Tenafly….”ten swamps”in Dutch…. ‘yes’, I thought.
In the early 60’s when my mother informed me that this was the meaning of the word. ‘How perfect that we had landed here, strangers in a strange land that does not want me…swamp times ten, ’ I thought.
We arrived in Tenafly, having travelled long and adventurously from India to this town, which my parents chose for its excellent schools.
My sister and I were to be in different schools, as she was not in junior high yet, and so after walking her to her school, I was driven alone to mine. I sat in the front seat of our black Plymouth station wagon and watched my fellow students stream up the sidewalk and into the building, and I told my mother that I was not going in. She said that of course I was and I said ‘NO’.
I saw what I saw and I translated it as familiarity with each other and the environment, and I was clearly from another planet. I had never felt particularly out of step with the world before, as everywhere that I had lived had held vast varieties of people and missions, and everyone was busy simply doing life. This was different. There was a focus on something undefineable that created a feeling of self consciousness that was throbbingly uncomfortable and I was less than. My hair was practically down to my knees, I was wearing a missionary barrel dress that had been shortened multiplle times, I was carrying my straw-bottomed sisal fiber bag with pencils and paper inside, and I had thought nothing of it, ever, except that it worked…but now I imagined condemning stares even before they existed. I was not going in.
After an amped up session of wills batting back and forth, my mother asked what we could do to make this easlier.
That afternoon we cut my hair, we bought a ‘villager’ outfit that consisted of a lavendar skirt, matching sweater and a flowered blouse and a respectable purse.
The next day, sitting in the car outside the school, I said “NO. I am not going in.”
Poor Mom.
After several days of beginning our mornings with upset and tears in that front seat, I went in. The first few days were silent observation. The girl in front of me in homeroom had the most exquisite shiny black hair that flipped into a perfect ring around her head, the girl next to me was blond and quite haughty but everyone seemed to worship her, another girl wore mini skirts and knee socks and heavy eyeliner and was outspokenly funny and rebellious. I
didn’t particularly notice the boys as I was looking for a girl to be friends with and I saw none.
During the first week, our Social Studies teacher announced a pop quiz. The entire test was true-false and multiple choice. I carefully read each question and then circled every answer in the multiple choice and both answers for the true-false section. The next day the tests were handed back to us, mine was not delivered, and the teacher asked to see me after school.
At the end of the day, being asked WHY I answered as I did, was I overwhelmed? I was so surprised. ‘NO!’ I wasn’t overwhelmed at all. I scrolled down, one by one, explaining how an absolute answer would be if one was viewing this from one perspective, but if one were to shift that perpective, then another answer would be correct…which meant that as the initial perspective hadn’t been defined, every answer had to be right, because every perspective was involved. The fact that I passed with an A+ wasn’t important to me. What was important was that this teacher honest and truly said that she was DELIGHTED to meet me and welcomed me.
This was the beginning of a new chapter of inclusion in a world that I had felt the opposite in….simply an INCORRECT assumption that this was an unfriendly, unwelcoming place, because of my fear driven perspective.
Beautiful friendships grew and I learned to be an American American.
Thank you Mrs. Harvey, and thank you, Universe, for the lesson in my own perspective.