R.A. Villanueva - Offerings

 

 

In principle, sharing the world with a daughter, raising a daughter, that is strong willed, headstrong, it should be a gift. And so, when my wife and I found out that we were going to have a daughter, we immediately started making lists of names that would be fitting, names that would usher into this world of being some kind of groundbreaking, trailblazing catalyst, someone who would change things. And so, we ended up in antiquity. 

 

We started laughing and thinking about an epic poem by Homer. And in this epic poem, the title character is named Odysseus. He's the one who fights the monsters. He's out for all this time. But as we started thinking and talking and laughing, we realized that actually that the heart of the story is his wife. His wife's name is Penelope. She has ingenuity and creativity. And she owns her role and lives it in her own terms, staving off everyone who comes to take what rightfully belongs to her. And she does it with creativity. 

 

And so, my wife and I said, Penelope. All that sounds great. The idea that someone could represent all of these amazing things. When I look at my daughter and listen to her consistently say no to me, [audience laughter] I got what we wanted. [audience laughter] The issue is that she's two. And so, when we dreamed of this fully formed person who would rise and then bring down the patriarchy, we could not have imagined a little volcano of a person [audience laughter] who refused us at every instant. 

 

“Penelope, do you want the mac and cheese you asked us to make for you?” “No.” [audience laughter] “Penelope, it's the weekend. I think you should take a shower now.” “No, thank you.” [audience laughter] “Penelope, it is now almost midnight. Don't you think it's time for bed?” “Nah.” [audience laughter] We have a daughter who has a thousand ways of standing up for herself. And it's everything we dreamed of. My life as a father is reckoning with this, how do I make room for this force of nature? 

 

The other day, it was my turn to pick her up from school. And so, I went to daycare. At the front of the daycare, there is a little table where you sign your child in and out. When we check her out and sign her out, she looks at where all the pens and antibacterial wipes are, and she takes a couple of the pens and she takes them home. So, when we clean up, we discover a dozen pens just lying around the apartment. So, part of our routine is then to come back and to return the pens to her school. 

 

On this particular day, it was my turn. According to plan, I went outside, I put her in her stroller and I started pushing her down Atlantic Avenue. I looked down just to make contact and to say, “You are safe. I'm with you. I love you.” And there she was, just looking back at me with a grin. I looked at her face and I felt it. I scrolled down, and there in her hands, two fistfuls of pens, [audience laughter] an entire bouquet of pens in each hand. She had taken all of them, including the antibacterial wipes which were spilling out of her pockets. 

 

For whatever reason, this was the moment that I thought, I have to push back. She cannot be absconding with every pen in the entire daycare. And so, I said, Penelope, those are not your pens. You have to return them. And she looked at me, bemused and said, “Nope.” [audience laughter] I said, no, Penelope. And then, I lowered myself to eye level. So, she knew I was serious this time. And I said, Penelope, we have to give the pens back. 

 

When she realized that I was pushing back on her and challenging her challenge to me, all of a sudden, things started moving. Her face changed, something feral activated [audience laughter] and she just started wailing, “These are my pens. I need these pens. These pens belong to me. I need them.” I don't know what a two-year-old needs with that many pens, [audience laughter] but she needed them. She just kept yelling and screaming, singing this primal song, so much so that passersby would walk by me, and make eye contact and just go, “Damn.” [audience laughter] Some actually said, “I'm sorry,” and just walked away fast. [audience laughter] No one could do anything for me. 

 

At this point, she had slid out of her stroller, and was now across the sidewalk with the pens like this, in a Christ sacrifice to the heavens. [audience laughter] I didn't know what to do. This person was the chosen one. She was supposed to be the person who brought the entire-- She was supposed to rage against the machine, not against clicky pens and sanitizer. 

 

And so, in that second, I froze. I didn't know what to do. I have to confess to you, that as this is happening, sometimes I have these flashes. I have these flashes to all the brilliant constellation of women in my life. All the women who are in some way powered by fight, who've stood up for things. She inherits all of that from them. And of all these women, my mom, my wife, my aunts, I think of the one person that Penelope never got a chance to meet, which is my grandmother. 

