It is an assumption by most people I know that they think they have time for everything they have planned in their life. Every so often, you get a rude reminder that time is the most precious thing in your life, and that maybe you don’t have that time you need.

I remember by grandson Trey being born. Poof, just like that, he’s 19 years old. Chloe wasn’t born that long ago was she? What, she’s a third grader now? Certainly Destiny is still a newborn, right? Nope, she just started Pre-K.

I won’t even start with the kids. One is over 40, one is approaching 40, several in their 30’s, and the youngest will be 30 next year.

I have had the unfortunate habit of thinking that there is plenty of time to do things, only to be reminded later that not all things work on Randy’s timeline.

My grandfather Arturo Rivera was a talented musician. I have been told that as a young man he was invited to perform with the Chihuahua symphony. He played all sorts of stringed instruments, from guitar to violin. When I was young my beloved grandfather asked if I wanted to learn to play the violin or guitar. My idiot young mind thought that was a waste of time so I said no. Ten years later or so, when I was 19, I reached out to see if he was still willing to teach me. Of course he was! He would take the bus from his house in Juarez twice a week to come to my house in El Paso for lessons. It was amazing. I was progressing like I didn’t think I could. Six weeks into the lesson, my “Papi” as we called him, suffered a stroke and passed away. I thought we had time.

Arturo Rivera with violin

My mother and father divorces when I was really young, about two years old. I never got to know my father, my pictures of him are nothing more that very faint memories and fuzzy, warm feelings. My father passed away when I was nine years old, and he had not been a part of my life for last seven years of my life. A few years ago I got a call from a phone number I didn’t recognize. It was my step-mother. She was my father’s first wife, and the woman he returned to after he left my mom. She was looking for my mother. She wanted to speak to her and apologize for my father’s actions in leaving my mom alone to raise kids by herself. After I explained to her that my mother had passed away several years earlier, she began to cry. This went on for a bit, and for some reason I decided to stay on the line with her.

She then proceeded to ask me what I knew about my father. I told her that I had almost no memory of him, other than a few pictures. She told me that she would like to spend some time talking to me about my father and letting me know that he wasn’t the jerk that I probably thought he was. (She was right, that is exactly what I thought.) We decided we would talk in a few days when we both had enough time to chat. I got busy, had to postpone a couple of times, and guess what? Yep. She had a stroke, and lived a couple of more years without the ability to communicate before passing away. I thought we had time.

What really brought this pattern to mind these last few days was the loss of another person that had started to share family stories with me. In 1998 I attended a family reunion in Utah and met a large part of the Carrasco/Aranda clan that I had not seen or even known about since I was a little kid. At that reunion I met a vibrant, funny, passionate man that was my mother’s cousin. His mother and my grandmother were sisters. He was one of my mom’s favorite cousins.

Of course he had to tell me the now familiar story that he had changed my diaper when I was a baby, but he also shared some stories about my grandmother and grandfather that I had never heard before. I didn’t get much of a chance to spend time with him that time, but we said we would keep in touch.

Fast forward a few years, and we had not kept in touch. My mother passed away a couple of years after the reunion, and I did not hear from my first cousin until we found each other on Facebook. Through him I got to meet, at least on Facebook, some of his children who I vaguely remember being at the reunion. We would message each other now and then and talk about my mom, my grandparents, his kids and grandkids, and often some words of encouragement and love when things were going rough with me.

We kept talking about visiting with him in San Francisco, possibly this year even, then COVID got in the way of traveling. Our last message to each other was that we would plan to get together as soon as COVID was over, and we would share an “abrazo” that we each needed.

COVID quickly took Mario away a couple of weeks ago. It was unexpected, and with his passing went a load of family history and stories that he had stored in his incredible mind. While I can’t compare my loss to my cousins Xan, Mario, Julian and others losing a father, I nonetheless felt a huge hole in my heart when my cousin Lily, his sister, called me on my way to work to tell me about his passing.

I though i had time.

Mario

So to my family and friends out there, I may become a nuisance, but I now realize that I don’t have an indefinite amount of time promised to me. I want my kids and grand-kids to know that side of my family. Somehow I need to make that happen.

To my friends here and elsewhere, let’s quit making excuses for getting together.

Do we have time?

I am about to turn 62, and I finally can openly acknowledge what I have known for a long time.   I am a crybaby.     It feels like I am in a 12 step program and I am in a meeting saying out loud “Hi, my name is Randy, and I am a crybaby.”      “Hi Randy!”, they respond.

Why the sudden revelation?   There has been a lot of change in my life in the last couple of years.  Some wonderful, some not so wonderful.    I have found myself on the verge of tears but something inside me stops me – something that has stopped me for 60+ years.

