My mom has worked her whole life for others. When she was young—even younger than I am now— she helped raise her 5 siblings. She would feed them, watch over them, and constantly care for them while both her parents worked. As a young teen, she acted as a second mother to children ranging from just younger than her to infants. When she grew older, my grandfather decided that to provide the best opportunities for his children, he would send them to the US, where they could attend school and make lives much better for themselves than what they could hope to achieve in Bangladesh. At the time, my mom was little older than I am now. Having just graduated from the top college in Bangladesh, Dhaka University, she uprooted her life to support her 16-year-old brother completely alone. For years, she worked through several part-time jobs at the same time, suffering through sexual harassment and racism all throughout, so that he could study through high school and attend a college nearby.
My mother rarely ever tells me what her life was like back then. I’ve only ever gleaned small pieces, glimpses at her past. One recount in particular still burns a permanent hole in my memory. One part-time job my mother worked as a young adult was at a grocery store as a cashier. A coworker of hers was infamous for preying on young immigrants fresh off the plane, regaling them with tales of assistance and care in exchange for a few “favors” here and there. He soon set his sights on my mother and for months on end pestered her. When it became clear that she would have nothing to do with him, he quickly changed course and decided to make my mother’s life a living hell. He sabotaged her work and made it seem as though she wasn’t doing her job. He often tried to intimidate her with threats of deporting her and my then-teenage uncle back to Bangladesh, going so far as to follow her home.
And yet my mother still remained steadfast against his assault. She continued to work, doing her best to avoid him at all turns. At some point, the coworker stole money from her cash register and then attempted to pin the blame on her. At that point, my mother stopped talking and refused to tell me the rest of the story. All I know is that she has worked many more jobs since then.
A life of struggling continued on for my mother even after my uncle grew older and graduated college. When she married my father, she still worked her part-time jobs to support herself. At the time, neither of my parents were making much money and found it hard to get by. About a year later, I was born. With no one to take care of me, my mother stayed home to care for me while my father went on to work two full-time jobs at once. For the next few years, my mother acted as a homemaker, constantly taking care of my younger brother and me. Looking back through my memories and the home videos we have of the time, I realize just how much she toiled for our sakes. She could have afforded to simply take a break after over thirty years of constant strife. But she didn’t.
She took us to the library every single week so that we would learn to love reading. She enlisted us in every single extracurricular program she could to enrich our lives, even when it meant a bigger burden to her. She watched over us while we did homework and studied, helping us with every single issue we didn’t understand. When she wasn’t in the kitchen cooking meals catered to our taste, she was always running tasks for us, bettering our living conditions, or for our neighbors. More often than not, friends and family members would come to her for advice and aid with their own problems. While she was never obligated to assist them, she would anyway and never expected anything in return. When she couldn’t afford to give back something of equal or greater value, my mother would often decline gifts. She was just as strict as she was on us as she was on herself.
When I entered middle school, my mom began to relax slightly. As I grew older, she let me take on more responsibilities from her shoulder. Her break was short-lived, however, as my second brother was born. Once again, my mother took on every responsibility on her own shoulders. She spent more nights awake, soothing the crying baby, than she did asleep. I helped out where I could, but for the most part, my mother took care of everything, on top of all the pre-existing duties she carried out. Unlike most pop culture references, she refused to let herself take it easy on the third child. She raised my youngest brother just the same way she had raised me: with all the same attention to detail and opportunities she could create.
And now, she’s gone back to working “part-time.” She works longer hours than most any of her coworkers and again suffers through racist treatment, this time from customers. Sometimes, the pressure of working and taking care of her children becomes too much for her, and she visibly breaks down in tears in front of me. Once, she told me that she works for everyone else all the time, and she’s never in their thoughts. It’s true. She’s spent her entire life working to support someone else, and everyone, including myself, takes her for granted. We all rely on her, but we never think about what would happen if she were to simply vanish.
This is my mother’s plight: toiling for the sake of someone else and never receiving anything back. It would make my life to say that this story comes to a close with a happy ending, that she found a place in her life where she didn’t force herself through this treatment, that at least one person realized what she does every day and fully appreciates her for it. But that’s just not true. She’s still working, day in and day out, for nothing back but sore wrists she can barely lift with and weak ankles she can barely walk on.
