Dear Soul:
Today I’m gonna tell you about my father. He’s an important figure to explain why my family and me are like this today.
First of all, the accurate word is “father”. Not “dad”, or “daddy”. These words are too soft and you should feel tenderness to speak like this. He was my “father”. He was working all day. I only watched him at lunch- lunch is more important than dinner or breakfast in Spain, it’s the main meal here - and at night, like an hour or less before going to bed. He worked in the morning and in the afternoon and evening. Sometimes, when I was about 5 years old, he went with me to my school after lunch.
These were the greatest moments I spent with him, when I went to school. He was by my side and we talked together. We ate chestnuts in our way to school, in the autumn. We took two or three after lunch and we were eating them in the street. He was not angry back then.
My father was working all day cause we didn’t have a lot of money. He used a secondhand car, and I used the old clothes from my sisters. One day, the father of two of my friends invited me to go to school in his expensive car. My father was so happy, inviting me to go there with them. I cried, cause he was so happy cause he didn’t have money for a car like that one. I rejected it. I said I wanted to go walking with my father. He was always by my side to go to school and I felt like failing him. He didn’t look very happy but finally we went together walking, as always. The school was 10 min. walking from our home.
Nevertheless, I cannot call him “dad” or “daddy” cause he was so distant. He looked like angry all the time when I was a child, unless when we went together to my school. My brother and sisters said he hit them with his belt when they were children like me. After coming home to have lunch, my mother said “Father is coming, father is coming” very worried, like she was scared of him.
I don’t remember exactly why, but sometimes I wondered how my mom could marry him. She was all day taking care of us, not only the children in the family but also the old people. She prepared meal for us, she was the one helping us whenever we had a problem, she was tender (sometimes, she was not a specially tender mother). She was always there for all of us, and I didn’t like how my father treated her. He was very cold with her, even when she gave always her everything to make him happy. Even forgetting about us. She cared a lot about my father, but he ignored her.
I remember I was very angry because of this, even when I was very young. Then, my father started to change, specially when he was old enough to stop working. He became more friendly, I could even say my mother and him were like a normal couple back then - even when they were fighting all the time, but they were closer to each other.
My father was very boring. When he started to talk about something, he kept saying the same for hours. You could even go to the bathroom and he followed you talking about the same, saying the same he was saying before. If you went to the bedroom, he entered with you, standing at the door and talking. You could not do anything unless listening to him repeating and repeating the same things. When he was with my brother, they only talked about wine. How they were caring about the plants giving grapes, the time of making the wine... This topic all the time. Sometimes, they talked about a traditional celebration in Galicia in which people of a family kills one pig to eat during all the year. Also about another typical tasks of the countryside, but it was mainly about wine.
My father didn’t like to celebrate things. All people should be serious people, focusing in their works and how to earn money. He was distant, boring, he never cared about how you were really, he was like a mask of a sacrificed father. My mother always says he’s very worried about how I am, that he would be very happy if I call him, but the last time I called him he was as distant as always. It’s like she’s talking about a completely different person, like she cannot see who he really is.
I mean, if he’s not the perfect sacrificed caring and loving father she says she is, the world will not end. But at least, she should not deny the truth. He’s like he’s. Nobody is perfect. It’s ok if he’s not the perfect father, we are not perfect neither. He hit my brother and sisters with his belt, this is not what a caring father does. I would not like to marry someone like him.
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