But no one asked permission to eat dinner, and no one slept in a shed, and no one else was deciding their lives for them.

And on a high shelf near the doorway, Alvin noticed the small rusted iron key.

“Why do you still keep that up there, Dad?” he asked.

Manuel looked at the key, and then at his wife, and then at his son.

“To remember something important,” the old man said, and he did not reach up to take it down.

“What’s that?” And Manuel answered with the wisdom he had paid so dearly to earn.

“That a home can be registered under your name,” he said, “but it stops being yours the second you let other people make your decisions for you.