This post is sponsored by Phillips 66. Thank you for always being so supportive!
I found this photograph of my mom and dad today. This photo makes me so happy, and they look so beautiful and handsome!
My mom and dad had such different upbringings from one another. My mom was the oldest daughter of the wealthiest businessman in the city, who was also very generous and adopted and raised family members and sent them to college. My mom tells me that growing up, her parents were always feeding and housing people—even strangers—and they were the only house that had a television, so the whole neighborhood would gather together to watch television when there was a big show on. She had her own seamstress and a designer who handmade all her clothes. You could say she grew up as a princess.
My dad is the youngest son of 5 boys, the son of a very successful businessman. When my dad was about 11 years old, his father’s best friend tricked his father into investing all his money in a new business and then ran away with all his money, never to be seen again, and leaving the family dirt poor. My dad tells me that for many, many years, his lunch was simply 2 hard-boiled eggs that he’d take to school, and that he was hungry all day during school. To this day, he’s not a fan of hard-boiled eggs because he got so sick of them.
My dad had a dream to come to America, to see for himself why America is the most powerful country. So after working and saving just enough money to pay for a one-way ticket to America, one semester of tuition at a university and one month of rent, he came to America. He was married to my mom by then, and they ventured out together to a country so foreign to them. My mom, who grew up as a princess, worked as a janitor for a gas station along with my dad early every morning to survive. They didn’t own a car or a television; their only possessions were a radio and one bike. So early in the morning every day, my dad would sit on the bike seat with my mom sitting in front of him on the metal part of the bike to ride to the gas station so they could clean the bathrooms. I can only imagine how hard of a transition this must have been for my mom, who not only was newly married, but also had moved to a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language and was experiencing culture shock. As a janitor of a gas station, owning nothing but a radio and a bike, she was living a completely different lifestyle than she was used to.
My parents worked hard and had 5 kids, and I can’t speak for myself but my other 4 siblings are amazing people who are doing great things in their lives. We had a wonderful childhood with the most wonderful, loving, respectful parents, and I am so proud of what my parents have achieved.
