Cliff-Diving

This past Friday, kindergarten zoo field trip. As a teacher at the same school, I get to be just daddy, but unofficially a teacher as well. Day started off well, kids excited, checking lunches. I specifically remember my grandmother's packed lunches on field trip days to the Museum, or San Jacinto monument. She'd wrap fried chicken in tin foil, a soda pop miraculously still cold (wrapped in a wet paper towel and tin foil did the trick), a bag of fritos. Del fixed myself and Cruz a lunch, flat-bread pita style sandwiches, pickles in a sandwich bag, vitamin water, brownies. We ate better than the manatees.

This was Cruz's first bus trip, so he sits with his partner while I get to wave at all the kids I see everyday and confirm once again that I am Cruz's daddy. On the way, the kids sing vowel and alphabet songs, season songs and clapping songs. On the way back, we dropped off almost half of the kids with the parentals. Half of those kids fell asleep on the way back to school. Cruz sat next to me, not because I was his favorite but because I had a large souvenir drink and he wanted my ice. The cutest thing is watching him dig for ice, drop it out of his small hands, dig or another one and telling me his love me while he makes mouth slushes.

Once we began the trip, Cruz and his walking buddy formulated our plan (monkeys and lions!) and we set off, me wearing Cruz's transformer backpack (I think it all came full circle, i might have had one back in the day). The second we entered a housing area for Asian-themed animals, the kid with us refused, became scared and wouldn't forward the field trip. Cruz is bouncing around him, saying, "I'm not scared," "Don't be a fraidy cat," and other borderline mock/assurances that boogeyman, man-eating tigers or aliens would not attack the child. I kept thinking I'd be the first teacher fired for dragging a kid through the zoo, of all things. Poor kid heard a lion roar and you would have thought I was chasing him with a packet of worksheets.

After lunch, no big deal. We went through maybe 1/3 of the park, saw manatees floating in cabbage-laden waters, made funny faces at the bonobos, laughed at Gorilla butts, answered questions about kindergarten-thought evolution--"When that bird grows up, will it become an eagle?"

In the reptile exhibits, Cruz pets snakes, he stand on the edge of the glass looking for snakes like he's searching for Waldo. Our partner was not a finger-length from my hand, skittish at the sounds, delighted in seeing turtles and wondered what an iguana looked like. Am I blessed with a fearless son, or is he a product of my influence on him? I keep thinking of our little partner, no father at home, all the other kids at my school--no fathers. I see people complaining about the lack of marriages that are faithful. Boy, did men blow their responsibility. I see an entire generation of kids, fatherless. God gave us the responsibility to be fathers and what have we done with it? It's squandered.

No wonder the kids are afraid of lions, the darkness, succeeding and failing. Cruz is ready to bungee jump off a cliff and scream, "What's next?" Fearless. God Bless him.