I was home, in my birth home, (America later adopted me) in that tiny Caribbean island which shows up (if we're lucky) as a dot on most maps. I was having a "roundtable" discussion with the elders, who seemed to have a penchant for standing around and listening to my ramblings--a captive audience--like acolytes listening to the pontifications of Pius the Tenth and his infallibility theories regarding the assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven.
From as far back as I can recall, I had delusions of grandeur. I believed, assumed, rather, that I captivated those around me, by my mere existence and gift of gab. My grandmother, Avie, in particular, was smitten, I was convinced, and thought I was the greatest thing to have been born and reared in the village since "Whappee killed Phillip" circa 1706. She was, single-handedly, and with her myriad indulgences, responsible for my hubris.
She said I was born forty years of age. It was clear that I was precocious, that I understood and said things that were way ahead of my years. As far as I was concerned, in my seven year old wisdom, granny Avie was right.
I was beyond womanish. I could be found any given afternoon in the company of women my grandmother's age--in their forties and fifties--listening to grown up gossip and wearing grown up flip flops. I had a way, that I would stand back with my hands akimbo, always in a state of hysteria, explicating, doubting, or demanding of one thing or the other. It amused and thrilled them and the more I realized this, the more I "performed." I had a distinctive laugh, like my father. It was loud and boisterous and not at all demure. My laughter could be heard echoing into the hills and got me the moniker of "little vagabond."
The mischief I often found myself spearheading was legendary, and knew absolutely no boundaries--neither for that matter did the consequences once my mother got wind of my latest transgression. But make no mistake about it. Back then, it was all about me. I was the center of my own concocted universe, and still, to this day, live largely in my own world.
Yes, my id ego was off the charts. I didn't even know it was ego, for to me, it was just the way things were. I was the center of life as I knew it, all things and people revolved around me. I could do and be and become anything that my little mind and heart conceived and desired--including becoming a lawyer. It never occurred to me, or to them, that my dreams would not come true. One day, a day that was like most of the others, granny asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And without hesitating, I replied, "a lawyer." And she beamed down at me, as if I had said something unseasonably smart. And she nodded her head and said, "Yes. that's exactly what you will be." I smiled back up at her, feeling really intelligent, as if I had made the most perfect choice in the world. She went out and told the whole village. All her friends. My parents, siblings, cousins, friends and foes. They all believed. To them, it seemed self-evident even more than it did to me, as the years wore on.
Eventually, those words of mine, and those expectations of theirs crystallized in my mind and became dogma. There came a time in the history of my life when there was nothing else I could imagine being, nothing else I could be.
But it would be 30 long years before I would realize my dream. And by then, I would feel like Cinderella, the girl who accidentally got taken to the Ball. And, of course, what would the ball be without a flock of wicked step-sisters and their male counterparts?
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