I collect turtles. I have collected them for quite a few years now, and have turtles from all over the world. Most of my turtles were gifts from that dearest kind of friend, an old friend who has seen me at my worst, [take my word for it, she has been at my side when I was in the hospital, and I am a bad patient,] and takes me at my best, no matter what may be happening in between. Whenever I see a turtle, I am reminded of her and I have to smile. Or giggle. Well, usually I laugh out loud.
The story of how I came to collect turtles is an amusing little tale, which begins about ten years ago, and involves some fun with my friend, whom I will call Sherry. [That might be her real name, or it might not. I am not usually one to change names to protect the innocent, to say nothing of the guilty. Which is where this story is going.]
Sherry is a true friend of the heart, who overlooks and underemphasizes the bad while building up the good until you don’t even recognize yourself. She is the kind of friend you can not talk to for four months because life just happens, and when you finally do talk, you pick up right where you left off, and spend six hours catching up and not even realize where the time has gone.
Anyway, a few years back, we were both exhausted moms of young and very busy children, like most of our mutual friends. One weekend, several of us decided to go on a "Mom's Weekend Out." We rented a condo in central Missouri, a couple of hours from home, and we planned a weekend of fun, shopping and eating our way into nirvana.
We left on Friday afternoon, and didn't get there until evening, so we didn't have a lot of time to do anything exciting that first night. We agreed to get up early the next morning and go to the outlet mall and do some shopping. It was a couple of months before Christmas, and we all had presents to get, so this was a fun way to get the job done. We went early, met up for a quick lunch, and then finally finished up in the late afternoon, when we were all dog tired, and just a little silly.
Well, to tell you the truth, we were a lot silly. I think we were off the edge of the cliff silly, in fact. We were giddy from the thrill of an entire weekend of not being responsible for anyone but ourselves - moms on a power trip and we weren’t out of gas yet.
We went to a small pizza joint for dinner, and while we sat there, we laughed and acted like a bunch of goofy teenagers. Although we were quieter. We do deserve credit for that, because we probably wouldn't get credit for much else that evening. We laughed until we cried, weak and stomachs aching, over everything and nothing. It was just one of the times when you are happy to be alive, and everything strikes you funny, and you giggle and laugh like little girls.
While we sat there, we observed people entering the shop. We weren't making critiques, and we weren't being rude, we were just noticing people because it wasn't a very busy place, and that gave us something else to comment on and giggle about. My back happened to be turned to the door, so I was not participating as fully as everyone else, which is probably just as well, anyway. Easier for me to control my mouth if I don't have material to work with. And let me just point out... no, never mind.
All of a sudden, someone mentioned a person coming in the door that was noteworthy. I don't really recall what the source of the excitement was, she was probably exceptionally pretty or something, but I do recall not being able to see over the high back of the booth bench I was seated on. I sat up straight from my slouching position, and still couldn't quite see. Then I slowly extended my rather giraffe-like neck to it's full length, trying not to be too noticeable. I didn't want to look like I was staring at the woman I was staring at. If you know what I mean. That would be rude, and I am never rude. Silly, maybe. Thoughtless occasionally. But never rude
Something you should know about Sherry is that when she is with close friends, she will occasionally blurt out what is on her mind before she really thinks it through, or considers how it will be heard on the receiving end. [ [I would be worried about putting that little bit of info out there on the world wide web, but she is usually the first one to point it out, generally right after having done it, so I don't think it's a secret. But just in case it was a secret, I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.] This is actually one of Sherry’s endearing qualities, because she is very honest and real, and you never have to wonder what she is thinking inside.
Evidently, the situation with my neck was a little too much for Sherry to leave alone. She burst out laughing, and when she was able to gasp out the source of her mirth, she spluttered, "You looked just like a turtle!" Well. Everyone at the table quite naturally turned to examine my neck, which I retracted back inside my collar quite a bit faster than I had stuck it out. Which of course made her laugh even harder.
