wrote this for Ilyana and Havana
It was Christmas Day 1997 and I was driving a luxury Lincoln Sedan through the dense fog of the Central Valley in rural California. I neared my face to the windshield as if it would help my eyes better penetrate the wall of greyness that hid everything but the road.
Two tall palm trees. Two tall palm trees. I kept looking down to check the scribbled directions I’d been given. Seeing the pair of palm trees, I veered off the country road and onto a fenced property. The sandy dirt under my tires, bumpily I pulled up to the disheveled old farm house. Seeing my lights approach, the family had come out to greet me.
It was a trip with some uncertainty hanging over it. I had met Karen a couple of times before, but I'd decided to come to Fresno to ask her out. To ask out the woman who would some day be the mother of our children.
In many a sense, there are no beginnings to things. Just as there are no ends. But this is the closest to the beginning of Havana’s history. A child’s history is a shared history and this is where that shared history begins.
Fourteen years ago Havana was just a city in Cuba. Nothing more. Karen and I had not shared a room on a remote Greek island. We'd not been up all night at the ER. We'd not cooked or cleaned house together. We'd not held hands. We had met and we had flirted.
I knew all three of Karen’s sisters before I’d even met Karen. I was close friends with her younger sister's husband, Pierre. Pierre and I had conspired to get me invited to the Harper family gathering at Christmas in Fresno.
I’d met Karen at a couple of times at house parties hosted by her older sister, Ann Marie. On the last occasion, we’d managed to hang out long enough that I felt drawn to get to know Karen better.
I had prepped for this trip. Pierre was in on the plan, his wife Monica, perhaps less enthusiastically. I was not shy in sharing my intention to ask Karen out, and if word leaked to her directly, all the better. I hired a large black Lincoln Continental: big enough for all four Harper sisters, and Pierre and I, to go bar-hopping as one group.
While in line for drinks I shared my plans with Karen's other sister Paula, with whom I am closest today, and she said she'd let the other sisters give Karen and I some time together. Finally late in the evening in a dingy night club somewhere in Fresno's Tower District, we found ourselves alone at last. Sitting closely to speak above the music at a small table, the intimacy of the moment was just right.
I looked at Karen. She was very attractive, politically conscious, insightful, and smarter than me.
So I took the leap. Past small talk, past opines and joking and nonsense and innuendos. I asked Karen out on a date. A real date.
Well, not exactly. I shaped the question in the most general way possible, asking her instead, to let me know what my chances were of receiving a positive response if I were to ask her out. That broad approach left me room for a fairly dignified retreat. But that wasn’t necessary.
Driving back to the bay area that weekend, I cranked up the radio, opened the windows wide and watched the fog rise and fade away, stepping aside for the warmth of the late morning sun.
