The Day You Begin

There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you.
Maybe it will be your skin, your clothes, or the curl of your hair.

There will be times when no one understands the way words curl from your mouth, the beautiful language of the country you left behind.

My name is Rigoberto. We just moved here from Venezuela. And because they don’t understand, the classroom will fill with laughter until the teacher quiets everyone.

Rigoberto. From Venezuela, your teacher says so soft and beautifully that your name and homeland sound like flowers blooming the first bright notes of a song.

There will be times when the words don’t come. Your own voice, once huge, now smaller when the teacher asks “What did you do last summer? Tell the class your story.”

“We went to France,” Chayla says.
“These shells came from a beach in Maine” A boy named Jonathan holds out a hat filled with tiny shells so fragile, they look like they’ll turn to dust in your own untraveled hands.
“My whole family went to India.”
“Spain!”
“South Carolina!”
Each souvenir a small triumph of a journey. Their travels going on and on.

And as you stand in front of that room, you can only remember how the heat waved
as it lifted off the curb, and your days spent at home caring for your little sister, who made you laugh out loud and hugged you hard at nap-time. You can only remember the books you kept on reading long after she had fallen to sleep. And in that room, where no one else is quite like you, you’ll look down at your own empty hands and wonder What good is this when other students were flying and sailing and going somewhere.

There will be times when the lunch your mother packed for you is too strange or too unfamiliar for others to love as you do.

When even your own friend Nadja will wrinkle her nose and say “What’s in there, anyway?” And you’ll wonder how she doesn’t see the rice beneath the meat and kimchi.

You’ll wonder why she doesn’t remember that rice is the most popular food in the world.

There will be times when the climbing bars are too high, the run is too fast and far, the game isn’t one you can ever really play.
I don’t want him on our team.
You can watch.
Maybe you can have a turn later.

There will be times when the world feels like a place that you’re standing all the way outside of…
And all that stands beside you is your own brave self steady as steel and ready even though you don’t yet know what you’re ready for.

There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you until the day you begin to share your stories.
My name is Angelina and I spent my whole summer with my little sister, you tell the class, your voice stronger than it was a minute ago, reading books and telling stories and even though we were right on our block it was like we got to go EVERYWHERE.

Your name is like my sister’s, Rigoberto says. Her name is Angelina, too. And all at once, in the room where no one else is quite like you, the world opens itself up a little wider to make some space for you.