The Gift
It is the gift that continues to give. It is the gift that took years to embrace. It is the gift that sometimes causes my body to shudder and has, on occasion, a perplexed face staring back at me. But it is a gift nonetheless and it is embraced.
I vividly remember standing on the white marble steps at Darden staring back at this couple staring at me. I’d only met them earlier in the day, but I was accustomed to people staring at me. (My mother is right, I do look like an alien and folks will stare. I can’t control it, just accept it and carry on).
Several years following that incident, I sat on the idyllic wrap-around porch belonging to the couple. We sipped champagne, noshed on cold vegetables, cheese, and bread, and spit pits from cherries—'gracious living' as it is known in our circle.
As night fell and the sea air embraced us, we moved inside continuing our lively conversation—which ranges from art to music to religion to politics to business acumen to sports. We cover the gamut—one of the many reasons in which I delight in spending time with these two.
I can’t recall the exact conversation that night, or the exchange that spurred the following statement, but that utterance will remain with me forever.
“I told Dottie when I first met you that you were special, that you had the gift,” said Jim.
Jim enjoying 4 p.m. champagne
My jaw dropped as I lay across the chaise in a state of awe, and feeling of vulnerability and shame.
“How did you know?” I asked. Almost in a whisper.
“I saw in you what I saw in my mother. She was blessed with the gift.”
For me, that moment set me free and made our relationship click.
For years, I’d been ashamed and afraid of this gift. I already knew that I was an odd bird, but did I really need another level of oddity? I wanted to deny it, wanted to tuck it away hurriedly in a drawer to never open again.
Wait, what did he see? Was it something in my eyes—the window to the soul? The way I tilt my head slightly to observe? The aura of aloofness that masks my keen observation?
“It wasn’t one thing, I could just see in you, what I saw in my mother.”
I felt vulnerable that someone not only could see this gift, but told me that they knew. But I also felt a great sense of relief. Perhaps it was okay to have the gift and embrace it. This was a well-educated man who ran a successful business and who is well-read and travelled and he was okay with it, why couldn’t I. (I still have no idea what exactly he saw).
Dottie and I drinking champagne in the parlor.
The gift is always with me, it is just a matter of whether or not I want to embrace it. I’m glad, if you will, I listened the morning I walked out of my Chicago apartment, took a step and shuddered. The shudder—I was going to be in an accident that day.
The asphalt was wet with the morning’s rain as I started the three-mile drive to the office. Not half a mile into the commute, a woman pulls out from the lumber yard driveway where she’d just dropped off her sister for work. I brake, but it is too late as we collide.
The airbag worked. A bruised sternum, bruised cheek bones and a mild concussion later, I was back in the office. I dared not tell anyone that I had foreseen the future that morning.
It was the summer following my first year of college—the only summer I spent in my quaint hometown after turning 19. For the first 30 days of my stay, it rained. From showers to downpours to ferocious thunderstorms, and everything in between. I remember one evening the skies started to blacken and the ominous glow indicated that this would be something more than the rain shower. Mario and I had been about town for the day, and on the way home, the heavens opened and with it hail stones fell.
We were only 10 miles from home, but the road seemed foreign that afternoon. There was no way we were going to win this battle. I decided to drive about a mile to a friend’s house to wait out the storm.
We are all gathered in the family room, quiet as the storm moves violently through. In my head I saw a tree on our house. I said aloud to the group assembled in the room,
“A tree just fell on our house.”
Everyone looked at me and then told me to shut up and that I was being stupid. There's no tree on your house.
As sure as the preceding days, the storm ended as abruptly as it started. Mario and I thanked our hosts and hit the road. As we approached our house there laid a tree resting on the roof. Yes, a tree had indeed fallen on our abode.
Incidents like these happen all the time. There have even been times in which I’ve communicated with others without opening my mouth, without seeing them, even. So you can see how as a young child and into the young adult years one would be a bit afraid, embarrassed and ashamed of such “skills.”
I can go for months without acknowledging what I see, hear and feel and then it will hit me. So of course it followed me here to Charlotte. Of late, I’ve known what guests of Dean & DeLuca want before they ask. These are complete strangers, and I can barely remember what I ate for dinner last night, much less what a random person enjoys. I play it off with the guests, not moving to get what they desire before they verbalize it. I wouldn’t want to scare them. This doesn’t happen with every guest and there is no rhyme or reason when I know and when I don’t.
I accept it. Embrace it. Own it and love me.
