The Sacrifice Of Immigrant Parents

Mattresses on the floor, shared bedrooms and rooms without furniture are some of my earliest memories of England.  

I guess learning English was easy. I say that because I have no memory of it. One-minute I’m sat on the stairs, in a stranger’s house clinging to my mother’s legs, who was now my personal translator, with no idea what’s going on around me. But she had a job to do. She was an in-house nanny, and we both got to live their together, sharing a bedroom in the basement. It was a pretty good job for someone who had left her old life in Poland behind to start a new one in England.  

The next thing I knew I was in school and of course I’m behind. Not only because I had to start school before I knew English but also because in Poland children don’t start school until they’re older than children in England. I stayed behind all the way until my final year at St Marks. It felt like a victory for everyone involved – teachers, parents, family members that I had finally caught up.  

Throughout this whole journey there’s been one person who has believed in my abilities. My mother. If you have any experience with a first-generation immigrant parents, you’ll know the importance they place on education matched with the fierceness of their love. Often tough love. Its only as you get older that you begin to appreciate the sacrifice of a parent who left their home and family to create a new and better life – for you.  

I think I liked my life in Poland. Sand playgrounds, Pierogi, seeing my dad and spending every moment joint at the hip with my cousins. If there's one thing I knew it was that I had family. Something in England I sometimes wonder if I missed out on. 

But this story doesn’t just belong to me. It belongs to my mother. Who’s experience was probably far scarier than mine. Underpaying night-shifts combined with aching bones and constant school-runs. I won’t go into too much detail.  

My mother found a job within two weeks of arriving I England and hasn’t stopped working since, so, when you degrade first generation immigrant parents for their flawed English or jobs, you should think about the sacrifice and hustle that parent endured for a better life.  

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