A quote: “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”~~ Anne Lamott
I’ll start with a story …
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Supper was over and Carwyn had disappeared. Again. I sighed “teenagers!”
But she had cleaned up the dishes and made the kitchen right, so who was I to fuss?
Just her mother.
I felt Virgil come up from behind and wind his arms around my waist. “Don’t grumble so. Girl needs her alone time, and she’s always had a mind to be by herself from time to time.”
I turned within his arms to face him, reaching up to hug his neck, “She’s just my youngest and her big brothers have all moved out to start their lives,” I smiled, “We’re all alone. Whatever will we find to do?”
Carwyn was washing up after morning chores while I got breakfast on the table. “Tell me about grandma again.”
Virgil paused as he stepped into the kitchen glancing at me, “Well, shortstuff, I’m sure you remember her and we’ve told you that your great grandfather found her at the edge of the Territories when his posse found a burned-out camp. All her people were dead and he figured she was about 3 or 4 years old. He took her home, and raised her with his own.”
“And after? When she grew up?”
I was confused, “You know, dear. She married grandpa, had Uncle Josh and me. She had a special talent as a midwife, too.” A memory of Mom when I was struggling giving birth with my first. Her calm manner, laying cool hands that seemed to soothe the pain into the background, and her eyes …
Carwyn went out to the porch and brought back a small basket, uncovering it to reveal a redwing songbird. Poor thing, it was obvious its wing was broken.
“Found him out in the pasture, the cat stalking him,” she reached into the basket, gently cradling the bird in her hands. She stepped to the door, opened her hands and the bird perked up. Standing, taking one look around, and flying away perfectly healed.
She looked back at us, her eyes showed a solid silver, soon starting to fade back to her pale blue. Just like my mom’s.
“Please. Tell me more.”
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license.
From the time she started school, Corrine had a problem fitting in. In an earlier age, she would’ve been called a changeling, and sometimes it really did seem like she could hear the horns of Elfland. If adults insisted she engage in group play, she would, but she clearly treated it as a job to do until she could get out of it. She needed to go to the bathroom — and when she was done, she wouldn’t rejoin the group unless an adult guided her back. She was tired and wanted to sit down for “a while” that lasted until she could slip away.
She never outright refused, but she had as many excuses for avoiding group activities as the day was long. Nobody was overtly hostile to her, unlike the bullies who had make my K-12 years a living hell. But all the other children seemed to reciprocate her attitude and regard including her as a job that had to be done, but one they wouldn’t put any great effort into. If she worked her way to the edge of the group and wandered off, nobody would go and urge her to rejoin their game.
When the teachers expressed their concerns to us, they could never actually identify any actual problem. No, she wasn’t fighting or arguing with the other children, or doing anything else objectionable. She just didn’t seem motivated to be part of a group, and when required to participate in group play, she’d make no more than a minimal effort.
All our talks with her went the same way. She clearly viewed group activities as work to be done, and wasn’t interested in seeking them out. Fun was me time, not we time.
She was in fifth grade when the Institute people came to visit and talk about telepathy. Most of us knew how important telepaths had been in the Energy Wars, especially as interrogators, but also in rescue work after Skyfall and the Great Outrage. However, most of us were under the impression that psi was the result of those secret Cold War experiments with feline DNA, so our children couldn’t possibly be affected.
However, it turns out that there’s always been a certain baseline amount of psi genes in the human population. The Second Sight that your Scottish grandmother talked about wasn’t necessarily flummery or just perceptiveness. And Corrine had just enough that she really did feel like she was living in two worlds at once — and it made group play sufficiently less rewarding that she had no motivation to seek it out.
Her psi wasn’t so strong that she needed to go out to the training center at their headquarters. However, they encouraged us to enroll her in classes with their local chapters, so she could understand and manage it.
Corrine’s never going to be a social butterfly. Socializing is never going to be recreation for her. But she can be a team player when she needs to be, and at the same time, she’s never going to get into the stupid scrapes teenagers get into trying to fit in with the crowd.
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