Like Father, Like Son

Growing up, I was fortunate enough to be blessed with an innumerable family that unknowingly sheltered and protected me from the crude fact that I did not have a father.

My aunts, uncles, grandmother, and my grandfather, all acted as a father figure to mold the man that I am today. Them and someone else.

About thirty-one years ago, the universe was performing its magic and aligning paths that otherwise wouldn’t ever cross. You may call it whatever you would like. Some call it, destiny or fate, others may call it karma, perhaps luck and billions more may call it, “God’s work.” It is my preference to call it chance.

Back in Minnesota, there was a twenty-five-year-old young man that didn’t resemble the mind of the rest around him. He was and still is very particular. And it was that particularity that led him to meet my mother.

Unlike the “friend” he was traveling with, he wanted to visit a less touristic part of Mexico and because of his stubbornness and exceptional eristic qualities he pursued his friend to vacation in the rather underdeveloped city of Mazatlán. It was the same stubbornness that convinced his friend to walk on the side where all the street food carts, and all the open-air-shops were.

And it was just like that how he saw my mother selling hot dogs and all his logic, common sense, and sanity was thrown out of his mind. He fell in love with my mother at first sight. It is a rare occurrence, but it happens and my parents are living proof of it.

This man came into my mother’s life when I was about to turn four years old. I never ever grasped exactly what he was to me. A white man with blue eyes and a funny accent every time he tried to speak my language. Someone that I had the opportunity to see once a year for a few days. But for those few days, I was one of the happiest kids alive.

I never knew what to expect from a father. Yes, my uncles, aunts, grandmother, and grandfather where all there, trying to void that hole I never knew I had, but to have a father around you, at all times, I never knew what that was.

I learned so many things along the way by myself as best as I could. My uncle, who rests in peace, taught me how to build and fly kites. That same uncle taught me how to play marbles. I taught myself how to lift, play guitar, shave, male hygiene and have dreams. It was not until I moved to America that I got to experience what it was to have a father. And it took me decades to call him that, a father.

I would always call my father by his name. he didn’t deserve that, because even though I saw this man only a few days out of the year, he did one million things more than my biological father ever did…who I only met twice in my life, and both were disappointments.

By the time I moved to my father’s house, I was already grown, and even though this man, who took upon this job that wasn’t his to take, was doing the best he could to give me the tools needed to succeed, but I was reluctant and stubborn. There was a lot of friction between us. It was hard to go from seeing this man once a year and always having fun with the new games he invented, and then being in his house and doing the not so fun stuff.

One weekend he tried teaching me how to fish. Something I have never done, I was already eighteen and after experiencing fishing, at that age, I was bored out of my mind. I didn’t understand back then that what he was trying to teach me, was more than fishing.

But with time, I started to realize that he and I were more similar than different.

We had a father son road trip to see my favorite songwriter, Ricardo Arjona.

We lifted together for a while, and he taught me a lot more than what I knew at the time.

We ran 5ks together and cycled around the city.

He took me skiing and was present in every soccer match I played in High School.

We went to watch a couple of movies I loved in exchange to watch documentaries he wanted me to watch to learn more about the history of the U.S.A.

He proofread every single essay I had in college so many times until it was almost perfect.

He takes real interest in my songwriting, comic drawing and every single adventure I embark on.

Those are just a few things he did that started building a father-son bond. But what it made that bond unbreakable is the undeniable fact that after I moved to America, he was always there.

He sacrificed his dreams, and goals to marry a woman he fell in love with and two kids that weren’t his. And now he says he lives vicariously through me.

He has given everything from every perspective to be the most amazing father there will ever be.

He is a true Angel. A man of honor with an undeviating moral compass.

Someone that I thrive to be like in many ways and be different in others.

We don’t share a strand of DNA but are nonphysical resemblance is uncanny.

Take notice that I never referred to him as a stepfather in this blog. Because for me that would have been utterly disrespectful.

He is my father, and I am his son.