I think I'm pretty lucky when it comes to my family. Although, like most Latin families, we have our screaming fights and disagreements, there is one place that I know I will always be able to count on my family: when it comes time for me to move, no matter how far away they live.
I never knew how unique this was until a lot of my non-Hispanic friend really didn't have the same experience. It's not that their family didn't help them when it came time for moving day, it's just that mine consistently traveled 1,300 miles to help me move from one apartment to another–even when that meant traveling more than once a year.
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I guess you could say that it all started in college, when my parents loaded up the car and drove me from south Florida to my new life in New York City. Since then, my mom came up every May and September to help me pack, put my things in storage over the summer, and then move me into my new dorm in the Fall.
When I got my first apartment, she continued to do the same: coming up year after year as I moved from one apartment to another. My brother sometimes came up with her, too, and one year (when I moved twice in a four-month period due to a terrible roommate situation) my entire family came again. And they did the same thing when I moved into the apartment I'm living in now.
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Have I moved a lot? Yes, definitely. Am I kind of exhausted? Absolutely. That's why I'm FINALLY staying put—at least for a little while. Does that mean that my family's helping me less? Definitely not! After two years in my current apartment, my mom came up once more to help me rearrange my furniture. To be honest, that single task was probably the harder than all of my packing-and-moving combined.
Perhaps one day I should seriously settle into a house and just stay there but in the meantime, it's nice to know that my family will always be there for me—even as I ask them to move my couch for the 15th time.
Has your family always been there for you when you went through big life transitions? Share with us in the comments below!
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