Mira, I Owe It All to You
Taking care of a five year old and three teenagers is difficult, especially when you have to do it all by yourself. But somehow, my mom managed to get it done. The queen of the house, my mom would provide us with anything we needed; food, shelter, clothes and medicine. At this age, I naively thought these basic necessities were free and easily obtainable, not bothering to think about how hard my mom truly worked for it all. Over the years, however, I was able to witness my mom’s very own experiences working as a cleaning lady and the sacrifices she made to financially support my family, moments which came to shape my relationship with education and even my own identity.
We lived in a tiny apartment in Queens, inundated with a variety of children’s books my three older siblings had accumulated in their childhood. I loved to stare at the covers of these books scattered around my home and imagine all the possible storylines within their pages. I loved the enchanted lands and mystical characters of fairy tales, their unique and miraculous plots. Exciting and suspenseful, despite always having a happy ending, the fairy tales my mom read taught me that good always overcomes evil. I would put a random book in my mom’s lap and ask her to read it to me. Each time she did, I was transported inside the book and envisioned every character, tree, and creature, exactly as they were described.
By the time I was eight years old, fairy tales were no longer an obsession. All I cared about was the Nintendo DSi my brother got me for my birthday. I brought my DSi along with me to wherever I had to go which, at eight years old, were really only school and wherever my mom went. My mom took me along with her to supermarkets, church services, visits to friends, doctor appointments, and even brought me with her to work. I watched my mom as she mopped the floors of an office, wiped the counters of a deli, and vacuumed the dirty carpets of a stranger’s home. I witnessed her work long hours each week, seeing her clean at different homes and offices, or wherever she could land a cleaning job.
One of my mom’s workplaces was the deli near our home. The deli smelled like black coffee and toasted bread and was always stocked with candy, bags of chips, and soda cans—so sometimes my mom would buy me a snack or two while she cleaned. The manager didn’t speak Spanish and my mom struggled with English, so the manager would yell out “Mira!” each time he called my mom to tell her where else she should clean. Eventually he got used to calling my mom “Mira,” which translates to “look,” as if that were her name. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but he should have just called my mom by her real name. My mom’s name is her dignity, and mistreating it takes away her identity and any respect she deserves. She may not have received a college education, but I didn’t like seeing her be treated as a servant.
One late evening, after an entire Sunday’s worth of work, my mom and I stood at the bus stop during what felt like the coldest night of my life. Despite having gloves on, my mom stuffed my hands inside of her inner coat pockets and hugged me tightly in an attempt to fend off the winter cold. My limbs were numb and my eyelids drooped as I tried to stay awake for the next bus. I could only feel my mom’s warmth against my face and the thirty dollars she had made that day inside of her pocket. It was there that I asked my mom why she had only made thirty dollars after having spent nearly ten hours cleaning the woman’s cluttered house. She responded in Spanish, “No papers. No education. That’s why I always tell you to do good in school. With a degree, no one has the right to treat you like dirt.”
After that night I realized my mom never came to America with the intention of making a fortune from cleaning services. She came to this country for me, for my siblings, for her future grandchildren—for the education I need to receive to make something of myself. I knew it was up to me to improve my family’s socioeconomic status through education. At the time, my siblings had chosen work over college and didn’t care much for school. I could have easily followed in their footsteps, but having witnessed my mom tear out so much of herself to give us a chance to pursue an education, it would have been selfish of me not to take it. I knew I had to do well in school, so I replaced my beloved DSi with a calculator and my fairy tales with textbooks. My new dream was to live out a future my mother never got the chance to have.
A few years ago, I overheard my mom reading a story to my three year old niece about a girl who grew up in a house alone. I assumed the book was in Spanish, the only language my mom can read, but upon closer inspection, saw that the book was actually a copy of Goldilocks and the Three Bears—in English. It was on this day that I questioned how my mom read to me as a child if every book in my home was in English. Later, my mom confirmed to me that she had been making up each story she “read” to me until I was able to read on my own. I was taken aback by this, learning for the first time that it was actually my mom’s creativity that sparked in me a love for literature. My mom is the reason I love reading and writing, and her hardships are also what drove me to improve my literacy skills in school. She never deprived me of literature in my childhood—even if it meant making up stories—and she never stopped motivating me to become the best version of myself. For this, I owe my mom everything.
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