A story for my younger self

This used to hang on the wall of my old room. I’ve still got it hanging in my new room. :)

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a girl who was raised in a magical country, where the streets were paved with gold and you could eat anything you wanted to. It was a place that many people tried to go to, some becoming fugitives in order to stay there. But the girl’s parents did it the right way – they filled out all the forms, all the paperwork, her dad had a steady job and her mom took care of the house. The girl, being born there, was already a citizen (in every legal way). Her parents, because of how long the paperwork took and how many other people were trying to become citizens as well, had to wait fifteen years before their citizenship finally arrived. By then, the girl’s dad had gotten successful at his job, and the mother, in the style of many women in this magical country, divorced him for half his money, and tried to take the kids too.

During this sad time, the girl’s dad told her about the country they’d come from, though she’d hardly ever been there except for vacations, and even then only saw the tourist spots. She didn’t know what life was like in a country where the streets were paved with stones and many people were very poor. She didn’t know what life looked like in the countryside, where farmers lived and farmed without the big machines she’d seen in her magical country. 

So she decided to read about it. And when she read, she was horrified to learn that her magical country had actually done harm to the country her parents’ came from. Imagine if, after the revolutionary war, an allied country decided instead to invade the country it had just helped to gain independence.

That and other things made the girl decide. When high school or college was over, she was heading back. Her parents had never taught her the language of their parents, and she had never been taught the history of it that she was reading ravenously as well, but she wanted to go back. She didn’t need to live in the magical country. It wasn’t so magical there, she’d learned. But she wanted to know what life was like in a country where divorce isn’t the norm, where Catholics aren’t a minority, where lives are a little tougher - and, she’d soon learn, the folks are a lot friendlier too.

And she’d also find out – things are much more magical in the land her parents came from, than in the land she had left.

And now I’m here. :)