Part 2: My 5-Year-Old Wouldn’t Get In The Pool — Then Her Tattooed Biker Father Walked Onto The Deck In Swim Trunks And Did Something That Made 80 Strangers Stop Breathing
PART 2
I want to tell you who Ben was before he was a covered-in-ink diesel mechanic with a patched cut hanging in our hall closet.
Ben grew up in a small two-bedroom apartment off Camelback Road in west Phoenix in the 1990s. His father had been a foreman at a concrete plant until a back injury in 1998 retired him at forty-one. His mother had cleaned hotel rooms at the Embassy Suites at the airport for twenty-six years and is, as I write this, still cleaning hotel rooms at the age of sixty-eight because she does not believe in retiring.
Ben had an older brother named Tomas who is now a high-school history teacher in Tucson.
Ben got his first tattoo at seventeen years old on the kitchen table of a friend’s apartment in West Phoenix. It was a small black cross on the inside of his right forearm that he had told his mother was a school project.
She had not believed him.
She had also, by Ben’s own account at our kitchen table on the night we were married in 2016, said exactly one sentence to him in Spanish when she had pulled him aside in the hallway of the apartment that afternoon.
She had said: “Mijo. Decide who you want to be before your skin runs out.”
He had been seventeen.
He had not, in his own description twenty-two years later, fully understood what she meant until he was twenty-eight.
Between seventeen and twenty-eight, Ben got tattooed approximately every six weeks. He had done two years at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence between the ages of twenty and twenty-two on a charge that involved a stolen vehicle and three other young men, two of whom he is not in contact with anymore and one of whom is dead. He came out at twenty-two. He went to work for a diesel-repair shop on a referral from his older brother. He worked. He got tattooed. He worked. He got tattooed.
He met me at twenty-eight.
I was twenty-five.
I worked at a dental clinic in Phoenix. He came in for a regular cleaning, sat in my chair, and when I asked him to open his mouth wider for the X-ray bite-block, he closed his eyes and turned bright red because — by his own admission later — he had never been touched on the face by a woman with hand sanitizer on her hands in a professional capacity and he had not, in twenty-eight years on this earth, known whether you were supposed to make eye contact during it.
He asked me out the second appointment, six weeks later, after a deep cleaning.
We got married at the Glendale courthouse on a Tuesday in November of 2016.
He has not, in the nine years since, had a single new tattoo.
He told me, on the night before our wedding, sitting at the small kitchen table of the apartment we had moved into together that summer, that he had decided sometime in 2014 — two years before he met me — that he was done. He had told himself that the man he was going to be for the rest of his life had been written on him by twenty-eight, and that whatever he was going to be from then on, his skin was going to stop being the place he wrote it.
He has not been tattooed since.
He has a small embroidered patch on the inside front panel of his cut, over his heart, that I made for him in 2020 the week our daughter Lyla turned one — a small square of pale pink cotton with the letter L on it in white thread.
That is the only mark he has added in nine years.
He has worn the patch for five years.
He has been a father for five years.
He has been, by every account I am qualified to give of him, the gentlest man I have ever known.
He is also, by every count of the strangers at every public pool, beach, water park, and lake in the state of Arizona we have ever taken our daughter to, the most heavily tattooed man in the room.
PART 3
We pulled into the parking lot of the Glendale Community Pool at twelve-oh-six p.m.
Ben got out of the truck first. He came around to the passenger side. He opened my door. He helped me out. He opened the back passenger door. He unbuckled Lyla from her booster seat.
Lyla was wearing the small pink Hello Kitty swimsuit she had been refusing to wear into the pool for three weeks.
She looked up at her father.
She said: “Daddy. I don’t want to.”
Ben crouched down on the asphalt of the parking lot in front of her booster seat so his face was at her eye level. His enormous tattooed forearms rested on his knees. His shaved head reflected the white Arizona sun.
He said, very quietly: “Mija. You don’t have to.”
