was holding a third baby, a little boy who looked like he was just born, and I felt this illimitable joy.

Then out of nowhere this celestial creature shows up, and in the blink of an eye everything changes. PI was still in the kitchen with my wife, but suddenly Veronika was 18, packing her bags and getting ready to move out. Her little sister was 16 and pretending that my wife and I didn’t exist, and my dream son was a young teenager. My wife looked older, as I imagine I did as well, and all that joy I felt was replaced with an immeasurable sorrow.

I felt slighted. I felt robbed that this alien came in and so suddenly made us older in no time at all. I grabbed the creature and I started yelling at it, pleading and sobbing, “Give me back that time! Just give me back those years you took!”

When I woke up, I saw my wife sleeping soundly, still 5 months pregnant with our second baby. I sneaked down the hall and poked my head into Ronnie’s room and found her curled up in a little ball, still 19 months old.

I was relieved. Happy that my young family is still young, hopeful and excited about the days to come with them. But at the same time I felt a bittersweet tug in my guy that reminded me that one day, save for the interstellar traveler, that scene from my dream will be a reality. My daughters will grow up and move out. If my wife and I have a third child, they too will grow older and all my children, God willing, will have their own families.

It’s funny, when my dad told what he would give for one more day, I understood the words he said, but this morning upon waking, I understood their meaning.

So today, I got my full ration of hugs and kisses from my little girl. And I pray that all you other parents out there got yours as well.

The Eucharist

So in honor of Fathers Day, I thought it fitting to share my experience with the greatest gift out Heavenly Father has given us.

I was born Catholic, baptized at birth, but my family didn’t start going to church regularly until my brother and I were in a Catholic elementary school, and if I’m being entirely honest, it was my brothers constant nagging of my parents was the catalyst that got us to go.

As Catholics, the high point of the Mass is the Eucharist, in which the priest, acting the role of Christ at the last supper, transforms mere bread and wine into the most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus. We call it transubstantiation, and while it retains the physical properties of the bread and wine, through the power of the Holy Spirit we believe it becomes His Real Presence. Because we believe it to be truly the Body and Blood of our Savior, the Eucharist is treated with the utmost respect and care. In fact, etiquette dictates that the one in Communion must consume the Host in view of the Eucharistic minister to ensure it is not being taken away and then later disgraced. After the transubstantiation, any of the leftover Host not consumed is stored in the tabernacle at the back of the altar. It must continue to be protected and cared for until it is consumed, because it had ceased to be ordinary and is now the true, physical presence of Christ.

I promise there is a point to that, and I wasn’t trying to show off.

In the Church, you aren’t allowed to receive the Eucharist until your First Communion, which for most youth brought up in the church is around the second grade. The same went for me, but it wasn’t until I was 17 that I truly understood, and most importantly appreciated, what the Eucharist is.

When my brother’s turn came for First Communion, we hatched a plot. Since we both knew that it was not proper for anyone not having gone through First Communion to openly receive the Sacrament, we made an agreement when he started preparation that he would save some of the Host for me. We had seen the wafers before, and they were all imprinted with a cross. We figured it would be easy for him to break the Host into four pieces, and save one of the portions for me. I remember watching him and his class process out of the church, and then running outside to meet with him. When I finally found him, I was smiling eagerly, awaiting my prize. But he just shook his head, and told me he couldn’t do it, that it wasn’t okay.

I was mad. He tried to calm me down, but I was so angry with him that he could be so selfish to abandon our plan. He was the selfish one in my childish logic for not sharing the Eucharist, because at that point, I just didn’t understand.

Our parish in Northern California where we lived at the time was relatively small. My family always went to the 7:30am Mass every Sunday, which was usually celebrated by the parish priest, an old Irishman, Fr Healey. He was very devout, looking back on it almost uptight and stuffy, but nonetheless had a burning passion for his faith, despite his outward conservatism. And I remember that passion came through in one homily in particular, that he gave annually during the Feast of Corpus Christi, in which he would lament, amidst shouts and tears, the disrespectful manner he would see some members of the congregation treat the Eucharist. He would weep that after Mass he would sometimes find half chewed, spit out pieces of the Eucharist in the pews, and that some of his flock were the perpetrators of such in dignified treatments of the Sacrament.

