The Burn: Chance of a Lifetime (Part VII)

The American and I stayed in touch for a couple of years. He visited my family in the summer of 1994, we wrote letters, and talked on the phone every now and then. He gave me my first and only Barbie, and taught my brother and me how to play frisbee. 

We then lost touch. I suffered the loss of that friendship a great deal. As a 12-year old, I struggled to understand how someone can care about you so much one moment, and disappear the next. No explanation, no good-byes. Just a huge album with memories.

Looking back at it now, I realize that the friendship dissolved once it had served its purpose. It emerged out of nowhere during one of the worst moments of my life and inspired me to dream of a life starkly different from the one I knew.

I kept a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in my notebook all through high school, and imagined myself living in San Francisco one day. I studied English like my life depended on it, and in a way, it did. 

But it was my relationship with the Georgian translator named Nino, who had accompanied the American to the burn center, that turned out to be a fateful one. 

While the American and I didn’t stay in touch, Nino and I talked on the phone and occasionally met up over the years. During one of those phone calls, she encouraged me to apply for a US government-sponsored exchange student program for ex-Soviet high schoolers. I had just turned 16, and would be graduating high school the following year. I had one chance to get the scholarship. 

The competition consisted of three rounds of English proficiency tests, an interactive group exercise, an interview with the program reps, and an application which included everything from a personal essay, to letters of recommendation, to my school transcripts, to vaccination records. From a thousand Georgian high school students who applied, only 60  would make it to America. 

It took three months to take all the tests and complete the application. Nino was one of the people who wrote me a letter of recommendation. 

On the day I submitted the final piece, it snowed in Tbilisi. As the city fell quiet with the first snow, I felt peace. I had done everything that depended on me, now it was time to let go and wait. 

On March 31, 2000, I got the phone call — I’d be going to America. 

Did I have to get burned to get this chance of a lifetime?

To be continued…