My Pink Handprint
One of the fascinating things to me about human sexuality is how it is pretty much imprinted on us at birth. Our choices that define the spectrum of our sexuality are set long before we have any idea of what sex or sexuality mean.
I don’t have a lot of memories of my year in Kindergarten, but there are two events that have great clarity over everything else and defined me early on. One was the playhouse in the back of our kindergarten class room. It was where the girls played while the boys did boy things like play kick ball, roughhouse, or those other boy things I never really got.
The playhouse had pink walls, plastic plates, cups, and plastic cooking utensils. There were even little pink aprons to wear. It was very much for the girls, AND I LOVED IT.
It was easily my favorite activity. Nothing came close. Side by side with the girls playing house. I WAS IN KID HEAVEN. It still makes me smile, many decades later into middle-age and easily one of my happiest childhood memories.
My second very strong memory had to do with a Kindergarten tradition. Every year the Kindergarten class would make our handprints in a round, pancake-sized piece of clay. The boys would choose blue-colored clay and the girls pink. Okay, you are way ahead of me, but it’s my memory so let me finish.
So, as you guessed, I did choose pink and must have been insistent because the teacher did not fight me hard on my choice. I AM A GIRL—I wanted pink and would not have it otherwise.
After we pressed our hand into the clay, the clay pancakes were labeled with the date and our names and sent off to be fired and glazed. The process was way beyond my Kindergarten pay-grade, but the upshot was, one day, we get them handed back to us beautifully shiny, smooth, weighty like they were something real and substantive, and we took them home to make our parents proud.
Back when I was in Kindergarten, we walked alone about a half mile to school and back. Nowadays, it seems almost unthinkable, but back then we were sent off and came back; no adult supervision, no concerns like there would be today.
Needless to say, I held it in both hands and walked it home being extra careful not to drop it. When I got home, I was excited that my Mom would be proud of me of what I had accomplished: a beautiful, glossy, gorgeous pink handprint.Her reaction was not what I expected and she started to yell and said how I had ruined the display she was planning of my handprint with my other two older brothers.
Three boys: BLUE-BLUE-BLUE ceramic handprints on the living room wall. BLUE-BLUE-PINK would not work and I ruined her perfect display.
My first visceral introduction to how my instinctive, subconscious choices, would affect my life.
At that moment I wanted to reach out and break it, but knew, even though the pink handprint ruined my mother’s plans and she was very upset, it would be even worse to break it.
I WAS TRYING HARD TO BE A GOOD DAUGHTER.
Needless to say, thousands upon thousands of subconscious and conscious choices later, I was married and still am to a wonderful woman and have an adult son who makes me proud beyond words. While everything looked traditional from the outside, what people didn’t see was the mascara I wore for years, and still do on occasion even though I am well into middle-age. The candy apple red nail polish I would wear on planes during business trips where I was safely traveling alone and could be myself. The body glitter I would wear on my face during these trips because it just made me feel pretty as I admired my painted nails.
Dial the clock further through the Marilyn Monroe film festivals, my Sondheim musical phase where I literally bought every musical soundtrack LP of his and still have them (I wonder what they’re worth?), the necklaces I would wear in creative ways as bracelets and rings, the Sex in the City and The L Word marathons. Long before the phrase “binge-watching” entered our vernacular, I would binge watch DVD boxed sets of multiple full seasons of L-Word over an entire weekend and at the end, still not satiated, would re-watch my favorite L Word episodes or dig out my Sex in the City DVD boxed set and re-watch those.
Dial the gay clock even further and, after my father died and my mother lived alone in Southern California and I was living in Northern California, I was the only son who called her without fail, every week to check up on her and see if she needed help on anything. My other brothers would call once in a couple of months if she was lucky—it was usually much longer than that.
Admittedly, I called mostly out of a sense of duty. After all, this is WHAT A GOOD DAUGHTER WOULD DO (I literally told myself that!) She called me her “ace in a hole” (she liked to play poker) because I was the only one she could rely on to make everything right when life dealt her a bad hand. I would drive 400 miles from the Bay Area to LA whenever she needed me. Middle of the week, on the weekend, day or night, it didn’t matter. I was there.
AREN’T DAUGHTERS WONDERFUL!
Every family needs them, even when the chromosomes don’t cooperate.
Dial the clock forward and when my brothers, our wives, and various nephews and nieces were cleaning out the SoCal house after my mother died, the pink handprint was wrapped up in cloth along with two blue ones in the bottom of a chest in my parents’ bedroom.
The symbolism of wrapping up and hiding the Blue/Pink child away from the world in the bottom of the chest is so deep on so many levels.
BLUE-BLUE-PINK; BOY-BOY-GIRL
It never quite leaves you. The joy in carrying it home, how proud I was, and the bad feelings of greatly disappointing my mom. But it was now mixed with another feeling, quite unexpected: one of pride, and even joy, that I was then and still am today
THAT CHILD.
Damaged some? Maybe. But always making my own instinctive choices and living with the consequences, however they may fall.
Blue / Pink or Pink / Blue or whatever the blend, it is at its most beautiful when removed from the bottom of the chest, unwrapped, all glossy and pretty, and placed squarely in the middle of the living room wall for the world to see.
I AM PROUD TO BE THAT CHILD AND I AM BEAUTIFUL!
-Christina Reid
Retired professional, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Avid gardener and community volunteer. Writes primarily short stories focused on real life experiences often with LGBTQ themes.