Birthday Girl

Teachers are not supposed to have favourites, but the rules are less clear where personal tutors are concerned. Usually, I keep a friendly yet professional distance, but there’s one girl I teach who is just such a sweetie, I made an exception. She’s from a far eastern country and attends one of the smartest public schools in the area. She’s bright and keen, sensitive and humble, and it’s clear she enjoys our lessons. Last week, she turned sixteen – in the middle of the school holidays, thousands of miles away from home, and knowing this, I decide to take her a present.

At the end of our Saturday afternoon lesson, I present her with a small shiny parcel. She unwraps the turquoise paper and the pink tissue to reveal the little bracelet made from pale blue Chalcedony beads. Her jaw drops, and she quickly slips the bracelet on her wrist with a surprised yet delighted ‘Thank you!’. Then she proceeds to tell me it is her first present as she hasn’t yet told her parents what she would like. She has to wait until she returns home in the summer for her party, and on such a grey, sleety afternoon, I feel the weight of her words keenly. The gulf between Eastern and Western culture, between a sense of entitlement and a sense of duty strikes me - especially when I think of the other sixteen-year-old girl I teach, sweet but spoilt, expecting me to supply all the answers, all the grades.

As I leave, she thanks me again twice, and I do hope she genuinely likes the present and isn’t just being polite. On the way home, I worry that I may have over-stepped the line, and will incur her parents’ displeasure, but the desire to treat her, the girl whose smile betrays a sadness, the girl whose writing has moved me to tears, the girl whose candour and lack of self-belief remind me so much of my own young self, was strong and true. And I do not regret it.