Lupe

      

                 So as a kid my home life was very dysfunctional, I have talked about my home life before and I will again at some other time. My next door neighbors were the Sanchez family. They basically adopted me as a child, I ate meals with them, I played with their children, and I went along on family adventures. Lupe is the father in this family, and in case you haven’t figured it out by the name they are of Mexican descent. The love and guidance I received from them helped to shape the best parts of me; they were under no oblation, had no requirement, and gained nothing of a financial nature from me in fact I'm sure it cost them money to have me as a guest  so often. I have a great debt to the whole family, and in the future I will write about the family a lot.

           
 I just got off the phone with Wally and the conversation I had with him got me thinking about the last conversation I had with his father. It had been ten years or so since the last time I saw Lupe and his wife, my god parents, and I was telling them how much what they gave me meant and how it must have been hard to have four kids and to have me around all the time, his response to me was that he had told the rest of the family early on that he felt that I was in need and to make me welcome in their home and life. When I told him about how sorry I was to have vanished for so long he said they allow people into their life for as long as they needed it, and were glad to have them. Thinking of this conversation and the man the words came from humbles me, this is what I think a father should be, not just a father, a man.