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http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/
I Remember When You Wanted Lemon Trees and Graveyards
My middle daughter, Shelby, has always been a wonderfully quirky child. She was a colicy baby, but she would stop crying if someone turned on a vacuum cleaner. In those days we just left the vacuum cleaner running all the time. It was like white noise on heroin. Visitors would stare and sometimes point at the vacuum cleaner running in the corner. I lost the ability to hear it and would forget that it was on. The silence that fell over the room when I shut it off was deafening.And so it came to pass that when the kids returned to school after Christmas break, Shelby was running her own black market candy store out of her jacket.
At age two she started eating lemons at restaurants. She would stretch out her arm toward your iced tea, opening and closing her hand until you gave her your lemon wedge. Then, as friends and family watched in amazement, she would devour it rind and all with scarcely a pucker.
At age four she lived in a dream world of her own making. She would gather all of her beloved toy animals and Disney characters into her room and close the door. If we tried to peek inside she would politely but firmly ask us to leave.
At age five she became obsessed with death and dying. It was like living with a miniature Woody Allen. She begged to be taken to cemeteries where we would walk around and read headstones together. She became concerned that she might end up as a mummy and be put on display in a museum. She wondered if a meteor might end life on earth the way it did long ago in the days of the dinosaurs.
At age six all of her fears caught up with her and her life began to unravel. She was afraid of bridges, both to walk under them and to drive over them. She was afraid of heights, death, illness, rides at amusement parks, disease, pestilence, plagues, car crashes, swings, and that her father would be arrested for watering the lawn on the wrong day during a drought. A play therapist helped settle her down just before Jeanene and I lost our minds.
When she was eight I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. She thought for a moment and then said she wanted her very own lemon tree. She said she didn’t know any kids who had their own fruit trees, and anyway she had always loved lemons. It was an odd request but one easily granted. Her lemon tree lives in a pot on our back porch even now.
At ten we lived through a nightmare. We moved, and she had to go to a new school. A gang of girls in her class decided that Shelby was weird and chose her to be the object of their ridicule. She felt ill many mornings and wanted to stay home. Seeing her sad but brave face when I dropped her off at school broke my heart over and over. But she was strong, and she told me that she was going to be herself no matter what anyone said. By the end of the year, she won over some enemies and managed to make a place for herself in the treacherous and slippery world of 5th grade society.
And now she is twelve. In November she came to me and told me what she wanted for Christmas.
“I want a black leather jacket, only it doesn’t have to be real leather or anything. Fake is fine. Nothing expensive. I want to hang stuff from the inside of the jacket and sell it in the halls of school, like they do on TV. I think that’s cool. I want to go up to a kid and say, ‘Hey Mike…can I call you Mike? Mike, do you LIKE candy?’ And then I’ll open my jacket and have all this candy hanging in there.”
Somehow this child keeps finding ways to surprise me. Actually, I was pleased that she was working out the dialogue in her mind ahead of time. I may have a budding writer here.
Her older sister found a fake leather jacket in a used store, sewed strips of Velcro inside it, and gave it to her for Christmas, receiving a thrilled hug in return. She gave Shelby advice on being discreet and avoiding teachers in the halls. I was worried that she might get expelled, but I decided that I didn’t care. It’s worth it, if only so she will have this story to tell for the rest of her life.
And so it came to pass that when the kids returned to school after Christmas break, Shelby was running her own black market candy store out of her jacket.
She was a smash hit at school, so I hear. Everyone was talking about the girl in the black jacket who sells candy in between classes. The first day she gave most of the candy away, bringing home ten cents. The second day she made a $1.50, but lost it while changing in the locker room. But it was never about the money. It was the idea of it that thrilled Shelby, like the idea of having your own lemon tree. And she managed to make a place for herself in the scary world of Middle School. Even some of the cool kids gave her that nod that says, “You’re okay.” A person can build a Middle School reputation for themselves having pulled off something like this just once.
Shelby is entering the dark tunnel of adolescence. And she is asking all the questions that everyone asks when they get sucked into the darkness of this season of life.
“Who am I?”
“Where do I fit in?”
“Am I okay the way I am?”
Sadly, the answers being traded inside the tunnel are not always the best ones. A lot of good kids get chewed up in there. Some never find good answers and spend their whole lives searching.
I’ve been through the tunnel experience with the first sister, and I will go through it again with the third. There isn’t much I can do but hug her and be waiting when she emerges in a few years, blinking in the bright sunshine.
And I WILL be waiting for you, Shelby. You have always been my string of pearls, and I will be there when you come out and resume your love affair with lemon trees and graveyards. And when you are ready to hear me, I have the answer to your questions. I know the answer because I have journeyed to the secret places of the world and found wisdom.
Here is the answer you seek:
You have always been okay, even from the beginning.
So VERY okay.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
RLP
Real Live Preacher. Com
