How my family got me through the immigration process
Since I am an only child, my parents were the first best friends I ever had, and they were also the most financially generous. As a child, I used to call my mom “Anne” and my dad “Steve” perhaps because I saw them more as my friends than as my parents.
People always commented about how close we were and at the time I don’t believe any of us thought we could get any closer.
One day on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, my mother and father sat me down and asked how I would feel about moving to the United States. My first thought, being an 11-year-old girl was: Britney Spears lives there, they have Bonnebell Lipsmackers and really good ice-cream flavors like cookie dough, so I would like to live there too.
We started the daunting immigration process and within a few months we found ourselves living in Las Vegas, Nevada. We had my dad’s family who I just met for the first time but other than that we had no friends, no familiar faces and definitely no familiar foods. We only had each other.
So how did it make us closer you might wonder? It made us closer because I immigrated at an age where adolescents typically push away their parents. I had no choice but to stay close to mine because they were all that I had.
