My children, I would not want to have to write this article, especially on a day like today. Sometimes it is difficult for me to make public confessions of my faith and my love for you. It sounds corny and simple to me to reduce my father’s love to a date, a Facebook post, or a picture of you in a wallet, kept at the bottom of a dark pocket. But Y’s question caught me off guard: “Who are you going to spend Father’s Day with?” Then your grandmother, with the same love with which as a child she used to spread mutton tallow on my chest for a cold, He told me: “What are you going to do tomorrow? have some beers!” I responded to both of them with dodge, I think also with a bit of that pragmatism and hardness with which I protect myself, on days like today. I’ll be alone, I told them, but don’t worry, “it’s my turn.”
Many times I have had to hear that father is anyone, that striking phrase that contains a bit of popular experience and a bit of discriminatory myth. Following this logic, I can perfectly be far from my children, be a working human, an almost exemplary provider, who neither feels nor suffers. But, the questions from Y and mommy disarm in me the credible sense of the popular and submerge me in that sea of affections, contradictions and complexities of a father who is HIM and not ANYONE, a father who every month, and not only in June, he strives to be consistent with the love he feels for his children.
Perhaps today, as I write, I try to replace mommy’s hand on my chest, and ease the pain of your absence this day, which undoubtedly hurts and burns me deep. Ridiculous claim is that a text can replace the affection of my children, which I have not embraced for three years. You will have to forgive me for not being able to take a flight and go see you and give you that hug, while wasted my time writing
In short, they should know, although it may not even be healthy for them to know, that there will be thousands of migrant Cuban parents and grandparents who will not be with their children in Cuba today. This could be part of my apology for not being there, for moving away, for being, distantly, occasionally through the cold screen of a phone. However, as much as I hide behind a resilient shell, I do not resign myself to this loneliness without you, just as I know that you are not satisfied with a father 6,000 kilometers away.
For this reason, in the overwhelming loneliness that accompanies me, I dissipate the mists of that melancholy thinking of them, walking together through places of unimaginable beauty, far from wars, pettiness, material and spiritual misery. I dream and wake up with your endless laughter sweetening my ears, with a look from you, Roxi, or a hug from you, Maikiel. But the harshness of the multiple borders, rivers, unknown territories that I must cross to reach them physically, scares me and makes me question myself.
Is it worth leaving behind your children, your mother, your grandmother, so many people you love and who love you? The truth, I would confess that it is not worth anything that takes someone away from her deepest affections and loves. Without that, even if you don’t want it, you lose a bit of laughter, charm, fullness, why and what for are you somewhere in the world. You are consumed by the impotence of the impossible hug, of not knowing how they grow, of not feeling how they learn, of not being closer in error and success, of being able to see and hear them articulating the word “Dad”. So, if the loss is so immense, we will have to go out into the world to find an answer to another question, or to the same question formulated differently: “Why do so many people decide to leave behind their children, their parents, their grandparents, their so many people who love and who love him?
Inquiring about the answers to this last question can be a useless exercise, which contributes nothing on a day like today to love and affection. Let’s leave it to time, let’s leave a little to the wind, let’s forget questions and answers like these for a moment. Let’s dedicate ourselves today, my children, to think about what tomorrow will be like from today together, let’s design a world of tender colors where nothing separates our loves and affections. My prince, make a design of our names with chopsticks (remember?) and engrave it in your mind.
Definitely today, Father’s Day, we will be together, there will be no darkness, no obscurantism, no distances that separate us. I know that so many others, from so many parallels and meridians, will also be in Cuba hugging their children, their grandchildren. Father is not just anyone, that’s why I will make this diaspora reduce to the size of my migrant and hopeful embrace, which through some happy path will reach you. And, finally, why not, I’ll toast my children’s health and happiness in peace.
