Checks and Taxes

 When my middle daughter was in high school, we were eating as a family at the pizza place where she worked part time. This daughter said that she and her friends were planning on going to a movie that weekend, and asked for movie and snack money. We said sure, and handed over some cash, probably a $20. While she was doing something else, her boss pulled us aside and said, "Do you have any idea how much she makes? She can pay for her own movie and snacks!" She was a delivery driver, getting significant tip money; he mentioned an average day's tips.

"I know," I said. "But she's still a kid, so we cover most stuff she wants to do. She only has to pay her own band fees, gas and insurance." He looked at us like we were crazy, and he was deeply unimpressed with our parenting.

"Oooookay," he said with raised eyebrows. "I just didn't know if you knew."

Yeah, we knew. We just figured that it's better for our kids to figure out how to handle money, and potentially make stupid choices, while they're kids and all their necessities are covered. Maybe that wasn't a great plan - I don't know. But even years later, it still seems like the best plan.

When the kids were little, and they got money for birthdays or Christmas, we helped them count out coins to pay tithing, encouraged them to put something in their college funds, and then pretty much let them decide what to do. By the time they were old enough to have their own jobs and paychecks, we were even more hands off. Don't want to save, or pay tithing? Want to spend it all on candy? Well, OK, but you may not like how that turns out, long term, but go for it. We have two who hate to spend any money, including for things that they really want, and two who would spend it before it was in their hands if they could. They all needed to figure out how to make money choices.

Having kept most of their choices in their own hands, I was really puzzled when my oldest, at roughly 11 or 12, said something about us "taking" money from the kids "to pay taxes." She said this with a considerable amount of anger, and narrowed eyes, but when I said, "What money?" she snapped, "Nothing. Never mind."

I wondered what kind of odd thing she was thinking of, but it was so far from reality that I just brushed it aside. In a few months, she brought it up again - "when you took our money to pay taxes." Again, when asked about what she meant, she responded, "Never mind."

As years went by, she'd bring it up not very often, but consistently once or twice a year. Sometimes, we'd be the only ones there, and sometimes other people would be with us, but we could not get her to explain what she meant.

We could not figure out what she was talking about. Did she mean a child credit on our income tax? We explained what that meant, and she looked blank. We tried very hard to explain all of our taxes - that income tax came out of paychecks before we got them, that our property taxes were paid with our mortgage payments, that sales tax was built into prices. We explained repeatedly over the years. She was probably 14 or 15 when I told her, again, "We have never, ever used money that belonged to you kids for taxes. Ever. We don't even use your money (meaning the savings accounts they'd had since birth, to which we contributed with every paycheck) for things like camp."

She rolled her eyes and said, "Whatever you used it for then."

"Used WHAT for?"

But the only response I ever got when asking her what money she meant was, "Nothing," or, "Never mind." It was maddening.

As she became an adult, we heard about it less often, but she'd still bring it up, and still refuse to explain what she meant.

When she was in her 30s, she made a passing reference again, and I said, "OK, you are going to have to explain to me what you are talking about, because we have never had any earthly idea."

She looked a little bit sheepish, but actually answered. "When you made us sign over our state fair checks."

Starting when they were literally in diapers, the kids usually entered something in the county or state fair - coloring, photography, and when they were older, scrapbooks and baking. We adults entered photos, crafts, baked goods. The kids wanted to be like us and get ribbons. The state fair also gave kids cash awards. It was $1 for a third place, $2 for a second place, and $3 for a first place. In reality, it usually just paid back the entry fees, which I think were $5 per child, but it was really exciting for the kids to feel that they'd won money.

Their first time entering the state fair was when the older kids were 7 and 8. They expected to be given cash, and were deeply disappointed when they were told it would be a check, and they had to wait for it to come in the mail.

When the checks came, they wanted to know how to spend them. We explained that checks were the same as Daddy's paychecks. They were used to watching us take their dad's paycheck and get it cashed every two weeks, but he cashed it at a casino. You can only do that after you're 21, we explained. "You have to take it to the credit union and sign it," we explained. "Then they'll hand you cash, or you could put it in your bank account."

"That'll take forever! When can we even go to the credit union?" Much complaining ensued. They wanted cash RIGHT NOW, because they'd already had to wait for the mail. This was despite the fact that they couldn't spend it at home, and couldn't go shopping without us.

"Well, as soon as you sign it, anyone can cash it," I said. "If you sign it, Dad can give you cash right now. Then when we get to the credit union, we can cash or deposit it." That sounded MUCH preferable to waiting, so they signed the checks and we handed them cash, probably $6 or $7 each.

The next year, they wanted to do the same thing - we asked, not assumed. Waiting is not a strong suit for children. They did it for years. Until they had their own paychecks coming in, and they handled checks themselves, they'd sign the fair checks, we'd hand them cash, and then we'd deposit the checks into their savings accounts. We told them we were depositing them into our account, but we weren't going to miss a few dollars.

I told her, "You signed the checks in order to cash them. We handed you cash for your checks, every single time. Then we deposited them in your bank accounts, so you actually got paid double for every one of those."

She looked stunned. "How much?"

"An average of $7 or $8 each. The year you won Grand Champion, I think it was $12."

"Oh." She looked sheepish again. "I thought it was a huge amount, like hundreds of dollars, and since I never had that much, I figured you guys took it."

"It was between $1 and $3 per ribbon, depending on placement."

"Oh."

I am just stunned, myself, by so much of this. My daughter has spent almost her entire life angry about something that she refused to discuss, even after bringing it up herself. That in and of itself is baffling. People, if something upsets you, talk to the people involved! This should have been an easy, quick fix, back when she was 12. Instead, we faced decades of, "Never mind." My daughter will avoid conflict whenever possible, so I'm sure that was her aim, but her actions actually created conflict. (If you bring something up, be prepared to discuss it! For everyone's sake!)

I'm also just baffled as to how a child who could read even when she got that first check, and who was always the one who opened the envelope with her check in it, did not know how much the checks were for. She understood decimals; we'd taught the kids that when writing things to do with money, things like prices, anything before "the period" was dollars, and behind it was cents. Plus, checks have the line with it written out - "six dollars and no/100 cents." Plus, she entered things in the fair up until she turned 18; in high school, her usual entry was her meticulously kept scrapbooks. She read the fair's entry packet, every year, and it spelled out the money involved. She also would have deposited those later checks herself, so she definitely ought to know what they said. How would she think that the checks were bigger when she was younger? Or that there was a separate check that she didn't see, but we cashed without a signature? Even if she misunderstood at 8, there were many more years when the process itself should have cleared up this confusion.

