No one accomplishes anything on his or her own. With any achievement there’s always a second or third party who chips in a little or a lot.
It’s safe to say that my parents played a huge role in helping me attain my college degrees. They unselfishly weaved their way into my life to during that decade-long journey. Yes, I took the long route to earn my bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
My mother and father played different roles when it came to my college life. My mom stuck with the academic side of things while my dad provided the transportation to and from college. We worked together for these achievements.
Even though I had readers at school, my mom would read texts and books for me. It was unfeasible for me to always be available when she had time to read, so we improvised. I had an old-fashioned handheld cassette recorder and she would record herself reading the material. Mom learned many different subjects ranging from history to geology and psychology to English. Majoring in English and history meant lots of big textbooks and novels. I recall her reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. She didn’t like the book much. But she endured all the reading she did to help me.
Mom spent many hours in her bedroom with the door closed recording on those clunky cassette tapes. For years afterward I had bundles of those tapes lying around my room. Sometimes when I used to still make a mixed tape, I would pop in a cassette tape and press PLAY on the player. On occasion I’d hear my mom’s voice reading something or other for me.
Then there is my dad who, unlike my mom, disliked reading and therefore helping me by reading school material would have been difficult. But dad played his own crucial role in helping me earn my degrees.
Dad used to work for the King Ranch, a large ranch in South Texas. Let’s just say it’s big enough of a ranch to have its own airport. My dad happened to work at the airport.
The airport was located ten miles from the city of Kingsville, which is where I attended college at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. So the proximity of the airport and my dad’s work made it quite accessible to get a lift to and from school.
You might be asking at this point, why didn’t you stay in the dorms? I started to and did for my first year of school. But transition was difficult and anxieties got in the way. Eventually I got booted from school for a semester and when I dug my way out of the academic hole I created, I just never went back to the dorm life.
So for years, semester after semester, week after week, I would wake up around 7 a.m., to get a ride with my dad. I would wait at the airport for a few hours and then dad would take a break from his work and drive the ten miles to town to drop me off. Then he would pick me up in the afternoon and we’d drive home together. When I enrolled in night classes, dad would wait at the airport, eat his dinner there, and then pick me up around 9 p.m., when class let out.
My parents sacrificed much for me. Mom read material she probably didn’t enjoy and dad spent many hours on that stretch of highway, State Highway 141 and staying late at work when he could have been home early.
While a student earns a diploma and has his or her name embossed on it, my diploma should also contain the names Graciela Garcia and Roberto Garcia. Both deserve those degrees as much as I do. Thanks Mom and Dad.
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