Yeah, right.
We both knew that any such move would likely be permanent. Cleo herself was showing signs of aging and it was plain to see. Shipping her around the country, getting her used to new climates (the humidity of the South vs. the dryer air of California) and different surroundings was unlikely and unfair. If she was going, she was likely going for good. We knew that.
For the time being, Candice and I determined the best thing to do was to press pause on our nanny search and any plans to exile Cleo just yet. Our anxiety, of course, was elsewhere. Rosalita might have been injured or badly traumatized, or worse. So Candice called one of the places of reference that Rosalita had listed in her binder. More than anything she was simply looking to broaden the context some, get a better sense if we had any real reason to worry.
The first number appeared to be some sort of placement agency. Its generic name seemed innocuous enough and when the call went to a recording that indicated that the main contact number had changed—though the recording didn’t offer a new number—Candice just shrugged it off. But then as she skipped through the list placing calls to some of the other references, similarly odd things persisted. Contact numbers had either changed but offered no forwarding information, were disconnected, or were just plain wrong. In the one instance she did connect with yet another nondescript agency, it took a few moments for the woman on the other end to fully register what Candice was asking for. When at last she understood, she did in fact offer a glowing endorsement of Rosalita. Candice thanked the woman and hung up the phone with a furrowed brow. Something didn’t feel right.
“Try one of the personal recommendations,” I suggested, sensing something fishy myself.
Candice dialed and waited. A moment later a woman named Leslie picked up on the opposite end.
Hesitantly Candice said that she was calling for a reference check on Rosalita.
“Who?”
Candice explained.
“That’s so strange,” Leslie responded after a beat.
It was strange because Leslie had had a similar experience with a prospective nanny candidate named Marianna. Marianna, as it turns out, had also left a list of references that was proving nearly impossible to follow up on and validate. Similar to Rosalita, Marianna had met all the other criteria perfectly and also charmed Leslie and her husband, who were looking for someone experienced and caring to look after their son, Beau. Still, Leslie claimed that even before the troublesome reference checks, a “sixth sense told her something was off.”
Sadly, neither Candice nor I could really claim the same thing.
Now that we were sufficiently suspicious, we turned up the heat Law & Order style. Along with Leslie, our freshly minted joint task force got the goods on Rosalita/Marianna. The woman, it turned out, was a seasoned con artist with a criminal record. With a few even more gullible victims than us, she had managed to finagle advance payments, claiming various hardships, and then skipped out on them. Fortunately none of our digging concluded anything more serious than that. Because obviously when it came to handing one’s children over to caretakers, there was the potential for a lot worse.
I chose to look at this event with a glass-half-full disposition. We’d dodged a bullet by not getting ensnared in Rosalita’s wily trap. Candice, on the other hand, fell back on the glass-half-empty point of view. She was deeply disturbed we had misread Rosalita so significantly. Our only consolation was the discovery of Cleo’s sixth sense. Sure she couldn’t differentiate between the garbage truck rolling through the alleyway outside or the destructive gusts of a tempest like Hurricane Katrina, but now we could reasonably argue she might be able to smell out a rat. (Metaphorically speaking, that is, since there was the one time we had a dead mouse in our house for over a week and Cleo failed to detect it.)
Still, Candice—having just hit her eighth month of pregnancy—was spooked enough by the episode that we put our search on hold. Happily for Cleo, largely because she had earned her stripes by being the only one to sense Rosalita’s deviousness, this put to final rest any discussion of her shipping out.
With our nanny mission pending, I drifted back into my prior paranoia of whether or not I was truly prepared to be a father. Watching Candice’s belly grow was like watching the sand from an hourglass slowly slip away. I knew my days as a carefree guy who still considered himself a kid were numbered and that soon enough there would be a living, breathing being who would happily remind me of that every second of every day. Amid this state of baseline panic, as it turns out though, I was not the only one who noticed Candice growing. A colleague of hers in his infinite observational acumen noticed that Candice was about to pop, and mentioned that a very good friend of his was about to part ways with the woman who had helped raise their son from infancy into his teens. They had adored her so much that they ended up retaining her for years even though they didn’t really need her anymore. At one point, their son was out of the house so much that they actually bought a dog to keep the nanny company. Candice and I concluded that the anecdote was cute enough that it should at least earn the prospective candidate an interview.