I just could not imagine how she wasn't clear on this. I'm an overexplainer, and the fair sent out a booklet, every year.

I think I've now figured it out, based on the first appearance of the "you took our money" complaint. That happened the year after her photo of a walrus took Grand Champion for the children's photo division. She got a huge purple rosette, and a ton of praise. Her uncle, a professional scenic and wildlife photographer, hung it in his living room (the only photo he displayed that wasn't his).

She was always worried about being out of step with her peers, or being wrong about anything, so she often took the opinions of other children as gospel. Kids have a tendency to take the word of their peers over their parents, anyway. I'll bet that when she mentioned earning Grand Champion to kids at school or at church, some kid said, "Wow, did you get a ton of money?" Instead of saying, "No way, the state fair doesn't hand out a ton of money," she started to worry that this kid knew something that she didn't. (She frequently worried that other people had access to information that was hidden from her.) Surely a Grand Champion got a ton of money! Where was it? She would not have accepted her own experience as making her the expert on this matter, even though she'd won the prize, and she'd entered for years, whereas the other kids may not even have known that the fair came with competitions for kids.

So, she decided that we took it. At least she decided that we had a good reason; fixating on "taxes" shows that she was starting to figure out how modern society works. At least she didn't figure that we partied with it.

I just cannot fathom this, though - that something that obviously made her so miserable was such an easy to explain misunderstanding. Why in the world did she not discuss this with us? Then again, would she have believed me when she was a kid? Obviously, she suspected us of something shady, when our entire motivation was to stop the complaining about waiting, by getting money into their hands as soon as the checks arrived. Note to self - just send complaining kids out of the room, and make them learn patience.

I'm just glad it's finally resolved. Good grief.

(I mean, it is resolved, right?)

"Going To Do Something"

When my oldest graduated with her bachelor's degree, we were excited and proud. For one thing, she'd worked hard to get there. For another, my husband, myself, and all four of her grandparents do not have college degrees. All of my children have some kind of secondary diploma or certificate, which makes me happy.

Usually, when we'd tell people she was graduating, the comments were predictable - "How exciting!" "What's her degree in?" "What are her plans?" But one comment just landed a bit wrong. One friend of ours did not actually seem very excited, and said, in an almost scolding tone, "She is going to do something with that degree, isn't she?"

"Of course she is," I replied brightly, ignoring the implied criticism. "She's going to be educated."

This elicited a sigh. "You know what I'm saying, right?" they asked.

"Yes, I do. You know what I'm saying, right?" I asked with a bit more edge in my voice.

They appeared genuinely puzzled. "No."

Oh, for goodness sake.

I didn't try to explain how many things that I found wrong with their query, starting with the fact that good news should be met with congratulations (especially if you're then going to nit pick or gripe). Then there's the fact, as I previously mentioned, that her parents and grandparents do not have degrees. Also, they had chosen to direct this gripe to someone else (me) who has chosen, as their career, to be a stay at home parent.

I was totally clear that my friend was alluding to stay at home parents, despite my being one. I have heard, not just from this friend, but from many people, what a "waste" that is. I experienced frequent verbal bludgeoning, myself, most of it from people who liked or loved me. "But you could do anything!" they'd say, and they were completely unsatisfied by my response of, "I know I could. And I chose." It was annoying and exhausting to deal with people who were sure that no one would choose my life unless they were stupid or trapped.

I've endeavored to teach my children to avoid being job snobs. Sometimes it works. But just recently, I chastized my youngest for saying "Susie Homemaker" in a scathing tone that indicated that the occuption was less desirable than shoveling manure. "You know that I am a 'Susie Homemaker' by choice, right? And besides, do you want me saying (using the same scornful tone of voice) 'people who work retail'?" I asked, since she works in retail. She glared at me, but I'm right about this. Don't denigrate someone else's job. If you do, don't be surprised or angry when they denigrate yours.

Criticism of choosing to be a full time parent (or homemaker without kids) is often leveled at religious people, somehow coupled with the idea that men must have coerced or threatened women into staying home. That may happen occasionally, because humans are infinitely varied. However, most of the stay at home parents that I know are doing it because they really want to be at home. I am also a rarity among us; most stay at home parents that I know not only have degrees, I know a significant number of them with master's degrees. When my kid needed a math tutor, we hired a mom with a master's in math who homeschooled her own kids.

Here's another thing that bothers me when someone tells me what a "waste" it is for bright, educated people to spend their days with children. Do we want only stupid people to spend their time with kids? That's such a bad plan.

Anyway, I knew that was what this person was asking me - "Is she going to spend all that money and time on an education, and then waste it by having kids and staying home?"

At the time, she was headed straight into a job in her chosen field. Her degree is in education, and she wanted a job as a teacher. She worked as a teacher for 10 years, too.

Now, she is not working in her field. (She's not a stay at home parent, either.) I was tremendously proud of her then. I am tremendously proud now. (I would be tremendously proud if she was a stay at home parent.)

Two of my kids are working in their degree field. Two are not. I'm proud of all of them.

I understood why my oldest chose her first career. I also know why she left it. I'm not going to go into all the reasons here. In fact, I'm going to choose just one - money. After 10 years of teaching, she left, and took a job in insurance. Her new job requires only a high school diploma, and she walked into a starting wage that was higher than her wages after 10 years of teaching. It was also fewer hours - no at home preparation or grading time, no parent conferences, no finding and prepping a sub if you're sick. She constantly marveled, "When the work day is over, I just walk away, and I'm done until the next work day!" Her weekends were totally work free.

She's now been there for a few years, and her last bonus almost equalled her annual income for her last year in teaching.

So, even if this was the only consideration - and it's not - I think everyone is totally clear on why she'd choose this job, and not one in her degree field.

In my opinion (and I'm right about this, too), education provides you with two things - knowledge, and choices. She still has all of her knowledge, and all of the experience she gained in areas like time management, setting and achieving goals, "people skills" (how to deal with various kinds of people), and learning how to sift unreliable sources from reliable ones. She has choices, as she can now take many jobs that other people can't. There are many jobs, for instances, that would suit me, but I can't even apply, much less be hired, because of my degree status.

So, Friend, and any other critics, the fact that she is now not working in her degree field does not bother me, or her employer, or her husband or the rest of her family, in the slightest. She is still "doing something with that degree."

As she would be, in my opinion, if she did become a stay at home parent.

