The Most Important Day Of My Life

When I was a child it did not take me long to realize I was growing up in a setting that was not the “American dream”. My mother and father were never together; I grew up living with my mother, grandmother, and grandfather until my mother got married to my brother’s father when I was 7. Although I did not grow up like most of my peers, I would not change a thing. I am now a successful 23-year-old Caucasian, Christian, English speaking heterosexual female living a middle class life. I owe most of my success to my mother who I watched struggle for years, working 2 jobs just to get myself and my brother food and clothes. My brother’s father turned to drugs after my brother was born and it tore my mother and our lives apart. Once he was out of …show more content…
My mother picked my 14-month old brother and I up around midnight from the baby-sitter’s house after working a double shift. She drove us home and while she was struggling to carry my brother’s diaper bag, his car seat, and all her work bags to the house my brother’s father walked out onto the porch. He started to scream at her for not leaving her check at the house so he could spend it on liquor. At 10 years old I could tell this fight was not like the usual, there was a spark behind his eyes; one that I have never seen before and I hope to never experience again. Once we all got in the house my brother’s father ripped out all of the phone lines and threw the TV onto the floor. He then continued to yell and get into my mother’s face. I remember getting my brother from his car seat and carrying him upstairs to my room and locking us into my bedroom, just like my mother asked. At one point they all came upstairs and broke down my bedroom door. I ran with my little brother in my hands to the neighbor’s house and she called the cops. I never interacted with the man again. I don’t know what would have happened if I never got the courage to run over to the neighbor’s house but I know I did the right thing. It was that night, after the cops left, that I realized the beauty in life. People are who they are and people do what they do because that is all they know. This incident showed me to take a step back from what you see and to evaluate what is all around. As a young child I used to hate sitting in the back seat of my gram’s car between my great aunt and uncle because they would talk for hours and repeat the same things over and over, but that night I realized this was not something that made them annoying, it is what made them my unique great aunt and