Thinking About My Late Parents On A Nostalgic Morning
As a father, I go back to the role of son for a while and discover things about my parents. Their music, habits and upbringing. Is it harder now to be a parent than it was before?
On a morning of unprecedented nostalgia, before preparing breakfast, I searched on Spotify: “FM Horizonte”. And yes, there is more than one playlist with the music from the Argentine radio station that my dad used to tune into in the morning. Why did I search for it?
It happened recently. It was one of those mornings when exhaustion was at the forefront and I think I was trying to find a formula that would relieve Irene and me of the burden of the routine of raising two boys — Lorenzo, 5 years old, and León, 22 months.
It was one of those days when the kids had been coughing so much that it seemed like their lungs would pop out, and the lice appeared for the first time on their heads. Between the coughing and the itching, they took turns in waking up and we spent most of the night awake.
As a mother told me, in the moments that you feel most exhausted, you also feel that this demanding stage of childhood will never end and that we parents will never stop being tired, with dark circles under our eyes and no time for ourselves. I know that this state won’t last forever, but I forget that almost every day, especially on the hardest days.
So, as I prepared breakfast, I once again thought of the Prussian discipline of my parents who, without exception, got up every morning to herd their seven children to their destinations. I don't remember them ever lying around in bed because they were sick, or because they just wanted to rest a little longer.
Everything worked with a precision that I can only admire now. At 6:45am my dad woke us up by turning on the radio, and by 7:25am, four of us had already had breakfast and were in the car going to school. The house remained deserted, because my three older siblings had already left for college or work.
I do not idealize, at least not very much, the atmosphere of those mornings. In fact, from a distance, I am a little suspicious: how did they manage to keep everything running so smoothly and quietly when there were so many of them? It is true that there were some mornings with some tension because we did not get out of bed, but in my memory they are few and the tension was minimal.
“It's already five past seven,” my dad would lie to hurry us out of bed, while he turned up the volume of FM Horizonte, a radio station that was immortalized in the voice of Martín Wullich: “Meanwhile, here, in the big city... a new hour... begins.”
A comparison with the past
I say that the tension was minimal especially when I compare it to how I often feel now as, with my partner Irene, we try to get our two boys out of the house in the morning.
I fall into the cliché of understanding and valuing what my parents did for me and my siblings only now that I became a father.
My parents were the first generation to study at university in their families — they formed a middle class in a Buenos Aires society in which, at the time, there was a social ascent that today hardly exists.
Just now I think about how challenging it must have been for them to raise a family with seven children and, besides wondering why they chose that, I question why it is so difficult for me, my partner and most of the parents I know to be parents nowadays.
I know that job insecurity, little or no support network and the isolation of nuclear families explain a lot.
But the first thing that comes to my mind is that my parents were dedicated to this task, which was combined only with work. There was no space in their routines — or expectations, I guess — to eat out at a restaurant (I only remember eating out with them twice in my childhood), play tennis, travel around Europe or the United States (they never left Latin America), go to watch a football game, exercise, go to the movies, watch Netflix or fool around with the phone for three hours (or more).
This comparison is not an exercise in nostalgia to say that the past was better. In any case, it is a way of trying to understand — them and myself too.
…
After dropping León off at daycare, I took Lorenzo to kindergarten. Then, I told him that the music we were listening to was the one my dad played every morning.
“And you liked it?” asked Lorenzo, who at the age of five posed a question that I had never asked myself, and that also gives several clues of the generational differences, from my folks to my children, passing through me.
What does it mean if I liked the music my parents played? It is a question that was not part of my childhood universe, because I was simply not raised with that possibility. You listened to (and also ate) what they decided. There was no such thing as requesting La Vaca Lola or Cocomelon on streaming — much less was there room to cry out for a song.
At that time, in the late 80's and early 90's, I didn't know a bit of English, and my brothers knew little more but not enough to understand the songs that aired on Horizonte: The best (Tina Turner), Wound in my heart (Propaganda), Never gonna give you up (Rick Astley), You (Ten Sharp)...
In any case, they didn’t give me a choice either. The radio was a background that was part of the morning scenery arranged by my parents — and respected by us without complaining. How did they make us simply follow them? All that I lived and listened to was settling in my hard disk without my knowing it.
“And did you like it?” insisted Lorenzo.
“I don't know, ehh... Yes,” I improvised an answer. “Now I like to listen to that music because it reminds me of the mornings when we were all together having breakfast before leaving the house together. There was something there from my parents that was care, love for us, their children, and that only now I am able to grasp. I feel tenderness for that which at the time I couldn’t be bothered by.”
