Nightingale
When you think about the mentor in your life, many try and avoid thinking of their parents. For many reasons this happens, many don’t want to admit the influence they’ve had over their lives, they’ve had a bad experience with them, or they just don’t care. I unlike other people am not afraid to admit that my mother, Gina Marie Porretta-Baker has had the biggest impact on my life and is my number one mentor.
Gina; meaning garden or powerful mother of all black people, both describe her perfectly. My mother has taken up a powerful passion for teaching. She wasn’t always an English teacher, she started off her career in the employment of Verdi Group. My mother was let go from the building, as many others were too. To keep the family income, she began her teaching career in the school Edison. How much joy do you think she got from this experience? Surprisingly she had a lot. Not from the principals or the teaching assistants or the school itself, no she got her inspiration from her students. Her students were inspired by her, as was I.
My mothers a teacher, an English teacher to be exact, a teacher that began to inspire her students each and every day and earned the respect of each student. You can see the passion she feels for her students, the way she comes home sometimes so aggravated you feel as if she could bring on thunder from the anger spitted throughout her words. Apart from the aggravation, she comes home flustered. Not a bad flustered, a flustered where she wants to help each and everyone, but knows its impossible. My Mother prides in her students, and they take pride in her. She comes home every week or so with a letter, gift, picture from one of her students and you know by the way she smiles she loves each one of them and has a deep appreciation for each gift and word that is written on that card.
My Mother was not only a teacher, but a friend to her students. She would stay late, discussing how a student may do better and would help figure out why her students were not doing as well as they may usually have been doing. One of her students was having trouble at home; his father was in jail, and his mother was an alcoholic. Both of his parents left his sister to take care of him, his brothers, and sisters. But his sister wouldn’t pay attention to him, neglected him like the rest of his family had. They were abusive towards him, and my mother had found this out. He was never fed any food, and would starve some days. My Mother knew there was a problem that he was encountering in his life. He opened up to her, poured his problems to her, like pouring rain, each beat of his life hit a string in her heart. She took him to a shelter that day, a shelter that would feed him food and give him a place to stay at night that would protect him, not beat him like his own family back home.
My Mother didn’t just care about her students, she had a caring for ever person that was in need of her help. As Whoopi Goldberg once stated, “When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they’ll remember and be kind to someone else. And it’ll become like wildfire.” My mother started many wildfires.
I remember on two different occasions how my mother changed the way I thought about those random people roaming the streets. It was a brisk, freezing, rainy day, as we were on our way home we were just passing by Mercy high School. We both noticed a girl walking by herself, with a baby carrier in her hand. I wasn’t as much thinking about the girl herself, but that poor baby in the carrier. Babies have such a high mortality rate and they can die from the cold more quickly than an average adult can, so yes I was panicked for that little child. As my mind was racing with these different intricate thoughts, the car had come to a stop.
“Do you need a ride home?”
“Thank you.” The girl replies.
So many different curious thoughts pulled into my mind, why had my mother stopped for her, was it the same reason as I was thinking about? … I was happy to the fact she had taken action, instead of the laziness I had conquered up as a polar bear in that back seat, just watching and listening. That beautiful baby girl had been asleep the whole time; the cruelty of the rain had no effect on that innocent time of peace. As we drove the girl and her baby home, my mother was invited in to the house. I was invited in too but I was scared, like a deer in the headlights, not knowing what to do. As five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen, my mother finally appeared in the doorway, and was given a plate of the families dinner, with the girls mother crying and hugging my mother saying,” Thank you.”
The smile my mother wore, like a ray of sunshine that couldn’t be ruined by thunder, the way her cheeks rose to a blush red, the way her voice shone as a firework she told me how grateful the mother was to be returned her daughter, and her granddaughter.
The second different occasion occurred as we were driving along by the downtown tops. A women was walking, she was elderly, with a wrinkly face, glasses that suggested she may have a difficulty seeing, and carrying bags that weighed her down. My mother saw the difficulty the women was having carrying those bags. The women must have felt like Quasimodo, with all that weight setting on her back. My mothers sadness she felt for that women, the stars crying for the moon on a dark night, the lone puppy crying for her mother, a baby screaming to be held, my mother felt that women’s need for a helping hand. My Mother asked her if she needed a ride somewhere, we took her to the bus stop she needed to be. Even though it was a five minute drive, it would’ve been a fifteen to twenty minute walk for that women, and when I thought of that in my mind I could feel the heaviness of those bags that would weight me down. How I gave pride in my mother that day, I knew she really was just a brilliant women.
My Mothers not someone you forget easily, she has the shortness of an Italian, the wrinkles of someone who has devoted their life to a drive that will push peoples mind to a higher level of thinking, a perspective on life that you just want to have faith and hope everything will just work out in the end. She has faith, in everyone and everything, faith for a better tomorrow, faith that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan will end, and we will be restored back to our husbands, wives, friends, children, partner, faith that people will be restored their jobs, faith that god will show us the plan he has in mind for us, she has faith.
She helped me become a better person. She taught me that life may knock me down, but I had to get back up on my own two feet. Mom also taught me that even though some people may never understand and may never believe in me, I have to believe in myself. She told me though, “I believe that you will change the world someday.” And even though that’s a wide set goal, I hope to change someone’s life, as she had changed many.
My mother is a nightingale; she is heard over all the other birds. She will always be heard, and I will always be there to listen.
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