Emeterio Was My Dad, And So Too Was Stan Lee

My father was an immigrant, a dreamer, a gambler, a hero, a broken man. Like all of us, a bevy of contradictions to say the very least.

He was a cop in Cuba, before the Castro regime. He had a wife and three sons, and fell in love with a girl half his age. He'd seen her grow to womanhood, and then marry another man. She carried a child, and then watched that child grow. Until that young woman's husband died of cancer, just as the insurrection swept like a tide, leaving questions, contradictions, imprisonment and death in its wake.

Art had to be state sanctioned, property was repossessed. Friends and family arrested and killed, or disappeared from one day to the next. And a woman with a young daughter, with no education or skills to barter her life with in the service of the state, became afraid of the days which loomed ahead.

In steps my father to save to save the day. By hook or by crook, or the methods in between, he got her daughter out, and his sons too, who then were able to claim their parents on humanitarian grounds.

So that's why he's a hero, because all this was no mean feat. Captain America kicked Nazi ass, but the Castro regime still stands today. My dad did what he could, giving them the middle finger salute, all the way from the shores of Ellis Island.

My father was an elderly man. At least, that's how I remember him. I don't remember him having a job. I just remember him visiting once or twice a week. Because he was still married when the affair commenced in earnest.

That affair took its toll in lives disrupted. A woman with a broken heart, caring for a child mostly on her own. An unruly child with temper tantrums and hard to control. Fights I could hear from my bedroom, desperate, clinging make up sex I inadvertently walked in on, curious why the familiar noise had stopped.

My father was a champion poker player...who loved to play the ponies.

Poker is a long game. It's one of small wins and losses, and then small wins again. And even if you possess that rare ability to count cards, and keep it all in your head, (and from the accounts I've heard of my dad's play, he most certainly did) it ain't like Rain Man. There's no system that's fool proof. But he was good enough to buck the odds, enough to let them win, so they'd come back another day.

But he loved to play the ponies. He liked the action, the big payouts, and the long odds that made his winnings sweet.

Of the people who knew him, someone once remarked, if he'd been alive today, with all the Poker Tournaments, and the legitimization of the game... he'd be a millionaire.

But maybe not. Because my dad was always smart enough to set some money aside. Enough to meet his obligations: to buy his food, and to pay his rent.  He had enough to buy presents and toys and comic books for me. But he died without a penny to his name. All I inherited was a brass ring whose gold patina had faded, and the cubic zirconium stones long since gone cloudy and dull, but which he never took off his hand. 'Cause he liked the long odds. So he took it all with him, and left with just a pretty corpse to mourn.

I'm grateful to him. I see the flaws now. I see the heartaches, and disappointments, and my the reasons for my mother's patience wearing thin. This is a life that demands so much from you. So much more than just a dream.

But I got my ability to dream from him. The dreaming was his legacy to me. 'Cause my dad liked the long odds, and I guess I do too.

He used to ask me, "When I'm a millionaire, what do you want me to buy for you?" And I answered, "I want an animal of every kind! I want a dog, and a cat, and horse, and a dolphin!" And the next day, a pekingese puppy showed up to call our place home. I remember when he died I asked, "Where is Snoopy? I can't find him anywhere?" And my dad replied, "Snoopy was sick, and we had to send him to a farm where the air is pure so he can get better."

God bless you dad. Because I believed you at the time.

My dad was a dreamer, and so now I am too. He bought me  comic books, which my mom didn't see the sense in. They were "funny books", and beyond that, I don't know what she thought. Was she afraid they would corrupt my mind? Was she afraid they would fill it with trash? Did my father know what he was doing? Filling me with an insatiable curiosity to read? Or was he simply indulging a son, in the sunset years, of his last journey through fatherhood?

Regardless, that's how I discovered Stan Lee. Stan taught me to love the written word. It helped that Jack Kirby and John Romita were there to make the words palatable. They kept the story moving. They gave it breath and life. But Stan would look at the thesaurus, to find another word to say what he meant. He banked on his readers insatiable curiosity to find what it meant. And he wasn't wrong. It's how I learned to read.

He wrote EPIC stories: about Galactus, a force of nature; the eater of worlds! And he wrote of a power far greater: the will of man to stem the tide of chaos and steer destiny by the reigns.

He wrote of a young man, not much older than me, who in a fit of selfish pique, caused the death of his uncle, and learned we are all responsible for so much more than ourselves. At least that's how I took the lesson, "With great power, comes great responsibility", whenever I stopped to dwell.

He wrote of a Doctor, searching for a cure for himself, and a way back to his old, selfish life. What he found was enlightenment instead. I think the Rolling Stones still said it best: "You can't always find what you want. But if you try, sometimes, you get what you need." (Ahh yeah)

And in the midst of the civil rights movement, he wrote of a group of teenagers, shunned for no other reason, than being unique.  And I could relate to that.

Stan Lee not only taught me to read, he taught me some of literature's great themes. Those themes that resonate in your heart, because they feel true, and color the way you view this world.

I have learned to love the written word, and now here I am writing some for you.

I was illiterate before I picked up my first comic book. I was shy, and introverted, and wanted nothing more than to be not noticed by anyone on either side of that aisle between the teacher's desk and ours. I lived in a world where I din't know anyone, having moved around from time to time. I lived in a world where the only thing constant, was that my parents loved to fight.

But I learned how to dream: past the shouting, and the fighting, and divorcing, and the getting back together again just in time to see my dad pass away.

I learned how to dream, and express those dreams, in terms which I could control.

In that respect, I'm luckier than my dad, though not as skillful by far. I have to work twice as hard for everything I do, when it seems to have come so easy for him. But I recognize where my talent lies. And the same cannot be said for him.

He never knew Damon Runyon, but I knew Stan Lee. These word I've shared today, are all because of him.