While reading the essay prompt, there were many ideas swirling around my head about who I should focus my essay on.
Martin Luther King Jr, President Obama, Stephenie Meyers; there were countless people who I admired, but the person who I chose to write about was someone close to home. However, after thinking about what made my mother truly admirable, I began to recall all of the stories she has told me throughout my childhood. February 25th, 1974 was the day that my mother was born. The second youngest out of a family of five, my mother always joked that she must have been adopted because she is nothing like her dysfunctional siblings. My mom, the polar opposite of her sibling’s, for example, loved going to school and earning all A’s, while all of her siblings would hide from their parents and try to skip school. Growing up in Brooklyn, my mother had a lot of experiences unique to New York City life in the 70s and 80s. The emergence of Hip Hop, graffiti and break dancing was something that my mother and her friends actively participated in. In one breath, my mother claims to have been timid and well mannered, while in the other, retells stories of all of the fights she had ever been in growing up. John, my mother's oldest brother was extremely protective over his sisters, however, he showed his love by roughhousing and picking on his siblings. The constant arguments and flat out brawls my mother and …show more content…
My grandfather taught her many valuable life lessons, such as how to deal with rejection and how to properly change a tire. At the age of 12, my mother would lose her biggest role model, her father, to a heart attack. The death of her father caused heartbreak not only within the family, but throughout their entire Brooklyn community. My mom’s biggest inspiration, unexpectedly gone from her life with no warning. Consequently, the unexpected death caused a stir within the family. With everyone in the family mourning, there was not much else being done. My mother and her siblings performance in school quickly deteriorated due to them no longer showing up, my grandmother started to smoke heavily and the household began to erupt into more arguments. My grandfather was the glue to the families dynamic and with him gone, chaos ensued. However, after a few years, my mother was able to get her life back on track. She was a high school graduate working a full time job in order to save money for college, she had her own apartment in Brooklyn and she had just started a new relationship with someone who would later turn out to be my father. However, at the age of 19, my mother would soon remember the feeling of heartbreak. My mother’s youngest brother, Steven, was murdered in broad daylight. Shot in the back, Steven was unable to defend himself from his attacker, who was later found to be the brother of an