Chapter 1 Until I was in high school, my world was very different from the average girl’s life.  I never went to school, Mother and I moved approximately every other month, and I also made a habit of visiting South Africa every year.
 
Mother is a world-renowned marine biologist.  Nearly everyone in her profession knows who Marilyn Bassey is.  Because she was in demand in so many places, we moved a lot.  We would arrive at some beach or aquarium, stay there for a few weeks while Mother observed and advised, then move on to a new location.
 
That is why I had a tutor.  Mother and I discovered early on that changing schools every other month was not the way a child of seven should live.  So she hired a very competent tutor, Miss Haley Waters.  Miss Waters and I got along wonderfully, providing I did my lessons on time.
 
The only thing missing in my life was a father.  I did have one, but he lived around 9,000 miles away.  When I was little I used to always ask Mother to tell me the story of how I was born.  She would tell me about how her and my father both wanted to have a child, but neither of them wanted the marriage that was a part of it.  After much thought, consideration, and debating they decided to go to a clinic.  Nine months later I was born, and both my mother and father were very happy.  Then my father got his next assignment:  South Africa.  So he had to go away.
 
Father is a doctor.  Some would call him a missionary doctor.  When Father had to go to South Africa he and my mother decided that every summer I should come visit him.  When I was young, they always had someone escort me, but as I grew older I became very independent.
 
Whenever Mother talked about my father or Father talked about my mother I could tell they loved each other.  Maybe not in the same way most kid’s parents loved each other, probably more like how a brother would love his sister;  but it was definitely there.
 
As I grew from a child with hazel eyes and dark locks around my head into a teenager with long, wavy, black hair and green eyes I realized that not all kids lived the way I did.
 
I talked to Mother about it one day when I was eleven years old.  I asked her why no one else moved all over and went across the world every summer.  I told her that I wanted to go to school in one place like everybody else.  Mother just dismissed it as one of those phases kids go through to get attention.
 
For the next years I had annoyed her about it.  A few years after our first talk about it, Mother got an offer to teach and do research at Berkeley University.  I was very thankful to the people at the university, because when Mother accepted the position it meant that I would be able to live in one place.  It also meant I could be more normal, and go to school with everyone else.
 
During the summer before my junior year in high school Mother and I moved to Lafayette, California.  This would prove to be the first place we would live at for more than 134 days.
 
Taken from an essay written by Druscilla Bassey
 

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