Security

"Children need to feel that their parents are all powerful, especially in their early years," says a child development expert whose work I admire. I agree with him, really; I agree on most things he says. I just know that we did not achieve this with our first born.

We did all of the things that are supposed to make a child feel secure. We picked her up when she cried. Frankly, we picked her up when she didn't cry, because crying was rare. She rarely even cried to be fed; I had to watch the clock and say, "Feeding time!" or she'd only eat two or three times in 24 hours, even as a brand new newborn. We talked to her, sang to her, read books to her. I was a stay at home parent, so she was never without me. She was a quiet, easy child, so we took her out on our dates - to restaurants, to the movies. We wore her in a backpack when we couldn't carry her. As soon as she could do things like dress herself and speak, we let her make decisions - what to wear, what to order off the menu at a restaurant.

Everyone assumed she was happy, because she was quiet and self contained, and she probably was. She colored, she sang, she "danced" (she considered walking in a circle while music played to be dancing). 

Even when she wasn't happy, she didn't demonstrate it by fussing. When her little sister was born, and she was 13 months old, I was in the hospital for almost a week. She didn't cry, and she loved the new baby, but she broke out in a head to toe rash.

As nearly as I can tell, she never thought that we were all powerful or all knowing, though. She didn't think that she was - that was our second born - but she didn't think that we, or any adult, was, either.

I mean, it's not as if either of us drank, or traveled for work, or that she ended up pouring herself bowls of cereal because I neglected to prepare dinner. We were there, we were attentive, our home and neighborhood were safe, we had extended family and friends and church members who were there for all of us.

And yet...

When she was 8 months old, we took a road trip to see my sister and her family. The route that is the most fun takes us down the California coast, with stops in San Francisco, Monterey, San Simeon, or other beach spots before heading to Orange County. That's the route we took for that trip. We have photos of her in the backpack on Daddy's back at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and on the beach in Ventura.

We didn't take a trip the next year, when we had a newborn and a toddler, but we did go the year after, when the kids were 2 and 3. Again, we went over the mountains from home, and took 2 or 3 days getting to Auntie's house, stopping at fun places along the way, and talking about how Ariel lived in the ocean.

We'd talked about how we'd see Auntie Lynne and her kids, and stay in their house, but knew that she'd have no memory of having visited before. Still, when we got there, both kids were having fun - who doesn't love the beach, aquariums, and cousins to play with? Plus, we went to Disneyland; it was a great trip.

The night before we left, I told the girls to start gathering their things, because we'd have to pack it all for the ride back home. I let them know that we had one more day at Auntie's, and then we'd drive home. It's about 7 hours in average traffic to get back home, so we wanted to do it in one day, which meant an early start.

"We're not going home," my three year old announced confidently.

"Not today, " I said. "But tomorrow, we are. That's why I want to start packing today."

"No! We're not going home!" she insisted. "You don't know how to find it!"

We reassurred her that, yes, we did know. "Just like we knew what roads to drive on to get to Aunt Lynne's, we know what roads to drive on to get home." We told her that we had done this many times, and that she had actually done it before, but she was a baby, so she wouldn't remember. She looked at us as if we were crazy.

The next day, she got more and more irritated every time we mentioned going home. Her attitude said that she could not believe that we were persisting with this foolishness, insisting that we could do something that was so obviously impossible.

We explained again that we had driven the roads before, and remembered. Then, we brought out our big California map book. (Remember the days of paper maps? I love paper maps.) We told her that these were drawings of where we were, and where we'd go. We showed her that the blue was the ocean, the green was land, and the lines were roads. "Even if we forget, these maps will show us which roads to drive on." 

Still, she insisted, "We can't go home! You can't find it!"

I started to wonder if she understood that we were deliberately visiting family. Did she think that we'd just gotten lost, knocked on a random door, and had strangers take us in?

Of course, we insisted that everything be packed, and we got in the car and drove away. Our second born fell asleep in the car, even on short rides, so she was fine, but our oldest made indistict elephant noises - "EEEEE-eeeee-EEEEEE-eeeeee" - for hours on end. HOURS at a time; I don't know how her throat didn't get sore.

About halfway home, I said to my husband, "The next town we go through, find a park so the kids can run and play, because we all need out of this car." We have cute photos that he took of a smiling me pushing smiling kids on the swings. It looks blissful. It was, in fact, a break necessary in order for all of us to avoid metaphorically exploding.

When we pulled up at home, she was absolutely astonished. "You FOUND it! You FOUND it! How did you find it?"

So we told her, again, about how we knew what roads to drive on because we'd done it before, just like we knew how to drive to her grandparents' houses, about 30 minutes away. We reminded her, again, that if we got confused or lost, we had the map book. She looked confused. "But, how did you find it?" It felt as if we would have had more credibility if we told her that we read it in our tea leaves.

A few days later, I was talking about her astonishment with my brother. "Aren't we supposed to have another ten years or so before she decides that we're brain dead? This just seems way too early for teenage dismissiveness."

He laughed. "Well, she knows that she can't do it, so she figures that you can't, either."

I'm certain that he was correct about this. That's exactly what she was thinking. I just could not - still cannot - figure out how she came to that conclusion after watching us, every day, do things that she could not. We could read, we could drive, we knew how to operate the TV remote and the phone (that hung on the wall, and only made phone calls) and the oven. She knew these things; she watched us, daily, do things that she could not.

So, despite my belief that the psychologist is right - children benefit from a "my dad could beat up Superman!" mentality - I am obviously unclear on how we could have instilled that kind of belief.

Illness Part 9: Breaking Up

 "Can I break up with my endocrinologist?" I asked my primary care doctor, a General Practitioner.

He smiled, and said, "Well, you're the patient. You can do whatever you want."

That's patently false. I spend much of my time getting medical tests and otherwise jumping through hoops, so that my insurance will pay for things. I am not in charge. (But I should be, along with my GP.) In actual fact, my insurance company is in charge.

But, still, I was glad. When I started seeing the endocrinologist, my GP had said, "If anybody can figure out what's going on with you, she can." I looked forward to that. My body chemistry has been just not quite right all of my life. I have developed an aversion to hearing the word "should," as in, "...you should be feeling..." and, "...this should be working...", because often, that is not how I feel, and that is not how my body works.

After my thyroid was removed, my sister wanted to know what had caused it to be enlarged and covered in nodules. I told her, "Nobody seems to know, and they're not particularly interested in finding out." But I wanted to know. Something caused it. Should it be treated? Will it affect other things? So, my family and I were very excited to send me to a specialist, one who would figure it all out.

