My Origin Story

The hardest question I get asked – which should not be hard at all – is: where are you from? It should not be difficult, most people are born and grow up in that same town, they may even live in the same house throughout their childhood. But in my case, my answer is complicated. And today, I will explain why that is. I am a 1.5 generation immigrant – even USC professors who study immigration had a hard time classifying me. I was born in Roseville, CA which is near Sacramento, but I never really lived there, I spent the first 8 months of my life between Rocklin and Lincoln. Then I moved to Zapopan, a municipality in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. I spent the next 13 years of my life there – never learning English or much about the US, except for what I saw in movies – I was so disappointed when I got to high school and it was nothing like in Mean Girls or the Breakfast Club. Then a few days before my 14^th birthday, on March 17, 2006, my mom, my brother and I moved to Redwood City – I spent the next four years there attending high school, learning English, trying to understand American culture and figuring out how to make it to college. And then I moved once again to Los Angeles to attend college and spent seven years there. In 2017, I came back to the Bay Area and I am now based in San Jose…

So I don’t really know where I’m from. And even though part of me wishes I had had a stable place and house to call home – I wouldn’t want it any other way. But the following story is my “origin” story. A story about my mom, the most resilient and courageous woman I know. And although some details may have been embellished for dramatic effect, I love this story.

When my mom was 16, she met my dad when they were both working for Supermercados Gigante. And they started dating soon after. My mom came from a very poor family, she is one of 9, so when she met my dad, a boy who came from a middle class family, she was a little dazzled by him. They dated for 6 years and then got married. She needed a way to leave her house. And when he offered to take her to the US to go visit his sister, she said yes. She had another reason to go – her sister gone to the US when she was only 10 and she hadn’t seen her since. She had always kept in touch with the family, but for the last few months, she hadn’t reached out and my mom was starting to get worried. So she said yes to going to the US with her now husband. She had never been out of the country so it seemed like a good adventure and a great opportunity to find her sister – because the US was small enough that she could just find her, right?

So they went to San Diego where my dad’s sister was living and they stayed with them for a few months, but soon after they arrived, my dad started to change. He wasn’t the same person she had met. He was drinking a lot, partying with them and making her stay behind – it got to the point where they would lock the doors so that she couldn’t leave. The environment turned really toxic really fast. And then she found out she was pregnant with me and things got more complicated. She started going to the doctor for checkups on her own even though she didn’t speak any English or have a car. They kept going out. And he started cheating. Soon, it became too much. So she called her aunt, the only person she knew in the US that she could get a hold of. She explained her situation and her aunt arranged for one of her friends to pick up my mom and take her to the airport so that she could fly to Sacramento and move in with her. But since they would lock the doors, when her aunt’s friend showed up at night after they had gone out, she had to jump out of a window onto the roof of the van of the friend. She was 6 months pregnant by then.

My mom made it to the airport and flew to Sacramento and she settled in Lincoln with her aunt. Her cousin was pregnant at the time too. So when the time came for my mom to give birth – her aunt took her to the hospital and left her there because her daughter was jealous and didn’t want her to spend too much time with my mom. I was a C-section baby and there were some complications. She spent two months in the hospital and couldn’t leave because she had nowhere to go. It got to the point where a nurse offered her place to my mom and she had accepted. My mom and I were going to move in with one of the nurses but the night before we were supposed to leave – there were lots of deliveries and they placed a patient in my mom’s room, she had just given birth to a baby girl and spent the whole night calling her friends and letting them know. The next morning, someone came to pick her up. A tall lady with blonde hair, she had brought some balloons and was holding the baby while she waited for the new mom to get dressed so they could leave. She was waiting by the edge of my mom’s bed and when my mom got a good look at her, she looked familiar. This blonde lady looked like someone she knew. So in a moment of craziness, she called out her sister’s name “Nika?” and the lady opened her eyes wide and stared at my mom “quien eres?” (who are you?) and my mom said “soy yo, cecy, tu hermana” (it’s me, cecy, your sister”) and my aunt almost dropped the baby. She started to cry and then my mom started to cry and they couldn’t believe that they had found each other. My mom and I went home with my aunt too and everyone at the hospital celebrated. They couldn’t believe my mom had found her sister.

We spent the next few months in Rocklin with my aunt and then my mom decided to go back to Mexico. And she got back together with my dad because some aspects of our machismo culture are hard to escape. But eventually she did, she divorced my dad when I was five. And since then, she has continued to show me how brave and courageous women can be. I am forever in debt to her and I wish you could meet her.