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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
My two sons, Aaron and Emiliano, have been very blessed to have a loving and caring long term, super tight friendship with four beautiful, intelligent and loving young men. These young men’s; Levi, Jerome, Andrew, Joel, along with Aaron and Emiliano, friendship has survived all of life’s usual and unusual trial and tribulations. This past weekend they got together for Andrews wedding. I was the designated driver and father witness to this majestic affair.
Aaron and Andrew have known each other for 30 of their 32 years. I remember, like it was yesterday when I was one of the fathers that volunteered in a San Fernando Valley Pre-school Cooperative that first brought these two boys together. They became friends quickly and today remind best friends. We would move to Ventura County when Aaron was ready to begin kindergarten, but even then the two kids loving friendship always found a way to get the boys together. Living in the city of Ventura my two boys, Aaron and Emiliano flourished. It was in this wonderful community that my boys met Levi, Joel and Jerome at Anacapa Middle School. The five boys became best friends, and almost immediately Aaron introduced Andrew to the crew and they welcomed him wholeheartedly. They would all graduate from Ventura High Schools. This was an intelligent and caring group, who had been primed by their parents and influential mentors in their lives to pursue a college education. They all enrolled in college and today all of these young men have a college degree.
It was in high school were these six teenagers would begin their tumultuous passage into young adulthood. By this time all six friends had survived the acutely painful experience of their parents divorcing. Each one of these youth was now being “shared” and influenced by the divorced parents. It was painfully clear to me that the divorce experience deeply hurt and effected each one of these young men profoundly. The coping mechanism to deal with the pain and alienation of the divorce varied with each kid. A couple of the boys went over the edge and developed nasty and long term drinking and drug problems that over the years cause devastating pain and anguished for the youth and the folks that loved and stuck by them. A couple of boys just wanted to “quit life” and so they descended into acute self-imposed psychological exile. For years these young men disappeared, taking their anguished and loathing along with them into a ghostly world of doubt, mistrust and despair. My son Aaron, on his way to becoming the President of the United Stated was struck down with acute Multiple Sclerosis.
It was a long dark period, between the start of high school and the end of college, which these youths experienced and somehow survived that turned them into young men. As I noted earlier each of these six young men successfully completed their college career and received their hard earned degrees. None of these middle class kids had a job, or even necessarily a realistic idea of what they were going to do to make a live after college. After college life this six men/children were again alone, frightened and not quite sure where to turn next. I remember they all seemed at time to be jaded, lost and without the necessary fire to take on the world. These six frightened young men were in their early to mid-twenties. I secretly feared and prayed for the light and thunder to subside in their collective future.
Then one day the sun began to rise slowly. Two of the young men got married after they completed college work. As expected they initial faltered, but quickly with the help of the loving spouses the two young men turned their lives around. These two young married couple found that unconditional love can turn even the dysfunctional couple into a focused and nurturing family unity that can overcome even the most imposing obstacles, including keeping the nuclear family together and united.
The other four young men play the bachelor “game” into their thirties. The fear of commitment and failure seemed to be a singular challenge for these young men. Instead these four men turned to careers and individual life challenges that faced them. They had to work out their own unique set of problems, there was no hurry, and so they are their time before in “jumping” into a serious relationship.
So I was thrilled when my sons announced to me that Andrew was getting married. It came as a surprise to all of us. Andrew was the “special” friend, the one that could get into trouble the fastest, the one that would not finish anything that he ever started. Andrew was the kid that we all worried would have the toughest time in adjusting into “responsible” adulthood. Yet here we were this weekend witnessing this wonderful young man exchanging wedding vow with a beautiful, accomplished and loving young woman. At one time or another I have been blessed to be a “surrogate” father for all six of these extraordinarily wonderful young men. I am a blessed father figure to six incredible young men, and I give thanks and praises to God for giving the opportunity to a part of their lives.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.
