Chapter 4: Luca
There is no greater gift than my son. There is no greater calling, no heavier burden, no richer reward than being a father. Yet what I never expected was the gift to be my greatest teacher; it is Luca who taught me so much about love. I learned that love is so much more than a feeling. Love is a small name we give to a mammoth monument constructed of deliberate, purposeful and relevant acts.
The idea that parenthood is a calling, a noble burden and a rich reward reflect values and priorities permeating every part of my upbringing. My parents would parenthesize every life lesson and act of discipline by reminding me they immigrated to provide us with better opportunities and that one day I would be a husband and a father and that people would depend on me and that my life counted for something. The way in which life counts, they would explain, is in relationships. The value in life is brought by being noble and strong and in sacrificial care for your family. They never once told us “we just want you to be happy.” That seemed to be an exclusively American ideal. To most people around the world struggling for basic needs and freedoms, happiness isn’t a goal; it’s a luxury and an elusive byproduct of life. The repeated benediction throughout my upbringing was “we don’t care if you’re happy. We want you to always do the right thing and if you do, eventually you’ll be happy.” In retrospect, I’m grateful for that positive pressure. I think a lot of young men lose their way from lack of vision in their life. Instead, my way was laden with a sense of obligation and purpose which kept me focused. And so I always wanted to be a father and viewed my youth mostly as a time of preparation for the responsibilities of adulthood. What I didn’t expect was how much fun I’d have being a father and how all those duties and obligations become happy burdens when fueled by love.
I’m so grateful that Elaine and I always maintained humor about parenthood. On our first date we discussed how many kids we wanted. It’s weird, I know. It’s not a normal part of conversation for undergraduate co-eds grabbing coffee together for the first time. But from the beginning we always had a comfort and ease of conversation with one another. At any rate, she wanted a UN contingency of her own biological children plus twelve adopted children, each from a different country. I wanted four of my own who all looked like super models and acted like saints. Nevertheless, fast forwarding many years to being two yuppie parents recently displaced by a natural disaster and expecting their first child we were surprisingly laid back and having fun. I was working a lot and she was studying for the Florida Bar exam. Despite all the difficulties of the preceding months in adjusting to our post-Hurricane Katrina lives, it was actually growing into a cozy time at home. My sister-in-law, who I’ve known since childhood and who is Elaine’s best friend, came up and helped us settle into our little apartment and get the baby’s room together. Our little apartment and thrift store furniture began to feel like a home.
Elaine somehow managed to be the most beautiful and most prodigious parturient I’ve ever seen. She was glowing. She maintained her tall lean figure so from the back you couldn’t tell she was pregnant. But when she turned that ship around her abdomen stretched to impossible proportions. It hovered, perfectly horizontal, like a shelf of baby. She was about three times deeper than she was wide. We joked saying it looked like she swallowed a beach ball. Yet in her diligent manner she continued to go for long walks and exercise every day. By the due date she was eager to deliver. We did all the things they say induce labor. We exercised, ate spicy Mexican food and made love all in the same evening. I was exhausted. She was impatient.
Eventually Luca came via cesarean section. We held one another and wept for joy. You could hear my family cheering throughout the whole ward. It had been a long road to this point but all the uncertainty and angst melted away into the eyes of that little baby. All of a sudden I had a renewed purpose; a living, breathing anchor to my life. The gratitude was overwhelming.
On our way back from the hospital Elaine leaned over and whispered “momma’s hungry”. We stopped for dinner at a local British-style pub filled with smoke and raised eyebrows. Day two took us to Target and out for ice cream. It was clear that this baby was going to be on the move even though his early months were spent with me working long hours and Elaine studying for the Florida Bar exam in addition to working full time. I think part of the reason he started speaking so much early on is because mostly alone in the apartment with the baby, she would read her legal texts out loud. He grew up to the soothing tones of Constitutional Law and Tort Reform.
