A suit doesn’t make the man.

Roberto Rivera lost his father at a young age and started working even younger, caring for his sisters and his mother, my beloved abuela.

According to family folklore, in a scene straight out of Macondo, my grandfather died from a knife wound at a cockfight tournament. Even tragedy had its rituals.

Years later, I would come to realize that my happy-go-lucky father lived his entire life with severe functional depression—the kind that wraps itself around you so tightly that you drink just to breathe.

He drank every day until he died at 58. Still a kid waiting for Superman.

But the suit doesn’t make the man.

I remember how he cried when he found out I had taken catechism classes and made my first communion without him. One time, while sharing a cab with strangers, he bragged so loudly about his son in New York that the woman sitting in the front seat, half laughing and half exasperated, said, “It’s not like he is Victor Rivera.”

"You see? he responded without flinching. “She already knows him.”

For a long time, I believed I needed to be someone different: polished, put-together. Someone easier to admire.

I wore the suit, not out of shame, but because I didn’t understand the man who raised me. And now, at 58, with kids of my own, I’m starting to.

His love was vibrant and undeniable. His pride—a reflection of everything he longed to give but didn’t know how.

He didn’t always have the words. But he gave me the weight, the legacy, and the name to succeed—Victor.

And I’ve spent my life learning to own it—not as armor, but as something closer to truth.

You see, I’m still growing into my suit. Not the one I wear to boardrooms, weddings, or funerals, but the invisible one stitched together from grace, tears, and forgiveness.

From what I’ve lost and what I’ve found. From what I’m still learning to hold.

A suit doesn’t make the man, but the man makes the meaning.

I’m still taking measures.

Happy Father’s Day, Papi.