My Family

Growing up, my mom has always been the person in my life that kept me appreciative. Her story and all she has done and continues to go through is absolutely remarkable. I often ponder about how I was so blessed to have a mother who is so strong and resilient against every obstacle. Without her I would not be the determined God fearing individual I am today because she makes me see that nothing can stop me from their dreams so long as I believe.

I was seven years old when I was told that the parents who raised me were not my biological parents. I clearly remember the day that my aunt reveled the story how become her child. The story begun with her intellectual and revolutionary younger brother decided to become the president of Ethiopian Airlines Labor Union, who stood against the military dictatorship Ethiopian government. My dad was one of the leaders who coordinated a peaceful declaration for strike asking the government to give the power to the people. My dad, became the one of the most wanted for a campaign of mass killings called Red Terror, after seven people were shot and about 300 employees were arrested at her work place. The Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2015P) reports, “Estimates for the total number of people killed in the Red Terror range from 50,000to 140,000 to over one and a half million”, which included several universities students, educated and professional young men and women.

What would you do if one day you got the chance to look in another person's life. If you want to follow me into my loving and caring house, you will learn all about my family. You will learn what makes us unique. You will also learn about how each member is important to me. What you find out may surprise you or terrify you. One thing though that my family sticks by is a line from the disney movie lilo and stitch: “Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.” So if you would like to know what it is to be in my family come and join me.

One of the most difficult things to do is to break all my ethical values and principles down into a single phrase or statement. However, I have no choice in the matter. So, I would have to say that my family’s drive to want to do good for those who are less fortunate and the strong sense of family that we all demonstrate must be the strongest and best values of all. If we stay along that thought process, I would say that, for me, if I leave a strong and ethically sound roadmap or legacy for my kids and their kids to follow, then I would say that life was a success. Having said all of that, here is my single statement: The purpose of life is to achieve a socioeconomic status to where I can ensure the safety and overall wellbeing of both my family and then their families while achieving a positive impact on society that is greater than when I entered it. Always try to better myself and my family!

John F. Kennedy once said, ”Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” This quote explains how much of a support my grandparents, family, and a safe country mean to me. I am very thankful for my grandparents who support me all the time and come to sporting events and love to hear about school when they call at night. I am also thankful for my amazing family, who always stand by me everyday and love to hear about my school day and come to baseball games even when they don’t really want to. Some of the other things that I am also thankful for are that we can live safe happy lives, we don’t have to be drafted into the Army, etc. Lastly, I am thankful for a safe country that has a great armed forces, leaders, and is very generous. Moreover, I am thankful for a safe country, family, and my amazing grandparents.

Darkness, anger, sadness, innocence and love: these are the words that describe my older half-brother and all the memories and emotions he brings to me and my parents. I was born in a loving home, he was born under chaos. My father is my hero, his father is his villain. To take care of me, my mom left her job. To take care of him, my mom left my brother with my grandmother so that she could get a job. This story is hard to digest and harder to put into words. The relationship between my family and my brother is now over, and it made my vision of life and family change completely.

As cliché as it may sound, my friends and family are the most important things in my life. When I say that my parents are the best in the world, I am not exaggerating. They treat me like an adult, appreciating my opinions in debates about anything from sports to politics and telling me the truth whenever possible. With them, I have been able to see the world, traveling to around the United States (to places like New York City, Acadia National Park, and even Columbia, South Carolina) and abroad (including Bermuda, Italy, and France). In my family, I am able to find people who challenge me to be my best and who also notice when I need comfort. On a similar note, my friendships have made me into a more adventurous, open person. I am naturally cautious and can worry extensively over decisions, but my friends have a way of bringing me out into the world. I have had wonderful experiences like going to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal and taking late-night fishing trips that I never would have done on my own. The people I love bring out the best in me and make me want to be even better.

Family was a word that made me feel like a empty bag, drifty down the wind, not having a clue where it's going next. It was a word I heard a lot, my family this and my family that. People I was surrounded with had a family to be with but I didn't have no family here to even spend time with. Sometimes when I heard people talk about their family, I would day dream and imagine how my family was like, what they liked to do, what did they do and go for family reunions, how many people I had in my family, were there some in my family, characteristics I shared with them or were there others that were totally different from me. I would think what was my mom and dad's side like, what was different, and how did they come together to call us a family, what was the history in the Kanidy and Elbare family that brought us together as one. All these questions I had in my head left me wondering out alone for years. Whenever people asked about my family, I would just want to blast off, miles away to my destination, right quick, and meet them and land back to the conversion and tell them about my family.

