Mi papa....

Today marks the anniversary of my Father's death.
I miss him so very much... and think of him everyday.

 He and my mother were divorced when I was a young child, and I wasn't able to visit with him often because while we lived in Chile, he lived first in Mexico City and then in New York City as a diplomat for the UN. However, although he may not have been privy to the day to day of my life... he was never absent.

I spent many wonderful times vacationing with him at the beaches in Chile and Mexico.... to this day, a "real vacation" for me has to include the beach. Also, it is in the sounds, sights and tastes of Mexico that I think of him.... just as in the streets of New York City.
Mi papa.
He was also a painter, and a poet.

He took my sister and I to museums and galleries and the theater... as well as clam digging in upstate New York, shopping at the mercados in Mexico-strolling through Chinatown or Chichen Itza, browsing through the street wares of artists in the streets of Mexico and through the treasures found in the weekend street fairs of New York. Life with my dad was always interesting and fun.

My father, Luis Olivos Ruiz de Gamboa, had a huge influence in me, and in how I spend my days in my present life.

When he died, I felt the whole world had been pulled from under my feet. I was just graduating from high school, and had plans to move in with him and study up north. I was devasted. Lost and broken.

It has been many years since he died, still- I miss him.

I think of him often. And I believe it was he who brought Sergio to me- he knew the joy that Mexico brings to me and that it brings me close to him...so what better way to bring Mexico to me in DC than via a Mexican painter/partner? It is funny, yet I deeply believe that it was my Papa who orchestrated our meeting...

Papa, te amo y pienso en ti...siempre.