My Family Tale

For the past seventeen years of my life minus a few months, I have lived in the United States. I grew up skiing and bicycling in Grand Rapids, Michigan, until my family decided to move all the way out west to Flagstaff, Arizona. Many eleven-year-olds might become stubborn and defensive in response to such a massive, life-changing move, but I remember embracing it because I was with my family, and I was ready to face any obstacle that unveiled itself to me because I knew that my late comedic father, my worrisome mother, and my troublesome brother would be right by my side. As we made the two-day drive from Michigan to Arizona in our SUV together, we watched the numbers on the odometer crawl up more and more until there were 2,000 more miles on the car than there were when we started, and we

My family history is a complicated one to say the least, however through this research I have learned more about them than I previously thought. Throughout the years I have spent many hours talking to both of my grandparents listening to their life journeys. My father’s mom Charlene had a rough childhood. She was born into complete poverty in the Central Valley in a town called Porterville, CA, as a field worker in during the depression. Her mother my great-grandmother was full blooded Cherokee Indian, and they experienced harsh discrimination. Living along the roads in ditches, or one room shacks they never really had much of nothing. When Charlene was 13 she got married and pregnant to an awful man, and before my Uncle David was born my grandma filed for divorce and began dating my grandfather Homer. She ended up marrying Homer and by the time she was 19 she had all four of her children, my father Don being the youngest.

My mother, my brother, and I were on the train going to Munich. Life was already hard as it is and my brother dying certainly did not help it. It was a day in January 1939 and this was the day when I would begin a new chapter in my life.

To the Dad, at your age, no it wouldn't be a good idea to have a 27 year old drug addict grandson stay with you. This is one of those things that has to fix itself. For one, your daughter has to evict her son and stop enabling him, if he won't get help for his drug addiction. My In-laws kicked out a drug addict daughter with kids, because a social worker said it would be the only way for her to get clean, was to stop the support. She got arrested a couple of months later, her kids went in Foster Care. She was given a year sentence, she got off drugs and finished her GED in jail. When she got out she did AA meetings and got a job and eventually got her kids back. My In-Laws kept her at arms length for the rest of their lives due to her behavior

Hi my names Karlee Haase and I'm going to tell you about my crazy family.In my family I have a mom and dad a brother named Jarrod and a sister named Sophie, Jarrod's 16 and Sophie's 10. I'm going to tell you a story about when my siblings,cousins and I had a sleepover at our

Everything was about to change, we wouldn’t order take-out on Sundays, it was a big deal, I was losing my best friend, the only father figure I have ever had so far. I watched him taking all of his stuff out of the apartment, I was getting more and more mad. Wasn’t our beautiful relationship enough to make him stay? I even blame myself I thought I had done something wrong, maybe wearing his clothes and leaving them all messy, I apologize and swear not to do it again, but it didn’t matter the decision was already made.

As the United States was expanding, so were the prospects for my family. My ancestors arrived in the United States with the hope of bettering themselves and taking advantage of the opportunities that the United States was said to hold. This made my family excited about coming to a new land, one where their future generations, with me included, would be able to progress and prosper. Upon arriving to the United States, my uncle Ben made the journey to the lands in the Far West. They were rumored to hold a great opportunity, and my uncle could not miss out on this chance to gain prosperity (Unruh, 1993). My cousin Michael arrived from Europe as an immigrant to Ellis Island, and was also able to establish his life and those of his family members in New York City (Behdad, 2005). In addition to the two family members mentioned, it was my aunt Carol that joined the Reform Movement of the United States and became a part of a turning point in American political history (Buechler, 1990). With such a rich historical background, I was able to compel together a historical representation of my family's growth and involvement from the beginning with America.

I grew up on a steady diet of Hallmark and fairy tales, and like most little girls I hung onto every last word. From the couple fighting, to them desperately confessing their love for one another, I just could not tear myself away. More times than not I would replay every moment of the story in my head, that is until a new love story caught my attention. We all know the storyline. The beautiful young lady meets a handsome stranger, and as much as they try to deny it, they have a special connection. As their relationship grows they suddenly can not stop themselves from confessing their feelings, until something tragic happens and they both ended up heartbroken. Most importantly, all of these events lead to their fairytale ending, where they live happily ever after. These stories are great, and watching them is a rite of passage for most young girls. However, these romances are not real, and love in this life will never look the way it does in movies. Naturally, as I grew older my love for these movies only grew, but I could see the effect they were having on me by the age of 10 when I had already decided that being a wife, and having a family was one of my biggest life priorities. Having a family is still so important to me, but that's not the problem.

