As I write this, my son Joshua is 101 days old. I’ve been thinking a lot about how my life has changed in the past 100 days and about Red Panda. You see, after spending 8 years in the NBA, there are a couple of universal truths that you realize cannot be questioned:
The room was filling with chaos but time slowed down when I saw the nurse raise her foot and disengage the brake on my wife’s hospital bed. So began the hardest seven minutes of my life. Let me back up.
As my wife enters the final days of her pregnancy, I thought it might be helpful to give you a list of the top 10 mistakes guys I made this past summer.
We’ve all seen movies or tv shows where the husband begrudgingly or awkwardly learns about the wonders of the female body during the pregnancy process. While it might be funny to watch, it’s a lot less amusing to a wife who’s trying to learn as much as she can about what lies ahead. Oh also… do not under any circumstances start laughing during the class on breastfeeding.
Another scene usually comes later in those tv shows where the husband surprises the wife with some grand gesture. Something that shows he’s thinking about her and is really invested in this process. So cheesy, right? Well it turns out that’s the good kind of cheesy. Like nacho cheesy. Those moments are like light houses for emotional safety as she navigates the stormy seas of her daily routine. Oh also… do not under any circumstances make fun of the sweet cliche thing on tv that’s making her cry.
I’m not quite sure why this one is important. My wife enjoys a Malibu mixed drink every now and then and during the pregnancy she’s mentioned how much she misses it. Well I found a bottle she had tucked away in our pantry and a helped myself to a nice cold drink that I enjoyed in front of her. For some reason this was a mistake so I guess… do not under any circumstances drink Malibu.
I’ve found that emotions in pregnancy are a little bit like driving during an ice storm in Texas. No one knows what’s going on, some idiots are just driving normal causing problems for everyone else, and usually you just end up spinning your wheels. When a conversation starts to slide off the road, don’t steer into it and try and correct it – that only makes this worse. Just take your foot off the gas, calm things down and maybe distract her with something nice (see #9). As my friend Will says, “Shhh…. just let it happen.” Oh also… do not under any circumstances quote Will to her when she’s upset.
The thing about a magic act is… you’ve got a lot of rabbit turds to pick up once the audience leaves. Pregnancy is magical, but it can make quite an emotional mess in the beginning as the changes begin taking effect. Early on in the pregnancy I decided it was finally my turn to do the dishes (we’d been married for 8 months, it was time) – well this made her cry because she felt bad that I was having to do the chores while she was drained of all her energy in the first trimester. It was a confusing time for both of us. Oh also… do not under any circumstances think that this No Dishes rule is permanent because…
In the 3rd trimester, the growing human inside of her is beginning to feel cramped in their apartment and start trying to knock down walls. As a landlord who is very attached to those walls, my wife was sometimes not too happy with just the process of sitting still on the couch. In this stage, the pile of dishes growing in the sink represented everything she needed/wanted/felt obligated to do but couldn’t because of the pregnancy and as the pile grew, so did her stress levels. So soap up, get your hands… dirty? clean? and and wash those dishes because she’s not going to think it’s sweet anymore. She’s going to think it’s about damn time. Oh also… do not under any circumstances think that the dishwasher will be a bro and handle it for you. That jerk will leave food on the dishes and totally throw you under the bus.
My wife loves finding deals and saving money. She also loves coming home and telling me in amazing detail about each purchase, the cents per dollar discount she managed to get and then the total savings which she says for the end as any good storyteller should. She also loves football and when games are being played she’ll always want them on the tv. During the fourth quarter of a close game she recently began telling me about her shopping trip earlier in the day as one team was seconds away from taking the lead in the red zone she’d speak over the play-by-play with enthusiasm and passion… about shopping for baby clothes. But a year from now, 6 months, heck maybe even a week from now I won’t care about that game but I will care about my kid having clothes to wear. Oh also… do not under any circumstances run a draw play on 3rd and 6 when the defense has 8 guys on the line.
Guys, they don’t tell you this all the time but sometimes taking pictures is prohibited in certain areas. Don’t be the guy who gets caught and yelled at by the ultrasound technician midway through the pregnancy which makes each visit afterwards extremely awkward. Oh also… do not under any circumstances use the machine on your own stomach once she leaves the room.
Your wife will be carrying a human around inside of her. She’ll feel someone else’s hiccups, kicks, summersaults and all sorts of other things that keep her up at night, keep her running to the bathroom and keep her emotions swirling so much that Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt should be chasing them. So it’s not cool to say “Oh it’s getting real!” after 37 weeks just because you saw her belly move from across the room. Oh also… do not under any circumstances see a kick and exclaim, “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!”
Uh oh.
Somehow I guess my wife and I decided one wedding and three new jobs in 2014 wasn’t quite enough. We decided to add to the chaos by putting my house up for sale. I swear it seemed like a good idea at the time.
My first official business trip was to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August of 2000. At 21 years old, I felt like a young professional jetting into New Orleans and meeting a client a short drive across the Mississippi State Line. I barely remember the reason for the trip, but I did learn something about faith that echoes in my head to this day.
When I moved to Arizona in 2007, one of the major contrasts from Texas I noticed was efficient highway construction. When one of the major highways needed work, they’d schedule it for overnight on a Saturday and crews would have all the work done and the cones collected by the next morning. The only sign that they were ever there is the improvement they left behind.
It completely makes the whole “90 degrees at dawn” thing worth it.
