Personal Narrative: My Mother

As part of my EDUC 2204 class, we are required to go out into the community and create experiences that enhance our own learning. The first lab I conducted was about understanding parental socialization by interviewing a parent. I had absolutely no desire to interview my own parent because I didn't want any questions or answers to feel biased or skewed. (I am sure I wouldn't agree with most of my mom's answers anyway). Instead, I chose to interview a former professor who I admire tremendously. Steven Hall was a professor at Idaho State University in the Department of English and Philosophy. He recently received a new title at ISU as part of the First Year Experience team. Mr. Hall will now be helping mentor first year students and assist them in their transition to university life. While in class, he had mentioned a few times about his young son and when the assignment came up, I knew who I wanted to interview.

Growing up, I only had one parent in my life. It was just me, my parent, and my older sibling, and most of my friends were the opposite sex. My household was also the opposite sex. One would think that being around the opposite sex all the time that I would act more like them, but I don’t. I did everything that society would expect me to do.

I was so scared, I was about to walk down the aisle for my mom’s wedding. September 9,2017, I felt so pretty with my long rose colored dress with my makeup and my rose colored nail polish. Holding flowers and a ring box, it was a little hard but I did it! Ok, here I go everyone was clapping and I was nervous, then I got to the end of the aisle and “plop” the top of the ring box fell ugh I was so mad I couldn't even get it because I had so much in my hand I had to go back for it, so I turned around and got the top and stood in my place.

“We were led into an examining room, where a nurse instructed my mother to remove her shirt and put on a cotton smock with strings that dangled at her sides. When my mother had done so, she climbed onto a padded table with white paper stretched over it. Each time she moved, the room was on fire with the paper ripping and crinkling beneath her. I could see her naked back, the small curve of flesh beneath her waist. She was not going to die. Her naked back seemed proof of that. I was staring at it when the real doctor came into the room and said my mother would be lucky if she lived a year. He explained that they would not attempt to cure her, that she was incurable. There was nothing that could have been done, he told us. Finding it so late was common, when it came to lung cancer,” (Strayed, 11).

My family has lived in Ohio all our lives, but we decided to move, along with my friend and her family. We moved to Oakland, California when I was thirteen. I, Madison Gayle Harrington, and My Friend, Miley Ann McNeally, Have Been making YouTube videos ever since we were sixteen. I have two older sisters, Hailey who is twenty two and Angelica who is twenty and one older brother, William who is twenty one, who I don't see. I'm in my senior year of high school. I'm seventeen turning eighteen.

We waited at the door for our mother, we knew better. Once she approached us we turned around and took a look around the gift shop. I didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to get.

My interviewee is a second generation immigrant with one parent who was born in El Salvador and the other who has Mexican roots but was born in the United States. For the purposes of confidentiality my interviewee will be addressed as Ana from here on out. In this interview paper I will discuss the experiences that Ana faced growing up in a tri-racial household. I will also evaluate her experiences regarding assimilation to the lectures and reading assigned through out this course.

I was born January 9, 2003 at 11:44 P.M. I was born at the Mason City hospital and my mom, dad, and family was there. My dad was the only one in the room while I was being born. My grandpa was with all of my older siblings in the waiting room. When I was a baby I would only suck my thumb. I sucked my thumb until I was about six or seven, and I would never suck my thumb in public. I was the only one out of four who sucked my thumb. My brothers Gaige and Nikolas had a pacifier. My sister Lily also had a pacifier and I sucked my thumb.

Mama always had a love-hate relationship with my hair. If she was around me all the time, she’d comb and gel my black curly hair into an unpredictable shape, whatever she wanted. It almost always became a frizzy, tangled mess. I never liked her hair styling but I finally learned not to argue with Mama. I liked my hair like I like my food: simple. No need to add anything, or spend more money. My mama didn’t see it like that.

Her mom and dad never loved her. She has never even left the house. Her parents didnt even bother gaving her a name. Al she had was this like a tape recorder that she found under her moms bed. She loved that thing. One day she found a newspaper of a little girl that was getting hurt by her parents like she was. It said that one day she finally called the police ,and showed them all of the evidence she had. She got to get a new family. Right there at that moment the little girl knew what to do.

when i was younger my mom was very sick and she had to get surgery ,it was really hard on the family because she was always the one cooking for us doing laundry for us and all the other things kids don´t usually do. When that unfortunate event happened i had to take charge and be able to do the same things as my mother did for us ,since she would be unable to move fore a few weeks do to the surgery. I took the lead and started to do every thing and even taking care of my mom when she was sick.Another thing that i took charge of was making food for the family and taking care of my sisters as well as by brother.As my brothe wasent very familiar with the stove and cooking ,he amired me for taking charge and being able to take of my mother. As

I watched as the letters looped and formed my mother’s name on the line; beautiful and clear, the mess of lines were a paradox in and of themselves. I grew up as the oldest of five in a single parent household; my mom was my biggest inspiration even though, until I was six and started devouring books, I didn’t even know what the word meant. When I first started learning cursive in elementary, I aspired to be able to have a signature as unique as hers. I’d doodle my name all over my notebooks; my friends and I would practice signing each other’s hands and books for the day when we’d all inevitably find fame. Eventually, our names had a constant presence on each other’s belongings. When I got older and my mom went from a stay-at-home mom to someone who worked odd shifts and exhausting hours, her signature on our papers suddenly became rushed and lost

I had arrived to the big world on a morning of the 28th of June in 1996, at 7:48 am at Cambridge Medical Center. The day my mother had bright me home, I immediately started to observe the world around me; just as would any other newborn baby, and I also watched my new family, mainly my mother. As I watched her through out my life growing up, I’ve learned that she did a lot for others. More then she did for herself, which I always wondered why. But, when I had gotten to middle school, I soon understood why she did so many things for others. She worked at a company called Public Health Solutions, which involves helping the mentally ill become independent for themselves; she had worked at that same company for 20 years. Every day she came home

Today is March 24, 1950, and my mother is taking my brother and I to the doctor’s office. I don’t know why we are going again; we went just three days ago, on my thirteenth birthday. The doctor did a lot that day, too. He put this huge mask on my head while I ran in place, watched how I breathed, took xrays of my brain, and even watched how I slept. Also, he and my mother talked for awhile. I can’t remember exactly what they were talking about, but I remember some words. “...in perfect health for the procedure…”, “...strongly suggested…”, “...will be allowed to watch…” I don’t know what the procedure is, or what my mother is allowed to watch. In fact, I’m not really sure if it is my mother who is allowed to watch. I’m pretty sure they were

After my mother and I have an argument she usually smiles at me and says, it’s because we’re so much alike that we argue. She reminds me that our lack of communicating often stirs more trouble than why we were arguing. I used to get upset that my mom didn’t set time aside for our family to spend time together or make us eat together at the dinner table. I was upset because I was comparing our family to my friends’ families. I valued those things and assumed my mom didn’t, but I was wrong. My mom had so much on her mind everyday it was breaking her on the inside. Not only had I wanted my mom to be like my friend’s moms, now I had wanted my mom to be different because she was depressed. Bonhoeffer mentions that we desire images of others that we want, but aren’t the true image they bear as Christ’s (pg37-38). At first I was puzzled. How is a good image of mine, not Christ’s image for her? I learned that His image is neither right nor wrong, but simply uniquely divine. My mom could have done those things, but her whole life would have had to be different, and I would never want to change who my mom is.