Chapter 402. A Heart-Pounding Day Together with My Girlfriend: Eating Marshmallows while Telling a Campfire Story. (3/4)
“How much money did your mom end up making?”
“Well, since everybody would typically go for the three subject limit, using $28 a month per course… over 9 months... with 3 courses per student... and 239 students… factoring in the three teachers she had to pay at a $400 a month salary, I guess it would work out to be somewhere around $160,000 annually. Of course, there were expenses to take into account.”
“That much? Shouldn’t she have been pretty well off in that case?”
“Well… normally you’d think so. But… she wasn’t even doing that well with all that money. She had a bunch of other expenses. For Christmas, she’d buy a present for all her students and even take them all to a nice restaurant. Many of those students had never even been to a restaurant before in their entire lives. Some of them would break down in tears. She also gave out some freebies. For some students who didn’t perform very well in school, whose parents couldn’t afford to pay due to poverty, she actually taught them for free in secret.”
“Wow, she sounds like she was a saint.”
After Rosa fed me another marshmallow, I responded, “I… don’t know about that, she ended up overworking herself into poor health. Doing all that was extremely draining on her while trying to raise me. She worked tirelessly at it without rest. She was simultaneously fighting a financially draining, expensive legal battle against this country’s government over the course of those three years for wrongfully deporting her.”
“Not only did she have her teaching and legal fight to worry about, she also undertook a side project.”
“She even had the energy for a side project?”
“Yeah, during the days she wasn’t teaching, grading the work of students she was teaching, or talking to lawyers, she used the time from Friday to Sunday. She was developing some really crappy underdeveloped backwater land she received from her grandparents with the intention to sell it. She had to clear out the land herself. Her grandparents hadn’t been able to as they’d been sick and ill since she was young. Her grandmother was actually quite nice to her compared to her own mother.”
It’s a shame they died when she was still pretty young.
“She went around carrying me with her under the scorching hot sun holding an umbrella over her head and cleared out ‘the bush’ on that land with her own two hands. She naturally couldn’t do everything alone and she did also have to hire workers to install drainage and roads on that land. As she didn’t have much breathing room financially, she had to stand out there keeping a close eye on those workers like a hawk to make sure everything was actually being done and they weren’t slacking off.”
“That sounds pretty awful.”
“It really was for her, she was weak to the heat and passed out easily from it. But if that wasn’t enough, there were also squatters on the land she owned who would break down any progress made. She had to spend money to hire police to keep an eye on it to prevent her hard work from being destroyed.”
“It really sounds like a nightmare.”
“The worst part of it was how her brothers were handed down the best of land which was already perfectly developed. They didn’t have to lift a finger, everything had been handed to them on a silver platter.”
“Her mother really didn’t care for her at all and it showed in how she was treated.”
“Doing all these things combined essentially ate up all the money she earned and more. Her father even pitched in $60,000, his entire savings, to help with her legal battle. She fought her case all the way up to the Supreme Court where the ruling was finally in her favor.”
“So... after those three years of painstaking work she was able to come back here?”
“Yeah. Three long years. But... for what? I still don’t understand the appeal. What she saw in this country. Was it her idealization of the term first world country? The thought that it would lead to a better future?”
“Though she was very hardworking, I can’t help but think she was mistaken. She was seeing things through a fence where the grass was greener on the other side. She couldn’t be happy with what she had... and because of that… things didn’t pan out as she wished.”
“However, I suppose deep down she just really wanted to run away and escape from her family who treated her as if she wasn’t human. In that regard, I suppose it made sense why she wanted to flee to some far-off land where their cold heartless gazes could not reach her.”
“What happened after she returned with you?”
“She lived happily ever after.” She worked herself into her grave.
“But you just said-”
“Don’t you think we should get to bed? It’s pretty late,” I cut her off to prevent her from questioning further.
“I’m not sleepy yet.”
“Well, I am a bit sleepy.”
“Already?”
“Yeah. We can continue this story another day.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
Rosa let out a sigh as she caved, “Haaaaah. Fine… I’ll hold you to that. You better tell me what happened after she came back.”
“I will.”
Despite my mother’s little success won through the legal system, the story didn’t have much of a happy ending after all of her bitter struggles. The world wasn’t such an easy place.
In hindsight, she could have probably lived a much happier life if she forgot about this country and saved her money rather than squandering it by fighting that legal battle. My mother really drew the shortest end of the stick in life.
