My Dad

Posted 02/07/2017 by Taline Perez

February 6, 2017 One of my favorite shows is “The King of Queens.” . It’s a comedy sitcom about a couple and her father who lives in their basement. The father on the show is a lot like my dad, except Armenian and Middle Eastern. In real life, a character like that is a little hard to swallow daily unless you're his eldest daughter who doesn’t get bothered by who he is. But on the show, he’s portrayed the way I see my dad. A little ridiculous at times, way too direct but honest, rough around the edges but a softy who will cry because of a memory, loud but silent when he’s lost or hurt, overly confident and stuck in his ways but loyal and predictable, smart, and unable to express his emotions well. The most important thing to him is respect. 

My favorite three things about my dad are his common sense, generosity, and transparency. He is who he is. He doesn’t hide it, try to change it, or apologize for it. He is not manipulative. He is by no means flawless, and around the time my mother died 13 years ago, he apologized to me for some of the things he had done “wrong”. But I had decided years ago that God doesn’t make mistakes. He was meant to be my father for good reasons because God is good and he is very capable of turning and using anything for good. He would be the person who would shape who I become, and God would use everything he did right and wrong to do that.

  Last Friday night he went to a new primary doctor, I’ve lost count because he changes them so much which I hear is more common than you'd think, and he was told to go to emergency because he didn’t look good. By 1:00 am, we found out that he has a mass in his left lung. My sister heard “hope” and I heard , “ A mass the size of a man’s hand that doesn’t look good and is probably cancer because it is not smooth, sort of ugly, with lots of fingers coming out.” Maybe because of where I am with Sergio I am able to hear things as they are. It is a necessity and a skill you have to develop quickly when there’s no one else there with you in the rooms and you have to be the one to be strong so you can support your husband. Although once again, God brought people around us who today go to every appointment with us and me. And these aren’t just ears, these are people who make you feel grateful for the wait of their arrival, an overflowing of support and care from people who have been chosen and placed by the hand of God. He doesn’t miss a thing.

We don’t know the stage yet, but I think it will be advanced. My father started smoking late in his life, in his early 30’s when he went to Argentina by ship. He lived there for six months and then returned home. Besides picking up Spanish, he picked up smoking. He has the “smoking” cancer.

My dad has had a hard life growing up in poverty and hunger during much of his early life. His parents escaped the Armenian Genocide and fled to Lebanon. There are reasons for the dots on the map of his life where he stopped, got lost, or recovered. Unfortunately he has experienced a lot of immaturity (unlike us) from believers and makes the easy mistake of confusing people with who God is. A little like Huckleberry Finn when he decides he'd rather go to hell rather than accept the beliefs about blacks at the time. That's not the only choice available but that's what he chooses. That option also excludes any room for people to grow, and hopefully we will all grow and change for the better. But ultimately he has a very hard time trusting God to do what is best for him. He trusts himself more. Maybe this is because of what he’s been through. It’s difficult to say. Just like the intricate contradictions in who he is, his relationship with his God is the same way. The same God who he introduced us to, the same God he wanted us to love so he drove us to Sunday school but didn’t attend church, the same God he says knows him, yet he struggles to know.

I love my dad just like the little girls at the dance. He means the world to me, just like Sergio means the world to me. He blessed my marriage with Sergio because as he put it, “ This is good. You two think just alike and you’re the same in your religion, the same type, the same thinking, the same beliefs about Jesus. It’s good.”

What is on my mind? What else can you take away from me God?