“It’s so good, we don’t need manners right?” my daughter says her mouth full.
We’re both noisily gnawing on pieces of fresh sugar cane her daddy just cut up. We’re sitting on my bed, side by side, chewing, chomping on the little pieces, sucking and slurping all the sweet juice we can, leaving only small clumps of white fiber.
I’m so glad she loves it as much as I do.
I’m so glad we get to share this together.
Her childhood is very similar to mine on so many levels, against all odds since I live thousands of miles away from where I was raised (10,275 miles to be exact). So far, that I’m in a different hemisphere, 14 time zones behind. Different country. Different currency. Different culture. Different language. Yet so much is the same. I went from one tropic (Capricorn) to another (Cancer). I moved from the French state of La Reunion to the American state of Hawaii. Once an island girl, always an island girl. A new generation is now following in my footsteps.
She and I both claim Mango as our favorite fruit. She eats breadfruit chips, just as I did growing up. She knows what a banana is supposed to taste like. She can recognize papayas on the trees and pineapple in the fields. She knows that coconut water does not come from a tetra pak container. She walks barefoot on gravel and the tiny pine cones at the beach. She loves the blue ocean and the green mountains. Just like I did. (She has it even better than I did.)
Her home is a short 10-minutes walk away from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. She’s a country girl.
I grew up on the busiest street of the biggest town of Reunion island. I was a city girl.
She’s American.
I was French.
She has born with blue eyes.
I was born with brown ones.
She’s homeschooled.
I wasn’t.
She plays the violin, practices martial arts, takes ballet, goes to art classes, all activities I never tried.
I’m glad I get to give her the best of what I liked about my own childhood.
I’m even gladder I get to spare her the worst of it.
Her education is founded on very different values from the ones my parents chose.
This is her life, not a redo of mine.
Long after we wash off the sweet sap from our hands, we will remember this. We’re two different people, with different experiences but eating sugar cane binds us like nothing else can. We’re two island girls. These are the moments that will stick in our memory. Forever.
It is a beautiful essay about two beautiful lives.