 

My grandmother's name was Socorro, and she grew up in the Philippines at a time where it was expected of her to just be a wife. The highest place you could hit was to have a family, raise that family and keep a home. She did all those things with grace and with passion, but she wanted more. She was a shoulder to cry on. She was a mediator. She was someone who stood up for people who didn’t have a voice. I didn't know her in that way. I knew her as my grandma. And near the ending of her life--

 

She was a chain smoker her whole life. Near the ending of her life, she lived with us. I remember that it was hard for her to breathe. The doctors, and all of a sudden, “You have to stop smoking,” but she did what she wanted. And so, there were times where she would have an oxygen tank, and she would call me up to help take care of it. She'd point to it and she'd gesture to me to push it aside. I'd push it aside and then she'd tap on the bed, because she wanted to arm wrestle me. [audience laughter] She would roll up her sleeve and you would see this bicep just like-- [audience laughter] 

 

Her hand would just sort of shroud mine and she'd look me in the eyes and then she would just go-- [audience laughter] and just take me out every time, just merciless. She would laugh so hard that I'd have to wheel the oxygen tank back to give her back her oxygen. That's the woman that she was. Other times, we had to start taking the cigarettes away from her, because it wasn't healthy anymore. And so, we started hiding. Her brand was Parliament. And so, I remember that the little tesserae of dark blue on the carton. We'd hide them, because she would just-- 

 

But no matter what we did, she would end up outside just looking at us like-- [audience laughter] We had no idea where she got them from. It became an arms race. We would hide Parliament’s, then we would find Parliament’s. We weren't sure if the Parliament’s that we found were the ones that we had hidden or she'd hidden herself. It turns out that after church, we'd go food shopping for the week, and she would sneak away while we were getting cereal, and she'd go to the pharmacy and just start pocketing, buying and hiding them. It came to the point where we just kept being outsmarted and tricked. The doctors just said, “Let her go. Let her be happy.” So, that's what I'm up against. 

 

Penelope is part of that legacy. I'm thinking about my Penelope, I'm thinking of grandma, and I'm watching Penelope writhe and squirm and boil over on this sidewalk and I don't know what to do. So, I call my wife. [audience laughter] She picks up in her beautiful musical voice, she's like, “Hi, how are you?” And in that second, she hears in the background, “I need these pens. These are my pens,” like Gollum or something. [audience laughter] And so, my wife, Jennifer, just says, “Did you get the bribe chips?” I don't know what the bribe chips are. I said, Jen, I don't know what the bribe-- What are the bribe chips? 

 

And she goes, “Okay. You see where you are in the corner?” She knew exactly where I was. This has happened before. “Look across the street. You will see a bodega. [audience laughter] The bodega's name is Champions. “Put Pen back in the stroller, go back in there and get the bribe chips. Pen will know what to do.” [audience laughter] So, I did everything that my wife said. I picked Pen up. I put her in the stroller. She was still crying. I knelt down beside her and I said, Penelope, would you like some chips? Her entire face just changed. It was like-- [audience laughter] “Yes, father. I'd like some chips.” [audience laughter] 

 

No, but she said, “Yes, chips, yes.” And so, I took her over there in the stroller, walked in the front door of the bodega. The person behind the counter looked at me like, “Hey, this had happened before.” Penelope got out of her stroller, turned to her left and there to her left was a shelf of Pringles. She reached up, got an orange tin, cheddar cheese, put that in her lap. She reached up, and then she got a bright purple one, barbecue. She looked at me and she said, “For my brother.” We paid for them and we walked out. 

 

I think I was supposed to give her one chip per block as a kind of incentive. So, you make it, I'll give you one. But I decided at that moment just to let her have the whole can. And so, she had it in her lap, and she looked at me, and she nodded and I pushed her all the way home. I'm thinking now, reflecting on it as her dad, for me, it's not a bribe. For me, it's not appeasement. For me, it's not a compromise. It seems like this moment that we had and that gift was an offering, that that little small act of defiance, rebellion, mutiny, it's a way for us to understand each other and for me to say, “We hear your voice. We need to make space for you.” 

 

The hope is that these small moments of conversation between us will lead us toward the big things in the future, so that she knows I'm not going to shut her down. I'm going to let her rage if she needs to, but I'm going to be there, so that when the time comes, she has the power, and the agency, and the love behind her to change the world that she'll inherit from me. Thank you.