"What makes you different makes you beautiful"

Walking through Madison Square Park, I was drawn to watch as a rather large group of pigeons grazed on what appeared to be pollen clumps from the surrounding trees. There must have been 30 or 40 dark gray pigeons scrounging around in the grass, but I couldn't help but focus my attention on the different bird of the group. With feathers as white as snow, the bird just seemed to possess a different aura than the others.


As I watched the white bird pecking around, I had to wonder if the bird knew it looked different from the rest of the group, and if that was the reason it was positioned a little off to the side by itself, not getting right in the middle to compete for a snack. The white bird looked so beautiful and serene, and I was reminded of a quote I had clipped out of a magazine and pinned to my bulletin board when I was in middle school that read, "What makes you different makes you beautiful."


The quote stuck with me (and on my bulletin board) for years because I remember knowing I looked different from most everyone else - taller than all my classmates and one of the only people with red hair - and I desperately wished those differences would make me beautiful. (If you didn't know me circa 1993, let me just tell you "beautiful" is not the first description that would come to mind. Tall, skinny and awkward would be a little more accurate.) I guess I thought maybe if I read the quote enough, someday it would come true.


At my Grandma Maudie's 90th birthday party in 1994, it was the summer before my freshman year of high school, and I remember talking with a little old lady for awhile about how excited I was to start high school and be a majorette in the band. Lately I had been thinking it must not be so bad that I was so tall or that I had "orange" hair to match our black and orange majorette uniforms. I kind of thought I was maybe even becoming beautiful like my quote promised. That is until the little old lady tells me out of the blue, "One day you're going to be glad you're so tall and have that red hair." What? Although it was true, I hadn't mentioned to her that I wasn't happy as a lark with my height and hair. And "one day" - what was that supposed to mean? She might as well have said, "You poor thing, even though now you are abnormally tall and your red hair just makes you stand out even more, one day you'll be glad for these freakish attributes." I remember just looking at her with no response other than a half-puzzled, half-offended expression.

But her words stuck with me like the printed words clipped from the magazine had, and in my mind hung right beside that quote on my bulletin board. Well, if "what makes you different makes you beautiful," then hopefully "one day - one day - one day I'll be glad I'm so tall and have red hair."

She was right - I'm not sure when, but that day arrived, and I wouldn't trade my tall height and red hair for anything.