One of my earliest memories as a young child was waking up in the middle of the night and telling my parents I was thirsty. My father would get up and give me some water, and I would be afraid to go back to sleep. The place where we lived was an old garage in the back yard of an old woman's house, and when it rained you could see water running down the walls. The worst part was the rats, which terrified me at night. My parents were young immigrants, and my father worked very hard and we eventually moved across the street into a rental house, but it was a huge improvenent for us since it was a real house. A couple years later my parents were finally able to buy a house. It was a brand new house, very modest, but they were so proud. Both my parents lived in that house the rest of their lives. I wish they could visit me now, here at my home in the country, so they could see that they taught me about sacrifice and hard work, and those values have stayed with me all of my own life. I'm thinking about this because today I came across an old picture of our family that was taken on the day we moved into that new house. #grownostr #memories