It should’ve been California!

I’m getting a tattoo.

I can’t say that this was a lifelong dream.  Though I never specifically articulated this to myself, I looked on most tattoos as the unconsidered whims of the bored.  Anything that could be so important that it would be worth permanently emblazoning on your skin, I reasoned, did not need to be worn on your sleeve.

Then Marcel was born.

With her birth I realized that, unlike most important things–such as God, country or alma mater–your child will pull away from you.  It’s a necessity of their life.  The more they pull away, however, the more you want them close.  And nothing is as close as a tattoo.

With Tristan’s birth–and my family probably complete–I could design a tattoo that would accurately reflect all of my children.

I wanted this tattoo to be more than just an accurate protrayal of my children but also an inspiration to them.  I wanted it to represent more than just my love and devotion to them, but also to inspire them to be the kind of women that I think they can become.  And so this tattoo not only symbolizes them but it also symbolizes the things I’d like to bequeath to them.

There is a symbol for my family.  The family that birthed me and raised me made me the man that is worthy of being their father and, I think, is a foundation for their own growth and prosperity.  There is a symbol for my faith which guides and inspires me and could play the same role for them.  There is a symbol for duty, because that comes first.  There is a symbol for ambition, because anything that’s worth doing is worth doing better than anybody else.  And there are symbols for me and my daughters.

We still have some decisions to make about the design but, aside from colors, changes will be only in the margins.  Then, the tattoo will probably take many hours over a month’s time to complete.  When it is done, however, I will have a lasting tribute to my daughters.  And knowledge of that, perhaps, will follow my daughters throughout their travels.

For the past four weeks, with the exception of one rain date, we’ve spent Saturday mornings at Marcel’s soccer practice.

Much to my chagrin, Marcel has never evidenced much interest in playing ball of any sort.  If I turn the TV to football, Marcel falls out into a spasm, as if I’d taken away her lunch.  Her various sport toys collect dust, while Marcel turns her attention to the music, art and kitchen toys.  Even as a baby, the only attention she would give to balls that I rolled her way was the occasional attempt at chewing them.  There’s so much value in team sports, however, from fitness to socialization, that I’d thought we’d give it a try, anyway.

We couldn’t just show up, though.  We had to get equipment, including her own soccer ball. Somehow, someway, Marcel must have heard about soccer–we’re a football household–and was intrigued by the prospect of getting equipment for playing the game.  So, when I told Marcel that we would have to get soccer equipment, she got very interested.  In fact, she even queried about it over and over.

“Soccer?  We’re going to play soccer?”

Eventually, we got to the sporting goods store one school night.  Here, we started to get off track.  We started in the section with shin guards.  I was a little befuddled by the selection.  Apparently, soccer equipment had come a long way since I played in high school.  Things were further complicated by the fact that Marcel wasn’t as interested in the selection as I was, but preferred the opportunity to run wild in a new environment, instead. It took quite an effort to corral her long enough to choose a pair.

The next sign of trouble was choosing the soccer ball.  Ignoring the classic white and black hexagonal design, as well as a sleek blue, silver and white number, Marcel settled on a pink version.  I admit that I briefly  wondered if a girlie color would impede a competitive spirit but quickly shrugged it off.  Style and heart, I concluded, need not be exclusive to each other.  After picking out a BPA-free water bottle, we finally headed over to the cleats.

There, we came across a mother-daughter combination buying cleats, too.  That daughter was significantly older than my Marcel–5 or 6 years older, at least–and she knew what she was doing.  Marcel was fascinated by the girl and her routine of trying on, then testing, her cleats, and she couldn’t wait to mimic the girl with her own sprint through the store.  Finally, I thought, Marcel is interested in sports.

Then soccer practice started.

She was good for the first half of practice.  She not only played close attention to the instructor, but she even did a fair impression of his moves.  Keep this up, I thought, and I’ll be able to buy tickets to the 2028 Olympics!  Then Marcel noticed the playground equipment.

A sly smile spread across her face, then she made a mad dash for the colorful jungle gym, without even once looking back at her soccer ball.  I grabbed her up before she reached paydirt and carried her back to the  square patch of grass marked off with tiny, orange traffic cones that served as our “soccer field”, and told her to finish practice.  Her interest lied elsewhere, though, namely this new game of “catch the playground” with her dad.  Ultimately, the only way I could get her to focus on the soccer instruction was to bribe her with the promise of a brownie.

