Do you ever have those moments when you can’t tell if you hate your mom or love your mom? My mom is a wonderful woman. Great woman. She’s a woman with a huge heart for illegal immigrants who are brought in as children. Mom has spent some time in the immigrant community, mainly with children. Mom has watched kids who are here illegally come to grips with the fact they will have to live their entire lives paying for a mistake they were not old enough to make. She has worked with these kids who realize because of choices their parents made they will not be able to achieve the American dream. And it breaks her heart.
Keep following me here. Mom wants to get the story out. So, my wonderful mother tried. I love my mom and think she can do anything she sets her mind to. Funny thing, my mother doesn’t agree. When someone wants to get a story out, why not go to a storyteller/writer? After all, those are the people who can tell the story.
I’ve heard these stories for years. The high school students who are straight A, Advance Placement, on their way to be the first to go to college in their family that find out they are here illegally. Some of these kids were days old when they came across the border. America is the only home they know. They have never been to Mexico. They study hard to get somewhere, only to find out America has closed their doors. These kids have no choice. Their parents bring them across the border. Sometimes they are brought over on visas and their parents overstay. Sometimes they are brought along with the rest of the family by Coyotes. They live with parents who are in constant fear of being deported. They grow up to inherit this fear. Some will marry American citizens and begin the long process of trying to become an American citizen. Some will become adults, have children, and live in the fear of someone deporting them to a country they have no memory of. These are the forgotten in the discussion of illegal immigration.
Can you name another crime where a child is held as accountable as the parent? Drugs? We don’t hold a six year old found during a drug raid accountable. We don’t hold the twelve year old accountable. Why would we? It is the parents who committed the crime, even if the child was living in the house. Driving drunk? I don’t remember a child going to jail because they were in the car when Mommy or Daddy was driving drunk. Just this summer here in Southern New Mexico a kid was caught with the getaway car & loot that his father, uncle, and another male relative had left behind when the police were closing in. The kid was given a teddy bear and taken somewhere safe.
You’re asking why I am wondering if I hate my mother. I thought so after all of this. Mom suggested I write their stories. Okay, that’s not a bad thing. It’s just I was a little busy with the Zeidrich Chronicles. Now, I have another story forming in my head. It is a story that needs to be told. I’m thinking I may try to write a short story first and submit it to Glimmer Train Press’ September Contest (Open Fiction 2,000-20,000 words.) I was trying to figure out what to write, anyways.
Don’t you hate it when your mother comes up with a great idea? Can’t you see that discussion with an agent? Agent: “How did you come up with the story?” Me: “Well, my mom thinks she can’t write and told me someone needed to tell the story.” Agent: “Your mother does have more ideas, right?”
Oh well, it is a story that must be told. The September Contest ends 30 September. The results will be made public 30 November. If I win, y’all will have to read it in Glimmer Train Press. If not, I’ll post it here on the blog in December.
I guess I don’t hate my mother, just her muse’s timing.
-Amanda Nicole
PS: I got yet another rejection today. This one was three pages long email not because of the amount of words, but the space between paragraphs! I am not kidding when I say the printed email had four inches between paragraphs. Yep, someone needs help with emails.
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