Are You Aware? A Work in Translation
This is part IV in our “The Latin Experience in the States” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here.
Earlier this month, I was in line at a food truck. In front of me was a young woman, about 15 years old, with her parents. As they stepped forward to order, I heard the young woman translate the menu for her parents from English to Spanish. In Spanish, she explained the menu choices and then proceeded to order for them. Watching as she helped her parents order food flooded me with memories of my own childhood.
From an early age of 11 or 12, I did much of the same. I would accompany my parents on errands and translate for them with bank tellers, shop owners, and school staff. In the vein of what comes first — the chicken or the egg — I have often wondered if my social anxiety evolved from having been thrust into navigating an adult world at such an early age, or if my social anxiety was ever-present and merely magnified the awkwardness and discomfort of these interactions.
I remember on two separate occasions, years apart, I went with my parents to rent apartments. The first time, I was in seventh grade and we had just moved to New Jersey. The man renting the apartment showed us around, and I served as a translator for my parents as they asked questions about the rental, including questions about rent and utilities. The landlord also asked my parents questions, and I was the one to translate their answers. About five years after that, we moved to another apartment and, again, I was the one asking the married couple who was renting it questions about utilities, like oil and gas. We were fortunate that, in both cases, the landlords who were renting the apartments were accommodating and understanding.
Making phone calls, for me, was excruciating. My parents would ask me to call the electric company to inquire about the bill, an auto parts store to see if they had a certain part, or a doctor’s office to make an appointment for them. Talking on the phone, to this day, brings me so much anxiety. I hate making phone calls of any kind, and I will avoid them at any cost. In most cases, when I have to make a phone call, I silently pray that whoever I am calling will not be there so I can simply leave a message. I don’t know if it was my early responsibility of making important phone calls on behalf of my parents that caused me to have phone phobia, but it is still an ever-present obstacle in my life.
Approaching people, in most arenas, brings me intense unease. I will walk around a store five or six times looking for something before I will approach an employee to ask for help. As an elementary school teacher, I feel great comfort in spending most of my days communicating with children. That is where my comfort zone lies. Approaching and talking to adults in any capacity is a discomfiting task that accompanies me anywhere I go. As a kindergarten teacher, I once felt so much anxiety approaching a custodian to ask him to replace a light bulb in my room. As my class and I passed him in the hallway, I pretended to forget that I had to ask for his assistance. One of my students — a bright, courageous 5-year old — stepped right out of line to approach him and asked if he would replace the light bulb. I was in awe of this confident girl who had no hesitancy in approaching him. Such ease in approaching adults had always been out of reach for me, beginning in those early days when it was my duty as a daughter to assist my parents in their communication with the world around them.
As a bilingual teacher of elementary students, I have seen my own students navigate this world where they translate for their parents with school staff and in other areas of their lives. As I see children and teens around me follow this tradition of helping their immigrant parents communicate in a variety of settings, I have come to realize that it is not just a duty given to us by our circumstances, it is a great privilege to bridge the gap between our parents and the world around them. As for me and the bilingual kids around me, we have been tasked with this responsibility of translation in many circumstances. In doing so, we are able to show our gratitude for the great sacrifices our parents have made on our behalf.
For the majority of our parents, who immigrated to the U.S., it was not their first choice to leave behind the comfort and ease of their language and culture, to uneasily enter a world in which they could not speak the language or understand everything that was said to them. My parents left Guatemala in the midst of a 36-year civil war. They came to the U.S. looking for work, hoping to provide a safe home for their two girls. They left their families and everything they knew in order to offer us bright futures. They worked — often two jobs — with no time or money to sign up for English classes. My father worked in a factory and fixed cars on the weekends. My mother set aside her hopes of advancing her education in Guatemala and instead cleaned the houses of wealthy families in New Jersey where we settled. Looking back, every time that they asked me to make a phone call or approach an adult in public, they were asking me to do something that would benefit me. Calling the auto parts store, asking for a part for a car my dad had to fix for a customer was for my own well-being. He was earning money for our family, and I was needed in that endeavor.
The sacrifice our parents made to leave behind everything they loved and understood was done on our behalf, for our betterment and for our comfort. Their discomfort directly led to our comfort in this country we now call home. We are here, in this country, with this privilege, because of our parents and their substantial sacrifices.
There is something I hope this generation of children and teens who continue the tradition of translating for their parents understands: Your duty to your parents is both noble and necessary. You are trusted, by your parents, to help them in the great endeavor of forming and leading your beautiful family. Your parents are tasking you with important duties that will shape you into mature and loving humans and leaders in many areas. Be thankful for the wonderful privilege you have of helping your family make its way in a new and uncertain place and of laying down roots that will be strong for generations to come.
Recently, I went to lunch with my parents at a restaurant in San Antonio, where we live. The waiter spoke both English and Spanish. I helped my parents read the tiny print of the menu, and then when it was time to order, my dad looked to me to tell the waiter what he wanted. Even now, my dad still asked me to help him order lunch. And it is a privilege for me to do so.
Marcia Argueta Mickelson is an immigrant from Guatemala who came to the U.S. as an infant. She is a fourth grade teacher and an author of young adult fiction. Her next book, about a young woman from Guatemala, comes out in September. She lives in Texas with her husband, Nolan Mickelson. They have been married for 26 years and have three sons.