I would listen year after year, and though I saw the pain, the horror he felt and recognized his love for the Eucharist, I still didn’t understand.

Even when I grew up and started taking more of my faith and development into my own hands, I never truly understood the Eucharist. I knew it was holy, that it was one of the defining things that makes Catholics separate from other Christians, but even at 16 if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to give a satisfactory answer.

Because I just didn’t understand. Not would I for another year.

When I was 16, I started volunteering at my church in Reno where my family had moved. I was a part of the youth band, and kind of a youth advisor to other kids going through the sacrament of Confirmation. A year later after I turned 17, I was asked to be a youth leader on a retreat to the Steubenville West conference in Tucson, Az. Eager to get away from my parents for the summer, and excited to spend time with my friends, I gladly accepted. The conference was fun, a lot of talks from Catholic Apologists, daily mass and nightly worship. On the last night of the conference, however, the local bishop held a special session of Adoration.

Most Catholics might find this hard to believe, but until that point in my life, I had never heard of Adoration before. I didn’t know what it was, or that it was something the Church did. Adoration is when the consecrated Host is displayed in a monstrance for us to, literally, sit in the presence of, pray, and adore. A monstrance is a vessel for the Eucharist to be stored and transported in, and are beautifully designed, there are really no two that are alike.

Like I said earlier, the Host that is not consumed is protected and stored away in a tabernacle at the altar. A consecrated Host is not something that just sits out in a church. But during Adoration, the true Body if Christ is put on display for all to see and worship.

It was at that first Adoration that it finally clicked. I was talking to my wife before I wrote this, trying to find the exact words as to why it happened then. And as is usually the case with wives because they are the smarter of the two, she said, “It’s because for the first time, you saw the Eucharist how it should be seen; in all His glory.”

Something so simple, that is now something so powerful. I always knew the Eucharist was important to us as Catholics, but I finally understood, I finally appreciated it. Knowing the full glory in the Eucharist, seeing Him beautifully presented like the King He is, makes it all that more precious now when He is presented to me every Sunday in a manner in unbefitting a king, in a simple cup, looking as simple as a plain piece of unleavened bread.

I think now, as a father, one of the most thrilling and awesome moments of the mass is when my wife and I receive the Eucharist together, knowing that when Veronika was growing in her belly, and now that my wife is pregnant again that as our second child grows, and with each of our future babies, that because my wife receives the Host, my children in utero are fed and nourished with the Body of Christ as well.

Happy Fathers Day to all fathers, grandfathers, godfathers, stepfathers, and to all men whom someone calls father. May God keep you safe, and bless you the way He has me.

My Wife the Superhero

So it may be weird to post something completely unrelated on Easter, but whatever, this is my blog and I’ll do what I feel, and I’ll post my Easter blog later.

So Veronika has started daycare at the beginning of March. She loves it, and she gets to finally interact with other babies (my wife and I don’t know any other couples with children Ronnie’s age). We’d known this was coming, so my wife and I had been preparing for the emotional strain of leaving our daughter in the hands of strangers.

The one thing we forgot to prepare ourselves for was the sicknesses that came with daycare. So far, Ronnie has had the stomach flu, a cold, and freaking pink eye! We were able to keep that contained just to her, but she shared the stomach flu with us and knocked my wife and I out for a few days.

Then two weeks ago, my wife got tonsillitis, and she was bed ridden for a good five days. During that time I had to take the lead on the day to day house and baby duties.

