For most of my life, or at least as far back as I can remember, my dad and I have bonded over everything. From books to movies, music to journaling, Papa and I have always seemed to have an endless array of topics to choose from and dive into together. Most of my playlists are made up of songs he recommended and he asks me for tips on how to improve his reading habits almost daily. He is my best friend, my ultimate sidekick and my everything person.
However, even the most close-to-perfect relationships seem to always stay at just that — almost perfect, but not entirely. While Papa and I share almost everything with each other, there are some topics we never touched with each other. Among these lies the topic of sports.
I am not a sporty person. Never have been, never will be. Papa isn’t either, not really. But his lack of innate athletic ability (Although I don’t want to sell him too short, he did bike a 100-mile marathon a few years ago which will never cease to amaze me) doesn’t mean he won’t sit down for hours on end and watch a football match or a Sunday Formula 1 race. He may not be an athlete, but he most certainly is a sports fan. I, on the other hand, am not.
Now, I did play volleyball for six years as a kid and I even tried my hand at soccer, although the latter attempt only lasted four months. And while I wasn’t the worst volleyball player ever, you would never catch me dead watching a volleyball match on television. Nor a tennis open. Nor a basketball game. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Sports as leisure amuses me as little as possible.
My lack of athletic inclination was never a problem for me growing up, or at least I didn’t think so. I never had many male friends nor were my female friends all that into sports. Those who were weren’t outwardly bothered by my apparent disinterest in anything sports related (I’m sorry if I was a boring friend in elementary school, Isabel. Thanks for preserving my feelings and never saying it to my face). As I grew older, though, this disinterest began bothering me and I didn’t really understand why. That is, until one gloomy Sunday morning.
***
On a gloomy Sunday morning during my junior year of high school, I awoke to the pitter-patter of raindrops drumming on the windows of my childhood bedroom. The first thing I did was check my phone. “9:00 a.m.,” the screen glared back at me. As I slowly regained consciousness, I became aware of a British-sounding voice and the faint sound of zooming cars coming from the living room.
As I got out of bed and rubbed my eyes, I began my slow descent downstairs to the center of my house. The first thing that came into view was the first thing that always comes into view: Papa, sitting on the large, black armchair he purchased for himself to put in the living room as a throne of sorts a few years ago. His legs were perched up on a low, wooden stool and he was wearing his fuzzy, black bathrobe. I began walking up to the sofa next to the armchair. Papa slowly raised his freshly brewed cup of coffee to take a sip as I took my seat next to him. Nonetheless, amid all the familiar sights and smells, Papa was accompanied by a television program I wasn’t all that accustomed to walking in on.
“What are you watching?” I asked him innocently, ignoring what was so obviously in front of me on the television screen.
“Oh, just the Formula 1 race. I watch these every Sunday,” Papa replied.
Every Sunday? What? This interest of my dad’s had been unbeknown to me until that gloomy Sunday morning. If we always discussed everything together, how come he’d never discussed these races he insists he watches on a weekly basis with me?
For the first time, I felt my lack of athletic inclination posing itself as a setback in my life. My relationship with my father was mostly perfect, or so I believed. The fact that he had chosen not to share his habit of watching Formula 1 races every Sunday morning with me tainted our relationship ever so slightly, making it feel less than perfect. But my mind could not comprehend this because Papa and I had the perfect father-daughter relationship, or so I’d thought until that point.
After this realization, I made it my mission to rectify mine and Papa’s close-to-perfect relationship. It had been even more perfect once, so I figured it could most certainly be even more perfect again.
***
Around a year later, the time to decide where I was going to spend the next four years of my life rolled around. The infamous college decision process was coming to an end! After years of saying that the University of Michigan was my dream school, I decided that Ann Arbor was in fact the perfect college town to spend my first four years of adulthood. Although my decision was mainly rooted in the fact that I thought the University and Ann Arbor were the perfect place for me, there was an underlying motive I would be remiss not to mention: Papa.
Papa graduated from the University in 1996. Born a Wolverine at heart — my paternal grandfather also graduated from the University in 1963 — Papa always knew he wanted to attend the University for his undergraduate degree. More than this, though, he has always been a huge fan of what every single U-M student and alum is: Michigan Athletics.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a single athletic bone in your body, nevermind if you don’t understand any single football rule or technicality (I sure don’t). Whatever the sport, whatever the athlete, if it has to do with the University, U-M students are there.
And so is Papa.
And apparently so was I.
Now, I don’t mean to be manipulative, and there are many reasons beyond athletics and Papa as to why I chose the University as the institution to complete my four years of undergraduate studies. But ever since I found out that Papa seemed to avoid sports talk with me since I was uninterested in it, I had made it my mission to reinstate our mostly perfect father-daughter relationship, with sports talk most certainly included.
***
As I near the start of my fourth and final academic year at the University, I am left with many a memory to reflect on. Tailgates and game days and late-night talks with my best friends and study sessions until we all slowly crash seemed like a bottomless luxury at the beginning of my undergraduate career three years ago. However, now that the end is nearing with every passing day, I am left to reflect on my most cherished memories and what I will miss the most about my time in Ann Arbor.
While I will definitely miss everything that I’ve come to associate with my lovely college town and my unrivaled, absolutely epic school — the game days, the sleep lost, the friendships made, the go-to spots discovered — I know the memories I’ve made will live long within me. But there’s another aspect of my college experience that I’m going to simultaneously miss and cherish forever, mainly because I know it will never dissipate like the traditions I’ll be forced to leave in Ann Arbor will.
When I decided to come to the University, I knew that the special bond I had with my dad would only strengthen. We already talked about almost everything — from books to movies, music to journaling — but there were some topics we rarely, if ever, touched, the main one being sports. With my decision to enroll in the University, that inevitably changed.
Football Saturdays were a holiday in my childhood home for as long as I can remember as a result of Papa’s inextinguishable obsession with his alma mater. Now, they continue being a holiday, but one that we cultivate, share and talk about together. Every new player addition to the Michigan Football Team, every season won or lost, every game played, we sit and talk through it all together, as we do with mostly everything else. While I must admit that Formula 1 races aren’t really my thing, the University certainly is, and that is one of many things I have in common with my father.
My relationship with Papa is one of — if not the most — special relationships I have in my life. My dad is my number one fan and supporter and my right-hand man.
Papa, thank you for teaching me to cultivate my hobbies and my passions and to not be afraid to talk about them loudly and proudly. I love you more than you will ever know.
Te quiero mucho,
Statement Summer Managing Editor Graciela Batlle Cestero can be reached at gbatllec@umich.edu.
