I was reading an interview with Matthew Quick in a little magazine I occasionally write for called The Mockingbird (maybe you’ve heard it from my PERIODIC SELF-PROMOTION?)–anyway, Quick is the author of Silver Linings Playbook, among other stories, and he said this:

“Even in Hollywood, some of these super-famous people that you see in movies as utterly confident and polished have told me behind closed doors, ‘I totally deal with all of these issues,’ or, ‘Look at the meds I’m on just to be on TV every day.’ There’s even a family in this. I’ve learned that this suffering is universal, that my problems transcend me. It’s great to show other people they’re not alone. Maybe there’s family to be found right there.” [ed. note: emphasis totes mine]

I’ve always thought of the various population subsets of which I am a part (the anxious/depressed, the parents of kids with superpowers/special needs, the gingers) as a kind of club. Specifically, The Society of I Didn’t Ask for this Shit. But now I can see it as more of a family, our common experiences binding us in a way that goes beyond (or around) genetics, that ties us with something that’s not blood but is still thicker than water.

And now I read that there actually may still be a genetic basis for some of these similarities, as a specific gene has been found that is involved with serotonin levels in the brain, with the end result being that those who have the shortened version of this gene were originally thought to be predisposed to more negative emotional responses but, it turns out, are simply predisposed to more emotional responses, PERIODT. In other words, they (WE) are what you might call sensitive.

The Husband and I took advantage of free tickets and suite access to go to the Hugh Jackman concert here over the weekend and while I drank free prosecco, Hugh belted out his hits and provided some unexpected catharsis. We haven’t been to Sunday services in a few weeks due to sicknesses/birthday parties/couch callings, and I was not expecting to have my ass taken to church by Wolverine, but there we were, my short allele getting all kinds of verklempt over renditions of “This Is Me” and “The Greatest Show” and Hugh’s throwing around of quotes like this one from PT Barnum:

“No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.”

It reminded me of a similar line that hit me between the eyes when I took the boys to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory over the break:

“When a boy has just a touch of odd
And he walks the streets without a nod
He should know that odd is a gift from God…”

Of course I thought of my own boy, of both of them, of myself when I was their ages, of all the moments that led to my feeling like an outsider, an observer…and how all those moments fitted me especially for writing, for moving, for landing in places that are so far from home and yet are home, to people who are so far from family yet are just that. Connected not by limbs on a family tree but through suffering and laughter, through stories that may not have been lived together but are still shared.

There were the passers-by on the New York sidewalk to whom I never spoke but were there for the same reason I was–because they couldn’t not be. There were the people at the one concert in my life I attended alone, sitting at a bar by myself but not really, because the music and lyrics had engraved themselves upon my soul over years of hearing them, and this can lead to a certain kind of bravery. There were the people at Hogwarts who were too afraid to say Voldemort’s name and the ones who banded together to fight him–because there is a particular kind of magic that always leaves traces.

Because what is family, if not this: sitting at a table together, speaking with eyes when words won’t do, knowing you belong right where you are? Or, as it was for me last week, on a pier out in the ocean standing with a group of people I’ve never met, all gazing at the dolphins we happened to be in the spot, right then, to see? For one moment, or for all of them, a group of people looking in the same direction, at the same thing, seeing it for the wonder it is.