Candice and I were wary from the start, so we poked around into this newest candidate’s background. Her name was Mirna. She was of Guatemalan origin, had lived in the United States for over a decade, and was keen to keep working so she could support her twenty-year-old son, who was in medical school back home. This heartwarming tale immediately set off alarms for me as I cynically contemplated questions to collapse her story. Candice meanwhile had tears in her eyes. For both Mirna’s own good—and more importantly my own—I decided to hold back on the old Gitmo routine. A great thing, in fact, because over the next hour Mirna thawed us out with her warm and genuine affection. She confessed her own misgivings about working for anyone after her last employers, whom, she said, she regarded as family. She was nervous about whether or not she could ever build as close a bond with anyone else, and yet she knew that raising another boy was the only thing that would give her fulfillment.
“How do you know it’s a boy?” Candice laughed, her emotionalism having receded.
“I don’t know.” Mirna shook her head. “Just a feeling, I guess.”
At this stage my own feelings were so tangled with emotion, self-doubt, paranoia, and wariness that I knew my best bet was simply to align myself with my wife. I shot Candice a glance and she nodded silently back at me. I knew what this meant. I excused myself to go retrieve Cleo. In a few minutes I returned with her in my hands. I held on to her leash tightly and let her down to the floor. Mirna stared at her a little nervously as Cleo started up barking and lurching toward her.
Mirna didn’t have any treats with her nor any other choreographed routine, but clearly she had something else, because as I let her leash go limp, Cleo skipped excitedly toward her and sat by her feet. This time, Cleo didn’t go down or roll over, or do anything that remarkable, in fact. On the contrary, she remained just as enthusiastic and giddy as before. She sat for a moment, then leaped to her feet and danced around as if she were doing a Tony Robbins firewalk. Mixed between louder splintered barks, she whimpered excitedly and lurched back and forth and side to side. Candice and I exchanged glances once more. We knew what we were watching: family. “Is she always like this?” Mirna asked a bit hesitantly.
“Yes!” Candice and I exclaimed gleefully at the same time.
MIRNA HAS BEEN with us since the very beginning of Krishu’s life. Every morning when she arrives, Cleo goes into the same sort of energetic spasm and dances around in circles like a baby on Red Bull until Mirna settles her down with a treat (or three or four). Krishu, likewise, regards Mirna as family and the three of them communicate almost exclusively in Spanish. Both Candice and I were adamant that Mirna speak in her native tongue to Krishu, hoping he would take to it along with English, Mandarin, and Hindi if he were exposed to it from the earliest stage. What we weren’t expecting was that Cleo would go Spanish on us as well. Then again, we could hardly cla
im surprise when Cleo once more defied expectations.
Like many people in our lives, Mirna was at first a little awed by my father. While she hadn’t read any of his books, she was aware of who he was and initially reacted nervously when he dropped in to see his grandchildren. One afternoon after he had dropped by, played with Krishu for a few minutes, and then slipped outside to use his cell phone, Mirna pulled me aside and urged me to advise her in the future when my father was coming so that she could adequately prepare Krishu.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, unclear what it meant for Krishu to be “prepared.”
She insisted that Krishu be fully napped, cleaned up, bathed, dressed appropriately, his hair combed and fingernails clipped if he was going to meet his grandfather.
I assured her that all of that was not necessary. But she pushed back in a way that showed she meant business. Twenty minutes later, he emerged from his room looking like a dolled-up choirboy. Twenty minutes after that, he stood stiffly in front of my father, who stared awkwardly at his comb-over.
“What happened to him?” Papa asked.
I shook my head and then smiled at Mirna, who beamed with pride.
Fortunately for us all, within another twenty minutes Krishu was rubbing banana bread in his hair and the planet was happily back on its axis.