“Men don’t cry,” I’m told.  “Crying is a sign of weakness,” I am reminded.  “Suck it up, buttercup,” I am mockingly told.

Growing up, I was ridiculed by the other kids because I would cry over little things.  I just could not help it.   One particular classmate was merciless in his taunts.

Looking back, I know that this was the beginning of my attempts to be stoic whenever these situations came up.  It comes from a deep troubling place in my life, which one day I will share in detail.  It’s nothing horrific, but I missed out on  a huge part of my childhood because of the responsibilities that I was asked to take on being raised by a single mom.  More about that later.

I remember sitting in a movie theater watching Forrest Gump, and right after Jenny dies, my daughter Jessica turns to me and asked “Are you crying?”    My immediate response was a quick denial.  She knew different.   I was in a dark room thinking that I could hide the emotions that had come out unexpectedly.

Most times I can hold it in really well.   When my mother passed away, I should have broken down immediately.  She was my mom after all.  But I needed to be strong to help out my dad, who for quite a while was in a state of shock.    So during the days leading up to the funeral I held it in, being the strong one for my dad, my brother, and my half-siblings.  I delivered the eulogy, and although many people in the chapel were crying, I held it in.

Fast forward to five years later, when my dad passed, I became the default head of the family, so of course, I had to help plan the funeral and arrange for the closing of his estate.  One  more eulogy, one more tear less event.    It was so tear less as a matter of fact, that I was accused of not caring for my dad because I was not distraught.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.    It’s just that it was expected (or so I thought) that I put on the facade of a person that had it all together and made decisions without emotion.

The problem is that when you hold it in for so long, you never know when it is going to come out.  Something totally innocuous, like a sad picture, some melanchonic music, or a fleeting memory will make me just flat out burst into tears.    During moments when I am really tired, or really sick, those emotions come to the surface and they want to come out.   This is certainly part of the issue I have had in the past with battling clinical depression.

It’s getting better, though.  I have a loving wife who has convinced me that it is ok to cry.  It’s normal.  It’s not unmanly.  In fact, it is an important coping mechanism.   We have been together a long time, but it is finally soaking in.  It’s OK!

So look at me.  A crybaby, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I can say that I cried at my daughters’ weddings as I gave them away.  I cried at the birth of my grandchildren, at the loss of my dogs over time, and I was a crying fool when I watched the ending of “Coco” with my family last Thanksgiving.

Today, when I heard of the shootings in Florida where 17 kids (so far) were killed, I shed a tear, especially when I found out that two of the victims hit close to home.  They were part of the Young Women’s program that my daughter’s friend is involved with at church.  As the tears came, I realized that the wall was coming down.

Why did it take so long to realize this?   I don’t know, but maybe I will go have a big cry over it.

The title of this blog may sound demeaning when you consider that this is a reflection on the life of an amazing person.  I chose to call it that because for many people that went to school with him, Ralph Alvarez was the class clown – the one mimicking Mr. Heil, the semi-permanent substitute we had for a while our junior year, the one who ran through a pep rally in full Jerry Lewis style, or the one drawing a mildly inappropriate cartoon that made a comment on the conditions at school.

I was quite shocked when I heard of his passing.   When I shared this news with friends, they also were quite taken aback.  We always wondered what had happened to Ralph, and now we find out he has passed and we  have no way to reach out to him to tell him how he touched our lives.

We all have our wonderful memories of Ralph.  When I asked for people to share their recollections, most people recalled what a great talent he was.  He went to state finals with his rendition of “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot.   Anyone that ever saw him perform pantomime in Speech competitions were enthralled with his precise and very effective movements.  I can still recall his interpretation of a Charlie Chaplin piece, “The Great Dictator” which just gave you the chills.  Even if you were not familiar with the movie, his pantomime told the story in an incredible way.

Many of us saw his wonderful cartoons and caricatures.  He did a parody of “The Exorcist” which he called “The Abortionist” which was drop dead hilarious.  My one regret is that I did not get to hold on to a sketch book that I had of his with pages and pages of his drawings.    He came by my office one day, about 10-12 years after graduation, and asked if he could have it back to use as a portfolio of his work.  Of course I gave it to him, but I honestly wish I had made a copy.

He had a unique way of punching through things that were too serious.  We once had to perform a record pantomime in class as part of a project.   He and I had done “Santa Claus and His Old Lady” by Cheech and Chong which he nailed.  Most of his record pantomimes were so funny you didn’t realize how well he was mastering the recording. Our speech teacher, Miss Griffing, told us all we had to do a serious song lip sync, and she made sure that Ralph got the message that this was strictly serious, no kidding around.

