Hey there, it's Nick. Today we have something a little different. A story told in three parts in collaboration with our friends at the podcast, everything is stories. All the names have been changed to preserve anonymity.

I remember, holy shit, I haven't thought about this in ages. I was at my dad's when my parents were separated. I was at my dad's house, rooting through stuff in his bedroom, because I was being nosy.

I'm in this little walk-in closet. In this closet, I had found this box. A black box, sort of like what you would find, really fancy dresses in.

I opened it up and there was all these tiny little black pouches in it. I opened one of the pouches out and shook it out. It was going to sound so crazy.

But it was like emeralds and jewels. Tons of black little pouches and maybe six or seven in each pouch. The ones that I remember most clear was emeralds.

I put it back in no big deal. A couple of weeks later, my dad had given me a ring that had an emerald in it. It was gold.

I remember he had to put tooth floss or something around it because it wouldn't fit me. I felt so proud because it was the first jewelry my dad had ever given me.

Real jewelry that wasn't a little heart or hello kitty. I remember being 9 or 10 and for about a year or so thinking, okay, my dad had to jewel her. Maybe he imports emeralds from Columbia.

So, you know, and sells them to jewelry places here. And I really couldn't tell you at that time what my parents did for work.

From radio to opia, you're listening to Love and Radio. I'm Nick Vanderkulk. Today's episode La Retirada, part one.

You know, he was the kind of dad that like got us like power wheels. You know, like my sister had like a Lamborghini power wheel and I had a Jeep Cherokee power wheel.

We had like our rooms where we had two separate rooms that were like decked out with everything. He gave us everything we wanted. He like pretty much spoiled us. He was a good dad.

I grew up with him up until I was about like eight years old. We didn't live together, but he lived in the same neighborhood as my mom.

When you talked to my mom, she could be like, I was fucking scared out of my mind and I she didn't convey it to us. When you say with my mom, I'm gonna get a lot from it.

Cause I don't know the shit. These are the questions that you'd expect someone to have asked, but like, I've just never asked them.

Did you want to go over the name stuff? Remember mom, we're not using our names.

But I have to change the names. Well, that's what they're gonna. I don't know how you guys want to do it. What's the name mom that you like a lot, but isn't connected to in any way to you?

Make a Rossio. That's my best friend from the maker power now. Rossio. Yeah. The last name.

Um, this is called Gomez. Yeah. Rossio Gomez. Rossio Gomez. I write it down so I could remember.

Hi, my name is Rossio Gomez. I'm the mother of, um, just a Jeff, a Jeff, a kid. Don't even worry about the left. Okay. My son name is Jeff. My daughter.

I got out so early from the Dominican Republic when I was only 11 came to New York.

We came here and I remember it was knowing and my own, my aunt had the used to live here and they came to the airport with coats first time that I wore a coat.

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