😮 I removed the handcuffs from a prisoner and recognized the tattoo of my dead father. He died in Vietnam three months before I was born; I never knew him. 💔 And this 67-year-old man, accused of stealing medicine from a pharmacy, had the same military badge on his arm that my mother has had framed in the living room for forty-eight years.

me a real dad, not a bronze one. And an ugly part of me didn’t want him to stop. I didn’t care about Güero in his chair. I didn’t care about Lalo in his grave. I wanted more of MY dad. I wanted him for myself.

A daughter who’s spent her whole life praying to a photo, and it turns out that what she wanted most wasn’t for her dad to rest in peace. It continue reading …