Where I am Today
It was a beautiful sunny day in the summer; it was my mother’s birthday. There was a lot of people and food. My mother was turning thirty nine. She works for home health aid agency as a homemaker. Taking care of disable and old seniors at their house or one of the homes that the state provides. Also she’s stylist, doing peoples hair, nails, and waxing.
August 2006, my mom asked me if I wanted to go to a sickek house. I’ve said to her okay. A sickek person is someone that is born with natural, spiritual gift that can read cards, hands and tell your past, present and future. Next day in evening we were driving to that person’s house. When we arrived there was a huge house on my right hand side and a tree in front of it. The house looked hunted that’s being there for decades. When we entered inside the house it was so nice and neat, the decorations were perfectly matched with everything. In the spiritual room was full of statues all around, and there was a lot buckets of flowers and roses, also many candles of different colors. As soon as I entered into the room I felt such a peace and a funny feeling that is unexplainable. After few minutes later a men comes in and introduces him self to us, he started talking to my mom I step outside of the room so she could have her privacy. Half hour later she comes out with a smile in her face and says to me “wow he knows a lot”, then she said is your turn now go in. When I went in he started telling me things that only me and god knew such as struggles in my childhood, emotional feelings that I had towards my father that I didn’t grow up with. He also told me that I was going to a medical school and I was going to be certified as a nurse. At the time I had a job working in a milk company as a clerical assistant, I wasn’t thinking of going to school because I just wanted to work. He kept talking to me and telling that everything in my life was going to change but I just looked at him and said yeah whatever. After the consult I was so comfortable that I felt like I knew him all my life.
Alright. So I was telling you about that gym teacher I had who was a substitute teacher, and he always claimed that he… would get in the “zone” and be able to, like, see ghosts and stuff and communicate with them. He was at a Wawa one time, and he stepped outside and there was an old man out there, and he was like, “Excuse me, sir. . . I just need your help for a second.” He was like, “Yea, sure… whatta ya need?” And the old man was like, “Could you go into this store… and ya see that lady over there?” She’s like an elderly lady. “So could you like go over there and tell her that I love her?” And then he told him his name, ya know, whatever it was, and my gym teacher was like, “Yea, sure.”… So he went in there, and… he went up to the lady and he was like, “Hey, I had a message from John,” whatever the hell his name was, “And he wanted me to tell you that he loves you.” And she told him that John had been dead for a couple of years… He described what he looked like to her, and she was like, “Yea, that’s definitely John, and he’d definitely do something like that.” Umm, yea. So, I mean, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but, he told stories like that all the time.
It was my senior year of high school, I was sixteen, getting ready to turn seventeen. It was my senior year of high school. I was not your typical girl wearing makeup everyday and worrying about getting dolled up for school. I did not play sports. Don’t get me wrong, I would get all dolled up if I had something special to do like go to a school dance. I had a part time job at Olive garden because my parents motto was “if you do not play a sport you need to work!” My mom used to say to me “you know Alana back in my time I was not able to work so you are very lucky you're able to work.
I received the call that my brother had overdosed when I was going to a haunted house with a couple of my friends. My mother had not known the severity and told me not to worry. Steven had overdosed in the past so I was not as concerned as I should have been. My friends and I kept on with our festivities and then they dropped me off at my house. There was no one home and I became distressed. When I called my mother she told me to just go to bed and that they would be home soon. I forced myself to sleep. I was in a daze when my mother and father came into my room to tell me that my brother was dead. I don’t know what happened in my brain, but I could not talk and I could not cry. I believe I brushed it off as an awful nightmare. My unconscious demeanor scared my parents so they kept sending people in my room trying to get through to me. I woke up to my best friend hugging me, not saying a word, and then she left. I woke up to my grandma holding my hand with tears flowing down her eyes, not saying a word, and then she left. I woke to my godmother speaking about grief and how I needed to believe that he was gone, and then she left. How was I supposed to believe that my brother was no longer on this earth? I sat there on my bed alone as the idea of my brother dying crept into my mind. My heart began to literally ache. I cried hysterically for hours on hours. It has been a year since he has passed and it doesn’t get any
Ok. One night my sister and I were at my father’s house. He lives in Kingsville on 10 maybe 9 acres of land in this [small pause, looks at ceiling] I wouldn’t really call it a farmhouse, just a kind of small house out there. The previous person who lived in the house was supposedly shipped to an asylum, for, you know, normal stuff [pause] schizophrenic or something. My sister and I were at the house one night and we were cleaning up the house while my dad was on some sort of job out of the state and my step mom was at work in the hospital. We were doing our stuff, and then the power flickered, and came back on. We didn’t think anything of it. Then, outside of the door, we heard a noise, kinda like a dog barking, but like, just enough not so that we knew it wasn’t. So, we hear this noise, and start to get fre...
