Published 2025-08-30
tag(s):
We are in the Adirondack mountains for the weekend. The cabin has spotty internet, there's
spotty cell signal, so I don't know if this will go up now or once we are back home.
I don't even know how to pronounce Adirondack. Well, I didn't even know this mountain range
existed before coming here...
Kiddo was on his room, now taking a shower after much complaining. Wife probably playing a
game on her iPad. I figured it was a good time to do my own thing.
In the past, any kind of couple or family vacation was seen as "we are supposed to spend every
second together, or else something is wrong". Actually, even non vacation time was like
that.
Echoes of my upbringing, and probably more on my mother's side. My sister and I talk quite a
bit about these things lately...foreshadowing for posts to come? Maybe.
I told Maria, I was about to bring the laptop in case I felt like writing. Advantages of driving, you carry something "just in case", until the car is comically tilted from the weight of all the things you definitely won't use.
But then I felt like it wasn't worth it. Maybe a bit ashamed? "Oh, so now you write
all the time". Yet we were on the cruise, I felt the urge to write, and annoyed I didn't have
how...[1] If this shame? sounds stupid: it is. Who cares?
Then I remembered Colorado and Vélez play this Saturday. I am not even sure we'll get to watch
the matches, I wouldn't change any vacation plans to do so[2], but that
was a good enough reason to bring the device.
Why is that a less embarrassing reason to bring the laptop than writing? It is a creative
outlet after all. I have no idea...
But speaking of fútbol....
Last week I was listening to the Vélez match "on the radio". That is, on my cellphone, over a
YouTube broadcast of a radio.
(When I was thinking of writing about this, I figured I would include a link a video or audio
of an argentinian broadcaster commenting on match. But, no signal, so...it is up to the reader
to find one, if curious enough.)
There's something very particular to extremely fast speech, barely any pauses to breathe, so
that no second of the game is lost to the listener.
And it was this time, and not any other, on the 129 bus heading back home, that I felt my eyes
giving in, the memories unlocked...why this time, and not any of the previous ones? I have no
idea. Why do I feel so urged to write this down now instead of any other time? Also
no clue. I thought it was because I needed to cry a bit, and process feelings. But right now,
I feel another reason creeping in: I fear I will lose these memories.
Pascual was so dry. He barely had friends. Growing up, I was full of pride he would tell me he
loved me, but not anyone else. Now I understand it as another sign of how emotionally stunted
he was, something that only changed as he grew way older.
He had a ton of clothes, gifts from his kids and eventually his grand kids, but only wore the
same 3 (admittedly ugly) polos, the same battered watch, the same 3 pair of pants, always.
The one thing he was more than happy to spend money and time in was food. That's one thing
that connected him and my mom, their enjoyment at serving tons of food even if there was a
small party at the table. I always assumed that this is a consequence of growing up in
poverty. I know of my mom's childhood with some detail. My grandfather never talked much about
his, and by the time when he would really open up a about his childhood, I was already living
far from him.
Yes, it makes me guilty, wondering the stories I missed. Yes, I am trying really hard not to
let that same guilt define the relationship with my parents for the rest of their years. I
have no clue if I will succeed.
Both my grandparents expressed their love through food. And I had, growing up (and I can see
it now) a big emotional hole to fill. So any time I visit, my grandfather would suggest I make
myself a sandwich, heat some leftovers, grab some cookies.
I would always say yes, because I knew it made him happy.
I so much enjoyed my status as the favorite grandchild. Even if I was raised to be modest to fault[3], I feel no shame saying that. Everyone knew.
Such favoritism made me eager to spend many weekends, and school breaks, at my grandparents
house. I would get up, make myself breakfast, and sit down with them to talk about people I
never knew or barely remembered, discuss the news (watching the 8 pm news, and eventually the
24hs news cable channel, was a staple of the house), and help them cook lunch or dinner.
It was specially fun to help them make pasta from scratch, stretch the dough, spread the
filling. Then Pascual would get the ravioli rolling pin with his giant hands, make a whole
table of perfect squares. It was my job to use the rolling cutter to separate them.
Such an italian thing. Big family meals with pasta on Sundays.
My dad never cared for football. My grandfather wasn't a super fan, but he did follow Boca Juniors. That's why when someone asked which team I supported, I said Boca, no hesitation. As I grew older, I followed that statement with "because of my grandfather, I don't really watch a lot of football".
He was born in 1929, and would sometimes watch the games, but the most common way he
would follow the team was on the radio, which I guess felt more natural to him, but I didn't
quite get it. He could watch the game!
Instead, he would lay down in bed, and put this little "AM/FM" radio on his belly, and listen.
I could only catch the names of the players. The traditional "gooooooooooooool" screams. And
the rushed ad reads when the ball was out of play.
But I didn't really get it. I hadn't watched enough football in my life to do so.
But now...I do get it. I can picture the pitch and the plays and the movement of the ball. And this last week, on the bus, I realized that this is how he followed football. I remembered him and the echo of the little radio in his bedroom, and I haven't stopped thinking about him since.