We’re Moving Back to the U.S

An essay on transience

In 1997, when I was nine years old, my family moved across the country from Oklahoma to Ohio. We left behind the first house I remember, where my parents had planted grass in the backyard and installed a swing on the front porch and taught me to rollerblade on the tricky brick road. It was the house that had a laundry chute, the house where I accidentally dropped a ceramic Daisy Duck figurine down the toilet, the house with the waterbed and the flowered brown velvet couch. Looking back, I realize it was the house where both of my parents turned 30 and the house that hosted my grandparents and aunts and uncles with space to spare.

Pandas were my favorite animal that year. My dad, who didn’t usually buy us presents if it wasn’t a birthday or Christmas, brought home a stuffed panda when we visited Ohio to search for an apartment. This action seemed significant then, like he was apologizing for uprooting us. We must have moved over the summer, because I finished 3rd grade in one state and started 4th grade in another. ‘Clarissa Explains It All’ was tied with ‘Saved by the Bell’ for my favorite show, and I dressed myself in stone-washed denim jeans, a fluffy white t-shirt, and a denim hat for the first day of school, hoping to hide my new kid nerves.