Notes

And is it we the sight in Virginia, s ar so after I had shined the United States y her whiped. "This is now the safe place in the world. From our bed, with my mother by my side. I could see the moon etched again windowpane, fat and full of mith, clinging with great expectations to the sanctuary of the lavender blue sky, It hardly marred that all and ghosts of a different war lingreal, the Battle of Fredericks burg the Battle of Bull Run. Confederate victories secured by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia

There was nothing to be afraid of. My mother and I were looking at a country in love with itself, beckoning us to feel the same. We'd crossed the rough edges of the war into this lustrous new territory that faced the heart of the nation's capital. We were on a flabby mattress, in an empty but un- cursed apartment, waiting for tomorrow to arrive.

"You can lose a country. But no one, no war can take away your education," my mother reassured me as we lay together in bed. "You will have the best education in Amer ica," she whispered.

Years later, that was the hook I had used to trick my mother into my idea of college, American-style. Every serious student in America embarked on a four-year quest, to be taught by a master teacher at a college far away from home. I had explained. It was the equivalent of a martial artist leav ing her village to study kung fu at the Shaolin Temple, 1 would say, or even Siddhartha Gautama going away to seek enlightenment under the bo tree. It was as prestigious as a local scholar being admitted to the mandarin rank at the emperor's court. And although she did not do it with grace, she believed me. Bit by bit, I tricked her into believing the