Finding
by Annie—Age 50—Tokyo, Japan
Those who knew me along the way would say that I pretty much ended up where I wanted to go. On the other side of the world. As a kid, I dreamed of other places, other worlds. I mimicked accents and would call my mom from a neighbor’s house pretending to speak another language. Just to get a reaction.
“I’m sorry I don’t understand you,” was pretty much her standard response. She never did catch on to me.
All those years playing school in our backyard playhouse led everyone to believe that I’d be a teacher. I didn’t want to go down that road. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s when women were blazing new trails. I stumbled around trying to find a major in college until Daddy told me to do what I loved. I loved reading and writing so I was an English major. I loved languages so I studied linguistics. How far can you go with that?
To pay my own way in the world I turned to teaching. After a masters’ degree in Applied Linguisitics, I landed a job in an intensive English university program. I taught English to speakers of other languages. Somehow young adults from all over the world discovered that small univeristy town that wasn’t even my destination. I eventually moved on. I taught in Malaysia. I wandered the world and settled in Japan teaching, then marrying, having children and living with my in-laws. Now, my life’s work is making sense of pretty much everything around me. I’m slowly catching on.
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