I thought it was hilarious, because I could see her point. As I mentioned, I have always thought of myself as more of a giraffe. I can almost see The Arch from here, my head sits so high on my neck. Obviously, this was too much of an opportunity for me to just let that comment pass, so I said, "Don’t you think that’s kind of… personal? I mean, I might be really sensitive about my giraffe neck.” I re-extended my neck a couple times, just for fun, and we laughed some more.
Sherry was mortified, of course, embarrassed because she hadn't meant it the way it sounded. Although, of course, she did mean it exactly as it came out, but not in an insulting way. I understood that, because like I said, we are old friends, and I knew what she meant. She wasn't laughing at me, she was laughing with me. Hm.
But I see her point. I’ve checked it out a couple times in a mirror since then, and I do look like a turtle coming out of my shell. Anyway, we all laughed, and then we moved on to other silly subjects, like playing Uno until 4 in the morning, and I think Monopoly might have come into the picture at some point. Well, Sherry thought we moved on, anyway. But I wasn't done with her yet.
For Christmas that year, which was a couple of months later, I got her the first turtle. I don’t remember what it was, something silly and inconsequential, I’m sure. It was meant to be a reminder of the fun time we had enjoyed together, and the laughter we had shared. Sherry was chagrined that of all things, that was what I would think of, although she surely wasn’t surprised. And once she got over her embarrassment, she gave as good as she got. The next gift I got from her was a turtle in return, and we have been doing it ever since.
I have given her turtles from all my travels, so she has turtles from Mexico and Asia, Hawaii and Minnesota. And she has done the same, so I have turtles from Paris and Prague, Colorado and Florida, and a whole lot of points in between. We have given tiny turtles in the form of necklaces and pins and earrings, and we have given knickknacks to sit on a shelf. We have exchanged garden turtles, and her daughter even has a stuffed turtle from when she was born that I couldn’t resist sending, because it was just so right.
Speaking of the kids, they have gotten in on the fun too. Wherever we go, our kids are always on the lookout for turtles. It’s become a game for them, something fun to watch for, and it’s even sort of educational. Turtles seem to be a part of the folklore of every culture, and wherever you go, you learn something about them when you ask if there are any turtles to be had.
I never see a turtle now that I don't think of Sherry and giggle over that throwaway moment so many years ago. But as insignificant as those moments are, they are also, to me, the moments in life to cherish - the moments when we are real, so much ourselves that we forget to be better than who we really are. And in revealing the real us, the us inside, we allow those deeper friendships to develop and grow.
Sherry's comparison of me to a turtle was more apropos than she probably realized, because I have spent my lifetime keeping my real self hidden away. I have always been afraid to let people in, to allow them to see the real me, because I have always had a sneaking suspicion that I am not quite good enough, not quite smart enough, just not quite enough, to be worth getting to know. My shell has always been more impenetrable than any turtle could ever dream of, and breaking through it has only been for the very determined.
Sherry has a special gift for people. She is not the turtle, hiding inside herself, afraid to let the world in. On the contrary, she has never known a stranger, because you can't remain unknown for long around her. You can leave her in the bread aisle for two minutes while you run to the frozen foods, and by the time you get back, a total stranger will be pouring her heart out when she thought she was just there to get hot dog buns. You meet her for lunch at the Barnes and Noble, and you will find her in the children's books, taking to heart the story of the woman she has known for all of ten minutes while she was waiting for me. Okay, I was late, as usual, but that is not the point.
And the things people tell her would surprise you. I have heard people tossing out relatively intimate details of their lives, especially about their children, on a 30 second acquaintanceship. This is an alien idea to me, spilling out my guts to a complete stranger I have known for five minutes and will never see again. I spent three years and I won't tell you how many thousands of dollars for the sort of counseling Sherry seems able to dispense in the supermarket parking lot. And I have a feeling it may be almost as effective, because when people say farewell to her, you can tell they are feeling a little better about themselves, and their load is little bit lighter.
