Ann Dunham Obama, President Barack Obama's mother, lived in Seattle during her growing up years, on Mercer Island,  where I also lived for a time with my second husband and the son from my first marriage.  My son was born two days after Barack Obama was born (wherever it was).  I know that my son was born in Seattle and the hospital in which he was born.  But if I had not
been separated from my first husband, my son would have been born in Chicago.  I was living with my parents in Seattle when my son was born.  I too was a wanderer, going here and there trying to find something.

I too went to the University of Washington.  I first enrolled there right after giving up Stanford University temporarily.
I had been very sick at Stanford, so I had a good reason to transfer to the U.W. after a quarter on sickleave at home
with my parents.  I was 17 then.

Later, I went back to Stanford and eventually got an M.A. there, but always sick periodically.  I met my first husband
there, a man getting his Master's in metallurgy.  I went back and forth between U.W. and Stanford several times, because I was periodically getting ill, and was neither diagnosed nor helped by doctors.  I would collapse and return home to
Seattle.  When I was married, I lived in Chicago for eight months, twice pregnant, lost the first one, returned to Seattle
to escape freezing weather, stayed there to escape harrassment and false accusations of husband.  Got a divorce.

Are you dizzy reading this partial description of my travels back and forth?

I am not dizzy focusing on Ann Dunham's back and forth life, because I understand it from experience.  She probably
had emotional problems which caused her to not know where she belonged or whom she belonged to.  When she
went to the University of Washington a few weeks after her son's birth, she was simply going to where her childhood
home had been, the Seattle area.  She had friends there, as described in the article posted on Doves.

So there is some question as to where President Barack Obama was born.  But the travels of his mother, Ann Dunham,
are not a mystery.  She was simply trying to find her way, something many young people do when life's path does not
become obvious.

Ann Dunham continued to wander after that, all the way to Indonesia, as we all know, and went back more than
once to Indonesia, even after her divorce from the Indonesian Lolo Soetero, and even after she received a doctorate
from the University of Hawaii.  She returned to Hawaii to die of cancer in her mother's home.  It is rarely mentioned that she got a doctorate from UH--an interesting fact which shows something about her which is not usually discussed.

I too lived several times in Hawaii due to my second husband's needs.  My first husband also lived in Hawaii after
we were divorced and after he got his Ph.D. from Stanford and before he was murdered in Oklahoma.

In today's world, we travel like mad!  Looking for something, or following someone, or following a job opportunity or an education.

We still don't know all the answers about Barack Obama, and maybe we never will.  But his mother's travels are
no mystery.

Mariel