Informal essay: The summer day

UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Lit
27 August 2008

The Summer Day

If life is wild and precious, for most of my life, I didn’t know it. I had a standard childhood, cramped, passionate and overall spent in happiness. As a girl, I would catch bugs, pluck flowers, collect pretty little stones and pony figures, all for my own happiness. I would regularly destroy furniture. I would have heated fights with my older sister. It was a normal set of self-indulging, formative years.
Then came older childhood, when the inches measured each year would exceed two, and when concepts of beauty and friendships extended beyond princess dresses and the joy of playing with each others unicorn collection. There the storms of little things overwhelmed, and would often leave me in tears. Acidly jealous of a friend, with physics-defying slimness and clarity of emotion swaying in her graceful features. This was late Elementary, when being the right kind of feminine was so important, when little girls knew little else that could compensate for a face that would topple crowds. This was the eager times, when one would conform fiercely to the ideals of girlhood that others had set for us. Wear coquettish skirts with flowers and fluffy sweater for the cute look that would wow teachers and strangers. Have long, smooth hair. Delicate features. Know everything about fashion. I followed, and was mostly miserable for it. Being chubbier and taller than all the other girls of my grade meant I stood out awkwardly in nearly all things feminine. Skirts didn’t fit right. Pretty rings wouldn’t fit on my large fingers. There were good times. Fishing for tadpoles until your knees turned green-grey with dried mud. Climbing a tree to grapple with ripe mangoes. Playing a fast and hard game of dodge ball. And there was always paper and pencils, where I could lose myself in pursuit of graceful lines for hours. But for the most part, these activities were looked down upon by teachers and classmates, and would usually lead to some expression of contempt. This didn’t help build up much self-esteem.
I remember one time in particular when I was ten, playing on the play field with classmates. They were of the slim and wide-eyed variety that the Romantics of the nineteenth century would have adored. A dance teacher suddenly came up to us with a camera, and motioned us all to come over by a large neon slide. We ran over in curiosity.
“Hi girls! Would you like to be in a yearbook picture?” she asked liltingly. In a strong chorus of smiles and gasps, we all showed our burning desire to be in the yearbook. This was something to be proud of—in a joint elementary, middle and high school, especially with the high school students managing the yearbook, shots of elementary students were rare, beyond class pictures. In a rush, we all crowded and balanced on the slide. The teacher took one photo, paused, and then frowned.
“You there,” she said, pointing at me. “Could you move out of the picture?”
Surprised, I slowly crawled off the slide from the mass of posing girls. I watched from the side the smiling girls pose before an enthusiastic photographer saying a variation of “Wow, that’s pretty, girls!” and “Beautiful!” I was vaguely hoping that the photographer had only waved me aside to take a picture just of me alone. But she soon finished, and amiably thanking the girls, walked away. I remember feeling my throat ache and eyes sting as I wondered what was wrong with me. Why pretty, shiny things like Valentine cards and the attention of a camera weren’t for me, but for girls like them. My childhood diary entry of that day only notes a stoic desire to better myself. “I’m ugly. That’s the truth…That is it. I’m using cream for your skin to take freckles away. The problem is my fat. I’ll bike every day and swim on weekends. No more leg, belly, arm and good riddance to cheek fat. Aloe Vera applied twice a day. I’ll brush my hair and wash face at lunch too. A new, pretty hair style too. I vow to be skinny.”
Even before I hit the rocky teenage years, I was none too happy about myself. I wasn’t skinnier by then, I was still growing alarmingly, and I felt unlikable, worst of all. Not being able to smile and chat easily like other kids, but shy and withdrawn. I felt that people saw me as large and awkward, not made to be treasured like other girls. Forever doomed to play the bumbling villain instead of the princess on the playground. Forever to be the handmaiden to others.
Things changed, slowly and quietly. I moved from the tropical nest that was Singapore to the colder climes of North America. I survived middle school, with its even fiercer preenings and now competition for gentleman attentions. I found other venues to find a power and a voice that was listened to that I never found in trying to be pretty. But to this day, I still struggle with that demon. The one that says one is never good enough. One is never going to be loved, or appreciated, or even remembered when gone. That being precious and treasured is all about being chased after, being physically exquisite.
But the thing is, I know better now. When I was younger, I had nothing to believe but the surface world around me that valued princesses and models. That a girl’s value is measured only by her graces and charms. Now I am older. I can make beautiful things now out of paper and pencils. I care for a gold-livened slip of scale and fins in a fishbowl that grows more precious in sight and heart as the days go by. I can make precious things. I can and will do things like climb a tree or catch live beetles for pets without worrying so much about other people’s reactions. I can appreciate “the grasshopper…gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.” Life in its beauty. I only wish I’d been more attentive to the world outside the artificial when I was younger, not so focused on the world that people make that is often cruel but yet asserts itself as the only world worth living in. There were scoffers in Mary Oliver’s poem too, ones who said there were better ways to spend time than dreaming about in the fields. One has to find out on their own the validity of other experiences, of the existence of other worlds. So I am not always treasured in an image-conscious suburban society that prizes vivaciousness and beauty in girls above all. Now I see: why should I even labor to change myself to be more of the standard of such a world anyways? Not that genetics is really that malleable anyways, but the point is, there are other worlds. One that I create out of paper and colors in which my skills lead the way. Other in which nature in its beauty envelops and swallows me up. Worlds in which that which I treasure the most, in my “one wild and precious life” can be the highlight, rather than the accessory or a pretension in others.
The hurt is still there. There are days when my body and face are hateful to the sight. But now there are more days when I simply do not care. When I am alive to inspiration and the thrill of a good book. There are less days now, spent hurt over the past, and the injustices of the present, and more days spent ready for tomorrow. A tomorrow I will make on my own, not slanted to please the world and its denizens so hungry for things. A life for my own, made to enjoy every bit of things, from the scent of books, to the stress and anticipation of projects, to dreams of making something beautiful for the world. A life not so caught up in a rat race of beauty and wealth that never is won, but a life more focused on simply enjoying. Enjoying fresh flower buds, appreciating warm tea in winter, taking every little thing and packaging it in lavender for years to come, rather than swallowing them all and only wanting more and better that never is the best.