VELVETEEN RABBIT LIVES

My father was born in Babaoyo, Ecuador. His immigration journey took place when we was 18 and he landed himself in Washington D.C. for college. Soccer.I have so many questions that I want to ask him. When I was 7, I went to St. Anne’s Catholic School. My first experience with prejudice and racial bias was at age 7. I came home crying to my mother saying, “The kids won’t play with me because I have brown skin.” My dad allowed his identify to be an obstacle –don’t speak Spanish in the home. Assimilate. So, race was not a conversation or at least an overt and transparent one. My mom soothed me, stroked my hair and told me that kids were just jealous because God painted me cinnamon. I was seven and how did would I at seven make sense of all of this? Two of my older siblings were out of the house, in college already and two other siblings were beyond my reach at they were almost done with high school. So, a matter of whom to talk to was out of reach. And at seven, I was not even sure how or what to say or name this. I was in first grade still learning how to spell and you could catch me watching Grover on Sesame Street. What did the color of my skin have to do with playing old maid or red rover or jumping rope? How do you explain prejudice to a seven-year-old, so it makes sense? My sister Diana, 19 at the time, was living in New York and attending college. She heard about this playground incident from my mom. In response, she mailed me two books, one of them was the Velveteen Rabbit. Her inscription said, “My Sweet Niccole. This is a present for you. It is the story of how something becomes Real. When you love something so very much, you make it real. That’s how much I love you. A big Kiss., little girl. Love, Diana” This was big. At 7, I was so unsure of myself. I wasn’t the “right” skin color on the playground. I was awkward and unsure if people still loved you when you were awkward and learning how the world worked. My pre-frontal cortex wasn’t even online. When she gave me that book, I felt heard, safe, loved. I understood in my 7-year-old way, that she loved me in all my states of being: wobbly, awkward, unsure, and beautifully brown. I did not know at 7 that she- at 19–was also wobbly, messy, and awkward, until I did. That gave me great ease in my heart and mind. I learned in that moment, that this is how she shows up for others and that is how we can show up for each other. That we can choose to love the shabby bits of who we are…and we can love and accept the shabby in each other.