Where are You From?
No question elicits more anxiety than this one. At times, I even avoid meeting new people just to side-step this question. “Where are you from?”—seems like such an easy question that should have such an easy answer. For me and others like me, not so. I am a part of that societal anomaly called “Third Culture Kids”—those are born in one culture, raised in another, and never completely ‘at home’ anywhere. Allow me to explain… I was born in south Alabama…way down south where the peanut and cotton fields fill the landscape. I came into that world in the mid-60’s…long before cable TV, central a/c, cell phones, and anything akin to ‘urban sprawl.’ My daddy was the Baptist preacher at a small and growin’ church outside of Dothan, Alabama…that’s ‘Dothan’ – “DOOOE-thun.” My momma, a school teacher, and daddy raised my two older brothers and me in a good Southern home. My few memories of this time include hot summer evenings, a kiddie-pool full of frogs my brothers and their friends had caug