A day ago I realized I have two Palo Verde trees in my front yard when I met my neighbor Joel. Joel has an immaculately manicured desert landscape lawn and mercifully stopped by to talk with me when he saw me at work in the jungle that my property had become. In the nicest way possible he gave me advice, offered me tools and one thing he said stuck out to me: “These Palo Verde trees could definitely be cut back, that would help them grow.”
“Oh so those are Palo Verde trees. Imagine that!” I thought to myself as I nodded seriously. Then I went inside and Googled how to prune them.
I’m in love. I’m proud of my work. I’m surrounded by great friends. And I’m pissed off.
There is a special kind of shame that only grown-up humans are capable of feeling. It’s the kind of shame you feel when you realize you’re singing along to Justin Bieber song. I felt this kind of shame today when I was moved by something said by a personal trainer on an infomercial as I was flipping through tv channels.
Once upon a time many years ago I decided I wanted to marry Brenna Temple; I just took a long time to ask. Here is the story of how we got engaged…
I decided our engagement would take place on December 12th (12/12) because the number 12 is special in our relationship. In the early days of our long distance relationship I suggested we establish a specific time of day that could be Our Time – in each time zone we’d set aside that time to think about each other. She came beck with “WHAT ABOUT 12:12?”
“Ok, but why?”
“Because it’s R time!” And she attached a picture of a scrawled “12” that actually does resemble the letter R. “Get it?!”
This was definitely the girl I wanted to marry.
On the morning of December 12th I boarded a flight for Atlanta in secret. For other passengers the flight time was somewhere around three hours but it was the longest trip of my life. It’s a strange feeling when you are aware you’re moving toward your destiny. Much like a first time skydiver, I was about to do something very exciting and scary and I wasn’t going to do it alone.
In the bag at my feet was a new ring with a lot of history. Months earlier my parents had offered me the diamond from my mother’s ring for when (not if) I proposed to Brenna. I initially declined but my mom argued that after 45 years of marriage she didn’t need a symbol of their love – my father was that symbol. She made a convincing argument and I accepted their gift to carry on a piece of their marriage into mine. Thanks, Mom & Dad.
While on the flight I did my best to convince Brenna that it was a typical Thursday. Since we send each other messages so often, she was sure to notice a three-hour silence from me. I was afraid she’d already be suspecting something special on 12/12 and when she told me the night before my flight that she’d gotten her hair cut and painted her nails I had a sinking feeling that she knew was just too nice to ruin my plan. But just in case, I used a laptop and the onboard WiFi to send her text messages from the air. I landed at 2pm and while hustling through the Atlanta airport I sent her an additional “Happy R Time” message since it was 12:12pm back in Phoenix.
Apparently I’m extraordinarily good at deception.
I took a cab to Muss & Turners restaurant where Brenna had (fake) plans for drinks with her friend Meg. I had heard about M&T’s weeks earlier when Brenna told me about a business lunch she attended in a cool location with a hidden speakeasy bar in the back. Thanks to Google and a few Yelp reviews I found the name of the place and got in touch with Tiffany their awesome event planner who was a huge help in the planning process.
When I arrived to M&T’s I found my expectations exceeded. Across an open dining room was a large freezer door that opened to expose a shadowy hallway that twisted and turned into a cozy speakeasy-style bar. There was a dining room off of the hallway that allowed for some privacy and the bar featured one-way mirrors that I used to watch for Brenna’s arrival while sipping a cocktail Tiffany bought me to calm my nerves.
Finally, the moment (and the girl) arrived and I saw Brenna enter the dining room. The staff sprung into action as I slipped through a side door into the private dining room. In a few moments I heard Brenna being directed down the hall. She turned and saw me standing there in a suit and gasped, “Oh my God!” as she walked toward me.
She was stunned and I was shaking. But I managed to get on one knee and ask her to marry me…
After the shock wore off and the reality of what just happened was setting in she asked disappointedly, “So Meg’s isn’t coming?”
“Sorry,” I said unapologetically (keep reading).
After a few minutes to ourselves I told her the private room was booked so we had to relocate into the bar area. There, she discovered a table set up with a Monopoly game I had made up with each property representing a special place in our lives. Monopoly is her favorite board game and it’s now mine as long as I am winning.
We enjoyed a couple of mimosas at our table while I filled her in on some of the backstory leading up to the Question then we decided to go back down the hallway – collect my bags from the private room – and have dinner in the main dining area (ok, that was the last deception, I promise!). As Brenna rounded the corner she gasped when she saw coats on some of the chairs. She thought we’d have to awkwardly retrieve my luggage during someone else’s dinner until she took another step and saw a few of her friends (including Meg!) waiting to surprise her. I had contacted them via Facebook (not creepy at all) and asked them to assemble to help us celebrate.
It was an incredible night.
Looking back, I am so grateful for everyone who played a part in this to make it so much better than I could have planned it on my own. Everything fell into place so perfectly and magically that it would have been easy to think I’d fallen into a fairy tale.
Thank you to Muss & Turner’s – the staff went above and beyond to welcome me and make Brenna’s night truly special. Definitely check this place out and ask to see Eleanor.
Thank you to Meg and Bryn for helping with the plan, getting Brenna there with a clean(isn) shirt and for keeping a secret!
Thank you to Lisa for the airport drop-off and to all of my friends for your encouragement, advice, and excitement.
Thank you to my family – in San Antonio and North Carolina and soon opening new locations in Houston, Austin, and Tennessee – for everything.
And thank you to God who reached into the cookie jar in His perfect time and gave me everything I’d hoped for after all – happily ever after.