At my first visit, I went over things going back to my childhood. She seemed interested; she listened, and occasionally asked questions. But it soon became apparent that she was not looking for what caused the gland to need removed. Her entire process revolved around the fact that it was now gone.

Well, OK. It's probably hard to diagnose after the fact. I get that.

Still, any symptoms I had also were disregarded as irrelevant. Every appointment, I'd be handed a sheet asking me about symptoms, and I'd check box after box. Near as I can tell, no one even glanced at those forms. All that was ever discussed were my blood tests. When I'd bring up symptoms, I'd be told, "Don't worry. You're still adjusting. It will all even out eventually."

Ten years later I can say with conviction: it never evened out. Ever. (Illness Part 4: Symptoms) Through different medications, different doses, different protocols, I still have almost every symptom. I had them before the thyroid was removed, too. Obviously, there's something we're not looking at. I have become convinced that we don't yet know even what questions to ask, much less how to check my body. I just hear over and over about what "should" be.

Soon, I rarely saw the actual doctor, and just saw her physician's assistant. Not a deal breaker. I also rarely recieved eye contact from whoever treated me; they spent the entire visit, minus checking my vitals, looking at a screen and typing on a laptop. Years ago, this became standard. I don't know if the directions came from the AMA or the malpractice insurance or the medical board, but every single provider now spends their visit looking not at the patient, but at a laptop. They spend more time filling out forms to "prove" that they're treating a patient than they do actually treating patients. That annoys me tremendously. But, as I said, it's standard; I can't really get away from it.

I have listed the issues that I had even getting an appointment (Illness Part 5: Caring For My Health). It was just so exhausting, and gave me a bit of insight into the fact that the office ran exclusively on PROCEDURE. Again, not terribly unusual and not a surprise, but so aggravating. Every office seems to expect everyone in the outside world to know about and comply with internal procedures as a matter of course. This is a problem, because the layperson doesn't work in your office, so of course they are not going to know How You Do Things.

Now, actually being seen at the office, I had to deal with the office staff too often for anyone's comfort.

For instance, I had to be seen every month. To me, that means "roughly every 4 weeks" or "in 28 to 32 days." Not to the office staff; to them, it meant in 30 days, exactly. If day 30 landed on a weekend, the woman making the appointments would fuss and huff and talk about "getting back on schedule next month."

I once pointed out to her that my monthly blood tests were not 30 days apart. I was sent home with a paper, and I took it to the lab and got tested whenever it was actually convenient. Usually, I did it on day 25 or so, but it might be on day 15 or day 29. She looked at me blankly, like she did not understand the language I was speaking, and then gave me a long explanation of how I had to come in every 30 days EXACTLY "so the records will be accurate." The fact that when my blood was drawn seemed far more critical than when I walked in the door to discuss it with the doctor seemed to just pass her by. Finally I just ignored it and resigned myself.

Then one month, as I was leaving, I was asked to come back in exactly 30 days, and I balked.

"That's the first anniversary of my mother's death. I don't want to even leave the house that day."

"Oh, you'll be fine. Just take yourself out to lunch, or maybe go shopping."

I stood there in disbelief and stared at her. What I wanted to say is, "Oh, of course, a nice restaurant meal will totally distract me from the fact that my mother is dead." But I didn't say that. (In retrospect, I should have.) Instead, I said, "I would really like an appointment on another day. Can I come a day later?"

"No, no, no, it's thirty days. You'll be fine. How's 11:00?"

I wanted to scream, "It is not FINE. She is GONE. Don't you have a mother?" Instead, I got an appointment for 11.

It wasn't too many months later when I ran into an issue that she couldn't bully me through. The only appointment available in 30 days was at 8:00 am. The office is 30 minutes away from my home, and I had to pick up a child, a child who did not yet drive, from a class at 7:30 am. The class was 10 to 15 minutes farther away from my house, so if my child walked out on the very stroke of dismissal, and I had great traffic and luck with lights all the way home, I could potentially leave home at 7:45. The math simply did not work, especially during rush hour traffic.

I explained all of that, and asked for another day. No, of course, I HAD to be seen on that day, and that was THE ONLY appointment available.

"I WILL be late. I can't avoid it," I told her.

"Just get here as soon as you can," she said.

Fast forward exactly 30 days. I browbeat my child, with instructions to come to the car immediately at dismissal, to not stop and say hello or goodbye to anyone, just run out to the car. Eyeroll; "I will, Mom." And he did. I drove like a crazy person home to drop him off, then sped across town. I was, as promised, and guaranteed by the laws of physics, late.

"You're late," the receptionist huffed.

"I know. I told you that I would be. (This was literally the same woman who made appointments.) I had to pick up my son across the valley at 7:30."

"Well, I don't know if we can even see you now."

"When I asked for a different day, because I'd be late, you told me that you couldn't do that."

"The patient after you has already been called in!"

"OK, you gave her my time slot, so give me hers." 

"Her appointment was scheduled after yours!"

"So you said. You have two patients, and two time slots. You gave mine to her, so give hers to me."

"We can't see you if the patient after you has already been called in!"

At this point, I threw out any pretense of being polite. I raised my voice; I'm an actor. I can project. "I told you that today was not convenient for me. I told you that I would be late. I asked for a different day or time. I don't know why I'm here, anyway! I can tell you exactly how this appointment will go. I will walk in and say, 'I feel great.' She'll say, 'But your numbers are terrible,' and I'll walk out of here with a new prescription. I COULD DO THIS OVER THE PHONE."

She stared at me, then out at the semi-full waiting room, and said, "I'll see if we can get you in."

And just like magic, they could. It took all of 15 minutes for the entire thing, from being called in, to being seen, to being dismissed. I walked out of the office with the predicted new prescription.

That was the day I decided that I didn't want to go back.

"I don't ever want to speak to anyone but you about my medication," I told my GP. "If I'm sick, I can see whoever's available. But I don't want to discuss this with anybody else. Ever."

Well, I didn't quite get my wish. I've seen the Physician's Assistant repeatedly. Now, my doctor is going on a church mission out of state. Some day, he will retire. Maybe, by then, I'll be OK with that.

But I have never regretted breaking up with my endocrinologist.

Big Foot

When I was in high school, one day a friend looked down at my feet and said, "Your shoes look really sloppy like that."

"Like what?" I asked. They were new, without holes or stains, which was not always the case. I am all about comfort, so I had been (and still am) known to wear stained or torn shoes. In high school, despite being, as all adolescents are, overburdened with crushing worry about what I looked like, for months I wore a favorite pair of fabric shoes that had holes directly over my pronounced bunions. My bunions stuck out through the frayed fabric. Any time someone would point it out to me, I'd say, "They're comfortable like this." I even bleached them, so they'd look cleaner and nicer while the holes got bigger.

