I had a hard time figuring out how to start this post. I am still battling with the fact that my father was at one time a matador, the father that tucked me in bed night after night as a little girl. After I hung up the phone with him, I felt the need to look up the definition:
Mat-a-dor [mat-uh-dawr] : noun
1. the principal bullfighter in a bullfight who passes the bull with a muleta, and then in many countries, kills it with a sword thrust; a torero.
After reading it, I didn't get the answer I was looking for but then again, what exaclty am I trying to solve. My own disbelief maybe, the idea that my dad could actually kill a living thing. If you know my father at all, one of the biggest character traits that he has is his love for animals, his gentle nature with all things living. So what would have provoked him in his early twenties to become a matador, to get into a ring and fight till death? Maybe I needed to start from the beginning.
My brother and I always knew my father had an interesting past, especially as a perpetual bachelor growing up, however there were some things he kept hidden, quiet, left to stay buried. Shane and I were snoopers, snooping to find bits and pieces of my father's stories. This led us to many, many places some expected, some unexpected. We did not expect to find a long, slim, slightly curved sword in a box taped up in the corner of the garage. There it was, hidden, sealed, forgotten but why?
My father since he was a young child aspired to be a bullfighter. Something around the novelty of the sport and the
torero excited him. He recalls that by the time he got into his early twenties, he started writing to a popular instructor in Juarez, Mexico. He needed a mentor who could properly train him and be a
subalterno (student of the bullfighter) to learn everything he needed to become a matador himself. He met him on the boarder of Arizona and Mexico to discuss not only my fathers interests but the dangers that go into the skill of bullfighting. My father was determined to give this a shot eventhough the risks were high and death was always a factor, sometimes it was the the bull, other times it was the fighter. As he trained it consisted mostly of leg work and various movements that help trick the bull and help the matador get control of the ring and the audience. Not only was this a sport but a performing arts skill that was necessary to stay alive. When my father's instructor felt he was ready to face a bull and make his first debut, he announced it to the city of Juarez. Of all the practicing my dad did, not once did he face a bull. Stepping into the ring, he only got one chance. This was the moment, the ultimate test to prove he was a matador, an athlete, an artist and among all else, a survivor, to live to tell the story.
Dad made it through his first fight and did many more after, killing 6 bulls in total from Juarez to Mexico City. For my sake and my brothers, he gave up the sport, headed back to Arizona to enroll in college to live and work like everyone else. He can though, look back and remember the days he was a
Matador de toros (a killer of bulls), a hero, a survivor and a performer. He can say he accomplished something not many men would ever dare do or survive to tell the story. He did what Ernest Hemingway dreamed of achieving and often wrote about, but never had the determiniation or fearlessness to actaully step into a ring. In that sense, my dad became a hero to me.
That sword is still in a box, packed somewhere in the garage in Arizona, but still often sparks tons of conversation, just like the picture attached. It's not a past my dad likes to take us back to often, saddened by the bulls he did kill but he carries through knowing it was for the art of the sport. As I look at my father, I find it hard to believe that he was once in a bullring as a matador killing bulls in Mexico but when I close my eyes, I can take myself there imagining what it must have been like. The crowd is cheering, the wind is slightly blowing, dessert dust is in the air and the announcer introduces the fight. My father is in his sequinced sliver uniform, standing tall, walks into the ring and bows to the audience while the bull is eagerly awaiting to be released, to charge at him. As I picture this moment, I feel the rush and understand my father and his dream to be a matador, to escape the reality of everyday and enter into a world of survival, art and mystery, a place only few will ever know. In that moment, my father became the matador I have read about, a piece of the puzzle that has helped make him who he is today and still the father I have always remembered.
