Grandma taught me anyone can be family

Homes like this one are typical of the kind I used to visit with Nana Rafaela.

Nana Rafaela always believed in the importance of visiting family, and that was also the case with people she called family but may not have really been.

“That’s your tio go say hi mijo,” she would whisper into my ear. I never questioned her introductions, but as I turned older, I began to second guess the number of tios and tias that were really in my family. They must have had some kind of…