The principal at my daughter’s school said it was usually the parents that worried the most about their kids starting school. However, I did not feel worried. Together with my future schoolgirl we did all the prep way in advance:
- We got all the schools supplies from the list provided. We did that early, too.
- We ordered the uniform at the beginning of the summer. It arrived a month later.
- Our teacher came highly recommended. We were pleased to get into her class.
I was as relaxed as I could be.
It seems that my daughter wasn’t. One day, on the way home from the library, while waiting for the green traffic light, she suddenly asked me: ‘What if the kids at school make fun of me?’
Oh no. I wasn’t ready for this.
‘Why would they do that?’ – I asked trying to understand what was bothering her.
‘Because of my skin color.’
I felt totally unprepared. What’s the right answer? What do I say?
The light turned green and we started crossing the street.
‘Well,’ – I started, ‘if kids make fun of anything it’s probably because they don’t understand.’ I hoped I got that part right. ‘Maybe they have never seen a black person before. Maybe they don’t know that there are kids in this world of many skin colors.’
She seemed to agree with what I was saying. I managed to convince myself, too. Look, I’m not the kind of mom that reads books on how to raise smart, beautiful, well-behaved kids. I’m not. I don’t even google any questions, issues, problems to do with raising kids… Well, OK, I do, sometimes. But I don’t even like the term ‘google’! Anyway, I’ve heard from other parents from mixed families that I should do this and that, talk to my daughter about this or that. I didn’t. Don’t ask me why. But that should explain why I was speechless.
‘What if I don’t find any friends?’ – a question that followed some days later.
This I could handle. This was a more familiar territory, as the year before she had joined a new group in the kindergarten, and she did make plenty of new friends. With time. This I answered with ease and it comforted us both.
When September 1st came and my girl was having her first lesson, I mingled amongst other parents. I spotted darker skin tone here, overheard English over there. Good, I thought to myself. Very good.
And when my daughter said, shyly ‘I think I made a new friend’, my face lit up with the smile.
At the end of that same festive day, after all the joy and excitement, after the rush of sugar, on the way home…
…she shared with me her life plans: ‘First, I’ll go to another country and find there a rocket. I’ll fly with that rocket to the Moon. From there, I’ll fly to another planet. Then I’ll come back and get married. Or not. Then I’ll go to Mexico and maybe get married there. Who knows. Then I’ll go to Belize and visit daddy’s grave. Then I’ll fly to London and spend 20 months with London boy. Then I’ll go to an island where I’ll find friends and we’ll go sailing on a boat…’
What beautiful and colorful dreams of my daughter.
