My name is Anna, and the man who raised me works for the city.
That fact has never embarrassed me. Not once. But on my wedding day, I learned that some people quietly decide a person’s worth long before they ever hear their story.
My father, Joe, has been a sanitation worker for as long as I can remember. He wakes up before the sun, leaves the house while most of the world is still asleep, and comes home tired in a way that settles deep into the bones. He has done this job with consistency and pride for decades. He never treated it as something to hide. When people asked what he did for a living, he would simply say, “I work for the city. It’s honest work.”
I grew up believing that.
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