A Voice For Animals

27 APRIL 2020 BLOG 5 BOOK OF SONGS AUTHOR’S 2ND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

27 APRIL 2020 BLOG 5

Mélina asked herself one day “Who am I?”. Mélina was the only person in Song village who was half girl and half boy. Mélina was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Melody’s. All the other parents in Song village had children who were either a girl or a boy, and not both at the same time.

            Mélina went to school with all the other kids in Song village. Mélina is 12 years old. Some days, she refers to self as “her” or “she” or “his” or “he”. Some days, Mélina looks at herself in the mirror to see a boy reflected back at her, and sometimes a girl reflected back at him. Her friends nicknamed her Carrot, because of her long ginger hair. Everyone thought he was very handsome. They said that he smiled with her large brown eyes.

            One day, Mrs. Opera, the teacher, asked her students to write a story. The writing assignment was “Who Am I?”. This was the first school assignment of the first week of school. The written assignment was due the last week of the school season. The students would be required to stand in front of the class and read their story to the other students.

            Mrs. Opera gave a yellow journal to each of the students for them to write their story. The students stared at the journal. “Please write your name on the front cover of the journal”, instructed Mrs. Opera. The students did as they had been instructed.

            Mélina took her favourite orange pen from her pencil case. He wrote HONEY on the front cover. On her 10th birthday, his parents told Mélina how he got his name. Mr. Melody is Greek and Mrs. Melody is French.

“Twelve years ago, your mother and I were sitting under a tree,” said Mr. Melody.  “You were in Mama’s belly. We spent the afternoon talking about the name we would give you. Mama looked up at the tree. She stared at a beehive. “Miel.” she said. We will name our baby “Miel”. Miel is French for honey and a good name for either a girl or a boy. I looked up at the beehive. “Méli!” I replied. “Méli” is Greek for honey. And together we said the name Mélina. We made an excellent choice since you are both girl and boy.”