Growing Up in American With No Mother
Story and photos by Hector Gonzalez

It’s been said that the person closest to a man is his mother. I wouldn’t know. The last time I saw my mom was one month after my sixth birthday. I’m 21 now. I was on a bus that was leaving El Salvador to Guatemala. I still remember her waving bye to me as I left with my father, grandma and uncle.

My father, a man I met for the first time at the age of six, wanted to take my grandmother to Mexico to be medically treated for a condition she had. My father told my mother that he wanted to bring me with him to Mexico so that I could spend sometime with him and my mother agreed.

My mother and I both thought that I was going to go to Mexico and come right back, but instead my uncle had met up with us and drove us to the U.S. Before we had left El Salvador, my father had gotten my mother pregnant -- a brother I would never know. Crossing over to the U.S., I quickly understood that I was not going to be seeing my mother for a very long time. I used to cry a lot and ask my father when I was going to see my mother, but he would always say, “When I get the money, we’ll bring her here.”

For the first couple of years I would talk to my mother maybe once a month on the phone, but eventually it seemed like it didn’t really matter anymore. There would be gaps of years that would pass without me talking to my mother, and the few times I spoke to her, it felt like I was talking to a stranger.

I’ve always felt like I was different than most people I knew. When I was in first grade the teacher gave the students a rose to give to our mothers for Mothers’ Day. I had no one to give it to, so I gave it to my teacher because I felt ashamed of coming home with a rose and not having a mother to receive it. In elementary school I had a baby sitter and I would sometimes refer to her as mother. I would feel guilty saying it, but at the same time it felt good to call someone mother.

Although I grew up with my father I never thought of him as my family but as my father. A family consists of multiple individuals who provide different roles. My father is just one individual who provides only what he knows. The warmth, comfort and compassion that a mother is suppose to give to her son was pretty much absent in my life. I had to find these things internally.

Growing up without a mother has shaped who I am, and the way I interact with others. Although sometimes I’m somewhat sentimental, most times I lack compassion towards sensitive people. Sometimes I also feel like I’m not afraid to lose people or to have people walk out of my life, because I have already dealt with people not being in my life anymore. When I talk to my mother now as a grown man I’m happy to hear from her, but our conversations are uncomfortable and forced. I sometimes send money back to her solely because I feel like I’m obligated.

I’ve never really felt mad about my father taking me from my mom. Although I would have loved to grow up with a mother rather than a father, living in El Salvador was pretty miserable. My memories consist of hunger, poverty, violence and war.

But being raised without a mother has also helped me take control over my destiny. People like me who have been separated from their mothers and have seen so much violence are supposed to be angry, violent, and depressed. I don’t think that I’m any of those things. I actually think that I’m more emotionally and mentally stronger than most people that I know.

A couple of years back a teacher asked me what has inspired me to become who I was. I said that it was the idea that one day I will return to my mother, and when I do, I want her to be happy of the man that I have become.

Also Read:
Missing Pieces -- Growing Up In America with No Father
By Adrian Avila