Irene Mendozza

Prof. Mandy Geddes

ENG121

Counternarrative - Irene aka Mimi

May 19, 2019

IRENE aka MIMI

Mimi came up, as Andrew, my grandchild, heard his mom, calling me Mami, he began to

call me Mami too, with great dismay of my daughter, that just, couldn’t wait to be called mom, he

will call her something like a mumbling and to me clearly mommy. There was no way of Andrew

calling me other way and then he said MIMI I think that by mistake but it was a relief of the tension

of the "moms" there. And MIMI was born. I feel very comfortable being called Mimi and is like I

always was.

My friends and family commented, not in front of me, the roll I was taking been a grandma,

for them, it was unbelievable that I was so dedicated to them. For me it was like the continuation

of something that I had begun many years ago but with many differences. One of them, it was not

my daily responsibility.

When my life took a strange turn, my daughter was 8 years old my oldest was 16 and he

had a terrible car accident, they were going to cut his legs. To make this story short, I revolted

myself against that possibility and in one day's notice, I came to this wonderful country to seek for

a change on the outcome. I did! The price for this, was that I lost all, from my hair to the house the

money, the bodyguards, the dogs, everything, but my son is perfect and he is running bike
competitions all around the world. He did seven days in the Amazon and got one of the three prices

among more than 300 people.

At the time, here in the US, and while he was in recovery of the one of the 36 surgeries he

went through; my daughter, Andrew's mom had to become the mother of my other two kids, I had

to work and she was cooking and taking care of them at home. She was 9 years old.

This is not exactly a counternarrative, but where it becomes, is where it begins the story of

someone that never imagined that could survive to one Tsunami of life and she did; we all do.