On Father's Day - An Anecdote :: Human Interest

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June 19, 2011

On Father's Day - An Anecdote

Topics: Human Interest

Back on Fathers Day 2006 I wrote and posted here on Hyscience this anecdote about my Father.

Unlike most people to whom their mothers have been pivotal growing up as a child and in their lives, though I have a beautiful and loving mother, yet because even as a young woman she was sickly and frail, my Father was the one who bore the brunt of raising me as a child and being there for me when, unfortunately, due to her illness, she was not.

As a result I developed a "Patricentric" view of the world, unlike most other people. For instance, in Catholicism part of the allure for the veneration of Mary - aside from the obvious of her being the "Handmaiden of the Lord", without blemish, who gave birth to our Savior, and was the instrument of God's Salvation - stems from the "Matricentric" perspective shared by most people, who saw in Mary a mother-figure, loving, nurturing, welcoming, and forgiving; while in God the Father they saw someone removed, stern, immovable in his retribution, someone to be respected and feared in His role as Father and arbiter. Thus people recurred to Mary as an "intercessor" who would plead with the stern and immovable Father on our behalf, to forgive us our trespasses and hear our prayers. I have no such compunction.

Having been raised lovingly by my Father, and being that as a child he taught me the meaning of "Faith" and "Trust", as I recount in my anecdote, I can relate to the Deity as if I were talking to my own Father, for, however great my transgression, dire my plight, or wrenching my need, what would I not ask of my beloved Father that he would not give? What punishment could I possibly fear at his hands greater than having offended him and letting him down? Who could intercede for me before him, when the person I trust the most in this world to intercede on my behalf....is him?!?!

Once as a child, and while my Father was at work I fell ill and had to be taken to the hospital by my mother and my maternal grandparents. It was back in the day when medical technology was not as advanced as it is today. I was dehydrating and needed an IV. The nurse, not finding my tiny vein to be able to place the needle, stuck it in my back where the dripping fluid made a huge bulge that made me look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I was in a daze coming in and out of consciousness. But once, when I came to, I distinctly remember the face of my Father next to mine. I looked up at him and mumbled: "Papito" - "Daddy"....

At the time my Father, who is a trumpet player by trade, and one of Cuba's foremost and best trumpet players of all times - certainly Cuba's best trumpet player in the 50's - was working in the show at the newly inaugurated Havana Hilton at the time. Upon learning of what was happening to me, he dropped everything, and left - right in the middle of the show - to be by my side. He spent the night there by me, not leaving me alone even once... I would look up as he caressed my hair and see him there and would confidently slip back into my slumber... He stayed with me uninterruptedly all during my stay.

It saddens me to see that in today's post-feminist world, fathers seem to have become disposable, at best irrelevant, and that "father" often means the man who in turn is sharing your mother's bed.

It is even more shocking and horrifying to see that such faith, love, and trust as I learned from my Father, and which - as I expounded upon previously - was traditionally the province of the mother, is eroding so much, to the point that in today's hedonistic, amoral, self-centered world, a child, a little angel such as Caylee Anthony, cannot even trust....her own mother!

What I wrote back in 2006, is as true today as it was back then, and as true as it will always be. Fortunately, at 88 years-old, I have the Blessing that my Father still lives, and that though life and our diverging paths have taken us thousands of miles apart, I can still pick up the phone, with tears welling up in my eyes, listen to his cheering voice, and tell him one more time: "I love you Papito!"

Here is the anecdote I wrote back in 2006:

He rolled up his sleeves and gently picked me up from my crib. I opened my eyes to see the handsome, youthful man my Father was at the time and I would say "papito."
At 3:00 AM he had just arrived from work at the Capri Hotel in Habana. He was, and remains to this day, Cuba's greatest trumpet player. The crisp, unmistakable sound of his instrument has not been duplicated since; no matter all the elaborate finger work, or the high pitched notes reached with more restricted mouthpieces by others, which he reached with ease in his Olsen trumpet.

The youngest of five children, he endured abject poverty and privation during the "Great Depression" and he would later tell me of the many times he saw my grandmother cry because grandpa had no work and she had no food to put on the table; he would recall the many times grandma would boil some rice and split one fried egg amongst them all to feed them.

