Jesús Sepúlveda (Chile/ USA)
Father is sitting on the bed. His hips are broken. There is a curfew outside.
Father’s words sound like sharp timpani on the patio of the house.
I inherited a language that I transmitted later to my son and my students, no matter how many languages I learned later. We are born into a language.
I tell you, son, that there is an energy that makes the entire universe. I tell you, son, that you open your eyes and here you are. I tell you, son, that today is July 14th—which should have been your grandfather’s birthday (my papi). I tell you, son, that people in South America call their grandfathers tata.
Grandfathers are called tatas all the way along the Andes. The energy of parents comes from their parents… and so on…from their parents… from their parents…and from their parents… It is a cyclical energy of tatas and abuelas (grandmothers).
Without a mother and a father, humanity would not exist.
Children sometimes grow up with their parents, sometimes their foster parents raise them, sometimes they grow up with a mother, or with a father only. Sometimes they grow up with their grandparents, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, friends, neighbors, street people, gangs and thieves. You name it. Sometimes there are institutions—some of which can be quite sinister—that the state or private parties provide and manage.
To continue its existence, society must invent a sort of prosthesis that replaces people’s ancestors. We could call it social parenthood, but in reality, it is the consequence of a life that lacks communities.
One of the functions of any parental relationship is care. An absent father is an image that can easily be demonized or idealized. Sometimes it can also be an existential absence that leaves part of the world empty. It is an irredeemable wound that leaves its scars in both father and daughter.
Excessive care, on the contrary, can narrow or limit the path of the offspring. It is not enough to follow the path of the masters, Matsuo Bashô says, but to seek what they sought. When parents are no longer here in their human incarnation, a sound and the feeling of a light in the soul remain. You realize then that you must be responsible and take care of that light. Part of that light goes to your children. If there are no children, then it goes to your students and disciples.
Everything always faces a brutal duality: life/death, day/night, right/left, nature/civilization…
Experience and/or wisdom show nuances, so you learn that not everything is black and white.
The gentle and tender father who plays with his son was also a wild youngster when he was growing up.
Football—or soccer—is a collective passion. When the son and the father pass the ball around there is communion: they celebrate life together.
The guardians of the garden take care of and protect me—they are beings that appear and disappear and who are nonetheless always present, no matter what.
Doña Secoya is not just a redwood tree—she is the spirit of Mother Earth who materializes with her gigantic dimensions because she captures the light of Father Sun. That light becomes a trunk.
There is Hammurabi’s Code, Abraham’s right to kill his son, Fresia—the Mapuche woman who threw her infant son to his father chief Caupolican to test his manhood—paternity laws, pre and postnatal leave, spousal support, child-support laws, and, of course, national laws.
Nations guarantee political fathers the right to sacrifice the country’s youth in the name of the fatherland.
There are also founding fathers and mythical fathers. Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac founded the Incan Empire. Then, colonization made all homelands unsecured.
And there are indeed modern laws that regulate non-traditional families—two fathers and one mother, two mothers and one father, two mothers, two fathers…
Modernity has put the father/mother duality in tension.
There are siblings who also serve as parents, as well as aunts and nuns and adoptive mothers. Literary mothers and fathers can become role models when they capture one’s imagination. Parenthood is crucial to foster healthy role models.
There are no recipes for raising a family. Follow the intuition of the heart and be open to learning. Be ready to be present without judgment. Hold the space and learn how to guide and lead. There are no recipes for being a parent. Sometimes you just know what to do. Sometimes you don’t have a clue.
Wisdom vibrates with the speed of love. Who appropriates these words? Love is real, but most likely it is also the most overused and hackneyed word in the dictionary.
Parents are proper nouns that the mother tongue and the paternal heritage—the patrimony—complement. Laws grant the rights of marriage, which are estate agreements.
There are also traditional ways of agreeing. Or there were. I’m not sure anymore. There were arranged marriages everywhere at some point in history. Horses were the dowries, so were other animals and gold.
The forced mating that Pol Pot imposed in Cambodia produced thousands of children from forced parents. Forced procreation is a tragedy.
Sometimes very young parents don’t know how to become successful parents—they are rather progenitors than caregivers. No sex education, no advice, no role models. The human being has been thrown into existence—Jean Paul Sartre wrote. He also stated that freedom requires responsibility.
After pleasure comes responsibility. Communities teach that. The modern world talks about it but encourages otherwise.
And there is also artificial insemination, just as there is artificial intelligence, so to speak. The artificial world uses prostheses to substitute for our experience.
Some children are born in vitro. What other cloneries—pun intended—are happening right now in obscure labs? We don’t know anything, except that experimentation is a fine line. Mary Shelley warned us early on in 1818.
Fatherhood is indeed different from motherhood. And this is surely a duality.
Relationships that nourish, nurture and create let procreation continue while souls learn.
All parents nurture and learn. Sometimes parents from rural areas express their love by doing rather than saying. You love through actions rather than words.
Children are the ones who will remember. Father and mother allow those memories to exist. In the sacred web of life everyone and everything plays a role.
Every father and every mother should wish their best for their son or daughter, hoping they can be happy, and wish the same for all humanity.
Being a father means to care and raise with love.
Sometimes reality is the opposite. Yet, despite cruelty and parental imperfections, this parental utopia does exist and keeps history in motion.
Happy birthday, papi!
Eugene, Oregon, July 14th, 2024