Delia Gallegos

English XI – Benjamin

12 September 2000

“To Be an American”

Last night, I stayed up until midnight writing a four-page paper condemning the American Dream as either an illusion, a cliché, or a clever marketing scheme. Today, I sit in my nicely decorated room and listen to a new CD on my 5-speaker stereo. I type on my laptop – the second one in our family – and pull books out of my new “trendy” messenger bag. Meanwhile, the red blinking numbers on my cordless phone/answering machine announce that I have two new messages on my private line.

Two generations ago, my grandparents lived in poverty. My paternal grandfather lived on scraps and slept on the floor, and never got past a fifth grade education. My maternal grandmother lived in the slums, and was married with two children by the time she was sixteen.

Nevertheless, my family has advanced. My parents own a small but cozy house. Two of the three daughters in the family have secured scholarships at prominent private schools in Greenwich. College is in my future. The distance that we have traveled in our ten years here astounds me. Tonight, I have become a believer in the American Dream.

My life would have been much different if my family had never come to the United States. As with so many others, financial issues lured my family to the United States. The trouble began in 1984.

1984 was the year that my parents, Francisco and Delia Gallegos, purchased a restaurant by the name of Victor’s. It didn’t have many customers; previous management had been very poor. After various months of repairs, the restaurant was a Bennigan’s-type place complete with its own pianist. Customers began to come, and the restaurant began to make a profit.

On an international level, 1984 marked the devaluation of the Mexican peso. The event was critical to my parents’ little business. Banks offered high interest on savings accounts as an incentive to keep money in the bank, and, consequentially, in Mexico. The plan worked well – people began to spend less money, and the restaurant suffered.

Also in 1984, Victor’s was audited. The government discovered that the previous owner had acquired a high debt, which my parents were responsible for. Combined with the devaluation of the peso, the financial strain forced my parents to sell the restaurant in 1985. They bought a Laundromat that same year.

It wasn’t that the Laundromat didn’t make money. It brought in a modest income. Rather, it was the necessity of working long hours that proved to be the Laundromat’s main fault. People tend to do their laundry during their off-days, forcing my parents to work weekends and holidays. Both of them believed that there was a better lifestyle to be found.

At the time, my father’s mother and one of his brothers had already lived in the United States for several years. They introduced to my father the idea of living in the United States, and it seemed an all-too-enticing prospect. In April of 1989, the family sold the Laundromat and relocated to Stamford, CT. It was a month before my 5^th birthday, and we became Americans.

There is more to being an American than simply residing in the United States. How I became an American is as much defined by our life in the United States as it is by the story of our arrival.

My father soon landed a job as a maintenance worker in an old hotel-turned-nursing-home. For a time, the family lived in a single rented room, and my mom devoted her time to learning English and taking care of her husband, her oldest daughter, and the newest twins – Mireille and Rachel, born June of 1989.

Since then, my father has become indispensable and universally loved at his job. My mom has gone back to school to study Business Management, hoping to complete the education that she never finished in Mexico. I attended a public elementary school in Stamford, and was put in a special program for stand-out students that got me into a summer day camp at Greenwich Country Day School. Eventually, I got a scholarship to go to GCDS for good, and one to attend Greenwich Academy after my graduation from Country Day. Mireille is currently in 6^th grade at GCDS, while Rachel attends a Norwalk public school. She was born with walking disabilities, but operations and therapy sessions have improved her walking abilities a great deal. Incidentally, such attention was not available in Mexico. We own a house, and every person has his or her own room. We are living the American Dream, and the knowledge of it ties us to the land in a manner not to be obtained any other way.

Sometimes I feel as if I shall never be completely American. A part of me belongs to Mexico, and always shall. I embrace the music, the food, the tradition, the language, and the family that still resides in the country that I have left behind. Of course, the same holds true for most of the United State’s population. The diversity created by people of different nationalities is a part of what defines America. It’s s ironic that I am all the more American for maintaining certain aspects of my Mexican past.

I have become an American in many ways. I am American for contributing to America’s Melting Pot. I am American for residing in the United States, and I am American for living the American Dream. The culture and the history of the country are so ingrained in my being that America is the only place that I can rightfully call “Home.” Perhaps that makes me American most of all.