Plants were a very important aspect in my father's 75 years of life. My father migrated to America in 1957 from Kingston, Jamaica, where he described that life was really rough. He came to America all by himself, with no money in his pockets and no clue where his life was headed- he was only 15 years old just coming to America, known as the "land of opportunities". In 1967, 10 years after, my father moved to Brooklyn, New York where he would officially start his new life, with the mother of his 3 older kids (my brothers), at just 24 years old. He then began to tell me how important his plants were in the midst of his divorce and new marriage with my mother in 1995. He stated, now at 75 years old, "plants always sat well with me, they grew with me, it became a part of me". He described how rough it was to start a new family,switching jobs and gaining custody of only one of his children from his previous marriage. When my mother migrated from Dominican Republic in 1995, when I was born, my dad first started growing the plant that now wraps around my kitchen ceiling. This plant is important because it signified his new life, and the birth of his first baby girl, and ever since 1995, he has been growing the plant since, till this day in 2017. Ever since 1995, he has been growing (what now sits in my kitchen) 10 plants. One of them, specifically, started out as a twig when he first got diagnosed with colon cancer in 2015, and now it has grown with him till this day. 

– Jamie Fox

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant