The Child Playing Alone

The Child Playing Alone

"I was once a rapturous child drawing at the dining-room table, under a stained

glass chandelier that sat like a hat on the swollen orb of my excitement. What is

exciting that child, so distant from us in time and space?"

Squares of different colors are splattered all over the sheet I am staring at. Some are yellow, others pink, a few green and lots are blue. Unfortunately I am not staring at some great artwork or beautiful quilt from Alabama. I am look at my weekly planner, pasted on the wall with a few worn looking pieces of tape. Blue for physics and green for chemistry, orange for calculus and yellow for expository writing; I leave no activity plain white. Not only different colors are used in the squares, but different designs as well. Some are striped, others are spotted. Some are solid squares while others have empty centers... some are even a combination of colors. At a first glance it appears this creativity is due to necessity. I needed to organize my time, or at least try, and so I produced a colorful chart. A deeper look transports me back to my childhood in Nigeria.

My home country, in the heart of the tropics, is interesting. The nomadic cattle herdsman is constantly covered with white specs of salt from his evaporated sweat in the arid and hot atmosphere of almost 40 degrees centigrade in the north of the country. Surrounded by a few shrubs scattered over sandy plains, he is constantly in search of pasture for his cattle and water to drink. The market women chat away in the high humidity of the south watching their kids play in the shade of the few palm trees left, after development has robbed the land of its natural dense vegetation. My home was there in the south, near the coast, with the Atlantic Ocean knocking at our door. There was the constant danger of the beach being eroded by the angry ocean, intent on claiming back its space, as about 50% of the island I lived on is land filled. Thus my mother refused to allow me onto the closest beach to my home as it had many dangers, from the ocean to bored louts hanging around looking for innocent victims. I could never feel angry at her though because she gave up her career, by choice, to take care of her children.