ABSTRACT
I continue to reflect on some of my father’s values of acceptance and compassion regardless of one’s skin color, religion or sexual orientation. From him I learned that “everybody bleeds red”, “all roads that lead to God are good”, and “we are all God’s children.” In the current essay, I relay a piece of his story through brief sketches of his parental figures as related to me; they were physically absent, emotionally abusive, resilient or divine. His story, like all of our stories, highlights the age-old questions of nature verses nurture, the influence of parents and the immutability of early experiences. Despite his upbringing, or because of it, he became a capitalist and a Christian.
