In Clover

 

“If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.”
― Dr. Temple Grandin 

            The above quote by Temple Grandin reverberates in my brain.  I think on it almost constantly. What genetics make some of us social communicators, and some of us solitary thinkers? Furthermore, which one am I?

            I have always wanted to be thought of as complex, and therefore categorized with “odd ducks.”  My family is full of brainiacs, and I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince the world (and myself) that I belong to their elite smarty-pants club instead of being lumped in with “the rest of the world.”  As a school-girl, I was picked on by typical kids-being-kids.  Although it hurt to be excluded, I told myself that I was fabulously misunderstood and they were afraid of my super power: slightly above average intelligence.  This belief was comforting and romantic.  It was full of the promise of the grown-up I would become.  I’d seen enough movies to know the one who gets bullied in school always ends up getting the best life in the end.  I was willing to wait.  I could even savor the experience.

            I remember in the sixth grade, we were given an arts-infused science project to write a poem about the solar system.  This was so my thing.  A group of pushy and rough kids were teasing me because I finished first. They asked me to read my poem to them, so they could make fun of it.  I obliged because I knew my poem was awesome and I always showed kick-ass bravery in the face of doubters.  After hearing my work, the wall of faces around my desk dissolved. Their twisted expressions popped into neutrality, like bubbles.   I had silenced their squawking, but they didn’t leave.  “How did you write that that quick?” the ringleader asked.  “I don’t know,” I answered, “The words just come to me.  I could do a gazillion more.”  “Will you do me one?” she almost panted.  Pop!  Pop… pop… popopopopopopop!  The wall of faces was now frantic.  Have you ever seen an idiot get an idea?   It hits them like a freight train, and shines like a neon sign.  I let them all ask, one by one.  Each hard little face, trying to look soft. All trying to seem friendly. All grasping for the tools to convince me to help them. Eyes darting left and right, searching their brains for words, trying desperately to string the right ones together.  In about 20 minutes, I had written science poems for almost the entire class.  I was writing one while making up another out loud, as a kid transcribed.  It was nothing.  My classmates were eating them up like piranhas, “Me next!  She’s doing mine now!” whisking the poems off my desk and scurrying off to copy them in their own hand.  Oh, I had no delusions I was making friends.  I was taking delight in this, though. I enjoyed rubbing their noses in the fact that ideas were so plentiful for me, I could afford to give them away, even to people I didn’t like.  “It’s just taking all the stuff we’ve learned, and arranging it into patterns that rhyme.  You can organize any idea into a rhyme.”  Well, I could, anyway.

            I had a quite few experiences like that as a young girl.  Sometimes I thought I had the heart of a boy.  I dreamed I was a hero, misunderstood by all the ordinary humans around me.  I had little desire to trade unicorn stickers with other girls or sit in the clover at recess, braiding each other’s hair. I dreamed up adventures.  Mostly ones that took me away.

            By the time I became a young woman, I had indeed followed my dreams far and wide.  It turns out that it was music that would be the power that allowed me my fairy-tale life.  With the help of some great teachers, Cindy Barrett of Memphis, Tennessee, and Julianne Weick of Evansville, Indiana, then Conchita Antunano of New York City, I developed a voice that gave wings to all I imagined as a child.  My evolution as an artist was tied closely to my maturation as a woman. 

            It was JT Smith, who hired me as an ingenue for the first time.  My whole life I had cast myself as a villain, or at best, the funny best friend.  Trying desperately to be the interesting one, I had shunned opportunities to be sweet.  I guess I thought I’d made this deal long ago: I will always say the wrong thing.  I will always try to steal the boyfriend.  I will always dress a little too provocatively, as long as people pay attention.  JT was the first grown man I wasn't related to, who saw me as a fresh and vulnerable young girl.  I was never this girl until the ripe old age of 23. “How should I play it in this number?” I asked on hundreds of occasions over the years I had the honor to work with JT.  He’d look at me, weary, and speak slowly, willing his direction to sink in.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I picked that song for you.  Not for you to be somebody else while we listen.  It's enough for you to just be. It’s more than enough.  It's everything! Everything good comes out of you when you're not trying so hard.  Just stand there and sing.  Be your f@ck*ng self.  And for godssake don’t “do” anything.”

            (I have to weep for how I love that man.)

            Suffice to say that over the course of a lifetime, I have changed.   The fear of being boring has subsided over the years and I have discovered that I have my moments of being a happily ordinary human.  Connecting.  Helping.  Saying something kind.  Letting someone else win.  All of these things feel good, and as a Wife and Mom, I get to do them more and more.  I can’t make quick calculations like my Dad, I am not a great debater like my sister, or a problem solver like my Mom.  But, I have my own gifts, and I try to use them to draw people in, and not separate myself from others.  Every once in a while, though, I think of the misfit kid I was and can’t help feeling I sold her out.  I caved.  I decided to be happy.  Nice.  How uninteresting.  How boring I have become.

            Walking into work one morning, I saw a wiiiiiiiide patch of clover and thought to myself, “Oh, there’s nothing I’d like better than to plop right down in the middle of all that green and just look for a four-leafed one!” I thought of Temple Grandin.  Then I thought of the kind of girl who whiles away time, stroking greenery idly in the sun.  I shamed myself for being simple and realized I had lost any ability to group myself with those who invented the wheel or fashioned the first spear.  I was a silly social being, chattering by a cave somewhere.  What ever happened to me?

            Every morning and afternoon for weeks now, I consider that yawning stretch of clover, and look down my own nose at myself for desiring so completely to lie in it.  I look at it from outside my window and watch the wind caress it, wishing my fingers were the breeze.  Oh, how I would comb the entire patch if I could.  I’d touch every single shamrock.  I’d memorize each one.  I’d categorize them in my head, ones with two big leaves and one small; ones with one big leaf and two big; ones with a torn or chewed leaf… well, those would have to be two distinct categories I suppose.  Then the four-leafed clovers!  I’d pick those.  I’d admire them for minutes upon minutes, marveling at their perfect symmetry, their perfect, mathematical sense would calm me. I’d arrange them and press them so they were slightly askew, some with the upper-right most leaf, and some with the upper left pointing highest. Then I’d group them in fours… Wait!

            Could it be that I am driven to survey and collect these little treasures, not because I am silly and vapid, but because I am actually quirky, weird, and slightly obsessive, with a keen eye for patterns and anomalies? Yes! Yes, I am still me!  A proud geek, doing something that no one else is doing.  While everyone else is getting their Starbucks and checking their e-mail, I think I will plant myself in a big clover patch and have myself a good old search for those four lucky leaves.  When I make a little collection, I will show it off.  Someone will ask, “How did you find all of those?” And I will say, “ I don’t know.  They just came to me.  I could find a gazillion more.”