You have to understand first that I was a doll. Not personality-wise. Literally. My mother dressed me like something that should be kept on a shelf, ribbons matching socks matching whatever else could be made to match. I left the house every day looking like a gift somebody wrapped. This matters to the story.
I was in kindergarten, and it was sports day, and my father came to watch me run. If you grew up Jamaican you know that sports day is not a small thing. Sports day is the Olympics with a tuck shop, and a parent showing up in the middle of a work day to watch you specifically was a big, big deal. My little chest was so full of pride I could barely breathe around it.
And I had new sneakers. Brand new. White as church. The kind of shoes a child looks at more than the road ahead.
The race started, and I have to be honest with you the way I am honest with everybody: I could not run to save my life. Whatever gear the other children had found, I did not have it. Within seconds I was dead last, not even losing gracefully, just losing thoroughly, in front of my father, in my beautiful new shoes.
And somewhere in the middle of that race, little five-year-old me did the math that some grown people never do. The problem was not my legs. The problem was the shoes. Every child in that race had spent their whole life running barefoot, on grass, on dirt, on the hot road. Barefoot was our natural state. These stiff new sneakers were a costume, and I was losing a race in a costume.
So I stopped. In the middle of the race, in front of everybody, I stopped, took off the sneakers, and left them right there on the grass like a snake leaving its old skin. And then I ran.
Mi dear, I ran. Whatever was missing before, the ground gave it back to me. I passed one child, then another, then all of them, and I crossed that line first, barefoot, ribbons flying, with my beautiful shoes sitting back down the track where I had abandoned them. My father was so proud. Doll wins race. Shoes finish last.
I have been thinking about that race my whole life, because it keeps coming back around in bigger costumes. The job that looked right and fit wrong. The plan everybody approved of that could not move me forward one inch. Again and again, the same little lesson from sports day: sometimes the thing slowing you down is the exact thing you were proudest to put on. And you cannot win your race until you are willing to stop, in front of everybody, and take it off.
Let go of what looks good. Hold on to what works. A five-year-old in St. Mary figured that out before the finish line, and I have been trying to stay as smart as her ever since.