Lucas’s Changing Fatherhood

Lucas’s ambivalent experience of parenting shifts from exhaustion and fear toward a durable, reorganized bond with Maiko.

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The Cost of Care

A Father’s Exhaustion Daily demands Lucas recalls sleepless nights, illnesses, mess, and the constant attention required to raise Maiko. He jokes that caring for his son can feel like managing a drunken little person. Love beside resentment He insists that he adores Maiko while admitting that parenting has narrowed his freedom. The contradiction makes his fatherhood emotionally credible rather than idealized.

Fear of Losing Him

Vulnerability Arrives A child’s danger Lucas remembers Maiko’s fever convulsions and his belief, in the moment, that his son might die in his arms. Medical reassurance cannot erase the terror of the experience. The family body He imagines harm to Maiko as an amputation of the whole family. Fatherhood gives him a newly exposed vulnerability that he had not known before becoming a parent.

The Gift on the Street

Choosing Maiko’s Present A sudden decision Lucas sees a ukulele in a shop window and says that he has to buy it for his son. The purchase is impulsive and costly, but it reconnects the wandering afternoon to his responsibilities as a father. A small object survives When the robbery takes his cash and possessions, the ukulele remains in his hand. It becomes the tangible link between Lucas’s reckless day and the child waiting at home.

The Instrument’s Afterlife

Learning to Play Recovery through music Lucas learns chords and rhythms on the small instrument. Its manageable scale gives him a way to practice and express himself when his larger life feels unmanageable. A lasting paternal gift Maiko later brings the ukulele to his father’s apartment and forgets it there. The instrument continues to support Lucas, even after its original purpose as a present has changed.

A Home in Two Places

Shared Fatherhood A new schedule Maiko spends part of the week with Lucas and part with Catalina. Lucas describes the arrangement as something the child has adapted to, though he still misses him on the days apart. A child names belonging When a neighbor says Maiko has come to visit his father, Maiko replies that he lives with him too. The correction affirms Lucas’s continuing place in his son’s life.

During Lucas’s reflections while walking in Montevideo

In Lucas’s recollection of Maiko’s childhood illnesses

Late afternoon, after Lucas and Guerra leave the music shop

The months after the September return

About a year later, after the separation