When Ronnie was first born, my wife and I decided that she would stay home to raise our daughter. Now I know that raising a baby is a full time job in itself. I knew it would be stressful on my wife, and how the daily functioning, cleaning, and other house chores would fall on her, and she didn’t mind because she got to spend all day with our beautiful baby. I was always quick to defend her when my coworkers would make jokes that she would sit around all day watching TV, doing nothing. I always knew that she had made a huge sacrifice to walk away from a job she loved to make sure that Ronnie spent her first year with her mommy.

I always knew, but until she was bed ridden, I didn’t understand. When my wife was out sick, all of her jobs became mine. The cooking, the cleaning, taking care of Veronika. I knew it was difficult, but I never truly appreciated all that my wife did this past year to keep our baby alive, healthy, happy, and our house running.

I feel guilty the times I took for granted all she did to make sure that when I came home from work, the house looked nice, that each night I went to sleep in a bed that had been made that morning, that I ate a wonderful meal cooked earlier in the day on clean dishes she had washed.

All that, while making sure my daughter was clothed, bathed, fed, and loved.

It’s no secret that my wife is incredible. I’ve known since the moment I met her how extraordinary she is. I’ve never doubted her, but playing single dad for a week really brought that appreciation and admiration for her to a deeper level.

I feel I may start to ramble if I go on much longer, so I guess I’ll end with this: our marriage is a partnership. I’m blessed to have such a strong woman to support and strengthen me.

I only hope that I do the same for her.

Giant Baby!!!

A few months after Ronnie was born, when she was learning how to stand up, I started playing a game with her I call “Giant Baby!!”

I would lie on my back and hold her standing up on my stomach and have her stomp around like Godzilla, laying waste to an imaginary city. She would lift up her feet and giggle as I made the noises of people running and screaming as their town was razed to the ground.

As an added bonus, Giant Baby had toxic drool that would melt thought anything, even daddy’s t-shirt.

Thankfully, there was only one thing in the world that could stop Giant Baby, and that was a barrage of daddy’s kisses and tickles. Just as the town was on the verge of utter annihilation, daddy would rise up and begin the assault. Giant Baby would scream out in a fit of laughter and be vanquished.

And mommy would be in the background smiling and rolling her eyes that she ever married such a dork.

Work got tough a few months ago, and lately I’ve been staying longer hours, working more on the weekends, just overall devoting more of my time and energy towards my job. I’m thankful for the job I have. It’s allowed me to create a life for my family I otherwise would not have been able to afford.

However, I’ve reached a point where I have a huge decision to make. And I realized it the other day. I was lying on the floor, and my daughter, who can now walk on her own, came running up to me. I picked her up, and realized we hadn’t had a good old game of Giant Baby in a while. So I stood her on my stomach, and saw that now…well, she really is a giant baby.

And I lamented the time I had already lost. That in a brief period of time she had already grown so much, and that while I was there for that time, I was more of an observer than a father.

I might just be a bit sensitive, or being hard on myself, but I don’t want to lose anymore time. In five years, I’m not going to look back and say to myself, “Wow, I just wish I had spent that extra ten hours a week in the office.”

I am making the decision to spend more time at home, and that the time I spend at home is better spent on my family. I am making the decision to be more active and to make my prayer and spiritual life better. Work is work, I can’t let that be my life. It’s not fair to my God, it’s not fair to my wife, it’s not fair to me…

And it’s not fair to my giant baby, who will keep getting more and more giant until one day, she won’t be able to stand on my stomach.

I don’t know if this is depressing, or uplifting.

But it’s cathartic. I sure feel a lot better, and I’m damn sure not missing anymore time with my family.

A Childlike Love

Mark 10:15 reads, “Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”

I used to have the wrong understanding of this passage. It wasn’t until I had a daughter of my own that I truly began to realize what Christ meant when he spoke these words. I used to think it was that a child just accepts God’s love, His plan, with little or no questioning. That a child, trusting and full of wonder, will accept the Truth that God loves us so much that He became a man and died for our salvation.

And I guess maybe that’s not wrong, but it’s a very simplified, and itself childlike understanding of the true meaning of the passage.

