Children do change everything. They see the world through a completely novel set of lens and perspectives. Your priorities shift as you protect and nurture this very fragile and vulnerable infant. You experience a very different kind of love than anything you have previously experienced.
Eileen and I were very intentional of making sure we were living in harmony before we brought a new life into this world. Well, as much as in harmony as folks in their mid 20s can be. I would have waited a bit longer and Eileen would have been a bit faster but the compromise worked out well in timing our first child. We were similarly thoughtful in timing our second child five years later. For the third child, well, that was an unplanned, precious gift who was conceived by parents who were still madly in love.
We should start at the beginning with the tale of the annual mom’s tribe – a tale of pent-up desire and love, of children, and eventually of murder.
The Annual Mom’s Tribe
In a unit where all of the men were deployed nine months of the year, there was but a single window each year for conceiving children. Thus, you were either in the annual new mom’s tribe or you had committed adultery. There were several officer wives in 1987 mom’s tribe who all became pregnant in a very small window of time and all were due at the same time. This included Tammy who lived in the same cul de sac with us and Jennifer who would later be convicted of murder. Little did we know of the paths our annual mom’s tribe would take from this group of closely bonded women.
Eileen’s first thought at about 2 AM was it was time to get to small clinic on base about a mile away from our house and see which of the other seven women in the tribe were there. She was READY. Curt’s first thought today was the very difficult monthly 7 mile Monte Berico run that was now off the agenda. Great timing dear!
The birth was uneventful for nurses and completely novel to us. Curt parked himself at Eileen’s head for seven hours and marveled at Eileen’s ability to sleep between contractions and her ability to manage all of this without painkillers. Eventually, a conehead boy was born in perfect health with a slight shading of blue. The nurses moved immediately to help another member of the annual mom’s tribe (there would be three births this day).
As with all new parents, all of our preparations did not prepare us for wonder and enormity of our first child. We would do fine but let me share two vignettes that should resonate with new parents and cause more experienced parents to chortle:
- After several weeks, Eileen and I went out to dinner at the Officer’s Club. This was in part because we could not afford a dinner on the economy with a new child and in part because the affordable alternative was one of three Burger Kings in Italy. I went classy and we went to the Officer’s Club. While Eileen and I enjoyed a rare steak dinner, our son was in distress. His stomach was as hard as a board. He was in so much distress that we took him to the emergency room (it was a small room) at the clinic. An elderly doctor on duty quickly examined our son and determined he was constipated precipitated by a dietary shift to creme of wheat. We thought it was an emergency. The doctor, steeled through countless similar experiences, did not smirk and quickly resolved the distress.
- The children of the mom’s tribe quickly settled into sleeping through the night. Our child did not. Thus, Eileen because increasingly sleep-deprived. The other women and I posited that our son was not hungry but just wanted to spend some time with mom. While Eileen intellectually accepted this argument, she struggled to emotionally lay still while her only child (other than me), was crying. It took the threat of duct-taping her in bed so that our oldest would cry himself to sleep. He then immediately started sleeping through the night.
Trey Facts
Grandparents and What They will do to see their first grandson
For both of our parents, our son would be their first grandchild. There would be planes, trains, and automobiles associated with their travels to see our son. Let me share with you their stories as they did everything they could to come see their first grandchild and our oldest son.
Anne Murray, John Denver, and the Autostrada
When Eileen’s parents flew to Italy, they did the sensible thing and flew into Venice which was only an hour from Vincenza. We drove over and had a playlist of relaxing music on a cassette tape with a mix of Anne Murray and John Denver tunes to calm them and help them adjust to the very different rules of driving in Italy. It was their first time traveling outside the United States. Eileen’s dad Peter astutely made two observations during the two hour trip:
- I was driving much faster than 55 miles an hour. I replied that we would be killed through multiple collisions if I drove 55 mph on the autostrada. The average speed at the time was between 80 and 100 miles an hour. Sit back and enjoy some more John Denver. He did.
- He observed that I paid the autostrada toll in “monopoly” money. Eileen and I just let it go and appreciated they had traveled so far to celebrate the birth of our son.
Eileen’s parents would visit us three times while we were in Italy and we took them to Venice, Rome, and Lake Guarda. In Venice, everything went lovely. In Rome, everything went great including before and after a band of gypsies swarmed Eileen’s dad who responded by beating them off with our son’s baby bag. At Lake Garda, we had a grand adventure until Eileen’s mom got very, very nervous on the hairpin curves as we climbed the hills surrounding Lake Garda. At our home in Crespina, they discovered that plugging a 120v vacuum cleaner into a 240v plug causes a lot of smoke and a much nicer new dual-voltage vacuum cleaner replacement. We suggested they use all of our appliances.
Iceland Air, Spies, and NATO Secret headquarters
When my parents flew to visit us, they did the sensible thing, given the large number of siblings accompanying them, and flew the least expensive route. This involved a flight from Atlanta, GA through Reykjavík, Iceland where they would fly to the least likely gateway to Italy – Liechtenstein.
My dad’s intent was simple. Save money flying and then rent a car and drive down to Italy. While he did accomplish this goal, a couple of things did not go as planned:
- He did not anticipate that the flight through Reykjavík, Iceland would involve the family walking across the runway, outside, in shorts and flipflops, in the snow, to board their 2nd plane.
- He did not anticipate that European rental cars are smaller than American rental cars and the importance of getting the correct car paperwork when you change cars at the last second.
- He did not anticipate that the six hour trip from Liechtenstein to Vincenza, Italy could take, say 18 hours, if you did not know Italian, Swedish, and German. As Steve Martin sagely opined, they have a different word for everything.
- He did not anticipate that different countries use different currencies which are very helpful to pay tolls.
- He did not anticipate that he would find the secret NATO headquarters at 4 AM in the hills around Verona when he took a wrong turn about an hour from our house.
- He did not anticipate being surrounded by Italian carabinieri with machine guns and attack dogs who did not speak English when he and his family discovered NATO’s secret headquarters.
- Remember that note about having the wrong paperwork for the wrong car I mentioned above. Yea, that did not go over well.
- Fortunately, the Italians came to the conclusion the Carver version of the Spies Who Knew Too Little and let them go 4 hours later.
Death by Gorgonzola, the Tower of Terror, and other tales
You would think that would be the end of the story but of course it is not. When we visited Padua, Italy, my brother Mark decided to be safe and order a cheese pizza. He got a four cheese pizza not realizing that one of those cheeses would be gorgonzola cheese. He took a huge bite as young men do and immediately realized he had made a truly horrible mistake. He was sitting across from me and I could watch his thought processes just through his facial expressions:
- First he thought, can I possibly swallow this? This thought was immediately dismissed. It was too large of a bite and consisted of too much gorgonzola.
- Second, he seemed to think, can I spit this out? This option was immediately dismissed as well as it was too large of a bite.
- Third, he acted on the last option – a quick retreat to the restroom where he just so quickly returned and started carefully cutting around the gorgonzola cheese.
You probably did not know that Italy has a Tower of Terror but it does according to my mom. I will give you some hints:
- It is a small country within Italy… (there are two)
- It uses the euro as its official currency but is not a member of the European Union…
- It is the oldest existing representative republic…
I am, of course, referring to San Marino. My mom enjoyed the drive to San Marino. She did not like the walk up Monte Titano which actually has three peaks and is nearly a 750 foot incline.
Finally, my family would return to the United States via Paris because what could possibly go wrong with that? It went as horribly as you might imagine but that is a tale for another day.
Baptismal Tales
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