She said: “Daddy. I’m scared.”
He said: “Mija. I know. Daddy’s gonna go in. You watch. If daddy can go in, you can decide what you want to do. No pressure. You watch first.”
She nodded.
He stood up.
I carried Lyla on my hip the forty-five yards across the parking lot, through the front gate, past the front desk where the same aquatics director from the previous Saturday looked up and got very still, and across the pool deck to a lounge chair on the far side of the children’s section where I set Lyla down with her small Hello Kitty beach towel around her shoulders.
The pool deck went quiet around us as we walked.
I want you to picture what the deck was looking at.
A six-foot-two two-hundred-and-twenty-pound Mexican-American man in dark blue swim trunks and a clean white t-shirt and heavy black motorcycle boots, walking across a public pool deck in Glendale, Arizona, on a Saturday afternoon in late July with his five-year-old daughter on his wife’s hip. The white t-shirt was already wet at the collar from sweat. The shaved head was wet at the temples. The tattoos started just below the collar of the t-shirt on his neck and ran up the left side of his neck to his jawline.
Both arms sleeved wrist to shoulder.
Both legs visible from mid-thigh to mid-calf below the swim trunks completely sleeved with traditional and prison-style work — koi fish, a small Madonna, a wolf, an Aztec calendar wheel on his right calf, the cursive name of his late grandfather Hector on his left calf, and along the outside of his right thigh just below the swim trunks the words MIJA EN MI ALMA in old-school cursive that he had inked the week Lyla was born and that I am, only now in this post, telling people about.
A woman in a lounge chair four chairs over visibly tightened her grip on her three-year-old son.
A father across the deck stood up and called his two daughters out of the splash pad.
The aquatics director from the front desk walked out onto the deck at twelve-oh-nine p.m. and stopped about fifteen feet from us.
He cleared his throat.
He said, in the careful management voice of a man who does not want to start a problem but who is also clearly considering it: “Sir. May I help you.”
Ben stopped walking. He turned to face the aquatics director.
He said: “Brother. I’m Ben Vasquez. This is my wife Aurora and our daughter Lyla. Lyla has been in your Saturday lessons for three weeks. My wife asked you not to come back this week. I am not my wife. I am here today. I am going in the pool with our daughter. We will be out of your way in forty-five minutes.”
The aquatics director did not say anything for about three seconds.
He looked at Ben.
He looked at the lounge chair where I had set Lyla down with her Hello Kitty towel.
He looked back at Ben.
He said: “Sir. The shallow end is over there. Please use the children’s ladder if you go in.”
He walked back to the front desk.
Ben did not say thank you. Ben does not say thank you for things he has earned the right to have.
He pulled his white t-shirt off over his head.
He folded it carefully and set it on the lounge chair next to Lyla’s towel.
He walked the twelve feet to the edge of the four-foot shallow end.
He sat down on the concrete deck with his legs in the water.
He looked across at Lyla on the lounge chair.
He smiled at her.
He said, loud enough for me to hear from twenty feet away, loud enough for the deck to hear, loud enough for the lifeguard up on the stand to hear: “Mija. Watch your daddy.”
He pushed off the edge of the deck.
He sank into the four-foot shallow end up to his shoulders.
He spread his enormous tattooed forearms along the concrete gutter.
He turned his face up to the white Arizona sun.
He closed his eyes for about three seconds.
Then he opened them and he looked across thirty feet of chlorinated water at our five-year-old daughter on the lounge chair, and he said the sentence I have been trying to get to for twenty paragraphs.
He said: “Mija. The water is okay. Come see.”
PART 4
What happened in the next eleven minutes is the thing I am writing this story for.
Lyla looked at her father.
She slid off the lounge chair.
She walked across the twelve feet of concrete deck in her bare feet to the edge of the children’s ladder on the near corner of the shallow end. She stopped at the top step. She put one small hand on the chrome railing.
Ben did not move from his spot at the gutter.
