Great dreams require sacrifice
Ventura County Star: March 10, 1999 by Sandra Nieto
I remember the day when my husband and I chose to start a new life in the U.S. I was pregnant and we were full of hope to find an opportunity of a better kind of life for my baby. I think it is the principal reason of our people. That's why we leave our countries parents family and friends.
We sacrifice to live away from the things we loved to follow the American Dream our dream.
Nothing is really easy either here in the land of opportunities. You have to learn the language to work and raise your kids. Sometimes life's duties make you feel overwhelmed and we're needing our families close to us but they're so far. It makes us to know the loneliness.
But we confront all for only one motive the biggest one -- our own family our sons and daughters looking for a brilliant future in this wonderful country. Someones reach it someones not.
It is the sad thing. I saw how some parents works the whole day under the sun in the fields to bring some food to their homes and to keep the dream alive. The kids not always respond in the way we wanted. They enroll in gangs instead of school they carry guns instead of books and the worst thing is they feel it is right. It's cool!
This way goes to two final destinies: jail or death.
This is not our longing dream. I really feel so sorry for those parents who can't see realized their hopes for whom the insane desire for the drugs and the bad companies broke the illusion.
We have to check our family daily and ask them always if they're doing their part to realize our dream.
Never is it too late to recognize and restart the way to be -- the winners who our parents a long time ago dreamed of.
-- Sandra Nieto of Santa Paula was tutored for two years at Blanchard Community Library's literacy program with her husband Augustine. She is now taking English classes at Ventura College and has a 3-year-old son Fabean and 10-year-old daughter Stephanie.
Notes: (Sandra Nieto wrote this essay as one of her assignments for the Family Literacy: Aid In Reading-Families For Literacy program at Santa Paula's Blanchard Community Library. She is still learning English so we have reprinted her essay as it was written.
