A FATHER’S GIFT: LESSONS IN STRENGTH
Dad facing deportation recalls teaching his three daughters values of hard work, respect
The memory came to Juan Rodriguez last week, as Father’s Day was approaching.
He flashed back to a day about five years ago.
He had asked Karen, his oldest daughter who was then in middle school, to help him on a job where he’d be replacing a gas tank.
He told her to put on work gloves and slide next to him, under the car.
“I need you to extend your hands and hold this tank up very strongly,” he said. “If you don’t, it will fall on our heads.” Karen didn’t know that Juan had already placed jack stands to avoid an accident. “I wanted her to take her job very seriously,” he remembered.
As Juan worked, Karen grew tired and said she couldn’t hold the tank much longer. He encouraged her not to let go. He felt she needed to understand how the family made a living and that it was hard work, but he also wanted her to come away feeling strong and capable.
Until now, Karen hadn’t realized that day had been scripted by her father.
Before then, she said, she used to like getting her hands dirty and rubbing them over her body, “pretending that I had worked really hard.”
That day, she did work hard, and the lesson was learned.
Juan is a quiet man who doesn’t like to lecture and doesn’t feel the need to act “macho.” He prefers to lead his three daughters by example.
Those memories have become bittersweet as the end of the month draws closer and he faces deportation.
For many years, Juan’s wife, Celia, worked as a janitor from late in the morning until nighttime. That meant Juan was the one picking up the girls from school, because he could make his own schedule as an independent mechanic.
“I have been with them all the time. I have nursed them since they were babies,” Juan said.
Celia said the girls confide in him more than her, a closeness born from all those hours
together.
“They go to him for everything,” she said.
For Juan, summertime has always been the happiest part of the year, because the girls are out of school. He said he tries to make something special for them each day.
Last Friday afternoon, he was in the kitchen of their southeast Houston home, checking on the carrot bread that he was baking. On the stove, a pot of creamy “atole” was boiling, extracting the essence of sweet corn that El Salvadorans like the Rodriguezes prepare as a traditional hot drink.
But one of the things the girls like most is going “with Papi to work,” Karen said. Every time they go to a client’s home, they follow a ritual. One of the girls prepares a lunchbox with refreshments and snacks; another takes the tools out of their car and puts them in order so Juan can work. When the job is done, a daughter collects the tools while Juan talks to the client. Since they were little, they understood that they had to be respectful with customers. “I told them that it wasn’t just my work but our family’s business,” Juan said.
Rebecca, his middle daughter who is 15, would sometimes grab a tool and pretend to be repairing something next to him. The memory makes him smile.
“It’s not like with my mom, the handbags and shoes,” Karen said. Working around cars “is our way of getting involved in his world and being able to spend more time with him.” She thinks it inspired her desire to study engineering in college.
For Juan, those days gave him opportunities to impart life lessons, “so that when they grow up, no one can try to pull a fast one on them. They will know what things are worth. They will know how to fix things on their own.”
Celia tried to distract Juan last week, hoping he’d stop checking on the girls all the time. They were on a mission, strategizing about the gift they would buy him for Father’s Day.
The girls had wanted to purchase a Keurig coffee maker, and they had searched the internet for models last Thursday while their parents conferred with lawyers fighting to keep Juan in the country.
Karen had saved $100 from allowance, but she needed about $50 more to complete the purchase, which she hoped her mother would lend her until she got paid at her summer job.
But neither parent wanted them to buy the coffee maker, perhaps because they realized that he might not be able to enjoy it for long.
Juan knows this could be the last Father’s Day he spends with his family before being deported. He must present himself at Immigration and Customs Enforcements headquarters in Houston on June 29.
Since that “black day in February,” when ICE informed him of his upcoming deportation, Juan has felt that “every day is a miracle. One less to the deportation but, thank God, one more with my family.”
Juan is particularly worried about Rebecca. He said she is the most fragile. She doesn’t talk much, and anytime she hears about the deportation, she starts sobbing. She barely leaves her room.
“I just don’t want to hear about anything. I just try to
avoid it,” Rebecca confided last week. “Being alone, it helps me forget about it.”
Kimberly, the youngest, knows something “really bad” is happening to her family. The 10-year-old tries to cheer everyone up by leaving sticky notes around the house that say “I love you” and preparing fruit salads for visitors.
Kimberly said she doesn’t want to worry her family with her deepest fears.
“I heard a woman saying that, in El Salvador, they had to give money to bad people, because if they didn’t, they would be killed,” she said in a quiet moment away from the others. “I know it’s my parents’ hometown, but I don’t want to go. Where am I going to hide so that nothing happens to me?”
She broke the tension by changing the subject to the poster she was going to make for Juan. She would use blue letters to write out a Father’s Day card and tell him she loved him. And the adornments would be in orange, she said, because that’s his favorite color.
On Sunday, Juan woke up just after 4 a.m. He cleaned the house, then laid down next to Celia in bed and turned on the TV, hoping it would rouse her. He was anxious for Father’s Day.
They had a light breakfast but let the girls sleep since everyone had been up late the night before, spending time with extended family and drawing out each moment.
No one likes saying “good night” anymore.
Soon, there was a fluttering behind the door that leads to the bedrooms. The girls were up.
One by one, they came to see their father, each carrying presents and all shouting, “Happy Father’s Day” in Spanish.
“How beautiful!” Juan said, amused by gift bags that featured Superman.
“You are our hero!” the girls said as he unwrapped the clothes they had bought him — socks, T-shirts, shorts and shoes.
The girls asked him to save the envelope for last. Tucked inside, there was a letter from each one.
Rebecca encouraged him, for one day, to “forget about everything.” Kimberly said that she was happy that he was with them. And Karen thanked her father for “being the most extraordinary dad.”
“Thank you for fighting for us and for everything you provide to us. … Daddy, these are difficult times, but God will not forsake us. God will be with us at all times, and we must have faith that we will be victorious. Good things happen to those who love and follow the Lord …”
For a moment, they believed that. None of them thought that this Father’s Day would be the last one they’d spend together.