Task 1 from Claudine * MARina

After reading the acceptance speech “Cherries for my Grandma” by Geoffrey Canada, one could say I must have been influenced by his topic idea. At some point I was indeed. I strongly believe that families are the foundation of the self, for good or bad, they are certainly the first reference for values and moral ethics.

My motivation comes from many sources, but there is one person who significantly stands as the main catalyst for all the good in me. She can sail through the most tempestuous storms and still shine all the way back to shore. My strength to keep rowing throughout many devious courses, I seek on the one who long before my arrival learnt how to cope with the various tides. Her name is Marina. She is my mother.

She was only two when her mother passed away with tuberculoses. Tennyson, her father was a truck driver and along with his two other children, Lucilia and Ruben, he had to manage to keep on track. In the middle of a rural landscape, back in 1953, they couldn’t rely more than on people’s good will.

For some years grandpa wouldn’t go for long distances, coming back at the end of the day for his children. Marina the youngest, many times would go with him. Sometimes ridding as a shotgun, sometimes back with the chickens. At some point she had been all over the region and knew exactly where milk came from.

By the time she was eleven, grandpa made a special delivery. They packed and went to the big city, meeting a prestigious family from the nation’s capitol. They were delighted to engage to such a rural young broad who knew a lot more than just potatoes. They soon offered her to stay and continue her studies to some better schools. Since she had always been on the road, she said yes.

Growing up with a borrowed family can bring some side effects. Their children became her children and between school lessons, her bedroom became a nursery. Besides, it also became hard to tame a heart born free. So many restrictions brought her to reminisce the plenitude of grasslands once left behind. Marina knew emancipation had to come fast and soon arranged for grandpa to change linear time, speeding up natures’ formalities, making ’51 looking more like ’49 on her ID.

Her new eighteen made the world hers to ride. From one job to another she managed to finish high school and get to college. She also humped from one place to another; from living with old ladies and their outnumbered affectionless cats, to six in a room without windows. She knew the light was within and nothing would come on her way to ascension.

At twenty three, still a virgin, mom who thought so enlighten by life experience, met a charming older man. Two weeks later her period was late. Two weeks and one day past he was gone. Nine months after I was born. Time sped up since then. I had to grow up fast from not wanting borrowed families myself. At five, Marina gave me the keys to our last rental; luckily this one was free from cockroaches. I was to be by myself while she was at work. Go to school and back without devious routes. The hardest I remember was going up the stairs instead of taking the elevator to the tenth floor. Somehow the view made worth the effort.

Nobody ever said life would be easy. We come without instructions. As foolish as we may think the parts are all connected, there are pieces that only come together along the way. My mother showed that picking up stones instead of kicking them, only helps for building up castles in the future, and that future is always today.