Happy Anniversary!

My first experience on a plane was 20 years ago. In July 29, 1989 my mom, sister & I boarded a plane to come to California to meet up with my dad. I was 10 years old and had no idea what was going on. All I knew was that I was going to get to see my dad after not seeing him for a few months. That decision taken by my parents completely changed my life. It has been a roller coaster ride with its ups and downs but I am forever grateful for the opportunities that I have had by living in this country. I don't know what my life would be like if I had never moved here. Would I have been like the majority of my girl cousins who are married with kids? Is that the sort of life I would have had? Would I be as independent as I am today? Would my parents still be together? Would my mom even be alive if she hadn't had the surgery she needed? These are some of the questions that I ask myself as I reflect back on the past 20 years. I have been a US resident for 2/3 of my life. I have grown up in a household that was a mix of traditional Mexican values and a very different culture which I experienced while I was not at around my parents. I will never take for granted the experiences that I have had since living here.

It wasn't always easy. When I moved to my town, there wasn't a lot of diversity. In my fifth grade class, besides a few Asian kids, I was the only other minority. No one else spoke Spanish and my English was very limited. When I try to think back on how I managed to get through that first year, I just don't remember all the details. I do remember my first day of school and how intimidated I was. Coming from a Catholic all girls private school to a coed public school where I didn't know anyone or spoke the language. Since we had moved here mid –summer, we didn't know what the school attire was. I showed up in my best clothes because my mom was under the impression that that was the way kids dressed. I had on a hideous flower print dress, knee socks, Mary Janes and my hair was pulled back in a tight pony tail. As I walked into class, I remember being stared by everyone and seeing that no one really looked like me. Every kid in class was wearing very casual clothes. I felt so out of place. Add to the fact that I couldn't really speak with anyone I became instantly became the odd person in the class. My teacher Mrs. Franklin, who I remember fondly, was so nice to me but really didn't know what to do with me. There weren't any ESL classes at that time and the material wasn't available in Spanish so what she decided to do was sit me down in front of the computer. I used to play Oregon Trail & Mavis Beacon. There was also a fishing game which names I can't remember. Since math is universal, I excelled in it since the private school I had gone to was more advanced in that subject. That was the only source of comfort I had for the first few years. To this day, it still amazes some people that I can do long division in my head or some advanced math without using a calculator. As that first year went by and kids got to know me, they were nice to me but I had no real friends. How could you be friends with someone who you weren't able to communicate with?

Luckily, Mrs. Franklin's daughter in law was Puerto Rican and knew how to speak Spanish. My parents ended up hiring her as my tutor after school. I would meet with her and we would go on walks and she would point things out to me and that is how I started to learn English. She herself was not a teacher so that was the best way she thought that I would be able to learn. And I did. The next year when I got to middle school and they offered ESL, I was only in the class for one year and then I was able to hold my own with the other kids in the regular classes. Homework during those times was such a chore. Because my parents' English was also limited, they couldn't understand the assignments that I was given. Even though I didn't understand what the handouts were about, I still had to complete them. Here is what would do: we would get the dictionary and translate everything into Spanish and complete the assignment. Then it would get translated into English. Did it make sense? Who knows… we did the best we could. And this was after my mom and dad had been at work all day. Those nights were always filled with tears and frustration from all of us because homework had never been that hard for my sister and I before. Since we didn't have any other family in town, the weekends I would spend it at the pool in our apartment complex playing with my sister or we would go to the Mission in San Francisco to eat and be around Mexican people. At that time, that was the closest place to find people that had our own customs and spoke the language.

To be continued...