West Side Story Of A Puerto Rican Family

My mother shared her religious views being born into a Puerto Rican family filled predominately with Roman Catholics. She was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on November 29th, 1968 to two loving parents joined by a single sibling named David. Her schooling was done primarily in Puerto Rico as the family moved back when she was 6. While in school she excelled as my grandmother did, but there was one thing that shocked her in Puerto Rico. They didn’t teach English in the school which was odd because she knew from talking to older kids in New Jersey who lived on her street that they were teaching Spanish in their local school. However what I found shocking was the level of violence in the public school system as my mother describes. There were

Her brother David was a victim of local gangs getting into fights fairly eventually joining one himself because “what else could he do?” Eventually my mom and the rest of their family moved back to Jersey City when she was 15 settling on York Street and attending Ferris High School. Here my Uncle David and my mother enjoyed the relative peace it provide in comparison to complete her academic work. She went on to complete high school second in her class and attended college at Jersey City State College now known as New Jersey City University eventually dropping out after two semesters after meeting my dad and getting into a bit of trouble. As my mother grew older she described an unexpected change in her life when she met my dad through her Aunt Aida. At the age of 19 my dad was a notorious troublemaker and as my mom put “we enjoyed having fun”. I pressed her on what exactly fun meant and she eventually relented giving me a sort of censored version of her life at the time. She described the relationship between herself, my aunt, my dad, and shortly thereafter, my Uncle David to be essentially revolved around partying and were arrested multiple

Througout the course of our questioning he fondly reminds me of a time when he’d walk me home from school hands interlocked when I was very young. The time when we got separated from our parents Party City at the age of 7 and 4 respectively and when an employee approached us attempting to help asking us where our parents were he grabbed him and started biting allowing me to run away. Of course our parents had taught us about “stranger danger” and though there was in fact no danger it was still a loving gesture in hind sight. He also reminded me of him teaching me how to catch a baseball and ride a bike. My brother as he remarks may not have taken much pride in his academic work, but he always took pride in being my big brother and though I always recognized and appreciated his efforts I never realized just how much they meant to him. I am slightly ashamed to admit this got a little too emotional for comfort between two men over the age of 18 so we had to move on. Moving on to my dad brought up a sore spot because my brother and dad didn’t have a particularly close relationship to put it lightly until he took up an interest in plumbing much later. He describes how he felt my dad was always disappointed in his academic failures to the point of shutting him out entirely even admitting to holding a hint of jealously toward myself which