We also spent a fair amount of time dressing him up in various outfits for photographic entertainment. There was the sheep hat, the Arab Bedouin, the old Greek man with mustache and glasses, the passed-out college kid with empty beer bottles strewn around, and my personal favorite – the guido chulo. One of his onsies unbuttoned with a wig placed as chest hair, a fake mustache and some of Elaine’s gold chains and voila! Baby guido chulo! Pictures to be used as bargaining collateral during his adolescence.
Despite the happiness of this time, it was still filled with tragedy, heartbreak and precious lessons learned. We never found out the gender of our child during the pregnancy. Elaine and I figured that there are very few happy surprises in life and as long as the baby was healthy we were lucky. Ten days after Luca was born I got a call from my cousin. Please understand that my cousin is an incredibly brilliant and abled man. He always excelled at school and sport and is now a very successful interventional cardiologist. His wife is equally as accomplished and one of the kindest and sweetest people I’ve met. She is also a physician. They have two beautiful children: Nicholas the all American scholar athlete and Alexis, the beautiful and precocious toddler; the apple of her father’s eye.
I figured Sam was calling to congratulate me on our newborn. Although in the middle of a busy work day as a lowly medical resident, I managed to answer the phone. I think I will forever remember every detail of taking that call. He congratulated me but I could immediately hear a tremble and urgency in a voice I know to be bold and confident. I immediately asked him what was wrong. He told me that his youngest child, three year old Alexis, had in the course of the previous two days started complaining of a headache and vision changes and started having nausea and vomiting. An urgent MRI showed a terrible brain tumor and they had been referred from Jacksonville to my hospital in Gainesville for emergent neurosurgery. They were a mile down the road. I told my attending, he dismissed me for the day and I raced over to the children’s hospital. I found Sam in the brightly lit hallway of the children’s ward.
There are few times in life when we get the honor of witnessing another human totally emotionally bare and vulnerable; without face or pretense. They are the moments of hopes shared and souls exposed. I will never forget his tears of anguish. With heaving but restrained sobs he supported himself against the wall of the hallway outside her hospital room. Leaning forward and holding his face in both hands the overflow of tears spiraled down his forearms. Here he was, perhaps the most capable person I know, utterly and desperately helpless. Within the clangor of his shattering heart reverberated pleas to God to take his life and spare his daughter’s. My heart broke under the sheer gravity of what I was witnessing. In shredded whimpers he acknowledged that anything else in his life he could handle and control. He is a man of talent and of means; nothing could pierce him save for this. His child’s health was beyond his control and this situation lay to rubble the foundations of the world. I too was breathless with tears. All I could manage to say was that I had been a father for only ten days and could never imagine what he was going through.
But as time goes on I have been able to imagine what that might be like. The threat of losing one’s child is a gut wrenching fear I’d just as soon not explore. But I have wondered to what am I entitled? Does my child owe me anything? What if he rebels? Or isn’t brilliant? Would I love him any less? What if he goes astray or makes bad choices in life? Gets involved with the wrong crowd or settles for second best? I don’t think there is anything he can do to unravel my love for him. As time progresses I am ever certain of my unconditional love for my son. However, I have come to realize that the parental challenges I am more likely to face are the things he may do to augment my worry or concern for him or diminish my pleasure and pride with his actions. I know this has nothing to do with the tragedy of having a sick child threatened by a brain tumor. But over time it got me thinking about how to love him through the normal twists and turns of life. It got me thinking about how this feeling of love in my heart will translate into actions and choices I make as a parent. How will I prove that I love Luca or anyone else for that matter? How will my emotion of love empower my actions? I think realizing this helped me realize something about love: love is a verb and not a noun. It takes its shape in choices and in deliberate and purposeful acts. The point is this: if I love a person then I will do whatever is for that person’s good, despite the cost to me. Often that is to support, teach, nurture and protect. But sometimes that means disciplining and setting limits. I think a lot of modern parents do well on the former but struggle with the latter. If Luca grew up to be a criminal I would do everything in my power to thwart him and report him to the police if I must because I love him and want him to avoid self destruction. He may resent me for it but so be it. This is the key to assessing the caliber of love; by the acts it conceives. Of course it’s possible to do good acts without love but love without acts isn’t worth much either. When love is present it bears acts of expression and so I’ve decided that the caliber of me as a person will largely be determined by the quality of my paternal acts of love.
