Most nine-year-olds in Round Lake, Illinois spend their summers outdoors jumping rope or swimming in the lake. I spent my fourth grade summer in my kitchen, teaching my then 68-year-old grandmother the alphabet. My grandma, Mama Pava, grew up in a small Mexican village. She came from a very poor family. Her mother died when […]

“I didn’t even foul him!” “It’s hard to tell sometimes.” “No, it’s not! That ref just sucked!” I sat alone in the second row of our minivan, shivering slightly in my basketball singlet and shorts. I should have worn a jacket to combat the January chill, but being a stubborn 10-year-old, I had insisted that […]

She quietly hobbled into the clinic when her number was called, clearly in excruciating pain. When asked what was troubling her, she lifted her left leg to reveal the sole of her foot. The entire medical team froze in shock. A cut on her left foot had become so infected that we could almost see […]

My family has always been religious and involved in our church. When I was younger, my parents helped the priest give the host, my sister was an altar server, and my grandmother arranged bake sales. This was about the time that my mother, to my great distress, felt I needed to become involved too. I […]

The room was a frenzy of twirling tutus. Adrenaline filled the air, sparking the tiny ballerinas into frantic leaps that ended with them splattered against the mirror like Silly Putty. Parents rummaged around for ballet slippers, hair ties and dance bags scattered amidst the chaos. Their last class of the year was over, the recital […]

“Hello Bella!” said Levi as he lifted his hand up to give me an enthusiastic high five.”Hey Levi!” I said. I moved into my assigned classroom, stunned and delighted.On any other day, in any other situation, this friendly exchange might seem pretty unremarkable.But, you see, Levi is a seventeen-year-old autistic boy with extremely limited verbal […]

Life is Tough As I sat at age eleven with my Nintendo cradled in my left hand and my eyes buried in my right hand saying my goodbyes to my father, I did not quite realize what was truly happening. For the next eighteen months, the only time I would see my father would be […]

Perhaps the most confusing creature on this earth, by far, is the woman. An ever-flowing waterfall of hormones and emotions, the woman is a blubbering, hysterical mess who never seems to know what it wants. In addition to being fickle and overly sensitive, it is only attracted to men who treat it like a doormat. […]

She’s never been called glamorous or even an enthusiastic pretty. Her acorn-colored hair hangs simply above her shoulders and sometimes catches a glitter from the reflecting sun. She’s constantly trying to keep it tucked behind her ear in hopes that it won’t stray, but it usually half-covers her eye in hopes that it one day […]

Throughout my years of being a student, I’ve always been taught that a minority was someone of a color other than white, from somewhere other than the United States, and who had a faith other than Christian. Well, here it is, 1995, almost 14 years since my school days began. I’m not dependent on any […]