Hispanic Heritage

You may not know anything about me or my Spanish heritage, so let me explain a couple of things.

One of the best things about being Hispanic is the excellent food that we have. I personally can cook, it's just not all that great, but that’s okay, I’m still a work in progress. My mom is currently teaching me all her secrets and everything she knows about how to cook and how to give food that amazing, authentic flavor. My mother learned to cook from her mother, and her mother-in-law taught her a couple of her secrets. All that bonding and teaching is what brought them together, and it’s what brings me and my mom together as well.

Being able to do something so simple with my mom and not having to worry about her being 1,924.5 miles away gives me a certain peace. What doesn’t give me peace is thinking about how she or my dad could get taken away at any second and be put miles away from me. I know some people who cry when their mother isn't in the same room as them. Thinking about my parents not coming back from work one day or not coming back from going out and doing a simple errand makes me sick with worry.

Everyone takes all that for granted, but what happens when your parents don’t come home that day? What happens when you don’t have anything to eat or any clothes to wear because your parents are in a Jailhouse and are waiting to get deported, and you can’t do a thing about it, you can’t help them. Sure, a trip to Mexico sounds great, but what’s the price? Leaving your children, your husband, your house, your pets; leaving everything that you’ve come to love and cherish behind is the real cost.

Imagine having to live in constant fear and worrying about simple things like not being able to drive to work because you don’t have a license. Imagine living in fear everyday that when you walk out of your house, a cop might pull you over and you won’t make it home that night to your family. Imagine all your friends speaking about going to college, making plans and getting all ready and excited about starting a new chapter in their lives, but you cannot start that new chapter because that chapter has already been written for you. It’s telling you to your face that there is no “the sky is your limit” for you; that you can’t go to college and pursue a career because everywhere you go there will always be that “but you're an immigrant” discussion. I might have just told you to imagine all that, but there are people whose lives are actually like that.