A Tribute to My Younger Brother and Sister

I wrote this for my public speaking class, and I'm sending a copy over to my dad so that they can see it. What do you think, will they like it?

Hello fellow classmates and thank you for the next few minutes of your attention. My name is Jazmin Perez and for this Speech of Tribute, I have chosen to honor my younger siblings. Their names, Joseph and Carmela. I love my younger brother and sister but before I delve into the specifics of our relationship, first a little history on our family.

My mother and father married at the young age of 19. Legally they were set, but the wisdom of experience had not yet developed and within a few years of their marriage, they were divorced. My parents decided to remain on friendly terms for my sake, but my father still retreated to his hometown in Veracruz, Mexico. For two years, our relationship consisted of 10-minute phone calls and kisses sent through the moon. At the age of 5, he returned and bought a house a few minutes from where I lived and arrived with a new wife he had forgotten to mention. Unaware of the actual situation, I befriended my step-mother, Angeles and within a year, I had a younger brother. A year later my sister was born.

         
I had always been an only child until they came into my life. Always alone at home, my neighborhood was too dangerous to play outside with the neighborhood kids. But they were born. And suddenly I wasn’t just responsible for myself; I was responsible for them as well. I had never felt needed before. Everything I did, everything I worked towards would be seen as an example that they should follow one day. My mother already had high expectations for me but now I had them for myself as well. I wanted them to be proud of their older sister. I wanted to be able to pick them up when they fell and hear them out when they needed to speak. I wanted to be relied upon because I, myself had been alone. And I didn’t want that for them.

It didn’t matter that they had a different mother, we still shared blood and even if that weren’t the case either, the way they looked at me whenever I walked through their front doors said it all. They loved me, in their younger years they adored me, now I’m sure they tolerate me. But I will always love them. And I watched silently but eagerly as they grew up and went through the phases to see what their personalities would be like. My brother went from The Lion King to Thomas the Train to Dinosaurs to Pokemon. My Sister went from princesses to more specifically Pocahotas to Justin Bieber to well, she’s still currently hooked on Justin Bieber.

I encouraged but I also chastised, I wanted them to dream and wonder the way my mother had allowed me to do. But I would not tolerate rudeness or selfishness or the behavior of a spoiled child. I wanted them to be polite, and considerate and when people spoke to me about them, I wanted to hear that they were loved. The point, ladies and gentleman, is that they are healthy, receiving a fine education, and I love them with all my heart.

My Personal Literacy Narrative

My mother has always had high expectations of me. She had a hard life but she wanted more for me. And in hopes of that wish coming true, she provided me with the opportunity for an education that far exceeded her own as well as all the support I would ever need. The rest was up to me. I had to work for what I wanted and I had to earn my own success.

Yet as a child I didn't understand what it was that I wanted from the world. My heart was too enraptured in the fantastical Disney movies of the time. And my adventurous spirit idolized my cartoon hero Sailor Moon. In the movies I could believe in magic and happy endings and for a little girl who's family didn't have much of anything, they provided me with wonder and faith. Sailor Moon's story made me think that if an ordinary girl like her could have an amazing destiny, then maybe I was meant to do something important with my life as well.

Too caught up in my own world, my studies never really held much importance to me. But the one thing that stood above all else was my love for my mother and my need to please her. For as long as I can remember, it had always been the two of us and I adored her. I wanted to do anything and everything she asked of me, and at the age of 6, that meant learning how to read. For her sake, I made it a priority. I payed attention in class. The work wasn't too hard. I had my fun in school and overall, I was doing well in my studies. That didn't mean I liked reading, it was just a necessity for school. It was something my mother expected my to do. I could read fine, about as well as the rest of the class. But it was  a hassle and too complicated to have to sound out the strange words and then attach a meaning to them.

Yet my level of competency was not enough for my mother. She loved to read and the fact that my book of choice had been a picture book during the second grade was unacceptable. It became her mission to make me love reading as well.

I remember nights when she would lay me down in bed and sit right next to me. Covers soft as silk tucked in around me and my bear in my hands, she would take out Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone. With only the light from a desk lamp she began to read. She would so this night after night. I cam e to expect the sweet fragrance of her perfume, the feeling of the mattress give away under someone else's weight and the cool smooth surface of her arm as I nestled my cheek against it; everyday examining her hands for the slightest change as they turned the pages and created that crackling sound of a bound book being opened for the first time. I loved that sound and her voice but try as I might, when it came to my turn to read, I couldn't imagine the story the way her voice illustrated it for me. Whenever I tried I would lose the tale in the technical aspect of reading. The story of a boy in a magical world became nothing more than meaningless words that I could not put together.

After two books of having her reread to me whatever I read but could not interpret, my mother changed tactics. Yet those nights of bedtime stories did accomplish two things. First, I craved more stories that made my imagination fly and my heart race. And second, I began to love the feel of a book in my hands.

My mother's new approach involved manipulating my fascination with animals. A commercial had been airing on the T.V. at the time, and in a stroke of genius, my mother decided to get a subscription to the popular ZooBooks.

It became a ritual of mine to run to the mailbox once every month to receive the latest edition. I would commit every picture to memory and I would absorb every fact that the books provided unaware of my growing vocabulary and the improvement in my reading skills. My mother, ecstatic over her small but eagerly awaited triumph, took on the next challenge; finding a chapter book that I wanted to read. She needed to slowly separate me from the crutches that pictures were. And she found her answer in The Series of Unfortunate Events.

I was hooked and it only took that one book to spark a life long passion for novels. I picked up the The Chronicles of Narnia, once I was done with those The Golden Compass, then Percy Jackson and so one and so on.

The skills I gained began becoming apparent in class. There were words only I knew, phrases only I could comprehend and I felt proud of the status I had gained as a reader. The world of Disney was not the only world I could venture into now. And soon the day I began my next challenge arrived. . .

. . . A blank piece of paper in front of me, running my hand over it to smooth it, the page gave a soft crackle. I smile. And grip my pen. Time to tell my own story.




Citations:

The Little Mermaid. N.d. Photograph. impawardsWeb. 27 Sep 2013. <http://www.impawards.com/1989/little_mermaid_ver1.html>.

Sailor Moon 101. N.d. Photograph. MTV GeekWeb. 27 Sep 2013. <http://geek-news.mtv.com/2011/05/27/sailor-moon-101-pretty-powerful-and-pure-of-heart/>.

Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone. N.d. Photograph. mediaroom.scholastic.comWeb. 27 Sep 2013. <http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/press-release/scholastic-unveils-first-seven-new-covers-harry-potter-books-celebration-15th-annivers>.

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians). N.d. Photograph. heightslibraryWeb. 27 Sep 2013. <http://heightslibrary.org/wordpress/undeadrat/?p=3447>.

Zoobooks (original commercial). 2012. Photograph. YouTubeWeb. 27 Sep 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8EvnM2XUTI>.

Lemony Snicket:12 Books in 120 Seconds. 2006. Photograph. YouTubeWeb. 27 Sep 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej3hAZ1QnqA>.