Perspectives and Identity

It is Friday morning and as usual, we have the morning assembly. Fridays are reserved for “Cookie for a thought”, students come and speak on topics they are passionate about. Last Friday was different. Two brave girls from 8th-grade spoke and the students in the  assembly were quite. These girls poured their hearts out on the issues of Identity. One of them wrote this short story. I reproduce it here with the student’s permission. The passion which they spoke with was commendable. It was a pleasant surprise on a Friday, morning.

Till death do we part.

 â€œ Okay then, meet you there at 7?” “Yeah sure “

That was how it started, a quick date at Starbucks, when they were fourteen, their coffee sitting mostly untouched as they shared quick shy conversation. They had known each other for months, yet they still felt slightly flustered for some reason. They left promising to meet again, and not just as friends. So the days turned into months, months into years as they still met together at Starbucks every now and then, finding time for each other in their busy schedules.

At twenty-five, they got engaged and had a small wedding. Three years later they adopted, and two years after that they adopted again. They watched their children grow, took turns rocking them to sleep, listened patiently to what bothered them, no matter how small it was. They were there when their kids got into fights, coming home with a black eye and sprained wrist.

 At fifty, both their kids had graduated and their oldest boy had married. Their younger daughter just finished up with college, starting to feel the weight of the world on her shoulders. Four years later, their first grandchild was born. A girl, dark brown eyes, fuzzy little black wisps of hair and a smile formed in her parents eyes as their granddaughter wrapped her little hands around each of their fingers.

 At seventy, they stopped running every day in the mornings and switched to jogging. Their bodies were not being able to keep up anymore. They talked about their children, their five grandchildren, all the times they laughed and cried together.

 At the age of ninety-two, their hearts stopped beating. They passed away in their sleep, next to each other. The family was devastated and they were buried together. At the funeral their son said to almost everyone he talked to “ the greatest parents anyone could ever have. Even if my sister and I were adopted, it didn’t feel that way. My parents were the greatest fathers the world had ever seen. I don’t regret a single punch I took to the face, the swelled pain of the lingering black eye. I don’t regret defending my parents against everyone who had ever made fun of them because they were branded “Gay” by society. Outside, every display of affection they shared, a hug, a kiss, the comforting squeeze of a hand was frowned upon by people in the crowd. But I didn’t care, neither did they. They were still the happiest couple I knew, and none of us let the terms society branded them with affect us, our family, our bonds, our happiness. “

At home he and his sister sat down on the bed in their parents room, tears still marked their cheeks, as they took out their parents wedding album and opened it to the page of them saying their vows. In her father’s scrawl, they saw the caption. “ Till death do us part.” her fingers slowly traced the writing on the page as her brother held her. Their parents still living on in their minds, it didn’t matter if they were “gay”, they were still amazing.

Nobody asked these girls to speak on this topic. One of them went on advocating the idea that it is okay to be different. As a part of the unit in the class they were exploring Perspectives and Identity and this story was a result of the extension and application of their learning from their classrooms. 

One of them told me

Expressing yourself is a very important thing to think about, and even more important to act upon. One of the reasons I decided to write about a topic like this is because the topic itself is so controversial, and is seen with so many different points of view. One person could be totally against it while another could be 100% for it, and others may support being gay, but not bisexual, etc. We need to learn to develop our own identity, and be comfortable with it, this also means embracing our color, mindset, and sexuality among other things. I think I liked to open the story with putting common acts that are seen by heterosexual couples and finish by saying it’s not just heterosexual couples who can do this, homosexual couples can do this as well. “Identity and perspective” in this short story I feel like a lot of people have their own perspectives on others identity, and I wanted to write something that gave you the message “it’s ok to be yourself”.

When your students give you such surprises, you know that somewhere you are creating open-minded individuals, who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right. Stoked.