Success is a Journey

Image by Andrae Ricketts

My definition of success is a home without roaches. My children haven’t had to grow up finding roaches in their cereal, crawling across a wall, or invading their beds while they slept. Success is having a refrigerator full of food and not a single roach on the shelves. Success is being able to provide my children with as little insect trauma as possible.

I grew up in a home where trauma was a roommate. Besides the roaches and occasional mice, there were the mean neighbors, the creepy landlords, and the daily abuse from my father. I’d rather deal with the roaches and mice. A quiet home was a blessing. Father was a monster of a man that demanded absolute obedience. My family and I cherished the days, weeks, and sometimes months when he wasn't around.

My mother’s definition of success was being able to get through the day with as little drama as possible. Mother worked for the Boston Public Schools as a cafeteria worker. It was a great job for her because she was able to feed the neighborhood children and bring home leftovers for my brother and me. It was a good day when you came home from school and found a refrigerator full of plastic-wrapped food trays.

Mother’s other definition of success was ensuring that her children did well in school. That meant my brother and I were at school every day and had to be at death’s door in order to stay home. Not only did we attend school on a regular basis, but we needed to do well in our classes. I excelled in school, bringing home A’s and B’s. My brother was more of a C-average student.

Since I was the oldest, our mother placed the most pressure on me to do well academically. The future of our family was on my shoulders. Since I liked school, I didn’t mind meeting my mother’s high expectations. My brother was a different story. As he grew older, he would often get into fights, skip school, and argue with our mother about his grades. My mother loved us dearly, but it soon became apparent that I was her definition of success.

And I didn’t let my mother down. I was the first in our family to leave our roach-infested home and go off to college. Eventually, I received my undergraduate degree from Suffolk University. With the help of tuition reimbursement from my first job, I was able to go on and receive a Master's degree from Emerson College. Years later, I’m at the last stop on my academic journey, exploring schools to pursue a doctorate.

My mother passed away from cancer on June 6, 2017. She was 71 years old. Before cancer, my mother had one of those faces where you couldn’t tell her age. She had smooth brown skin, brown eyes, and specks of gray in her black hair. By the time cancer claimed her life, my mother had aged overnight, losing weight, filling her now ashen face with wrinkles, and covering her entire head with gray hair.

But my mother left this world on her terms, she lived long enough to see my brother and I celebrate our birthdays (I was June 4th and my brother was June 5th). Refusing the doctor’s suggestions for hospice care, our mother passed away in her sleep in the evening. She left this world knowing that she had raised her children to adulthood, cared for her grandson, and left her legacy for us to carry on. That was my mother’s definition of success.

My definition of success is to be the woman my mother wanted me to be. Before she had died, she told me that I would be okay. I was too caught up in my grief to believe her. All I wanted was for her to fight cancer that was killing her. But after her passing, in the years that followed, my mother was right.

As a poet and writer, I have experienced an increasing amount of success. I've attended conferences and workshops. I’ve won awards and have been published in numerous journals. My reputation as a poet has grown in Boston. Recently, I received word that I had been given a poetry fellowship by the Writer’s Room of Boston, a well-known writing organization.

My success will be a tribute to my mother. She believed in my writing ever since I was a young girl. Mother always supported me by buying writing supplies, taking me to the library, and posting my awards from school in our living room. She was always talking to her friends about my writing. I was her success and my definition of success is to continue to make her proud.

Success is a Journey was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.