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My father´s guayaberas
My father is unlike any other… and I know you´ll say that that´s just what everyone says so please don’t bother, let me explain. He doesn´t follow the traditional rules or standards that fathers do. Yes, he loves soccer and he can be distracted sometimes, but I think at his core he´s no father and he´s no traditional man, I see him as a teacher from which whom I don’t bother to learn. Let´s start from the beginning; my father´s guayaberas, his closet is filled with them. Whether they´re pink, white, blueish, lilac or green he´ll wear them proudly no matter where he´s been. From a Sunday afternoon with the family to an important interview on TV, he´ll wear those Mexican textiles and colorful silks as happy as he can be. He studied civil engineer and he´s an urbanist at work, but it took me some time to realize those are just his tools to change the things he believes are wrong. He dreams of a city where people can walk, kids can play and local business can grow. I think he fell in love with Paris at some point and he just won´t let go. I always wondered why he came back, after I watched him walk those French streets last summer I just can’t stop picturing him as a fish with no water nor fins stuck in Monterrey´s traffic jam. Either way, he´s here now, and I think his platonic love gave him purpose. He has to work with snakes and wolves, fill long boring paperwork and aspire to inspire to slowly begin to change the “no”s to “go”s. Although I admire him for that, that´s not the main reason why I say he´s strange. I believe he´s just someone who doesn´t belong to a place like this and he´s not scared to make it change. Same thing happens when talking about his parentship… I don’t recall one single time where he has gotten mad at me or yelled, he has never lectured me about school or work and he was never in the mood to nag. Instead, we talked about the clouds, he used to ask me why I thought some of them were white, while other were grey and he also used to remind me that superman was actually called Clark Kent. I don´t know if the second statement was also a lesson, but I think both of them worked as a way for him to always be there. He also talked about forgiveness and being at peace with yourself, he thought me not to judge people but to understand and love instead. He´s a friend who I can trust and an interesting man who I haven’t figured out just jet, but I think those guayaberas in his closet represent all of those things that make him strange and the fact that he wears them everywhere works as a reminder for him no to settle, and always be truth to himself.
