From Strangers to Family
When I came to the United States, I was 16 years old. By that time, I had lived in my native country of Guatemala and also had spent almost 2 years in Mexico. Even though moving was not new to me, I was completely unprepared to come to a place where it snowed, had big trees everywhere and was full of people who didn’t look like me and didn’t speak my language. Another detail that made me more insecure was the fact that I was going to live with my aunt, her husband and 3 kids. That doesn’t seem too unusual, but in my case, I was going to live with a family I had never met.
I realized right away that the living situation was going to be difficult for everybody. The house where they lived was a small three-bedroom, so I had to sleep in the living room. To make things worse, my cousin came a month later. He was also 16, but now both of us had to sleep in the living room. Eventually I knew that at least one of us would have to leave.
One of the first things that my aunt did was to get me enrolled in high school. I remember we went to the office and met an older American man William Gerard Hutchinson, that all the students call Mr. Bill. He was the bilingual family liaison and worked directly with all the Spanish speaking families. I was put into a newcomer program for students who didn’t Speak English. The first half of our day we studied in Spanish and English and then after lunch we went to the regular classes with the English-Speaking kids. Mr. Bill’s office was a safe place for all of us. He always had a bowl of candy, and he let us keep our backpacks in his office until after lunch. So, every morning before class started, we would all go to his office and check in and joke around and get candy and then come back at lunch time and get our backpacks. Mr. Bill was always helpful and friendly, and we all depended on him. His only rule was you have to be honest.
It was hard because I couldn’t speak English, but, neither could the new friends that I had made. I was enjoying school, but the situation at my aunt’s house had gotten very tense. I decided that I would move out and live on my own. I was able to find a room in a house near downtown. All that time I kept going to school and every day I would see Mr. Bill. But, one day I was skipping class because a group of students invited me to stay for a second lunch. Mr. Bill saw me and told me to go to my class. I said I would, but then I went with my friends instead. When Mr. Bill found out that I had lied he was very upset. He came to our newcomer class, and he told us how disappointed he was when we lied. After that I didn’t go to his office as much because I knew he had caught me lying.
Eventually the house where I was living needed to be repaired, so I had to move out. The problem was that rent was so expensive that I didn’t have anywhere to go. I talked to a woman about my problem, and she said that I might have to go live in a shelter. She made some phone calls to see if she could find a place for me, but nobody had anything cheap enough. Finally, she called Mr. Bill and asked if he knew of anything available to rent. He said that he didn’t but that he and his wife Nora Hutchinson, who had just retired, had a separate living space on their property. She hadn’t mentioned that the student in need was the same one who had lied to him.
I went to live there with the idea that it would only be until I could find something else. It has been four years and now I call Mr. Bill and his wife grandma and grandpa. I don’t think any of us could have imagined how our relationship would deepen and continue. They are my new family. But now I am lucky to have them and very happy to be with them, they have changed my life. They got me out of a bad moment that now I think, I don’t know if I would still be here if they hadn’t rescued me from where I was. I love them so much.
“Friendships are sometimes formed in the most unlikely places-”
