Berries

 

There was a Holly bush to the right of the front door of the house where I grew up in Connecticut.

On fall days after I got home from school, I would ask my mother to use a basket and I would gather the squishy red berries that grew on the bush. I promised her that I wouldn’t eat them. They were round-almost bursting-and satiny shiny smooth in my hands.

They had holes in the top where I would try to fit my pinky.

I wanted to wear them like Lee-Press-On-Nails.

I would pick a pile of them and store them in my little container. Then, I would take my hoard and a brown flannel blanket (also given to me by my mother) and go around to a hidden area to the left of our house. My grassy hide-out was sloped at about 45 degrees and hidden from the eyes of our neighbors, the street and my mother. It was small-probably about the size of three ping pong tables-and narrow. I would spread out my blanket and put the basket of berries next to my legs. Then, I would pretend:

I was trapped on a desert island,

hiking a mountain and stopping for a snack, or

by myself in a meadow.

Maybe you are picturing me in 1^st grade. Perhaps 3^rd.

I was in 6^th.

10 or 11 years old.

Now that I’m a mother, even though it hurts me to think about it still, I think that this naïveté and innocence is why I was bullied. My mom and dad were pretty awesome about teaching me about tradition and different cultures. They provided me with stacks of books to read. (I think I would finish two or three novels a week.) And, as you’ve learned in my previous posts, they opened my eyes to all sorts of music.

What they didn’t care about was making sure I had the coolest clothes. Or that my hair was cut in just the right style. Those types of things shouldn’t matter. Those things should not be what are important.

Except, as I know you know too, they sometimes are.

I went to a gorgeous private school through the end of 6^th grade. It had a sprawling campus and, up until I was in 4^th grade, wasn’t co-ed. I wore a uniform. Either a greenish plaid skirt or a grey flannel one. Maroon or navy wool vest. Starched white button down shirt. Docksiders.

I played field hockey. We had assembly. There was a headmistress. Flag ceremonies. Art classes where each child had access to a pottery wheel. A music program taught by the wife of a Broadway producer (she’s the one who helped me to learn that I love to sing) who would put on shows that should have been in black-box theaters in The City.

I grew up in a very wealthy town. My parents worked hard-both have advanced degrees. But, despite all of that, to send me to this private school, our family needed to make “sacrifices”. I place the word sacrifices in quotation marks because now that I am older (it’s amazing what becomes clear with time) I know that they weren’t. Sacrifices, I mean.

My friends flew to Aspen for winter break. Bermuda. The Keys.

We went camping.

I couldn’t believe my bad luck.

Now, I want to take my 6^th grade self by the shoulders and give a good hard shake. It’s a joke. I had everything. My parents were (and are) incredible.

That said, I was really happy at that private school.

Until 6^th grade.

There were 18 students in my grade. 9 boys. 9 girls.

Of the girls, 3 weren’t cool and didn’t care. They had each other.

Then, there were the 5 queens of the class.

They wore their kilts rolled an extra inch. Their legs were smooth and brown. They had the right lip-balm from Woolworth.

And then, there was me.

I wanted to be one of Them; one of The Five.

Except, I wasn’t.

Before sixth grade I was outgoing and outspoken and vivacious. Spicy. My own me.

Then, as my Psychotherapist mother has subsequently taught me that middle school girls often do, I went underground. I wanted to blend.

And The Five could smell my desire to be one of them. To make The Five, The Six.

They stole my homework and ran it under water in the sink.

They took my uniform gym shorts and replaced them with a pair two sizes too small.

(I didn’t tell). 

I wore the shorts and had a stomach ache from where the waist band ate into my belly. They called me thunder thighs. It had never before occurred to me that weight was an issue to be discussed or measured.

They wouldn’t let me sit at their table at lunch until I begged.

I’m still ashamed to say, I begged.

They made fun of my glasses. My hair. My ankles.

I let them. I believed them.

I. Didn’t. Tell.

My parents continued to pay tens of thousands of dollars to send me to a school where I was being abused. But, how could they have known?

I’m a master at masking.

It is in my nature to want to please. Up until very recently, I was so completely terrified of conflict that I would avoid it no matter the cost. I just stored it inside. Bottled it up until it exploded in either blinding white rage or hot tears that wouldn’t stop.

I don’t keep it in any more.

And, by the way, that’s why I picked Holly berries that year; sat on my blanket.

I was thinking.

Or healing.

Maybe, pretending.

I was figuring out who I wanted to be.

Some days, I still am.

But at least my non-sixth grade self knows that it’s important to speak my mind and my heart.

My non-sixth grade self knows that there are sacrifices to be made to support my children and my family. But, I will not allow those compromises to force me into hiding. No man, no woman, should have to stuff it all away. It’s excruciating.

And, even my sixth grade self knew that no one should be bullied.

We all know that, really.

But bullies are out there. They are. And sometimes they are in disguise.

You just have to be too strong for them.

That’s the lesson my mother taught me.

The one I teach my daughter. My son.

It’s the sign I have hanging over my front door:

Be brave.

I promise you, it works every time.