Suddenly recalled what Paco said.
i caught sight of a flimpsy news article, carefully trimmed at its edge, and placed neatly within the transparent slip of a file. He opened and showed it to me – there was a man’s photograph beaming proudly; i knew it was him. It looked like some celebratory news of sorts, bold headline in Spanish, an important man in the newspaper. ‘That’s me,’ he grinned proudly. He had won some prize back then.
The news article had pen marks that circled and underlined particular words. I peered closer. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ he said. ‘When I won this prize, I told my dad and he said nothing. He didn’t hug me, he didn’t celebrate, he didn’t say much at all.’
‘I thought he didn’t care about it.’
‘When my father passed away last year, I found this news article in his room. Kept neatly in a file. That was when I realized for the first time so many years on, that he was actually proud of me. He was proud of his son.’
He beamed.
Advertisements
