When my mom and I arrived at the Los Anglos airport in Jan 1994, I had just turned twelve years old.    No one told me (I suspect my mom didn't know either) about California "winter".  I had on layers upon layers of clothes that couldn't fit into our four huge suitcases.  Because that is what you do when you move to a new country to start a new life, you over-pack.  You don't know the price of a winter coat, you don't know weather trends, and you certainly have no idea what the future holds.

I don't think about that day very often, maybe twice a year.  But this past weekend, I thought about it every five minutes.  The images of wary travelers being halted, detained, and turned away from entering this country brings fury and sadness to my heart.  In our haste for self-preservation, it's all too easy to zoom out and loose focus over the details of human suffering.  I zoomed in.  I saw myself. In that crowd, there are lifetimes of plans and dreams, no smaller or less noble that our own.  We are in, sheer luck.  They are out, sheer madness.