Around the age of fifty, she became unable to work because of physical and mental disabilities. She became overwhelmed with obtaining information on who to contact, what services were available, and how to complete the appropriate form. Therefore, it became my responsibility to assist with her care. Her debilitating illnesses are dementia and cancer. She also suffered a stroke, which rendered her immobile. Caring for her allowed me to see there were others in the situation, too old to care for themselves and in need of assistance. I began helping the elderly members in the church and other family members who had elderly parents that needed assistance with obtaining the appropriate care. It became a passion. This is just one part of the
Being that I was a little kid, I thought I was on my way to heavan. But soon, my representation of an angel turned in to a nurse. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?” I wake up, I say yes to her questions and go to sit up but she stops me and lays me back down. “don’t sit up, im going to get your parents.” I lay there in bed and wait. My mom and dad walk in and they smile, hug and kiss me. The nurse says that im able to go home and in few minutes. Time passes and im on my way home. My family calls to see if im okay and send gifts. I slept the rest of the day. Never again will I, play with a group of kids with a baseball
I slowly opened the front door -- the same old creak echoed its way throughout the old house, announcing my arrival just seconds before I called out, "Grandma!" She appeared around the corner with the normal spring in her steps. Her small but round 5'1" frame scurried up to greet me with a big hug and an exclamation of, "Oh, how good to see you." It was her eighty-fifth birthday today, an amazing feat to me, just part of everyday life to her. The familiar mix of Estee Lauder and old lotion wafted in my direction as she pulled away to "admire how much I've grown." I stopped growing eight years ago, but really, it wasn't worth pointing this fact out. The house, too, smelled the same as it's ever smelled, I imagine, even when my father and his brothers grew up here more than forty years ago -- musty smoke and apple pie blended with the aroma of chocolate chip cookies. The former was my grandfather's contribution, whose habit took him away from us nearly five years ago; the latter, of course, comes from the delectable delights from my grandmother's kitchen. Everything was just as it should be.
I woke up Tuesday morning excited for the day I was going to spend with my mom. I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking fresh coffee listening to my mom and aunt tease and joke around about how paranoid my mom was about doing well in her classes, my aunt was telling her that maybe now that I was there, she would relax a little bit and have some fun. Our plan was to go to one of mom's classes with her, and then on a tour of UNC and then we were going to go to dinner and a movie.
Community One: Spanish Schooling My first community is my Spanish schooling that I was engaged in from elementary school to sections of my high school education. Since this Spanish education took place in a homeschooling setting, my parents were my teachers the majority of the time. I also attended classes that were held in brick and mortar schools that would give me access to different teachers occasionally. The majority of my textbooks were in Spanish, and I was taught Spanish and English for grammar classes.
When I was younger, living in the south side of Chicago my mom and dad looked after me, my sisters, and my brother. My dad would occasionally drink too much whenever he had money. Sometimes he would get violent reminiscing on his past or the current past-present. One day my mom packed some of our clothes in our book bags. Then she rushed us out into the night. We wondered the streets as children and eventually made our way in to a shelter. We stayed several days and nights. We would visit my mom’s side of the family from time to time just to catch our breaths. Later during our wondering, travels my mom bumps in to an old friend. She fills him in on our situation and he lets us stay with him for a while. The two of them become very acquainted with each other. There is a problem. The building that her friend lives in does not allow children, or so we were told. To make matters worse he sees me and my siblings as a hindrance. We leave the apartment to look for a new place to rest or heads but this time the friend comes along.
For my oral history I decided to interview my mother. My mom’s life is filled with so many interesting stories and they always take me to another place. I chose her because I wanted to more, I wanted to see if my mother was more like me when I was younger. Mother was a straight A student in high school and involved in many clubs. She was born and bred in Cleveland, she grew up in a different and exciting time; it was the eighties. Here is my mom in not so many words :
It was Friday night, I took a shower, and one of my aunts came into the bathroom and told me that my dad was sick but he was going to be ok. She told me that so I did not worry. I finished taking a bath, and I immediately went to my daddy’s house to see what was going on. My dad was throwing-up blood, and he could not breath very well. One of my aunts cried and prayed at the same time. I felt worried because she only does that when something bad is going to happen. More people were trying to help my dad until the doctor came. Everybody cried, and I was confused because I thought it was just a stomachache. I asked one of my older brothers if my dad was going to be ok, but he did not answer my question and push me away. My body shock to see him dying, and I took his hand and told him not to give up. The only thing that I heard from him was, “Daughters go to auntie...
I watch her walk in from work. I can tell she is exhausted from working back to back shifts with only a four hour break in between. That’s my mother always working hard and not complaining. As she sits next to me on the sofa she smiles at
Even at the age of 17, many adults have praised me for being a well-rounded, responsible, and mature young adult. Though I am often complimented for my character, I have my mother to thank. She is a big part of the reason why I am the person I am today. From academic awards to character recognitions, my mother has helped me reach all of those accomplishments. From a young child to a young adult, my mother has taught me to be obedient, respectful, and nice. She has ensured that I keep my conduct in check and my grades up to par.
While in school, Mom didn’t have it to easy. Not only did she raise a daughter and take care of a husband, she had to deal with numerous setbacks. These included such things as my father suffering a heart attack and going on to have a triple by-pass, she herself went through an emergency surgery, which sat her a semester behind, and her father also suffered a heart attack. Mom not only dealt with these setbacks but she had the everyday task of things like cooking dinner, cleaning the house and raising a family. I don’t know how she managed it all, but somehow she did.