The Strongest Person I Know

By Harold Nunez

Everyone knows or has someone in their life who, at least mentally, is the strongest person they know. My mother is the strongest person I know. Not many people would allow their children to live in another country for years, especially while being alone at home. Birthdays, puberty, graduations and so many other life experiences missed. Not because she wanted to, but because she sacrificed those moments for us to have more opportunities in the future to create a happier life. She says she's happy living a single life as an immigrant mother, we don't know how true that is, but what is always known about her from anyone who knows her is that she's the most caring person, whether she's being truthful or not.

Her name is Leonor and she's 51 years old but people tend to tell her she looks younger. She works in a small bakery in New York City that she has been a part of for years, even after the original owner left and sold it to someone else. On her off days, she likes to casually drink and listen to old Spanish tunes that she sings along to at the highest possible volume. And sometimes, she may even sing them at a karaoke with her friends like how she used to do back in the home country. And I know she's a real mom to us because even though she comes home tired almost everyday from work, she still finds time to clean and cook for her children while having to wake up at the crack of dawn to do it all over again.

While previously mentioning how she's the strongest person I know, she's also one of the most unique. She's fierce and loud about her beliefs while also being able to be calm and peaceful when she's listening. She overcame the challenges of having to raise 2 children by herself and still having to let them go for years to be able let them get a better education and to receive more opportunities that they wouldn't have gotten in Dominican Republic. "That's what all good parents should strive for their children to do" she said, "for their children to progress and move forward in life". My sister, Shante and I left home to move to New York City with our father's side of the family back in 2010. This included Our father, grandmother, aunt, uncle and our cousin and we settled in a small one bedroom apartment. We talked to our mom everyday on the phone about how our day went, school, life in a new country and how much we missed her. We only visited her twice from 2010 to 2016 for a couple of weeks during those visits, and when she finally arrived in early 2016, us 3 decided to move elsewhere as a family. One of the biggest impacts this had on not only her life, but all of us as a whole was that she works almost everyday and is still committed to her mom duties as we moved around from rooms to family member's homes to finally our own apartment just recently.

Before all of this, she was living in D.R by herself. She didn't have any issues living alone, but the idea of not having your children with you at all and only being able to talk to them through the phone would be devastating to any parent and that was the actual issue. She recalls this period of her life being one of the hardest. " I did cry a lot over you two during that time though, it was a very stressful period of my life”, she recalls when talking about telling her family about having to make that decision. They supported her decision and she knows that in her mind she made the right choice, but a part of her selfishly thinks about how much less trouble she could have gone went through and been happier with her family as a whole if she would have declined the opportunity. However, even with these hypothetical scenarios, Leonor acknowledges that it was worth. "I missed you and your sister so much and I realized there that I had to sacrifice my wellbeing for you guys to move ahead in your lives" she expressed as her voice got softer and her face turned more serious. It's not a sensitive topic to her, but when she reminisces about it, she takes some time to think about those hardships in her past life.

Furthermore, while being separated from her children played a tough part in her adult life, she still had to deal with other issues in her life when she finally got reunited with her children in the United States. Leonor surprised them as she showed up to their front door in early 2016 in New York and gave her children a big and emotional hug. They spent weeks catching up and teaching/helping her adapt to the new environment she had just recently landed in and knew nothing about. Some of the things she was trying to learn and had recently just experienced included learning and speaking English, adapting to the New York citizen attitudes and their routines, getting a new job and more. Fastforward to now, she is basically a New Yorker, waking up at 6AM almost everyday to work and is now the one that tries to help her immigrant friends get used to the United States lifestyle. She still doesn't perfectly speak and understand everything in english and she's only a resident as of right now, but she is moving towards doing all she can to make her life and her family's life easier. "There have been and there are still difficulties I deal with, but wanting to move forward motivates me and makes me sacrifice time to adapt to even the smallest things like the weather, the fast life of New York, the language barrier and other stuff that makes New York what is" is what she says when asked about her living in New York for almost 8 years now.

She's been living as a single immigrant mother for awhile now, but she hasn't let that stop her from doing what she believes is best for her and her family, not just for now, but in the future as well. She said she "feels proud" of the job she's done because "even though there are a lot of rocks in my path, I feel great for accomplishing my role as a mother" back in D.R and now in the U.S.

In the end, my mother says that even though she loves the Dominican Republic as her family lives there and she lived the majority of her life there , she would rather live with us in New York as she sees the United States as one of the better places for more opportunities in life when it comes to personal and money matters. One of the reasons I chose to write this piece about my mother is because she has been living a life and dealing with situations that many immigrant parents have dealt with or are currently dealing with. Also, since she's been a hardworking single mother for a lot of her adult life, she knows what it is like to go through some of these events that affected her back then and she still deals with now when it comes to trying to raise a family. Even though these hardships are still present, Leonor is proud to present what she believes a mother/parent should be to her children.