Team Gray!

An enigma wrapped in a riddle.

First let it be said that though I picked the name Ayanna, I found myself in the delivery room wondering how to spell it. I accepted the convention that it was ‘Ayanna,’ but probably would have preferred just one ‘n,’ which is why I often spell it Yani. Then, there’s the Xay spelling, Yone, and the various nicknames, including Yannis. They all refer to the same child, and life is enriched with her around.

Yani loves and thrives on structure, so I’m trying to provide enough for her. She wakes up to color-coded chore lists and schedules of when she’s to do which chore. Then the day stretches before her and she is constantly striving to wring as much creativity out of each day as she can. Today (7/12/04) she got started early. During her first chore, taking the clean clothes upstairs and sorting and putting hers away, she decided to dress Joy in a strange costume.

“Why does Joy have a leaf on her head?” I asked when I saw a plastic green leaf under a red bandana on Joy’s head.
“She was climbing trees,” Yani explains matter-of-factly.

“Why is she wearing a bandana?”

Yani grows exasperated with her unimaginative mother. “Because she’s a pirate, mommy!”

This, of course makes Mani want to be a pirate, too, which throws the chore list off, because she’s supposed to be helping Xay to sort the dirty clothes for today and bring them downstairs for washing. Yanni prevailed; Mani got duded up as a pirate, and I, after showing her the chore list, and explaining that Joy already did her part in the laundry, cajoled a sobbing Mani (she wanted a water gun with her costume, NOW) into doing her job.

Princess Yanni strikes again.

It seems so long ago that she first started referring to herself as princess. What birthday party was that? 10? I think so. Princess Yanni invited a large group of girls to come to the party dressed in princess dresses. Despite the fact that she’d had a swim meet earlier that day, Yanni ruled the day in this custom-made just for the party, beautiful purple gown with a matching double-coned hat.

She wore that dress until it was painfully tight in the bust.

Yanni lives in bold strokes. She seems a wisp of a girl: tall, very thin, embarrassingly shy at times, with a very light touch. Then she comes out in a blue wig. Or a pink one. She also has a couple black wigs, too. And a red cape. And a black cape. And a purple cheerleading outfit that says Carver Lab in green letters.

She hates to be called Ghetto Fabulous, but will wear as many animal prints that she can get her hands on all at the same time. She was so desperate to get animal print that she sewed small cheetah print scraps to the bottom of her flairs.

Back when Yanni was around 2, I left her alone with her father, and came home to find her dressed in a gold swim suit with white lace tights. Her daddy still says she looked cute like that. [ed: she did...]

Then there’s the tiaras. Princess Yani has a collection of them. Her first one, plastic with fake diamonds and turquoise gems seemed like a treasure to a young visitor named Katrina Mom one summer.

Reluctantly, Ayanna gave it to her. A few days later, she received a beautiful handmade thank you card. The next year, Katrina was killed in a tragic accident. Her mother gave Yani a picture of Katrina, her little sister, Liesl, and Yani playing dress-up together.

She has a Cinderella side, too. Many of Yani’s days are spent doing chores and watching her younger siblings. We’re working on the Cinderella attitude—you know, singing while she works, cheerful disposition. . . she is only 12. ½.

Back to the pirate scenario. Mani goes upstairs to do the chore I told her, and returns in the blue wig. Yani is wearing the long, black one.

That’s the same black wig she wore to choir rehearsal one night. Before she joined the Youth Choir, Yani used to go to choir rehearsal with me just to watch us sing. Charles Laster, the music minister at that time, came up to me and asked what was up with my daughter. I told him she just liked to come watch rehearsal. “That’s ok, right?”

“No, I mean, what’s up with her head?”

I’m used to the wigs. I thought he was talking about her new leopard print hat at first, but then remembered the wig.
“She likes to wear wigs.”

He cracked up. He even went down there to tease her about the wig.

“Don’t you mess with my daughter!” I called after him.

He didn’t say anything nasty, she assures me, but she did end up taking off the wig.

Personally, I would be too embarrassed to go out in public wearing those wigs, but I think it is cool that Yani wears them. I kind of get to live through her—this tall, thin, gorgeous girl not too afraid to be different. Like a princess.album_001/IMG_4561.JPG