“Work comes before school,” my mother’s father would always tell her. She loved going to school and learning new things, but she couldn’t go until she finished her chores. She didn’t complain because she knew it was the best decision for her family. She knew her father believed in education but couldn’t afford to provide her with a good one.
“We didn’t have any land to call our own. We depended on land owners to rent their land to us,” my mother told me. Even after renting land, they couldn’t count on profits. The circumstances had to be just right. If it rained too much, their crops could drown. Too little, and they would dry out. Crop failure was common, and they just had to learn to accept it. To make matters worse, they had to come up with some sort of payment plan each to year to rent land in the first place. It always seemed like it came down to hope.
Although my mother had grown up around extreme poverty her entire life, she never gave up. My mother has always told me, “Siempre para adelante mijo, nunca para atras, ni para garar impulso.” (Always move forward my son, never take a step back, not even to gain momentum – [sounds better in spanish!]) I have grown up around that statement, but did not completely understand it until I began to hear stories of my mother’s upbringing.
By the time my mother was a teenager, she was the eldest in a family of seven siblings. Her actions would not only influence her life, but the lives of her siblings as well. Failure wasn’t an option. Her family was counting on her. In those times, you had to be close to your family, because they were literally all that you had in the world.
While I might think I understand what the word “poverty” means, my mother’s stories prove that I do not know the first thing about it. Books, movies, or even visiting an impoverished village would not do it justice. I don’t know what it’s like to look forward to meals of tortillas con limon y sal (tortillas with limes and salt) because it was the most substantial meal you were going to have in a while. I don’t know what it’s like to wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning and go work in the fields before going to school. What I do know is that I feel fortunate to have been raised with those values without having to live under the same circumstances that my mother did.
My mother couldn’t attend a regular high school because she could not afford it, so she decided to take a year-long sewing course after finishing middle school. She didn’t want to be stuck where she was, and felt this was her only option for a better future. Unfortunately, she couldn’t finish the course because she was offered the opportunity to travel to the United States with her aunt and uncle. The decision to leave wasn’t automatic since she didn’t know what to expect from the journey or what was waiting for her at the destination.
On one hand, her family was doing well, – in the sense that they were making ends meet – but on the other, she couldn’t see a positive future for any of them. “Taking care of one’s family” – that’s what motivated my mom to migrate to the United States. “My family was dependent on too many variables. That is why, as the eldest of my parents’ children, I felt a responsibility to help them, even if it meant traveling, by foot and in cramped buses, across two other countries to get to the United States.”
Hearing my mother tell me this helps me understand why I have always felt a responsibility to my family and their success. I will always try to my hardest to ensure that my family members never experience such poverty again.
The picture above is when I took of my mom when I took her sightseeing in NYC last winter.