Alexis got admitted on a Tuesday afternoon. She was scheduled for surgery Thursday morning. I asked my residency director, a world famous neuroanesthesiologist to do her anesthesia. He agreed without hesitation as he graciously reassured me of her well being.
I tried to reassure my family in the same manner on Thursday morning as I met them in the pre-operative holding area but I lacked the confidence that comes with experience. I gave them weak hugs as I awkwardly whispered that everything was going to be fine, having no idea if that was actually true.
I met my cousin and his wife at the bedside as they were consoling a near hysterical Alexis. Somehow she’d picked up on the fact that they might have to shave part of her shiny, thick, onyx black hair and was in a fit. Her little I.V wasn’t working but her mother and I eventually coaxed her into drinking some relaxing medicine mixed in sweet syrup for sedation prior to rolling back to surgery. The challenge of getting a toddler to take medicine is a formidable one on a good day, let alone when they’re terrified of ending up with a Kojak coif and can sense that something ominous is about to happen.
My director and I escorted her back to the operating room and got her off to sleep smoothly. Neurosurgeons as a group are known to be impatient, demanding and fairly insensitive and so I couldn’t believe it when he agreed to wait and let one of the assistants braid Alexis’ hair. She knew how to do cornrows and did it in such a way that he could incise in-between the rows without having to shave off too much. I was moved with gratitude. The assistant got started and my director told me to leave the room and not come back so I wouldn’t see as they drilled into her skull and gained access to her brain. I timidly thanked him and obeyed.
In an ironic and cruel twist of fate I was scheduled in pediatric neurosurgery that day. I guess they thought it would be helpful to be near to her operating room. All day I was doing anesthesia on children with brain tumors. It was excruciating. Every child became Alexis for me. Every patient’s family became my own. The parent’s eyes screaming in terror and anguish and exhaustion became the eyes of my cousin. The extended families that held one anther for lack of anything else they could do were just like my own family. Each trembling little hand I held belonged to Alexis. Every drug I gave to alleviate anxiety or pain was for her and every slumber I induced was to give her rest. Every drop of fluid or blood infused was to sustain her life. I trembled through the whole day and more than once ran for refuge and respite in a restroom stall; overwhelming tears fighting their way out of my tightly squeezed eyes as I summoned up strength to fight them back and maintain composure.
Fourteen hours into the day they finished Alexis’ surgery and about that time I finished work as well. I dragged myself up to the Intensive Care Unit to meet my family. She was off the ventilator and sleeping peacefully; her head wrapped in a gauze turban. The tumor was essentially in the core of her brain and they couldn’t get it all without compromising major functions such as walking or sight. They had to leave some tumor. Nevertheless, surgery went very well and she was stable. I left my family at about eleven o’clock that night and drove back to our little apartment.
My mother in law, who is a nurse, was staying with us to help Elaine with the newborn. Although I’d know her for years and we had a warm and caring relationship, we were never particularly close. She liked me because I was a good husband to her daughter and I liked her because she was an excellent cook. I quietly walked through the door so as not to wake anyone.
Elaine and Luca were asleep. I collapsed on the couch. Erica came out in her pajamas and sat at the end opposite me. She asked me how it went. As I struggled to form the words and give some doctorly and professional assessment of her prognosis, the levee of my heart broke and I dissolved in the deluge. I wasn’t wailing or sobbing but pent up tears poured forth, sweeping me along in the current. It had all been too much; too overwhelming, too heartbreaking and now too relieving to know Alexis was alive and okay. My mother in law scooted closer on the couch and held me like only mothers can do as I soaked her shoulder with tears and snot. I came to find out later that God would use that moment to break through her heart and establish a true relationship between us. I will never forget the quiet comfort she gave me. I snorted heartfelt thanks as I crawled into bed.
