Although my mom didn’t have a lot of money within her family and as a seven year old, she did have wishes and dreams. She wanted to have enough money considering her mom sometimes barely had plenty to buy the necessities they needed, she wanted to have everything her other classmates had such pretty clothes. She wished plenty of items, though the point she hoped would happen was a dream, a dream to be a U.S citizen.

My mother rarely talks around her past, therefore I looked forward to hearing her perspective of the American dream and her past. Strange, she genuinely agreed to let me interview her. “Ask away,” she started, “Take a seat.”

         As a child, my mother had various wishes, including having clothes to dress her Barbie’s. she reminisced,  “because I couldn't afford the quality clothes, I needed to draw them in with a marker and redraw them because It would later be wiped out by my hands.” One of the wishes that stood out the max was when she mentioned having documents. “I always wanted to be a U.S citizen. I wished to be able to live close to a beach, shop at all the expensive stores, but the more meaningful reason, is to in fact have citizenship, travel and work over there” my mother stated. In order to achieve that dream, she “had to be the best in school and work for a while.” She knew she “wasn't going to be living in Mexico when [she] knew [she] could be something successful.”  She explained, “I made tortillas in a tortilla store, my gosh I hated that place, however I knew I must do it to achieve what I wanted.”

         “In the process of getting my documents, all of a sudden, stuff started getting in the way.” she stated. As I'm listening to her, she started getting into specific details that I never heard her say. “I always worked extremely hard in my job to earn the money, still It was very difficult because I had to hand some to my mom to buy the necessities” she responded. I imagined that she couldn't complain since in Mexico, the children respect their parents, such in a way I related to her. I mentioned to her if she was still in high school while working and she commented that she, “couldn't leave high school [she] needed to complete it, if [she] was going to leave to the U.S [she] at least had to be educated.” I began to notice that she was getting emotional although she was holding it in.

         After her long wait, she arrived to the U.S legally. She explains, “I don't want to give you the details on how I showed up here, its too much,   I was excited because it was the first time I went on an airplane.” She started commenting that at first she felt awful for the reason that she left her family, including her sisters behind, nevertheless she knew that she was making the right choice for her own sake. “Right when I arrived here, i stayed at a friend's house while I picked myself up, it took a while, but I made it there.” Eventually she mentioned that she found the man she was planning to marry and at the deadline of the story, she told me, “I Always wanted to be a citizen. I started off as a resident, but worked my way up, look at me now, im a U.S citizen and I honestly feel as if I accomplished something extraordinary in 10 years. That was my American Dream. To have documents, eventually become a U.S citizen, and provide my kids with a better life than I had.”