Baby Names A-Z Monologue

A generation ago, a man left his young wife and flew over an ocean he could hardly pronounce, his dreams heavy in his thin trousers. His wife followed him two** years later, her father recently buried back home. Against everything he knew, the man turned from medicine to computer engineering; despite her language barrier, the woman pursued a career in law. He worked two jobs to support his wife through law school, and she took a waitressing job when she wasn’t studying, so that they might keep what little they had. At night, they taught each other English, their mouths silently forming sounds with the radio. If those first years were hard, the couple never let their future children know. When they became pregnant for the first time, the woman chose the name, Amber, on the first page of a book titled “Baby Names A-Z”. Because this is just the beginning, she said. But despite their bravery, their daughter would turn out to be a glorious antithesis. I am that

The second time my mother recovered from surgery, while we awaited the results, she told me an old Chinese proverb that roughly translates to, “You can only enter halfway into the dark forest before you begin to come out the other side.” How did you tell a woman that strong, that determined, that _____, that you weren’t like her? When I blew out candles each year, I kept a silent wish to be as industrious and brilliant as my parents. With the smoke of my dreams trailing off the end of an extinguished candle, the train of my life chugged on.

In the fall of my eighth grade year, I was sworn in to NJHS, an event with as much gusto and bravado as can be expected of a middle school celebration. For the first time, I faced a new frontier. While others slaved over the idea of mandatory community service, my stomach clenched at the thought of new people. Interacting with strangers? I came close to