Journey of Life.

Chapter 95.

I go to the kitchen in search of a bottle of water. The moment I open the refrigerator, my mother enters. In addition, she has a small box in her hand, strangely never seen before. As soon as she catches a glimpse of my face, she smiles at me without saying anything.

I see her sitting down and opening that mysterious object. I slowly walk towards her.

"Who are these girls?" I point to the image where it depicts her with two other friends of hers. The style they have is towards the end of the 80s, when my mother was 20, those times when she was still a sophomore.

"They are Cassie and Sandy, they were well known in college." She shows a nice smile. "They were two really rebellious and carefree girls, with whom, thanks to them, I was able to really enjoy those college years."

She's right, their ways made it clear. In addition to their way of dressing, their attitudes made mom really cute and different. In this one she is sitting holding two books, including Sense and Sensibility and Madame Bovary- books she herself gave me. Instead they are lying down on the ground holding two bottles of beer and a cigarette in their mouth.

"The great thing is even though I was different, they always accepted me for who I was."

Smiling, she adds, "At first I wanted to change if I wanted to adapt, but in the end, I noticed that appearances are deceiving, instead they have always encouraged me to be myself- even though I constantly felt like a fish out of water."

"Before I made friends with them, I always spent semesters the same way, all because I wanted to make them proud-"

Maybe I understood what she means, in fact after a big sigh, she says, "My parents were tough people which education had to go always first, the rest didn't matter to them."

Smiling nervously she adds, "I had to be perfect in everything, especially when it came to school and having good grades."

Without even giving me time to comment, she welcomes me to her world, letting me travel into her past. I don't know exactly how to live it, because as she once told me, she and I are one. I see a lot me in her, especially in imagining her small figure on her bed reading. According to her account, she also used that means to create her own reality. She almost always spent her days wandering around the world of those great writers, especially when she read The Little Women. That was the first book her mother gave for her eleventh birthday. It was a way to calm her down, they were times when they had just moved to the USA.

So greeting her uncles and cousins ​​with the thought of never seeing them, made her very sad. Very often she didn't even manage to settle in with school, so her diversity as well as her shyness hindered her from making friends. First of all, because she didn't want to, and second, she wanted to go back to Mexico- to her old friends and in particular to her favorite tía. But the thing that pushed her to act were her parents, she knew that the reason for their transfer was to give her a chance and an opportunity to get a safe and hopeful future.

And that's why they forced her to do her best in school. Despite trying to make friends, everyone excluded her. She didn't understand why. Until she met dad, who thanked to him had her own circle of friends. He was different from her, he was very lively and funny, while she was cold towards him. But he always managed to make her laugh, and make her feel comfortable. Her parents didn't like it, because they thought it was a distraction. So they forbade her to spend time with him.

"They often told me, your role is to do well in school." Her voice reminds me that I am in the present, although my mind is still stuck in that world. "And that was a way to help the family."

"Did you do what they said or..." I don't intend to finish the sentence, I wanted her to complete it.

"I was a child, so it was obvious that I wanted to have fun." This time, smiling, she says "And your father, despite my warning of my situation, he didn't give up."