Enrique's Writings

 Family dinner was perhaps the most important time of the week for our newly blended family. It was the one occasion when both sets of children truly spent time together, a chance to reconnect, share stories, and catch up on everything that had happened during the week. With children of such different ages, those moments were rare and precious. Saturday dinner became our shared promise: no matter what, we would all be home for family dinner. My youngest son had what I can only describe as a sunny disposition. He radiated warmth, with a natural friendliness and an enviable tenacity. These qualities made him a joy to be around. His creativity and playful sense of humour drew people in, helping him make friends easily, at least under familiar circumstances. His determination quickly became legendary in our household. I remember when his school organized a chocolate bar fundraiser and asked students to sell door to door. He approached the task with relentless enthusiasm, knocking on ev...

We, my family and I, and the family of my friend and colleague were granted, ministers permit to come to Canada as government sponsor refugees. Our jobs as a human rights lawyers had put a target on our backs. To protect us the Canadian government sponsored our immigration. The two families traveled together. Shortly after our arrival, and thanks to local contacts we had secured through our work in El Salvador, organizations such as the Jesuit Centre for Social Justice and the Inter Church Committee for Human Rights in Latin America, we were able to connect with a supportive community. Through these relationships, we secured a house where the two families could live together in community. Our new home in Toronto was in a neighborhood on Jones Avenue near Danforth Avenue, in what is known as Greektown. There was relief in finally having a place to call home, a space where uncertainty began to settle into something more stable, more hopeful. Once we had housing, our next step was to regi...

 Everyone in the family knew the object, even if no one could say with certainty where it had come from. The older siblings remembered it on the mantel above their grandparents’ fireplace, as fixed to that living room as the house itself. It looked ancient; the wood it was made of had been polished by time, and its sharp edges had been rounded by the passage of years. It was older than memory. Its brass plates on each of the side pieces were polished and, at the same time, marked with little dents that added to what had once been decorative symbols engraved in it. Each of the wooden side pieces was about forty centimetres long, three wide, and about one centimetre thick.  The two side pieces were attached at the top by a bolt. Their extension was guided at the bottom by a fine curved piece of wood attached to each side. The curved piece had a little bolt attached to the side pieces that made the two side pieces wider or shorter through a small guide cut through the centre, all...