This story will not be lengthy, but for me, this moment has affected the way I see people to this day. The moment all began due to a piece of mango. It was a typical mango, only for $5.89 each. Better yet, it was bought at Walmart, at Berhman Drive, the supermarket I have shopped at for most of my adolescence, where I would buy any other mango. And the person who surprised me with the kind gesture was my very own father.
So what makes this exchange so key? Well, let me give context on the relationship between me and my father. Ever since I was born, our relationship would deteriorate as I grew more independent. I began to stray from their faith, becoming a non-believer at a young age, discovered that I was attracted to both men and women, and realized how misogynist my father is and how his ideology affected our family. He became more distant, quiet, and less involved in my life, focusing on the younger siblings. This all led to increased tension at home, making me remorseful every time I would make it back home from school.
But one day after coming back from school, my remorse turned into confusion. I go up the stairs to the usual sound of my younger siblings doing their daily activities while my mom is in the shower, exhausted after work. I get called over by my father and he is quiet like usual, but there is a difference. Ten esto, he says as he offers me what is in his hand. It was a slim piece of mango, sweet-smelling and yellowish-orange in color. I received it and didn't realize that I had tears running down my face. I hugged him. After years of not giving each other a hug, the kind gesture reached the inner child of my heart, the child that years ago wanted validation from her parents, the one who worked so hard to keep A's to keep them satisfied. So, after a long minute of hugging, we talk about out our disagreements and the grudge we carried for years. We talked a talk that we needed to carry out years ago. He explains that as a Latino man, he didn't have a good father or a good environment, which resulted in him being influenced by misogynist points of view. His father was adulterous and a drunk, leading to him getting adjusted to his father's character. So, now that he is a father, he saw himself fail as a father for his first child, that child being me. Seeing his mistakes, he aimed to make the childhood of my other 2 sisters better, not realizing that this did me more harm. So he apologizes, apologizes for his mistakes and the way he was raised. And I tell him it isn't his fault for the way he was raised, but I appreciate the way he held himself accountable for his actions.
So, how this affected the way I think today is to not judge people immediately, to understand that there are people that lack the privileges that I have. Realize that background and raising are key to the way an individual ends up as. My dad is not cruel, all he needed to do is reflect on his actions and his way of thinking, trace back to when he started to think that way and then he found the source, his childhood. It may have taken time to get there, but all he needed to do to begin our healing was with just a piece of mango.
The method of stuffing multiple people into a car should globally be a human rights violation, but that was how my mother got here. At 12 years old, my mother, having a notion that the United States was a place of opportunity and hope, made her way from El Salvador in search of the American dream. She saw this opportunity as a ticket into what she thought would be the ideal product of her actions. Entirely unaware of the importance an education had on the living standard in the U.S, she struggled to keep our family afloat. Since my parents’ arrival to the U.S, they have spent their lives living paycheck to paycheck. In an attempt to lessen the immense wage gap between us and almost every other American, I was sent to sell popsicles for a dollar. At the age of 7, I didn’t understand why such a fragile, weightless, and oddly green piece of paper was so valuable to many, especially to my family. Little did I know that my father's middle school diploma and broken English did not equate to twenty dollars an hour, but rather a minimum wage.
“Cuando sea grande quiero ser doctora, papi.” (When I’m older I want to be a doctor, dad.) He proceeded to respond with a statement that stuck with me like the gum on the bottom of a shoe. “No tenemos el dinero necesario para esas cosas así que deja de soñar tan grande y ponte a trabajar.” (We don’t have the money necessary for those things. So stop dreaming so big and get to work). My father was closed off to the idea of post-secondary education and believed that working fresh out of high school was the ideal road.
My parents' story was bound to become a cycle repeated by me. I was on the road to becoming the rule stating that eighty-nine percent of Hispanics don’t pursue a post-secondary education. My father’s words played a pivotal role in my life. They became a gravitational force that pulled me into pursuing an education that I, according to my parents, was never destined to have. Soon enough, my perspective towards Hispanics pursuing an education altered when I grew confident in my own abilities. My forehead was no longer marked with the word “unworthy” written in my mother’s barely legible handwriting.
Despite not having the financial means nor the moral support necessary, I was worthy of an education. I had the work ethic along with the intellect to continue my education. It is now more clear than ever that my background does not define my future. Rather than believing I was destined to become a cafeteria worker like my mother or unemployed like my father, I now believe I have the grit to achieve my dream to become a healthcare professional.
