Born Into 'the Life'

My father, like his father before him, and his father before him, was a farmworker. When he came to the United States to look for a better life and search for the American Dream at about the age I am now, my father found work as a farmworker in many states, such as Texas, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kansas, and Florida. My mother, who was moving from state to state also with her family as they worked the fields, met my father in Florida while picking oranges. They fell in love and got married. When I came along, my parents were working together picking cucumbers in North Carolina. Even when my mother was carrying me in her womb, she was still out there in the fields working, picking cucumbers.

You can say I was born into "the life," like a prince would be born into nobility; only I was born into "the life of the migrant," a life of poverty in most cases. I would be sent to school and played like the other kids, but the major difference would be the summers. My mom and dad, my two younger brothers, and I would make the annual trip to North Carolina where I would be working the fields beside them.

I remember waking up early in the morning while the air was freshest in the North Carolina mountains. I remember feeling the heat in the middle of the day when the sun was the brightest, and its heat would pound on a person to the point where it would sting. I also remember the relief when the day's work was done. I remember the setting of the sun on the way home in the van used to transport the workers. The setting sun, which was unnoticed by everyone, except for me, seemed to reach out, caress me while warming my face pressed up against the window. I would turn around then and lean up against my mother sitting right beside me as she wrapped her arms around me, and I would fall asleep most of the time.

This is how I spent most of my summers as a child. During the rest of the year, we would migrate back down to Florida where we would return to nursery work. I would go back to school and in the afternoons stay with my cousins at my grandmother's house waiting anxiously for my parents to show up.

The experience of being a child of a farmworker has driven me to try to better my life by doing the best I can in everything I do. Although being a child of a farmworker is rough and not many people would endure it, it is a part of me that I will never forget and will always carry inside to motivate me in all I do. I am standing at the edge of tomorrow, and today it is up to me how far I go.

Excerpted from Luis' original essay, which won first place in the 1998 Richard A. Bove Migrant Students' Poets and Writers Festival. A booklet containing the works of other entrants in this annual competition is available for a $5 donation to the Richard A. Bove Memorial Fund. For more information, contact Earl Wiggins, (800) 949-1916.