Ohhhh Elena.....

Here I go feeling bad and sympathetic again. Elena made me want to rescue her. “My Spanish isn’t enough”. Elena and anyone else who moves out of a country that speaks their native tongue to a country that does not has a big, new world to face. It is scary because you can’t communicate and learning a whole new way of speaking a whole new language is extremely difficult no matter who you are. Once you are used to something for so long, to change that is hard. Elena moved here when her children were infants or toddlers. They don’t want to speak Spanish anymore. That is their second language now and Elena feels as if she is missing something because she can’t be a part of the laughing and the jokes they share at the dinner table. Learning English from a book is not going to teach you the language you need to survive in the world. She is unable to communicate with those around her. Her husband does not seem supportive in her choice to want to better herself (he needs to go in my opinion). She continues to try and learn because she does not want to get to the point where she is unable to communicate with her children, where their Spanish slowly fades away and all they know is English, making her deaf when her children need her help. Being deaf is the same as not understanding what someone is saying. Either way you cannot understand weather you hear the words or not. Taking my kids to school and everywhere around there are people that don’t know English. I actually feel bad because just having to tell someone to move out the way because of danger, just not understanding the word move or danger can get you killed. That’s just an example. This poem touched me. I have a dislike for the husband who frowns on her trying to better herself, and sympathy for Elena who wants to better her language mostly for her children so she stays connected and herself