The icebreaker discussion question: Describe for us a time you felt different.
When I was in second grade, growing up in East Memphis, I was a Brownie. You know, a little Girl Scout. There were maybe 20 of us that gathered, sang songs, played games, did activities together. We were the same age, eight or nine. All of us white, all of us pretty solidly upper middle class. Our dads (not so much our moms, yet, mind you, but our dads) were doctors and brokers and accountants and restauranteurs. By most sociological standards, a pretty homogeneous group. And back then, we all wore the same uniform, a jumper in a fairly washed-out and sad shade of brown, with a brown beanie, a little orange tie at the neck, and a sash across the front that bore all our insignia - the Brownie pin, the little merit badges we'd earned, and of course, the all-important number that identified to which troop you belonged.
For me, that was Troop 53, Memphis Jewish Community Center. And I was the lone gentile.
East Memphis has long been a place with a pretty high concentration of Jewish folks. The reform Temple Israel and several synagogues are located in the eastern part of the city. I went to a small private school with many of the girls in my Brownie troop. The composition of my class at Lausanne was very interesting, not only for being slightly majority Jewish, but for its enormously lopsided gender composition. Lausanne had been an all-girl school until they started admitting boys in 1970, and let's just say they weren't enrolling in droves. In 1978, our class contained two boys. This was only a short-term problem for them, though, because when we girls finally started to discover boys... let's just say those two never had it so good, before or since. But I digress.
My school was only a few blocks from the Jewish Community Center, around which much of the social and community lives of my classmates was centered. So it made perfect sense from a geographical standpoint. And frankly, since the Brownie troop was comprised in part of my own Lausanne classmates, it didn't seem at all unusual to me that I should join an otherwise completely Jewish Brownie troop. Sometimes you don't know you're different until someone else points it out to you.
Not all of the scouts in my troop went to my school. There was this one little girl, the daughter of the troop leader, who came right up to me and got, you know, all up in my grill, so to speak.
What are you doing here? You're not Jewish!
Room, meet elephant.
I don't recall what my reply was to this. What do you say? I'm sorry? One thing was certain: I was going to hate this girl instantly. She always had something smart to say. She looked at things differently from everyone else. She expressed her opinion whether you wanted it or not and never backed down from it. She didn't care if even one other person agreed with her point of view or defended her. She had chutzpah, for sure, and she definitely marched to the beat of a different drummer. Takes one to know one.
When she transferred to Lausanne a few years later, she and I had the distinct honor of being the two worst players on the 7th and 8th grade volleyball team, where we took up right where we left off in Brownies, mercilessly antagonizing the shit out of each other. We spent so much time harassing each other, in class, at volleyball practice, and pretty much everywhere else that we eventually bonded and became the best of friends. I was welcomed at her house for countless sleepovers, and she at mine. Her parents weren't afraid to call me out on the carpet, and mine felt similarly empowered to bring her back in line. We were two odd ducks, but we had each other. We made up stories and recounted strange dreams to each other and cried about boys and rode our bikes to the mall. We both developed an interest in music and searched for new and interesting bands and shared with each other what we'd discovered and scoffed at the unenlightened. And grew up smart. And made our parents crazy. And slogged through college applications. Laughed, hugged, fought, and shared everything.
She introduced me to my husband. And told us we would be good together. To our faces. Subtle as a freight train. (I didn't like him at first, either.)
She left Memphis and went to college in Wisconsin and then law school in North Carolina and worked a ton and lived in Memphis and then Atlanta and then Memphis and lost her father and looked after her mother and moved to Washington D.C., where she currently makes a living as a lawyer, still telling people all their damn business and getting paid to do it.
Four days after Baby Warrior Princess was born, she came to Little Rock to see us. Completely ignoring any Christian tradition about godparents, we asked her to be Lily's godmother. It seems very appropriate that the WP calls her grandmother Bubbie and has a Jewish godmother. Nancy insists that I'm actually Jewish anyway, so I should just stop lying to myself.
We don't get to see each other much anymore, but we stay pretty connected on Facebook, reporting our news and sharing articles and snarking away at the Golden Globes in real time. And she sends Lily presents from time to time, just to let her know she's thinking about her. Before we left for Europe, she sent the WP a $20 bill to spend any way she wanted. Later, the thank you note read: Dear Nancy, thank you for the $20. I used it. Your pal, Lily.
The other day, WP and I were on our way home from school, and she asked me, Mom, can I join Brownies?
I had to smile. I wonder if she'll meet anyone interesting. Maybe there will be a little girl who becomes her nemesis. And then her friend. And then her sister. You never know.
We start Brownies next week. I'll let you know how it goes.
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