My Mom drives me down from the hills and through the lush deciduous countryside of Virginia. This is where she grew up, she explains, until she was my age. We arrive at a large farmhouse at the side of the highway. Inside there are about twenty young and ambitious people from Brazil, Palestine, Africa, Mexico, Brooklyn, China. We are seated at tables of four, and as we talk and the odor of comfort food drifts from the kitchen, we discover that we must be at some posh retreat for human rights activists. I walk over to a computer kiosk and invite all the Portuguese-speaking people to get together after dinner. After dark, I take a walk in the woods out back. Near the barn there is a thong with the stars and stripes on it. I hurl it out into the woods, but an eagle catches it in mid-air. I take this to mean that I no longer envy the prodigy.