I was back home for winter vacation my second year at UCLA. My best friend, also from Utah, had come back for winter break from Stanford. We decided to celebrate the new year together.
I invited her to my home. My father carries the tradition of his late mother – homemade pizza, music and laughs. As my father prepared the pizza crusts, he engaged in dialogue with her and me.
He asked me for something, and my response was one of attitude and “Do I have to?” My father laughed and asked my best friend, “Do you treat your father like this?” Quick to respond, she stated: “I do not know, I never had a father.” Naturally, she and I laughed, but in that moment, it left my father speechless and stunned. To date, my best friend and I joke about how she is one of the only people that has ever left my father speechless.
While we may joke, I have had the privilege of having my father in my life. Like my best friend, my father’s father was absent from his life.
My father to me, is the father he never had.
I began to reflect on my relationship with my father through my dissertation work, which was a comparative study on Chicana/o and Puerto Rican college-educated families to advance narratives of intergenerational achievement and college readiness. During data collection, my colleague, Dr. Rebeca Mireles-Rios, and I often bonded over the role our Chicano fathers had in our lives despite stereotypes of them as absent, abusive, uneducated, imprisoned or macho.
Contrary to those stereotypes, our fathers both held advanced degrees and were present in our everyday lives. Due to the educational status of our fathers, we were granted specific benefits such as attending private Catholic schools for our K-12 education, middle-class households and early exposure to four-year institutions throughout our upbringings.
