My Mother Who is Seventy, and Just Started Taking English Classes

This still just shows, that it’s NEVER too late, to start something, translated…

For the other elders, they’re learning as they grow older, but, my mom is different, she’s growing older, as she learns.

My mom told me, that she grew up in poverty as a child, she was, raised by her older sister, and, didn’t know to work hard in school, it wasn’t until when she was fifty, when she finally got that wake up call, maybe, it’s because of how the kids are grown and left the home, she’d started contemplating on what is, a meaningful life.

At first, she’d taken up driving lessons, although it’d taken her three tries total, to finally get that license, finally!  Then, she’d gone to the remedial middle schools, all the way, to graduating from high school in night school, it’d taken her a total of SEVEN years.  She was never absent from her classes, didn’t show up late, or leave early from her classes, is the eldest in her classes, and, because she’d worked hard in her studies, she’d gained the acclaims and the respects from both her teachers, AND her classmates, and she was even chosen, as the head of the class too, and was voted as the model student for her entire school, it’d made us look up to her as our role model.

At age seventy, my mother started taking up English with the television programs, at five in the morning sharp, she’d sat in front of the T.V. watching, “Everybody Speaking English” program, after the lesson, she’d gone out, to take her morning swims, she’d done this for seven years straight, never taken a day off.  At noon and in the evenings, there were, replayed segments of the shows, and, she’d rather lose her naptime, or her time to rest, she’d wanted to practice her English skills again and again, she wanted to go travel in the U.S., and wanted to speak in perfect English, and not need anybody to translate for her.

Mom told me, she hoped to live her dreams of journeying to the U.S. before she turns eighty, and wanted me to go along with her.  Looks like I may need to brush up on my English skills too then, otherwise, if my mom became my translator, I would totally be ashamed!

And so, this woman kept the positive attitude, of learning as she ages, and she’d not let her age become the barriers to her own learning processes, and, in the process of her, getting an education, she’d inspired others too.

and no, this, is still NOT my photograph…