But the shoes this friend was talking about were very new. I could not figure out what was sloppy.

"When you wear the laces like that."

"Like what?" This was making less and less sense. The shoes were laced and tied, all very normal and neat.

She sighed. I seemed to have that affect fairly often; my friends would sigh and wonder why I was clueless.

"Here. Let me fix them." She untied my shoe, then grabbed the laces and yanked, hard.

"OW!" My feet were always pretty uncomfortable, which I blamed on the bunions, and anything squeezing them was incredibly painful. While my oldest daughter was always self conscious about her bunions, and wore shoes that hid them, with pumps and ballet flats for dress shoes, I spent years buying only dress sandals, so my bunions could poke out through the straps. Sometimes, a friend would try to talk me into pumps, and I'd say, "Closed, rigid shoes hurt!" Anything tight across the bunions could make my foot scream, and my whole leg ache.

"What?" she wanted to know.

"You're squeezing my foot!"

She reached out and grabbed the sides of my shoe, trying to get the parts where the laces go through the holes to meet.

"OW!! That HURTS!" I yanked my foot away.

"This is as tight as they go?"

"Yes! This is as tight as they go!" I rubbed my foot and retied my shoe.

"You need bigger shoes!"

"These are half a size bigger than I normally wear." I showed her how I had over an inch between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe.

"Then you need wide width!"

"These ARE wide width!"

She looked aghast. "You should be able to close them, like this." She stuck her own foot out. The only part of the tongue that was visible was the tip, sticking out of the top of her shoe. The parts where the laces went through met in the middle and touched.

"I have never in my life been able to pull them that tight."

She looked just horrified. After a few more minutes (and comments like, "That's all your foot?") she sighed and said, "I guess you'll have to wear them like that, then."

"Yes, I will."

Obviously, I still do. That's my current pair of shoes in that photo, snapped on my cell phone.

I mean, isn't the whole point of laces to adjust them to the individual, because not everyone is the same? I think so. I always have. And yes, those current shoes are wide width. Yes, I still have an inch, maybe more, between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe. My toe hits well below the line of the triangle pattern.

Of the many things that have caused me to feel self conscious, this was not one. It was another instance, though, in which I wondered if her thinking was alien, or mine was. Not that it changed anything; I still have to loosen the laces when I buy shoes, but that's why there are laces, and not zippers.

I don't quite understand a lot of conventions on human interaction (that I have been told are just instinctive and built in). That's fine. But, if I may, I will suggest a way to have that conversation that was not alienating.

Example:

Friend: "Why are your laces so wide? Are they really loose?" See, asking questions is a great way to find things out - do not start out assuming that you know everything. This is hard, but necessary.

Me: "No, they're actually pulled pretty tight. I just have really wide feet."

Friend: "Really? That wide?"

Me: "Yeah. I have a hard time even finding shoes that I can wear, even in wide width."

Friend: "I've never had that problem."

Me: "You're lucky." And we'd go on about our day, and I'd have forgotten this conversation, instead of being annoyed by it decades later. I had dozens of conversations like that over my school years, and I can only remember the details of this one.

See?

Occasionally when I tell stories like this, someone will say that this is why we all need to guard against letting other people know our thoughts, because if people know what you're thinking, they won't like you. Respectfully, no, that is not the point here. The point is how you express yourself. I am deeply aware that a significant percentage of people will find my feet to be weird, gross, or just outside of their experience. This is normal. A few others will think that I'm exaggerating, probably for attention or sympathy. This opinion, too, is normal. The fact that both of those assumptions are wrong doesn't make them any less common. Thinking them is not a problem. Saying them is not a problem. Being rude because of what you think is a problem.

Making assumptions without asking is a problem. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that there are things that every person on Earth does not know, does not understand, or has not ever encountered before. Quit assuming that if it's outside your experience, it doesn't exist. Quit assuming that you know everything. Ask, politely - "why do you" instead of announcing, "that's sloppy."

Another problem is acting on your unconfirmed assumptions, especially in a way that leads you to cause someone physical pain. If you don't know what's causing something, your chances of messing things up are pretty high!

Also, let's say that I thought that loose laces were some kind of fashion statement that made me look cool. Telling me that you don't think so is OK. Insisting that I change because you don't think so is NOT OK.

The biggest problem for me, though, is why it still annoys me after decades - the assumption that I should experience shame because someone else didn't like my body parts. This girl's entire demeanor screamed, "Eeww, gross!" - which is, again, not uncommon - but then went on to assume that I ought to be just as horrified. I ought to hide my gross feet. I ought to hope that no one notices how gross they are. I ought to avoid lace up shoes. I ought to be depressed because something about me wasn't pretty. 

This is a problem.

In general, people talk about being proud of who you are, ignoring "the haters," realizing that "you're perfect, just the way you are" - until how someone is conflicts with someone's idea of how they should be. Women are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not pretty. Men are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not strong. This is garbage.

Women talk about how we don't owe it to anyone to be pretty, but a lot of us are then disgusted by bodies that just aren't pretty, or women who "don't even try" to be pretty; you know, the loose clothes, no makeup, short haired women. Or, we're not disgusted, but we decide that those women are probably lesbians, because men would just never be interested in them.

I just cannot buy into that. It's inaccurate. It's damaging.

That's why I'm still annoyed. Someone thought it was better for me to experience shame than to simply accept that this is how my feet are. I was born this way. 

When I had them surgically altered - bunions removed, etc - it was so they would work better, not because of how they looked. They're still wide. They're still hairy. They're not pretty. My laces are still loose.

I am not embarrassed by my feet. At that point, in high school, I was embarrassed by my saddlebags, my rounded tummy, my receeding chin, and probably more, but I grew out of that. Because even though my body is me, it is not what gives me value.

My feet have taken me great places. My shoes are comfortable. That's good enough.

Pandemic Problems

 So, it's been almost exactly a year since the world shut down for COVID 19. I was on a cruise ship when that happened, with spotty internet and no real idea what the rest of the world looked like while I planned my days around trivia quizzes, lectures and movies. We came home to a very different world than the one we'd left.

We all remember, I think, the last time things were "normal" before they changed. It's a shared experience; we all understand it.

As is usual, though, I find that I don't really understand how some other people reacted to the new reality. I mean, on an intellectual level, I can tell you how they feel, and why. I just do not emotionally relate to it.