That happily ever after bullshit in stories was nothing but a convenient lie adults told children to not crush their innocent little dreams. Going off my mother’s experience, happily ever after does not exist. If more was written after those alleged happy endings, you’d definitely discover that ideal ‘happily ever after’ ending was nonsense.
Why do I say that?
Well, in the end, after all her fighting to get back to this country, my mother never got another teaching job here. There just weren’t enough teaching jobs available at that time. When a position opened up at a school, you’d apply through the school division but you needed to know the principal at that school to really have a shot at landing the position. This was because the principal would put in a recommendation on who to fill the position. Without a recommendation, your chances were as good as zero. The same could be said for just about any decent job these days though.
My mother who’d gone through high school in her home country naturally didn’t have such convenient connections here.
I couldn’t help but think, if she hadn’t gotten married, had me, and been deported so soon after she finished her degree... maybe things would have been different. Maybe... she would have found a teaching job if she had the chance to right after she graduated. But… there was no way to know for certain.
I could only speculate based on what I’d learned over the years my first time through life. Work experience within the country was valued far more than work experience from a third-world country like my mother’s. My mother naturally was unaware of that back then, she was clueless and had to learn everything the hard way from the ground up. It was one of the major reasons why she wouldn’t be contacted back by many of the employers she applied to upon her return. The gap in related work experience within this country acted as a shackle that hindered all sorts of potential development opportunities for her.
A gap of three years post-graduation looked like an eternity to employers. When combined with her lack of connections, and being a single mother raising a child, her situation was utterly hopeless. She was considered unemployable for a lot of places. No matter how much she struggled, nobody would give her a chance here.
It was truly pitiful as she may have had a glimmer of hope before her father retired. Unlike her, he’d worked as a teacher in this country for 25 years and retired the same year my mother got married when he was 68 years old, two years before I was born.
By the time my mother returned to this country with me, he’d already been retired for 6 years. He’d never been much of a social person and had kept to himself for all those years. He didn’t form deep relationships with his students or colleagues. My mother often said he lived a lonely life.
But that’s beside the point, any sort of connections he may have had in this country that might have proved useful in helping my mother get a job in education was essentially gone after six years into his retirement. If it was closer to when he was still working, he might have been a powerful asset and able to lend her a hand in her job hunt for a teaching position.
Chapter 402. A Heart-Pounding Day Together with My Girlfriend: Eating Marshmallows while Telling a Campfire Story. (3/4)
“How much money did your mom end up making?”
“Well, since everybody would typically go for the three subject limit, using $28 a month per course… over 9 months... with 3 courses per student... and 239 students… factoring in the three teachers she had to pay at a $400 a month salary, I guess it would work out to be somewhere around $160,000 annually. Of course, there were expenses to take into account.”
“That much? Shouldn’t she have been pretty well off in that case?”
“Well… normally you’d think so. But… she wasn’t even doing that well with all that money. She had a bunch of other expenses. For Christmas, she’d buy a present for all her students and even take them all to a nice restaurant. Many of those students had never even been to a restaurant before in their entire lives. Some of them would break down in tears. She also gave out some freebies. For some students who didn’t perform very well in school, whose parents couldn’t afford to pay due to poverty, she actually taught them for free in secret.”
“Wow, she sounds like she was a saint.”
After Rosa fed me another marshmallow, I responded, “I… don’t know about that, she ended up overworking herself into poor health. Doing all that was extremely draining on her while trying to raise me. She worked tirelessly at it without rest. She was simultaneously fighting a financially draining, expensive legal battle against this country’s government over the course of those three years for wrongfully deporting her.”
“Not only did she have her teaching and legal fight to worry about, she also undertook a side project.”
“She even had the energy for a side project?”
“Yeah, during the days she wasn’t teaching, grading the work of students she was teaching, or talking to lawyers, she used the time from Friday to Sunday. She was developing some really crappy underdeveloped backwater land she received from her grandparents with the intention to sell it. She had to clear out the land herself. Her grandparents hadn’t been able to as they’d been sick and ill since she was young. Her grandmother was actually quite nice to her compared to her own mother.”
It’s a shame they died when she was still pretty young.
“She went around carrying me with her under the scorching hot sun holding an umbrella over her head and cleared out ‘the bush’ on that land with her own two hands. She naturally couldn’t do everything alone and she did also have to hire workers to install drainage and roads on that land. As she didn’t have much breathing room financially, she had to stand out there keeping a close eye on those workers like a hawk to make sure everything was actually being done and they weren’t slacking off.”
