What Phrases Did Your Dad Install On You?

Somebody asked me this week what phrase my kids are going to hear in their heads when they’re 40. That’s the kind of phrase I argue we repeat so many times that it stops being just words and turns into ideas within our children. I answered fast, which was kinda surprising to me, and also not, because the answer was already sitting there waiting I guess. “Está bueno, está bueno” I responded, which is basically what I use to avoid saying anything too-adult around the kids.

It’s like it’s fine, “está bueno”, it’s good, we’re okay, whatever this is we can find something in it. It is honestly the closest thing I have to a religion at this point, and I say it constantly, in the car, at the table, over spilled things and broken things and hurt feelings and Tuesdays, over “spicy” temperaments, you know what I’m talking about. I’ll use it for a plethora of situations, but mostly to absorb things, as a stoic acceptance or resignation of things. I’ll use it for boo-boos and blood. I’ll use it for things that are actually good for everyone. Or that’s what I tell myself it is. I don’t know, really, I think it’s mostly inoffensive. “Vastitas” is what I say to myself, and “está bueno, está bueno” is what I exteriorize or externalize openly.

This question though, really stood up a bunch of dust for me, a dust storm really, because I immediately thought about my father and my upbringing… mainly because the phrase I received was different. Very different. And I’m sure the ones you received are particularly interesting too, or if you are lucky, you don’t relate to this, lucky you. Anyways, back to my father.

My father used to tell me, repeatedly and humorlessly, very seriously, “honra los genitales.” Honor your genitals. Honor the fact of being a male, be worthy of the equipment, be a man about it. At least that’s what I think he used it for. I remember it used to be like a barrage, in repetition, which makes it sound alliterated, like a machine gun, “muchachito, honra los genitales, honra los genitales!” and he would use it just as I use my “está bueno”, for anything, I was walking too slow, “muchacho, honra los genitales”, I would get into trouble with my mom, muchacho, honra los genitales, I would complain about something, I would not do something or I would need to put more effort towards something because the results were not up to his standards, muchacho, honra los genitales, like…

It’s funny for about a fraction of a second and then you probably hit a WTF, and then you think a little about what it actually does or could do to someone affected by this type of rhetoric, used in the long term, and, at least for me, the feelings of heaviness creep in. I mean, that’s all we parents do nowadays, right? We measure ourselves and our behavior towards our children into how traumatic they might or might not be. So yeah, I got that “honra los genitales” every time my dad wanted to point out that I was not up to his standards, whatever they may be, those are still undefined for me to this date. Or not, actually. Ultimately I feel like he used it whenever he wanted, positively or negatively, and it still made me feel very strange either way, like all of it converged into the same something.

Another thing that super blows my mind is that my dick and balls are the one thing I got for free, at birth, by divine luck, and I did no work for it, I was just born with this package. I did not earn my genitals. I did not earn them, which is hella confusing too because I feel like I have spent the whole rest of my life proving my father that I deserved to have my genitals in some shape or form. That’s so fucked up, “Está bueno, está bueno” I would say at this shit now, a very fucked up paradox.

Nobody ever told me how much “honoring” was enough, either. Which I think affected my self-esteem, whether I want to admit it or not. There is no afternoon where anyone in my family said “listo, ya, you honored your dick and balls, you’re done, now you go sit down and rest and enjoy being a man. Thanks, son!” That type of language only gave me trauma that looks like a bill or an invoice, as a duty? What is even the teaching? No, really. I asked my father about this at some point and he said he didn’t remember, and it felt like literally the wildest gaslight I’ve ever received from him, he’s almost at 90yo so there’s not much for me to do about it but I tell you something, my sister was never told to “honra los genitales”… that shit is no bueno, the patriarchy and the machismo at full effect, and the craziest part to me is that nobody in our house thought they were doing anything to me or my sister, it was just something men said to boys and everybody nodded and smiled. My mother certainly has never said anything about it, I might get “spicy” myself and call her after I finish writing this to see what she comes up with. Should be one of those “está bueno, está bueno” moments too.

I wrote something a while back about the fictional characters who raised me, Goku, Dr. House, and Guts, and Superman, and Saitama, and the Master Sword and Mjolnir (both only let you pick them up if you’re worthy), and I framed my whole upbringing thing as a story about the men or paternal figures who weren’t around, like the anime came in and filled a hole. But almost every one of those stories is about a guy proving he deserves to be there, earning the right to be himself, earning something he already had, so they didn’t really replace my father, they continued him, in a much better or colorful dialect, or relatable way, with soundtracks and swords and arcs. I didn’t escape the instruction or him for that matter, I just upgraded its packaging and got to feel like I chose it.