Some people, when I'd post photos from my own back yard online, would say, "You went outside!?! Why? It's dangerous outside!" Well, look, being exposed to other people was potentially dangerous, but there's nobody in my back yard except me, and maybe someone who lives in my house with me. I didn't understand the extreme fear of simply existing in the world.

I went anywhere in public only once in that first month, to get groceries. There's three of us in my house, so in the first three months, each of us went to the store once. Maybe if I had a job outside my home - I don't - I would have been a bit more prepared for this, but when I finally went somewhere in mid to late April, I could not get over how many people were on the road. It looked like any other ordinary day. "Where are all these people going?" I wondered. 

After a month at home, I went driving to a lake just outside of town, hoping for fresh air and the chance to take photos; those are two of my preferred ways to relax. And all across town, the streets were full. When we got to the lake, the parking lot was almost full. Luckily, most of the people were out on the lake, wind surfing, so we were all distanced, and I got great photos. Still, I was a bit surprised by how many people were out and about. And how one of them wanted to walk RIGHT UP TO me to talk; hey, I don't even like that when I'm not worried about germs.

Which brings me to the other people that I don't understand, the people who experienced fear and anger and pain in being home all the time. I started to see all kinds of things online about how "humans aren't meant to live like this!" and predictions that violence and suicide would increase - and they did! This was a surprise to me.

Because I was, sincerely, happy as a clam. I woke up every day, especially in the first three or four months, thinking, "Yay!" I had no schedule, no expectations, no obligations, and it was delightful. For most of my life, I rarely watched TV during the day, but now, I had no problem with sitting down in my jammies and watching TV any time I felt like it. I read books, I painted, I stayed up late (for me, anyway) and slept in. I'd look online and see that people were taking online classes, cooking from scratch and making sourdough, and FaceTiming daily, and it just sounded exhausting. I was not organizing my closets and deep cleaning. I was rewatching old TV series - hello, Stargate Atlantis; I'm always going to gloat a bit that I knew how cool Jason Momoa was years before everybody else figured it out. I should have done more cleaning, really, but it felt like vacation, and who deep cleans on vacation? Not me. Everybody likes vacation - how were they not as happy as I was? Really, I was puzzled; I am puzzled.

But, because I was puzzled, I thought about it, I read about it, I talked to people, and I tried to figure out what people were thinking. I feel the need to repeat here that I don't look at differences as being an intrinsic case of, "who's wrong, who's right?" Right and wrong are for moral issues and the laws of physics, not for the fact that the world contains infinite variety, especially in humans. I'm also deeply puzzled any time someone sees that they're out of step, and immediately agonizes that they're wrong, or judges that everyone else is wrong and probably stupid. Some flowers are yellow, and some are red. Some dogs are small, and some are large. Some people prefer things that make me miserable, and vice versa. The point is to understand, not to relegate everything to two little boxes.

I also need to be clear that I am not speaking about about families or individuals who were experiencing job loss, illness, death of a loved one, lack of food, or anything else that is actually tragic. Those people deserve every bit of help and love and empathy that we have, and more. Their pain should, always, be our own. I also understand that most people were having some kind of empathy response, feeling for those who were experiencing these things. I'm speaking from my place of incredible privilege, about people whose homes looked a lot like mine - plenty of food (and TP), income, secure housing, good health, and loved ones who are mostly in that same boat, people whose lives are physically comfortable, but who now had to deal with being home (in comfort) almost all of the time, and were feeling uncomfortable about it.

The things that didn't resonate with me were things like, "How many times can you organize your sock drawer?" or actual angst, like the woman who said to me, "Was I always this friendless, and I just didn't notice?" I had to roll that around in my brain for a while, because it made no sense to me. How can you have fewer friends, just because you're at home, not out and about?

I think I've figured that out; it has to do with who we perceive as a friend. My definition is very broad and encompassing. If I like you, if I have positive thoughts about you or feelings for you, you are my friend. Unless I specifically dislike you, you're my friend. That means that you, personally, are in luck if we've ever met; I would be hard pressed to name more people than I can count on one hand as being people that I just do not like. Even then, even counting the very few people on the planet whose presence I avoid, I don't wish harm or misery on any of them. I hope they're happy and healthy, just not in my presence. If they were to be in my presence, I would be polite, unless pushed pretty aggressively.

Sure, I understand the concept of "close" and "casual" friends, but it's become fairly clear to me that I don't categorize the same way some other people do. There are people who have never been in my home, who have never hosted me in their home (despite living in my community), whose numbers are not stored in my phone, who are absolutely my close friends. Some I've known for decades. 

A few years ago at a funeral, I saw someone with whom I hadn't been in contact for over 20 years. But we were kids together, we understand a lot of each other's backstory, they could have my organs if they ever need them, so the first words out of my mouth were, "I love you!" accompanied by a hug. And they said, "I love you too! How have you been?"

I'm often sincerely puzzled by people who see each other several days a week. I don't understand that; I don't do that. My parents didn't do that. My parents had family, neighbors, friends that they liked, that they did things with, but there were no weekly bridge games or girls/guys nights. There were no daily, or almost daily, phone calls. I'm the same way. Seeing someone 3 or 4 times a year feels "often" to me.

I also sincerely cannot make sense of the idea, "Well, I did like you, I thought you were fun, but then we didn't see each other for a while, so now we're not friends anymore." When I talk to people who only feel close to someone if they see each other all the time, it feels artificial and needy. I can be outside of your presence and still feel that you're my friend. One of my close friends, who I've known since we were kids, described it this way: "I don't need to see people every day to know who my friends are."

Other people have called me and my relatives like me "anti social." I prefer the wording of a professional counselor that I once saw - "You just function with a very high degree of autonomy. Most people don't." I'm not afraid or unhappy, I'm just self contained, and I can't imagine why that would be a bad thing.

I remember being puzzled when I was a newlywed moving to a new town. I'd be hundreds of miles from the only city I'd ever lived in, moving to a city in which I knew no one but my husband. Someone who truly was concerned about me said something about how hard it would be, because "you won't have any friends!" I replied, "I'll have the same friends that I have right now."

"But there won't be anybody to hang around with, day to day!"

"I don't hang out with my friends much now." I was 20, only two years out of high school, but I considered frequent contact to be something that kids with a lot of free time did. Several of my best friends had moved away, others were in school full time, some were like me and working two jobs. There was not a lot of time or money for hanging out, and our schedules were no longer similar, nor did we all live in the same neighborhood anymore. Getting together was a 'special occasion" kind of thing. I thought that was normal; I still do. I liked them, they liked me, I still wrote long, newsy letters, but now I put stamps on them instead of handing them off between classes. I didn't feel the need to audition people for Frequent Contact Buddy, because I wasn't lonely without one.

