Manners

beadsbraidsbeyond.blogspot.com

A striking family, three little girls with beads
that must have taken hours to arrange,
a handsome dad in dreadlocks and they
may have thought it strange I'd sit beside
them out of all the crowd of those
who looked a little more like me. One shyly eyed
the bag of chips I had and smiled a quiet query.
I offered one, a second to her cheery older sister.
"Did you say thank you?" said the dad, which held
a tone of something Daddy says a lot, and they assured
him that they had, which was an accurate
assessment of their conversation with this woman
who would never see the family again, or wouldn't be
remembered if she did. When time to leave, I complimented
him on sweetness children must be taught and told him
when I teach at school it isn't hard at all to tell the ones
who've learned the proper lessons from their birth,
at home. "You've got to start them young," he said
and beamed, not back at me, a woman whom he
didn't know, but at his girls, each hair bead touched
with hope that they will grow to be the princesses
befitting daughters of a king as noble and as kind as he.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013