The Power of Influence

Going to school the Fri­day before Mother’s Day, I thought it would be like any other day in the first grade, a spelling test, a visit from the sci­ence teacher, and maybe an art project. That is not how it turned out, however.

“Today we’re going to think about our moms,” Mrs. M explained to our class, “I would like you to write down a few words to describe your mom and some of the good things she does for you.”

I sat there unsure of what to put down on the paper. My teacher had told us to write down the things our moms do for us on a daily basis, make our lunches, watch our soc­cer games, plan our play dates. That’s when the tears came. I remem­ber our teacher’s daugh­ter had been there that day, and she took me out­side to talk about what was both­er­ing me. I can­not remem­ber exactly what I said to her, but I remem­ber that was one of the first times that I real­ized how very dif­fer­ent my life was from all of my friends’ lives.

Divorce is a nor­mal thing, but most kids from divorced fam­i­lies got to live with their moth­ers for part of the week and their fathers for the rest. That was not the case for me. My dad has had full cus­tody over me for most of my life, and for a while my mother only had vis­i­ta­tion rights one day a week. Even then, she often had excuses for why she couldn’t make it. It hurt, and on that day in first grade I real­ized how badly I wanted some­one to be proud of me, to be able to put my art­work on the fridge and to come to soc­cer games. All I wanted was a mom.

Know­ing my life would never be the same as those around me, it became my goal to make my dad proud of me, and to become some­one that any mom would be proud of, too. I set my mind to doing every task the best that I could, work­ing hard to excel in school and sports. My hard work paid off. I was always proud when report cards came to show my dad how well I was doing and I loved to bring home art­work and sci­ence projects to show off. His pride was not enough for me though, it was my mom’s atten­tion I had desired, and as I got older, I stopped see­ing and talk­ing to her all together. I learned that she had been abus­ing drugs and which made me real­ize that she was not a good role model, and I have been so lucky that my dad was and still is a good role model in my life.

When I learned about my mom’s drug abuse, it became my dream to be a pos­i­tive role model for oth­ers and hope­fully influ­ence their lives in a pos­i­tive way, just how my dad influ­enced me. That is why I started to work at a day camp. See­ing kids smile, laugh, and play every­day and know­ing that I was mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in their lives by tak­ing care of them and play­ing with them made me so happy. I know that when I was grow­ing up, the peo­ple that I looked up to were my teach­ers and day camp lead­ers, and I wanted to make the same impact in the lives of other chil­dren. Some kids don’t have the same types of fam­i­lies as every­one else, and by being a pos­i­tive influ­ence in their lives I hope to be a role model to those who may not have one at home. In the end, I am proud of my life, because even though it is dif­fer­ent from my peers’, I have learned to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the lives of oth­ers, a les­son that will stick with me forever.

• Photo by Leonid Mam­chenkov / Used with Per­mis­sion