A Place to stand.
In life there are times when you are down on your luck and everything has gone wrong. You lost your job, and your girlfriend broke up with you all in the same day. The only way you can measure yourself is your character and how you bounce back from your problems. Will you make the same mistake again? Only time will tell. In the memoir A Place to Stand, Jimmy Santiago Baca (2001) describes problems he had. Jimmy's father is an alcoholic and his mother never lived up to her title of as being a mother. At times the world can be one's worst enemy, but for Jimmy the worst enemy was himself. Although, Jimmy tries to find his own freedom by thinking about his past, his imprisonment traps him in a different world that he has never experienced.
As a young boy, the only person Jimmy depends on is himself. Jimmy's parents are a big influence in his life like any other normal family, but Jimmy lives through hell with his parents. At a young age Jimmy had seen his father in jail and drunk, which is something that changes his life forever. Jimmy's mother is a woman that had made a big mistake, marrying a man that she knows is not right for her, Jimmy's father. Later on in her life she makes another big mistake, which is to abandon her children and create a different life. Jimmy knows that his whole life will change, "Tomorrow will be a better day with Gods help. But as she led us into the house, I knew tomorrow would never be better. Something in my life changed forever" (p 17). Even though Jimmy knows it was going to be bad, he never imagined his mother leaving them forever. .
But through all those hardships Jimmy had his grandparents who loved him and took care of him. Growing up with his grandparents is the only time of Jimmy's childhood that he feels free. Jimmy was free to do whatever he wants; he is able to wonder around town, play with his brother and sister and be free.
