barralopolis

Dad and I, in the very beginning.

As I write these lines, my dad is already up in Havana. He stays up late at night and gets up early, sometimes in the middle of the night if inspiration hits him. After breakfast he will sit and fire up the oldish PC and check his email through a dial-up connection. As most people in Cuba, he does not have access to internet at home, but he can send and receive emails, the main way of communication between us. Through the years I have subscribed him to newsletters, and copied and pasted big chunks of information and articles into bodies of email for him to read. In his 80s, my dad is still very curious about the world.

That is one of the reasons I subscribed him to my blog. Other reasons include an added motivation for me to write regularly. But my main hope is that he will be eventually writing his own blog and that way widen his circle.

Dad and I, last year.

My dad has many stories to tell. He wrote an autobiography some years ago where he tells about his “lives in succession” from his native Spain to Cuba. After the first book, the writer’s bug got him, and he has several books in the making related to his experience in criminal justice and history. But we kids are currently enjoying his newest work, coming in email installments, about the adventures of a globetrotting character born in the island of Lampedusa.

In the book The End of Big, Nicco Mele tells the story how his elderly father wrote a book by transcribing his letters from WW2 and publishing it as an ebook through the internet (with his kids help, of course). Besides being a fascinating read for the family, it turned out a way for the father to connect with a number of people who had similar stories and experiences, enriching his social life.

My dad taught me many of the important skills in life, from swimming to driving, from how to give IM injections to how to avoid getting drunk. He introduced me to chess, the love of philosophy, and in general the joys of intellectual pursuits. Over the years we have been close or far, depending on which corner of the globe I happened to reside. And communications have ebbed and flowed depending on the demands of life.

But as of today, I am enjoying this common interest in writing, and I do hope we will become blogging buddies in the near future. Looking forward it 🙂