Over time, her interest  flagged so much so that, by the most recent practice, Marcel was no longer asking about soccer.  On the contrary, she was openly protesting even having to put on her cleats.  Still, we made the trek out to practice, with me struggling to find ways to motivate and inspire her to appreciate the sport.

For the first few moments, nothing came to mind.  I stood by her as she stood by her ball looking at the practice from our forlorn corner of the square.  Eventually, the instructor asked everybody to carry their ball to the center and start stretching and Marcel grudgingly complied.  Then he started slowly running around the square and, as Marcel and the rest of the students dribbled behind him, he asked the group to try to hit him with their balls.

Then Marcel hit him.

Then I lost my cool.

“Yeah, Marcel,” I yelled, jumped and clapped!  For the past five minutes, Marcel had, slowly, got more and more engaged, which was thrilling enough.  And she also had exhibited new skills in controlling her ball.  This also thrilled me.  Most importantly, however, when I spontaneously cheered, she beamed with joy, which thrilled me even more!

Maybe she was just happy that she hit the coach and won the game.  But maybe my cheering was the means I had been looking for to motivate and inspire her through practice and, maybe, even to the Olympics!  Maybe I was the one who had hit paydirt or, as that famous, Spanish-speaking, soccer announcer Tony Tirado would say, made “Goooooooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

So, when the class had moved onto the new drill–a pseudo-jumping jack, except the kids kept their hands on their hips and jumped around their soccer ball–I started cheering wildly, again.  Marcel, however, didn’t beam this time.  Instead, my 3 y.o. flashed a 13 y.o.’s embarrassment and impatience and shouted me down with a very stern, “Daaaaaaaaaaaaad.”

And, thus, it appeared we had both got a little ahead of ourselves.

Sometimes, Tristan creates a vacuum in her milk bottle, which stops the flow of milk.  I suppose every baby does it.  Marcel did it, but I learned to regularly pull the bottle away so as keep the flow steady and the cries at bay.  By the time Tristan arrived, however, I must’ve forgotten the trick because she regularly creates vacuums.  Amazingly, Tristan figured out the answer to the problem all on her own.

Often while I’m daydreaming my way through Tristan’s feeding, or whatever the hell it is I’m doing, Tristan realizes that the milk has stopped flowing.  Any other baby would start crying but fail to recognize that, just by opening their mouth, they have let air into the bottle which, in turn, allows the milk to flow again, thus making further cries unnecessary.

Of course, any baby would make this mistake.  After all, they’re just a baby!  Apparently, though, Tristan isn’t just a baby because Tristan doesn’t cry.

Instead, when the vacuum occurs and the flow dries up, Tristan starts pushing at my fingers.  She’s trying to push the bottle in my hand out of her mouth.  She’s not strong enough to actually move my hand, of course, but she is strong enough to get my attention.  When she starts pushing, I pull the bottle away, we wait for the telltale bubbles and hiss to stop and, when it does, she opens her mouth and I pop the bottle back in.

Obviously, she could achieve the same affect just by opening her mouth but, given her age, her way is mighty impressive to me.

When people criticized us for spelling Marcel’s name in the masculine form, I joked that I would’ve called her “Jack” if I could’ve gotten away with it.  A truer statement is that I would’ve called her “Seymour”.

Marcel, like all babies, came out looking like an old man.  More specifically, she had short hair and was wrinkly.  In addition to all that, her hair was jet black and with loose curls and her face came to a point at the nose.  I couldn’t shake the notion that she looked so much like those huddled masses that paraded through Ellis Island in the early part of the last century.  So I jokingly called her “Seymour”, which was most popular during the years between WWI and the Great Depression.

Tristan, in her own way, also inspired an old man’s name.  Her short, loose curls where golden and her face was perfectly round.  Her head was huge, however, and her bottom lip is so full that it often droops.   Sometimes, when her mouth is open and she gives you that blank baby stare that you don’t think there’s a thought in her head.  At those moments, she looks like a “Gus” to me.  That name was last big during the Industrial Revolution, so it’s old enough for her, too.