Amazing Grace

Grace won a major art contest. She’s pretty amazing that way. Amazing Grace, as they say. The contest was open to all children of Foreign Service officers worldwide, ages 13 to 18. Who knows how many entries were submitted. Probably a gazillion.

This year's theme was “Wherever You Go Becomes a Part of You.” Grace isn't big on emotive themes, but she is big on art, and especially on cash prizes. And this contest’s winner would receive a $500 cash award. Grace was in. And she won. Amazing Grace.

She painted a self portrait. A girl in a red dress stitching the flags of all the countries she's called home into the flesh of her arm. She's still holding the needle. The thread dangles from her skin where the most recent flag — El Salvador’s — is lashed into place along with the banners of the UAE, India, Saudi Arabia, and the USA.

I don't know — and won't ever know — what it's like to be Grace. She holds her cards close to the chest. So these tiny glimpses into tiny parts of my daughter's vast, vast heart are like someone left open the lid to a locked treasure chest. But it's that rare kind of treasure that you don't want to take for your own, you just want to watch it sparkle for as long as you can.

Every place you are is a part of you. How much a part is your choice. You can sit there and let the sky and the city and the dirt and the food and the sun and rain and sand and colors and the people and their words settle down on you like layers of dust. But then you can brush it all right off whenever you want. Whenever it's too heavy or smells too foreign or feels too inconvenient. Even if you want it to stay, a stiff wind can carry it all away and leave you the way you were before you came. Like none of it ever happened. And then what's the point of anything?

Or you can grab hold of your “where,” hold it up to your skin, thread the needle, pierce the flesh. You do it over and over again. It hurts like home. You make holes in yourself, you fill them up with someplace new. A little pain, a little patch. A little blood, a little badge. You were something when you got here. You're something else when you leave. That's the point of everything.

Amazing Grace.