Mom badass youth story

On septiember 83, after a year of teaching in a primary school, and a misfiring exam, Brigitte -my mom- decided to leave her little country side's town to go to San Francisco as an au pair girl.

She took the cheapest flight available which made her do two halt. She first flew from Paris to New York. And after some problems with the immigration police - because they had found photographs of the family where she was supposed to live and work in California, and because she did not have a work visa – she went in a hotel to wait overnight for her second flight to Denver.

The next day she took a flight from JFK airport to Denver, there she had to take another flight to San Fransisco but she did not know where to go. She asked an information counter, immediately the stewardess recognised her name –the plane was waiting for her! Consequently they both run as fast as possible across the airport and the departure gateway, when they finally arrived the plane's door was just closed. The stewardess had to knock at it to inform the plane's stewardess they were there. Fortunately they heard and could reopen the plane only for her.

In San Francisco Brigitte lived at Nikta's home, another air hostess where she was working. The home was on the top of a little mountain on a street named 'skyline Boulevard'. The garden had a view on all the 'bay area' of San Francisco, that was really beautiful, she remembers it now as an incredible thing.

Brandon -the boy she had to take care of- was 3 when she arrived, so he did not speak english very well and he still was learning a lot of things so he pronounced some words with my mother's french accent. They were always together. Sometimes Brigitte passed four days alone with him because his mother was working a lot.

After one year of work the deal was that the au pair girl received a bonus. In october of 1984 with that one, Brigitte decided to take one month of hollidays.

She took the car of an Irish friend of her who was moving to Florida and started cross USA in this little car. But things did not happen as she expected, at El Passo in Texas next to the frontier she was arrested by immigration's officer because her visa had of course expired for a long time.

She found herself in an immigrant jail, and she had to take a lawyer in Texas because the laws were not the same from one state to another.She spent three weeks in jail with only mexicans girls or from south America, fortunately and thanks to a precedent travel in South America my mom was speaking spanish very well.

To pass the time she was playing cards with the other prisoners. Day after day she saw a girl that was alone, so she decided to talk to her. She was from ecuador and was not speaking spanish but an old dialect. She did not know how to write and would say something to her husband who also was in jail but in the man's one. My mom finally wrote a letter in spanish for her husband but the ecuador's women did not really know what put in it except that she loved him. This women did not have lot of money for her exil but she was wearing a Michael Jackson's T-shirt.