Mermaids

A few months back I had a close friend say I reminded her of a mermaid. The comment has stuck with me in a way that has been haunting my dreams and waking reflection.

I have often, let's be honest here, my whole life, felt out of water. I have felt like an alien on a strange planet. I don't understand people. I don't understand the way they think, act, or do the things the so many call "normal". None of it makes sense to me immediately, so I observe.

Like a mermaid, I sometimes long to have legs and walk with them, like a normal person. Sometimes I have a deep longing for the ocean, to find more people like me that "swim".  Caught on dry land with fins and gills.

Growing up I dealt with everyone thinking I was a freak. I was a prodigy, a writer/poet, that instinctively knew how to turn a phrase and make an artful metaphor.

Now, understand that I am not really saying I am a mermaid. It is a metaphor. I have to state this disclosure because in the past I have been accused of being crazy for using metaphors or story telling.

But what I am saying, is that life is hard. Maybe it is harder for quirky people with poor social skills? I don't know. What I do know it that it is really hard to thrive out of water. It took time, growing up some.

I recently read an article about child prodigies and how as adults they fade and flop and struggle. The article, to sum it up, says that they are all intuition and that early success comes so easy to them that they never learn to actually master the craft or work to improve. I could not find the article but this one says similar things.

Yes. That. I flowed through writing classes and to this day I still don't know how many syllables in a haiku- I have to look it up. I have no idea what kind of verse Shakespeare used. I graduated with a degree in creative writing and published poetry and I should know these things! I should have studied them, paid attention, mastered the craft. Instead, I just walked away from it.

So now, I feel like I am drowning. I feel like I am not very good at any of it. I feel like Garth Brooks- a country music super star who's passion was really rock and roll. I'm good at making pork and farming- but that's not really what I want to be good at. That's not what I want to do. I am paddling upstream in murky alligator snapping turtle infested muck, my own insecurities and incompetence like a bag of cannon balls weighted and tied to my legs.

I have to make peace with that. For right now, I have to make this swamp and mire my home. I have to make friends with those beasts in the river, my tail, and either drown or emerge queen of the swamp.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays From the Stamps Kids

A Foot Deep With Two Days Left

We got 8 inched of snow, though Chad says less. That's not the foot deep I am referring to in the title of this post. I am so, so intensely deep into just surviving my own emotions this season.

A Midwestern storm blew in just as our family cow went down and refuses or cannot get up. I spent 4 hours in the freezing rain pulling and pushing, running a quarter mile back and forth to the house checking on the kids and trying to make dinner then back to Rosie. The sheep are in heat and the ram was feeling aggressive. I got the truck in the pasture and felt like I broke the fence trying to get it there and keep all the sheep from escaping led by the llama. I did it though, facing the truck downhill and put the brights on so I could keep going down to Rosie, begging her to get up, pulling on her, the rain freezing in my hair and making my clothing stiff as it froze and thawed and refroze. My breath like needles on my mouth in the air, in and exhale. Rosie's calf, crying out for milk and the ram slamming on her side. All of us begging her to get on her feet. Rosie tried and tried and just couldn't. I get that. I get being so deep into pain and just not having the energy to get back up even with pulling and pushing and begging and the rain.

I cannot give up on her. I called the vet for after hours help and he came to the farm in the dark, freezing rain. I called Chad and was rude to him about not being home, but he got on the road and headed home.

The vet got Rosie stable, a could shots, instructions. I hauled a tarp to the pasture. I gathered food for her. I made oven baked shrimp for the kids. Changed diapers. Changed boots and into dry clothes and repeated the rounds out to the pasture.

By the time Chad got home, all my own pain and all my own loneliness had frozen and was crackling into shards of nothingness. Rosie still isn't doing well, two days later, but she's still with us. We are nourishing her and attending to her. Praying that she'll make it.

Me? I am still out there. Soaked to the bone in freezing rain, buried in a foot of snow, waiting for the moment when I will be up on my feet again.

All Anyone Wants is to be Included

Lily and Holly are in the church holiday pageant. When they found out that other three year olds are too, but not Isaac (because he isn't ready for the Sunday school preK class) they marched up to our Pastor and asked why Isaac couldn't be included. They said, "All anyone wants is to be included." The Pastor was quiet for a moment and said, "You girls are right. I will find a way and Isaac will be in the show too."

Not five minute later, Isaac was cast as a lamb. He will toddle and run around the sanctuary during the show, making lamb noises and dancing. He can be loud and go where he wants.

All anyone wants is to be included.

Inclusion is not having a kids table at the holidays. Not having special sports just for "special" kids or just for girls. Inclusion is being a family and being involved together. Inclusion is remembering how important inclusion is even when the normal of the world is exclusion and isolation.

My friend Holly says that when you get her family you get ALL of them, no one gets left behind (or at home). This is how we live and to us Isaac really is a normal kid. Even when we encounter fully verbal and active kids his age, we see Isaac as a whole and beautiful person. It is easy for us to forget the delays that others see, easy for us to forget that not everyone can read his hand signs, we just know him.

Holly and Lily though, they advocate for him in ways that even I missed. It never occurred to me to even ask for him  to be in the play. I figured I would stay in the nursery with him while they performed. I would miss out too, but better than trying to hold him while he signed frantically for "trains" and "play" and screamed loudly the whole time. He loves the church nursery so, so much.

The girls, my girls, thought better. They never even missed a beat because to them, of course he should be included. 

The response from our church family? So loving and wonderful. Just one more thing that helps me know we found the place where we can thrive. Open hearts, open minds.

*Unfortunately, a Midwestern snowstorm has cancelled the service that included the pageant. The girls have prepared a speech to present to the Pastor all the reasons why the show should still go on, even if it has to be after Christmas. The story of Jesus is IMPORTANT even after Christmas, they told me. I am so blessed by these children. Every single day, I am blessed.