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Seeking Children's Forgiveness, Journalist Pens 'Letters From A Father'

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The Associated Press

Published: June 16, 2008

MIAMI - A father seeks forgiveness for what so many men regret, missing key moments in his children's lives because he was too busy, too far away.

This father was there for millions of others -- veteran Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos is watched nightly by Spanish speakers across the United States and Latin America.

Now he is offering a surprisingly vulnerable love letter to his children, 21-year-old Paola and 9-year-old Nicholas, and publicly seeking their absolution.

In "The Gift of Time: Letters from a Father," released Tuesday in English, Ramos presents 15 meditations on his sometimes conflicting identities as son, parent, foreigner and passionate journalist - identities he admits he has yet to fully reconcile.

"After twenty-five years of living externally, pursuing the news, I've decided to give myself permission to pause for a moment and take a look inside," he writes. "For years now, I've blocked or avoided so many things that - at times - I don't even recognize myself."

His unwillingness to neatly wrap his life up is precisely what may make the Mexican native's words resonate with fathers and children across the Americas.

Ramos' sentiment is most palpable in his letter to Paola, who moved to Spain with her mother at age 3. Ramos only saw her several times a year until she became a teen.

He recalls when she asked why he didn't move to Madrid: "It was as if you were saying, if you love me as much as you do, then why don't you live with me?" he writes.

In the book, "I was trying to explain to her and, yes, to ask her for forgiveness," Ramos told The Associated Press. "I made a huge effort trying to be with her, but I know it was never enough."

This book is Ramos' eighth. A Spanish version was released last fall. In July, he will release a bilingual children's book about parents and kids, inspired by his relationship with Nicholas.

And he still hasn't quit his many day jobs: a nightly Spanish-language newscast with co-anchor Maria Elena Salinas, a Sunday news show and a syndicated newspaper column. He's also a correspondent for a news magazine and does daily commentaries for Univision radio.

Ramos said he felt compelled to produce something different as he turned 50; he struggled with his own father's death for nearly a decade; he divorced a second time.

Ramos said he reorganized his life in recent years to spend more time with his children. Yet he still wrestles with what it means to be a parent. He questions why he sought out such dangerous situations - bombings in El Salvador, a rifle to his chin in Afghanistan. At the same time, he is candid about the adrenaline rush and desire for truth that drove him to cover war.

He describes his homemaker mother as the ideal selfless parent. He also writes that for her, "something was missing. Something vital." When he went to college, she also began to take university classes, "and I couldn't help but think that my mother was living a sort of delayed youth."

Ramos said he published the letters because his struggles are like those of so many other parents.

"Even the richest, most powerful men and women in the world," he writes, "are paupers in the face of time."

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