"Ballet Slipper Pink" by Kate Dilworth (Oxford County Winner)
My grandparents had three sons, my father being the oldest. My father was thirty-one when he met my mother, who was twenty-six at the time. Nine years later, they got married and had me. When I was five, I couldn’t wait to turn seven, and at seven I couldn’t wait to turn ten. I couldn’t wait to grow up. At five, I couldn’t understand the concept of death. I knew my parents would never leave me, and I would always go to sleep in my ballet-slipper pink room, with my parents asleep just on the other side of the wall. My parents would never leave me; they would always be just beyond the pink.
As my wish came true and I turned fifteen, I realized that not only had I grown up but so had my parents. Over the ten years of wishing for maturity, my parents’ skin wrinkled and their jet-black hair became sprinkled with salt. One day, my mother would have me sit down next to her on the guest bed of my grandparents’ house two days after Christmas. Then she would ever so calmly tell me my father had prostate cancer. But it was so small I shouldn’t have to worry. He would stay on top of it.
I had been to countless funerals. Death was simply something that happened. I would put on a nice dress, ride in a silent car with my parents, and sit in a still church. The priest would say a few words, and the family would read their tear-stained speeches about their husband, brother, or son. Yet I had never been to the funeral of someone I truly knew; I couldn’t mourn the hole in my heart if it was never there to begin with.
At sixteen I am sitting on the couch two weeks before the start of junior year. My father sits next to me. When I look at his face, I notice something. I have his eyes, his nose, and the same straight black hair. I spent my entire life viewing him as immortal, believing the never-ending fire in his brain would never burn out. It’s what made him my father. Now though, he has to have surgery; they have to remove the prostate before the cancer spreads further. I remember the moment. I remember hearing only pure silence. I remember the feeling of my mother watching and listening from the kitchen island, my father’s face, his eyes, my eyes, our eyes looking at me, waiting for a reaction. I saw my parents as regular men and women, and I, the perfect mix of both.
I went to bed that night in my room, the one next to my parents, but my ballet-slipper pink walls were painted white.
Kate Dilworth, an eleventh grader at Hebron Academy, wrote “Ballet-Slipper Pink” about the experience that made her realize her childhood was over via the action of painting over her pink bedroom walls. Kate writes about her relationship with her parents and her emotions about leaving her childhood behind.