Hannah: So, my item--that I do not actually have today--is a key, just kind of a generic door key for the inside of a bedroom or something like that. From what I remember there was no attachment. 
It was just a…I mean…I was little, so I don't actually know relative size now? I would honestly say it was a smaller key with no attachments. It had a little square hole on the top. 

So, when I was four years old, I moved from a tiny town in Texas called Franklin to Doha, Qatar, kind of across the world for my parents' job. I don't really remember much about the time, because I was four. But I got the key because I was super excited about getting a big first room for the first time. I ran upstairs, and I went to the bedroom of the new house that we had just seen. It was probably late at night, so probably 10 or 11 p.m. and everyone else was exploring their rooms and the kitchen and et cetera. I was exploring my room; I had a private bathroom, and on the counter, there was just this key. I was excited cause four-year-old me was like, “I'm gonna have so much privacy.
I'm going to be so independent with myself.” So I picked up this key and I ran to the door, the main door to my room to the hallway, and I put that in the little doorknob, and I locked myself in there. 

So that is how I got the key. But after that, I was not privileged to have the key anymore because I did lock myself in the room. 
And so, I did find it years later on top of a little half wall for my shower. One day I climbed up on my bathroom counter to just see…I don't entirely know what I was doing…but to see a different perspective of the world, and I saw this little really dusty key on top of that little half wall, and that was how I found it probably four or five years later.

Gracie: So, this was your house in a different country. Do you have any other special memories about your time in Qatar? 

Hannah: I lived there from four to ten years old, so I remember a lot of the older stuff. The one other prominent memory when I was really little before I started continuously gaining memories, it was probably later in my four-year-old life or five. We went to the souq, maybe for the second or third time this was, which is just basically a giant market. I was wearing a pretty gold dress because four-year-old me was very obsessed with looking very rich all the time. At this point, my hair was a lot lighter than it is now. Over there, their natural hair color is very much darker. And so, I got a lot of compliments on my bright hair and some of the university students over there, I think I don't know entirely what they were doing, I believe it was a school project, but they were taking photographs of interesting things around Souq, and they asked for a picture of me. So, there is a picture of me on the cover of my mom’s book.

It was my classic pose, like a very aggressive hip-pop. So, it was me and the gorgeous gold dress, just with a brick background and me aggressively posing to these three or four Middle Eastern women in full hijab. It's a great picture to look back on because it's very like “What is that?” But it is a very silly memory because four-year-old me was obsessed with all the attention and looking a certain way. 
Other than that, I don't have too many prominent memories before I was maybe seven or eight. There was a lot of traveling, but in Qatar, I just don't remember too much. 

Gracie: Do you think you would ever go back?

Hannah: Yes. That is my goal. For my future career, I’m hoping to do something business-related in the Middle East. 
I would love to go back to Qatar for a trip, but I don't know if it's the place for me for residency because it is a complicated place.

Gracie: 
Why do you want to go back to the Middle East? 

Hannah: Yes, absolutely. So, in my mind, I don't entirely have a reason why, maybe it was just the foundational years, but in my mind, Qatar and the Middle East, in general, are kind of home to me. There's nothing wrong with Laramie. 
I am a big city girl, so, it's not my ideal place, but it is also where my family is and all that. So again, I don't have an entire reason for it, it's just kind of where my mind associates with my happiest years.

Gracie: That's great, okay. 
And then I guess if we go back to the key, how does this item and its history relate to you in the present?  

Hannah: I think my motivation for the excitement with the key was again, my independence and, because this was the time, I think, where I was starting [to become independent]. I was obsessed with Barbie when I was little, and there were a couple of highschool themed movies for Barbie that kind of sparked my goal for independence, which is not my goal now, but four-year-old me was very much wanting to be the cool girl in school. 
I hate it now, but that independence kind of backfired in that moment because I locked myself in the room. My family was on the other side trying to help me. I was crying. 
It was bad. But it kind of gave me a life lesson of: Independence is great, I want to be an independent person. 


There's also times where I need help and can take a step back from that push to be independent, for the better, my better health, my better actions and safeties as well as others. Now I do think of myself as a very independent person. I try not to ask other people for help too often. 
I keep track of myself and manage myself, as well as others. I want to sustain myself as an individual, but I now, based on that life lesson that maybe not every door should be locked, have learned that asking for help and thinking before that big action: “Do you want to do that?” Maybe that's for the better. 


Gracie: Do you think that other people in your life have influenced you and your independence?

Hannah: I would say so. My parents, I'm the third child, and so I am a stereotypically spoiled third child, like the youngest.
I'd like to say that, I mean obviously my parents tried their best and there's like nothing wrong with their actions, but, I mean, they had two other kids, a career, their own life to deal with, and so I was left alone a little bit. That really kind of influenced my desire to be able to be by myself kind of thing and happily. My family, I don't know when this started, which I don't know if it's a good thing or if it's kind of embarrassing, but they call me the manager at home, because I manage other people. Which I think stems from my wanting to be independent, I want, like other people to be, I wouldn’t say in check, but I want them to be stable in their decisions. I try to help them with that, and I think that comes off as a little aggressive sometimes. But I think calling me the manager, probably since I was 11 or 12 years old, I want to say, 
I think that's really pushed me as a person and even subconsciously, I don't know, it's influenced me, I should say. 

Gracie: And then how does this item and the stories that you've told me reflect your ties to certain places? So, physical places, but also “places” like communities and families and stuff like that.

Hannah: That key kind of, I mean, I physically locked myself in my room from it, or with it, I should say. That kind of sparked a fear of abandonment in myself, I guess. I remember the first time I noticed my father should be home, he's not at work or anything, but he's not at home. I was calling him; I was looking around the house for him. 
He was at the neighbor's outside, where I could have easily seen him, and I could easily call for help. That was a very scary time for me. I guess it gave me an extra appreciation for the community around myself that I didn't exactly get to choose family or friends in the neighborhood, compound, I should say. Then, right outside my window, we lived in a house number 10, which was directly across from the clubhouse. There were giant, two separate kinds of fields where one was just an open space for things like soccer and sports and things, and the other was a giant playground. Then and then behind the clubhouse was like a giant pool, and that was kind of my whole life at that point.

I was a big swimmer. I remember I got a mermaid tale for my eighth birthday--one of those attached fins and a little covering. It was ridiculous, but I loved it. That was truly just such a privilege because I had a giant pool with a kiddy pool with a giant mushroom that drizzles [water] down on the sides. We had a bunch of rocks that I would like to play mermaids on and jump off. 
There was a little bar area where you could sit and be served. There were a couple of waterfalls. It was a giant, very privileged, pool to have right across the street. That sudden [thought], “Oh, I can't get out of my room when I lock myself in there,” 
the very first night, kind of pushed me to explore outside of my room, and so that, like I said was kind of also a home away from home. My big world was playing on the playground with my friends from the compound or lots and lots of swimming, and things like that.

Gracie: Is there anywhere else that you'd consider home?

Hannah: I'd say Scotland, like I said, is kind of a home away from home. Also, in a way, I think of UW as home, just cause my parents both work here, I've gone to school here, and I took classes here in high school. So, it's like, I know a bunch of the professors, I know my way around campus, I've taken summer - what are they called? 
Not clubs, not internships - summer camps! In my sophomore or junior year of high school, I came for a summer camp. I lived here for a month before I even got to really take classes here. So, it's like a weird sense of home because I know so many people that it's communal, you know what I mean?

Gracie: Yeah, fair.
It's the community, right?

Hannah: Exactly.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.