So much for dad jokes
Comedian Cori Gonzalez-Macuer has been a Seven Days regular, appeared alongside Taika Waititi in cult horror flick What We Do In the Shadows, and spoke out about suicide after the death of his father. Now, his main gig is being a dad to a 2-year-old daugh
People ask me if I’ve got a whole lot of new standup material now that I’m a single dad. I don’t. The stuff my daughter Freddie does is funny to her family but I’m hesitant about telling other people, especially non-parents, because when I was a non-parent and someone would tell me something their child had done was funny, and I remember standing there thinking to myself ‘‘That’s not funny. Your kid isn’t funny’’.
However, there was one shareable moment a while ago when Freddie had really bad constipation. I often send photos of her to my mum captioned as if it’s Freddie talking. So it’ll be stuff like ‘‘Hi Nana, can’t wait to see you’’ or ‘‘Hey Nana, can’t wait to come down to Wellington’’.
So, Fred hadn’t pooed for about three weeks and we were stressing out. But then one night she finally did it. She looked so happy and relieved. I took a photo of her and sent it to my mum and captioned it, ‘‘Hey, I finally did my big poo, I’m the happiest girl in the world right now’’.
What I didn’t realise is that I’d sent it to someone else by mistake whose name started with N and was underneath Mum on my contacts list. This was pretty embarrassing. After a few hours of kicking myself for sending it I started thinking, ‘‘Hold on, this person will see the photo and read the caption and realise that it’s me pretending to be Freddie’’, so I just got on with my day and stopped thinking about it.
A few days later, however, I found out that they didn’t own a smartphone, therefore can’t receive images. They can only get text.
So at about 5am on a Tuesday, they would’ve got a message from me saying, ‘Hey, I finally did my big poo, I’m the happiest girl in the world right now’. Looking back on it, I should have realised something was up, because they replied ‘Is everything OK, Cori?’, but then I made it worse by replying back, ‘‘Yep, that was meant to be for my mum’’.
Sometimes you’ll get weird looks if your child doesn’t look like you that much. Before Fred was born, we thought my Latin American genes would be the superior ones. Everyone in my family was born brown with a shitload of black hair and distinct features and we’d read that ethnic genes usually take over in interracial births.
This wasn’t the case when Fred arrived. She had no hair, had very pale skin and the bluest eyes ever. For about a year, I’d walk around with her and people probably assumed I’d gone to Ponsonby and kidnapped someone’s kid. I only speak to her in Spanish, which made people turn their heads even more.
Now she’s 21⁄2, the Latin genes are definitely starting to show in her, though. She’s inherited mine, my father’s and my grandad’s eyebrows but she pulls them off way better than us. Luckily, she didn’t get any of our noses. One of the most annoying things that people say to me when I’ve got Freddie (which is the kind of thing I actually used to say prekids, too) is, ‘‘Oh, are you babysitting your girl tonight?’’. I’m not getting $20 an hour for this. I’m doing what I’m meant to do. Being a single parent is hard under any circumstances but you need to see the positive in things. The way we look at it, Freddie will have twice the love growing up. She has two amazing families who will do anything for her. The two best grandmas she could ask for and aunties and uncles that she loves more than anyone (literally, as soon as one of mine or her mother’s siblings walk into the room, it’s goodbye Mum and Dad). She’ll have two lots of siblings growing up, too.
I came from a pretty small family, which got even smaller when it was just my parents, brother and sister living in New Zealand away from everyone else, so Freddie being a part of a big family is something I always wanted for her. She’s going to make a great big sister one day.
My parents had me when they were quite young and moved to New Zealand to make a better life for us because Chile wasn’t exactly the safest or best place to live in at the time. We didn’t have any family here and didn’t speak English or know the culture, so we always stuck together.
My dad always said family was the most important thing in the world, and even through the tough times of not having money or knowing where the next paycheck was coming from, he always did the best he could to make us forget about that. That’s something I need to learn, too, and not get caught up on sweating the small stuff. I’m 35 now, and I look at my parents and I don’t know how I could’ve have had three kids by the time I was 30.
Iremember the first time I watched Freddie on my own. She would have been about six weeks and her mum went to a birthday do for about three hours. I think by the end of that afternoon I had cried more than Freddie.
Since then I’ve been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time with Freddie because of my line of work. I have a lot of time to kill between jobs and when I do standup it’s at night when she’s asleep. There’s definitely been some tough times over the last two and half years, both financially and personally and I’ve gotten pretty down.
With work as a comedian being so sporadic, you go through stages of working a lot for a certain amount of time then going weeks, sometimes months, without something. It got to the point at one stage where I considered getting my real estate agent’s licence. THAT’S how bad it was.
But as I said, the plus side of all this was the days where Freddie and I would just hang out. Our bond definitely grew because of
that and now that things are getting busier and I don’t see her as much, the foundation for our relationship has already been laid. At the moment, she’s at daycare three days a week and the days when she isn’t, she’s with me.
I also get to pick her up most days from daycare. Weekends we usually play by ear depending on who’s got what on. A highlight was taking Fred to Wellington to see my family over Christmas. We were only there for five days but in that time, Freddie started her own craft beer company, joined the Black Seeds and did a barista course (it was Wellington).
Funnily enough, Freddie has caught the acting bug and has landed a few roles in things, including TVNZ’s The Adventures Of Suzy Boon, playing a prison inmate. She’s 21⁄2 and getting paid for it. Maybe she’ll be the breadwinner this year. Freddie’s mum and I are lucky that we have supportive family, friends and partners that are all willing to lend a hand.
At the end of the day, no matter what the circumstances are, the only thing that matters is your kid. Parents will disagree over things, but the one thing everyone agrees on is how much you love the child.
I know there’s been times when I thought I knew better than anyone about being a parent but that’s never the case. I’m learning to listen to others and look at things in the long run and how even the smallest wrong action can affect a child when they grow up. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I have an amazing, healthy, hilarious and talented little girl. It’s something I’ve often taken for granted and something I need to remind myself of from time to time.
What goes around comes around, so when I’m old, broke and living in a home somewhere, Freddie will be able to help me out with all the Shortland Street money she will be earning by then.
One of the most annoying things that people say to me when I’ve got Freddie is, ‘Oh, are you babysitting your girl tonight?’. I’m not getting $20 an hour for this. I’m doing what I’m meant to do.