The 10:30 am club

It actually starts around 5 or 5:15 am, depending on how dark it is outside.

The quiet rhythm of the house is mesmerizing. I enter the kitchen, pressing with care the wooden floor, trying to be lighter. Coffee, snacks, lunch, and breakfast. In a house of four people with two kids, there is rarely a sense of one meal that fits all. It takes time, attention, and lots of brutal feedback to get the food right.

On good days, I move from the kitchen to the living room to fold some clothes. In four piles, separated by each person. The dining table becomes the headquarters of onesies, socks, and towels. I listen to a podcast. Sometimes, it's about the state of the world. Other times, it is about how to live a good life. I think a lot about what it means to have a good life, to be a good parent, to be coherent. I know this time is precious, and I should stop folding and stretch. Stretching is a pill I need to swallow daily. At my age, it has become a necessity, and at the same time, it is the last thing I want to do. Mortality comes in weekly installments.

After the spell of silence is broken, the countdown starts. Ninety minutes to go from “good morning” to kids in the car and kisses goodbye. There is routine, but there is no predictability. I grew up in the cold Andean mountains with my single mom, and life was pretty much linear. Sunset and sunrise happen every day at the same time, so once the light is on, life moves at its own pace. Here, the changing seasons and the practicalities of four people with one bathroom create a perfect environment for the unexpected.

I try not to take things personally, but I fail constantly. Chopped fruit goes untouched; the pear I have been nursing, so it is ripe enough, ends up half-eaten or on the floor. I think about all the times food appeared in front of my eyes, from the hands of one of the women in my life, and how little I cared about it. I appreciated it, but I truly did not grasp what it took to have thousands of meals, day after day, year after year. Now I do, and I can do little to reciprocate. They are over there, thousands of miles away. As a result, I am fixed on the idea of not wasting food. As a result, I ended up eating two breakfasts every other day.

Today is Friday, so I care for my youngest one. The one who came days after the genocide in Gaza started. The one I cared for almost 6 months. The one who called both of us “mama” until he turned one. The one who got the post-pandemic parental version of me, over forty, trying to mend mistakes made with the oldest one. After my parental leave ended, I kept working odd hours through the week so I could still take Fridays off. Fridays have become the last vestige of my months of parental leave: a care routine oiled by the privilege of paid time off.

For years, I advocated at my workplace for changing our global parental leave policies. In the US, the policy changed from 25 fully paid days to 12 weeks. In other places, it did not. Without truly expecting it, I ended up drinking from that well with my second child, and it has been, by far, one of the top three best gifts of life. Paid parental leave should be a right for all, not a privilege for a few like me, as it is now.

After my second parental leave, I found it challenging, even painful, to go back to work. I knew paid parental leave was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a window of time where I could choose to be present and fully in it, or not. It is a choice. If you don’t make it a choice, then you drag your feet, you fade away, you join the armies of men across time and ages who have decided that care work is not worth their time or mental space. Some men use this time to advance professionally or to improve their work skills. Most cannot afford to take the time off, so they do what they can.

Our Friday starts sitting outside the house to see the trash trucks come by. This kid loves everything with wheels. Is this nurture or nature? It is hard to tell. In this home, we see colors, clothing, and lengths of hair as choices, just choices. Yet, the stereotypical sense of boys and trucks keeps ringing in my head.  He likes them, so we sit together and wait.

I see the guys coming on the blue and yellow trucks, coming up and down quickly while moving all the residues that tell the stories of the lives we live behind doors. Most of them are young, mostly Latino or Black. We have gotten used to seeing each other week after week, rain, snow, or shine. Without fail, I say some words in Spanish, and they respond with a big smile, waving to my little one, while he is taking in the whole ordeal. They honk. I look at them, and I think about how similar and how vastly different we are. We have so much in common, yet they push the trash barrels while I push the stroller.

I see the older Black guy who lives two houses up my street putting a white plastic bag on top of the blue recycling bins outside his house. He does this every week. Today, when the driver of the blue truck jumps out of the truck to take a bin, he grabs the bag and puts it inside the truck cabin, on the dashboard. I keep my eyes on him. Two stops later, he pulls a water bottle out of the bag.

I love that about my neighbor. No need to announce it to the world or make it a ceremonial business. Just men caring for each other. Solidarity is often found in the subtle details.

It is 8:45 am. Armed with a diaper bag, the morning snacks, shoes, socks, hat, hand sanitizer, water, and a baby in arms, I pull the stroller one-handed, and we get going. We start to wander around the streets of the neighborhood, looking for the holy grail: diggers.