Alexis began her road to recovery and despite contending with residual but slow growing tumor is now a gregarious, confident and dynamic young woman applying to medical school. I have seen how her parents cherish every moment of her childhood; the good and the bad, knowing each and every one is a gift.
That concept in large part explains the deep anguish over my divorce. The idea of missing any part of my son’s childhood broke my heart. Life is fragile and fast and the idea of my son growing up in a broken home or of Elaine and I having to miss any part of his life twisted my heart. It was less than a year after Alexis’ surgery that our marriage ended and Elaine took Luca and left. It was just before his first birthday. For six weeks I had no idea where they were. I had no idea where he was on his first birthday. My family wouldn’t tell me. There was no answer to my phone calls. I was on the hell side of purgatory. My family just assured me she was ok and let me “speak” to the baby over the phone when they were all together. I don’t blame her; I never did. It was my fault. She was devastated and in pieces. It would have taken most people longer to get their emotional bearings. But I was aching from missing Luca and terrified of now knowing what the future held.
It turns out that during that initial and desperate separation period, my oldest brother set Elaine and Luca up with an apartment down the road from them while the whole family assisted her in buying a house nearby. They both had a strong support system and so my own pain and sense of rejection dwarfed in comparison with gratitude and respect toward my family for taking care of them. Their view was that once married, she was no longer “daughter-in-law” or “sister-in-law” but just “daughter” and “sister” and a flesh and blood part of the family. Since it was I who broke our marriage vow then it was I who must be cut off as they rallied in support around her and Luca. My pain wasn’t in vain. My rejection was her protection. My forced absence wasn’t punishment; it was quarantine so she could somehow pick up the pieces and heal with their support. Until the end of my days I’ll be unable to repay that debt.
The stories that surfaced years later of the multiple and extraordinary efforts put forth by my family to comfort, resettle, and protect baby Luca from instability and bring hope to Elaine are unfathomable and profoundly humbling. They came en mass into her emotional cave, bringing light and warmth and carrying her for much of the long journey out of that abyss. While of course there were many heated moments between me and my immediate family, I see many years later that everyone was trying their best. They exhibited the same love I’m trying to describe: love that is deliberate, purposeful and relevant, that covers and supports and fights and lays down protective boundaries, love that is fierce and forceful.
Eventually Elaine and I began to briefly speak on the phone. We politely and civilly came to a quick agreement on most things concerning the divorce. This was not about material things. I wanted to keep all the promises I could of our marriage. I wanted to financially provide for her and Luca as I would were we still married. My decision to leave our marriage atomized her world and she was doing the best she could to be strong, fair and kind. My burden of shame and guilt was heavy. We agreed upon a visitation schedule until I finished residency.
At first she couldn’t bare to see me so she would leave Luca at my brother’s house. Often I would finish a 24 hour work shift, hop in the car and drive almost 3 hours to see him at my brother’s house. At the end of the day I would drive back. More than once I dozed off at the wheel and swerved off the road. I thank God I was never in an accident. But I was striving for consistency and was grateful for Elliot’s unfailing support in that endeavor. He often offered to drive me down so I could sleep in the car. If he couldn’t come along he would stay on the phone talking with me to keep me awake.
When I say Luca taught me how to love I mean just that. I realized that good intentions and loving emotions are only the beginning. As I said love without works is pretty meaningless. Without action on my part his emotional needs would never be met and an already brittle situation would crumble. So out of the shadow of my guilt I resolved to seek consistency and relevance in my interactions with him. My visitation schedule included two week nights a week and two weekends a month. I vowed to never miss a day.
