Stories

I’ve been trying to get her to tell me more about my past, to make sense of things, while there’s still time. She’s 74, and she’s the only one who *knows* all those things about me.

I said something about that to her this morning (omitting, of course, the part about her being 74 – that was, of course, implied, and didn’t need to be said. Apparently.)

When we talked a few weeks back and I was saying something about how hard it was, and *is*, for me to find people that I related to, she said something like, “Yes, I knew that when you were a little girl.” Or, possibly, “I could see that when you were a little girl.” Something to that effect.

Anyway, today I asked her about it. She resisted, at first, fearing further recriminations from me about some *further* way in which she and dad had failed me.

But I got her to talk about it.

“You were so bright, and I went to all kinds of meetings at the school to try to see what to do with you,” she said.

I asked her how she knew I was so bright.

She said, as if it was obvious, “You were speaking in full paragraphs – with a southern drawl! – at the age of two!” (We lived down south for a while, right about when I started talking.)

“Dad was afraid you’d be like these two neighbor girls who still wouldn’t leave their mother’s house at the age of twenty,” she said.

“Why did he think *that*??” I asked, incredulous.

“Well, you were so quiet – so self-contained, and reserved. And you were so completely unaggressive. We talked about it a lot, and we decided it would be better if you were around ordinary kids, rather than being in some kind of special school.”

“Ok, mom, I’m going to try to say this in a way that isn’t intended to make you feel bad – you’ve made it clear that you tried your best, and that dad was very young and inexperienced.”

“But I just want you to know, from the perspective of 40-some years later? I would have been *way* better off to have kids like me as friends. I would have felt *way* less isolated. I was a very lonely child, you know.”

“I know,” she said.