I was sitting downstairs at my house with my daughter, who was just rolling around on the floor like the maniac she is. My wife was sitting on the couch behind us, working on her laptop. It was a very hot day, so Veronika was just in a diaper. We watched as she learned to pull herself up into a standing position on our coffee table. She was very pleased with herself, and started to giggle and bounce up and down.

And in that moment, something clicked and my mind was brought to that passage. In that joy and mirth I saw in my daughter, I realized Christ’s message of a childlike acceptance of God.

See, in that moment I saw a happiness that I can only imagine is what Eternity must be like. Standing almost naked and dancing, my daughter knows no shame. Smiling and giggling when she meets new people, my daughter knows no prejudice or bigotry. She knows no hate, or anger, or sloth, or avarice, or pride. All the sins that we embrace as we grow older, that weigh our souls down and turn us further away from God, my daughter knows nothing of, but more importantly, has no use for.

The petty grudges and annoyances we as adults refuse to let go, children do. When we do something wrong at work, how often are we unwilling or cautious to repeat the same activity, for fear of messing up or failing again? When someone wrongs us, or cuts us off in traffic, we plot and scheme, wishing and hoping to get even. My daughter is learning to stand, and will soon be walking. She falls and when she does she screams out, scared by the fall and the pain of hitting her head. But she doesn’t let that stop her. She gets right back up and does it again. If I accidentally drop her, or scratch her, she doesn’t resent me, she is grabbing for me and giving me little baby kisses the next minute. While I am still punishing and cursing myself for being so clumsy, she has already forgiven me.

A child can get into Heaven because they are more like God than adults will ever be. They are a more perfect creation, a more pure example of how God wants us to be. A human, with no petty grievances holding them back from achieving the awesome potential and unconditional love that He wants for us all.

In His infinite wisdom, Christ wanted us to see that a child accepts the Kingdom of God, because the Kingdom is nothing but happiness. It is constant achievement. It is without fear, or hurt, or anger. It knows no class, no sex, no color, no creed. Christ is asking us why children so ready and willing to accept something so logical, something that will better each individual who decides that happiness is better than hate, but we as adults are not? Something that will break down the walls that divide us and bring us closer to perfection…

Questioning is useful, but only if we seek our questions to be answered. Children ask questions because they want an answer. As we grow up, and buy into this idea of intellectualism, as our minds “expand” and our hearts harden, we often question just to ask why, we question to debate, and not to seek knowledge. In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis writes, “Listen! Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now.”

We are not meant to blindly follow. We are not meant to give unquestioning obedience to God; a love of God without choice or thought, or passion, is not love at all. But Christ wants us, in our childlike acceptance of God, to ask our questions with the goal of finding the truth, and once we are confronted with the Truth, to have the childlike humility to accept it. God does not want blind love, but once our eyes are open, He wants it unfailingly.

But if we accept God like a child, how is it possible to give Him anything less?

Our Hospital Stay, part 2

So we were finally admitted to the hospital.

Which, thank God happened, because half of our family had already shown up, waiting eagerly for the birth of our baby. Our family never does things small or somewhat. We do things in a big way, because our family is big, and we have big personalities.

Now while we were admitted, it still wasn’t so easy. After we left the hospital the previous night, we went back around noon the next day. I was able to be somewhat more articulate when checking us in the second time. While my wife was waiting up in the hospital room being monitored, I was given a brief respite and my father-in-law took me to the cafeteria for a much needed meal. Being so anxious and nervous, I hadn’t eaten very much the previous 24 hours. I was halfway through my sandwich when I received a text from my mother-in-law:

Well she is only at 3.5. Nurse is calling doctor but they are thinking of sending her home again.

He heart dropped. I wanted to leave the table and run up to my wife, but my father-in-law made me stay to finish my lunch. It was the smart thing; I wouldn’t have lasted without the second half of my sandwich.