Somewhere in there, along this big mess, I built what I thought was the opposite phrase with Está bueno, está bueno. And between us, I am (was?) pretty proud of it, because it looked like I had flipped the whole thing in one generation. My dad handed me a nasty bill and I was going to stop that there. But a phrase has settings, no? A phrase can do the unintended. And mine isn’t that clean, I’ve realized it has two settings, mainly by dissecting my father’s effect and affects on me, because this is not about my father, really, this is about me, and you, and parents, and what we install, the phrases, the ideas, the behaviors.

Even when I want my “Está bueno” to mean you are enough, right now, at rest, nothing required, nothing owed, the world is not asking you for a payment today, I don’t have the guarantee that it’s going to affect and be received like this. I think my está bueno can also mean okay, okay, that’s enough now, please wind it down, please bring whatever you’re feeling into a range I can be around and that’s a lid. I think that my está bueno could be a mock of certain absurdity around something. I think that my está bueno could be irritation and politeness disguised as sternness, like a nice guy, not the kind guy. And overall, I really don’t want to put lids on my children, especially not with a phrase as ephemeral as está bueno, hell, my eldest got some of that and limiting our loved ones is never the way. That way I’ll end up installing the same insufficiency that my parent was alluding to, won’t I?

Children are not just listening to what you say anyways, right? These kids, they’re measuring how much room you have for them, how they are feeling around us, and they’re very good at it, so good at it, better than we are, because for them it’s survival information. And again, if you go back and remember, as a child, all of these ideas and paradigms, don’t they just click for you? Do you remember? Do you remember how your survival was shaped by these phrases from the adults around you, repeated, constantly, again and again. These soundbites now have much more color for children than what we think about, don’t they? I know mine were, I know which adults wanted to deal with me and which did not… perhaps I didn’t know I was doing that at that time as a child, but that’s what I’m talking about. Adults that put that lid on me, they all shaped my survival just as my está bueno shapes the survival of my children and whenever it becomes pervasive, a limiting factor, I think then our phrases become garbage. Which is not surprising to me, because in general, garbage in, garbage out, is real, and our parents did a mostly garbage job in many areas with these phrases and ideas and “old-school” ideas, for whatever the reasons they were and the information they had, and their capacity. My dad was an orphan by the way. He could blame upward all day, but he doesn’t (honestly, I don’t know what goes inside of him), but he did his best with what he had, considering.

So what’s the fix, a better phrase? That’s where I was going with this, I think. Something cleaner, something that can’t be used as a lid. And that’s wrong, and I knew it was wrong while I was typing it, because a phrase is what you reach for when you don’t want to do the whole thing, really. My father had a 4-word phrase instead of teaching me anything about being a man, literally. It’s kinda ironic that I started this dissection of my father’s phrases, thinking mine were so much better but it turns out these phrases are never going to replace sitting on the floor at 8pm on a Wednesday with a kid who is coming apart. These phrases are cheap parenting, or non-parenting.

My dad was an orphan, he did his best with what he had, and his best still costs me, and arguably the people around me, almost 40 years of proving something to a man who doesn’t remember saying it and who knows what else happened with and for my self-esteem. So doing your best is not a defense. It wasn’t for him and it isn’t going to be for me.

So anyways, no more phrases. Mis bendis, mis bendiciones, they don’t need me to have the right line loaded and ready, they need me in the room, looking at them, and willing to say the ugly thing out loud when the ugly thing is the true one. My kids also need to hear me say esto no está bueno. Out loud and with care. This is bad, this is not okay, I’m angry on your behalf and I’m not going to find the good angle right this second.

And you, if you have a phrase, and you do, everybody does… just notice it. Notice which one you reach for. Notice what you were skipping when you reached for it. I’m not even telling you to stop, I don’t know your house but just look at it.

And to the original question, I honestly don’t know how each of my children would answer this. What phrases did your dad install on you? I have no clue and now I’m so curious. Perhaps this is worth having a conversation, or not, just like it happened for me, I don’t want to go wrestling emotions and rustling feathers and bringing up old dust… hah!

My father handed me a bill I was never going to finish paying. I’m trying to hand my kids ground instead, ground to just roam, be free, to live however they choose to live, the kind that’s just there, that doesn’t ask what they did today or ask for receipts. Shaky ground is shaky ground whichever way you want to look at it! Whether I actually pull that off is not something I get to settle by writing an essay about it, and honestly, essays are the easy part, just like our little phrases and catchwords and quotes. This is the stuff that gets decided on a Tuesday, en el calentón, in the heat of the moment and in a tone of voice I’m not fully in control of yet.