And yes, sometimes being with other people feels very much like an audition. They're trying to figure out if they want to spend time with you. Sometimes, the answer is no; sometimes, that's a good thing. Not too long ago, a dear friend - someone else I've known since we were kids - told me about someone who phoned them and said, "I'm sorry, it just takes too much work to be your friend, and I can't do it." The reason? An invitation was extended, the answer was, "Let me check with the rest of my family, and see what the work schedules look like," and that took until the next day to accomplish. That sounds so very normal to me. My husband's in bed at 6 PM, and works 12 hour shifts; if it's not an emergency, I may not discuss it with him for about 24 hours, because I won't see him for about 24 hours. Apparently, the Invitation Extender felt that things can, and should, be determined quickly, and arranged via text almost immediately. Having to wait overnight stressed them out.

I have to say, if that's the case, then I couldn't really fit into their circle, which means that "we can't be friends," since their definition of "friend" looks different than mine. Theirs sounds exactly like "too much work" to me. I tell people, truthfully, that I don't often carry my phone, especially at home. Calls, texts, or emails are usually answered within 24 hours. If that doesn't work for you, then no hard feelings, but we should not plan on doing things together.

So, the pandemic doesn't feel all that different to me. In fact, I often see or speak to people more than I did before quarantine. I spent weeks taking Porch Portraits, because people were home and available, and I love to have subjects to photograph (and I could stand out on the sidewalk, no close contact). I took the first family photos for friends with a newborn. I took "first home" photos for young couples. I learned how to Zoom. People occasionally call just out of the blue, to see if we're OK. I do not feel ignored at all.

Do you know what has happened? I hate driving. I sincerely hate driving. I have been on the freeway only once in about 9 months, and I hated every second. It takes 15 minutes on the freeway to get to our favorite pizza place; I drive through town, taking 30 minutes. The first time I drove out of town since quarantine began, I had a little panic attack on the highway. It was a familiar road - I've driven it since I was a teen, and I was only going an hour away. I've driven it twice in a day before. Now, I just came unglued. That was ten months ago. I haven't driven on the highway since.

I've never been really comfortable with traffic or high speeds. Even as a kid, I was not a speed demon. I grew up during a time when 55 was the national speed limit, and I drove a clunky, slow VW van, and I really resent being asked to drive 75 now. It feels dangerous. It always has. So does traffic. My husband and I have always had a deal: on road trips, I will drive for hours through open country and small towns. He will drive in cities. I once had to drive home through LA when he was sick, and I spent at least an hour yelling at other cars and saying, "YOU OWE ME!" to my sick husband.

My brother lives about 10 hours away by car (at or near the speed limit). It's a familiar road; I've been on it, as a passenger and a driver, since I was a kid. Most of it is flat, straight, wide open road like you see in car commercials, where your visibility is 50 miles. But there are two mountain passes, steep and curving, that I hate. I'd be OK if I could drive them at 45 or 55, but I'm told that I can't, that someone will hit me from behind, so I cringe every second I'm there. I'm going too fast, other people are going WAY too fast, there's little visibility, there's no margin for error. I hate it - and that's on a good, normal day. I hate being a passenger there, too. Now, I do not know when I might ever be able to face that again. Certainly not now.

And I hate talking to people about it. I say, "I'd be fine if there were no other cars. I could mosey at 45, and everything would be fine." Then other people say, "What are you talking about? If there were no other cars, you could cruise at 120, and do 150 on the straightaways!" That just sounds like death. Speed is dangerous, speed turns small rocks into something that will spin you out or puncture your tire, it makes you likely to lose control, it will send you hurtling over edges and off of curves and tumbling down the mountain until you explosde. I hate speed. As a teen, I once got up to 65 downhill, and it felt like the Daytona 500 and a very bad idea. That means that other people do not "get" me.

Still, I coped well. Only a few years ago, I drove, by myself, on a 6+ hour round trip, on the highway, just to get photos for a niece's school Flat Stanley project. I left town headed north, and hours later, returned to town from the south. I had fun; the solo driving was a kind of meditation time. Now, I cannot muster up the courage to drive 10 minutes outside of town to take photos of the wild horses. Oh, I'll go one direction, on the old highway, because the new highway bypasses it, meaning there's almost no traffic on the old highway. But I will not get on the interstate.

Six months ago, I gritted my teeth, and was a passenger while my husband drove us an hour away, on smaller, state roads, for a tiny vacation. I didn't worry too much about the virus, but I worried A LOT about traffic. It felt as if I nearly had a stroke when he passed a highway department vehicle on a downhill curve. The drive was misery.

You're supposed to visualize doing things that you want to do, or get better at. I want to eventually drive on the freeway, and leave town on the highway, so I visualize it. I'm fine and calm until I visualize other drivers on the road. Then I freak out. I don't like other cars. They're deadly weapons, driven by impatient, distracted people. They could kill me.

Doing something frequently smooths out the edges of the anxiety, desensitizes you to it, so it becomes more doable. During this quarantine, I have lost all of my desensitization to traffic and speed and curves. I am a raw nerve ending.

I want to fix it. I eventually will fix it. But when people talk about what makes them sad right now, it's being home, and what makes them happy is leaving. I'm happy at home, and leaving makes me sad. Then people feel compelled to tell me that I'm "not normal," and need to work at being normal, because normal is a life goal. That's misery, too. "Normal" and "average" are just math. And I'm entitled to feel however I feel.

But in a society that considers sameness to be a bonding experience, I'm outside of the loop.

A Piece of the Puzzle

 Our church runs a week-long camp for girls ages 12 and up. After your first 4 years, you can be junior staff members, helping the younger girls. I went for 6 years, and loved it. I planned to come back at 18, but had to be out of state that week.

Although you can express interest in going to camp as a Tent Mom (supervising a campsite group, usually 6 to 8 girls), kitchen staff, first aid staff, or other adult, as with all jobs in our church, it's unpaid, and you are "called" by your leaders, and asked to go. I was only asked once, long after my older girls were adults, but before my youngest was old enough for camp. I thought that was slightly odd, since I'd always figured that if I went, it would be with one of my girls. Still, it wasn't too odd, and I was excited. I'd loved camp, I'd spent years as a Scout leader, and I felt prepared and enthusiastic.

