The Stage
Singer, actor and writer, my father. Or so he would have been. My old man.
The day he died, I played Mecano's "The Force of Destiny." I can roll my rs better than anyone else in Spanish.
What made my father who he was could not be measured by gestures, nor the sense of tragic doom. He taught me what men and women do to get what they want. He used to ask me to emote from the superficially blank to the most profoundly impactful dramatic expressions of who -- and what it was that I wanted. He taught me how to lie; how to be either a good or a bad actor.
He would hold his boy in his arms. The arms I wish would last forever. I have never loved another man as much as my father. He knew talent as he saw it and felt it. But the force of destiny made us repeat our coaching sessions until I knew how to make another being feel the most loved in the galaxy, or the most reviled monster of every child's dreams.
He took my head between his big hands, and jerked, and prodded, and moved my eyes and ears until he saw the exact expression he was after. When he shaped my lips with his hands, I intuitively followed his direction. I will never have another father, but I love mine in a way bright and lovely, resoundly mine.
Every inflection of a word matters! Hate, love, indifference, boiling retribution and so many more. The canvas that was my face as a child got kissed and sheltered by him. May you rest in peace, Papa.
© Text: Orlando Barahona
© Image: Thomas Hawk/Flickr
This work by Orlando Barahona is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
