Its been a long time coming since the early days. but those days are all i've got left. I've never claimed to be the hardest working man in life but there are days that i've pulled in my share of overtime. Now, I just stare out the window and want to sleep.
I was the oldest in my family who immigrated over to the states. Any son from an immigration family would tell you that they have their share of the burden. The language but also the capacity of the responsibilities given to you by your parents who will speak little to no english, even after the twenty years they've spent here in the States. I had two younger brothers and a sister under my care. Whether they got to school on time and came safely back home was all on my narrow shoulders. Whether they had a decent meal for lunch and whether they did their homework for the next day. Not to mention my own belly and my own homework that I had to tend to. When we had trouble paying the rent on time, it was me who had to go speak to our landlord to give us an extension and not call the police.
I had my first job at thirteen, running strange errands for a local barber shop to help and pitch in towards the household. See, my dad was half retarded and my mother didn't graduate high school so their income was relative to their abilities.
Okay, so my dad wasn't half retarded, but he was very much mentally challenged which practically is the same thing. Half his brain went numb from a burst of a vein in his brain and at an early age in his life as well. The combination of all those facts led me to the decision I made after High School and that was to leave my hometown for a college far far away. I didn't know what I was going to study in school and I wasn't sure how I was going to pay for school, but I knew I needed to get out. My parents struggled with the notion of me leaving home to go to school but reluctantly gave in. They always had seen me going to college close to home and that way I would still have the burden of the family on my shoulders. Was it their greed or was I obligated? The obligation in my belief held no bearing. Why was I to spend all my years being the man of a family I was born into? Family's are made, am I not right? That's why we marry and have kids of our own. But all that comes together when we are physically and mentally ready. All this was thrown at me and now my shoulders were about to give in if I hadn't been able to leave this town.
My mother of course, being the sentimental and emotional type, grabbed on to my button down shirt and cried for a good hour or so. I changed my shirt and grabbed my bag and jumped on the next train heading west. I didn't have too many options on which school I could attend. Helping my siblings everyday took away from my own studies and I was left with a less then decent grade point average by the school's end. I was bound for community college when I found a small school in San Francisco that would take me in as one of their students.
The four years in college wasn't any easier than the life I'd live back at home, but I felt rewarded that I was able to live on my own. During the days I would go to school and at night I would work in the kitchen of a small restaurant to pay for tuition and boarding. A couple of creative writing classes got me interested in becoming a writer. Any spare moment I had, I would take out my notebook and do some writing and by the time graduation rolled along, I had enough writing material to use as a portfolio to land a steady stream of freelance writing jobs which helped pay for rent and food but still, I was in the kitchen of the small restaurant making sure the food was hot enough to serve.
I had gotten my first short story published at twenty seven and by thirty, I had met a nice young lady to accompany me in my life journey. By then, I was an editor of a local newspaper, wasn't anything big and fancy but it helped pay for the bills and luckily, got me away from the kitchen of the small restaurant. I soon had kids of my own and found myself changing diapers and helping with my children's homework, something my parents weren't able to do for me. I had gotten a call from my sister one day in the summer telling me of my father's death and a year later I had gotten a call from my one brother telling me of my mother's death. They wrote me sometimes, my siblings, letting me know how their life turned out. My sister is now married and became a house wife. My first brother served in the army and it's been 2 years since anyone has heard from him. My other brother is happily married and running his own convenient store. I live here in San Francisco and have seen my family a total of ten times my whole life while I was out here.
I think about the decision I made to leave home quite often. How would my life had turned out? Now I'm pushing eighty and all I want to do is sleep all day. Like I said, I don't claim to have lived the hardest life, but I've had my share of overtime. And now, all I want to do is look out the window and dose off.
It's funny that even though I left home to pursue a brighter future for myself, my life still fits into a couple of pages...
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