Eventually I finished residency and took a job with a wonderful group of doctors in the area. Life began to settle down a bit and I had a sense of its shape. Although it broke my heart that my life intention of being an ever-present parent was now reduced to part time, I pursued my relationship with my son as my highest priority.
While in residency I always drove down to see him. Even if I had the weekend off I would get a hotel room and stay near Elaine. It didn’t make sense to drive him back and forth multiple hours and the idea of being so far from him terrified her. But now I was graduated, starting in practice and living much closer to Elaine. Luca was nineteen months old the first time he came to stay with me for the weekend.
I was renting a lovely two story townhouse in a lovely neighborhood. I worked very hard to have his room set up and ready with colorful and playful furniture. His bed was adorned with his favorite Spider Man blanket and a picture of Elaine and I hung over it.
I was so excited to have him and as he gleefully ran from one room to another exploring he discovered my closet and noticed how my shoes were nicely organized in rows. He ran over to his little Spider Man overnight back pack, pulled out his little Elmo sneakers and squeezed them perfectly in line with my loafers and dress shoes. My heart melted.
The next day we went to the aquarium. I responsibly packed a daddy diaper bag with backup clothes, diapers and of course, snacks. He heartily laughed at the otters, got a bit frightened at the penguin show and was mesmerized by the innumerable variety of fish in the giant aquarium. As we walked through a submersed glass tunnel he grabbed my hand, saying “snack time”, and led us over to a viewing bench. Snuggled up, I harvested the snacks from my brown corduroy, daddy, diaper bag and realized they were coincidentally goldfish crackers. As the fish swam by all around us he would hold up a cracker and examine if any of the live specimens resembled the edible reproduction captured between his little fingers. Having satisfied his curiosity about each morsel he would pop it in his mouth with a loud crunch and a little giggle. I’m not sure why that moment moved me so much but I remember feeling immense gratitude and excitement to get to know this little person, my son, better.
I learned something else about love from Luca. I learned to be effective not only do acts of love need to be purposeful and deliberate, they need to be relevant. My intention of spending quality time with him and teaching him about the world would be misguided if, as a toddler, I drag him to a lecture series at the local modern art museum instead of going to the zoo. Writing a loving note to a two year old probably isn’t as effective as finger painting with him. If I am to love I need to bridge the gap and speak in a language he can understand. I need to do things that resonate with his heart and fill a need. Many fathers struggle with this. Mine did with me. Either we can’t figure out how or we’re too tired or the importance doesn’t weigh upon us but for many reasons many fathers struggle with approaching their children on their children’s level. I was told once that if I had a pet dog I would adequately express my love to that dog by playing fetch or scratching their belly so how much more could I do for my own children. So, if despite exhaustion from working all night, I need to wrestle and play pretend Green Goblin as little Spiderman pummels me to the ground then I will. I will engage his mind, do things he can do, and try to get to know his character. It’s not about catering and spoiling him; it’s about doing what God does for us. God doesn’t require us to be a certain way before He loves us but rather He loves us, seeks us out and if our hearts are willing, He meets us where we are at.
And so then it goes as love is established it works a strange calculus. If Luca is assured of my unconditional love he will naturally grow to love me in return and seek to please me and if I truly love him then the things which please me are the things which benefit him. I think that equation carries over to other relationships as well. If I am secure in one’s love then I seek to please that one. But if that one really loves me than the things that please them are the things that are for my good and that actually benefit me. This strange algorithm is also reflected in the other’s life and so by both genuinely loving and serving one another, growth and betterment occur. If Luca is secure in his father’s love he will seek to please me and since I desire nothing more than fullness and goodness in every area of his life he will seek to please me with a life that is honest, powerful and good.
God is the ultimate one who does this. As I’ve grown ever secure in His love I seek a life that is pleasing to Him, not to secure his love but because He first loved me. And then I find that the life that is pleasing to him is actually a life that has brought me unfathomable restoration, goodness and joy. It is then as I put these pieces together in my mind that I believe God is the ultimate Father and that learning to love Luca is teaching me to love God better.