The hulk in me

Sadie sits on the outside looking in. Nora runs to embrace the next moment while Jonah stays close to me. And Molly, self assured poised for her next moment, eternally hopeful for her next move. I'm looking in a fish bowl and watching the world go around, swimming in a sea of ins and outs where some days it feels like I connect and am in my habitat and others I am a visitor. Today I was a visitor and I was not like Nora who ran in to the playground, picked her next friend and started her game.
Today my game should be meaningful. All my moments are meaningful and what does that make the moments that are mundane and more of the same. I have no patience for it. Gary and I met and fell in love under the auspices that we would take over the world. There were people who were petty and did not understand, we called them "taco bell" people. They just talk and talk but nothing actually comes out of their mouths.
I have worked hard to develop patience in this and to foster love and compassion in my children. The mothers in Molly and Sadie's dance classes years ago were these people. They talked about Target like it was some sort of extension to heaven, to Buddha himself, as if you could find happiness in the dollar aisle at the market.
I knitted and by the end of the year the mothers didn't talk to me at all.
Sometimes that is a bummer. I feel like why can't I be more like that? Why can't I fit in with ease? Why is it that I relate to the homeless guy I chat with on Mondays in front of the library better than I do my own friends?
I love that homeless guy. He is slightly smelly and he is sometimes cold and I give him a bite of my muffin and hang on his every word. He understands something that I am trying to get. We only get here one time and I want to get it this time around.
Sadie goes in to a party like a lost deer, starry eyed and confused, finding an activity or some sort of tree to climb.
I look for Gary.
We went to see the movie Up on Monday and it was the love story that my inlaws lived and Sadie told me she would never get married. I agreed, getting married is a big risk to run. You will get hurt eventually. Someday one of you will be lonely for the other. You should plan. You should create networks of friends for yourself so that when you are left alone you will be ok. That is what my mother in law should have done.
But she didn't want to. She fit in with him and I fit in with Gary.
It's really the only place I do fit in.
Sometimes I fit in with the homeschoolers.
Sometimes I fit in with the social workers.
But most times I don't.
David Banner didn't fit in. He had to keep on moving every time he turned green and had an "episode". Too bad he didn't have a partner in crime. A little green lady would have been perfect for him. At least then he would have been able to laugh about all those episodes later and someone would tell him that they are all just "taco bell" people and they could be green forever together.
Sometimes I feel like if I just stopped trying to fit in so much maybe I would embrace my not fit in ness and relish the person I am.