It’ll Shine
Hello, my name is Giovanni Briseno Paredes, I am 18 years old, a recent graduate from Brophy College Preparatory, and I belong to a mixed-status family. I was born in Phoenix, Arizona, where I have lived all my life, however, my parents’ journeys living and assimilating in the United Stated are just a tad bit more interesting. My mother, from Sonora, Mexico, and my father, coming from Nayarit, both arrived in Phoenix not simply due to their families’ dependence on them, as they were the oldest children in their families, but for their future children; the children they hoped would break the generational tradition of both poverty and lack of access to education, and accomplish incredible tasks unimaginable to their families back home.
Waking up at six in the morning, I knew my level of maturity, importance, and seriousness had to be at its zenith as if they were not, my mother could lose her job, and it would be all over; it was not guaranteed. I was putting on the gloves my mother gave me, as she did not want my hands to be end up scarred like hers, dried up from the harsh cleaning materials, and with every scrub I gave to the bed-side cabinet, I felt as if the drops of my childhood trickled away as I soon realized just how difficult it is to live a life with hidden identities and unrevealed fear of just one bad circumstance.
And yet despite everything we have been through, God really does double what you send out into the world, and there really is an opportunity here for me, my parents, and my sister. My sister and I were living proof of a narrative that is driven by this hard work, a story of sacrifice.
When one parent works in the Arizona heat risking his health, and well-being, grinding pools, and working on garage floors just so my sister and I have a chance to be driven to school, to take part in sports, to live the lives they never got to live despite desperately wanting to. When the other parent kneels to get every bit of dust from the bottom of bed of a master bedroom, the cabinet from an office, and the couch she would desperately love to relax in even for just a second just so we have the opportunity to have food on the table, have the resources one needs to attend the amazing school Brophy is, and to sleep in a comfortable bed they never had when they were our age. Despite all the sacrifices they pulled off, the times they had to come out of work to pick me up from school freshmen year, and the amount of events they have attended despite having the opportunity to sleep and relax adds on to the undeniably fact that despite racial prejudice, despite language barriers, they have managed to accomplish so much for my sister and I.
Thankfully, their tremendous efforts and sacrifices were not for nothing. Years pondering how they were going to manage sending me to ASU is now over as I will attend the University of Notre Dame as a Questbridge Scholar in the fall of 2022. Scrubbing that bedside cabinet did not just take from my childhood, but it slowly brought me closer to not only my parents’ dream, but my dream to make them and my sister proud to be a member of this hardworking, dream-achieving family.
However, the story does not end there, and like any good movie series, the antagonist simply keeps coming back, and only becomes stronger and stronger with every movie that comes out. It worries me now that I will be more than a thousand-eight-hundred-thirteen point six miles away from the ones I love, the people I call home, and the ones whom I see God in. It hurts that despite proving we devote ourselves to what we are here to do, it can all simply just vanish with a knock on the door, a bad circumstance, or simply put as some red or blue lights. We can’t let the opportunities our parents sacrificed for us be squandered, and we must do something about the inequality and injustices done by a system in which honorable people live out their lives in happiness. To the people like me, that recognize the efforts done by their parents, and the sacrifices they go through day in and day out, capitalize on the opportunities they have laid out for you, be attentive to the virtues and they values our parents have taught us, and just show up; watch just how God doubles what you have put forth, and how that bedside cabinet shines after all of the times you’ve scrubbed it.
