They are both first "drafts" in which i just wanted to get everything out, they still need a lot of work.
PLEASE any comments and suggestions are appreciated!!
1. My mother and father divorced when I was seven years old. My father kept busy as usual, working hard to grow the family business, a food distribution company. My mother moved out into a small two bedroom apartment and got full time minimum wage job. For short while after the divorce, my siblings and I lived with my mother. The four of us shared one bedroom. The idea at first wasn’t so bad; we would all get to celebrate birthdays and other holidays twice. I never thought that this would open my eye to the importance of my education.
My mother worked over forty hours a week for no benefits, barley making ends meet. There were nights when dinner would be a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, mostly just bread. There were nights that I would not eat at all because I was too worried about my younger sister not getting enough food. The most puzzling part of this all was the contrast of when we went to visit Dad on the weekends, when Mom would let us.
At dad’s house we each had our own rooms and we never had to worry about saving food. Best of all, there were no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ever. I always thought it was strange that my parents lived drastically different lives. I also wondered why our Dad was able to live like this while at Mom’s we were barely getting by.
The truth was, my father knew that he had to make his business successful. He had no other choice, he had to diploma to fall back on. From the age of sixteen he worked as hard as he could to create a stable, well-performing company. He made it. My mother on the other hand, never had to work. She never wanted to work. Whatever little money she was making were not going to the rent, they were feeding her addiction. She cared more about getting her fix than her responsibilities as a mother.
After some work with a lawyer, my siblings and I moved back in with Dad. It was a complete change from the life we were living. He still spent a lot of time working but he always made sure to check that our homework was done each night. He would spend time telling us how important it was for us to have goals and dreams, and that education would help us to achieve those dreams. I buried myself in my school work; I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be the first my family to graduate from college. None of my siblings had finished or chosen to go to college. I was accepted to all ten schools I had applied to with scholarship offers from over half of the schools.
I have always set high goals for myself. After taking a course in Labor and Employment Law, I had decided my next goal was to graduate from law school. It was that course that sparked my interest in the law, and for once I was not just doing the course work for a grade, I was doing it because I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn as much as I could about this area of law, and even took an internship at a firm that had a large amount of its practice focused in this field.
2.Cultural identity used to be difficult to grasp. I spent a good part of my childhood denying my mixture of ethnicities because I was embarrassed. Everyone I grew up around was or claimed to be “100% Italian” or Irish, or any other ethnicity. I was not like my peers. I was a mixture and could not identify with any of the groups. I began to identify myself as Italian, and ignored the fact that I was not “pure Italian”.
I remember growing up that in a suburb of mostly Italians; kids from other cultures were not readily accepted. Just like every other child, I wanted to fit it, to be accepted by my peers. I will never forget the Family Heritage Project assigned in third grade. Every student had to give a report to the class about their heritage and where their family came from. In addition, we were responsible for bringing in a cultural dish and dressing a paper doll in the chosen culture’s traditional form of dress. My small group of friends began to chatter and discuss what kind of pasta they would bring in. I chimed in saying that my grandmother’s lasagna is the best.
That afternoon, I ran off the bus excited to begin the project. When I went into my kitchen to tell my stepmother about the project, I notice my grandparents from my father’s side of the family at the kitchen table. Without thinking, I began to excitedly ramble about the Heritage project. Just as I was about to say I was going to do my project about Italian culture, my grandfather suggested I do my report of Puerto Rican culture. I immediately stopped talking and turned to my grandfather. After about a minute or two I blurted out that no one want to hear about Puerto Rico, especially since I’m Italian. I will never forget the look in my grandfather’s eyes as he shook his head and turned away. I just ran up to my room and began to plan out my Italian project.
I week later I did my presentation on Italian culture, just like all of my friends. I never thought about the project again until I had to do a similar, more in-depth version in high school. This time around I had a new group of friends, from all different ethnic backgrounds. They all excited talked about what they could share about Greece, Germany, China, etc. They were excited to talk about the culture they identified with. They knew what “group” they belonged to. This time around I didn’t have a group of friends all doing Italy, I had a group of friends that had a stronger cultural identity than I ever had.
I went home that day, still unsure of what to do. The truth was that I was Puerto Rican, Irish, English, French and Italian. The problem was I never truly placed myself into any of the cultures or embraced them fully. I talked to my dad about what I should do; he suggested I do Puerto Rico, just as my grandfather did six years earlier. Then I remembered back to the look in my grandfather’s eyes. I decided it would be a good way to explore the culture more, and maybe get a better sense of cultural identity.
I completed the project, and received an A. it was a great learning experience for me. I was able to learn about a topic that strengthened the connection between my grandfather and me. It was the beginning of a long journey of self-exploration I have made multiple trips to Puerto Rico, to learn and experience more. I have also made trips to France and England. I can now proudly say that I am Latina, but I am also proud to be a mixture of cultures. As my grandfather says, I get the best of everything.
