My annual tribute to my father, Antonio "Tony" Ruiz.

My father never took me to a Yankees game when I was a kid. That was the secret burden of 

resentment I carried for a long time. 

At some point before he died of Multiple Myeloma in his mid-sixties, I let go of that silly 

feeling.
It was still too damn long to carry such overbearing feelings.

As long as I can remember, my father worked two jobs to support our family, which grew and 

shrank with each foster child my mother took in after our brother Peter died. 

Pop would do his thing as a truck mechanic. 

If he grew tired of it or complained, I never knew about it. All I know is 

he never seemed to stop working. 

Ever.

I was the oldest in the family. 

I was expected to assume the responsibilities of the oldest son, 

“be the man of the house,” when Pop wasn’t home. 

I had no idea what that meant at ten or eighteen, even as my father and mother occasionally reminded me. 

Wasn’t that his job? 

I mean, wasn’t Pop supposed to work his ass off to ensure we had a roof over our heads, 

clothes on our backs, 

shoes on our feet, 

and food on the table?

What an asshole I was.

I was a kid in the fifties and early sixties. 

I was too young to work and too busy with school and playing stickball and Johnny on the pony after school to worry about getting my hands dirty, I mean filthy, like my father, who would come home smelling of the very things that would kill him in the end: 

gasoline, truck oil, and lubricant. 

On his hands, arms, sometimes his face, and all over his work clothes. 

After eight hours or more at one job in the South Bronx, 
then another in Brooklyn. 

Six days a week.

Then, the church usher duties on Sundays at Saint Anselm’s Church. 

For years, he would drive from 140th Street and Third Avenue to 156th and Westchester, 
which was not around the corner. 

He would fulfill his duties, which stretched into late Sunday mornings, then head home, 
bringing warm Italian bread or Kaiser rolls 

so he could sit down with the family for lunch, 
usually a bowl of Puerto Rican-style chicken soup. 

Then it was off to visit sick relatives, including his mother, brother, and sister 

(sometimes with us in tow).

In the summertime, he would pack the family into the car for excursions to upstate New York, 

visiting any number of lakes that seemed like foreign lands to us, 
yet provided us with exciting memories and relief 

from life in the South Bronx projects.

You would think I would have been more grateful.

Nope. 

It was the sixties, and rebellion against authority, 
whether it was your parents 
or the President of the United States, 
was what I did. 

Pop and I settled into a steady stream of arguments 

about everything from 

the Civil Rights movement (moving too fast) 
to American foreign military excursions (What are you, a communist?). 

I would sit in my room, reading books and articles 
on philosophy, 
religion, 
identity, 
war, 
and civil rights, 

and think I was smarter than my parents. 

What the hell did my father know, anyway? 

He was just a truck mechanic 
with barely a high school education.

It wasn’t until my first child was born 

that I began to get an inkling 
of what Pop knew 

about life, 
responsibility, 
family, 
and work. 

By then, much time, distance, and bitter feelings had passed between us, 

and we had settled into a peaceful coexistence, 
and we were okay with it.

But the damn Yankee baseball games still haunted me. 

Somewhere deep inside me, 
like a lingering toothache 
that wouldn’t be relieved 

until it was yanked out. 

Without Novocain.

It wasn’t until he was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma 
in his mid-sixties 

that his sacrifices became clearer. 

By then, I thought it was too late. 

I was in my early forties, 

and I realized 
that all those years of pettiness on my part, 
all that open rebellion from me, 

and all the disappointment I had showered 

on my parents over the years 

(Seminary, drug abuse, failed marriages and relationships) 

meant that I would one day not have time 

with my father that I secretly wanted, 

so I could ask him questions about life, 
his life, 
his past, 
and his dreams 

that went beyond throwing himself under a truck 

so that engine oil could drip onto his hands, 
into his body, 
down through his veins, 
and crawl into every cell of his body 

so it could be cooked into cancer in his retirement years, 

when he should have been relaxing.

I should have been the one to take him to a Yankee baseball game.

In his final days, 
I was called back to the Bronx 

so I could witness the inevitable, 
knowing there was nothing I could do. 

Cancer had run its course, and the options for cures and stays of death had been exhausted. 

All I could do was help my mother dress him one last time 
for the trip from the hospital to the hospice. 

I stood next to this man 

whose strong arms and hands 
had fascinated me as a kid, 

now thin and barely holding 
on to my shoulder as I held him. 

The final indignity of his frail, 
naked body was the last thing 

he wanted his oldest son, 
the son who had never appreciated him in his life, 

to witness. 

All I could say was, I got you, Pop. He turned, looked at me, and didn’t have to say anything. I knew, and he knew.

I will always love you, Pop.