What were you like a little girl once?

Another little descriptive essay for English Proficiency.

A Childhood Photo

I am supposed to write a descriptive essay for my English assignment based on a picture of someone. Flipping through the family albums, there is not one that strikes me or inspires me to write an essay about it. Then, I remember one photo. I rummage through a bureau and fish out a framed photo of a little girl at her kindergarten ‘convocation’.

This little girl in the past looks very different than her older self in the present. Her bean-shaped eyes are not identical – the right eye has a double lid and the left a single lid, framed by bushy brows. Though she does not have the high forehead that characteristically connotes intelligence, her eyes are bright and sharp. The button nose is adorable, but there is a hint of mischief and pigheadedness in it. Her mouth is taut with the slightest hint of an attempt to smile. The little girl’s complexion is blemish-free except for a little mark above her right eyebrow. A scratch? A mosquito bite? Her jet-black hair is tied back but wispy strands of stray hair have escaped the scrunchie to frame her heart-shaped face.

She is wearing a graduation robe, black with red and white stripes that form an angular U shape at the top half of the robe from shoulder to shoulder. The maroon collar is part of her kindergarten uniform that she is wearing underneath the robe. On her head perched a mortarboard, its red strings on the right side that denotes graduation. Her hands stiffly clasp her kindergarten ‘diploma’, but it’s probably just some rolled-up white paper tied with a red ribbon. The colourful background is actually the wall of the kindergarten. I believe somewhere on that wall there, among many pictures of trees, animals and fairies, was Snow White.

I could be describing any girl’s kindergarten graduation photo, but this photo is an image of the past and the future. Hopefully, in two years’ time I shall be like this little girl, wearing my graduation robe at my university convocation, stiffly posing with my degree but perhaps, giving a wider and more heartfelt smile than this one.