The beginning...

Today, I buckled a helmet onto my oldest son’s head as he prepared to ride his bike — no training wheels this time. I held my youngest in my arms, his tiny fingers gripping my shirt as we stepped into the sunlight for our daily walk.

A simple moment… yet somehow, it felt like everything.

I paused.

I watched.

And in that quiet space, it hit me:

I am living my dream.

I get to be a father to two beautiful children. I made them — not just through biology, but through love, through vision, and with the strength it took to become the man I once only hoped to be.

And just realizing that… brings tears to my eyes.

Because not everyone gets to live their dreams. Some in fact spend their whole life chasing it with no avail.

But here I am. Becoming someone I dreamt that I would be one day.

As I watched my son pedal forward, wobbling slightly but pushing ahead, something in that moment took me back — back to a Vietnamese six-year-old boy, newly arrived in a foreign land. I couldn’t speak the language. I didn’t understand the culture. I felt lost, small, and uncertain in a world too big for me to navigate.

Then I met her — a beautiful stranger with piercing gray eyes. A woman who would embody the soul of our great country — through her compassion and her fire. She would teach me about our beautiful country I now hold so dear.

A woman with open arms, smiling as if she had known me all my life. That was Grandma Juanita. And in her embrace, I found something I didn’t even know I needed: home.

She didn’t need words. Just love. She only knew that she loved me, and that is all that mattered to her, and it was unconditional.

That moment didn’t just comfort me — it changed me. It rooted me. It showed me that love did insist in this world, and that even a place filled with darkness light existed.

That was the beginning of everything I would one day become.

Now, as I walk beside my sons, guiding them into their own journeys, I carry her love with me. Her grace. Her resilience. Her kindness. She taught me that family isn’t just who you’re born to — it’s who shows up for you. And now, I get to show up for my children. I get to give them the same foundation she gave me — one step, one laugh, one hug at a time.

"The greatest gift we can give our children is roots and wings." – Hodding Carter

My grandma planted a kind of love that doesn’t fade — not with distance, not with time. It lives deep inside me.

And now, it lives in the hearts of my children.

This is more than fatherhood.
This is legacy. This is purpose.

And in the quiet, golden moments — helmet fastened, sunlight dancing on the pavement, laughter echoing in the breeze — I realize:

I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

We don’t just live for ourselves.
We live for the ones who raised us.
For the ones we raise.
And for the ones still to come.

Flash forward 30 years, and my beautiful grandmother is now battling dementia and Alzheimer’s. But I refuse to let that define who she is — or everything she’s given me.

Just like how she refuses to forget me.

I am the one person in this world she still recognizes instantly. My voice still lights something up in her — it perks her up, pulls her into the present. And in those moments, even if the world around her is unfamiliar, I am still home to her.

Her memory may fade… but her love?
It’s already become a part of me.

It lives in every lesson I pass on.
Every bedtime story.
Every moment of patience.
Every whispered I love you.

Because real love doesn’t vanish with time.

It echoes. It shapes.
It becomes legacy.

Because real love doesn’t forget.

It becomes legacy.

It becomes you.

So if life feels heavy, and you’re questioning whether what you do even matters — remember this:

The smallest moments today… are the ones they’ll carry forever.

Love loud. Show up. Keep going. Live Life.

Do it, for the ones who went ahead.