After All, Father and Son Do Relate to Each Other

“Oh, by the way,” says Eddie soon after sliding into the back seat of his father’s borrowed, old-model Mercedes. “I’ve got a game tomorrow, Dad. Are you going to be able to go?”

Alexandro Moreno, the teenager’s father and chauffeur, thinks a moment before answering in his rich, resonant baritone. Shouldn’t be a problem, says Moreno, who, after work, normally picks up his son from his maternal grandmother’s home in Santa Ana.

I’m along for the ride this Tuesday afternoon, curious about the caring father in this big, bearded bear of a man who glibly talks about his feminine side and performs Native American prayer rituals at his kitchen table.

I’m riding shotgun next to Moreno, a single dad and the tallest Mexican I’ve ever met. At 6-foot-7 and 300 pounds, he’s heftier than he was in his football days at Santa Ana High School and Santa Ana College. Eddie, shorter and slimmer than his father, now plays small forward for Mater Dei’s sophomore basketball team.

Making plans for Wednesday’s game sparks the first in a series of sharp but endearing exchanges between father and son during my visit. At moments in their spontaneous encounter, I felt like a therapist or referee. Later, Moreno would confide he heard his son say things he had never heard before.

But Eddie has one gripe his father has heard a million times. At the games, Moreno never says the encouraging things fathers normally say when their boys make a good play. He never says, “Way to hustle!” or “Good shot!”

No, not Moreno. In that darn radio-announcer’s voice of his that carries so far, he’s got to stand up and yell, “You’re beautiful, son! Beautiful!”

From the back seat, Eddie tries to explain how embarrassing that verbal pom-pom can be for a Latino teen who dresses sharp and is trying to build his name as a rap DJ.

“I dunno,” says Eddie, with a short burst of ironical laughter (he-he-he). “Kinda weird.”

“What’s wrong with that?” prods his father, turning to glance at the boy with the smooth cinnamon skin, full indigenous lips and dark, intelligent eyes. “You are beautiful!”

Moreno, who says his family never attended his own games, turns to me to explain the un-macho cheer that distresses his son. “I’m both masculine and feminine,” he says, “and I’m free to use my femininity whenever I want.”

Moreno delivered the line with nonchalance, as if guys talk that way to each other all the time. He may have sensed my discomfort and felt compelled to attribute the quote to Little Crow, a medicine man and pastor of a Native American church in Garden Grove.

Little Crow was among the featured speakers Thursday at a daylong dialogue on fatherhood in the 21st century. The program was designed primarily for social workers, youth counselors, teachers and psychologists--anybody who works with fathers or fathers-to-be. Moreno, who never knew his own father, works for the Children’s Bureau of Southern California, devoted to the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect.

Along with educator and therapist Jerry Tello, Moreno is co-chairman of the National Compadres Network, a group that promotes responsible involvement for Latino men in their families and communities. Moreno says the network grew out of a less formal group called El Circulo de Hombres, a gathering of men who share the joys and jolts of fatherhood and “support each other in becoming noble men.”

Their code stresses nonviolence, the preservation of traditional rituals and learning to live with honor.

It’s tempting to dismiss their slant as new-age sensitivity or psychobabble. But as a single father myself, I’ve always been intrigued by Moreno’s upfront preoccupation with his fatherly duties and dilemmas.

“Fatherhood is unquestionably the most important responsibility of a man’s life,” states a brochure from the Children’s Bureaus. “Yet in today’s complex society, many fathers are struggling to find their place within the family structure.”

Moreno was one of seven children raised by a single mother from Michoacan. He was 13 when he arrived from Mexico in 1974. When he realized he would never go back, the young Alejandro replaced the “J” in his first name with an “X.”

He graduated from high school in 1979, got a job as a bouncer at Latino nightclubs and got married four years later. Eddie was 3 when his parents separated and his father started the stilted, distant cycle of weekend visits.

“On the weekends it was all fun,” recalls Moreno, who moved to Iowa on a football and philosophy scholarship at the University of Dubuque. “It had nothing to do with being in his real life.”

At the time, Moreno was struggling with the effect of his own father’s absence while he was growing up. He searched for him in Mexico and located him in Veracruz. But their meeting in 1987 was a letdown.

Moreno saw his father as a stranger. He felt no connection, no “call of the blood,” no forgiveness, no desire to return. Ten years later, Moreno went back for his father’s funeral.

The Circulo gave him a place to talk about his feelings with other fathers. And the men helped him see that nothing was more important than the relationship with his son.

Moreno decided to reconnect with Eddie, and asked himself: “What do I want my son to think of me? What memories do I want my son to have of me?” By the time Eddie was a seventh-grader and acting up in class, he moved in with his father permanently.

They keep their two-bedroom apartment in Orange like a couple of college roommates, though one has seniority. In the living room, one wall is monopolized by Dad’s desk. On either side, mountains of papers, folders and mail are piled on the carpet like trash. The archives aren’t always on the floor; they were recently moved there from the couch.

Ah, the couch. It does seem to sink a little to one side, where Moreno likes to sit with two favorite, oversized pillows. That’s where he watches his favorite TV shows, “The X-Files” and “Ally McBeal.”

I’m sitting in Dad’s spot now. Very comfy. Moreno is on my left, sitting at his desk in a chair that swivels and tilts. Eddie is on my right, sitting at the kitchen table in a straight-back chair facing his dad, occasionally tossing a basketball as offhandedly as he tosses off critiques of his father’s habits.

“I told my Dad, ‘You’re being a couch potato. You need to move the TV,’ ” says Eddie.

The portable set moved to Eddie’s room, but so did Dad.

“Either way, he got to watch what he wanted. He was following the TV. So one day, I got mad and threw it out here,” says Eddie, nodding toward the small set sitting on a chair facing father’s favorite spot.

“You might as well be on the couch because I don’t want you in my room!” Eddie announced.

Eddie says he and his dad have little in common. Eddie (“Don’t call me Edward,” he told his dad) doesn’t speak Spanish, listens to rap music and color-coordinates his clothes. His father is bilingual but uses the Spanish option at the ATM, loves the Beatles and dresses in drab solids.

“Oh, and Dad, he likes to buy flowers,” says Eddie. Those are dried petals under the kitchen table, evidence of Eddie’s poor vacuuming skills, Dad points out.

The flower vase sits next to a shell Moreno uses to burn sage during his prayers, blowing away the ceremonial smoke with a huge owl feather, left out with more common kitchen clutter.

“My Dad’s into all this Native American stuff,” says Eddie. “He takes me to ceremonies, but if it were up to me, I don’t think I’d go.”

Does Eddie admire anything about his father?

“I guess, how he carries himself,” says Eddie. “He’s different, I dunno. I’ve never seen him really, really mad. And he’s not afraid to cry.”

In that moment, Eddie’s voice lost its sarcastic, teenage tinge. It was the same tone of admiration I had heard earlier when they were talking in the car about going to the game.

Said the son proudly to his father: “I don’t think you ever missed a game, huh?”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.