“I could only hear screams out in the distance. Everything was dark and couldn’t tell which way I was facing; it was weird because I’ve never had this feeling before. Then out of nowhere a bright light, the light was shining the whole place.” Then with a force I opened my eyes and I was in my room, my eyes were still asleep and my whole body was tired and my forehead was sweating. I looked at my phone and it was 4:30 am of April 6, my birthday. I dad this dream a week earlier before my birthday, at first it was weird because I didn’t understand this dream, but eventually I knew what the dream meant. When I went back to sleep, when the alarm woke me up, it was 6:30 am. I only heard a knock on my door, I opened it and with a big hug my mom reached out her arms and hugged me, followed by a big kiss. I still remember the day I was born, when I opened my eyes for the first time in my life. The first I thing saw, it was a man, that man was my dad.
Two years later, probably the happiest day of my life happened because my new baby sister was born. My family and my life began living in Mexico with in my grandma’s house there I played like there was no tomorrow. I will never forget the look on my mom’s face; between tears and laughter, her face was red as a cherry. I was confuse but then I understood that we were moving to some place called United States,
My mom called us and said, “Nos vamos a mover para los estados unidos, y nos vamos a quedar un tiempo alla.”
Then I replied, “Cuando nos vamos a ir.”
“Primero tu papa se va a ir y despues nosotros nos vamos,” and just like that I continued to play with my toy waiting for that day to come.
I remember the day my dad left to the united states, he left first to find a job and something called a trailer were people live, after my dad left two months later my mom And my two sisters left to America. My new life in the U.S was different from my life back in Mexico; everyone spoke a language that I couldn’t understand. For an eight year old moving to a new country was hard because everyone I knew lived in Mexico and all of my family lives there as well? The first few months living in the U.S we all lived with a friend that my dad and mom worked together with, her name was Lupita Osorio. Along with her and family we lived with them in a trailer with two bedrooms, we were very crammed together and it was hard living like that, my mom and dad felt like we were taking advantage of their space and time, but she didn’t mind as long as my dad worked she was going to keep helping us. School was about to start and my mom put me in at school called Homer Davis Elementary School, I remember the first day of school…”and this may sound cliché but this part is about the new kid not fitting in because I didn’t speak English, but there were hard times for me and my family.” Our fist house since we came to the U.S. my mom was excited, her smile went across her face from ear to ear. “Ya la hisimos”, my dad said jumping with excitement it was for us, all for us.

The years passed and I learned how to speak English, I was still learning words and I was very rusty too. Sometimes I would confuse words and switch them around and people would just give me a blank stare. I was twelve when I transferred schools; I was going to attend some school called amphi middle school. That school was way too different to Homer Davis because at amphi was a middle school which meant bigger kids and me, well I was just a piece of gum in their shoes. At amphi everyday there were fights all over the place after school, thank god I wasn’t involved in one. I was scare….. “Oh yes, very scared.” That was the first year attending amphi, but everything got much better when I made some friends. Everything was going great, until I moved yet again. This time I was going to Flowing Wells Jr. high and I thought; “that’s awesome” because I was going back from where I started, were my friends are, but I didn’t think things through because I was the new kid again. Yes I felt at home but people had forgotten about me and I forgot most about them. It was amphi all over again; I thought it was a cursed I had from transferring schools and being the new kid all the time. At that time was still hard moving and transferring schools. I think that other people can relate to this because everyone has transferred before or moved to somewhere else. It’s hard going through everything, but I never thought of giving up. All I thought was just keep moving ahead and never look back at the bad stuff and negative things that crossed your live in the past.

