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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781481729147 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 03/20/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 126 |
| File size: | 438 KB |
Read an Excerpt
When Family Matters
By Lawrence
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2013LawrenceAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-2915-4
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1My name is Mr. Huggins. I am a construction worker and I live in the United States Virgin Islands. I have had a hard life. I was born into poverty and had to overcome many difficulties, but ever since I was a young boy, I dreamed of achieving great things. With the strength and will from God, I was able to follow my dream and accomplish it. Throughout my life's long journey, I learned many things that I would like to share with you. This is my story.
I was born and raised on the little Caribbean island of St. Kitts/Nevis in the British West Indies. My family contained two different cultures in which I was born into. When my mother was a child, she was born and raised in St. Kitts, but had a Kittitian mother and a Nevisian father. Since my mother was from St. Kitts and my father from Nevis, this created conflict in the household. The family was ripped apart by politics from the fifties to the seventies since people from Nevis felt as if those from St. Kitts did not treat them fairly.
Although I was born in St. Kitts, my family and I were always from both islands. My mother and her brothers and sisters shared a similar life as me and my brothers and sisters. When my mother and her siblings were young, their parents died and left them to take care of themselves and therefore, nothing was left for them. They had to take care of each other at a young age. Since my mother was the youngest child of the family, she was told to learn to become a seamstress. When she fell ill, she wasn't able to continue her education in school and couldn't read very well. Later on in my mother's life, she made me and I was born into a family in which I enjoyed all of my childhood days.
I lived with my sisters and brothers, my mother, one aunt, and three uncles. We had a couple of goats and cattle, but they were later sold. When they were leaving on their journey, my aunt left for St. Croix and my uncles left for Tortola to make a better life for themselves. My aunt used to write to us occasionally, but my uncles would never write. Just like my mother and her siblings, we were left to take care of ourselves, but lucky for us, she was still here. We were very poor. Things were very hard for us once we had to fend for ourselves. We had no money and no electricity. The moon and the sun were our only means of getting light. We never had the things that other people had. We hardly had food to keep us healthy, we had no television, no radio to listen to, no telephone to make calls, but one thing we did have was each other. We were always there for each other for we were taught to love each other, respect each other, and be there for each other like proper families should do.
Sometimes, my siblings and I used to get things from other people because we were well trained and had manners. We respected people everywhere we went. I attended Molinevi Combine School for all of my twelve school years. I was a great student who did very well in school. The classes I took in school were Math, English and all the other subjects, including a course in Caribbean history, which gave me an interest in Christopher Columbus's voyages. I had many great teachers including teacher Mary Charles and many more who helped me along the way. Even though my mother couldn't read, she made sure that her children could read. She made sure that her children got their education for education was her first priority. She thought that her children would be able to do the things that she couldn't do for herself. Because of this, I always wanted to go to college. I heard so much about it while growing up. People would say that college makes your life better and gives you a better future, but my mother had no money and could not afford it.
Sometimes, things were so bad it seemed as if our lives were at the bottom of the pack, but we used to do everything we could to get out from the bottom of the pack. My mother used to tell us to study our lessons in school for education will take us anywhere we wanted to go in this world. We used to study hard all the time because that was the only material thing that we were not short of. All we needed to do was ask someone to show us the way and help us to the top and we would take it from there.
Throughout our lives, we met some great people along the way, but we still had no money. Our education was not taking us anywhere for there was nowhere to go at the time. We were always told that we could go anywhere we wanted to go with our education, but at the time, we were only spectators not going anywhere. But I had a journey up in front of me. I always wanted to go somewhere; I wanted to travel the world like Christopher Columbus. I wanted to meet new people and do all the great things that I heard they were doing. I wanted to tell them stories about me and my family and my country I left behind. I wanted to get a better education and make something of myself. I wanted a better life for my family and me. I would put my mind to do everything that came my way in order to probably find a way of escape. I used to play many sports when I was younger. I played cricket, soccer, dominoes, draft tennis, and many more sports and games that used to help me keep my mind off the life we were living.
When I was growing up, I never had a chance to meet my father. I didn't even know how he looked. My mother told me that he went to England when Caribbean people migrated there. They would go to England to make a better life for themselves, but when my father left, he never came back nor wrote to us. Since my mother was left to take care of us on her lonesome, she had to work in the sugar cane industry to do whatever she could to put food on the table. My brothers and I used to go help her before school and after school. At home, we used lamps and candles in order to see our homework in the dark at night. We had no electricity since my mother couldn't afford it, but my aunt that left for St. Croix would still chip in every once in a while to help us any way she could. She used to send our mother things that she couldn't afford like shoes, clothes, school books, pen and pencils, socks and whatever else that were necessary. One day, when she came to visit us, she promised me that she would send for me to come live with her so that I could go to a good school and get a better life. That was a promise that I would never forget and grew up with. I used to love watching the planes when they passed by and wondered where they were going. I used to think that things must be way better over there than what we had over here. I used to hear the men at the domino table, who used to live in St. Croix, talk about the HESS Oil Company there and that the workers were making a lot of money. I used to tell myself that one day, when I finished school, I would be working there at the HESS Oil Company in St. Croix.
My cousin used to come at our house on Sundays and I used to hear my mother telling him that when I finished school, she would send me with him to get a construction trade at Mr. James' Construction in town. When I heard that, I knew that it would be too much hard work for a sixteen-year-old child, who just finished school, to accomplish. When I finished school, my cousin came for me and brought me to Mr. James Construction so that I could get a trade in construction. As my mother said, and as I thought before, it would not be easy for me. There were so many workers there and I was told to take care of them. Sometimes, I would tell myself that this work was too hard to do for I was the smallest and the youngest there on the job, but I had to make up my mind to do it. I was considered lucky because the only things that people like me were ever told to do was work in the sugar cane field upon completion of school, or commit crimes and go to jail. The only children who were ever said to have
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Excerpted from When Family Matters by *NULL* Lawrence. Copyright © 2013 by Lawrence. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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