TAMIU GEAR UP IV 2015 Essay Contest

The Lonely Road When my parents were twenty-seven, they already had one child, and I was on the way. My parents had minimal high school education and no college education. During my infancy, money was very tight and my father was feeling as if he was failing his family. My father's hunger for money and happiness soon lead him to drug dealing. For a while he was actually doing fine. He was getting money, feeding his family, and paying his bills. Things were working out. Soon enough my dad actually had spending money. But just as all other things, the money didn't last. I was three when my father got arrested, and I remember this clearly, because it was on my birthday. We were all celebrating and having a good time, and of course the adults were drinking. The cops showed up and raided my birthday celebration; they took my dad and uncles to jail. My uncles were soon released, but my dad got charged with possession of narcotics and conspiracy to sell. My dad got charged with ten years in a federal penitentiary. Now we were back to square one. Actually I wouldn't even call it that; it is something worse. My mother was stuck raising two children as a single mother which just made things so complicated for her and me. My mother, doing what any other mom in that situation would do, started working two jobs. Now remember, my mother has minimal high school education and no college education. She did what she could. Her minimal education led her to work two minimum wage jobs, and she made no more than six hundred dollars a week. A couple of months went by and I had to watch my mom work herself to exhaustion. Once it became too much for my mother to handle we moved in with my grandmother. My grandmother lived in a three bedroom one bathroom house. Before we moved in with my grandparents, my aunt was already living in there with her parents, so now it was six people in a three bedroom house. I had to share a room with my sister and my mom. That was no fun. Actually, the fact that I was the only male in the house wasn't fun at all. My grandfather was a hard-worker who also got paid very little. For that reason he was never home. If there was any legal way he could make quick money he would jump on it. He worked at a factory five days a week for ten hours a day. The other two days he would cut grass or paint houses. My grandmother was also always working, but she worked as a provider for her mom, so she wasn't always gone. My aunt was still in middle school at the time. She and my sister are the same age. My mother still worked two jobs, and I would get home from school to find her sleeping from exhaustion during her one hour lunch break. During my mom's break I would make her soup or a sandwich, so that she could have something to eat when she wakes up. My mom would rest for about thirty minutes leaving her ten minutes to eat and get ready, so that she could be at work in twenty minutes. Once my mother left I was at home alone with my aunt and sister, but since they were girls I really couldn't do anything with them. I would go outside and just sit there and think what it would be like if my father would be with me. Three long dreadful years went by without my father, and I would blame myself for it. I thought that my father had left, because my family never told me what happened to him. Another long year went by, and I was finally seven.