So to recap. My mom had just laid on me over a meal of delicious tacos that the place where her and my dad met was down the street from this shady taco truck.

As I looked at it in awe, hearing the music playing from inside. I’m feeling whole…finally whole.

I start firing questions at her.

Now, my dad. Is an odd fellow. Ive always felt like I was unable to ask him anything, so I never did. So now I really know nothing about him… its sad. And this was my first opportunity to learn a little more.. and I was always too scared to ask my mom about him and her because I knew it always made her upset, and when she compared me to him it made me upset which is funny because I ended up being a spitting image of him. The quote “I will never end up like him, behind my back I already am” comes to mind. Fallout boy. Love it.

So I ask how it all went down.

Now, apparently my mom would go to this night club with my grandma and my grandma’s close family friend Mirna and they would go out dancing. For a second I try to imagine what it looks like.. the lights, the outfits, jeans are not allowed, everyone has to be dressed up, the atmosphere, liquor all of it. And im there. Almost 30 years before where im standing now my parents met.

So she would go there often with my grandma and family friend and they would dance. And my mom as gorgeous as she was would always find different people to dance with, what have you. But out of the corner of her eye, she saw a silhouette of a man with eyes on her. And she those eyes for weeks, maybe even months. Sometimes the eyes, turned into footsteps, into action. But, those eyes, that man always retreated because she would find someone else to dance with and he would lose courage. Hit and miss.

She didn’t know it at the time, but my dad was working at the time cleaning floors trying to make ends meet, and he would have his friend Pedro at El Bahia, always looking out to call him and alert him that she was there that night, and if she was he would race over for that opportunity to speak to her, and if she wasn’t he had no interest in being there.

This went on for months. Until finally..

They danced.

The right moment, everything fell into place and on a Friday night their fates were intertwined. He asked her out to a show for that Sunday, his dedication had finally paid off.

Now at this part, thinking of how my dad sat on the wall waiting for his Mrs. Right, always bowing out when another guy stepped up. I was immediately back at my 8th grade-highschool years thinking of all the girls I wish I could have danced with and never did.

I was my father.

I was that silhouette.

Outside of a shady taco truck, tears filled my eyes thinking about it.

I turned away so my mom couldn’t see, and even now tears swell my eyes thinking. “How could a man, who devoted so much time and effort just to dance with a woman, a stranger. How could they not be together forever? How could they not keep it together to raise his future son together. To watch him grow together under the same roof instead of a weekend at a time.

It broke my heart.

But none the less. This is my origin.

How did your parents meet? Was it on a dance floor? Who initiated the conversation?

How did you come to be?