Where I Once Belonged

It took my family almost 24 hours to drive from Mission, Texas, to Miami, Florida, and 13 years for me to come back. It was the mid-’90s, and I was 12 and two days fresh off my first kiss, aching from saying goodbye to friends I thought I’d know forever. I spent the whole trip crying into a pillow in the back of my parents’ ’95 Ford Explorer, coming up for air only to write poetry about feeling as lonely as a lone star. We’d barely crossed state lines when I began plotting ways to return to Texas.

Thirteen years later and newly married, my husband, Eric, and I packed all our belongings into a Budget truck and made that same trip in reverse. Only it wasn’t as simple as turning back a clock or retracing my prior steps. This is how I came to learn that home is a state found somewhere between the here and there, the then and now. It’s not a place I’ve ever really returned to. It’s one I keep discovering along the way.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t define my life through movement and migration. My family came to the United States for the same reasons many do: a better future and to chase a promised dream. My father, a pediatric nephrologist in Peru, found his experience no longer counted in the U.S. His journey to learn English, pass all the necessary exams, gain acceptance to a pediatric residency program and later earn a fellowship became my mom’s, older sister’s, and my journey, too. By the time we were 9 and 11, we’d moved to and away from so many countries, houses, apartments, and cities that I titled my life’s story—assigned to me as a fourth-grader in Central Florida—“My Journey from Peru to Costa Rica to