Carlitones

Así llamó a mi querido primo-hermano Carlos; Su padre, mi tío Carlos, lo llama Carlitos como también lo hace su madre Titi (hermana de mi madre y mi tía-madrina); Para añadir a la confusión, su primer hijo también se llama Carlos y lo llamamos Carlitos (o también le llamamos Chez); Pero yo llamo a mi primo-hermano como siempre lo llamé desde niño: Carlitones. Porque aunque era tres años menor que yo, siempre fue más apuesto, nadaba más rápido, era más arriesgado y por supuesto esquiaba mucho mejor que yo. Fue Campeón Nacional de Esquí Acuático con tan solo doce años.

Mi papel, como primo mayor, fue siempre protegerlo cuando estaba presente pero al final no lo pude hacer; No porque no estaba presente sino porque es el inescapable destino de todos: Lamentablemente, Carlitones ya no está con nosotros; Ha partido a otro plano.

Una de las cosas que siempre admiré de Carlitones es que sabía que tenía una vida privilegiada, la cual compartía cuando era posible; Desde una entrada a un concierto o un viaje a Chuspa, con bellas sifrinas, en su vehículo 4×4. Su forma de ser podría ser calificada como “El Hedonista Mecánico” —Asi lo titulé en un escrito de mi último viaje a Venezuela—

En realidad su actitud laissez faire lo ha debido ser un gran jefe inspirando responsabilidad y crecimiento personal. Pudiera no ser muy aparente pero fue también la forma como crio a sus dos hijos Chez y Alejo, productos del gran amor de su vida, una bella mujer que lo acompañó en las buenas y en las malas, hasta el final de sus días: La Gallega.

En una de sus visitas a California fuimos a esquiar en nieve, a uno de mis lugares favoritos: Squaw Valley en Lake Tahoe. Fue una de las actividades en que fui comparable con él porque fui adicto a esquiar en nieve. Nunca tuvimos la oportunidad de esquiar en Las Leñas, Argentina como lo habíamos planificado antes de mi skiing misfortune. C’est la vie!

Hace cuatro años fue la última vez que nos vimos, cuando me visitó con mi otro primo-hermano Juanin en mi actual residencia en el Sur de California. Hizo una parrillada espectacular y como sobró mucha comida, la compartió con un sortario grupo que estaba jugando cartas en la piscina de mi residencia. Tanto él como Juanin estaban usando trajes de baño tipo Speedo que en California solo lo usan los maricones (o los nadadores de competencia), resultando en situaciónes muy divertidas.

También fuimos a mi oficina y a almorzar en el muelle más bonito del Sur de California: San Clemente. Logré que mis primos usaran mis camisas de trabajo, las cuáles les quedaron grandes pero resultamos vernos muy cómicos y por supuesto también muy guapos.

Como decía nuestro tio Juan: —Al cual nunca lo vi leyendo una Biblia o visitando a una iglesia (excepto por un bautizo, una comunión o un matrimonio)—

Amaos los unos a los otros.

Juan 13:34-35 —
¡QEPD querido primo-hermano Carlitones!

9/11: A shocking day for our great Nation; And an awful day for me!

One World Trade Center

Courtesy of https://www.architecturalrecord.com

If you have previously visited my blog, you know I wrote with great passion about the original 9/11 in A Change of Seasons.

This year, I feel like a personally devastating 9/11 is happening to me. You see, on Labor Day I met with my paralegal; she was notarizing my signature to end my marriage of 37 years! I am a romantic at heart, and even though she could file the final divorce papers that day, I asked her to wait until 9/11 so I could say that I was legally married to beautiful Mik for 37 years —Mik: nickname for my ex-wife Sally, that I gave her after she corrected me; her maiden last name McFerren is pronounced MikFerren and not MacFerren— Even though we were legally married at the Santa Ana courthouse on 8/12/1983, very few people knew about it, we consider our actual wedding day to be 9/10/1983, when we were married in the suburbs of Akron, Ohio, at a little church, where Mik’s parents, family and friends worshipped. We actually did not celebrate with our California friends until we returned from Ohio —We hosted a great party cruising on the Kon Tiki in beautiful Newport Beach harbor—

The last two and a half years have been awful, but we had 35 years of wonderful marriage. So why are we divorcing? It seems I was getting too mean! Mik would disregard my skiing misfortune handicap and make me late for all my personal and business appointments; a trait that does not define me! As a matter of fact, people know that if I make an appointment with them and they’re five minutes late and I don’t hear from them, I simply leave. I resolved that issue by telling Mik that my appointments were ½ hour earlier. But I am the male of the species and I have to take responsibility in the matter: We mismanaged a lot of money, and Mik decided that the best solution for my immediate future, was to retire me to a nursing home; Of course, after the wonderful life that I had been leading, I didn’t like this proposition at all. That and some financial decisions which I didn’t agree with, turned me mean again and she filed for a legal separation after avoiding marriage counseling that I had proposed. Because of my condition, I might end up in a nursing home after all, but at the age of 55, I wasn’t ready for it. I guess we have irreconcilable differences.

But not all should be considered doom and gloom; We have two (adult) children: A handsome young man and a beautiful girl (I know she is now a young lady, but she will always be my beautiful girl) . And I was able to provide a great life for them and Mik. They grew up in heavenly SoCal and I have always been able to provide great homes for them. Our children are not saddled with student loans and they attended well-known universities, including studies abroad. I was lucky to be able to provide financial resources, most of the time, and Mik worked as she pleased or not at all whenever possible. We were also lucky to have exotic vacations in my native Venezuela, Spain and Hawaii as well as the beautiful US southwest. All my material accomplishments were always accompanied with immeasurable love.

