Defining Moments

I read Alyson’s blog on Sunday. It touched me. Completely.

I think we all have those defining moments in our lives. Moments. Not one, but many, when we see ourselves, our most true selves without the fog or haze that often obscures the real us.

I’ve had a few of those. Mine, likely, are not as profound as Alyson’s, or maybe I just can’t express them so eloquently. Nevertheless, they exist, and I’ll never forget them.

In eighth grade my mother enrolled me in a summer program for gifted learners. Essentially, it amounted to a few weeks of exploring my interests with a bunch of other gifted kids at a nearby university. I got to pick several activities/classes that appealed to me and then spent a few hours every day of the program doing each of them.

I’m not sure what all I took. Hell, I was fourteen, coming out of the most miserable experience of my life – middle school – and like most fourteen year olds, I was self-conscious and self-absorbed.

However, I do remember one class. Over a score of years later, I remember one class.

Yes. It was a creative writing class. However, I was already so filled with doubt about my real self that it took awhile to tap that creativity.

You see, I went to a small country school. I never went to any other school. I started kindergarten in a class of thirty and graduated thirteen years later just a few blocks away in a class of fewer than one-hundred, with over twenty of those same kindergarteners walking the stage with me.

Some might find that nice or quaint. I found it stifling. In the years since, the past five in particular, my mother has lamented that she didn’t find a way to send me to school fifteen miles away, to a much bigger high school in a bigger city where I could have found others like me.

It still sounds self-absorbed, doesn’t it? Well, if so, let me explain.

My mom had no idea I was really gifted until near the end of my high school career when she volunteered me for an IQ test. Yes, I qualified and was recommended for programs like the one at the university, but she just thought I was a hard worker. Anyway, one of her friends had to give the IQ test to a volunteer and score it order to complete the requirements for a course to get her school guidance counselor certificate.

Being the nice, people-pleasing girl I was, I sat for several hours and answered questions.

No one ever told me my IQ. Frankly, it’s just a number, so no big deal. I think my mother was probably wise not to tell me. You see, by this point, it had become achingly clear that I was different. So I tried very hard to blend. There weren’t any other gifted girls in my class. Years later, after studying giftedness for a completely different reason, I feel confident in that statement. I also felt exactly like the ugly duckling, but had no idea why.

Different is something teenagers are very astute at noticing, and to a teenager different is not necessarily good. Blending in became the challenge of the day, everyday. Trig was easy. Shakespeare was a snap. Yearbook layouts only took minutes. Blending in … total concentration.

I had a few good guy friends in high school, but no girlfriends, just people I sat with in class and chatted with as we passed in the halls. To a casual observer, I might have appeared okay. The lack of friends wasn’t from lack of effort on my part. They just didn’t get me and I didn’t really get them.

I went to college, not afraid that I wouldn’t succeed in the classroom, but afraid I wouldn’t make friends. Lucky for me, my own people skills improved with age, and college is a much bigger fish bowl.

Ah, but back to that gifted camp at the end of eighth grade and my creative writing class…

The teacher for that particular workshop handed me a book and asked me to read it one night to get ideas and then bring it back the next day.

It didn’t give me any story ideas, but it gave me life ideas. I think that teacher was very wise.

She handed me Jonathon Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach. Do you know the story?

In its simplest form the book is the story of a seagull that is different. He doesn’t fit in. His interests and talents and perspectives are so different from that of the other gulls that he is essentially exiled. However, through the guidance of an intuitive teacher, Jonathan discovers that different is good and that his gifts were amazing and that some gulls are just called to live a different life.

I identified with Jonathon – every page spoke a truth to me that I’d never before heard.

I bought my own copy of the book that summer. That very same copy is part of my sacred space.

Since then I’ve been on a journey unique to me. And while I learned to blend in enough to not get the shit kicked out of me every time I turned around, I never felt the need to compromise my own true being.

Of course I’ve faltered along the way, but never so much that my true self didn’t call me back.

I didn’t write fiction for a long time. The lure of success and overachievement in a world and career where those things came fairly easy didn't allow room for ... uh ... less purposeful pursuits. However, I’ve never known a time when I wasn’t trying to learn something I didn’t know because, like Jonathan, the learning speaks to me.

Now my path has led me back to the one thing that fourteen year old girl wanted to do – write. The Jonathan in me is having a ball. Big learning curves are his thing.

And me….well, that defining moment gave me courage for a lifetime of risk-taking. But this chance, this chance to write, I can't risk NOT taking it.

“…you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way..” Richard Bach, Jonathon Livingston Seagull

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