I was doing homework and working hard to get into high school with a good record of no tardies and detentions, and it paid off after working hard I was proud of myself to do so. At my house problems were about to begin and things were going to get rough. One day at my house we were watching the TV when we heard a scream along with a big BAM sound, I quickly turned my head when I saw my mom screaming and crying; her face was red and all of her veins were popping out of the forehead and neck, her eyes red and watery from all the crying. My dad just grabbed her and told her…”calmate, calmate los chamacos te van a oir y van a empesar a llorar.” My mom snapped about something and my little sister started crying but I calmed her down and told her that everything was alright. My mom has this thing when she gets mad, she snaps and turns to someone else and it’s scary because my dad went through it, I went through and my sisters as well. But I’ve never seen my mom and dad fight and arguing like that before, when we were living in Mexico my mom and dad hardly fought until we came to the U.S. there were many arguments and fights between my mom and dad, but of all of them only three were the worst of them all where I wanted to make them stop. The first one we were living on a trailer when my dad got home very late and he was drunk, his face was red and his breath could knock out a whole room full of people, he was laughing so loud and he couldn’t walk every step he took it was as if he was tied up with ropes and someone was controlling him as a puppet. My mom yelled at him but he only laughed. While this was happening outside my room, I was crying in my bed when I kicked my door and I yelled out…”ya callense por favor.” My mom and dad stopped immediately, after that night I don’t remember anything.

The second argument I was fourteen and we lived in oro valley and everything was going very good until one night that it was unexpected that they started arguing in their bedroom but this time they locked their door and even though my sisters and I were kicking and knocking on the door they didn’t open. After an hour of them locked inside my mom started crying and screaming, I only heard curse words in Spanish and knocks on the bathroom door. It felt as if they were fighting and arguing for years but when they came out both of them were exhausted, and they seem tired of fighting they even called the police on my dad. My sisters were crying their screams could have broken a glass in seconds. The last argument was the most horrible of them all it was on November 15, 2010 we were getting ready for thanksgiving about two days earlier things were heating up between my parents. First they didn’t speak to each other then they hardly looked at each other; I was getting terrified just seeing them like this. After two days of this they finally snapped and started to argue, this happened in the morning and when I woke up I saw that my mom was angry with something. Her face didn’t show any emotion but her eyes did they looked as if she had been crying, she told me if I wanted to eat something but her voice was different it was quiet as if she had no strength. Later on my dad came home from work and they didn’t speak to each other but then they started arguing again. I was in my room when I heard them screaming, I was thinking about my sisters; are they crying out of fear. Finally I decided to come out and confront them, I ran from my room to the living room and I started screaming, I made them stop and yelled at my mom; (“which I’ve never done since I was born.”) I yelled out to my mom and dad “se pelean por puras pendejadas” while I was crying, my eyes were filled with water, my heart was beating as fast as it could, and my breath was weak as if I was losing air with each breath I took, and my sight was getting blurrier and I felt my legs getting weaker and weaker. Soon I saw everything go dark….. I passed……… out…. The first thing I saw was my mom telling me to wake up
“Mijo despiertate, andale despiertate.” My mom said
“Que paso, donde estoy y porque me duele tanto la cabeza.” I replied but my voice was very weak, and dry.
“Haorita viene tu papa con agua, nomas acuestate” I got up quickly and started crying again because of them arguing.
I sat on the on the stairs leaning against the wall crying my eyes out. After my mom and dad calmed down, they talked about me having some psychological problem because of them arguing, because since I was born they argued a lot and they thought that I had a problem because I was always there watching and crying. My dad told me that everything was going to be alright and that I had to be calm. My dad took me to get my hair cut after the talk with him, after thanksgiving my dad and mom promised that they weren’t going to fight or argue anymore and since then they haven’t argued and that makes my sisters and me very relief, but at school things were going to get hard and very difficult for me.

I’m a junior in school; right now all of my classes are intense at times. Then a problem was going to happen, since I live in the south I don’t correspond with the flowing wells district. So one day my parents went to the office and told that we moved houses but my mom wanted us to keep attending the school. The new assistant principle Mrs. Pargas told my parents that my sister and I had to do well in school so we don’t have to transfer to another school,
“I will change the address on the computer, but your children need good grades to keep the address or they have to transfer.” said Mrs. Pargas
“Ok... I’ll tell my mom.” Said my sister; who was translating for my parents
Then out of nowhere I had a problem again, this time with a girl in my class and they send me to Mrs. Pargas’ office and I didn’t know what was happening, my back was cold as if I just had a thousand Goosebumps, and my heart was beating so hard because I didn’t know what was going on in here and after she talked to me she told me that I was going to get suspended because something I didn’t start and she didn’t believe me and I was worried, but nothing happened. But not all was bad in school for me, since I have memory I always wanted to be a chef and I’m not changing my mind because cooking is everything to me, every time I cook and bake I know what I’m doing. Becoming chef is my all time goal; I’ve been named the vice president for culinary arts for the next year. My mom was proud as well as my dad, things had changed since that promise. My mom told me, “bien, yo sabia que tu podias y si tu le sigues asi vas a hacer mas cosas que tu quieras.” That was one the greatest day in my life, that everyone was proud of me. But one day was the most tragic and unexpected day of my mom’s and my life, the day was June 26, 2010 it was a Saturday so I slept in a little bit longer but my mom woke me up and just told me that I needed to get ready to go to Hermosillo. I was so confused because I was half asleep and I didn’t know what was happening,
my mom told me…. “Se murio tu Nina….”
My face woke up and my eyes started to move and tear up and told her, “porque, y cuando.”
She told me, “se murio ayer.” I asked her again and she told me that my godmother had a heart attack while she was sleeping the night before.

