Morir Soñando

I always knew I could be a good father.

I wasn't certain, but I knew the possibility was in me.

I knew because of what I'd been given. And I knew it had been given in two completely different ways.

My mother was barely in her twenties.

It's the middle of the afternoon at the backyard school. She appears at the edge of the yard wearing a short skirt, a cute top, her hair pulled back with a white bandana. The way pop stars looked back then.

She is carrying a Morir Soñando.

She doesn't say anything. She walks over, stands above me, and hands it to me with such tenderness that I stop thinking about whatever a little boy thinks about in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

I drink it. I lick the milk mustache from my lip. She watches with the slightest smile.

Then she leaves. Quietly, the way she came.

How did she know that's what I wanted?

Was she a mind reader? A fortune teller?

No. She was my mother.

That's what implicit love looks like. It doesn't ask. It already knows.

My father lived on a different frequency.

He would dress my brother and me in matching outfits and walk us down the middle of the street. Not on the sidewalk. The middle. As if showcasing us for a role we had already won.

Even after I was grown, he would call me over, pull me onto his lap, and cover me with kisses. Then he'd look at whoever happened to be nearby and say it without embarrassment, without lowering his voice:

"This is my son. He is already great. And he will be greater still. Just watch."

It was embarrassing.

It was also the loudest thing I have ever felt.

A mother who knew before I asked. A father who believed before I'd earned it.

That kind of love accumulates somewhere you can't see.

December 26, 1999. NYU Hospital. New York City.

Barely awake, I held my son for the first time.

Unafraid.

Even though I had no idea what I was doing.

I didn't have to invent fatherhood.

I only had to continue it. A little better, if I could.

So it could keep going.