He kept his enormous tattooed forearms spread.
He kept his shaved head turned slightly so his eyes were on her without his body being toward her.
He said: “Mija. One step. That’s all. One step. You can come back up after.”
Lyla put her right foot on the first step under the water.
The water came up to her small ankle.
She did not let go of the railing.
She did not, for ten seconds, take another step.
Ben said: “Mija. Good. That’s good.”
She took a second step. The water came up to her knee.
She started to cry quietly.
Ben did not move.
He said: “Mija. Daddy’s right here. The water is okay. You can come back up if you want. You don’t have to.”
A young woman in a lounge chair three chairs over from mine — Jessica, I would find out later, thirty-one years old, in town from Tucson with her two kids for the weekend — Jessica had her phone out.
She had started recording at twelve thirteen p.m.
Lyla took a third step.
The water came up to her small thigh.
She was crying.
Ben said: “Mija. You’re doing it. You’re doing it. Look at daddy.”
Lyla looked at him.
She took the fourth step. The water came up to her stomach. The fifth step. The water came up to her chest.
She let go of the chrome railing with her right hand and reached out toward her father.
Ben did not move from the gutter.
He reached his enormous tattooed right hand out toward her across the four feet of water between them.
Her small hand wrapped around his right index finger. Her left hand was still on the railing.
She stood in chest-deep water gripping her father’s right index finger with one small hand and the chrome ladder with the other for thirty seconds without breathing.
Then she breathed.
Then she let go of the ladder.
Then, for the first time in three weeks of lessons and twenty-eight days of trying, my five-year-old daughter was holding on to nothing but her father’s index finger in a public swimming pool in Glendale, Arizona, on a Saturday afternoon in late July, with eighty strangers watching, and she was not screaming.
She looked at her father.
He smiled at her.
He did not say anything.
He took half a step back along the gutter.
Her grip on his finger tightened. She took a small step forward, with her feet half-floating off the bottom.
He took another half step.
She took another step.
He took another half step.
She took another step.
The chlorinated water rippled around her small chest.
He walked her, half a step at a time, the entire length of the shallow end, with her left hand free and her right hand wrapped around his right index finger.
At the far end of the shallow end he stopped.
He crouched down so his face was level with hers in the water.
He said: “Mija. I’m gonna let go of your hand. I’m right here. You’re gonna float. I’m gonna catch you if you need it. You don’t have to do anything. Just let go.”
She let go.
She did not float, in the strict sense. She paddled, badly, for about three seconds.
She did not sink.
Her father’s enormous tattooed arms were under her stomach the second she stopped paddling, lifting her up just enough that her face was clear of the water.
She laughed.
She laughed in the chest-deep water of the shallow end of the Glendale Community Pool with her father’s tattooed arms holding her up, and the laugh was the first sound of unmuted joy I had heard out of my five-year-old in three weeks.
Eighty strangers on the pool deck started clapping.
I want to be honest about this.
It was not theatrical applause. It was not somebody starting it and everyone joining in. It was the small spontaneous sound that happens on a pool deck when the entire deck has been watching one thing without admitting they were watching it, and one woman three lounge chairs over claps once, and then five more parents clap, and then within four seconds eighty strangers have all started clapping at the same time without coordinating it.
The aquatics director at the front desk stood up.
The lifeguard on the stand stood up.
Ben did not stand up. Ben had his daughter held up out of the water in the shallow end of a public pool. He was not letting go for a clap.
He kissed Lyla on the top of her wet head.
She laughed again.
PART 5
I want to back up to MIJA EN MI ALMA.
The words MIJA EN MI ALMA — daughter in my soul — are tattooed on the outside of Ben’s right thigh, just below where the swim trunks end, in old-school traditional cursive. He had them inked at a small shop on Camelback Road on the Tuesday after Lyla was born, two days after he had held her for the first time at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center on November 14th of 2020.