Gradually as the months passed, Mirna got more comfortable around my father. Still, she insisted that whenever Krishu was to spend time with my father, he was prepped and rested for it. She even chided Papa once or twice for daring to look at his BlackBerry when he was supposed to be focused on his grandson. In part, Mirna’s desire for Krishu and my father to have a strong bond was linked to her awareness of Papa’s celebrity—she wore my father’s connection like a proud badge, especially around her cronies at the local park. But really it was her own cultural heritage that held sacred the bond between men in a family.
“To be a good man, Krishu must know good men,” she told me once.
It sounded like a reasonable covenant to me and I nodded my approval of it.
“Now, if you and your father want to be great men,” she continued, fueled by my endorsement, “you will learn from your son just how to be.”
This time I stared at her, unsure what she meant. Had I lost something in the translation? She smiled back at me, pleased with herself. It became clear to me that pressing her most likely would not yield the clarity I was seeking. I let it go.
Over the course of the last few months, as my father started to spend days if not a week at a time with us, Mirna, of course, noticed. She inquired with Candice if everything was fine at home, presumably between my parents. We had learned over the years that casually relaying information that could easily transform into gossip amongst the nanny cabal at the park was akin to leaving a loaded gun around the house. To ward off any trouble, Candice advised her of my grandfather’s health, my mother’s prolonged stay in India, and instructions to me to spend more time with my father over the summer.
Mirna nodded knowingly as if she had been let in on some sort of secret. “He should spend more time with the baby and the dog,” she unexpectedly advised.
One afternoon she seemed to put this unique prescription into practice. Having been out at a meeting, I returned home to find Mirna standing outside of the house peering in through the blinds. I asked her what was going on.
“Your father.” She pointed inside. “He’s here.”
“Okay.” I nodded, unsure if that was the full explanation or not.
“He told me to take the rest of the day off. That he would take care of the baby.”
My expression clearly betrayed me.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s why I stand out here and watch them.” She squinted again through the shutters.
“He’s actually not so bad,” she added.
I moved beside her and peered through the window. Krishu seemed in heaven. He was holding Papa’s hands rotating in a circle. He was one of few children I’d ever seen who drew profound enjoyment from one-on-one ring-around-the-rosy. Unexpectedly, from the looks of my father’s expression, he appeared to be just as into it. The moment they “all fell down,” Cleo too joined the party, barking up a storm as both Krishu and Papa rolled with laughter.
“I told you.” Mirna smiled with a sense of pride. “Krishu and Cleo very good for him. He can write a book about them.”
I thanked her and relieved her of her surveillance.
Entering into the house, I now got a broader glimpse of the living room, which couldn’t be seen from the outside. In the hour that they had been left alone, Cleo, Papa, and Krishu had wreaked such havoc in the house, it appeared as if a hurricane had flashed through.
“What happened?” I stared around the room like a Red Cross worker who had just arrived on the scene.
“Nothing.” Papa shrugged as he crashed to the floor again with Krishu. Riled once more, Cleo danced out of their way, hopped onto the couch, and took out her hyperness on an innocent pillow that she’d already had at. The cotton from inside of it flew while she whipped it from side to side with her jaw. Clearly, while she lacked the capacity to sense a natural disaster, with conspirators like my father and my son, she had no problem making it look like one had occurred.
“Again, Dada!” Krishu sang as he sprang to his feet.
Papa lumbered to his.
The two of them started up again. “I spoke to Mom this morning,” Papa said as they made their first turn.
He faced me and grinned broadly. “She’s coming home in ten days.”
“Down!!!” Krishu bellowed. He often skipped most of the other words in ring-around-the-rosy to get to his favorite part.
Papa tumbled down to the floor once more. “She’ll be able to go with us to Whistler.”