From this poverty he rose through hard work, tenacity, and the excellence he achieved with his instrument, to become Cuba's premier trumpet player in the 50s, and he played and recorded with the likes of Cuba's most prestigious Big Band "Los Hermanos Castro" (with which he toured the world), the "Riverside Orchestra," "Orefiche," the "Benny More Orchestra," Cuba's immortal composer Ernesto Lecuona (whom he befriended), Cuba's Diva Rosita Fornes, the Salsa Queen herself - his dear friend Celia Cruz and her husband Pedro, and hobnobbed with the rich and famous and the Hollywood Elite in the playground that was Cuba at the time, with the likes of Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Ginger Rogers, Errol Flynn, and others. I treasure the photos he took with them; a testament to a bygone Era.

Yet each night after the show he would come home, shunning the notoriety and the fame, his fellow musicians and friends that wanted to party, or the chorus girls like the "Conejitos" (who was head over heels about him according to malicious gossip), and he came home to my mother and I.

My mother was a frail and apprehensive woman, and to calm her fears, my grandfather Vicente (my grandparents on my mother's side lived two doors down the street), would stay over until my father would arrive from work.

Air conditioning was not as commonplace at the time as it is today, yet we were privileged, and in the master bedroom we had air conditioning as well as a queen sized bed upon which my grandfather would repose alongside my mother awaiting the arrival of my father. My crib was also in the room.

Mindful of his repose, and respecting his rest, my father never awoke my grandfather when he arrived from work, but rather went over to my crib, picked me up, and took me to sleep with him, by his side, in the other room that had no air conditioning, but was blessedly wafted by the incomparable trade winds of Cuba.

When he picked me up, half-asleep, I would look up at him and mumble "papito" - daddy.

He would press me close to his chest where the rhythm of his breathing and of his beating heart comforted me, and carried me with him to sleep by his side in the other room. Never have I felt more at ease and secure than by the warmth of his side!

In the morning he would wake me to feed me my bottle of milk. He would then cook me breakfast, and by 10:AM every day he would take me to the park to play.

When I was sick, foregoing his sleep, he would stay up all night with me playing, as we battled our armies knocking each other's toy soldiers off with a pin-pong ball across the floor of the dining room. He built me the most incredible Marx Train layout ever. He made me a humongous kite that was over seven feet tall that would make the Chinese indignant with envy. He introduced me to Jules Verne and his "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," Mark Twain and "Huckleberry Finn," Emilio Salgari and his "Black Corsair," Duma's unforgetable "Count of Montecristo," and Voltaire! I recall hearing for the first time of that "exotic" wondrous land down under, Australia, as he read to me an epic adventure by Salgari taking place there, and learning for the first time about Kangaroos, aborigines, and dingos.

He infused me with a wanderlust to see what lay beyond the horizon, and he often told me of the scenic wonder of the Giant Sequoias, and the Grand Canyon in America which he promised one day we would visit; a promise he kept.

He would make me lunch, and bathe me, and cook me dinner before he left for work, and we would stretch a bed sheet over two chairs and pretend with my toy animals that we were in a circus.

He would take me to the movies to see his hero, Errol Flynn, in "Captain Blood" or the "The Adventures of Don Juan" or his idol Kirk Douglas in one of his many performances.

He was my playmate, my friend, my Hero, my Father!

Men's lives are often colored by their mothers. I love my mother greatly, yet my life was colored by my Father; even theologically.

Unlike those who must recur to praying to the Virgin Mary to intercede for them before the Father, I have no such compunction, and would rather pray directly to Abba (Aramaic for daddy), even as I would approach my Father (in his love and mercy, what could I possibly fear from him?!?!). I suspect Jesus had a similar predisposition.

In this day and age, where "Fatherhood" has almost become a bad word to the leftists, liberal, feminists, secular progressives, I would sing the praises of all those men who have sacrificed their lives that we may live, who have enriched our lives, and who are the quiet, unsung Heroes who have molded our lives! God Bless them!!!

Thank you Dad, I only wish I would be half the man you are. I love and honor you!!!