of your memories
Today, when Father’s Day is celebrated commercially, we must remember that it continues here, in spite of those who blurt out in the face how bad one is. Others were kind enough to say I love you, thank you, here I am for you, count on me. Going to share, first and second, these notes about my father. Edited, and published over the years here in Lecturas, EL DEBATE (17/Sep/2006, 11/May/2014, 27/Nov/2016, 1/Jan/2020).
In the trunk of travels and pasts there are two songs to remember the father figure: one, by the Catalan Patxi Andión, Father; and the other, by Chilean Ángel Parra, Elrailroader. Both imbued in the protest culture of the sixties and seventies of the last century. The second with the illusion of Salvador Allende and his revolutionary utopia truncated by the Pinochet dictatorship, where her uncle lost her life and her mother was precipitated to the end. Catalan, under the ostracism and repression of the Franco regime.
By Angel Parra
His song The Railwayman is a description of the father seen from a distance, about what his teachings left behind. It is the image of the father carrying his class consciousness and his daily silent battle, far from heroism and praise. So, he remembers ours in his daily struggle and work to build that roof and walls that would protect us, build them with his tiredness and remnants of misunderstood rebellion and overturned in night talks.
Later, his arrival from work comes to mind, his tired lament, but also the pride of knowing he is important and highlighting the white of his clothing, and even the martiality of his Mexican Navy uniform. You imagined that he could do everything.
And it is there, perhaps, where limits began and the springs that will make you get up from every fall, even from hell, begin to be copied in the unconscious. To find the firm step again, without wasting time licking wounds. There barriers were erected against resentment so that the fall would not be deeper, and, above all, get up and walk uphill to follow the path…
How it helped us, her four children, to know that the path was not backwards, it was not deeper, it did not go through revenge. That is why their memories leave us the strength to heal the wounds of our own struggles and falls.
By Patxi Andion
In Father, Patxi Andión, draws who is building it: “You are like the singing of a peasant who, by singing, is carving out our path. You are like a badly distributed pain that became a song and not a complaint. The moral lesson is received by the Catalan with the sample of the mediocrity that wants to be republican, Patxi Andión, says: “Companion of the sun, faithful companion, you never worried about being the first, you are like sweat, quiet and still, and you never opened the drawer of your own respect”. Teaching that is the only thing that allows you to sleep peacefully and wake up every day: “DO NOT OPEN THE DRAWER OF YOUR OWN RESPECT”.
He taught us to read, study and think about others, that there would always be the possibility of building a better society. Ever since Patxi Andión’s song became known, those afternoons and nights had a portrait: “You never wanted to save yourself alone, because there is no salvation -you said-, if not with everyone”.
Paragraphs: From his letters
In the years of study abroad, a handwritten letter from my father would arrive every week. In them he talked about how things were going at home and at the port. They always arrived on time, beyond the calls. They were companions in the distance, on that trip to Ithaca that he always encouraged and accompanied with those letters…
In Patxi Andión’s song, Carta a mi padre, he writes to him when he is no longer there. The first stanza, although written back in 1983, sounds very present in Sinaloa: “Father, I have heard that tomorrow it will rain, and that perhaps in the afternoon it will clear up and that the abortion thing goes on for a long time and that I don’t know who is getting married, now divorced…”.
Then come the daily life, those that fill life, far from the revolutionary dreams of youth. And, he would have wanted her little daughter to chat with her father. She felt the same with the photo of Riguito looking at the book that Grandpa Julio taught her, and she could no longer read it with Grandpa Rigoberto. The song ends remembering him.
Knowing that that memory and that struggle, his teaching and his message of love will always be there: “I say goodbye, I suppose you will understand that you always knew how to retrace distances, how I feel having to tell you, in this letter, things of such little importance, Father, I have heard that it will rain tomorrow.”
#dad