(2/3) “One day I found a box of old love letters that my dad...

(2/3) “One day I found a box of old love letters that my dad had written to my mom. They were romantic letters. They said nice things. I was surprised because I’d never seen him say those things. All of that had disappeared before I was born. My father had never told me anything about himself. Everything I know about him, I learned from my mom. She told me that the romance had been an act. She told me that she later realized he was a very cold man. But Mom always told me that we shouldn’t blame him. She said he had a very rough childhood. His father abandoned the family when he was very young. His mother married another man, and sent him to live with an uncle. She raised an entirely new family and left my father behind. He had a very lonely childhood. So my mother always told me: ‘You must not blame your father.’ She told me that always. Especially after she got sick.”

(Santiago, Chile)