I was twenty, my father gone, and I had nothing but a duffel bag when I walked into that shelter. That first night I lay on a cot and stared at a can of white paint on a shelf. The label read 'touch-ups.'
I thought: so this is me now. A touch-up. Something to be painted over and forgotten.
But the shelter gave me a bed and a meal and two months of quiet. I enrolled at the community college with a loan from a stranger who believed in me.
I'm eighty-five now. I've installed air conditioning in half the houses in this border town. My niece is learning to drive in my old truck — she stalls at every stop sign and curses like her grandfather did.
She reminds me of my own first uncertain steps out of that shelter. That paint can taught me something: touch-ups aren't cover-ups. They're the honest work of keeping things whole, one coat at a time.
I'd tell my younger self: that night is not your final destination. It's just a touch-up before the real work begins.