Mary Louise Fulton's mother stayed in bed all day while Mary Louise was at school. She was a beautiful woman, everyone said, as though her beauty might, after all, have sustained and heartened her. But I didn't think that, growing up. I felt, as perhaps all children do, that we were the ones who were different. Dick who never picked on little kids, Jane with her clean white socks, sunny Sally, even the cheerful, housebroken Spot.
Diversity is both our reality and our hope.
Shields is a writer in London who won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Inc. All Rights Reserved.