What I’m Thankful For
Posted on | November 27, 2008 | No Comments
For every shrieking argument, every traded slice and all the policemen that made up my teenage years, I am thankful for my family and my upbringing as a whole. I was raised by a male-bashing feminist who forewent the Rockwellian archetype and birthed and raised a child on her own purposely (“I didn’t want some man coming in and fucking everything up.”) Whose lessons on honesty and character were harsh and would settle in my mind for lifetime.
I had decided I wanted to become President when I was six years old and she never let me forget. My mother reminded me at my every weak moment that there was a future out there for me and told me when I was disappointing it. She also told me as often as she could that I was her salvation, her reason to give up the drugs and dealers and late nights and abortions (five, she said she thinks). She depicted for me a contrast of what she was attempting to create in my life and the lacking of which that had existed in so many others.
I was her break from the pattern of ignorance that affected what seemed like my entire neighborhood growing up. So when I tell others that I grew up around crime and poverty, I want to make sure they don’t assume that I feel victimized by that setting. I consider myself to have among the best of childhoods because, despite my mother’s $18,000 a year salary, we celebrated every birthday and there were toys under my Christmas tree every holiday season. Beyond that, she taught me social good. My seventh birthday was spent in a Red Cross shelter, where my mother and I had been volunteering after Hurricane Andrew struck Miami in the worst way. We slept on cots in the shelter alongside all these people who had lost their homes and my mom extended her warmth to everyone in the room. I remember when I was eight being talked into giving my prized Nintendo to a family my mother had read about in the newspaper whose home was burglarized the week before Christmas. “It’s your decision. If you keep it, I won’t be mad at you because I bought it so that you’d be happy,” she said. “But if you gave it to this family, think about how much happier it would make them. I don’t think any of these games could make you feel as happy as giving somebody else that chance would.” My mother spent my childhood ingraining me with the idea of responsibility not only for my own life but the lives of those who might not be as fortunate as me. Above all, I grew up with an immense amount of love.
Everything I am today is due to the love and the hope I was raised around and my wish that every child be granted that same opportunity, regardless of their circumstances. I have a lot to be thankful for and plan on working throughout my life in the shadow of my indebtedness.
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