Mowgli

When I was young, I wished with all my heart that I could be Mowgli from the Jungle Book. It wasn't just that he got to hang with Baloo and Bagheera, although it was largely that. It was also that I wanted to be a small brown boy, which was a little tragic, because I was then and will forever be a robust white girl. I loved the idea of running half naked along leafy paths, swinging from trees with my shock of black hair riffling in the breeze. I liked the idea that bad people were out to get me because I was a small brown boy--a recognizable mini-threat. When the girl (at least in the Disney film) appeared with the water jar on her head to lure Mowgli to the man-village, I barely held back tears of resentment and shame. I wasn't supposed to have tree-climbing, vine-swinging muscles, but a teeny waist and shapely hips . . . and really excellent balance. Iconographically, at least, my kind was made to fetch and carry, not carouse with wolves.

Yesterday I help a rocking birthday party for Liefy in the backyard. There were waterguns and waterballoons and a slip n' slide and trucks and balls and a race-car pinada and a sprinkler and as I watched him bomb around shirtless, brown as a berry for a white kid, I couldn't help but smile: Mowgli. I fetched him and his friends some lemonade, I carried him his crazy wished-for blue and chocolate birthday cake, and I thanked heaven for my serviceable, if not shapely, child-bearing hips.