(Describe a classmate without using name, hair color or clothing.)
Despite her small stature, she strikes me as a woman who would hate to be described as “petite.” Petite, to her, might translate into diminutive, to tiny and easy to overlook, which are things she certainly is not. Indeed she is short and slight, but looking into her face, into her often-narrowed catch-everything eyes, one can see easily the bigness of her character. And its in her eyes where you’ll find the most of her because she isn’t one to exercise her voice without due provocation. She is exact and cerebral, critical and opinionated, confident but in no rush to prove it to the room. Where some source their thoughts in their mouth, she hides them within her, waits for the right moment to share, the appropriate venue to disclose, carefully and thoughtfully, what she knows is really going on here. She’s like the person sitting next to you on the bus, who you’re sure hasn’t been listening to that fight you’re having immodestly with a family member over a cell phone, until you hang up near tears, and she looks over to you and says simply and quietly that one small, reflective thing that will make you feel better when you were sure that nothing in that moment could. She is a woman unafraid of shortness, but perhaps forever annoyed by the implication that what is small cannot be expansive.
No comments:
Post a Comment