Although I was born in Mexico I did not grow up there. I immigrated to the United States with my single mother at the age of 1.5 years. My mother and I only left Mexico with nothing but a backpack full of things to start our new life in the United States. My baptism dress is one of the items of clothing she brought. It reminds me today of where we came from and the little that we started with in this country. It symbolized the faith that my mother had in coming to a new country and the faith that helped her safely make her way into the country. In the United States she would become the breadwinner of our small, two-person family. She walked miles to and from work with me in her arms and did her best to learn English. She managed to give me a better life than she had growing up and gave me an abundance of love and encouragement along the way despite the many obstacles we both faced. As a child I learned English right away and eventually started translating for my mother and helping her figure things out. The baptism dress pictured means a lot to us and symbolized the faith we continue to have, the courage my mom had to move, and the love that we have for our country we came from.  Although our family only started with the two of us, she eventually married and had two more children. 

– BP

Relationship:  Im/migrant who arrived as a child Im/migrant who arrived as a child