I often feel like I don’t belong on this planet. Things other people consider normal boggle my mind, and I notice it being boggled even more as I get older. Things like conformity, structure, closed-mindedness. Eating animals – which only really started to affect me a couple of years ago – and which I am vowing to discontinue (watch your dog have jaw surgery after someone has broken her face and see if you look at chicken legs the same again). Hating other people because their skin color, sexual orientation or nationality is different from yours. Thinking your religion is the one and only answer, like God (or whomever) would really be that exclusive. Walking away from someone without explanation or at least saying goodbye.
I had a little moment of sad because someone I want to believe in didn’t care enough to wish me a happy birthday, and it was my 45th, and he’s known me forever. I want to believe he forgot, but I know he didn’t, and I want to believe his own life is in such a state of flux that the one or two sentences of email he has sent my way are the best he can do. But I know better. And both of those would be bullshit excuses anyway, and I’m too intuitive and realistic to buy that even when I’m selling it to myself. Sometimes the reality is that I take too long to let go, but I’m learning. Some people, sometimes, just don’t have it to give.
Which is why I was caught totally off guard while out walking tonight, when the little girl on the corner opened her gate and came running across the street to see me. We’ve never met, though we’ve smiled at each other in passing, and I assumed she was coming to pet my dogs. Because I saw her steal a look or two back at her open front door, I knew she was sneaking out. I opened my mouth to play the adult and admonish her for leaving the yard without permission, but before I could say anything, she extended her hand and placed in my own two flowers from her garden. She smiled at me, ran back into her yard, shut the gate behind her, disappeared from view. She never said a word.
Some people, sometimes, have it to give.
Flowers From the Kid on the Corner