Has anyone ever wondered what our mothers had to give up when we came along? I found a picture of my mother when she was seventeen. She wanted to be a nurse back then. She grew up in a third world country with limited possibilities for young women. She lived a life of plenty until my granfather died when she was fifteen. That changed her life forever. In this picture she is at the beach. She has a beautiful smile and long black hair like my sister, but she looks like me, rather I look like her. Her dreams all went by the wayside when I came along...no actually when my father came along. I was born in her twentyfirst year and my sister just over one year later. My father migrated to the US and she stayed behind with us and pregnant. She worked as a seamstress and dressmaker for one year. Between the money she made and what my father sent her they managed to save enough money for her to join him a year later. It was not as easy as she thougt though...she just could not part from us, her children. Everyone tried to "talk sense" into her and convince her to leave us behind and send for us later. That seems to be a trend with so many migrant parents, and so many families are separated every year and never re-joined. She decided that no matter what, wherever she went her children would go. And so she set forth on an impossible journey on buses and on foot from El Salvador to America. Yes, on buses and on foot. That is an amazing story that deserves to be told, but not on these pages.
As far as I can remember my parents have worked hard for us. She is the bravest woman, and the most courageous mother I have ever met. There is no one like her. I will never know how she was able to handle motherhood, even womanhood in the isolated life that she has lead. She has dedicated her life, every minute of it to loving her kids and sacrificing for us. I have no idea how she managed to balance five children, a husband and work without any modern day "support groups" We have so many tools available to us today that did not exist for my mother, or any other woman years ago.
I see her differently now. And so, I will do my best to get to know that seventeen year old girl from the picture at the beach.