I will start at the beginning...

I've been trying to bring people together my entire life. My earliest memory is from when I was almost three. My mom was sitting on the couch reading a story to my older sister, and my dad was in the kitchen washing dishes. I grabbed my mom by the hand, and as she reluctantly stood up , I remember my gaze falling just at her knees. I led her into the kitchen where my dad's back was turned to us, and then I announced, grabbing his hand: "Mommy, love Daddy. Daddy, love Mommy." It was just that simple to me, but my plea could not undo the damage, and my parents divorced soon after.

The second memory I have is my mom spreading a big map of the United States across our kitchen table and pointing to Maine. "We're going here," she said to us, and I don't know that we objected. The drive was long, and we had to pull over on the highway at some point because we thought we lost our hamster, Fluffy. But he was only hiding among the blond flakes of filling in his cage. We moved on, passing the granite towers lining I-95 that I thought would topple on us at any moment. We arrived in Yarmouth, Maine, and the three of us stayed through the long, miserable winters, making light of this uncertain life.

It wasn't until a few years ago that these memories came back to me. I had to call my mom to confirm, and it made me cry when she said yes. It's these abrupt things that we block out, and the subtleties of life that filter in, shaping our path, touching us so slightly, shifting our view, that make up the consistency of our lives. Though I never remembered these things, the memories were ingrained in my life all along. It's going deeper and understanding these things that make us conscious of our subjectivity, and open us up to the subjectivity of others.

In my heart, life and love are still simple to me; as simple as they were when I was three years old, telling my mom and dad that they just need to love each other and then everything would be okay. In my mind, I understand how things are not this simple, how life takes strange twists, things change, love shifts. It's hard making sense of the two, and I'm finding it's our great plight as conscious beings to reconcile the connection between our hearts and our minds. I'm not going to attempt to conciliate the accord one should strike between these two powerful entities, because it's different for everyone, but it's something worth exploring, and we must go inside to find out.

This is Maine...where, thanks to the twists and turns of life and love, I ended up.

I could not have asked for a more nurturing and pristine childhood.