When I was born, my father was 73 years old and my mother was 36. When I was 11 years old, my youngest sister was born and my mother was 47. My father, by that time, was 80 years old. When I was 8 years old, I went to school for about 3 months to learn to read and write, which I did in just 3 months.
When I was 9 years old, I started working to help my father with the house support, and when I was 13 years old, my father died. I was the oldest member of the family by that time, so I had to take the responsibility of a husband and a father, even though I didn’t even know how to behave like a man because I was still a little kid. My first job was to work as a scarecrow on the corn fields. I would work there from 5 am until 7 pm every day. I had to wait until it got dark so that the birds went to sleep.
I have two older siblings, but they had run away from home. They couldn’t handle any more of the pressure that went on in my house. Since my father was an older man with a lot of littler kids, he didn’t know what to do other than put the oldest one to work so that they could earn their own meals. I worked for about seven years to help my mother with the household. I work on the farms planting beans, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, bananas, papayas, and fruit trees. I did this so that my family could have enough food for the coming winter. I worked like the ants collecting food during the summer for the winter.
After I worked for seven years, an opportunity of coming to the U.S. came my way and I took it. I thought it was the best thing that could ever happen to me. Since I had two sisters in the U.S., one of them sent enough money so that my older brother and cousin could come to the U.S., but since my older brother didn’t get along well with my cousin, he didn’t come. In his place I was the one who came because I got along well with my aunt and cousin.
Before my father passed away, he had been very ill and we had to take care of him. We had to feed him because he couldn’t get up anymore. We had to feed him with a spoon and take him to the bathroom as well. My father as a young man had never asked anybody for help. He was a very strong man.
Now that I’m old enough, I look back and see how my poor father was doing his best to hold onto his life in order to stick with his young children.