a lot of the details about my grandfather. I don’t recall a lot of the incidental day-to-day stuff. But I do clearly remember, knowing him so very well, as I have felt it all my life. I was his eleventh grandchild and six years old when he died.
Shortly before his death I was sitting on his lap, amid the colourful multidirectional banter of an extended family gathering. I was leaning back onto his chest chatting to him, just so he would answer me and I could feel that great rumble of a voice rolling out of that great mountain of a man. My absolute love and admiration for Popa was full and intense, and even at the age of six I would consciously allow it to envelop me in its ecstasy.
Nearly all of my relatives were somewhat dumbfounded by me, and as such I was the proverbial “black sheep” and always a “naughty little girl.” But I was a pretty girl with blonde curls and blue eyes, so they loved showing me off—provided I didn’t speak or do anything “weird.” I was always kept under close restraint, particularly in public, but not by my Popa; he just loved me.
At a gathering only a few years ago, many years after the event, my older cousin recounted to me the conversation I had with Popa that afternoon, upon his lap. He recalled the tears running down Popa’s cheeks when I answered.
Popa rumbled, “Lissy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
And I said, “Wise.”
I remember saying it. I remember Pop’s silence, for it made me turn to look at him and bask in his gentle smile. My cousin tells me it was a rare day when he wasn’t astonished by me, but on this day I actually silenced the entire family. I can still see the dismayed heads shaking.
Weeks later, I was at school, playing in the playground at recess, when for no reason I knew at all I burst into tears. When the teacher came over and asked, “What is it, Melissa?” I replied, “My Popa just died.” She stared at me hard for a moment, then rolled her exasperated eyes and walked away.
I sat down on a bench, desolate and alone beneath the stark branches of a winter tree. My friends were playing around me but knew not to come to me. I remember feeling within myself that somehow, I had made the wrong choice. When my parents picked me up from school that afternoon they told me that Popa had died, indeed at 10:47am, while I was at recess. I said, “I know.” Of course, I was punished for being unfeeling and ill-mannered.
My childhood was not easy. And I was not an easy child. I’m certainly not proud of that fact, but I do forgive myself now that I am a little wiser.
The truth is, I didn’t really want to talk about myself in his book. It was a friend working in healing who convinced me. He said, “Melissa, who better to help someone that ails than someone who has been to hell and back, and then gone back a few times just to see if the climate has changed?”
As a child, the confusion was very real. I just could not comprehend the need or the rush of people to conform. Actually, I still don’t. Norman Vincent Peale seems to understand and put it concisely: “Conformity is one of the most fundamental dishonesties of all. When we reject our specialness, when we water down our God-given uniqueness and individuality, we begin to lose our freedom. The conformist is in no way a free man. He has to follow the herd.”
Almost thirty years into this life, I finally came to recognize that I don’t think like other people and they don’t think like me. My expectations of myself have not really softened at all, but in this discovery, I am far more generous, patient and indulgent in my expectations of others.
I am an Indigo child. When I read The Indigo Children by Jan Tober and Lee Carroll, I experienced two things: recognition and relief. Not only did someone understand that I didn’t think like other people think and didn’t seem to have the same social filters, but also the specialists referenced in the book actually saw merit to this! If you understand or have read about Indigos, then you’ll be able to laugh at, and comprehend somewhat, the audacious existence that has been, and is, my life.
Of course, it would have been a lot easier if during my childhood we recognised Indigo children and their differing natures. But my mother was blind in the wilderness to this strangely independent, very strong and apparently defiant child, a child who knew change was necessary and always pushed to make it. She was told to “discipline her,” and when that didn’t work, “discipline her harder.”
I appeared awkward, I was painfully shy, and the majority of my family just couldn’t fathom how to communicate with me. And I couldn’t fathom how to get through to them, either! I threw tantrums that to this day, only my own children can compete with (sadly for them, as they are dealing with the master). I was grotesquely intolerant of idiots, but rather than let them know it, I simply went within myself. Just didn’t answer. I see my son do the same thing now. My son has a physical disability and people, not knowing, assume it must be something to do with his disability. Having been there myself, I see him just choose not to bother himself with such small questions. He, too, just goes within.
Not unhappily intrinsic, either. It was (and still is) blissful to escape within and concentrate on the incredible influx of information that I gathered throughout the day from moment to moment. It was enjoyable to filter, refine, comprehend a little further or abandon information from various interactive and even multidimensional information feeds. A whole separate adventure lives within our own minds.
I used to, and actually still do, love watching people. I often recall looking at a group of people that I was amongst, from a distance. I could make myself be outside that group when physically I was amid them. I could view a moving kaleidoscopic portrait of them, and I would watch. And smile. And learn.
It wasn’t an easy childhood, and a bevy of forces were at work at any moment to assure that status. Bad things happened. Bad things. Any single one of these things could have created a victim of me. My apparent social ineptitude made me ill equipped to handle them. Remaining intrinsic, for me, was a defensive action in the face of the mind-chattering chaos of absorbing all the peripherals, as well as dealing with the obvious.
This absorbed, non-communicative existence prompted me to hear the phrase, “The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know!” more times than I care to remember. Every child hears this phrase at some time. I had it hammered in. However, it actually wasn’t self-absorption; it was an quiet essential for survival.
The downfall of my silent defensive strategy came to a head when I started school. Apparently I hadn’t been openly communicating much at all. Despite the fact that an extraordinary amount of activity was always going on within me, I hadn’t actually shared a lot of it. As such, when I was at the appropriate age to start school, my mother had placed me in a remedial prep class, as they had come to the conclusion that I had some sort of learning disability. I was only in the Prep class for two days before the school put me into Grade Two.
I had been reading since I was three, only Mum hadn’t noticed. I certainly hadn’t told anyone. Having to speak to people was horribly uncomfortable, and did I mention I was painfully shy? I have an extraordinary memory, a true gift that means learning comes easily. (When we meet, this is worth remembering, for my memory is long.) Again, in my naiveté, I had assumed everyone shared this. But alas…
The self-discipline to sit down and study was another issue. You would have hated me at school, not studying, getting good grades. But I was so bored and frustrated and despised being there. Unless I knew I would enjoy the task, I simply refused to complete any assigned homework, and in the face of this my marks did suffer. Homework seemed a pointless exercise of little benefit to any party involved, other than to tax one’s time.
I did everything extra curricula that I could during school, to stem the boredom and quash the frustration I had