During this day my mom and I were shocked and we were asking questions because my godmother was younger than my mom and it was so sudden too, because she didn’t act like she was sick. The whole trip I was asking questions to my mom of my godmother, because it had been about three to four years since the last time I saw her.
“Como se murio mi Nina, y como supiste” I said to my mom.
My mom said, “Le dio un heart attack cuando estaba dormida.” My mom just told me how much fun both of them had when they were younger, and that it was very shocking that she passed away so sudden.
So I told my mom how she found out about my godmother, she told me that she was checking her e-mail and that she saw that my godmother’s husband posted that she had passed away last night. When we got to Hermosillo we went to my tia’s house and waited there before leaving to the funeral, my mom told all of her friends what was going on. When we got to the funeral the first thing my mom saw was my godmother’s son crying outside and my mom when she approached him she started to cry and telling him that everything was going to be ok and that she was just asleep and that she doesn’t want to see him cry. When I was little I saw life as a vacation, in other words everyone lives in heaven and when people are born the just go to a vacation on earth and have fun and when people died they just simply went back to work up in heaven, that’s was my idea of every person in the world. So after that we got to the room where my godmother was and when I looked at her she looked as if she was asleep, her face wasn’t pail she had make up on and she looked as if she was only sleeping, she had dressing clothes on. My mom told me that my godmother was always smiling and having fun, telling jokes and just being happy to see everyone. That was one of the saddest days of both my mom and my life, and it’s been about nine months and it’s still hurts.

Meanwhile when school started it was my sister’s first day of high school as a freshman and mine was the third year as a junior. All of my classes are good and I’ve learned new things and it’s been a good year, since I was a freshman I got into the drum line class. One day at the Jr. High we had a pep assembly and the high school drum line was performing and when I heard them I them play I immediately knew that I had to get on that class. So when the day came as the first day of high school and the class of drum line came it was so awesome that I just wanted to play on the drums even though I didn’t know their names. But I ended up playing the xylophone and it sucked so much, but the next year I decided to play the snare drum and today I’m still playing the same instrument. And every day I ask myself “what’s going to happen to me when I’m older and how life’s going to treat me, I hope is a good life and not the other one because that would really suck.” My plans after high school are to attend NAU and graduate in culinary arts (fingers crossed). And thanks to my family I will go to NAU and graduate, because my family pushed me into never giving up and that’s why my family is the best and I would never pick or think of getting’ another family because it’s the best, sometimes my sisters and I fight, but every sibling fights its normal but we love each other. “That covers most of my life as Luis, since I was born and recently that I turned 17 on April 6. That’s been my life.” Now my life is definitely better, when people say, “there’s no happy ending.” Is just saying that of what’s the result of their lives, but in this case my life is going through the path of a good and happy ending. I hope my future would be a good one, and that everything turns out great. My family is doing great. But one day when my mom when to the doctor to get check and when the results came back she found out that she had gall stones, now she’s taking medication and she needs to get ready to be operated. My dad is doing great with his job and our new car that we bought everything is good. My two sisters are just enjoying life, one just started high school and at first she had trouble finding her way through but as time passed she found her way in. (“just as I did when I was a freshman.”) my other sister is in fifth grade and she very happy, getting awards and getting first place on school projects. She has her whole life ahead and has many options too. My life has really been a roller coaster with its ups and downs, but our family is still together and is closer than ever. As Anthony Brandt said, “other things may change us, but we start and end with family”