In Richard Rodriguez’s essay, near the end, he speaks about hanging out with his grandmother and how he didn’t necessarily have to speak in order to connect with her. On page 464 he writes, “Other times she’d look over at me, but she never expected a response. Sometimes I’d smile or nod. (I understood exactly what she was saying.) But it never seemed to matter to her one way or the other. It was enough that I was there.”
I can definitely relate to this moment. High school was absolute hell for me. Before my eighteenth birthday and graduation I underwent two major spinal surgeries during my junior and senior year. All four years I only had two options. Either 1.) Take drugs to subdue the pain, which often left me very disoriented and fuzzy-brained (After all, I was taking the hard-core stuff like Percocet and Vicodin). Or 2.) Deal with the crippling pain during class. No option was preferable. At that time I hated my public persona because I seemed really angry and inattentive, but that was only due to the fact that I was in severe pain and or drugged out. I couldn’t really connect with anyone because of this and also because they couldn’t relate to my unusual situation. Eventually, it came to the point where I just stopped talking to people all together because even that hurt. It took too much energy up. When I went home, though, I was given permission to release that tension. It was ok to cry, to be frustrated with my disability, and to just express myself. I definitely needed my mom the most during that time because her presence alone consoled me. Sometimes my dad would be awkward because he didn’t know what to do; I think it bothered him that he couldn’t fix my back or take my pain away. My mom, on the other hand, would just gently rub my back, let me know she was there, that she loved me and that we would get through this tough time together.
With this wordless support I was able to take school day by day and survive. And I think this is the most important lesson about families: survival. Families are thrown problems all the time, but it’s how we adapt to these challenges that defines us. Rodriguez’s family learned English and how to survive in America, while my family and I had to learn how to adjust our lifestyle to help me live with as little pain as possible.