Friends of All Colors

I found myself smiling in contentment—almost in victory—last week at the park. The weather was a lovely 70-something degrees, the evening sunlight was barely filtering through the canopy of shade trees, and my children were playing with new friends they’d just met on the playground. Mine were the only two white kids in the group.

Miryam is just getting to the age where she can play with other kids. She is quite shy at first, tending to observe others first and copy them later; she is generally content to entertain herself, with a healthy sprinkling of “Mommy, watch!” But this group of kids came over to where Miryam and Luke were looking at a mushroom, full of amiable questions to break the ice: Why can’t we touch it? Is he a baby? Why is she climbing up there?

They accepted Miryam without hesitation into their game of romping about in a line, and she followed them back over to the “big kid” part of the playground. After a few minutes, she had wandered off to her own sliding pursuits, and the other kids found me to ask, “Where’d that girl go?” I told them her name and pointed her out, and they ran, shouting her name, to get her back into their game. Next, I saw her running and sliding with them in procession. My little mama heart swelled up, so excited that my daughter was being actively included and that she was evidently at ease with her spontaneous playmates.

Later on, the gaggle of giggles came back to where I was pushing Luke on a swing. They wanted to help push him and find out what words he could say. One of them wanted to count how many kids were in the circle, and he kept forgetting to count himself. One insisted that the whole group go to the fence and yell a last goodbye to another little girl who was going home. Their eagerness to help—and their candidness—were so sweet. I hoped my own kids were absorbing How to Be Friendly to Everyone from them.

When we left the park, I was happy to note that this evening was the first of many when my kids would get to befriend people different from themselves in this city: within our first week of moving to Arlington, Justin and I noticed that the population was significantly more diverse than what we’d seen in our previous suburb in Missouri. While discussing this observation, I think we actually high-fived over the satisfaction we felt about bringing our family here. This is a place where our children can learn to see diversity as normal. Through daily exposure, they can learn that not all people look like them and talk like them, but that all people are human like them.

I didn’t catch any of their names, but here’s an open Thank You to the sweet kids who befriended my babes on an extra-beautiful—because of their attitudes!—afternoon at the park.