By Tere
Ruiz
Father’s
Day is coming and I believe it is a good time for reflection, gratitude,
honoring and healing. Whether we have
good memories or bad memories about our parents and our childhood,
whether our
parents lived long or didn’t, whether there were times when they gave us
headaches, I am sure there were also times in which they gave us joy,
love and
also, I am sure that they were proud of their children.
So let me
tell you about my father… gee, I loved that man! I really
did.
I don’t even know why I loved him so madly. I don’t
mean that he didn’t deserve it -although
I do think that everyone deserves to be loved- still, I can tell you
that since
I recall, I loved my daddy!
His name
was Arturo Ruiz Lopez and he was a very intelligent man! He
was adventurous and would always have a
great plan about how to spend the day. I
remember that on Sundays, he would wake up early morning and fill the
bath tub
with hot water, I mean hot, LOL. And he
would spend hours or at least this is what it felt like, in the
bathroom. Then, he would come out of the bathroom
wearing his bathrobe and a towel around his neck and lay on his bed,
steaming. This was the time when we had
to rush to the kitchen and prepare his “Polla” which was made with two
eggs and
sherry, blended until it was sparkling… he would drink the whole thing,
of
course after I got my nip of it.
I think
Sunday was the best day of the week.
After he had drunk his Polla, he would come with “the plan,” and
most of
the times, the plan would have to do with two things; what we would have
for
lunch - no matter how far we have to go to get the food he was craving.
And the second thing was visiting an
interesting place.
Much of
the time, early Sunday, we would jump in the car and drive away through
the
country to get to the Teotihuacan pyramids, Tepozotlan, Texcoco (which
included
a visit to the market to buy Barbacoa with his favorite “marchante”),
Los Arcos
del Sitio or just anywhere where we could have a picnic.
Of course
vacation was the best part of the year!
When I was a little girl, we would go to Tequisquiapan, in the
state of Queretaro, and after my
mother passed away, we started to travel to the state of Morelos, where
he
built a wonderful house with lots of trees, plants, flowers… I
think he grew almost anything “growable” on
his land, although it was said that in this little village nothing would
grow.
I
remember my father designed the whole construction; he was not an
architect,
but he built the most incredible house.
He just put his dream house in paper and hired the only masons
that
lived in this little 1,000 people village.
Of course, the house had a swimming pool that he loved, and which
gave
him the idea to start building filters, pumps and all that you need to
have a
swimming pool. This is when he turned
his plastic injection factory into a “things for swimming pools”
factory.
That was
my father, and I could spend hours writing about all the things that he
used to
do or say. I remember that after every
single meal we had among family, we would come up with a theme or
question, and
then he would tell us everything, I mean everything about it. Gosh,
I can’t believe he knew so much about
everything… he would tell us about the history,
about geography, the biographies of the people involved… I can’t believe
how
much I miss those conversations…
My father
passed away, in 2001, and to be honest, I have to say that regarding the
feelings, the emotions, the Love, he was not very sweet and gentle,
although he
was not tough either. Maybe he just
didn’t know how to be tender. My father
wouldn’t talk about the things of life, he wouldn’t hold you in his
arms, he
wouldn’t say nice things to you… But now
that he is dead, I know that deep in his heart, he was proud of me and
that he
loved me, although I don’t recall ever hearing that from his mouth.
But
today, after writing this impression of my father, or my daddy, as I
always
called him, after reflecting on his life or better say, my life with
him, I
feel grateful for having had the opportunity to meet that spectacular
man, that
spectacular human being, who had his ups and downs, who did make big
mistakes, who
felt helpless when he had to raise his four daughters on his own, and
specially
me being only five years old…
Ever
since I moved to Lake Chapala I have had the
opportunity to meet wonderful men who have left a footprint in my life.
Men who also had children, who also made
mistakes as parents, men whose children wished they’d had a different
father, because
they were not sweet, gentle or tender.
Men who I wish I had met twenty or thirty years ago so I could
have also
learned from their experiences and shared them.
After
this reflection I come to the understanding that when we label people,
like we
do when a person is our father, our mother, our teacher, or else, we
have
expectations on how they should behave… we make demands on what should
be their
behavior, and finally, we judge on whether they did their jobs right or
wrong. But we lose our precious time
doing this instead of honoring the person we have in front of us as just
a
common human being who might be as fragile, immature, inexperienced as
we all
are.
We in Focus on Mexico, want to celebrate and honor, all the male human beings that we have met on our Focus Programs,
who
have done their best to be superman for their children and who have
showed us
they are exceptional men, worthy of admiration, respect and pride.
Tere
Ruiz-Rodarte:
Director of Research and Development FocusOnMexico.
Focus
On Mexico offers 8-Day Educational Programs to Ajijic and Lake Chapala, Mexico
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