A True Miracle

The sun was piercing bright at what felt like a thousand degrees. The dusty leaves slightly moved with the little winds that would occur now and then. Puddles formed by excess water to the all dried up vines, leaving behind the marks of the chemical machine wheels on the uneven dirt ground. As I worked on the south side of the crop, I felt the sun burning my back. Sweat dripped down the bottom of my cheek, and I quickly wiped it off with the side of my black leather gloves. Placing the harvesting scissors to their holder on the left side of my jeans, I grab my phone from my pocket and read the time 2:25 pm, only five more minutes until we leave, I told myself. At that same instance, however, I hear the workers lower the banda music playing on their radios to listen to my father, the mayordomo (manager) announce: "Atención a todos, no iremos a casa hasta que este bloque esté terminado ya que manana iremos a un bloque en Mcfarland" ("Attention everyone, we will not go home until we finish this block as tomorrow we will go to a block in Mcfarland.") At that Instance I just reflected and told myself do I really want my parents to continue being this stressed and overworked. I knew I had to do something but I just could not figure out what I could do as a high school drop out. 

My parents are originally from Mexico, they came to the United States at the age of thirteen. They are at the age of fifty now and they continue to work as hard as if they were still young. I know that very soon they will no longer be able to handle the piercing hot sun and this hard core labour. I have thought of everything and I can not seem to find what I could do.

When we get home from work it is a relief getting to take off our sweaty clothing and finally be able to get clean and showered. After getting cleaned, we like to just rest for a bit before dinner. That is when my younger siblings come rushing to me. “Kenia! Kenia!” they call me “come look at this tik tok we need to try this but let's do something a little different.” “No” I tell them “I'm tired just let me, mom, and dad, rest. It was a super hard day at work today, you guys just do not understand”. I took a small nap but then decided to be a kind sister and join them in creating this tik tok but on one condition we have to do it on my account. They agreed and I started planning. We filmed the silly tik tok and although I thought it was embarrassing and did not want to post it I did either way. I asked if I could take it down but they convinced me to leave it up for at least two days. I finally got them to be quiet and we were able to finally rest in peace which was terrific by the way.

It was the following day at 4:30 am of course I did not want to get up. “Ugh. Another day at work” I told myself. I did my morning prayer as usual and prayed for my parents and to help us each day to be able to continue providing for our family. Although I dreaded going to work I was super grateful that there was work available because without it we would not be able to provide for our family, there would be no food on our table, and we would not survive. Work today was even more difficult. The vines were super bushy but then there were also tons of patches. Today we were deshojando which means that we were removing the leaves on the north side of the vine because we want just enough sun for the grapes to grow and ripen. We dislike the bushy areas because it means more work to remove leaves but we also dislike the patches because we have to try to fix the patches so that the grapes do not become raisins. I was working faster than normal for some reason I was feeling a lot more motivated. I believe it was my self talk from yesterday. Then my father finally called a break “descansen, a comer todos” he said (rest, get to eating everyone). I rushed to the porter potties to wash my hands before anyone because the sink causes a big line which can take up most of your break. I then went to a shady area with my parents and finally got to enjoy my breakfast when someone came rushing to me “Kenia go check your tik tok you are going viral” No way I thought to myself how could this happen when I wanted to delete it. It was crazy. I was ecstatic, this could take me somewhere if I continue with this and be consistent. This is all I could think of while working, I just wanted to get home and tell my siblings.

Right when I had opened the door to go inside they were there ready to share with me but I had already heard so we just jumped up and started cheering while my parents were just there super confused they did not understand what we were so happy about. We tried explaining but of course they did not understand because they have never heard about anything like this. From this day on I began to make tik toks every day after work once in a while one would go viral and we would cheer all over again. After being remarkably consistent I noticed that I was forming a fan base so I decided to take this a little further and created a youtube channel in hopes that my youtube channel would then blow up and I could earn a little extra from that aside from working in the fields. I started being consistent with that and one day I had decided to film a day in my life as a field worker. I recorded all the miserable faces and the older people being hard workers to provide for their families. I was so happy to hear that my youtube video had blown up. After a while of being consistent I grew a large following and decided to do this full time.

After a few years into being an influencer my parents finally decided to retire. My dream finally came true. I was able to provide for them just like they have provided for us for several years.