“Did you listen to it on TV?” continued Lorenzo.
“No, no, we listened to the radio, something that is less used now than before. Phones with music didn't exist, that's something new.”
“Were they invented when I was born?”
“No, no, ten or fifteen years before you were born.”
“Is fifteen more or less than ten?”
“More.”
“Much more?”
“It depends. At the age of 15, Maradona made his debut in the first division. At ten years old, he would not have been able to, it was a big difference. And you are five years old, which is your whole life; and it's a lot what you've already lived but it's nothing compared to what I hope you'll live. So, as always, it depends on the perspective.”
Every now and then I talk to Lorenzo like this, which may sound pretentious or stupid, but I do it a little as a joke and a little because I see that when I give him these answers in an adult, and somewhat complex, tone, he keeps listening as if I were reading him a story: he looks with his eyes wide open and does not interrupt, as if waiting for me to never finish talking. I don't know what the effect of my dialectical ramblings will be on him, but I feel affection flowing in the air.
…
After leaving Lorenzo at kindergarten, I returned home thinking about that nostalgia that had assaulted me a while earlier. And I asked myself questions.
My dad was born in the countryside in the central province of San Luis, which is part of the vast, flat plain region known as pampa. He moved to Buenos Aires as a young man to study architecture at the University of Buenos Aires. His favorite music was folklore —especially Jorge Cafrune, one of the most popular and outspoken Argentine folklorist singer-songwriters, but also José Larralde and Los Chalchaleros.
Why did he then play a radio station with classics from the 80s and 90s? Was he trying to empathize with his children or was it simply the radio station he randomly tuned into? My siblings will each have their respective memories of this time, because the same parents can seem very different depending on the perspective of each child.
When I drive, in Greece I usually listen to a radio station called Happy104, which plays mostly classics from the 90's. “Happy εκατόν τέσσερα (Happy ekatón téssera),” Lorenzo repeats.
Besides noticing that I am not doing something so different from what my parents did — raising a family, although in our own style and in another world —, now I wonder if I am creating memories in Lorenzo and León by tuning into this Greek radio station. Until the nostalgic episode with Radio Horizonte, I thought I played the radio just for myself, and honestly I did it without thinking about my children.
Again, I am probably not that aware of how every decision I make as a parent — and every action I take — can have an unthinkable impact and reach. How many more things will I be doing without realizing the imprint it creates on my children? While I know we will always be doing something wrong as parents, I still worry that I am not fully aware.
…
“She’s about to turn three, she’s the light of my eyes, the greatest love I’ve ever received and yet, there are times when I'm looking at my phone while she’s talking to me. These are things that one cannot understand,” wrote Argentine journalist
in his newsletter (in Spanish).It would be easy to judge him and say that yes, he’s right, that you cannot understand. But I think it's fairer to say that parents do a huge amount of things that are not understood (even less so from the outside) and that, in my case, many times I don't register them.
And so, here I am today, wondering once again how my parents managed to raise seven children, and even more amazed given how hard it is for Irene and me to do it — without realizing that it was probably much harder for my parents than I understood and perceived at the time.
All this also makes me evaluate some moments better, like some explosions my mom had. Sometimes she got angry in a way that I thought was out of proportion with what was actually happening (a glass breaking, the floor getting dirty). There were also the times when I found her crying in the kitchen while washing five kilos of spinach in solitude.
Why did I use to think my folks weren’t so affected by raising seven children? Will Lorenzo and León realize at some point how exhausted we often are? What will they remember from their childhood? I don't know, but maybe they can read this text — and others of mine and Irene’s — and that will help them in some way.
This is us for today.
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With love,
Nacho
🙏 Many thanks to Worldcrunch for translating and editing this newsletter.
Muchas veces pienso en mis padres, lograron criarnos sintiéndonos queridas, con orden y cuidados. Yo intento sumarle alegría. Creo que eso a veces les faltaba, no hacia nosotras sino en general. Sería que no había tanto tiempo para las cosas personales, para sus intereses como personas más allá de ser padre y madre? Igual después de yo haber criado hijos que hoy tienen promedio veinti , no reprocho nada. No es fácil esta tarea. Hermoso tu newsletter Nacho
Probablemente también les costaba a tus padres... ¿Les preguntaste alguna vez? Por otro lado, creo que no eran tan permisivos y tolerantes con los chicos como lo somos nosotros.