11.01.2025. SATURDAY
17:53 pm
Telling people about the baby has become my favorite topic of conversation.
Oh, boy, will I be one of those parents who smothers everyone they speak to with pictures and baby stories?
… Yeah, yeah, I probably will be.
So far, we have told Andrea’s parents and my parents (two different sets of parents, to be clear). And even though we told ourselves it would stop at that, I couldn’t resist telling my best man, Igor.
And in just a few reveals, we witnessed a whole bunch of reactions. Out of which, most notable by far, was her father’s.
“Ohh, very good,” Joza said as he tapped Andrea’s shoulder. “Thats… great. We should toast to it! Let me get my gurgling juice, Jim Bean.”
Well, turns out, we didn’t toast at all. Jim Bean was in fact Joza’s gurgling juice. He left the room, and we could hear him make all kinds of noises in the bathroom. He was choking, puking, and gurgling sips of the famous bourbon whiskey.
Irena, Andrea’s mother, rolled her eyes. She listened to that harmony every day.
By the time he returned, the news we revealed became ephemeral dust, floating away. And Joza began retelling his Yugoslavian army stories. (by now, you are imagining there must be some sort of a lesson for us hidden in those stories; there wasn’t.)
And thus went possibly the oddest pregnancy reveal ever.
Do not think Joza isn’t happy for us. He is. But he took the news like he takes a lot of things lately in his life. He took it for granted. He took it, and quickly shoveled it somewhere far underneath of his current primary concern – himself.
Well, last year, I had to teach myself a big lesson in taking things for granted. And the lesson began with falling off my motorcycle on a curvy mountain road. And it continued through a week of being bedridden in a hospital bed, looking at all the frail, broken, old people; they were waiting for relief, relief of any kind. My roommate, one of the unfortunate grandpas with broken hips, told me of his life. Told me of his regrets, and told me just how fucking lucky I was for being in that bed temporarily, for being in a position where in a years time, this would be just a hazy memory; while for him, this was the beginning of the end.
Our lives are littered with moments that deserve our undivided attention. Some of those moments might be moments of joy, of learning, and of pain. But they are our stepping blocks to growth. Growth of our human experience, or growth as in learning and adapting.
When we let those moments pass without a second glance, all we do is rob ourselves of a silver sliver of life, of light. And there, cliche as it is, is only one life, and one opportunity to take it all in.
So, Joza… Fuck man. Maybe we should buy you a motorcycle.