Think and Do: to Mom

My mom worked in a factory for over 25 years. Every day she checked thousands of cups, mugs, plates and other ceramic objects to see if they met the quality standards. During summer, she would take me and my brother with her to the factory for one day when she worked the afternoon shift. I used to love it. We would run around, ride on the pallets, get to break the cups and plates that would not sell because of severe quality issues, see the clay being shaped, the plates being painted... I dreamed of working there every summer. One day I told my mom, as we walked back home from the bus that when I grow old, I want to work there too. My mom paused and told me: "Never! I will never let you do that."

You see, I only saw the factory during summer, when on a hot sunny day we felt grateful for the cold concrete floor or for the air current entering through the broken windows. I had never experienced it in winter, when the concrete floor began to feel like ice after two hours at work, no matter how many socks you had, when the breeze felt more like a blizzard and the broken windows were covered only by a layer of plastic, when your hands would never warm up but you had to be as productive as on any summer day.
I did not know these things, but my mom lived them every winter, for over twenty years. She did not want her daughter to go through that.
At 14, I was accepted into a good high school, in a Philology and Foreign Languages (English and French) class. There was only one problem: I spoke no English. Dad said I would have to transfer. But mom said no. She took a short time to think about it and decided it was doable. She would do her magic and I would have to study hard to catch up with the rest of the class. She did not know how long she could afford to have me go to English classes, once or twice a week, after school, but we would do this. And we did. Six months later I was there. Four years later, in 2002 I graduated top of my class, fluent in French and English and made my way to an undergraduate degree in Journalism and Social Sciences on a state-sponsored scholarship. One month after getting my degree in 2006 I got a job in the field and started working for a local newspaper. My mother's boss went to ask her who did she have 'inside' to get me that job. "My daughter is smart, she does not need an 'insider' to get a job," she replied, extremely offended by his question.
In 2014 I received a teaching assistantship at NC State and my mom, who never got a chance to continue her education after the three years of vocational training was just... so proud.

Today I graduate from NC State University with a MA in Anthropology. If there was anyone who deserved to be there as much as I did... that would be my Mother.