Your status gives you an identity in this country, either you are a citizen, or you are undocumented. There are many ways to obtain citizenship in the United States of America. Some processes of citizenship may be easier and can be received in a shorter amount of time, others may take as long as twenty years, and there are also those who will always live undocumented because there is either no law, or no solution towards citizenship for them. Being undocumented is one of the toughest statuses to have. Most live in fear with the possibility of deportation. However, this status does not just affect the individual, those very close to them, such as parents or children, take on the fear as well.

I had just stepped into the apartment not so long ago from picking up my younger brother from the bus stop. I heard the door opening from my mom’s room and I ran towards it to find her walk inside with an expression of total loss. She sat down on the couch, and her expression changed within a second. She began to cry, and I was worried because she couldn’t find the words to explain that she got hit by a car a few hours before. My siblings and I were startled by the news, but we were also glad because we were the lucky ones, the blessed ones because our mother was still with us. I couldn’t stop crying, I was scared, I could’ve lost her and couldn’t imagine my life without her. My strong and hardworking single mother was on her way to work that morning, on Tuckahoe road, and as the crosswalk symbol changed to the pedestrian symbol, she checked both ways to be sure she was safe and began to walk across the street. A car began to approach but she thought the driver was going to slow down because she had the right of way, but that was not my mother’s case. The driver continued and hit her, but didn’t stop there, she started to drag my mother with her car for a few more feet until she finally felt the need to press on the brakes. My mother was in shock and couldn’t talk or move for a few minutes, people had to approach her and try to help her get up from the middle of the street. My mother came home that day with swollen bruises around her body and chipped teeth. Once again, although I couldn’t bear to see my mother in pain and psychologically traumatized from this accident, my brothers and I were still the lucky ones.

My mother had to take about a week off from work. She was a housekeeper, but after working there for about 4 years, she had no sick hours to use to recover from the accident. She started having lawyer consultations to see what could be done. In the simplest form, my mother, my strong, hardworking, and undocumented single mother had just gotten into an accident. It was only a matter of time until her job took her name off from the schedule. She was sent to therapy for months and had appointments with specialists from different departments. I went with her after school most of the time to translate. She tried to manage the appointments with my availability, and it was a process for myself to cope with. I didn’t like seeing my mother in pain, but there was one appointment that emotionally affected me the most. The specialist looked at the cat scans that my mother had undergone, and he broke it down to her in the simplest way possible. My mother’s body is never going to be the same. She can work, but her hernia will limit what she is able to do. She can’t sit for too long, she can’t stand for too long, carry heavy items, or flex her body too often. Doing so would irritate her back and cause extreme pain. I processed this information and came to the realization that my mother would undoubtedly not work for a long time. Being undocumented is already a tough situation and it’s easier for undocumented people to find work in physical labor jobs, for example the job position that my mother had as a housekeeper. This was not the only problem, being undocumented gives you no form of benefits with accidents just like my mother’s. No disability, no unemployment, and the list proceeds.

Although I wish there is a resolution to this life experience that shifted my identity in different forms, there isn’t any resolution to my mother’s car accident. I was sixteen when the accident occurred, I was eighteen when I “dropped out” of college. I didn’t feel mentally and/or emotionally prepared to start school, so after a semester, I took a break and focused on working for my family. My goal was only a semester break, but that turned into a two-year break. Our building got shut down my first semester of college, and my family and I had to move into a one-bedroom apartment. Our financial hardships were at an all-time high, so when I finally obtained a job, I focused solely on that. There was a point where I had three jobs at the same time and I didn’t care about the workload, I just needed to make sure my family was good. I am the oldest of three and although my mother didn’t agree with me putting school to the side for a while, I knew that only I could give myself the relief to know that my family is taken care of by providing for them no matter the circumstance.

The significance of this tragedy could be defined by the hardships that followed the accident. Not only will my mother have to live with this for the remainder of her days, but so will the rest of my family. We were all at an age where we needed her most, and that dependence practically got destroyed instantaneously. Although this seems like nothing but a tragedy, it taught me my most valuable life lesson; to adapt quickly and effectively no matter how harsh the situation is.

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