I was born in the land of eternal spring, Guatemala, on a warm December night, exactly a week before Christmas.  It was 1986 and I was the fourth in line to a legacy of six children.

I made it to where I am now thanks to GOD and the dream he placed in my fathers heart. I can’t help but reminisce on those cool summer nights in Texas when we used to live in this tiny one bedroom apartment in a small complex my father used to manage.  I remember the clear song of the cicadas and the cool breeze filled with the scent of honey suckle.  The cool nights usually came around after a good heavy rain, otherwise they didn’t come around too often during the hot Texas summers.

My father used to lay on the front porch and tell us the adventures of his early life and coming to America.  During his early years, he recounts of his father walking out on him and his mother when he was just a little boy.  He became head of household at the ripe age of 12, working at ranches or wherever he could to make ends meet at home.  He wasn’t the eldest but he had always had this sense of responsibility for those around him.  My dad dropped out of elementary school to earn money and put his brothers and sisters through school.  In his teen years he would eventually return to school and graduate from elementary school, just enough to learn how to read and write, but that was as far as he’d make it.

He married my mother when he was 24, she was 20.  She had my eldest brother during their first year of marriage.  It was a blessing but times in Guatemala were hard.  It was difficult to find a job to support a growing family and the hope of a better future was no where In sight.  However, the love that he had and that internal fire of a person who had fought against the odds his whole life was stronger than the roots that planted his feet firmly on Guatemalan soil.  His eyes were set on the land of opportunities, the United States of America.

The morning came when he would walk out of his home with nothing but a small bag filled with clothes and a few Quetzals.  He was about to embark on a journey to a foreign land where he didn’t know a soul and didn’t know the language.  All he had was his faith in God and love for his family.  He pretended to be brave but as the bus he boarded drove away, he broke down and cried like a lost child…… he was scared and wanted nothing more than to turn back.

He   didn’t have “papers” and traveled illegally through Mexico and eventually made his way to California where he would work odd end jobs until he could return home.  He did this a couple of times and brought my mom along once.  They worked in the California plantations picking tomatoes, grapes and olives depending on the season.  During their time in California, a friend made it out to Texas and convinced them jobs were good and plenty so they packed their bags and made their way down to TX.

There, my mom got a job at a fast food restaurant and my dad worked in construction.  They didn’t stay long, a child was on the way and they were adamant that she would be born in Guatemala.  In retrospect, they were silly…. they took off when my mother started with labor pains, drove three days and nights with only an hour or so of sleep a night.  They eventually made it to the Mexico-Guatemala border and my mom could’t stand it anymore, it was a miracle she had made it that far and the baby was about to pop out.  At the border, my dad stopped a cab and put her on her way to the nearest medical center.  My dad followed as soon as he could and there, in Guatemala was born a baby girl who would later struggle to become a US Citizen…..funny the irony.

With two children, dad would go back and forth between Guatemala and the United States, until he would take the decision to bring all the kiddos and wife along.  It was 1989 and the family made it to TX.  My dad worked most of his life as a mechanic owning his own shop for some years and my mom would, for the most part, be a stay at home wife, tending to the house and crazy little monsters.  She worked a few times, hardly when we were little but more so when we were a bit older.

We wouldn’t make it back to Guatemala until I was 7 going on 8 when we received the news that my grandmother, on my fathers side, had a brain aneurysm and wasn’t doing well.  We packed everything we could and sold the rest.  I met my grandmother the night before she passed, and eventually the rest of the family, boy was it a lot!  My parents plan was to re-settle in Guatemala but we, the children, had grown accustomed to TX.  That was our home.  It tugged at my parents heart that we wanted to return so after three months in Guatemala, we took up our belongings and once again, set on our way travelling by bus through Guatemala, by train in Mexico and across the Rio Grande on an inflatable yellow dingy.  It was a dangerous trip but God was with us.

The moment we started on our journey, my mom said she heard little foot steps following us until we were safely in the states.  Something she hadn’t heard since she was young, when she used to walk up a mountain alone, in the middle of the dark, after her shifts at a coffee roasting plant.  Mom says before we left she prayed God would watch over us and protect us on our journey.  That was his response!  Not to mention that right when we crossed the Rio Grande, one of my sisters classmates from elementary school was riding down the street with his mom.  They had just moved to the border town and recognized us.  Without a question, they took us to their house and then safely drove us to a Greyhound station where we boarded for Dallas.

Eventually, after years of struggle, we would all fix our legal status and the rest is history…………