Things had changed a bit since I was a kid. When I went, you didn't meet your Tent Mom or camp group until you arrived at camp. They've since changed it so that you all get together several times to meet each other, plan, get supplies, and the like. You also have two Tent Moms per group; again, having been in Scouts, I'd seen "two deep leadership" instituted, and I understood why.  We had our meetings, figured out how many tents we'd need and who had them, and otherwise made our plans.

I'm used to camping. When I was a child, my family traveled frequently, but I only remember two nights in hotel rooms. We camped. I remember my parents choosing where we could go based on gas prices. We had a great tent and sleeping bags. My parents built a wooden "grub box" with a latch, to hold the dishes, silverware and food. Everything else, including the clothes we wore while camping, were too worn out to be used every day. They were the threadbare things, the things with holes, stains, or broken handles, the things that were mismatched. A towel or a pan or shirt or something else would get to the point that we'd relegate it to the camping stuff. This was pretty normal - I spent a lot of time in campgrounds, and everybody's camping stuff looked similar to ours.

When I was planning for camp as a Tent Mom, every now and then someone would suggest buying something new, and I'd say, "No, I have an old one that we can use." Our church leaders encouraged us to use what we had, and not spend too much, so I felt prepared and obedient.

Then we got to camp. The other camp moms and I were on totally different pages. People had bought brand new, themed and color co-ordinated stuff. There were pots still in cardboard boxes. At the camp site directly across the path from me, the Tent Mom had brought brand new, pale yellow towels. Yellow! In the forest! She had also brought co-ordinating art that she put on stakes and tied to the trees. Their camp theme was cherries, bright red on sunshine yellow backgrounds. She literally had a ruffled apron that she wore while she used a (new!) broom to sweep the paths. (I wanted to yell across, "It's all dirt! You won't get down to bedrock!" But I didn't.) 

The other groups had hand decorated, personalized mailboxes for each person in their group. Our mailbox, that was for all of us in our camp, was a bucket. A non-decorated, non-personalized bucket. Yeah, I brought it. I brought the stained, used rope for our clothesline. Our one decoration was a posterboard with our group name (that year, all the groups went with cartoons for their group names). The mat in front of the tent was one that I'd bought years before on clearance for $2.54, then used at our home's door until it had balding spots. It didn't even say "WELCOME," or have a scripture printed on it; it was shaped like a fish.

I'm not exaggerating any of this. 

Let me be clear - those kinds of women - the ones with new, co-ordinating everything - are impressive in a dozen different ways, and I admire them. I will just never BE them. If all evidence wasn't to the contrary, I would have no problem believing that we are from different planets. I felt, that week at camp, as I do pretty much every day, that other people were given a different owner's manual for their lives than I had been given, but that mine was the only one that made sense.

The other Tent Mom in our group was a lovely person, but she spent most of her time with the Tent Mom in the next camp over, because they were best friends back home. The girls were fantastic, and I loved them, but I did not have effortless conversation. They were all excited because when we got back home, the new Twilight book would be out; I love books, but not *those* books.

Anyway, all of that is incidental to the story; I just want to set the scene. I never "fit in."

The girls are divided by age, so all the 12 year olds are together. That was our age group. There were other 12 year old groups, as well On the first day, just after we'd set up our tents, the "First Year" groups were asked to send a leader up to a meeting with the camp director and her staff. I went for our group. There was a girl there who needed a tent group. It was explained to all of us that she hadn't lived in the area while we were planning, so she hadn't been assigned a group, and didn't have any friends to join. They wanted to know if any of us had room for her.

The first group Mom said, "Oh, I'd love to, but we just don't have enough." They had already made personalized everything - mailboxes, sweatshirts, gifts for each girl - and she didn't want this girl to be the only one without what the others had. The second said roughly the same thing. They'd planned meticulously, bringing just enough of everything, all matching, for the girls that were already in their group. Plus, their tents were small, and pretty full. The girl looked uncomfortable.

And there was me. We had no personalized anything; even our mail just went in a bucket. Yes, I'd brought gifts to give to the girls over the week - stickers, pencils, note cards - but I'd also thrown in extra of everything, "just in case." Plus, I remembered being partnered with a girl in my first year of camp,  a girl who'd signed up late, and had no "camp buddy." It was great - we had tons of fun.

"We have plenty of room!" I said.

"Are you sure?" the leaders asked. "We don't want to put you out."

"I'm sure! No problem! We'd love to have her!" The girl smiled.

We had another girl in our group who'd come to camp without a buddy. She'd been with our group all through our preparation, but we did have an odd number. With the new girl, now we were even, and those two pretty much instantly declared each other to be their designated buddy. They were soon inseparable. All of the girls got along well, there was physical room in the tent, and we were glad to have her. Everything was great, and we all had fun. The other Tent Mom agreed with me that it was a good thing that we could add the late girl in.

And nobody griped that our stuff was old and weird and not pretty.

Those were the days before social media - imagine such a time! - and I lost track of most of "our" girls. Our camp had girls from all over the city, so we didn't even attend church in the same congregations. I was never asked to go to camp again. I assumed that either I'd taken my expected turn and all was well, or that I was just too out of step to be asked back. No hard feelings; I am out of step.

Anyway, years later, I found out that the girl who had arrived late had become so close to the girl who'd immediately become her friend that she became a frequent visitor in that girl's home. Time passed, and she actually ended up living with them, then being legally adopted by the family. And after a few more years, she got married, in the temple. (Our religion teaches that weddings outside the temple are "til death do we part," but marriages inside the temple can be forever.) I saw photos - she looked so happy, and so beautiful, and her adoptive family looked so proud.

It just really spoke to me that I'd had a teeny part in that. I certainly can't claim credit for anything in her life. It was a small camp - she would have met her sister there anyway. Because I am religious, I think that God put her in camp so that she could. What spoke to me was the idea that the weird leader, the one who was out of synch and sloppy and chaotic, the one who never fits, didn't get in the way of the plan.

And it's pure chance that I found any of this out. Nobody sought me out to tell me, personally. The girls might not even remember me.

Remember that the next time that you leave a situation feeling totally out of place, wondering why you were even there, and if somebody else shouldn't be doing it, instead. Maybe you're one piece in a puzzle whose completion you will never see. Maybe you helped good things to happen because you weren't quite as perfect as everyone around you. The way you are is OK, anyway, and doesn't hurt The Grand Plan.

And maybe, sometimes, you'll get to see some of the other pieces of the puzzle fall in around you, and you can see that, hey, I do fit.