This was great news. Every summer my family planned a family trip. Over the last few years we hit Colorado and Wyoming and collectively fell in love with the vast landscapes, lazy days, and outdoorsy activities they both offered. This year, we were traveling to Whistler in British Columbia, Canada, where my father was going to be conducting one of his weeklong spiritual seminars. Aside from the fact that we needed to play out the perfectly spiritual family, it seemed another ideal spot for us to continue our annual tradition. I envisioned full days of hiking, mountain biking, maybe even kayaking and fishing if the mood was right. We had all started to confront the reality that my mother was not likely to be back for the trip, which made it far less than ideal.
But the fact that Mom was going to be back in time to join us signified several great things. It not only guaranteed a gleeful reunion for us all, but also meant that Nana’s health had improved significantly. It also meant that while on vacation, Candice and I might even have the occasional chance to go out for “adult dinners” while my mom supervised the boy. While we most certainly loved Krishu above all else, the notion of a “date night” had become far more mythic lore than reality in the past two years for us. Add Cleo’s increasing need in her old age for walks every few hours, and there was rarely the opportunity for Candice and me to slip out and get away.
Most of all, though, I could tell by looking at my father and the sudden weight that seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders, the news of my mother’s imminent return had bolstered him. Even I often got caught up in the aura that clustered around Papa. It was easy to forget that just like everyone else, the sense of companionship he drew from my mother was special to him. We rarely if ever discussed it, and yet intuitively we all knew it was the glue that held our whole family together, but most of all balanced him.
This time when Papa and Krishu fell to the floor, Cleo joined them. She pranced around Papa, hopping on her hind legs and trying to join in the fun, her tail wagging furiously back and forth.
“You want to hear a bizarre story?” Papa sat back against the couch and laid a hand on Cleo’s head.
“I was working out this morning at the gym,” he began, “and a woman in pink spandex and sungl
asses approached me.”
You may think that the lady in pink spandex and sunglasses is bizarre enough, but in the crazy spiritual life of Deepak Chopra, that was par for the course. Often he or we came across strangers who confided in him some of their innermost secrets or thoughts. Once in the Frankfurt airport, in a restroom, a man at the urinal beside my father recognized him, got so excited that he forgot what he was doing, and turned to Papa to tell him how he had dreamed several weeks ago how he would “meet his guru very soon.” Whether or not the dream included his urinating on the guru’s shoes, we may never really know.
“I believe the karmic significance was the universe telling me to stop wearing alligator-skin shoes,” Papa later extrapolated from the strange episode. Ever since, you’ll find him mostly in brash red sneakers.
“She was an animal psychic and told me that I had a small fluffy white dog who was very important to my spiritual evolution.” As if she could hear him, Cleo lay on the ground, spryly rolled onto her back, spread her legs, and waited to be stroked by Papa. A very spiritual response, of course.
“She said that the dog was reprising a role from a prior life and that I needed to learn from her as much as possible.”
It crossed my mind. Might this pink-spandexed, sunglass-clad woman be my editor in disguise? My agent perhaps?
“What do you think?” Papa looked at me.
My father is not a very religious man, despite his notoriety for being one of the most spiritual guys around. If you ask him, he claims to be no more a Hindu (the faith with which he grew up) than a born-again Christian. And yet, as perhaps the world’s leading go-to guru on consciousness, a lot of what he speaks about and believes is drawn directly from the spiritual traditions of India, known as the Vedas. The notion of reincarnation—that the human body is recycled matter and that what we define as a person and/or personality is nothing more than that same consciousness refashioning itself—is aligned with what many Hindus claim as their faith. For my father, this has been a source of great consternation for years. For what he believes he can (like no other) rationalize and explain through science and modern physics, others believe blindly and fasten to their faith. In many ways, it has undermined his own work and he knows it. Still, the notion that a family unit like ours is not just a random computation of the universe, thrown together indiscriminately for one lifetime, but rather a function of a deeper cosmic intelligence orchestrated by consciousness, or dare we call it God, was not incredulous. If anything, it reaffirmed the instincts that we intuitively felt. The fact that a pink-spandexed doggy psychic might suggest that Cleo was part of our transcendental pack was entirely believable to my father, especially considering their intense summer bond.
Walking Wisdom Page 20