Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 173
On June 1, 1962, in the presence of my parents and siblings who had come to College
Station for my brother Chris’ graduation, and Kirsten’s mother who flew in from
Copenhagen, Kirsten and I married in the Catholic chapel next to Texas A&M. Joe
Elliott, with a broken arm in a cast, drove all the way from California to be my best man.
The Potter family, Ray Rivero and a few Aggie friends were also kind enough to show
up for the ceremony. That summer we lived in the married student housing area of
TAMU until I received my Master’s degree two months later. Then we moved back to
Houston where I had accepted a job with the engineering division of Brown & Root, Inc.
Kirsten continued her undergraduate studies and renewed her job with Father Young.
We rented an apartment near UST so she could walk to classes and work. Father
Young and I loved to engage in long conversations about subjects such as theology,
philosophy, political economy and history. I would keep him in my apartment until just
before midnight, giving him barely enough time to say his daily vocational prayers
before the end of the day. His friendship helped me develop a better understanding of
the on-going, fuzzy, random and gripping nature of the human experience.
I was not yet twenty-four when Kirsten and I realized we were about to start a family. My
first reaction upon learning that I was going to be a father was to reach out for help. I
was by no means ready to take the responsibility as a trained father would. I had not
lived with my parents since I was 17, and in the last six years I had changed much, not
only physically, but also in my view of the world. Yet, I didn’t have anyone to tell of my
fears, so I wrote my father asking him to take my yet unborn child as his. To bring a new
life to the world was plain scary. I felt that I didn’t know what to do. Worse, I felt like I
didn’t want to learn what to do. Then, almost by miracle, the fear disappeared and a
primordial sense of ability and willingness to take charge enveloped me as soon as I
saw my son born. I no longer wanted anyone else to take responsibility or even hear
any suggestion that they could do so. It was my son! I would give him all I had! I would
get whatever he needed!
I will never forget the metamorphosis I went through in a matter of days. I believe it was
part of the mandate encoded within us by the Supreme Developer, and I think that most
parents feel that way about their children. It is an expression of the instinct I discuss in
The Grand Design of this chapter. It smacked me right in the face, like a boxer’s punch.
The initial thrust comes from the genome, but sustaining the nurturing that we all owe
our young is a matter of choice. It is not a short and easy task and the first impulse can
be killed very quickly, as we see it happening much too frequently. The willingness to
sustain the effort in most cases must last at least eighteen years and often longer. But if
one chooses to be a good parent it is also a sublime and ennobling choice.
Except for the truly less privileged that grow up orphaned, we all have been exposed to
the sacrifices of parenthood, either as children or parents, or both. Without a doubt, the
frequency with which parents can point to their children with pride is almost equal to the
frequency with which parents have carried out their duties responsibly.
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