I think society today is filled with turtles. The more we do, the less we connect. We are on call 24/7, we have constant access with cell phones, IM, texting and computers, we communicate incessantly with e-mail and have news at the touch of button. We know everything about everyone, and yet, it seems, we know very little about anyone. The suicide rate is climbing while the marriage rate is dropping. We hang out, but we don't go steady any more. We have lunch instead of dinner, because we don’t have time to sit down and talk awhile. We race around dropping our children at one activity after another, but never really connect with anyone while we are there. I fear we have substituted a shallow acquaintanceship for deeper, more meaningful relationships, because we don't have time or energy, or most likely, either one, to go any further. Despite the information overload, we never seem to find out what is important to anyone, even people we are close to. Maybe even ourselves.
My son writes an opinion column for his college newspaper. [He is a lot more talented than I am, thus he gets paid for what he writes. Sort of the ideal job for him, really. He is opinionated anyway, so now he just gets paid for bloviating about it.] Anyway, he noticed that they are no longer allowing comments after his column, and so he wanted to know if he was being singled out, or if they had just stopped allowing them generally. He is bummed to find that the public discussion has been curtailed, but I disagree.
I think the constant freedom to express has had a negative impact on life generally. People shoot off an e-mail without thinking about what they are saying, they IM or facebook a comment that gets taken out of context because it wasn’t thought through, they say whatever comes into their head without filtering the output, and overall, the world has gotten much more negative and less friendly. I think that might be partly why more people are hiding inside themselves, less interested in expressing an opinion in real time. It’s safer to hide behind fake screen names online where their cyber world is more real than the real world, because it is the only place left for them to be fully themselves.
Which brings me back to Sherry. [This post was not originally intended to be about Sherry, but it seems to be writing itself that way. So I’m going to go with that, because she is a fun topic for me.] She has a very rare gift, one which brings the turtles out of their shells. As a turtle, I admire that quality, that ability to draw out others, to make them feel valued and worthy and important, whether it's for two minutes or two hours of her time.
What is it that allows Sherry to connect with people as she does? What makes total strangers open up to her after 30 seconds and tell her things they probably don’t tell their best friends or even their spouse? My answer, after many years of observation, is that Sherry listens with her heart. She not only pays attention, she asks questions that show she is genuinely interested, and she really cares. She doesn’t leave you hanging there, unsatisfied and empty, she takes the journey with you, and let’s you know, whether its for two minutes or two hours, that you matter to her, and she wants you to know you are not alone.
While I am a turtle, Sherry is the hare. That’s not to say she’s flighty. The analogy actually works out pretty well, because she used to be a runner, and she is always going in four directions at once. Which equals the number of kids she has, which explains why she lives in her van most of the time.
In the fable, the hare loses the race, while the steady tortoise crosses the finish line first because he keeps his eye on the prize, and gets there slow but steady. I’m not so sure it works that way in real life. I think often the tortoise gets run over because they don’t see the car coming, while the hare is the real winner, because they enjoy the beauty of the journey. Although the hare gets distracted by the minutiae of life, they also find the joy in the present that so many of us lack, and they share it with everyone around them.
There is an old quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” For the hare, it is all about the journey, and I think they have the right idea. Just because they don’t cross the finish line first doesn’t mean they don’t finish. They just do it in their own way, in their own time, and they do it with a crowd of happy followers who are coming along with them for the ride.
As for me, I am all too happy to stay inside my shell and hide from the world. It's an easy and familiar place, and I am not out of my element to stay there. That is where friends like Sherry come in. If I am slow, if I am afraid, when I go inside my shell, sometimes she will pick me up and shake me until my head falls out. Other times, when I am in need of comfort and care, she doesn't force me to hurry along. Then she will pick me up and carry me with her, so we can cross the finish line together. And we are guaranteed to have some laughs along the way.
I think the world needs more hares.
