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My Father's Cellphones
If you were to ask me to say the first thing that comes to my head when you say “Father”, I would answer with ‘cellphones’. I would answer with work and with offices. My Father constantly working is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a necessary thing. A work cellphone will always be near him, at his reach, in case he gets an important call, or a text nowadays. The familiar ringtone that he made of Scorpions’, “Rock You like a Hurricane” can be heard on birthday barbecues. You can hear it on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and on New Year’s. When I was at the church for my quinces, I heard it faintly while I was getting ready to take the pictures, but it quickly faded away, meaning he had turned it off. His cellphones are always ringing, a call at noon, a call at midnight, and a text here and there. He can’t even get into the shower without one of us having to rush over from his home office to the bathroom, his bag in hand because three of his cellphones are ringing and we don’t know which one is more important. I would say my Father carries his cellphones in his purse. But when I tried telling him he owned a purse, he flipped out and spent 10 minutes explaining to me that it was his slightly bigger wallet. Everyone always made jokes, -harmless jokes, that is, - and eventually he gave up and just decided to call it his “cosmetics bag”. The bag itself isn’t a big deal. In fact, it’s changed around 3 times in the last 10 years. Of course, what really matters, are the multiple cellphones he keeps in there. One is for personal calls, another is for calls from Japan, and the others are for work here in Mexico. You’d think that as valuable as it is, he would never lose it and always keep his eye on it. But lately, I can’t count the times he’s had to call us from his office to tell me or my brother to bring him his “cosmetics bag” since he forgot it at home. I think some part of him forgets about it intentionally; maybe because he doesn’t want to deal with them for at least an hour. He has spent so much of his life, (almost 30 years) taking and receiving phone calls that I think that maybe a part of him is just done with cellphones all together. But, even with all the stress, I know he does it for us, for his family and when my brothers call him on a Sunday to tease him about something, he always answers, and he always does it with a smile.