As a kid our parents have always told us to never talk to strangers. Not because they are bad people or dangerous, but instead because you simply do not know anything about them. When I was younger my dad always use to tell me, “Noah if you ever find yourself around a lot of strangers turn around and go back to where you came from.” It may be a cliché but every parent has said that to their children before, at least once. Let me first say that my family only consists of 6 people. Now, you may be thinking that is too small; there is definitely more than six people in his family. By blood, yes you would be correct. I count a real family as people who would give their shirt off their backs for you. Those people in my life are my mom, dad, sister, grandpa, and grandma. The rest of my blood relatives are what you could say, “hypocrites”- they say one thing to you and then their actions speak a completely different language. It’s like that one friend that says, “Bro, I’m outside.” but when you look out the window he isn’t within a mile from your house. At first it’s kind of funny, you joke around about it; but come that third and fourth time they do it you start losing trust in them and start taking everything they say with a grain of salt. Trust within my family is a huge characteristic for me and I believe that quality should be very important to everyone. Ontop of trust comes the momma rule that everybody should follow. The momma rule is, “I can talk back to my mom but if

“Hello, do you want to be my friend?” Wow, what a childish thing to say. Nevertheless, it was from my mouth in which these words came out of. I remember constantly saying this exact line to almost everyone I know, and the response I got was always something similar to a smile and “of course”, what happens after this is playing for hours on end and departing when our parents dragged us home. That was how I lived my childhood, making new friends wherever I go and ending everyone with separation due to our parents. During those times, I would be so annoyed with my mom, dragging me home every time we started to have fun. I now realize it was because we were a mess, covered in dirt and due to the fun we were having we didn’t even realize it was raining. But when I had realized this care that my parents had for me it was too late, my parents had divorced and I was left with my dad.

Losing a loved one is never easy. There will be pain and heartache. There will be Days where you do not want to get out of bed in the morning, and days where you just feel angry. I know when my family was struggling with the Loss of my baby brother, though he was just a few days old, it was unquestionably heartbreaking. Seeing my mom in the depressed state that she was in made me cling to her and I refused to leave her side for a long time after his passing. I know that I am not in your exact situation, and I will never fully understand, but I hope that I can provide at least some kind of comfort in this time of loss that you and your family are experiencing.

“Work hard, never give up, and most importantly, always stay humble and kind”, these are just a few words my father would say to me when he had the chance or felt that I needed to hear that. My mother would say, “Mickey, as long as you believe in yourself, you can do anything”. To this day, I live my life through proverbs, quotes, and advice from a variety of people. I am very family-oriented. Most of the things I do is in hopes that I can augment some type of valuable contribution to my family and others. To begin to tell my story, I will first start by talking about the people who had the biggest influence on my life.

I grew up in a household slightly different from the average household. This abnormal household showed me that no matter the family unit someone can have a positive influence in their life that will push them to achieve their goals. We lived in Maryland so the cost of living was high my parents had to work multiple jobs. This means my brother and I really had little to none parental or supervision growing up. I am only four years younger than my brother so I would hang with his crowd of friends rather than mine. In my household, my mother’s niece, Monet lived with us she is about ten years older than my brother. When my brother and I would wake up and I would be the only person in the house. I can remember waking up and smelling the freshly cooked waffles and bacon downstairs. Monet was my mother’s brother, daughter. Monet became so close to my brother Avery and I she was almost as if she was our sister. I can remember growing up and she would always say, “You don't have to take the route I took, its many more exits on the highway.” Even though I was young I was not blind to the fact of Monet role in the community and her neighborhood job I never judged her, she did what she had to do to make ends meet. It was an experience every day, or anytime being with Monet. She was so popular around Maryland it was almost like everywhere we went we received respect love. Now that I look back at the past, I see that Monet has taught me a lot that I know and live by today. I could

Family is one of the most important parts of life. When you have a piece of that missing, you always wonder what could be different. When I was little i always looked up to my uncles and my best friend was my papa. I wanted to do everything with them but because of my uncle’s job in the armed forces we didn’t see him as much as we liked but that made our time together even better. I would go everywhere with my papa and when my cousins were in North Carolina I wanted to do everything with them. I didn’t know that our family tree was just a little more complicated than I thought. It was something that would affect me forever.

When I was 16 years old, I realized I was similar to my dad. I always felt different from my family. My parents and my sister's look-alike. Their skin colors are all the same. I’ve always been the darker and chubbier one in the family. Sometimes I used to think I wasn’t even related to them. I even asked my mom as a kid, “did you guys kidnap me from someone as a kid?”