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Baby Nicky is Coming Home
It was a Saturday morning in June and I was riding my bike down the sidewalk on Biscayne Boulevard. The humidity had already made me sweat so much it felt like I had just got out of a swimming pool.
Summers in Miami are known for being hot and humid, with rain showers popping up with no notice. As the drops got bigger and more frequent I heard the gently honking from a vehicle on the street beside me. I pulled over and looked up right away.
“Beep beep.” It was Nick, an older friend whom I had known for a couple of years. He motioned for me to ride into the next parking lot and he pulled in right behind me.
I joined him by getting in on the passenger side, leaning my Schwinn Stingray down carefully on the asphalt. Nick rolled down the windows a couple of inches and I watched the rain come down as I listened to him sharing his exciting news.
“Jackie’s expecting a baby. Can you believe it, me a father? I’m going to take him to baseball games and teach him everything I know.”
“What if it’s a girl?”
“Boy or girl, either way I’m going to be a father. And Jackie will be the best mother any child could dream of. Look at the great job she’s already done.”
Jackie was recently divorced and the single mother of three school age children — Robert, Sandy, and…