Love at first sight is a terrible thing. A worn romance novel trope that has somehow convinced people that it transcends the page. But no matter how bad it may be, I am forced to admit that it exists, at least in a select few cases.

The story starts at a Baptist summer camp in Texas. I don´t know the place or the year, the details always seemed unimportant, but I do know the scene.

Campers were preparing for their final concert, getting ready to show their parents what they spent their summer at camp, doing. A small teenage boy with flaming red hair and cartoonishly big, round glasses looks across the crowd. His eyes catching on a girl a couple years younger than him with short, curly brown hair. Talking to him now, he can´t recall what it was, the way she looked, hearing her sing, but in that moment he knew she was the person he was going to marry, even telling his parents so.

This is the love story of my parents. The teenage boy, my dad, is now a middle-aged man with the same mop of bright red hair, only with a spot missing on top. This story was the start of many things,but it is also the catalyst that made that awkward teenage boy into the man that has had the greatest influence on my life.

My parents married young. They faced the struggles of being married through college together, until my dad was faced with the decision of dropping out to make sure that my mom was able to continue on and get her degree. He was a man well acquainted with sacrifices, and he made the decision easily. After dropping out, he fully focused on his job at the local newspaper, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, delivering a paper route, a job that had him driving through the night and into the morning.

Growing up on a farm, he took to the work well, and being a very talkative and easy going person, he was well liked. He naturally excelled at the job, and even without a college degree he was making a life for my mom and him.

It is here in the story where I came in, a new addition to the family, another person to care for. We moved to Portales, and he took up the job of circulation manager at the Portales News Tribune. He was gone most days, working to make a living for his growing family which would eventually include my sister. He did what was necessary, and I recognized what a man, a father, does for those he loves. We eventually made another move up to Clovis, with him in the same position at the Clovis News Journal.

It was in my senior year at Clovis High School that I came to truly recognize the effect that my dad had on my life. The core of who I was and who I wanted to be was formed around the things that I had grown up seeing my dad do so easily, the unshakeable work ethic, the way he talked to people,giving them his complete attention, and most of all how quick he was to make necessary sacrifices. As I was looking at my future with anxiety and stress, he was there to help me dissect how I felt and gave me the ability to form a path on what I wanted out of life.

He was a strictly conservative, Southern Baptist man, and growing up I stuck fairly close to this,but it was during my last year of High School that I started to diverge. It wasn´t a rebellion, rather me going out on my own search for truth, and though most parents wouldn´t encourage their kid to question the faith they grew up in, my dad sat there as I expressed my doubts and struggles with religion, with a warm and encouraging expression. His love was completely unconditional. I knew that our relationship was in no way dependent on my decisions or the direction I chose to go. He is a large part of the person I am today, and I am ever thankful.