My favorite place in the world is my house. While we were building it, my brother, sister, and I lived in a trailer for about a year and my mom and step-dad lived in another trailer right next to ours. They were about 30 feet away from where we were building our house. My family built a lot of it, plus some work was done from a junior college construction class. I have great memories from there. One of them is the first time that I threw a party. It was my sophomore year in high school, and my parents were out of town. Other memories include holidays spent with my family, riding quads with my friends on our property during breaks from school, and just relaxing with my loved-ones. My parents recently moved down to Southern California, so I really struggle with knowing that I will never live in that house again. However, I do plan on moving back up to Northern California and get a place with some of my buddies.
When I start feeling down about my parents move, I think about good memories I’ve had with them, which is usually vacations. The best family vacation I have ever been on was the summer before my freshman year in high school. Looking back at that summer, a lot of very impactful things happened to me that summer. My mom, step-dad, brother, sister, and I spent 9 days in New York City. The first day we were there, our hotel gave us Yankee’s tickets, so we went to Yankee Stadium to watch a Yankee’s game that evening. They were playing the Oakland A’s, and got killed, 13 to 4. Later on through out the trip, we went to the NBA Store, where I met a guy named Jamal Crawford, who plays for the New York Knicks. I bought his jersey and he signed it for me. We would always go out sight seeing and going to different places in New York. The city was very busy and you could always find things to do there. Our third day there, we took a fairy to so see the Statue of Liberty and then to New Jersey. The day that we got there was the first day that they re-opened the statue, but you couldn’t walk inside it. The only thing you could do was go into the museum at the bottom of the statue. I really enjoyed that trip and I wish my family could have done more things like that.
A “funny” family accident would have to be when I was 8; my mom, my uncle’s girlfriend, and I were at the roller-skating rink. That day was the first time that my mom had ever roller bladed. I was going really and I fell backwards and tried to catch myself by putting both of my arms behind my back. Right when I fell, I knew immediately that I had broken my arm. I started yelling, “I broke my arm, I broke my arm!” Then when my mom came over to see what was wrong with me, she fell right on top of me when she was trying to help me get up. Luckily, there was a nurse at the skating rink and made a makeshift splint out of my moms shoe and some athletic tape. I have a theory that because she fell on top of me, that that’s why my arm was broken in two different places. I had broken my right arm and because I’m right handed, I had to learn to write with my left hand. It was very frustrating trying to learn how to write with my left hand and dealing with having a cast on my dominant arm.
There have many conflicts between my family and myself over the years. One consistent battle I had when I was at home was that I wanted to throw a party when my parents were gone. Needless to say, they wouldn’t allow me to. When my brother was in high school, he had thrown a couple of parties and he never seemed to get in trouble for them. So, when my parents would go out of town, I would have little kickbacks with friends, which would eventually turn into a party. I had 2 or 3 parents while my parents were out of town over the coarse of my high school days. I got away with kickbacks, but I always got in trouble for my parties. I had thrown a party the weekend before I got sent away and I have a feeling that is part of the many reasons my parents sent me to an emotional growth boarding school. Plus other influencing factors such as drugs, doing bad in school, and being disrespectful to my parents. The reason I really wanted to have a party is because I wanted to have all of my friends over to party without my parents there to bust it up. Also I wanted to feel what it’s like to be independent, but now I realize the potential legal risks of throwing a party and I understand why they didn’t want me to throw parties while they were gone.
If you asked me who in my family that has been particularly brave, I would have to say my dad. He was diagnosed with Stage 5 Lung Cancer the summer before my freshman year in high school. He had gotten hurt at work when a big wooden beam fell on his back. He went to the hospital and he had punctured his lung when the beam fell on his back. The doctors drained about 4 pints of blood out of his lung. After they drained it, they ran some tests and found a big clump on his punctured lung, which eventually was found to be the Stage 5 Lung Cancer. Stage 5 is the highest stage of Lung Cancer. When the doctors diagnosed him, he was told he had 3 to 6 months to live. So, he started doing chemotherapy, eating healthier, and seeing doctors on a regular basis. After that, I saw him more often and when I wasn’t with him, I would call him more often. He survived 15 months after he was diagnosed. My aunt had called us and told us that we needed to come see him right away because he wasn’t going to be there at the end of the week. So the next day, my mom and I flew up to Utah to see him. When we got there, he was sleeping on the couch, so we woke him up and talked to him for a little while and then let him go back to sleep. He couldn’t even talk because he was so weak and frail. It hurt me a great amount to see my dad in a position of such pain. My aunt told us that after she told him we were coming up to see him, that he said, “I need a bath”. He wanted to be clean for my mom and I. The first day we got there was the last day I saw him alive. My dad was 45 years old and died of Lung Cancer November 29, 2005. He didn’t smoke cigarettes.
