As we celebrate MLK’s birthday with time away from school on Monday, let’s remember that whatever freedoms we have today were paid for by the blood and efforts of those who came before us. Who do you want to remember, family or famous, who did something to contribute to the freedoms you enjoy today?

Around a hundred years ago my mom’s folks took a train from their town in Mexico to Southern California. I heard that they had also consider going somewhere in the Midwest, like Kansas, where other relatives had settled. That one decision would have changed everything. Just leaving their town must have been something. One of my eldest aunts was born on the trip in a town named “Get Out if You Can.” So the foundations of my life have the stirrings of all of these personal, cultural, regional and national ingredients, both big and minute, and after over one-hundred years you end up with a 64-year-old writer typing out these words in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

I come from a long line of hard working individuals who sacrificed a lot for the betterment of their families and didn’t settle for what others were settling for. Except for the family part (ouch), that kind’a describes my life story, in as much as I’ve always found myself striving forward to do better and believe in better outcomes. I definitely get that from my dad, who was the dreamer and hard worker and my more stoic responses to life’s setbacks would definitely from mom (who famously told us as kids when we came to her with scraped knees, “of course it hurts, that means you’re still alive.”!). All of them play a part in helping me have the freedom and opportunities that I’ve enjoyed in my life. Thanks mom, dad, relatives and other co-conspirators.