me smart girl, yah yah

I love my time with Mom and Dad. I love seeing them so excited and feeling so grateful for their house getting organized. I understand that feeling of decluttering so you can feel calm in your surroundings, not that I have much of that in my OWN home, but I DO understand it. We were talking about public schools, and I remembered that mysteriously in 4th grade I got "sick" and didn't want to go even though I remember liking Mrs. Meier. First they took me to a "regular" doctor, who declared me "healthy." Then they took me to the "other" kind of doctor, and he ran some tests, among them an IQ test. Ah, there's the problem - I was bored at school because my IQ was a little elevated. So Mom and Dad started supplementing my education with trips, extra projects in astronomy, trigonometry, history and geography. I loved it all, I remember, my brain began to feel alive. I grew up thinking I was okay smart, but nothing outstanding. I told Mom and Dad that, and they looked at each other, funny looks on their faces.

"What?" I asked them.

"Don't you know what your IQ was?" they asked me.

I told them the number I remembered, the number I've kept with me all these years.

"It was 25 points higher than that," they said.

I was stunned, am still stunned - for what it feels like, I feel like I haven't known myself clearly for the past 37 years. Why would it even matter? Because there has been a part of my brain that has continually confounded me - why did I feel so different, if my brain was what slightly above average, just like Garrison Keillor's children at Lake Wobegon? Why do I have so many thoughts that fall, like a waterfall, Niagra-like, almost all the time? Why do I think of so many odd thoughts, like how many stitches one strand of ivory thread will cover on Mom's needlepoint pillow I'm finishing? Or what's the least number of breaths I can take in a minute? (6) Or what happens in the rest of the brain that we supposedly don't use? What could explain all of the strange things that happened to me in my childhood and all throughout the rest of my life, things I've known, seen, and heard, but no one else knew, saw or heard? But now I feel like my brain FITS me, fits my life, if that makes sense, like, "Oh, well then, THAT explains everything," and funnily enough, it seems to.

IQ tests don't mean anything, really. I know two people that scored really high, and they're both unemployed and on welfare. I also know lots of people who score "average," whatever THAT means, and they're the smartest people I know. There's book smarts, people smarts, street smarts, math smarts (I have just a touch), English smarts (I have quite a bit), art smarts (uhm, Tara says yes, I say no), parenting smarts (I pray to god I've got enough of this), and on and on and on. So this is one test, one number, but still... knowing this has changed everything inside of my head this morning, and it feels really good, like taking off a tight belt and feeling your insides expand back to where they ought to be. Ah... that feels better.

I'm off for my 4 mile walk, to the YMCA and back, then will be making chocolate chunk Toll House cookies (sure, I'm making them healthy, trust me...), then grocery shopping. It's a beautiful cloudy, moist kind of day, a slightly warmish, coldish wind in the air, like it's deciding whether to be summer or fall. The flaming sumac is already flaming, and my heart is longing for hot split pea soup and lots of lit candles. When my "work" is done, I will call Mom and Dad and tell them how much I love them, and how glad I am that I'm their daughter, and how glad I am that I can be with them so much. It is precious to me, and every conversation, every glance, is a jewel in my heart. I hugged Mom good-bye yesterday, but she couldn't look up, so I squatted down, eye to eye, and we just looked at each other. Some energy, some knowing, jumped between us, and I can't tell you what it was, only that I felt it. And it was powerful. Just like my love for Mom and Dad.