I’m wonderfully content with who I am, however, being black means I have two negative things to contend with that affect my vanity:
Firstly, I have a lot of melanin in my skin which means in the sun, I tan very easily. Suncream doesn’t work – it stops you from burning, but it doesn’t prevent you from tanning.
I love the sunshine, so I don’t avoid it, but if I stay under the rays for too long, I end up looking like a cross between a walking stick of charcoal and Twigwidge.
Twigwidge was a little brown ‘thing’ we sang about in primary school. He was the spirit of the chestnut tree. Kids aren’t aware they are singing about demons being evoked from the forest, and therefore, we happily chanted:
“Tap, tap, Twigwidge, rappa-tap Twigwidge. Twigwidge spirit of the chestnut tree…”
When you look him up on Google, (because you know you’re going to) you will see that he wasn’t that dark, but his hair looked very much like how mine became when too much heat was applied to it directly from above.
This leads me nicely to my second point – my tresses. Negroes may look like their hair is strong and thick because of how bouffant it is, but in reality, it is the weakest hair of all the races, and therefore, it breaks easily. Because it is so brittle, it is also very dry and therefore, if you walk into a black hair shop, you will be astounded at the myriad of products on the shelves, all containing some kind of oil, designed to keep our hair moist and on our heads instead of the floor.
When getting dressed, in order for me to be able to get something over my head without some kind of hair gel transferring onto my clothes, I would stick a carrier bag over it first and then later on, I upgraded to a clear, plastic food bag.
One day when I was getting dressed, I placed the food bag over my head and as soon as I did so, I screamed out so loudly that my housemate thought I was being attacked by a burglar. She ran into my bedroom to see me stood there all forlorn, with crispy bits of blue and pink dried petals, fragments of an orange slice, sharp shards of cinnamon and traces of pinecone all over my hair.
Alas, I had forgotten that I had previously used the bag to transport some pot pourri to a bowl and now I looked like some kind of unique ornament one would see sitting in the window of a vintage florist.
With all the moisturising cream in my mane already, it took a good three days to get the fragrant flower petals and spices out of my fuzzy locks and this is why I ended up using shower caps to protect my clothes instead.
After this unfortunate incident, (we had been getting ready for church at the time) the shower caps became important to me, and I didn’t like to run out of supply.
There is a jolly good reason why I have told you this story, and when I come back to it later, you’ll understand the significance of my latter trauma.
Murder. Normal people are not supposed to want to kill. Christians, even more so, because, “Thou shalt not snuff out the life of another human being.” is one of the Ten Commandments. But more obviously, it is not a nice thing to do.
This aside, I confess I came close to being guilty of this sin each time I sat in the Mums and Tots group listening to some smug mother giving me platitudes about how potty training isn’t that hard.
The quote that I struggled with the most was,
“They are clean before they are dry.”
This basically meant that children learnt to poo in the loo before they managed to control their bladder. Therefore, if you had a child who was leaving little brown deposits all over the house, there was something wrong with them, or there was something drastically wrong with your parenting skills.
Yes, you’ve guessed it. I was the one who was having to navigate around poo balls and facing the distress of finding one appear in a sock drawer, a slipper, or roll out from under the bed.
Believe me, I tried everything. Most writers at this point, would tell you they were tearing their hair out in frustration, but you know by now that because of my afro heritage, that was happening of its own accord, so I kept my hands below chest height.
My daughter was fast approaching the age of 3 and being an August baby, she was due to start nursery school (pre-school) the following month.
“I don’t want her having accidents when she starts pre-school!” I would wail to my husband, who had also run out of ideas of how to coax her towards the toilet.
If this, “They are clean before they are dry.” motto was true, then I had a long way to go before she was to stop wetting herself and the prospect of that was not good.
I am pleased to say that a week before Sarah began pre-school, she did indeed stop leaving deposits around the house and recognised that the toilet is where one placed such things.
However, before that day of triumph occurred, I was to face my hardest challenge yet.
One morning after breakfast, I entered my bedroom to get dressed. Without my spectacles on, I spotted what l thought was a broken-up chocolate muffin on the floor. On further inspection not only was I aghast to discover it was lumps of faeces, but they were sitting on top my shower cap! This was the last one from my spare stash.
Like a puppy, she had wandered into our room and out of courtesy so as not to soil the carpet, the sweet darling had grabbed the cap from the end of my bed and used it as her training mat.
I was furious! In my head, I could hear the gentle voice of the last mother who had imparted the ‘special advice’ to me, and
I realised I needed a whole load more of God’s patience and grace if I was to avoid becoming an inmate.
Prison clothes wouldn’t suit me anyway and there was no way I was going to contend with an unflattering gown as well as baldness (the shock of it had forced my hands to land on my head), so I decided there and then, two things:
- People meant well. Parental advice may not always be appropriate, but the heart behind it is often kind. Not every mother is smug and proud. They have been through trials themselves and are usually trying to encourage, even if the motto used is not 100% accurate.
- God hears our prayers. Sarah stopped soiling literally one week before starting pre-school and never had any further accidents. Not the solid kind anyway. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how long the wetting lasted and to protect her dignity, I shall not elaborate too much on that. But then again, you would miss out on the next chapter if I said nothing at all. Besides…Sarah doesn’t mind me sharing these stories. So here goes… (The Ragamuffin of Middle Earth)
