On my dad

My father’s name is José René Armando Salazar Borja. I often tell people that I don’t know whether he is alive or dead and most people think I’m joking. I’m so not. I prefer to think of him as dead not because I am a spiteful person but because I assumed he was dead from about the time I was 19. The thing is that if I found out now that he is in fact alive but sick or dying -and then he died- then I’d have to mourn him twice. I mourned him once; that should be enough for one lifetime. If he was alive he would most likely be very old and sick because he was much much older than my mum – and last we heard of him he was sick already.

My father was a carpenter and I’m lead to believe he has the father to another 14 children, two of which I’ve met. In his time he was also an avid baseball player and liked the drink. My mum has told me this and I have no reason to doubt her. My favourite story that my mum tells me of my father is the way he confessed to her that he used to be an alcoholic. Apparently he used to be an alcoholic of the type that is homeless, lives on the street, eats, drinks, and pees where he sleeps and is completely dissociated from his whole world. I don’t know how long he was like this, but I think he must have been lonely and feeling defeated. I have felt lonely and defeated at times and I don’t wish that upon anyone. However, this story makes me very strangely proud of my father. I’ve always believed that the hardest thing to do is not to say “no” to drugs, but leaving a vice that has become so ingrained in you that leaving it is comparable to tearing your skin off and dressing yourself in a new cloak. I have incredible respect for the people who can do this. To me it seems so heroic, despite the fact that these battles are usually fought in gutters rather than on stages. That is my favourite story about my dad, and that happened before he even met my mum. This story is probably also the real reason why I have never been keen to drink alcohol.

My father was a good carpenter, too. He was a cabinetmaker, and a very creative and productive one at that. Apart from his work, he made me and my siblings multiple things throughout my childhood. When I was in high school, I really absolutely loved woodwork (and metalwork), but especially the sensation of making things, the smell of the timber, and the way it can be so delicate and yet sturdy. I really liked art too, but my mum would not hear of that. At one point I considered doing cabinetmaking as a career (and probably the only other career besides medicine that I contemplated for more than a few minutes), but I knew I couldn’t face living in the shadow of my father. He was very skilled, how good could I possibly ever be? I would always be the carpenter’s daughter, and I couldn’t face that. I admit it was also my pride in not wanting mum’s family to associate me with his family more than her’s that discouraged me. In the end my family has always known that the dream of working with timber is always on the back of my mind as something that I might get to at some stage of my life.

My father was married and had a wife with four children when he met my mother, of course he didn’t tell her this until after she told him she was pregnant with me. My mum had four children of her own at that stage and widowed; she was 27. Apparently my dad wanted to leave his wife but my mum knew how hard it is to raise four children as a single mother in a third-world country so she couldn’t do that to another woman. The arrangement was that mum would care for me and my dad would visit periodically. Both lived up to their ends of the bargain and I resent neither of them for this.

The last time I saw my father was in August 1990 on the day before we moved to Australia. I spent the day mostly with two of his daughters (which to this day I struggle to call sisters because we’re still strangers) and I saw him a few times that day. Then mum came and picked me up and we went back home. It wasn’t like saying goodbye to family at all; to me at that age (about 9) he was more an acquaintance of mum’s that I had to call “papi”. Only in retrospect have I started to think of what being a father actually means.

Through the years I have met many people my age who come from traditional families who speak of their fathers as they do of their mothers. To me this is one of this universe’s most difficult things to understand. I think I came close one day to understanding quantum physics, relativity, thermodynamics, organic chemistry, and advanced calculus, but this concept of a male parent has had me beat. It is such a foreign concept to me; it’s like you’re trying to explain to me a colour that I’ve never seen on this planet. But I listen and I try my hardest to understand, but a male parent that you could compare to your mother? I find it so beyond my ability to reason that it’s actually a little embarrassing. I don’t know that I will ever understand; my mum to me is unique and no-one, no matter how good or loving or constantly present they are, could ever compare to what she means to me.

After my family and I left El Salvador, my mum and dad would write letters to each other about me, how I was doing, etc. For reasons I won’t go into, when I was about 15, my father chose to disassociate from my family, which I guess as a kid meant from me. So someone I barely knew decided to not know me at all; at least that’s how I reasoned it at that stage. I wasn’t bothered by it. To me he was always the equivalent of a sperm donor to my mum and had contributed to me after that only a last name. I wasn’t resentful, but I also didn’t actually take the time to care. Through the years I tried to care, I tried to convince myself it should mean something to me, but mostly I could only form theories of how I should feel but I admit I didn’t actually feel them. I imagined I should have felt rejected, unappreciated, anger towards him, spite, etc. I didn’t. A stranger I barely knew and was barely in my life had chosen to no longer be in my life altogether. How could I care?

So what in conclusion do I feel about my father? I acknowledge him. I wear his last name and will do so until the day I die, same as I do mum’s. I feel no resentment towards him. I feel no love for him except that which we owe all human beings. Mum attributes my enthusiasm for creative expression and art to him (she hates art), and if it’s true, I thank him for those genes. I admire his genius and talent at carpentry. I am grateful for the fact his alcoholism story has put me off alcohol my whole life. And I am incredibly happy that in his absence I was able to develop such a great relationship with my mum and the three brothers and sister that have always been in my life.

R.I.P. José René Armando Salazar Borja

...Or good health to you if you’re still alive, old man :)