Chapter 2

The power we exert over the future behavior of our children is enormous. Even after they have left home, even after we have left the world, there will always be part of us that will remain with them forever.  

-Neil Kurshan

The parentals arrived today after spending the holidays in the Dominican Republic.

Thought I missed them.

I was wrong.

Well not completely wrong.

Within the first half hour of our reunion, my driving was criticized, I was called an ungrateful child along with a slew of other insults. However, I couldn't help but laugh. These past 8 days have been so silent without my mother's bickering or my father's commands to pay the house bills. It almost just felt right to be heavily criticized, listen to my mom tell the same story to 5 different people, and smell the aroma of her chicken.

I find it funny that when I was growing up, I wanted to be so radically different from my mom. She was this overprotective, obnoxiously loud, overly voluptuous Dominican immigrant that refused to adapt to the American culture. She was an agricultural engineer in Dominican Republic and once she came to this land of opportunity, she was a factory worker for Coach assembling wallets. Talk about adapting. How could you come to a country to begin a new life and just opt to forget to learn the American rules of how to raise a teenager? I decided to take it upon myself to teach her what a curfew was, my social responsibility to partake in parties, and why it was crucial I get the latest Jordans. My mom was a terrible student though or maybe she got lost in translation.

Call me a typical, unappreciative teen but living under my mother's roof was not an option for college but what I failed to realize that my home was a safe haven. When things got rough, my bank account was overdrawn, my refrigerator was empty, my mother was there for my rescue. Now that I'm back home after 5 years, not only have I started to look more like her but I've been acting like her and to add more insult to the injury, I was told that I am just like her.

Lesson Learned: Because we are the authors of our futures, we find ourselves wanting to rewrite our destiny, changing what was naturally meant to be. There are just some inherent characteristics that we must embrace but not necessarily let it define us.