2011 "Celebrate America" 3rd Place National Winner

I remembered vividly all of these strangers laughing at me, and I didn't even know what i had done. This flashback included an adult, tall and stern, frown at what I had siad.  Before I knew it, my mother was gazing sorrowfully at me, with another look in her eyes that I couldn't identify.  I wondered what I had done to pain my beloved mother so much. In this strange, stern, new world, I knew nothing.

Coming from my world full of color,  I was unused to this bland, stale country.  But then my world collapsed, creating new horrid memories.  My family had escaped our nor unfamiliar home and immigrated to American, the free country.  Still, many people in this unfriendly people were hostile.  The immigration officers, teachers, police, all of them acted as if they didn't want us here.  I wished that my home still existed, so there would actually be something to call home.

But as I sat alone, thinking, I wondered what would have happened if I stayed.  Bombing, fires, they were all still fresh in my mind.  I knew that I would have lost everything there, but was this place any better?  I have to start all over from nothing.  Not even this new language.  I finally uinderstood what the emotion was in my mother's eyes.  Pity.  She was pitying me for not knowing what I had been through, what I had done wrong.

I know my family all wanted to create everlasting memeories in this place, but how could i ?  I had lived my whole life in my country, and it all got dewtoywed by war.  I shuddered painfully as I remembered what happened to our neighbors.  Did I want that to happen to me and all my loved ones?  No, I answered myself immediately.  And finally I understood why my family had made this decision.  We still have each other and we could build a new life.  I thought how, ever though grudgingly, America accepted us helped us to survive.  I lost many things, but all that I can regain.  No my family is irreplaceable.