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Esta página no está disponible en español. Orlando SentinelDad Embraces Duty Of Raising 2 SonsBy Scott Maxwell
December 22, 2002 There are so many reasons why Eric Vargas shouldn't smile. His mom is in prison. His father is poor. And the 4-year-old couldn't possibly understand what his therapist meant when he told "daddy" that attention-deficit disorder was to blame for the temper tantrums Eric has so much more frequently than the other kids at day care. But right now, a train is coming. And this is good. Trains make Eric smile. So Eric joins the pack of other runny-nosed kids at Winter Park Day Nursery in chasing the train. Past the swings. Past the slides. Until -- Clank! -- the pack is forced by a chain-link fence to stop running. It's a dead end. There have been so many opportunities for dead ends in Eric's life. But Eric has hope. He has a father, Eddie Vargas, who works seven days a week, detailing the kinds of cars that he could never afford to buy. His dad has given up any kind of a social life and focuses on raising Eric and his older brother in a nearly bare trailer in southeast Orlando. The home is meager -- an 8-foot-by-8-foot bedroomwith faux wood paneling, that Eric shares with his brother, Eduardo, 6, is dark and without the clutter of toys that most 4-year-olds leave behind. But the home represents progression. It is a step up from the family's small apartment. "We don't have much," Eddie said with a shrug. "But we're doing OK." Personally, I don't know how Eddie does it. When my wife leaves me alone with the kids -- even for just a few hours -- a cosmic explosion occurs. The 2-year-old smells fear. Her clothes come off. The running begins. And yogurt ends up on the ceiling fan. The 2-month-old is slyer. He senses that the lesser species is in charge. And his battle plan is simple, yet brilliant. He cries, willing to be sated only by the milk he knows I can't naturally provide. When my wife comes home, she is greeted by a family room that resembles the opening 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. I am always the casualty. Yet Eddie Vargas does this every day. And he's good at it. He is an anomaly -- a single father, struggling for more. "It's not easy," said the son of a father who sings salsa tunes in Puerto Rico and a mother who takes tolls on the Beeline. "But it keeps me out of trouble." Lynda Graham Mays, who runs the day nursery that keeps Eric, says that Eddie is the kind of poor that we don't like to think about. He works hard, loves his children -- and still has to fight like hell to make ends meet. "There are people who say the poor are lazy, that they waste their money on fancy shoes and televisions," Mays said. "They have not met Eddie." The nursery, which offers reduced-rate care to virtually all of its poor clients and received $31,000 from the Sentinel Family Fund this year, has been something of salvation for the Vargases. Teachers helped Eduardo learn to work through a speech impediment so that he was ready for school. And thanks to a school-recommended therapist, young Eric's tantrums happen less often -- usually only around naptime now, when he's too tired to know what to do. The family still struggles. Eddie tries the kind of money-saving plans known only by the desperate -- such as sometimes skimping on winter clothes, hoping that January will be mild enough to keep his boys warm. And he keeps his mind on the future -- on a day when he can work just five days a week and come home to a neighborhood with mowed lawns and neighbors who all work. "I want to be away from here," he said. "I'd love to live in a home where I could sleep with the windows open." Eric's aspirations are simpler. Looking at his older brother, who has adapted well in school and made friends easily, he said: "I wanna be 6." Such statements make Eddie smile. And they serve as frequent reminders that he did the right thing when he turned down his uncle's offer to take in the boys and let the overwhelmed father live the free-spirited life that most 20-something men crave. "That was never really an option," Eddie said. "I mean, I don't know how I could live with myself."
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