“¡Hombre Campeón!”
Regret is finding my papa’s old, raggedy scarf in the deepest crevices of his closet while playing hide-and-seek. Regret is also scrunching it up under my nose and inhaling its familiar scent, envisoning him wrapping the itchy yet comfortable patterned scarf around my neck in the cold morning of my dad’s hometown, Vitoria. His strong, manly cologne is embedded in it. making me cough, twist, and tug away at it. I remember dad always tightening it to the point where I couldn’t even breathe, as if an anaconda was wrapping itself around me, tightening every time I pulled at it.
Since my baby sister had not yet been born, Papa always had to fly to Spain for several weeks due to work. And on those business trips, he would always take little me along with him to “learn Spanish the best way,” he would say. “The greatest way to do that is to be surrounded by the language itself”. I didn’t appreciate it back then, but now as I look back, I sure do.
I recall the chilly cobblestone streets in “Plaza de la Virgen Blanca” smack dab in the middle of little old Vitoria. Smells of roasted nuts and Spanish cuisine floated through the air. Papa would take me on walks alongside my stylish hippie grandma (whom my not-yet-born sister and I called Nainai), my aunt Kuku, and the kindest soul I knew, my great Uncle Tio Amado. “¡Hombre campeón!” he would exclaim every time he saw me.
Tio was as humble as they come, the type who wouldn’t hurt an ant. He wore thick, rounded Harry Potter glasses and wore a joyful grin on his face. His pinky finger stayed crooked from his pro basketball days, yet it was hard to imagine such a delightful man dominating a sport as tough as basketball. He would always look out for me and give me second chances. I would trip into a puddle of mud, mess up in a sport, or say something I shouldn’t have, but he would just give me a hearty pat on the back and move along with the day. I never knew how; he had this superpower, which was always finding the light at the end of the tunnel.
He’s dead.
A bullet ripped open my heart, tearing through the flesh in my lungs, stopping my breath. “Dead,” echoed the word suddenly hollow. Old Tio Amado had passed away from cancer two years ago. The sudden realization made my heart sink into the deepest pits of my stomach and twisted my guts into uncomfortable knots. I pinched my face to stop my eyes from swelling with tears, barely containing them in.
Later that day, I lay restless in bed, letting the harsh truth seep in.
“Gege, are you ok?” my sister Lauren observed
“Do you miss Tio?” I asked her, not sure of what I meant.
“Tio Amado,” she repeated, “yeah, yeah, I do. But there’s no point in pouting; he’s gone already. We had good times with him, and that’s all that matters.”
I angrily sputtered, “How could you say that?”
“If you think ab-”
“Good night,” I cut her off, ready to be isolated with my own thoughts.
My mind drifted back to the last time I saw him, in Vitoria at Nainai’s house. “Hombre Campeon!” he said to me, beaming with happiness as he reached in for a bear hug. I looked up for a second, meeting his eyes with mine. I saw the happiness and hope in his eyes seeing my sister, and I have grown up so much since I last saw him 2 years ago. I hadn’t thought that this would be the last time I would ever see him, so I stood up and gave him a mediocre hug, still keeping my eyes on the game.
We said our goodbyes, like old friends who had drifted apart, and that was it.
That was the last time I had seen him. “Why hadn’t I spent more time with him?”
Why? Why?
“Shut up!” I yelled
And suddenly, in the soil of decay, a beautiful flower bloomed
NaiNai and Tio would grasp my arms tightly with their hard, chilly fingers, swaying me back and forth through the crisp air. Sounds of little children laughing and leaves crunching under footsteps were all around the park. It was early winter in Victoria, and we giggled and shared our favorite ice cream called ‘Pirulo Fantasmikoos’. Tio and Naiani, as siblings, would walk cheerfully without a care in the world. Papa would walk in front of us, almost like a silent guard, joining in on our jokes and taking pictures while he could, freezing moments in time as if they would last forever.
My first basketball game was with Tio Amado, my uncle, Tio Esteban, and my papa. It was a USC game (who were at their peak at that time), and it was my most memorable. The non-replicable smell of cheap beer and pretzels swirled through the stadium. I battled it out with the mascot, slicing at his cardboard muscles with my foam cutout sword. Both Tios and Papa would cheer at crazy three-pointers, and I would scream along, not knowing why. When watching basketball games, Amado was truly happy. And as the little follower, little me was, I would smile along with him.
He is gone.
What my sister told me was true. He is gone, and the past is the past. But sometimes on a horrible day, I start smiling for no reason — and I think of him. When I try something new without hesitation, when I walk onto the court, when I laugh after bleeding, that’s him. He never sat down and taught me anything. He just lived his life, but somehow, without realizing, he was here the whole time.