Off Centre...
Who knows how things begin. We all, whether rich or poor, smart or dumb pretty much start into the world the same way... some enter flawlessly, catawauling their arrival. Some pop out of their mother's womb like the nursery rhyme black birds sliced open from the Kings pie.
Being the last of four kids, my existence came just slightly off centre. Born on January 3rd... I missed the hulabaloo of being the New Year's baby by just two days. Not that my parents would've won anything like a station wagon to cart their offspring around in, or even six months of diaper service... but maybe their little girl would've had her name strewn across the front page of the Free Press -- a beginning to a life of who-knows-what.
And so it was... the little girl grew up, just outside of town... the country "Beaver Bus Line" ran once every hour... and if you missed it, you were stuck. I'm sure it is for that reason, I'm either on time or just a bit early everywhere I go. My hair was red, this, in the day when red was known as 'carrot top' or 'rusty'... who knew being a 'ginger' was going to be so smittened -- some thirty years later. My peace was made with my hair when finally referred to as 'Strawberry Blonde'... AT LAST my life would change course and I'd have fun - as all blondes do!
From then on, be it consciously or not, I decided to stand to the side. I adopted for myself a world where it didn't matter if you had a learning disability and couldn't capture arithmetic like everyone else. How many times in high school, had I excitedly started cutting out a sewing pattern, only to have it sit in a pile because I coudn't figure out how it was supposed to be put together. I wouldn't wear an apron anyway!
I developed an affinity to nature. Birds, and wildlife, dogs, cats, drawn by an invisible thread of recognition. How effortless it was to learn about the things I loved. This invisible acceptation of the world around me. Lying in an open field hearing the distant lyrical song of a Meadowlark is still one of my favorite things to do.
Not that I don't love people -- I do! In fact, because of my out-of-the-limelight life, I spend my days with people who are no longer viewed as viable. The aged have, in society's eyes been drained of their feasibility, waiting no less for their number to be called. Our culture misses the light that peers out of clouded eyes. A soul, after so many tried and true years, that can still cajole, is a life well lived.
The people I love, know of my quirky ways -- some admired, others not.
I've discovered that the off-centred life won't bring fame or fortune (drat!), but offers others the chance to see their own life in a different way.
-j-
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