The Quest for Home

I was six years old the first time I crossed a border. I was not an immigrant, exactly, though I would eventually become one. In 1991, my father had obtained a scholarship to attend graduate school at the University of Kansas. Friends told him that completing a doctorate would take five or more years. My mother said that this new country would not become our permanent residence, though we would be there a long time. It was not our home, she said, but we should try to "make ourselves at home."