“That sounds pretty awful.”
“It really was for her, she was weak to the heat and passed out easily from it. But if that wasn’t enough, there were also squatters on the land she owned who would break down any progress made. She had to spend money to hire police to keep an eye on it to prevent her hard work from being destroyed.”
“It really sounds like a nightmare.”
“The worst part of it was how her brothers were handed down the best of land which was already perfectly developed. They didn’t have to lift a finger, everything had been handed to them on a silver platter.”
“Her mother really didn’t care for her at all and it showed in how she was treated.”
“Doing all these things combined essentially ate up all the money she earned and more. Her father even pitched in $60,000, his entire savings, to help with her legal battle. She fought her case all the way up to the Supreme Court where the ruling was finally in her favor.”
“So... after those three years of painstaking work she was able to come back here?”
“Yeah. Three long years. But... for what? I still don’t understand the appeal. What she saw in this country. Was it her idealization of the term first world country? The thought that it would lead to a better future?”
“Though she was very hardworking, I can’t help but think she was mistaken. She was seeing things through a fence where the grass was greener on the other side. She couldn’t be happy with what she had... and because of that… things didn’t pan out as she wished.”
“However, I suppose deep down she just really wanted to run away and escape from her family who treated her as if she wasn’t human. In that regard, I suppose it made sense why she wanted to flee to some far-off land where their cold heartless gazes could not reach her.”
“What happened after she returned with you?”
“She lived happily ever after.” She worked herself into her grave.
“But you just said-”
“Don’t you think we should get to bed? It’s pretty late,” I cut her off to prevent her from questioning further.
“I’m not sleepy yet.”
“Well, I am a bit sleepy.”
“Already?”
“Yeah. We can continue this story another day.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
Rosa let out a sigh as she caved, “Haaaaah. Fine… I’ll hold you to that. You better tell me what happened after she came back.”
“I will.”
Despite my mother’s little success won through the legal system, the story didn’t have much of a happy ending after all of her bitter struggles. The world wasn’t such an easy place.
In hindsight, she could have probably lived a much happier life if she forgot about this country and saved her money rather than squandering it by fighting that legal battle. My mother really drew the shortest end of the stick in life.
That happily ever after bullshit in stories was nothing but a convenient lie adults told children to not crush their innocent little dreams. Going off my mother’s experience, happily ever after does not exist. If more was written after those alleged happy endings, you’d definitely discover that ideal ‘happily ever after’ ending was nonsense.
Why do I say that?
Well, in the end, after all her fighting to get back to this country, my mother never got another teaching job here. There just weren’t enough teaching jobs available at that time. When a position opened up at a school, you’d apply through the school division but you needed to know the principal at that school to really have a shot at landing the position. This was because the principal would put in a recommendation on who to fill the position. Without a recommendation, your chances were as good as zero. The same could be said for just about any decent job these days though.
My mother who’d gone through high school in her home country naturally didn’t have such convenient connections here.
I couldn’t help but think, if she hadn’t gotten married, had me, and been deported so soon after she finished her degree... maybe things would have been different. Maybe... she would have found a teaching job if she had the chance to right after she graduated. But… there was no way to know for certain.
I could only speculate based on what I’d learned over the years my first time through life. Work experience within the country was valued far more than work experience from a third-world country like my mother’s. My mother naturally was unaware of that back then, she was clueless and had to learn everything the hard way from the ground up. It was one of the major reasons why she wouldn’t be contacted back by many of the employers she applied to upon her return. The gap in related work experience within this country acted as a shackle that hindered all sorts of potential development opportunities for her.
A gap of three years post-graduation looked like an eternity to employers. When combined with her lack of connections, and being a single mother raising a child, her situation was utterly hopeless. She was considered unemployable for a lot of places. No matter how much she struggled, nobody would give her a chance here.
It was truly pitiful as she may have had a glimmer of hope before her father retired. Unlike her, he’d worked as a teacher in this country for 25 years and retired the same year my mother got married when he was 68 years old, two years before I was born.
By the time my mother returned to this country with me, he’d already been retired for 6 years. He’d never been much of a social person and had kept to himself for all those years. He didn’t form deep relationships with his students or colleagues. My mother often said he lived a lonely life.
But that’s beside the point, any sort of connections he may have had in this country that might have proved useful in helping my mother get a job in education was essentially gone after six years into his retirement. If it was closer to when he was still working, he might have been a powerful asset and able to lend her a hand in her job hunt for a teaching position.
