I’m Sorry. You Have the Right Number.

A call from my father who I haven’t heard from in ten years and before that 14 years, asked, “Cynthia?”. Wished it were the wrong number, but no. I didn’t even recognize his voice. “Yes,” I replied, wondering whom this was. “It’s…” a pregnant pause, “your dad,” Dad, defined as a man who begets or raises or nurtures a child, a term used loosely. “Your grandma is not doing so well.” Whatever disregard I have for him crawled it’s way out of my fiery lips into the corner of the room. This call had nothing to do with us, as nothing ever has. This call was about Vita.

When my younger brother and I were little, looking like twin boys when I had been a victim of a fanatic barber that decided that at five, I needed a tight cut like my brother right before picture day (cut sponsored by dear old dad), we never called our grandparents, Abuelita or Abuelito. We shortened it and called them Vito and Vita and it stuck. They were essential parts of my life. When my parents divorced, they were the only people on my father’s side that showed me any love (this includes my father).

At seven, they moved back to Guatemala. Vito died of cancer shortly after. I didn’t know at the time, that they had moved so we wouldn’t have to see him suffer. Vito was a towering man at six foot four, with ivory hair and a uniformed mustache. He always dressed like he was going to mass and in the wintertime wore a burly, sable woolly hat. His father was British, his mother Guatemalan. He looked like a bi-lingual Sherlock Holmes.

He would sit in his dark green recliner and watch TV. My younger brother and I would crawl behind the long, beige sofa like stealth military agents, quietly making our way over to him. We would sneak behind the chair, Vito oblivious to us. He did have hair, not much, but he would grease it with something I am still not certain of what it was and comb it to one side. My brother and I would silently play around with his hair. Making it into a Mohawk, making pig tails, splitting it in the middle. We’d giggle and I could see Vita from the kitchen laugh and all the while, Vito would just sit there watching Kojak.

It is said that before he passed, in his bed he told my father to tell us that he loved us very much. I was ten and never got to tell him how much I loved him. How he was the only positive male figure in my life.

Now, twenty years later, I get a call about Vita. My last link to that side of me. Once she is gone I will not have any connection from that part. I did visit her three times from 1999-2003. The final time I went with a good friend of mine for seventeen days. My Vita became her Vita. She told us stories of how after only a few months, Vito proposed and she said, “Why not?”. Told us how when she came to Chicago, she started out by cleaning hospitals, learned English in her spare time, studied and became a physical therapist. How one time, a woman with an infected foot was placed in a tub of hot water and that worms came out of it.

The first movie I remember seeing was with my grandparents. Snow White, at Vita’s holiday party. I remember sitting on Santa’s lap and thinking he had some bony legs that hurt to sit on.

We had many laughs in Guate and many tears the day I left because Vita forgot that was the day I was leaving. To her, it was like someone just came and took me away. In a way, that’s how it still feels.

Now, she is bedridden. My father, by name only, taking care of her. Do you understand the irony of this situation? The woman I love, my only connection to the other half of me is being taken care of by the man who left my family and never took care of us. All my hard feelings against him that plagued me throughout elementary and high school, that took years to not forgive nor forget, but to let go, mean nothing right now. He is there for her. Right now she is the one that matters. Not me, not him, her.

We spoke calmly. The first time since I was 12 that it didn’t end with him hanging up on me. We were two adults speaking of a mutual love. We were civil. Who would have thought?

My baby will never know her great grandmother personally, but will know of her through stories and pictures. If God allows her to live long enough, maybe she can hear her voice over the phone. Vita doesn’t remember that I told her I am pregnant, but if I have to call Vita everyday and tell her that I am having a baby, like it’s the first time, every time, I will do so.

My baby, however, will have a father. A daddy. Someone who will be there for her no matter what. To make sure that she is loved and cared for. To play and discipline her. To hug and kiss her. A daddy to look up to. Something that I wish I had my whole life. Something that I am grateful and blessed to say, she never will.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

24 weeks 2 days

Christmas. While the temps decrease, the cups of hot chocolate, holiday festivities, and Christmas songs increase. I walked through Union Station today, past a trio of Salvation Army volunteers playing a Christmas song on their trumpets. Tears began to creep themselves up, waiting to take a dive off the rim of my eyes. The first sounds of Christmas, the first sight of volunteers smiling and asking for donations to benefit those in need, tends not only to pull at my heart strings, but stretch them out and snap them back in like rubber bands. Two minutes later, I passed another trio, this time they were playing Feliz Navidad and I laughed. For that song always reminds me when I sang that in 7th grade with 3 other girls, in front of the entire school. My bright red turtleneck, loose all over except at the neck where it was strangling me, and my white skirt that showed off my white legs (I wasn't wearing tights), and my large, black glasses that took up half of my face - there I was singing like a cat caught in a razor fence, doused in cold rain watching the lightening creep closer - and I sang my heart out anyway (and I think I sang some people out of the auditorium too).

Snow. The first time those frosted flakes fall (no, not the cereal, but that does sound good about now) unto the cold pavement, covering the street and trees and dying grass in an ivory cloak, I take a deep breath and say, "Oh, man. This stinks." I don't like driving in the snow, don't like shoveling, throwing salt onto it that eats away at my new gloves, don't like the way the blanket hides the ice patches like mines, just waiting for an unsuspecting passerby to step, and slip and fall. Sure snow is beautiful - on a Christmas card.

Winter. A time to purchase boots, gloves, a scarf, ear muffs, coat, leggings, thick socks, sweaters and toasty toes. A time to spend plenty of money on these necessities only to have in a short amount of time, one glove, salt-encrusted boots, a ripped scarf, cold ears due to lost ear muffs, a hole in your sock, and shrunken sweaters.

Level of Attractiveness During Freezing Temperatures. I have seen one too many of women, in their tall high heel boots, tiny thin coats, bare ears and thin gloves, slip on oh those mines I mentioned above, have the reddest, driest, most painful looking noses and ears that make me want to touch them to watch them crack and crumble, and hair that isn't covered by a hat, yet by frizz control products and hairspray. Oh, yes and one last accessory for these women are Kleenex as they always have a cold. Then there are the rest of us, bundled up like Arctic ninja's, only eyes are seen, waddling as they walk (I waddle now without all this gear on), you wouldn't be able to point out your mother among these stealth, layered, honorary Eskimos.

Baby. Through this winter of already below 0 temps, my baby, warm and oblivious in her temporary home (her lease expires in 3 months), kicks and punches and reminds me that she's on her way. That next winter will be the warmest one yet in my life. A winter I am throughly looking forward to.