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11.13.2014

Full Circle


 (First Row, 8th from the left)

I was extremely disorganized when I was in 1st grade.
One morning, I could not find my little green school tie that went with my school uniform, and my harried mother, in an effort to stay within regulation--ripped two tiny strips of green cloth and pinned it to my school blouse.
May I repeat: ripped two strips of green cloth.
Just typing that, btw is sending me to Kamias road, to a time when my mom was trying to get NINE children off to school. Can you even imagine? (Make the voices stop!!!!)
You know what happens to children when they walk into a classroom wearing something peculiar?
They get laughed at.

This morning, I drove both girls to school. (pats self on back)
En route to G's school, she told me that she was going to wear tights today.
She had it balled in her hand and was preparing to put them on as she sat beside me during the short drive to school.
As she wriggled into them, they would not go all the way up to her waist, instead they stopped at the top of her thighs.
As we  approached the school, she was without a pair of socks and was in tights that fit her last winter.
But the tights did not fit her today.
I started to berate her for not preparing her uniform the night before (something I've always told my girls to do out of my own personal trauma with uniform malfunctions)
But I stopped myself mid-berate, as I watched her take a pair of scissors and deftly snip the tights around her thighs, lifting her legs to gain access to the material behind her thighs.
By the time she was done, it looked as if a blind person had tailored her now above-the-knee socks.
It looked awful.
I started laughing so hard. Hysterically actually.
She started laughing too.
I said: "G, you remind me of me."
She said: "Your school tie?" (she knew the story)

I offered to drive back home to get her a new pair of socks.
She told me not to bother--and that it was going to be okay.
As I watched her walking confidently into school,  I was filled with a sense of awe.
I  thought to myself that perhaps the amount of harassment I endured in first grade about my ratty tie, helped develop my crazy resilience today.
I am hoping that G's ability to face her day in middle school with her raggedly snipped socks-formerly-known-as-tights, is a strong indicator that she is already resilient. (and that maybe she won't ever yell: make the voices stop!!)

(I took her picture when she got home from school.)