From The Mouths of Babes

A couple of years ago, I worked an inner city benefit. I can't remember the cause but it was this magnificent extravaganza and the theme was loosely African. There were dancers, performers, I think the Mayor's office came - beads, boas, $100s per chair, at ten per table.

And I want to say I made gift bags, and did door duty, and maybe I was in charge of one room of local youths and their parents, later to perform tribal dances. It was my job to ensure that they were treated like star performers, and revered guests.

And at the time, I was, the whitest white girl in the room. I'm sure we were required to wear chinos, and a godawful men's polo, and likely flats. So as a) not to make the more attractive guests feel insecure and b) so everyone could tell, with a glance, who the help was. So there I was, for all the world like I stepped off the schooner in my docksiders amongst a room full and wild and exuberant kids and their dashiki and kaftan wearing, Sunday suited mom's and grandmas. There were hats, and vibrant purple dresses, and broaches and sensible shoes. It was a day for finery and I was totally, obviously, completely, out of place.

I was old too, to these young kids.
"Where's your baby at? Whose watching your babies tonight?" asked one little girl.
"You got kids of your own girl?" "She don' have no kids yet" the mothers tittered as I awkwardly policed the chicken finger platter.

Everything about me screamed "White suburban uptight girl".

And yet the kids were entranced. And curious. and kind.
"Can I have an extra necklace, Miss?" and "Your hairs curly for a white lady" and my favorite, heretofore never heard by me "How come you so thin? Don' you like to eat?" I think for some of them, I thought at the time for some of them, that this was the first time the had played with a white woman. Which may or may not have been racist. But for sure I was something different. As were they. Because to be fair, I don't think I knew what to do with a group of blunt streetwise youths who knew I was awkward with kids, and clearly thought it funny that a "grown white woman" had no kids or her own.

But we liked each other and a few little girls came to help me. The moms offered to shoo them away, but one little twinkle of a brown eyed girl caught my fancy and become my pet, and I hers, and we talked as I worked.

"Are you hear with your Mommy?" I asked.
"Ah no." she said, matter of factly. "I here with my Grammy. My mom too sick to take me."

"Of course" I thought to myself "Oh how sad. This is obviously an example of the cycle of poverty. This child being raised by her Grandmother, this little girl the product of a single parent home. Her mother likely coming off drugs. So sad. The grandmother, forced to parent another generation..

Outloud I said "Of I'm sorry honey, I'm sorry your mom's sick..."

"Uh huh" and then she huffed out two words, two words that to this day, at this very writing, crack me up.
"..and tired. She is sick and tired of me. She said so today."

Seven years later and I still think about her mom.
Very likely she was a married doctor, or lawyer, with two kids, a charming husband and the affluence to enroll her daughter in a dance class, with enough intelligence that it manifested into an extremely bright articulate little girl as confidence.

What a silly stupid white girl I was.
I wish I could meet that mom today.