I identify completely with the desperation that obsessed my parents. I live with it myself daily: the fear that you will be thrown back to where you started. My dad taught it to me and my mom taught it to me, and I had my own lessons. I lie awake at night thinking about it, feeling exposed, vulnerable—but feeling again the gratitude that I have what some people missed in life—a way to be happy.
I sometimes think of the day I discovered it. In the backyard of Pre-Primary Growth Center I was a lion in the nursery play, a hit in a major role performed in front of a semicircle of chairs filled with grades pre-nursery to prep and teachers and parents. On my head was a fierce cool lion hat with orange felt ears. Afterwards, wanting to continue my happiness forever, I refused to take it off. I wore it home, wore it at dinner, and in my bath, and wore it in bed that night, sitting there feeling special.
I was waiting, very excitedly, for my dad to bring up guests from the dinner gathering downstairs. I knew they would make a fuss over me, saying, “Aren’t you a darling,” and be really impressed because on my black hair was my fierce cool lion hat.
I wanted to experience again the feeling of that afternoon in front of people—the ecstatic sense that I was a lion because grown-ups were accepting me as a lion—the sense that I could say, “I want to be somebody good and walk out on stage and be the fierce cool prince,” and the world would say, “Yes, you are the fierce cool prince.”