But once the food was down I ran like a madman through the hospital. When I got to the room, the nurse told us the on-call doctor wanted to keep us for an extra hour for evaluation. We took an hour’s walk around the maternity ward, and then my wife a super hot shower. When she was done, the doctor came back in, and we were admitted.

I wasn’t told this, but there is a lot of down time waiting for the baby to come. We had a few tests, some blood work, a fentanol shot, the epidural, and turns pitocin drip, but other than that, there was a lot of reading, hand holding, and watching TV.

We actually made it through the entire World’s Strongest Man competition on ESPN, and Dumb and Dumber.

All the while, we received texts from our family asking for updates, like we would somehow forget to tell them the baby had been born. It was actually funny; my mom and mother-in-law were out in the waiting room, watching the 49ers/Ravens game to determine who would go to the Superbowl. They are both 49ers fans, and at one point were cheering so loud that one of the nurses had to go out and tell them to be quiet or else they’d wake all the babies!

But yea, a lot of downtime. My wife slept, and eventually the sun went down and I felt tired enough that I could go to sleep, and confident enough that if I did nothing would go wrong. I curled up in a very uncomfortable recliner, pulled my jacket over me and drifted off to sleep…

I was woken suddenly by the nurses kicking the door open. I jumped up out of the chair, sick to my stomach because I thought the baby was coming. “Oh God, oh God, this is it.” But when the nurse rushed in with an oxygen mask, I realized the baby wasn’t on the way just yet. I noticed the machines my wife was hooked up to were beeping incessantly. My knees began to shake and my nausea grew worse. My wife was in trouble, and I didn’t know how to help her. Talk about feeling completely powerless…

I rushed over to the bed, but the nurses pushed me back. After a minute of flipping my wife from one side to the other, her face buried in the oxygen mask, the machines stopped beeping. They layed my wife back down, smiled at me, and THEN LEFT THE DAMN ROOM!

I stood there for a minute looking at my wife, wondering what the hell just happened! I walked down the hall to the nurse’s station, and said, “Hi, I’m the father in room 410. What the hell just happened??”

Apparently, because of the pitocin, my wife displayed from 6cm to 8cm so suddenly, the baby dropped. The heart rate monitor stopped picking up the baby’s heart rate, and started reading my wife’s. So on their monitoring screen, the nurses saw the heart rate go from 150 BPM, and drop to 80 BPM.

Jesus, what a relief, but next time, please let the father know about that before you just walk out of the room!

As I said in the last post, I learned a lot about how hospitals work during my stay. Something I didn’t know what just how little we actually saw of the doctor. In the wee hours of the morning, the nurse came in to check on us, and told us it was time to start preparing for the delivery. The nurse coached my wife through the pushing, and after each push I kept telling myself, “Yea, so the doctor should be arriving any minute?”

After an hour of pushing, they brought in all the tools, and prepped the area. The doctor came in, and literally 2 minutes later…

I was holding my wife’s leg, and petting her head. I was telling her how well she was doing, how proud I was of her. Because I was, and I still am. She displayed a level of strength I didn’t know was possible, a level I could never imagine being able to accomplish myself. As I was doing my best to console her, I just felt a sudden urge to look down. Right at that moment, I watched my baby being born.

It actually happened really fast. She kinda shot out like a cork, and the doctor had to jump back a little to catch her.

I now say her, but in one of my previous posts I referred to my then-unborn baby as “he.” My wife and I waited to find out the sex until she was born. My wife said it is one of the few times in life you can truly be surprised.

No kidding. All the doctors and nurses told us to expect a boy, based on the heart rate, the position of the baby, how my wife was carrying, and all sorts of other metrics to conclude the sex of the baby without using an ultrasound. But when my beautiful baby came out, even the doctor said, “Woah…I guess it’s not a boy…”

There were two thoughts that ran through my head. The first was a joyous relief, “Thank God she was born healthy and that my wife had a good delivery.”

And then the second, “It’s a girl…I am so screwed…”

It didn’t even take my little girl 1 minute to have me completely wrapped around her little finger…