To all the Aries out there, ‘tis our joyous birthday season, and well-timed with the beginning of Spring! For some, birthday time puts a literal spring in their step. For me, it’s a reminder of the unfortunate fact that I’ve gotten a year older, and not sufficiently wiser, though I’ve hopefully learned a few more wisecracks over the last year!

This year, I have been pondering what I wish I would have known when I first came to my new home – “America” – in all its grandeur. Today I’m sharing with you two of the seven tips I wish I could have given myself on my seventh birthday, a few months before I was getting ready for life in a new country, that would probably have paid dividends to this day. Each tip has a story or two behind it, so these tips are broken up into three posts – the first of which comes to you this week.

Tip 1: You won’t suddenly acquire blonde hair and blue eyes by living in America.

To this day, some of my cousins tease me that sevenish-year-old me would burst out excitedly, “I’m going to have golden hair when I go with my daddy to America!” in a very pronounced Indian accent. I read a lot of Hans Christian Anderson back then, and somehow thought going to America meant acquiring Rapunzel’s hair. Sometimes, I announced to my family I’d soon have hair like Goldilocks!

Within months of moving and my hair not turning to gold, the myth was dispelled, but the feeling of not fitting in persisted. Over time, I did realize I didn’t need to have blonde hair or blue eyes to be a better me. I was just fine as is. The confidence to be me grew as I came into my teens, started doing well in school, and became much more comfortable with my disability and my new society. Had I known about the golden hair myth earlier, perhaps I could have saved some time working on just being a better, more confident me all along.

I came to realize my assumption about naturally acquiring blonde hair and blue eyes was very likely a subconscious pronouncement of the need to fit in. Through the media, literature, and even familial and societal conversations, we unconsciously impart stereotypes of beauty to innocent children whose minds are blank slates. Even today, my Indian-American mother fawns over the “gora gora” (white, white) children as “adorable.” All children can be adorable, regardless of skin or hair color.

You can decide if I am “adorable” when you see the photo below. I wasn’t blonde or blue-eyed – I was and always have been just me.

Tip 2: You’re just blind!

On my first day at Egypt Lake Elementary School I arrived in my best frilly frock but even more importantly, I felt relieved to already know all the math my second grade teacher- Mrs. Lamb, with her curly black hair bobbing as she moved swiftly from one side of the chalkboard to the other – was describing. I felt like I was ahead of the pack since I had studied all the same math problems in the first grade in Bombay.

Suddenly, Mrs. Lamb startled me by interrupting my silent soliloquy. “It’s your turn to read now!”

Uh-oh… I began to stare at the page, trying to find the lines. I uttered each word slowly, trying to muster the precision of an American accent.

Later, when my parents arrived, my face fell as Mrs. Lamb delivered the news: “Your daughter’s English is very poor. She’s reading at the first-grade level, or below. Her math is okay, but she can’t go into the third grade. We’ll keep her in the second grade for now, and we’ll give her help in English as a Second Language – ESL.”

In the fifth grade, I got more bad news, this time from my ESL teacher: “Your English is fine, so we have decided you don’t need to be in our class anymore. You had trouble reading because you can’t see, and ESL can’t fix that.”

“Oh no, Mrs. C! Will I still stay in your class through Halloween?,” I inquired, thoroughly accustomed to the better candy distributed in ESL as opposed to the regular classroom.

“We’ll still make you a bag of Halloween candy this time, but you don’t need to be in my class,” she said.

And thus, I realized that I had gained good chocolate, but wasted four years trying to perfect reading with my eyes because no one had figured out that I was justblind! If only I had figured that out for myself, but it never occurred to me for a single moment that I should just blurt out, “I can’t read because I can’t see!” If I had just said something, then I (and my parents and teachers) could have done more than a few things very differently to ensure I acquired the skills I needed much sooner to succeed. That wouldn’t happen for nearly a decade, and that’s a story for another day. I’m just glad it eventually happened.

Next week, I’ll share two more pieces of advice for 7-year-old Mariyam. In the meantime, tell me: what do you wish you had known at age seven? Let me know in the comments and in your messages to me on my social media, and I’ll talk to you all in the next post!