I honored my Papa because he was exactly that, my father.
No. He was not some high executive who didn’t just make it to his children’s games and events but also coached them.
That would be my husband, the father to all of our five children.
While you cannot change the past, I somehow found myself determined to find a way to remedy it by changing my future.
I still recall those moments to this day. Papa having to count those food stamps at the grocery store, sometimes to the very last paper print.
Back then, there were no such things as an Electronic Benefit Transfer one could privately slide into a card machine at grocery stores to keep one’s dignity.
Back then, food stamps were issued in books, torn out one at a time when paying at the counter as others in line watched while your child or children stood next to you as all waited.
Food items were limited to cold foods, eliminating Papa’s love for Jojos (seasoned and fried potato wedges) and fried chicken from the deli.
I saw my parents’ struggles, their succumbing to what they seemed to have surrendered to as their final years of reality.
The hand that fed them were beginning to look as if it would always be more than what they could provide for themselves and their family.
I don’t know what made me want to.
I don’t know what got into me.
I didn’t ever have around me the training to start.
Mama must have had enough of me asking her how I could earn my own wage in junior high prior to starting high school.
At the age of fourteen, there I was, receiving my first interview with the manager, Brad, to work as a courtesy clerk at a grocery store.
Before I knew it, I was given perhaps my first test of commitment. I was to show up first thing on Sunday morning before opening to mop and clean the store before employees and customers were to arrive.
Many stockers, all men, were already busily working within all aisles before the break of dawn.
I ignored them all as I had excitedly arrived to focus on all my tasks I was receiving training to do: pick up all the cardboard on the floor being dropped from stockers to place into the huge crushing machinery in the back room of the building.
That was my first test of commitment. I moved and picked up, one cardboard at a time, as if to me, under joyous mindset, I was running a race.
Stockers done and gone. Cardboards all picked up and crushed.
Now, sweep and mop the aisles, clean counters, and register areas before opening time. Done.
Next, would be to make sure the staff lounge and bathrooms were cleaned and mopped prior to their now arrival time. Done.
As customers started to come in, I bagged groceries while also running between aisles to retrieve items.
By the end of my shift, I had already re-shelved all must-return items to correct aisle locations.
Working for that grocery chain back then throughout my years in high school taught me so many trades and skills that working for the downtown public library, lingerie retail, Initiative 119, Main Headquarters fire department, and support guide for foreign exchange students by the time I was finishing my undergraduate degree were all a walk-thru.
Having had already broken gang fights inside a grocery store, patted people down for concealed items/weapons, used a ten-key calculator to balance the money till after ringing up customers from food to lottery tickets, cigarettes, and videos, scanning premises through video cameras to cutting up deli meat and making sandwiches, I saw and felt myself promoted in the world.
When the highly respected Chief of Finance, Trevino, at the Main HQ fire department, commented that I had already done a lot prior to getting a college work study position under his approval, I truly didn’t take in what he meant.
A person still running back then had yet to stop and look back at the courses traveled.
I look at my children now, all five of them.
I was the Ninja Warrior who overcame all those jumps and hurdles for them so they can just continue where I left off.
The glory of victories for the watchers are for them.
I created my own glories, one opportunity at a time, with or without an audience.
Even when, being a young mother starting college, I was given an opportunity to receive food stamp benefits, I turned it down.
I went as far as getting financial aid for school and WIC benefits to provide milk and eggs for my growing child inside me.
I still remember making that call, the very moment I graduated from my first two years of college and we were well on our way to renting our very first home.
Not knowing how to discontinue government aide, I took a shot at just making a phone call.
I’m not certain if that is still the way it is now but that was all it took- making a phone call to speak with someone on the other line who answered the call.
Upon telling them my case number and informing them I no longer needed assistance, the voice on the other hand just said, “Okay.”
Weird. I felt the freedom immediately and at that moment, I was big. No. Bigger than I had ever felt as newly young adult.
I look back now and realize that perhaps it was this feeling that I had surpassed the very life I had been brought up throughout my life here in America.
I was finally free. It felt good.
I think of the eyes I look at today. The eyes of my students. Many of them living under assistance.
Do they have it better than I did at their age?
EBT cards not just for the parents but also each child?
Memberships at museums, discounts at many affiliations, and even entry to make purchases at Costco?
Some even receive vouchers for school supplies and clothing.
Why is it that while I am happy for their given dignity, there is this creeping feeling within me that worries ever so silently?
Will these children continue to depend on such giving?
If so, would they confine to such dependency generations to pass on?
What of their potential to thrive? To be well and alive in their own earned ground? Their own two feet taking them to endless possibilities?
Will they ever believe of themself so as I have practiced and preached to my children and students nonstop?
Beyond the madness of the world, the familial drama to have to succumb, accustomed to the expertise of senseless talks, garrulous of the non-essentials and nonsense that prevent positive movement.
Will these young minds ever step outside of confinement?
Will they be like many who seem to just be cats chasing their own tails or dogs waiting for crumbs to fall off a table, one year past at a time?
I used to be so silent about my own challenges only because I never wanted any of my children or students to fear such happenings to come their way.
Up until one conversation where a colleague of mine followed after my facetious ways of mocking my past hardships that I should share my stories so that students could actually see possibilities come true, I thought silence was best.
Now, while I still joke and laugh of shoes that flapped open and hand-me-down pencils, I see in their eyes fed hope.
And, yet, a silent concern simmers inside each day, each time I feel the year comes to another end with those I have blessedly been challenged to help nurture and grow.
The hand that feeds them. How will they ever believe to fly away and be free?
Those wings aren’t broken, dear ones. The hand that feeds you is just lowered to your comfort. That’s all.
