I cannot say that my family has a vast American history of a 100+ years, but what I can say is that my family has grown a lot in the past 30+ years. We would not have migrated to the USA if it weren’t for my aunt’s marriage. It was 1984 when the first member of my family, my aunt, came to the United States of America. From then on, the rest of my immediate family trickled into the United States of America, looking for a place to grow and expand their family lines.
It wasn’t easy to get a stable household income and care for our family at the time, but paycheck to paycheck we managed to do it. My immediate family’s migration to the USA started with my aunt’s marriage. With this marriage, my aunt became the first green card holder, and presumably the first US Citizen, in my family. Seeing her success in America, the rest of my family, on my paternal side, came to the USA in 1992, searching of a better life. While my dad was struggling to settle in the USA, he lived with his sister and brother in law; who also housed their parents.
My dad’s other sister, Geeta, also lived with her sister, however shortly after, she got married and moved in with her husband. For the next fours years my dad worked hard and saved up enough money until he was satisfied that he could support a family. My dad started to search for a wife in the summer of 1996, the same time my mom started searching for a husband. At the time most indian’s marriages were arranged by the parents, leaving little to no decision with the spouses themselves. My dad, being an american citizen, was a very attractive choice to my mom’s family.
My dad’s citizenship granted them an easy ticket to becoming an american citizen, a very attractive offer. After looking for months, my mom and dad’s families finalized agreed to marriage in early 1997 and set the marriage for July of that year. After getting married, my mother brought her family over to the USA. Her parents lived with her for a while, but once their son got a job in Kentucky they moved with him. Up until I was born my parents both worked two full jobs, rarely seeing each other during the day.
Even though they did not need to work overtime in order to support themselves, they knew that they wanted to have children and would need a better income. They knew that having a kid would be very expensive, and that they would need to buy a bigger house. In the next two years my parents saved a lot of money, enough to have a kid, and finally brought me into their family. I was born in September 1999, as soon as this happened by parents bought a town house and moved out of their cramped apartment.
Though my dad continued to work overtime, my mother had to cut down to only one full time job. This made it very hard to survive, but we managed to meet ends. One I got older, they knew that they had made the right decision of not going back to India when times were tough, as America held a lot of opportunities for me. I often went to my grandparent’s house when both of my parents were working, so this helped my parents save a great sum of money. After a couple of years my grandpa retired and moved in with us; making the area very cramped.
With the money my parents saved, they knew it would be a good idea to move into a bigger house; soon finding out that they were having another child. At the same time my sister was born, my dad took a huge gamble in life. My dad put all of his savings into the restaurant business, and opened up a restaurant in the airport. This is when life started getting easier for my parents, as their income nearly quadrupled. My mom no longer needed to work and could care for my sister and I, while my dad’s workload was greatly reduced.
Going into the restaurant business was a great gamble that could have hurt us, we are just thankful that it worked out. Now my dad loves to expand on his restaurant business and has open and closed many restaurants, including a gas station. My parents are happy what they have done and look back at their history with appreciation. Though our family hasn’t done anything big in the USA, we have shown others that with great work and determination, anything can be done.
