Personal Narrative: My Mother

1038 Words5 Pages
My mother grew up in the Bronx with her two brothers and the rest of her family. She grew up underprivileged, moved around a lot, switched into many different schools and even shared clothes with her cousins, whom seemed more like brothers and sisters because they all lived together at one point in time due to the poverty in my family. Many of her cousins were in “honor classes”, so at a young age my mother worked hard to get into honor classes because she didn’t want anyone looking down on her. My mother graduated from Washington Irving High School and decided to set herself apart from the rest of her family, whom had dropped out of school or already started having children. She got accepted into SUNY Binghamton through EOP (Education Opportunity…show more content…
She always told me how her roommate had this “full closet”, while she had a lot of empty space. However, the amount of clothing she had was irrelevant as long as she was enhancing her future. In my mother’s first year of college, she worked at a supermarket that was way off campus, but she couldn’t really complain because she desperately needed the money to pay for her school fees and other needs. Her mother didn’t have the proper finances. My mother would work late shifts until closing time. In order to catch the last bus that went to campus, she would run miles even in the severe Upstate winters. If that wasn’t bad enough in April 1993, at the near end of my mother’s freshman year her mother went into cardiac arrest and passed away. My mother and her older brother were both eighteen years or older so they were already legally adults. As for my mother’s younger brother, he was a sophomore in high school and completely alone in an apartment by…show more content…
Then in the fall, she continued into her sophomore year. Now, my mother had to work harder for money than she did before. She also had to take trips back to the Bronx to teach her younger brother, whom was living by himself, everything she was learning in college so he can be prepared. My uncle Sean paid off the rent in the apartment with the little money he received from my grandmother’s death and also with money my mother sent to him while she was working in college. My mother got through one unpleasant predicament only to deal with another. In October 1993, two months into her sophomore year and 6 months after her mother’s death, her father passed away. My mother’s sophomore year was the “hardest year” of her life, but she still managed to graduate on time within the four years. In college, my mother wanted to better her life overall. This is significant for me because my mother overcame all her obstacles. Even as a current freshman in college, I feel like I have to do it not only for me but for my mother. My mother is very successful and she adopted this hard work ethic so she can give me and my brother everything we needed and
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