Wake up, mijo.

"Wake up, mijo (son).   I want to talk to you," he'd say.  "Meno, Ray, Jeff, you too, get up.  I want to talk to yous."  It would be about 11pm and we had been sleeping for about two hours.  I could hear my mother in the background saying, "let them sleep.  It's late."   "No, I want to talk to them...just for a few minutes."  My dad would say.  "Come on guys, get up and come to the kitchen, I want to talk to you."  

He used to do this about once every six months when we were little.  I look back now and think that it was probably the ten o'clock news that would spark something inside of my father, and get him thinking.  He would feel the sudden urge to tell us.  Right then.  Even if we were sound asleep.  We'd all stumble into the kitchen, half asleep, feeling like we were in trouble.  The look on daddy's face was not one of happiness.  Yep,  it was definitely anger.  But we didn't know why, until he started to talk. 

"I wanna tell yous something."  You guys don't know what it is like to be poor. "When I was younger, I had to start working at the age of 11 so that I could pay for my own haircut.  Because grandpa would only get us crew-cuts, and I got tired of getting my head shaved."  Then he would go on to tell us about the different struggles he had in life.  I'd stll be looking at him, trying to figure out what this was all about, trying my hardest not to break eye contact.   But it always felt like he was staring at me the most.  He would often cry while telling his story, and sometimes we would be crying too.  But here is what he'd always end with...

"And don't you ever, EVER, treat anybody differently because of the color of their skin, or the way they talk, or where they are from!"  "Do you know why?"   And we would stare at him, not sure if he wanted us to answer with a 7 year old answer.  If you've ever seen an Arroyo angry, you know that our eyes get really big.  And there we were in that 4 seconds or so that were passing very slowly, and one of us would say softly, "No."  Then he would say,  "because some day it is going to happen to you.  And you're going to know what it feels like.  And it hurts."  

After about an hour and a half had passed, my mom would say, "O.k. Manuel.  It's late.  Let them go to bed."  "Alright, come give me a kiss good night."   And we'd all line up and give my dad a kiss and go to bed, still not exactly sure what happened.  Now I get it. 

He was speaking from the heart.  And it had an impact on ours.