Life becomes more meaningful when you realize the simple life fact that you will never get the same moment twice. I had lived with my parents until I was 12 years old, but they could not care for me anymore, because they are working in a factory in Juarez for more than six or eight hours a day. They did not like the idea that my sister and I would stay alone, because my older sister was studying at high school and I was studying at elementary school. When looking for a good place that we may stay, after days of searching they found Centro Victoria de Niños Vida en Jesus, a small place but an amazing and comfortable place in Juarez. In this is a place a married couple care for many girls and boys of the same ages as me. Our parents explained the difficult situation we were going through. They told us that it hurt them a lot to leave us, but that they did not have any more options. The reality was that we did not have family in Juarez at the time. They told us that they found an amazing place and small place where we can stay just during the week. All children that have a family can have a chance to go to the home. My sister and I agreed to live there because we did not want to be alone. The first two weeks were very sad to feel that you no longer live in your house, but in this place, we are learning to be good people, get a chance to have two incredible families and having opportunities that changed my life.

Our story begins in Greece, many years ago. A baby was born in the city of Athens. Her name was Oakley. Oakley had brown, long hair with big hazel eyes. Her parents adored her.

It was a big lie. All those stories, I believed he was gone forever. All those hours I spent crying alone in my room, reading about what people thought had happened to my brother… It all started about two months ago, Jake would be gone every night, who knows where. He would tell my parents he's working night shifts at his job at the diner. I knew he wasn't there but I never bothered to ask where he went all those nights. One night, Jake never came back home, not even the next afternoon. My mom called the school, the diner, and his best friends mom. None of them had seen him for three days. Which also means he wasn't actually going to work, like I knew.

Looking back on my childhood, the experiences that have shaped and molded into the person I am today were immensely influenced from my mother. Women from vast cultures are expected to be subordinate and tend to be oppressed by the men in their lives, and this was no different in my mother’s case coming from a Latin culture. Growing up, I witnessed my mother being subjected to the traditional gender role that handicapped her in gaining her own independence outside of my father. She was expected to be submissive, stay home, raise the children, clean the house, have dinner waiting when my father got home. She wasn’t “allowed” to work because my father didn’t want her interacting with other men, nor did he want her to earn her own money because this would make her less dependent of him. Yet it was common knowledge that my father had extramarital affairs and everyone turned a blind eye. She had to ask for permission before leaving the house and in the instances that she didn’t, it always resulted in hostile arguments between them where I would fear for the safety of my mother.

My mother had mentioned to me that her family‘s story is longer than a book, however, it is so hard for me to ask the details of what had happened to her because all the stories in her life strike a chord in her heart. For example, almost all of my father’s friends in Hong Kong were the people who escaped from communist China. Their stories were soul stirring. Many of them left their families in China. Their vicissitudes of life contained joy, sorrows, partings and reunions. My father was considered very lucky because he survived. Many of them capsized in the rough sea; some of them simply spent all of their energy and died on the way to their dream; some of them were caught by the militias or the soldiers; some of them were extradited back to China by the British government. Their families left in China suffered numerous humiliations. However, more than thirty years having passed, their stories were dim without a voice in history. Either their stories were too bitter to bring up, or they did not want to be named as a traitor to their country. During Mao’s era, and even for a while after, anyone who escaped to Hong Kong was considered a traitor and turned over to the enemy. Escaping to Hong Kong was a very sensitive topic. Therefore, we would hear these stories all the time, but we hardly ever see anything written down about what they had been through. I have lived in the United States for more than thirty years, vivid memories of my childhood still

“Kaitlyn hurry up!” “Okay mom I’m coming!” Today is the day my family and I are leaving Tucson, Arizona. We are moving to a small town located in Virginia. I’m very nervous but also excited. We are leaving Arizona because my stepdad just retired from the military and he wants to live somewhere where we are surrounded by vast land. Also, on the plus side my grandparents will be very close to us. I’m going to miss all of my friends, especially my best friend Kayla. Maybe this move is the best thing for my family.

Many people in life have gone through a turning point in their life that either changed their own life or someone else's life. This is mine.