No matter what the future holds, I will keep telling my doctors and therapists, our families and friends and most people I meet that I wouldn’t be alive without the love and attention that Mik provided me during my recuperation from my skiing misfortune. I have always been a pretty active guy challenging myself in marathonic sports events and it could not have been easy to see your spouse almost die and with many tubes coming out of his body while in the ICU and reduced to a severely phisically handicapped person thereafter.

So what will I do know? Will I reinvent myself? 2020 has taught us not to make detailed plans because they can be unexpectedly derailed. One thing that I know for certain is that where two magnificent towers stood side by side, now a gleaming skyscraper has been proudly built. Alas, it stands by itself!

A Change of Seasons

September is a great month for sports. Baseball’s pennant races are heating up and the excitement of the World Series is just around the corner. The NFL and College Football previews are mind-boggling and a great distraction for any arm-chaired quarterback getting a leg up on his buddies.

The beaches of Southern California are at their best. The throngs of tourists are gone. The waters of the Pacific are still warm and somehow seem cleaner and more inviting. It is a great time to perfect bodysurfing tucks or to just horse around on the boogie boards with the kids. If I am lucky, I may even squeeze in an epic ocean kayak paddle with my water-dog friend before the winter storms exile me to the snow of the mountains

When September rolls around, there really is only one sport that consumes me: Coaching my kids’ Soccer teams. There is the challenge of learning 25-odd names and faces and the quirks that go with them. There is the sense of accomplishment of organizing reluctant parents into a circle of friends who turn into rabid Soccer fans every Saturday. There is the joy of meeting previous team members and friends on the fields. There is the pride of winning games and the satisfaction of turning losses into lessons of sportsmanship. September means coaching Youth Soccer and it is always a magical time of the year.

I can sense the changing of the seasons. My Sunday mountain biking rides are getting more pleasurable. The unbearable heat of the summer is almost gone. Cool, overcast mornings are soon replaced with glorious sunny afternoons that intensify the great feeling of being in the outdoors. This September there is another change in the wind. It is not crisp like the autumn air. It is not radiant like the equinoctial Sun. But it is more palpable. It is easy to feel it in the horrific pictures replayed on the TV, in the disturbing headlines of the newspapers and in the strident chatter of the radio.

Something is changing. It is history itself. Like watching the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall or the failed anti-Gorbachev putsch that signaled the disintegration of the Soviet Union, I find myself hypnotized, with the clear perception that an important historical event is unfolding right before my eyes.

I cannot help but share in the collective feelings of outrage, apprehension, reflection and determination resulting from the events leading to the now christened “First War of the Century.” Pundits and talking-heads seem to have all the solutions and provide us with multiple scenarios of how the future might unfold. But nobody
knows; History is fraught with remarkable, unforeseen events. I do know one thing: Next September will be a great month for sports!

Originally written 18 years ago, before I discovered BlogSpot and WordPress.

The Run for the Roses

In case you don’t know, the Kentucky Derby is also known as “The Run for the Roses.” Why? You see, the winning horse gets draped with this beautiful rose garland. And what a crazy horserace this year’s Run for the Roses was!

First of all, the track was a muddy mess, making the outcome more uncertain; The Triple Crown races —The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes— are for young horses only (3-year-olds, teenagers really), and most of them don’t have experience with muddy tracks. Second, it was won by a DQ; In all of 145 years of Kentucky Derby history this has never happened. If you had bet on Country House to Win you would have collected a cool +$132 on your $2 ticket (one usually gets cents on this kind of bets). Most people think Maximum Security was robbed (myself included). It was so crazy even the Donald got involved.

I have a longtime tradition to watch the Triple Crown races (and making personal bets) with Mik —That’s my nickname for my beautiful wife; it goes back to when we were dating: I learned her maiden name and mispronounced it as MacFerren; she promptly corrected me to MicFerren— We watched the race at one of our all-time favorite places, Stadium Brew while sipping mint juleps. I asked the pretty bartender to dial a couple of sports screens to the race, so we could watch it. The manager went one step further and turned all the TV’s to the Kentucky Derby, with sound, which is not usually done!

Someday, Mik and I will attend all the Triple Crown races. She has promised to wear an extravagant hat; All I have to do is to get hammered and lose exotic bets. [Insert emoticon or emoji here] © Mik and I, had also agreed that this year we wouldn’t have a Triple Crown winner before learning about this development.


By the way, I came across this video while watching sports documentaries, during my early-day warm-ups with one of my caregivers; Even if you don’t like horse racing, it’s well worth watching for its amazing story.

¡Si Va!


Courtesy of Flickr: Rex Gray

By now, everyone should know that the NCAA Men’s Basketball team from the  University of Villanova is better known simply as ‘nova. And that they won this year’s championship in a historic tournament run.

What most people don’t know (unless they were of driving age back in the 70’s) is that Nova was also a Chevrolet brand for a pedestrian car that was fairly successful and like all Chevy’s, were most-of-the-time reliable, relatively inexpensive and stock cars that could be converted into powerful beasts with a few modifications..

“No va” means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish and there’s a urban legend that the car didn’t sell well in Latin America because of its unfortunate name; Nothing could be farther from the truth, the Nova sold fairly well in my native Venezuela. As a matter of fact, my family owned one in that puky dark-purple color. Although, I didn’t inherited it, one my older half-brothers did; And he drove it for many years.

After Villanova advanced to the Final Four, I made a comment to one of my college BFF’s that was rooting for ‘nova, letting him know that his chosen team ¡Si va! which of course means,“yes it goes,” in Spanish.

So why was this year’s Villanova’s win historic? It all there! But let’s not forget that it could have been a ‘villaneous’ game if the point differential would have been the same as in the first few minutes!