The Father's Day Post

The extreme belated nature of this post is due to the fact that dads are hard. Dads are especially difficult for adult daughters. Dads also become a behemoth within most Latin cultures. So it took me a while to write an appropriate tribute to my behemoth Latin dad. (Seriously, this post started out as four pages single spaced before I managed to pare it down to something close to a coherent statement). 

As a young child, I definitely hung out more with my dad than with my mom. My parents took on those two very classic roles of "mom" as disciplinarian and "dad" as fun one. I was, without a doubt, a Daddy's Girl. This was both a good and a bad thing. My dad has always seen his role in my life as my protector. In recent years he hasn't quite known what to do with himself since I no longer live with my parents and can't really benefit from his attempts at protecting me. These "middle years" between middle school until the present has been like pulling teeth when trying to have a real conversation with him. I'm calling them "middle years" because I've felt a definite change more recently. Talking is getting easier as we move into this next stage. I think he's starting to believe he did a good job in rearing me.

All the things my father has taught me can be categorized as Defensive Evasion. I mean that in both the physical and psychological sense. The psychological defense mechanisms I've picked up from him have been somewhat unintentional on his part. Like him, I can be very good at hiding my emotions and am somewhat uncomfortable sharing them when I'm upset. This is a general trait from his side of the family, a quality that I can best describe as Victorian in nature and probably stems from the very era. As criollos (Puerrtoriqueños descended exclusively of Spaniards) his side of the family is white with the bitterness of fallen aristocrats (which, in many ways, they are). Bitterness aside, my father an I both tend to seek solitude when distraught; we burrow up in the fox holes of our minds.

Zorro is the Spanish word for "fox". Thus enters our masked hero, secretly Diego de la Vega, son of the wealthy Don Alejandro. Diego returns home to the small town of Los Angeles to find much has changed in the way of corruption and damsels in distress. He has been in Spain being educated by the greatest minds and swordsmen of Europe, and what better way to apply those skills than in righting the injustices of his beloved pueblo. Donning cape and cowl he tears a new one on The Man with his trusty steed Tornado. The authorities dub him El Zorro, and are outraged by the ways in which he constantly outsmarts them, slipping away to his alleged "fox hole." Laying the ground work that would reemerge as Batman in more contemporary fiction, (it was, in fact, the movie the Wayne Family went to see the night Martha and Thomas Wayne were murdered), Zorro has swashbuckled his way through film, radio, novels and comics. He even got his own telenovela (Spanish language soap opera).

Telemundo is way more amazing than you'll ever understand. Unless you actually watch Telemundo and do understand, in which case you're ready for I have feminist rant and death grudge against the network as a whole which will ruin your love of most Spanish language television.

A vacation to Disney World I took with my parents when I was eight is the first thing that comes to mind when I attempt to identify memories involving my dad. My mom passed out as soon as we returned to our hotel room. It was late; we had gone to see the fireworks show on Main Street at the Magic Kingdom. My dad and I weren't ready to go to bed, so we started channel surfing. By some great miracle or another, we came upon The Mark of Zorro (1940). At this point in time I hadn't seen this movie before. My dad, on the other hand, had been raised on it. As a Puertorriquen kid in the Bronx, I didn't grow up with many role models I could identify with. Sonia Soto Mayor has only recently became a Supreme Court Justice. All I had to look at were Maria and Luis on Sesame Street. Granted, when I was very young, Sesame Street was basically all I ever watched, so this was a pretty good deal of cultural affirmation, but once I started watching things other than PBS children's programming, I noticed there weren't a lot of kids or adults on TV who had names like Lopez or Cruz.

Understanding how empty the pool of role models was for me might help you imagine what it must have been like for my dad. Born in Mricau, Puerto Rico, he grew up in the 1950's and 60's at the 90th Street Housing Projects in Manhattan off of Amsterdam Avenue. Go five blocks farther Southwest, and you can literally be where West Side Story is set. (Fun fact: I was never actually allowed to watch West Side Story growing up. Sort of like how a lot of my Thai friends were never allowed to watch The King And I. Both are fairly racist and mostly cast with white actors in "brown face").

This is how my dad walked to school with his brother and Eric Estrada*.

The thing about Zorro, is that even though he was created by some white guy as an American Scarlet Pimpernell, even though the character was played by a white actor, even though the movie is in English, Zorro still feels like he's ours. By "ours" I mean all Latino kids. Zorro was one of the only Hispanic heroes kids of my dad's generation were ever allowed to have. While he is Mexican/Californian, in a sense the time period is so far removed, with a few climate and wardrobe changes he could have just as easily been Puerorriquen. Indeed, the story goes that my great-great grandfather was one of three brothers who migrated from Spain to the Americas in search of their fortunes; one to Puerto Rico, one to the Dominican Republic, and one to Mexico. I'm sure there are some Chicanos (folks whose ancestors settled the West when it was still Spain, then Mexico, becoming Americans as land was annexed) who share my last name. With how rare of a name it is, we're probably distant cousins.

We stayed up until 2am watching this black and white movie. It was the latest I had ever stayed up and was mesmerized for all of it. I definitely have a lot of the memories from that vacation that are marketed by Disney, of fun theme park adventures and what not, but this is one of the most powerful ones I have of time spent with my father. Watching movies is kind of our thing. It's how we spend time together. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, it's easier to let the screen do the talking than trying to engage in meaningful connection in the real world. Sometimes you just want things to be easy.

On the physical side of Defensive Evasion, my dad has purposefully attempted to instill a certain set of skills in me. Once I started taking public transportation by myself (also right around the time that I started wearing a real bra) he taught me how to fight. Rather, he taught me how to defend myself. In addition to teaching rudimentary lessons on how to make a proper fist and an understanding of how torsion in the body works, this consisted of three simple rules of fighting.

Rule # 4: Always wear awesome pants.

First rule of fighting: Always have your shoes tied. It sounds silly, but it's a completely real thing. More broadly, this can cover the general rule of sensible footwear. [Note: This is not to say a lady shouldn't wear heels if she doesn't want to, but assess the situation; if there's a chance you'll be walking a good ways or if a fight might break out somewhere, stick to flats. This may also just be a New Yorker mentality.]

Second rule of fighting: never fight when you're angry. Anger consumes all your senses, making you helpless. This is a great rule to live by, whether or not engaged in a physical conflict. By detaching from anger in a situation it becomes easier to see solutions to challenges on a logistical level. It also becomes easier to spot the root of conflict. I think this is why I'm so solution oriented.

Third rule of fighting: use your environment. There is no such thing as a dirty fight because the only time you should be fighting is if you are defending your life or the lives of those you love. This rule, combined with the fact that my dad is also an amateur inventor, has made me particularly adept to McGyvering my way through life.

One thing I never picked up from my dad, something I desperately wish I could bottle and keep, is his overpowering optimism. I'm a fairly optimistic person, but my dad's optimism defies my own understanding. He manages to approach any new endeavor as if he knows success will follow, as if he doesn't know what failure is. The thing about my dad is that he does know what failure looks, feels, and tastes like, but none of those failures have ever been able to diminish the the triumph of his hope and faith. He persists, tenaciously. His conviction cuts like a blade across your the shame of your indifference. Believe me, it leaves a mark.

* The part about Eric Estrada is true. Only instead of school it was theater classes in the church basement.