We did not know what to expect.   Curtains opened, and he sat there in a chair, with a smoking jacket, holding a pipe, looking all sophisticated.  The song was “This Guys in Love with You” by Herb Alpert.  Word for word, line by line, he lip synced that song and he had us in awe!  He was doing it!  Playing it straight.  Expressing every emotion that is in that song.   Until . . . it came to the part of the song where there is a short trumpet solo.  Without breaking character, he held the pipe to his mouth, and pretended he was playing the solo on his pipe.   We lost it.  We were rolling on the ground  in laughter.  When the solo was over, he went back to playing it straight and really showed us how to do it.  We expected Miss Griffing to be quite upset.  She just shook her head, smiled, gave him an A, and went on the next student.

I think Miss Griffing had it in mind that she was going to make Ralph be serious at some point in his life.  It was no secret that Ralph did not want to wear our bright orange graduation robes for our various Senior activities.  If I am not mistaken, she either bought his robe for him or had it made available to him, which she forced him to wear at our Senior assembly.    Ralph had a serious part to read as part of the ceremony.  He was given  his lines, and told to say those lines and nothing else.

The day of the event came, we all did our part, and it came time for Ralph to do his speech.    He came to the podium, stood there silently for a few moments, and then said, to the entire crowd assembled there, “I feel like a spokesman for Sunkist oranges.”   Of course we all lost it, and I will never forget the look on Miss Griffing’s face – a combination of anger, laughter, and resignation.   He then went on and did his portion of the program perfectly.

One of his dearest friends, Pat Grissom, mentioned that Ralph had a photographic memory.  I never realized that, but now I understand how he learned his lines (and everyone’s lines) so quickly.   He was also quite smart.    Pat mentioned in his recollection that he and Ralph were a debate team at El Paso Community College, and in one tournament they beat the #1 ranked team in the nation from USC.  Apparently Ralph did his argument on school reform in his Vincent Price voice.

We all expected at some point that Ralph would have been a successful artist or performer.  For whatever reason that never happened.   But to consider his life a failure would be to shortchange him as a person.  Ralph was a kind dear friend.    He was always so positive, even when things around him weren’t always good.

When he came to pick up his sketchbook, he found out that I had just gone through a divorce.  His words of encouragement and understanding meant the world to me at a time I was having a difficult time.

A story about him was shared with me by my friend and primo Joe Alanis.  Joey and Ralph were neighbors and grew up together.  He mentioned that he could never get Ralph to give up his street shoes to play ball, but he knew every word on every George Carlin album.   (My first instance of hearing about Al Sleet the Hippy Dippy Weatherman was from Ralph, not the record)  Anyway, Joey mentioned that the only one of his classmates that gave him  a graduation present was Ralph.  It was a copy of Winnie the Pooh that belonged to Ralph, and he presented it to Joey with a personal inscription which is too personal to share.    That is the Ralph I knew.   That is the Ralph that those of us who had the pleasure of being around him will remember.  I am embarrassed that I lost touch with him, and that I never said these few short words I’ve written here face to face.

This story is also called Goodbye to the Clown because that is the name of a play that most of us that were in Speech and  Drama are familiar with.  The imaginary clown in the play helps the young girl get through the trauma of the loss of her father.    Ralph was that way in a lot of ways.  His humor, his kindness and his caring helped carry us through school and those difficult emotional times that we call high school.  He never let us get down and he certainly never let us take ourselves too seriously.

Thank you Ralph.  May you rest in peace, and may you make the angels laugh.

Today would have been my dad’s 84th birthday.  He taught me hard work, mechanics, carpentry, frugality, and even a few new cuss words I had never heard.  When other kids were playing, he had my brother and I working on cars, busting down swimming pools, helping around the house, and any other chores he could come up with.

He was far from perfect, as most of us are.   He had an inherent mistrust of people, a bit paranoid at times, and quite insecure as well.    You see, he grew  up being largely unwanted by his family, and it took a lot of time for us to break through that wall.

He spoke a lot about his boys, my brother Art and me.  When I went to claim my dad’s remains and make funeral arrangements in the little town of DeBerry, Texas, his neighbors, friends, and fellow church members knew all about Art and me, even though we had never met them.    My dad spent a lot of time talking about us.

I call this post Happy “Dad’s” Day because this man was my dad, even though he was not my biological father.   From day one of his marriage to my mom we never used the word step-father or step-sons.   When we asked him what we should call him after he married my mom, he said “call me Don.”    We asked if we could call him dad (my brother and I were 10 and 8), he said that would be ok.   We never called him anything else.

On Father’s day this is the man I think of, not the biological father who chose to leave us when I was two years old, never to be seen again.  Thank you Dad, for loving us, protecting us, and showing us what a Dad should be.   I hope I make you proud.

Miss you.