We find a massive crew working on gas pipes. There are heavy machinery and yellow hats all around us. All of them are men. They look tough. While my kid repeatedly asks me to get on the digger next to us, I look at these men and think about how someone like me, with soft hands and migraines, would have failed to make it doing this work. I like plants, words, and talking to people about feelings and ideas. I bet many of these men do too. Yet, I cannot see myself handling any of the heavy machinery they masterfully use.

When I was back at home in college, my female friends hated construction sites and despised construction workers. They would get catcalled and harassed constantly. Many of them changed their usual walking routes to avoid these sites. I have never experienced this, but their experiences made me dislike those places too and fed my mind with negative ideas of what these men are.

When the guys see me with the stroller and the eagerness of my kid, they smile. They wave, and the toughness in their hands and shoulders suddenly melts away. They are kind and caring. They look at me, and there is a tenderness in their eyes and subtle knots, acknowledging my presence. I can see they are well aware of how popular they are with children. I suspect many of them are parents too.

As we walk away from the crew, I start to wonder when these men will become invisible to my child. They are part of the critical group of people who make life possible, comfortable, and safe. I wonder when their yellow vests will blend with the asphalt in his eyes. I wonder when children come to see them, as the trash and recycling guys, as people they need, but prefer not to become one day.

Then, we hit the playground.

I rarely see other men with children on the playground during the week, especially at 9:20 am. It is mostly women with children, and me. I am used to it already. But it has not always been this way. It has taken me years to feel that it is okay for me to be here. There are so many narratives about what men should do and where they should be, or how capable men are of caring for their children. None of this is unfounded, yet there is a real battle to debunk harmful stereotypes about the role men play as caregivers.

There are so many of us who are in the process of learning the language of care. Like any other language, the best way to master it is by practicing it. It is by making mistakes, by being vulnerable, and by asking for help to learn. Also, by taking risks and pushing against the world to find our own way of doing things. It will take us time to learn it, but we will because caring for others is what makes life worth living.

“Bom dia,” I say to the two women by the swings, pushing the toddlers. We are all regulars here, we know each other's names, and the names of our kids. They are the caregivers, the nannies. Brown women who care for these kids while their moms work, caring for other children too. There is something beautiful in the idea of chains of care. There is also something profoundly wrong with this racial and economic division of labor. We all speak in Portuguese while the kids mimic each other and learn how to share the space.

I look around and it is only us. A typical working day at the playground. But this thought starts to play peek-a-boo in my head.

What would I do if ICE shows up?

It might be a long shot. Yet, this is how fear works: it finds the empty spaces and occupies them. It takes away the perception of normality. I am a master in pre-grieving, so my head plans ahead, slowly, like shoveling after the first snow.

What would I do? Would they take me too? What about the children? What about my child?

Since I became a parent, it has become crystal clear that my role of caring for children starts with my kids, but it has extended to all the children I encounter. James Baldwin said it better: “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

Morality, what an odd business this is these days.

There is a systemic invisibility of this work, of these women, providing services that are not seen fully, yet are so essential. It makes me think about the women I see constantly coming in and out of houses, pulling vacuum machines, bleach, and towels from gas-efficient compact cars. Two or three of them, moving quickly, cleaning houses during the day. When the residents of these homes come back after work, their house is pristine and organized. With a set of jujitsu moves on the screen of their phones, they move money from one pocket to another. They love the work they see, they feel the care they pay for. Yet, the hands, the sweat, the names, and the stories of these women remain at a distance. Maybe not intentionally, but by default. How painful are these kinds of defaults?

The nannies, the trash workers, the cleaning Cinderellas, made me think of  A Decolonial Feminism by Françoise Vergès and the cleaners of the Paris metro. Patriarchy works that way, the metro is cleaned every day, as the city still sleeps, by invisible hands, dark hands, brown hands, women's hands. Perhaps these were the real invisible hands that Adam Smith was talking about.

As I secure my kid on the stroller, I think about the carton of 18 eggs I bought at the supermarket this week. The box reads “free range – certified humane”. Many of the people who build the fabric of this country have no free range and less humanity as days go by.

