‘This is the place where the fog rolls’
Prompt
Describe the world you come from; for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? (200–250 words)
Reponse
Bless the salt marsh bleeding out into the sea, and the faded beach cottages sighing at the approaching evening. This is the place where the fog rolls past the jetty in the morning, and chickadees play hide and seek in the forest. My grandma lives here, and every summer my sister and I come back to explore the woods and fields of coastal Maine — it provides us with a much-needed anchor while we move from place to place as nomads of the Foreign Service, living our third-culture-kid-lives as we wade through the churning soup of multiple perspectives, conflicting narratives, and clashing values. I am still picking through it all, trying to piece together who I think I want to be.
With each move, I am uprooted from my current place and transplanted in a new one. My life seems to be measured by the number of places I’ve lived in: Beijing with its dripping gray skyscrapers, El Paso with its barren mountains, Seoul with its impenetrable maze of roads, Maine with its beaches and forests, Sonseca with its wide open squares, Amman with its powdery white hills… I draw them close to me, and ache for them after I leave them.
But each impending move presents its own possibilities — I hunger for the people not yet met, beliefs not yet encountered, places not yet explored. If I could, I would visit all the places that a person could visit on this world, and more.