He had told the tattoo artist — a fifty-one-year-old woman named Rosa Cardenas who had inked thirty of his previous tattoos over the years — Rosa had asked him whether this was going to be his last one.
Ben had said: “Rosa. It’s the last one. I told myself I was done at twenty-eight. I broke that promise today. I’m telling you I’m done now.”
Rosa had said: “Mijo. You sure?”
Ben had said: “Yes.”
He has not, in five years and nine months since, had a single new tattoo.
He has worn the small embroidered pink-cotton patch with the letter L on the inside front panel of his cut, over his heart, that I sewed for him on the kitchen table of our small house in Glendale on a Sunday afternoon a week after Lyla’s first birthday. He has worn it for five years.
When he stood on the pool deck of the Glendale Community Pool on a Saturday afternoon in late July with his white t-shirt folded on a lounge chair and his enormous tattooed body fully visible to eighty strangers — and he sat down on the edge of the four-foot shallow end and let himself into the chest-deep water of a public city pool and called our terrified five-year-old daughter from across thirty feet of chlorinated water by the name he calls her —
He was, by my read, walking out the exact promise he had made on a Sunday morning in late November of 2020 in a hospital recovery room while I slept under a hospital blanket and our daughter slept in his arms.
The promise was that whatever he had written on himself between seventeen and twenty-eight was not, as long as he was alive, going to stop him from doing the gentle thing.
The tattoos were not the wall.
The tattoos were the proof of what the wall was no longer for.
His mother — the woman who had told him at seventeen Decide who you want to be before your skin runs out — Ben’s mother saw the viral video four days later when her co-worker at the Embassy Suites showed it to her on a phone at lunch break.
She called Ben that night.
She said one sentence to him in Spanish.
She said: “Mijo. You decided.”
She hung up.
She has not, in fourteen months, brought it up again.
She did not need to.
PART 6
Jessica’s video of Ben in the pool with Lyla went up on Facebook at four-eighteen p.m. that Saturday afternoon.
It had two hundred thousand views by Sunday morning.
By Tuesday night it was at four point six million.
By the following Saturday it was at eight million.
The top comment, with three hundred and twelve thousand upvotes, was written by a Facebook user named u/marathonmom_az. It said:
The most tattooed man at the pool taught his five-year-old daughter that courage has more than one shape. Inked arms. Long hair. A man willing to stand in a public pool to hold a little girl’s hand. That’s real courage.
I screenshotted the comment that night.
I printed it out on a piece of computer paper at the dental office on Monday morning.
I taped it to the inside of our kitchen cabinet above the coffee maker.
It is still there.
Lyla swims now.
She swims every Saturday afternoon at the Glendale Community Pool. The aquatics director — who I am going to call by his first name because Eric has earned it — Eric has put her in the Tuesday-Thursday afternoon advanced lessons cohort with the seven-year-olds, where she is the smallest child by twenty pounds and the only five-year-old, and she has not, in fourteen months, missed a single session.
Ben goes with her every Saturday afternoon.
He sits on the same lounge chair where he folded his white t-shirt that first day.
He watches.
He has not, in fourteen months, gotten into the public pool again.
He told me, on our back porch the night the video crossed five million views, that he did not need to be in the water anymore.
He told me that he had gone in the once.
He told me that the once was the whole reason for the tattoos.
That was the whole sentence.
PART 7
Lyla turned six in November.
She got a small pair of goggles for her birthday — clear plastic, pink straps — that she now wears at every swim session.
She still calls her father Daddy when she is at the pool.
She has, by his own quiet count, called him by the small private nickname she gave him on the way home from the pool that first Saturday — Daddy Mojado, which means Wet Daddy in Spanish — exactly seventeen times since.
He answers to it every single time.
She is in the deep end now.
She jumps off the side.
He sits on the lounge chair.
He folds his t-shirt.
He watches.
Follow the page for more stories about the bikers America thinks it knows — and the public pools they will get into in front of eighty strangers to hold a five-year-old’s hand.
