Mirror Mirror

Something silly happened at preschool this week.

In the grand scheme, it isn’t a big deal. But the sound of another girl taunting my daughter wounded me on all kinds of levels—the very least of which was that my mother-heart turned black and hateful, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from shaking the other girl.

Watching my daughter’s face crumple into a sensitive, tearful mask of hurt feelings nearly undid me. It was the first time I’ve ever seen another child truly hurt her.

Sure, there have been spats over toys, but this was a wound cut open with mean words.

That is an animal of a different color.

The incident is over: discussed with parents, teachers and children alike, mine included. Lectures have been doled out and forgiveness extended, on all fronts.

We’re square, all of us. I’m not even one whit upset about the whole thing now.

***

I switched schools between my second- and third-grade years. I went from a large busing district to a neighborhood school in a walking district.

I remember my first day at the new school so clearly. My first bagged lunch, my first walk to the playground. The bike racks were loaded with Schwinn’s of all colors and kids teemed around the school yard like lemmings, yelling and fighting and laughing, all at once.

I was terrified.

An introvert even then—especially then—I hugged the red-brick walls, waiting desperately for the bell to ring and for a teacher to take over. I knew how to do the classroom, but recess overwhelmed me.

In we marched, and sat on a green square rug in a room that smelled of spoiled milk and too many bodies. The teacher took me by the shoulders, stood me in front of the group, and turned me around to face my classmates.

“This is our new student,” she said. “And you better watch out, because she is smarter than all of you.”

The girl who became the woman who has been my best friend for more than 25 years still tells this story when we get together for drinks.

She was in the front row, staring at me, just one set of 30 eyes trained on that hateful new student.

***

My freshman biology teacher liked me very much.

The feeling was mutual. She made the class feel more like the best study hall you ever had, and a lot less like a science course. We spent a lot of time making each other laugh.

One day, she came and sat next to me while my lab partner and I made disgusting jokes about the female grasshopper we were dissecting.

She giggled along with us, like a school-girl herself. I was wearing a red sweater with a deep V-neck, pilfered from my mother’s closet, and a swingy ponytail.

I turned my face to her, and she gave me the strangest smile.

“You,” she said, “are going to be a huge success. I just know it.”

***

They looked like money.

You can just tell when kids have money. It comes off them in waves. It isn’t just their clothes or pocketbooks. It’s an air of entitlement and confidence that only comes with parents who have fat and happy bank accounts.

I had a small-city mullet and my first pair of Guess? Jeans, resting uncomfortably on my slender 15-year-old hips. The denim was still stiff, purchased just the day before in a fit of parental desperation. My mother handed me the pants, a pleading look on her face.

It was our second week in London.

I walked into the lunch room with a tray, looking dazed. All around me kids at round tables laughed, the precocious sheen of years spent abroad giving them an aura of adulthood.

I stood there for just a moment, and abruptly turned on my heels.

I ate lunch in the stairwell for almost a year, until I was befriended by a ragtag group of kids who called themselves the Misfit Toys.

I knew in my heart I wasn’t supposed to be a misfit. I knew I was smart and funny and sophisticated. But so fearful! So afraid to open myself!

Terrified to take a chance. Terrified to be rejected.

***

When The Poo turned to me, that look on her face, it took me right back to those dark places inside me that chant a refrain of worthlessness. It is a sad song I’ve spent years and many, many dollars trying to silence. I do not know whose voice it is. I do know that it lives inside me, for better or worse.

It is the force that drives me. It is the voice that makes me stumble when I get too close to the light of true success.

It is the force that made me rage when a small girl said a mean thing to my daughter.

Raising a girl is a wonderful, dreadful responsiblity. It is often a joy. But some days, when the reflection back is just a little bit too familiar, it hurts me deep inside my soul.