What is Your Mosaic? Part 1.

PART 1 OF 3...

What makes you, you?

We go through many stages throughout our lives. And through our experiences with those around us, we grow and we change.

A mosaic is defined as a picture or image produced by arranging together small pieces. If you close your eyes and remember yourself at different times in your life, what do you see? What is the picture that makes up who you are -- the small pieces that create a picture of you?

What is your mosaic?

To answer this, maybe we look back at various points in our life...

AT AGE 18, I WOULD HAVE SAID:

* I love eating pizza on Fridays because my childhood best friend Melissa and I would make Kraft Pizza Mix every Friday night without fail. She was my first true friend.

* I love, love, love escaping into books. Growing up, day after day of summer vacation, my sister Suzy and I, along with our cousins, went to the library to escape the heat of Toronto summers, devouring Judy Blume, Nancy Drew, and Beverly Cleary.

* I hate my knees. I generally wear long skirts or pants, and avoid shorts. Being teased as a kid for having knobby knees and being too skinny doesn’t help.

* Ringalos are my favourite snack. Not really allowed out on Saturday nights, my sister and I stayed in and rented movies -- putting Ringalos on our fingers and eating them one at a time.

* I am a bit lost. Being brown in a non-brown world is hard. Recent friends of different cultures really help. As does my new best friend Jacqui.

AT AGE 25, I WOULD HAVE SAID:

* As a teacher, on the first day of school, I tell my students that if anyone is sitting alone at lunch, ask them to join you. Moving around a lot in high school, the cafeteria was a terrifying place. I had no one to sit with -- until Grade 12 when I met Cindy, Barb, Tracy, Wendy, and through them, a gem of others. God bless them all.

* I believe in love and I am in love. It’s stable, but sometimes messy -- and is the story of some of my and Jacqui’s favourite films: Singles, Before Sunrise, Jerry McGuire.

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* I wear shorts, and have grown into my limbs and height. The colour of my skin, and the many Indian friends I have made in university empower me.

* I drink tea on hot summer days. It reminds me of our year in India. My mom, my sister, and I did this every afternoon and it felt like we had come home.

* My right eye bothers me in photos. As a kid, our German Shepard Sam got carried away when we were playing, and cut my eyelid. But I loved him and to this day still love dogs.

* I understand real loss. And gratitude. Losing a sibling, followed by the birth of our twin baby sisters has breathed light and life into our world.

What is YOUR mosaic?

PART 1 OF 3...