What I see: A young woman, in her traditional face paint and headdress
What I feel: Reality has just kicked in for this young woman.
My story:
When we were young while my father was ambassador to the United States, we often played with the other children at the embassy and learned their customs.
I noticed that my elder sister often joined the other little girls to play at makeup – but that was play, as little girls aspired toward being like their mothers in every way, but the day was distant, and this was play.
In the West, there no longer appear to be defined rites of passage in mainstream culture, and my mother said that is why so many older adults still act like spoiled children.
“It is necessary to make a firm break – the school dances, the material possessions – they do not have the weight necessary to make the break,” she said. “But by the time your sister becomes a woman and you become a man, we will be back home, and we will make the break and there will be no confusion. It is too much to ask a child to bring himself and herself out of childhood to responsibility; it is for the community of mature ones and elders to do that.”
My father's term of service was completed in five years, and the year after we came home, my sister was brought forth as a woman.
There was nothing of play about the dressing of her face on that day, especially since it had to be done in a year in which to come of age was to come of age in a time of great grief. The pandemic has ravaged the world, and although the wise leadership of our nation has kept the worst of it at bay, there is still much sadness for there are still great losses of life and opportunity. Last year was even worse.
Thus my sister wore the tear sign on her face on the day of her being brought to womanhood, and yet over her forehead, a drape of grapes, their rich juice and all that comes of them delicately flowing down her nose and becoming a shower of blessing upon her chin, while the yellow of the sun wrapped her head in light and hope.
I was very proud of her that day, but I felt the sudden distance between her and me, between the woman and the boy still a child, where there had not been such a gap the day before.
I felt the burden of the distance between her and her friends back in the United States who lived in a culture in which they might play for many more years – perhaps too many – painting on the signs of growth toward maturity that they had not yet reached.
I felt her grief for the loss of childhood, and her apprehension of going alone among her generation of her friends into womanhood in a deeply troubled world.