Call me 'Chupa'

By Carl Gadow of Eagan

My grandchildren call me Chupa. It wasn’t the name I had planned. In fact, I had something much more distinguished in mind.

“Why am I looking at a turtle?” I asked when my wife showed me the sonogram.

“It’s not a turtle! It’s your grandbaby.”

“Are they supposed to look like turtles?”

It was clearly a turtle, but I wasn’t going to disillusion her. She was excited about her first grandchild, and she needed me to be at least as excited as she was.

“I’m too young to be a grandpa. You’ll have to call me something else.”

After mulling it over, I gave her two options. Option one was Goompa. Not bad, but it felt confusing. It didn’t have the gravitas my new role deserved.

Option two I really liked.

“Call me The Big Chulupa.”

While the baby was still stewing in its own juices, I mostly stuck with The Big Chulupa. Occasionally I’d throw out Goompa just to see if it would stick.

By the time the turtle was born, I was leaning heavily away from Goompa. I was also regretting not including Mayor McCheeze as an option, considering I had spent a lot of years in Wisconsin.

I called him Turtle.

His mom named him Mason.

In the end, it didn’t matter what I wanted to be called. Kids have a way of deciding those things themselves. Mason picked his own name from the sounds he heard.

Chupa.

That’s when the job of being Chupa officially began.

I immediately liked it. It sounded just as important as anything with “Big” in front of it, but it had the advantage of brevity. And a baby just starting to talk could almost say it.

When Mason was one year old, I sat him on my lap while I put batteries into a new toy. I showed him how I used the screwdriver to open the battery case.

Turn. Turn. Turn.

Remove the first screw.

Turn. Turn. Turn. Three screws.

I put in the batteries, then handed the one-year-old the screwdriver and moved his hand to the first screw. He immediately started twisting his wrist, trying to tighten it. While I was play-acting teaching him, he was actively trying to learn.

Babies start getting interesting at about a year old. Before that, I call them throw pillows—you can set them on the couch and they won’t move. Then something shifts. You can see them soaking everything in, as if the thoughts forming in their tiny brains are visible if you watch closely.

At another grandchild’s first birthday party, I taught Leon how to toss small fabric books into the air. We made a game of it and played for at least an hour while he sat on my lap. He continued to play that same game for the rest of the week before moving on to the next discovery.

At every age, there is something Chupa can teach the grandchildren. Or sometimes they just need me to be there with them. Chupa wasn’t just a name I was given. It was one I had to earn.

It took years of play, small lessons, and being a visible role model. Playing in the park. Spending an hour pushing them on the swing in the backyard. Buying their first fishing pole. Then fishing it out with a large treble hook from the bottom of the lake when they drop it off the dock. Then holding down the flash of temper when they do it again in deeper water and it’s gone for good. Leaf fights in the backyard. Throwing the leaves up so they fall like rain, and don’t scare them or get into their eyes.

One day a nonverbal grandchild brought me the rake so I could remake the pile of leaves after he had trampled through it. The rake was much too big for him, but he made my duty clear. He wasn’t done with the leaves yet. Somehow he understood that Chupa was the one who could fix things. Rebuild the pile. Reset the game. Make the fun start again. Over and over, until the leaves were crunched into bits too small to gather.

As each grandchild has grown, we’ve found ways to remake the role of Chupa into what the child needed at the time. Fishing partner. Swing pusher. Leaf-pile rebuilder. Storyteller. Grandpa.

They all mean Chupa. And Chupa means something different to each of them. For Mason, it might mean fishing. For Noah, it might always mean leaf piles. For Emma, it might be Chicken Boy to her Dumpling Girl.

Someday, when they’re older, they might look up and just call me Carl.

I hope they say it with the same love they gave Chupa.