Flawless babble from the single most important human being ever to walk the earth.
Slowly becoming more comfortable with who I am now, enabling others to slowly accept that I’ll never be THAT Jorge again.
This is my personal blog. To get some insight into the rest of my digital presence, as well as a list of some of my favorite blogs to read, go visit jorgeparrales.org
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Of my father…..
My father always came through for me when I needed someone to count on. Every good trait that I have is attributable to him, but I didn’t get enough of them. He’s a good man……..a sickeningly good man. He’s one of the few individuals in life who actually made effort to live up to the same standards he expected from his family. He wasn’t perfect, but I genuinely believe he’s as close to it as humanly possible.
I have many great memories of him, but my personal favorite is from when I was 8 years old. My parents took me to a nearby park to kick around a soccer ball. At one point, I kicked the ball over the 8-foot chain link fence into the parking lot. I took off to run around the fence, but as I reached the parking lot entrance, I didn’t take the time to notice a curb where the grass ended and parking lot began.
I ate it. Hard.
I fell onto the pavement, sort of breaking the fall with my hands and knees, but my momentum made me slide another 5 or 6 feet. I got severe gashes all along my arms and legs and stomach, and even ended up with a pretty nasty bump on my head. As soon as I stopped sliding across the pavement, I became vividly aware of the enormous pain I felt……everywhere. As I began to cry out, I looked up to make sure my parents were aware of my injury.
My father was never much of an athlete, although he gave his absolute best effort for me as I was growing up, because sports were a huge interest of mine. I never saw him run, except for the occasional awkward jog on the basketball court when we would play some one-on-one at a nearby school. That’s why I was so amazed by what I saw when I looked up from the parking lot pavement.
He was sprinting, full-speed ahead. It was the first time I had ever seen my father moving so intentionally in the eight years I had been alive, and it continues to stand as my only memory of its kind. And when he got to me, I cried in his arms, because it hurt…..badly. But while I was crying, I felt ok. I felt safe. Because my father ran as fast as he possibly could to take care of his son.
To this day, that simple gesture (sprinting, when he never sprints) lingers in my mind as a constant reminder that my father might not ever move with urgency in his every day life, but if I ever need him, he’ll come running. Full-speed ahead.
He always has, he always will.
