“If you are always trying to be normal
you will never know how amazing you can be.”
Maya Angelou*
“Life can only be understood backward;
but it must be lived forwards.”
Soren Kierkegarrd*
Life is filled with contradictions. Last week I was filled with despair because I felt I did not live up to certain alumnae expectations. Of course, by the time I finished writing my sob-story, the despair was gone. Just putting the words on paper gave my thoughts structure and evaporated anxiety’s power it held when flying around my brain hitting this nerve or that sore spot.
Today’s quotes put that angst and recovery in perspective. I am not and never will be normal, whatever that is. Only by looking back can I understand how amazing graduating college at age 47 was.
I began my life by being born with a full head of bright red hair on Valentine’s Day. That put me in the not-normal category before I had done anything more interesting than burp. Since my mother had brown hair and my father had white/blonde hair the predominant question the rest of my childhood was, “Where did she get that red hair?” The naturally related comment was, “Oh, you have so many freckles!” All this was happening when my goal was to get a tan like normal people. Covering up at the beach when everyone else was stretched out in the sand was misery.
The next thing that not-normal thing that happened was my making the honor roll every year until I quit trying. My parents were children of the Depression. School was not high on many parents’ priority list – food and work were the top issues. My parents did not lack intellectual ability, they just lacked education. So the second question was, “How did she get so smart?” I was proud of being smart, but tired of the insinuations that my parents were dumb. Even I thought they were dumb until I was old enough to look back and saw how much they had accomplished.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I was not considered normal by most adults or classmates. How I longed to be like everyone else. I’ll just say that feeling alienated led me to make some “stupid” mistakes that led to gifts like my children, travel, library cards in many locations and unusual experiences.
Now that I’ve reached the mature age of 25 and have four great-grandchildren, the “other blonde” has softened the red in my hair. People are now aware of skin-cancer and the need to cover-up. So I look more normal. Thanks to public information and television shows like “Scorpion” and “Big Bang Theory” about people who have IQs much higher than mine, I’m considered normal, though an usually young great-grandmother.
Now I can look backward and understand that I’ve had an amazing life and have an amazing future to contemplate. What more can I ask of life? I thank Universal Energy for all the experiences that brought me to where I am today, even though they seemed difficult at the time.
And, so it is.
© by Sharon D. Dillon, May 11, 2015
*Both quotes are from “Inspiration, 5-7-15 Defy Ordinary” by Pamela Harper, http://www.pamelaharper.com
Sharon D. Dillon, energywriter@cox.net, http://energywriter.me “Laugh your way to peace, love and joy”
Chesapeake Bay Writers, Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop, Southern Humorists, National Society of Newspaper Columnists
Author of “Twins! Oh no!,” one of 14 stories in The Book of Mom: Reflections of Motherhood with Love, Hope and Faith, published by booksyoucantrust.com. Available in print and e-format at Amazon.com
Laugh your way to peace, love and joy 