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Have you ever seen the movie, “The Parent Trap”? 

Sometimes… I wonder if I have a twin sister out there. Someone who looks like me and thinks like me, but has the privilege of leading a different life. The chances are slim. I mean, mama isn’t any good at holding secrets, and my parents are still together. I would have known by now for sure. Still, I wonder what she’d be like. Maybe, the situation is less “Parent Trap” and more like… a shadow realm? A mirror world… Maybe instead of Lia (with an I), her name would be Leah (with an e and h). 

What would Leah do? How much of me makes up who I am, and how much is circumstance? I don’t know if anyone can truly measure that, but I think that some things would have to be different. If looking at Leah was like looking in the mirror, the mole on the inside of my left elbow would be on the inside of her right. The shaved side of her head would be her left, and mine on my right. Would she have the same scars? Probably not internally. But the physical scar on my left leg from falling off the garage roof in an attempt to learn how to fly could be on her right… if she also did the same thing. But if Leah (with an e and h) grew up in the middle of Manhattan, or somewhere in the deserts of Morocco, she probably would not have tried to jump off someone’s garage. Maybe her head would be full of hair, long flowing curls, that hit the back of her knees when she danced. Maybe she felt free. Maybe she didn’t know the depths of grief and sorrow that were plaguing me in my teenage years. If Leah existed, I wished her the best and the utmost happiness.

Growing up is not easy. 

That’s what adults say when they look back on their sad childhoods and wonder where their trauma started in the first place. But when you’re growing up… you don’t really see it the same way. Sure, my life has been hard sometimes. I live in a small town with small-minded people and some real characters that always seem to be the odd ones out. People I love have died- like my sister Betty. Betty was hit by a reckless driver in the school parking lot when she was in the 1st grade. Pastor Freeman (the only pastor at our church that seemed to even like me) died when he hit a moose on the highway. And then there was my favorite person in the world- Miss Newson. Miss Newson was the lady I used to house-sit for. She always treated me like a real person. She didn’t care if I was weird or different from the others in town. She was very eccentric- as all artists are. She liked to wear overalls and sweaters while melting crayons and candles in her front yard- even in the summer! She made wax sculptures and painted large canvases with hot wax. She was superstitious- always throwing salt over her shoulder and falling to her knees to pray every single time she saw a black cat. She was weird, but she was also super kind. She always offered me muffins and would tell me really cool stories about her world travels. People in our town didn’t really “get” her, but I found out that I didn’t really need to. I liked how different she was. I loved her tangential rants that our more respectable neighbors called, “crazy talk”! She was wonderfully weird and hilarious if you got to know her…. But she died of cancer before most of this town learned to appreciate her. 

I wonder… If I ever met Leah (with an e and h), what she would have thought of Miss Newson. I bet she would have loved her. I bet the 3 of us would have had so much fun. Miss Newson- with her humor and art gallery of a home filled with the scent of freshly baked blueberry muffins- would have loved to see me be less serious. She was always talking about getting healed. You know- internally. She’d say how we had to let go of our baggage after we processed it. She’d say how healing is a long process, that we could not let those who enjoyed poisoning others with their words get to us. She would have loved to see me healed. She also would have loved to meet Leah (with an e and h). If Leah was less outwardly weird than me… I bet this town would love to meet her too.