I remember going to the US embassy in Beijing for the first time in 2015. In the long line of bodies, sweaty and anxious, I listened as strangers talked about their plans for when their visa would get approved. One of them planned on being a lifeguard, the other a chef. As their conversation exhausted its fuel, they turned over to me, in the polo shirt my mom thought was presentable for the officer, my fingers gripping my folder of financial files I did not quite understand. When I told them I was headed to a boarding school in Boston, one of them simply declared: “But you are twelve! Is your mom crazy?” Standing in that lobby, not knowing exactly what an embassy was, I couldn’t help but ask myself, Is my mom crazy? I loved my life at home, for its consistency more than anything: my mom, my nanny, the friends I played hockey with every weekend, the bunk bed I’d had since first grade, the sixty-inch TV, the fruit platter in the living room, always fresh, waiting to be devoured. Why fix something that never seemed broken? Yet, as I found myself in a room of people eager for transition, I saw how the thrill of new beginnings gave their pupils light, the type of shine consistency could never give. So while my mom might have been crazy, I decided I could trust the strangers about to embark on the same journey. This year marks my seventh in the US. Puberty, two graduations, and a pandemic later, the step I took no longer seems jarring to me, as this life abroad become my new constant. When it comes to daily routine, little inconsistencies still irritate me, like when Kindlevan runs out of chorizo grilled cheeses (my lunch for the past two weeks) and I’m forced to go with the pesto chicken, or when a friend decides to skip our class and I have to drag myself to the SEC alone. Yet I have learned to love every change, big or small, for without them days are destined to blend together into a forgettable blur. Occasionally, I’d still ask, as an inside joke with myself, Was my mom crazy? She probably was, at least a little bit, sending her twelve-year-old who didn’t know how to fold t-shirts across the world. Still, I only love her for it, looking back at me in that embassy, oblivious of the magic of transition. Many thanks, William Zhuang
DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, ART BY QUINN HOERNER
APRIL 18, 2022 TUFTS OBSERVER 3
