Where height, skin hue, and language acuity are all relative when feeling at home.
By Noel Chilton '96
At five feet two inches tall, I have been short for most of my life—a dwarf, relatively speaking, born into a family of giants. (I have an uncle who is six feet ten inches.) Not that I complained. Being short had its benefits. My elementary school teachers always seemed to overlook me when drilling the class; I always got to hit the piñata first at parties; and I was picked to play Marta when our neighbors staged The Sound of Music in their living room. And in high school, despite my short legs, I could defend myself on the soccer field, whiz around the track, and finish the cross-country course in decent time. (It was only basketball that eluded me. I ended up getting to know every splinter on the bench better than any groove on the ball.) So you can imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that I was actually, well, tall. Let me explain.
Since graduating from Middlebury, I’ve bounced around a little bit, living first in Washington, D.C., and then in San Francisco before settling in Oaxaca, Mexico. As a native of the American Southwest, I found my new home, with its humble culture and warm people, to be just that—home. Though the steamy markets with their dangling chicken heads and mangled pigs’ feet could be nauseating, I felt closer to my roots as soon as I arrived in Oaxaca. There are no cellophane or Styrofoam disguises here. And life can be hard. You must scrub and disinfect vegetables, haul rainwater for washing, and slap-pat tortillas by hand until they are round and flat.
In many ways, I have integrated into this way of life and cannot imagine ever again combing the supermarket for prepackaged poultry parts. Yet as much as I have adapted to my new home, I’m well aware of cultural differences. There’s my exotic white skin. My accented tongue. And suddenly, my distinctive height. In my little corner of the world, standing five feet two inches leaves me taller than most people I’m around.
I became acutely aware of my change in stature just the other day as I huddled with my soccer teammates during halftime of a match. As we discussed kickoffs, crosses, and through passes, I suddenly realized that my teammates’ ebony ponytails barely brushed my shoulders. I was at least half a head taller than all of them.
“Guera, with your height, you could really help us on the basketball court,” my soccer teammates had been telling me. I thought this was some sort of inside joke—good-natured ribbing of the new girl—until that one huddle. Only then did I realize how extraordinarily tall my five feet two inches had become.
Now I am hyperaware of this peculiarity of mine. I have noted the following consequences of being a tall five foot two:
- distracted store clerks hand
me my change at thigh level;
- sinks are so low they make
me feel like I’m wearing
roller skates;
- friends stand on their tiptoes to give me
the traditional kiss-on-the-cheek greeting;
- knee and shin bruises can
now be attributed to narrow
bus seats instead of everyday
clumsiness.
So yes, now it’s my turn to feel like the giant. Strangely, I’ve never felt more at home.
Noel Chilton ’96 is a writer and artist in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her work can be found at http://noelchilton.com