First Times!
Written by Dr. Rocío Nuñez Shea, Director of Graduate Studies
We probably imagine life’s “first times” as taking place in the early years. First steps, first time startled by the tartness of a lime, first time writing your name. It’s easy to overlook that so many “firsts” take place throughout our entire lives, passing by uncelebrated, or at the very least, unnoticed.
Last week, I had the pleasure of watching and even partaking in many firsts of my own on the annual graduation trip for the graduating high school seniors at the Mariposa DR Foundation.
For these nine self-proclaimed “country girls” their first time in a multi-level urban mall in the nation’s budding capital must have been an absolute wonder. The blinding fluorescent lights. The overpriced food court touting global cuisine (Americanized or Dominicanized versions of them, anyway). The hypnotic neons of the arcade. The rhythmic beats of trendy clothing stores carrying strategically torn-up jeans that cost more than many of their parents make in a week, or even a month.
Still, in typical teenage form, when asked what they thought of the mega mall, they merely shrugged. At most calling it “nice” or “OK” and saying little else about what was surely a monumental experience.
Only upon a deeper inspection– a series of comical videos on my phone of the girls “practicing” using the escalators at the mall, looking like baby deer taking their first shaky steps in the world– did it really hit me how many firsts they were actually experiencing, and how life-altering it must be.
I saw them try Chinese food for the first time in Santo Domingo’s modest Chinatown, “This weird slimy chicken is actually good! Just eat it!” Riding the metro, “This is how you get the gate to open. Swipe your card up here, not down there, tonta!” Staying at a hotel “Oh wait, you mean we aren’t allowed to take the towels home?!” And finally figuring out escalators together, “We’ve been watching other people and you have to get on the second step, not the first! Ooooohhhh!!!”
I was reminded that so many of our own “firsts” take place in the company and with the support of those we love. And these later-in-life “firsts” are no different.
What a joy to watch these young women experience so many firsts on this trip and over the last ten years at the Mariposa Foundation alongside their life-long friends. Friends who celebrate successes, and cheer you on when you’re hesitant (and poke a little fun along the way, too). No “first”--from the clumsy clutching of chopsticks, to ordering the mysterious item you’ve heard about but have never tried on the menu, to shoving your friend into the darkened history museum theater–is too small to go unacknowledged. Let us celebrate them today and always. The sisterhood the Foundation has given the girls is the ultimate gift.
Mariposa DR has brought me back to so many of the moments of delight, heartbreak, and pure wonder of my own adolescence. Among them, the “firsts.” Now no longer only shared with parents and immediate relatives, but for these girls with a wider circle of trusted girls and women who form their inner circle and with whom they will forever be bonded.
May you have many more “firsts,” girls. And may you be together for as many of them as possible.