On a summer day of 1988, with only a plastic bag full of homemade wheat bread and desire for a better life, my father and his friend crossed an old wire fence as if they were going on a picnic. Two minutes later, they were stepping on American soil.
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Listen to this essay by Connor Henricksen as he recounts life in isolation. -
In the gray dawn of the morning he was supposed to leave, my dad came into my room. He sat on the edge of my bed, making a depression in the sheets. He told me to pack my bags and that he would come back in about an hour to get my sister and I — we were going back to Colorado. -
I don’t know how old I was when I developed obsessive-compulsive disorder. It had to be pretty young, because I remember being upset about turning seven. I cried because it was a “bad number” and it would take five years for me to turn 12, which was the best number. It was my number.
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Most of my early childhood I spent being embarrassed that my parents had accents and that my food at lunch always smelled differently than everyone else’s. My dad always made me Arepas for school and no one would know what it was. Kids would just stare and continue eating their goldfish. -
This I Believe -- On a summer day of 1988, with only a plastic bag full of homemade wheat bread and a desire for a better life, my father and his friend crossed an old wire fence as if they were going on a picnic. Two minutes later, they were stepping on American soil. His journey just started.
