How To Become An Immigrant

My parents immigrated to the United States in the 90's. I have a picture of them, standing in the street outside of their New York apartment. My mom's hair is gelled back and my dad's rocking the cheesiest dadstache this side of the Atlantic. From the timestamp on the picture I can tell that it must have been taken a few months before my older brother was born. Our family has moved around pretty frequently, both of my parents chasing jobs from state to state, and during the process we often misplaced important things. Photo albums, beloved stuffed animals, and old clothes tend to get lost in cardboard boxes and garages, never to be unpacked. But I've always kept the picture close by, either tucked into a side compartment of my tiny suitcase or inside one of the pages of one of my favorite books. …show more content…
She came over with a suitcase and two thousand dollars, assured that if things fell through she could at least get a nice vacation out of it. She lost the money on her first day, and found herself lost in a foreign country with no return ticket. At that point she'd tuck me into bed and remind me not to take a wad of money out on a crowded New York subway. Over the years she gave me the rest of the story in bits and pieces, telling me about how she made jewelery to earn extra cash, and about how she and my father had to live without amenities for weeks at a time due to bigoted landlords. I've had to fill in the blanks of her story, and my dad's as