Number one is my mother.
Always has been.
She’s got a good sense of humor, a high spirit, and somehow never gives up — even after everything she’s been through.
She feeds the neighborhood cats twice a day.
They’re not even her cats.
But if she skips a day, she feels guilty like she’s betraying someone.
She’ll send me random Facebook messages with emojis of Donald Trump dancing or the Grinch making faces.
She laughs at her own jokes before she even hits send.
She’s the first one to decorate the house for every holiday — Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
She’ll walk to Home Depot alone, buy lights or pumpkins or whatever she finds, and say:
“I want a nice holiday, even if you fuckers don’t like it.”
That’s my mom.
A little chaos, a lot of heart.
⸻
My other favorite person is someone who’s no longer here.
He passed away a year ago.
My old boss: Don Orlando.
He sold chorizo all over L.A., using his own recipe — a recipe he guarded more than his social security number.
His favorite phrase was:
“La vida es una chulada.”
Life is beautiful.
And he lived like he meant it.
This man created his own cheese from a germ he got from China.
Then he built a 3D printer out of:
• spare Home Depot parts
• an old monitor someone gave him
• and a printer from the 80s
He was in his 60s.
Before that, he had a construction company.
Before that, he learned English in the streets of Los Angeles.
I asked him once:
“How the hell did you learn English?”
He motioned to his mouth.
I said, “What?”
He said:
“I was hungry.”
Then he started laughing.
“If I didn’t learn English, I wasn’t gonna eat.”
That was Don Orlando.
Smart, stubborn, funny — and turned everything into an adventure.
Both of them — my mother, and Don Orlando — are people who moved through the world with soul.
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