Raison d'être

People seem obsessed with things that honestly don't seem that important to me most of the time.

I look at a beautiful child, or a flower, or even the sky and find myself in a sort of wonder that anyone or anything could be that beautiful.  I cannot think of one time when that thought was immediately followed by the question, in my mind, of, "I wonder why he, she, or it is here?"

Had you asked me who I was at three I would have said, "Linda."  That was enough for me.  I didn't ponder anymore over it than that.  I did ponder over that place called heaven where we all were supposed to have to go and where the only person I knew there was my grandfather and the truth was that I didn't even really know him, but I counted on him knowing me cause he was my momma's daddy. And I pondered over divorce where a family broke into two pieces and the kids had to go live with one of them and I hoped my mommy and daddy didn't get one of those. I thought about those sorts of things and things like the best word to name something so people would know what I meant. That was important to me.

Life was full of things to explore and I was full of curiosity and energy.  I slid pretty seamlessly from one topic to another and it was good.

Then people grabbed me by my long curls and began telling me who I was and why I was here and at first I wasn't all that impressed, but I was impressionable. Children belong out of necessity because they need to be cared for or they don't survive long, so I was soon among those searching for who I was, who you are, who we are and why we are here, assuming it wasn't just an exercise in conjugation.

There were literally whole foundations set up to tell me who I was, depending on which label was stamped on my soul the day I was born, but the how and the why were up for grabs. Everyone seemed to have their own agenda.  I was scrubbed, buffed, polished and dressed before I was even old enough to walk. My interests were headed, honed, refined and annulled before I was old enough to have a voice.

I was supposed "to be" a little lady, a good student, a musician, a writer, a credit to the family, a wife, a mother (in that order) and finally a grandmother --  and had I ever truly understood all these things I might have been totally overwhelmed, but as it was, I just went blithely on being me, excelling at those things I loved and falling helter skelter through the holes at everything else.

It's been a whirlwind life. A chaotic one. A lovely one and frightening one and when the roles are called up yonder I hope I'm there and not still wandering around down here wondering:

Why am I here?