It is 10 am. From the playground to the local library, we walk, crossing the softball field/dog park. There are two young guys sitting on a bench, talking and smoking. We look at each other, I smile and nod. They nod back. I try to imagine what life is like for these boys, for them and their circumstances. I think about the reasons why they are sitting on this bench instead of being at school. Older people walk around the dog park. Older women usually smile, wave, and talk to my child. Some of them talk to me and give me a look I know well. The look of “you are so good for doing this”. My partner does not get that look. I get it constantly. I try to see it more as a reflection of their experience than my values or morals. I keep that in mind when other older people choose to talk to my child while completely ignoring me. I wonder if it is the color of my skin, my presence, or a combination of these factors that subtract humanity from my being. Sometimes I wonder if fifteen years on this side of the world have made me too paranoid about racism or if I just see it so easily now, like spotting daffodils in the spring.

As I walk, I reflect on how there are so many things my partner does that I don’t fully acknowledge, that I don’t fully see. Not yet. She has been the main force to help me push patriarchy out of myself; sometimes I do this very willingly, sometimes utterly reluctant. In this conversation that I keep having with myself about how to be and show up differently, I try to keep this front and center, and I fail constantly. Intellectually, I understand a lot more about care and what it takes, yet still, there are parts of me that can turn on and off at ease. It is scary how deep patriarchy runs inside me still. My hope is to be a work in progress.  

At the library, story time begins at 10:30. Here we are, the nannies, the moms, the grandmas, and maybe two other men and me. 90% women, including all the staff. We sing, shake small handkerchiefs, and repeat animal sounds. I feel so welcomed in this space, and I wonder if many of my male friends can even imagine what they are missing when they are not in these spaces. Sometimes, as men, we expect that a space needs to be carved for us to be in, instead of taking the vulnerable steps to enter. We all can calculate the return on investment of our time at work, but we are not yet doing the same math to estimate the return on investing time in caring for our children when they are little. It is only by doing it that I have discovered that the real benefit comes from how it transformed me, like going to a foreign land. It also has felt like a self-imposed exile from the patriarchal home, built by society for men.  A dysfunctional, problematic home. Yet, it is a familiar place, nonetheless.

I’ve experienced this before. It is what happened to me in the kitchen.

For years, I was excluded from it. I also did not try too hard to be in it. My rite of passage did not include chopping vegetables or learning which spice was added when. It was about joining the men to smoke cigarettes outside the house while food was being cooked, hearing the real stories about what was happening behind doors, and hearing men talking about their feelings aloud. Seeing sides of them that were mostly hidden.

As a result, I did not learn how to cook, and no one seemed interested in teaching me. I used too much water when washing the dishes. I was like a round peg in a room of triangles in the kitchen. Then, when I became a parent, I started the process of entering this terrain with intention and curiosity. Also, with the arrogance that comes with ignorance. Slowly, I realized the magical power of the kitchen. I realized I did not need an invitation or to ask to enter it. When my mom, my grandma, and my partner were cooking, I needed to get busy. Chop something here, rinse something there. Ask for directions and do it. Pick up a book, a recipe, and just do it. As an ancient art, the magic of the kitchen as a communal space started to unfold. The conversations that happened while women were cooking. I realized that while I thought life was happening outside the house, smoking cigarettes, the real deal, the power analysis, the caring work, was being done in the kitchen.

Now, cooking has become a way to care for others in a way that I did not know before. Also, the best ground for metaphors about life.  By learning how to cook and how to take care of the kitchen, I found myself unlocking a world that remains obscure or uninteresting for many men. I have found in my kitchen, and the kitchens of others, a home away from home.

The day flies after story time at the library. Head back home, lunch, nap, dinner prep. Next thing you know, you are flossing one kid while the other is singing and throwing wooden blocks. There are ninety minutes of unpredictable love, screams, flying pieces of food, and several instances of civil disobedience. Then, silence again.

It is about 9 pm. I put on the earphones and started to clean the kitchen. Sometimes, care is something I can touch and see, like leaving the counters spotless and organizing the pantry after a supermarket run. I have aced the domestic chores realm. Yet, there is much of the nurturing I am still learning how to do. Cleaning up is hard but doable, but responding calmly after being yelled at is another level. This is the part of the care work I learn so much from my partner, and the part that I try to work on myself.

I set the coffee and think about how good it would be for me to stretch my back. Instead, I pull a piece of chocolate from the secret stash and indulge in it. The 10 am club becomes the 10 pm club in the blink of an eye. I feel like I will be picking up leftovers from the floor or doing insane loads of laundry forever. But I won’t. It will go in a flash, and then I will be a former member of this club, looking at others on the street, cheering for them as they carve their way into fatherhood.