My dad was a hippie.
I don’t know when it started, but ever since I’ve been aware enough to perceive it, he started to transgress.
He started early in my life, sharing his teachings with me like a true master. First, with his ideas of revolution and idealism: Che Guevara, the revolution, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the "Nunca Más", awareness of democracy, and the spirit of struggle. Then he continued with energy work, ethics, consciousness expansion, and UFOs. With his poems, his metaphors, and his stories.
I also remember when he started turning it into actions. He loved fishing. He had bought himself a rigid boat and would always go alone to some lagoon in Argentina. He would come back at dawn with dozens of silversides to clean and lay them out on the table. Sometimes, my mom and I would go with him, and she would sit and knit on the little boat.I was so young that I never got to see that live and in person, nor to remember it.
When I was eight, he sold the boat and bought his first motorcycle.I’m not sure he even knew how to ride on two wheels. I remember the three of us went together in the car to a store and he rode back home on his new bike like a champ. It was a low-displacement one, a shiny blue Suzuki 100. Before long, he traded it for a blue Yamaha Virago chopper, one of those where you ride half-reclined like a true biker, because evidently, that’s what he wanted to be.
Now that I start to piece it all together, he was a hippie, and I think he had always dreamed of that.
He put two black leather saddlebags on it, matching handlebars with hanging tassels, and that’s how he would pick me up from school. It was the ’90s. That wasn’t as common as it is now, at least not at the private Catholic school my parents sent me to.
The idiot kids in my class would tease me about how big the helmet looked on me and say,— Here comes the biker girl…They didn’t get it. The fools.
Looking back now, I understand so much: my dad was always a rebel and had always wanted to be one.
One day, he asked me for a tooth and made himself an earring with a gold inlay of my tooth. And, of course, he pierced his ear, since, as a proper man, he didn’t have it pierced. At that time, men didn’t wear earrings the way they do now. It was weird, but he couldn’t have cared less. The next step was getting a tattoo: he got a scorpion for his Scorpio sign, and underneath, my two names: AYELÉN ALUMINÉ. We went together to do it. My mom wasn’t too thrilled—what if he ended up encouraging me? Of course, he did.
Almost no one had tattoos back then, except the rebels. We didn’t know it, but it seemed like he was one.
I don’t know when it happened, but looking at it now, it’s as if at some point, he had gotten tired of something. I think of this hypocritical society we live in.
Then he separated from my mom and moved into a boarding house with an extra bed where I could visit and stay over. I became friends with his friends, and we spent Christmases together with the people from the boarding house.I loved visiting him; we all cooked together like a family. It was my second home.
Now that I think about it, it wasn’t so different from how I live now.
He started listening to cumbia villera- an underground popular music- when it was just beginning to emerge, and that was yet another form of rebellion. He bought himself red Topper sneakers and began traveling alone, always to the mountains.
He dyed his hair when that wasn’t common either. He would spike it up with gel like a teenager when, in reality, he was 50 years old.
He was modern. I used to get mad because I wanted a more “normal” dad, more boring, more formal, more aged. I never told him that. He probably would have made me understand that I shouldn’t have given a damn about that.
Then the Menem era hit, and like many others, he lost his job. He started working night shifts as a factory worker in a brass plant, busting his ass like everyone else, and that’s when he became even tougher and more combative.
When he was older, he got another tattoo. This time, he got the Grandmothers’ kerchief filled with butterflies, and, on a roll, he also tattooed “TO VICTORY ALWAYS” and “LOVE CONQUERS HATE.” He suggested we get matching tattoos. I said no. Now I regret it.
Ever since he met Néstor, he became a Kirchnerist, and even more rebellious, more political, and even more Argentine.
The only time I ever saw my old man cry before he died was when Néstor passed away.He called me on the phone, crying like a child. I got scared—I thought someone had died. And yes, someone had—Néstor had.
From that moment on, I became a Kirchnerist too, and we started taking to the streets together—to fight for our rights and to celebrate our victories. We went to protests together; he never missed a single one.
Life was tough on him, but still, he was a soldier, a warrior, and a wise man. He taught me so much—almost everything I am. Even now, as I relearn certain things, I realize he had already taught me those lessons long ago.
Now that I put it all together... it was obvious: he died the way he lived—always rebellious, always stubborn, always idealistic, always a hippie.
Now I understand why, when I asked him to do things differently, he almost never listened to me. How did I not see it before?
That was it—he was a hippie and my greatest teacher.
Who do I take after? I don’t know—you tell me.
_________________
Happy birthday to the sky. I always remember you with gratitude and so much love. With all your flaws, you were a very wise man. You still are light and a guide.
I honor your path, old man. I dedicate these words to you in the language you taught me. Always until victory, colleague!
♡
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