Between Two Worlds – Valon

I have NOT chosen this writing prompt for my Education narrative essay.

Valon Suma, a boy coming from an Albanian family who originally began in Montenegro. The beginning of my family tree formed when my parents both attended the only school in their town, Vladimir Katerkolla. Everywhere you go, to your left, right, infront, or behind you, to be seen is the mountain scapes of my region Mali Zi. (translates to black mountain.) To me the scenery is beautiful, it looks like what you’d see showcased in a picture frame, there are more cows, sheeps, and donkeys freely roaming the streets than cars causing traffic you would see in New York City. Besides the nature’s beauty, my father realized that the countries economic state was in shambles, working 12-14 hour days on the farm in the blazing dry heat of one hundred degree weather, water sources drying out whenever a heat wave would pass, he wanted out. My father made the decision to migrate to where we are today in order to open lots of opportunity for him and my mother.

To this day i always think of their journey, it’s hard to imagine that my mother would be walking/ running through fields, hiding in barns, looking for places to sleep and hopefully reach the aimed destination, at just the adolescent age of 17. Once they finally made it through the first set of hardship, another set was introduced to them. They came here with zero ability of speaking the English language, had no financial support, and were constantly in fight or flight situations. After being in America for two and a half years, my parents worked on themselves and decided to start a family. Since the beginning of my memory, my first language was Albanian, up to today it is still how we communicate in our home. Me being born and raised in New York, I grew up way differently than my parents, but I was forced to grow up and handle things kids of ages 6-16 would never have to deal with because of my parents; who spoke broken english . The child version of myself was trying my hardest to apply all the knowledge i was gaining from school, and try to bring it home to my parents to help their situation out. I was dealing with government documents, such as social security, tax forms, helping them obtain visas, and all the way to obtaining American citizenships.

There was this one day, I could vividly remember the scene and emotion I felt, I was in school, 8 years old in the third grade. Mrs. Persicos “math” room, white tiled floor, grey desk, and blue chairs. I had this one kid in my class who thought it was funny to disrespect me and my family, he went on to say “Your parents are stupid immigrants, they cant even speak English so why don’t they stay where they belong”. I didn’t allow myself a second to even process and think of something to say back to him, out of instinct I punched the kid in his face. Leaving him bleeding from his nose he went running and crying, I had no care in the world at that point. I was brought into the principal’s office after this incident and was forced to call my parents to set up a meeting. The words of my Mother that stuck with me were ” Pse Loni, pse duhet me ba ta probleme te panevojshme si kjo.”(translation – Why Valon, why do you have cause unnecessary problems like this.)

We arranged the meeting for two days later, my parents never really had free time, especially in this case where I caused trouble and almost got suspended, they were very upset with me. I remember sitting in between my parents, across from Mr. Feldman at his old school wooden desk. Throughout the meeting there were parts where I had to stick up for myself and translate whenever my parents had a hard time understanding his formal way of speaking. I felt as if he had no feeling to continue the meeting leading me to feel disrespected. My principal didn’t suspend me luckily but I had detention for a week and wasn’t allowed to participate in recess, same for the other kid. Just because my parents were foreigners and new to the country, the principal acted in way as if he was someone of importance, trying to sound extra intelligent. Since a young age, I had a concept of respect from the way I was raised, I put my family first and that has become my purpose to do right by them.