Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway) is about a woman and a man waiting for their train at a train station in Spain. Even though the reading was very vague you could kind of pick out that the two were arguing about uprooting and moving their lives to another place, possibly Madrid. The woman was second guessing herself thru out the entire reading. In my opinion, I believe she does stay with the man even thou she didn’t really want to. She would tell him that she would “do it” because she doesn’t care about her. More say that she cares about him. She kept telling him that they couldn’t have it all. It seems as if she was doubting that their relationship could ever be good again no matter what he tried. The man kept reassuring her that everything was going to be ok and she always had a way to shoot it back down. Even thou the reading was very vague you still could kind of get a sense of what was going on. From what I could get from this reading the man was trying very hard to try to get her to be happy again. She wanted to try for his sake and not hers. I have made an important choice to stay in a relationship with my two eldest children’s father many of times. But the finally, after eight years of the same situation, I made the choice to leave. About five years ago he was in prison for stupid offenses. But since it wasn’t the first time of him getting in trouble. He was sentences to one and a half years. This was getting old after me having to raise my two kids alone for almost eight years, enough was enough. I would visit him every week and made sure he had what he needed and never cared about what I needed. I put him before me. But towards the end of his sentence I started to think a lot. I was never going to go anywhere in life if I was with him. I wouldn’t be able to marry him, buy a house, he wouldn’t ever get a decent job because of his criminal record. He was nothing and I was slowly realizing that. The last call that I received from him was like this. I quickly answered the phone call from The Chester County prison, which was a phone number I already had programmed in my head, from millions of calls that I would receive from him. “Hey, how are the kids?” This was something he always asked but I knew it was only to ask and never that he really cared. “They’re fine, but there is something I really need to talk to you about.” I knew I couldn’t tell him face to face because he would have made a huge scene in the prison. He would act like his world was ending. Which honestly it probably was. “Alex, I’m so sorry but I cannot continue to do this anymore. It has taken me this long to finally come to agreement with myself that this is what I want and what I need.” He already knew exactly what I was talking about because this wasn’t the first time that I brought it up. “I told you that I’ve changed, I’m not the same person that I was,” he would say. I have heard that one before too. There was nothing changing my mind this time. My kids were getting older and they didn’t deserve to see this. I was putting my children first this time, not him. I quickly just hung up the phone and didn’t answer anymore. This probably wasn’t the best way to end the conversation, but I was also heartbroken. It was a decision that I made and had to live up to. I did send him a letter, explaining myself. It was a lot easier to let my heart out on paper.
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What you Don’t Know (Lulu Wang) is a podcast of a family who hid a grandmother’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis from her. Lulu Wang talks about how she didn’t totally agree with her family’s decision to hide it from her and the way they did it.
I must make difficult choices every day to lie to my two oldest children to keep their little hearts from being broken. Me and my two oldest children’s father were in a long relationship before we came to quits. He wasn’t growing up as fast as I needed him to, so we went our separate ways. In result, our two children were left wondering what was happening. My son was 5 and my daughter was a little over a year old when we split. He wasn’t supportive and didn’t help financially with the kids. I pretty much was on my own from the start. I just hoped one day he was going to wake up and change. Well that day never came. Being the person that I am, I just kept on moving. Nothing was changing for me, but it was for my kids. They didn’t have their father around. No phone calls, no visits, nothing. He just picked up and left and wanted nothing to do with them. I constantly would have to make up excuses for him, explaining to my children why he wasn’t around. As the years passed, he came around when he felt like it. I know I should have stopped it from the start because of the inconsistency but I just wanted my kids to be happy. He would take them maybe one or two weekends out of the year and made them promises that he never kept. It was getting old. But again, I had to pick up the slack and make up some excuses as to why he was not doing what he said he was going to do. Today my oldest kids are soon to be 11 and soon to be 7. Nothing has changed. Same stories and more lies that I must come up with. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by trying to protect their little hearts. But one day they will see what it really is and see that why I have been trying to cover their father for their own protection. My Name is Margaret (Maya Angelou) is a story about a black girl who worked for a white woman that got fed up with the constant belittling. She challenged authority as stood her ground so that she would be noticed.
Did you agree with Margaret's choice to break the casserole dish and two green glass cups? I would agree with Margaret. Enough is enough. In that time period blacks didn't stand their ground and try to be noticed because of the consequences that they feared. But Margaret could no longer take anymore. Miss Glory told her that Mrs. Cullinan had once given her a different name as well. They called her "Hallelujah". Miss Glory explained to Margaret that they tend to rename the blacks for their own convenience. I would never let anyone belittle me nor would I be able to stay quite. In my opinion she did the right thing. She stood up for what she believed was right. I also would have been extremely pissed off too that Mrs. Cullinan truly knew her name and continued to call her Mary, even after the fact that Margaret felt sorry for her, for that she couldn't have any children of her own, and her husband had children with a black woman. She was able to stand up to an authority figure. When have you made an important choice to either resist or not resist oppression, challenge the status quo, or refuse to obey an authority figure? There have been many instances where I had refused to obey an authority figure. In this case the authority figure was my father. I grew up in a very strict household. I was the oldest daughter so I knew I had it coming. My father came to the United States from Mexico when he was an early teenager. His cultures and parenting was quite different than people who lived here in the states. He was a bit “old school” as I would call it.My father didn’t really let me go out with my friends or do things most teenagers did. As a kid I wasn’t allowed to play with boys and so on. I hated it. All of my friends could go to the movies and hang out with each other while I wasn’t. I started to be a typical teenager and I started to rebel. I would do as I pleased and worry about the consequences later. He started to get even stricter with me and took the phone away. That was my main freedom was the phone. Things got even more heated when I couldn’t get along with my step-mother. She was constantly trying to turn my father against me, and it usually worked. I couldn’t take anymore. At that time in my life I believed I knew it all. I packed up my things and left. I was free in my eyes. My father couldn’t change my mind. I finally stood up for myself. Rosita CarbajalI will use this blog to write about my course requirements and what ever my heart desires.
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Rosita CarbajalI will use this blog to write about my course requirements and what ever my heart desires. Archives
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