A Diamond in Dorchester 2

I met a young girl waiting on the bus in Dorchester to go to Fields Corner. (Some mornings I do the 20 minute walk down to Fields Corner but not this morning.  I’m glad I didn’t or I would have missed meeting Diamond.) brought the sun out on a chilly day.  She was so personable and bubbly.  The conversation started when she told me and another woman standing there, that we’d missed a bus.  She’d forgotten her bus pas, ran home to get it and saw the bus going down Adams Street on her way back. 

In between crunches of the cereal she was munching from a plastic bag, I learned that she was in 6th grade, where she goes to school, that she’d made all A’s on her recent report card, that she was interested in acting and would probably audition for the Boston Arts Academy but then, again, her brother was waiting to hear from Latin School – he’d done well on the entrance exam – and one of her teacher’s thought she should take the test for Latin, too.

All of this info was delivered in a quick-torrent-of-words.  Then she’d stop, take a breath, munch more cereal and begin talking again.

“Oh, you like to read like my mother,” she said, taking note of the book I was carrying.  (I usually read on the bus but not this morning with such an engaging conversation going on.)  Somehow that got us into a discussion of Kindle readers – which she’d never heard of.  I described them to her.  “Oh,” she said.  (She punctuates her conversation with “oh’s.”) Then the conversation went off in another direction.

I learned:

• that we are near neighbors…she lives only a few houses away.


• that her cousin’s birthday is on Christmas Eve. 


• that she used to know how to crochet and wants to learn again.  (I told her I could teach her again, if her mother would allow me to.)

I wrote my name, # and email down and told her to give it to her mother to see if she might be able to come to my house when my niece, Naz, comes to visit.  I think they would get along being near the same age.

I asked her if she was going trick-or-treating on Halloween or if she “too old” for that stuff.  “Oh, No!” she exclaimed.  “I’m not too, old.  I love to dress up.”  I made her promise to stop by my house – I always have candy and the lights turned on although each year the trick-or-treaters are fewer and far-between.  Most of them seem to stay on Adams Street or go over to Melville Park which is deluged with droves of kids – some of whom are dropped off by vans.

Her name is Diamond.  I also have a friend, Diamond, who lives in Charlotte, N.C.  I see the southern Diamond and her brother whenever I visit Charlotte.  (Happens that I crocheted a shawl for her in her favorite color, purple, and sent it to her in the summer.)

I hope I have made a new friend in Dorchester’s Diamond.  I am glad she wasn’t so cautious about “not talking to strangers” that she didn’t talk to me.*  I would have missed out on meeting a joyous young girl, clearly being loved and cared for and optimistic about the world.  Children need all the caring and principled adults in their lives that they can get.  I hope I am able to become part of her village.

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If you like this post, you’ll also like, “I Love Walking in Dorchester.”

(*Although she did give out TMI.  I’ll have to caution her about that.)