As a child, I was different from the other kids.
My arms were thin as pipe cleaners. I faltered at word games or team sports of any kind. I talked to myself a lot and hated to see animals suffer. More often than not, I preferred to be alone.
Generally, I slipped through the wonder years unnoticed. Occasionally, the bullies at school would put me down with a scowl or a punch so they could loom large in the eyes of their lieutenants.
Then I grew up and proved to myself that I could do all those things the bullies couldn’t. Mostly, I learned how to take care of myself and serve other people.
But there are others among my human brothers and sisters for whom growing up different was a far more perilous venture. Some were taunted — even persecuted to the point of death — for the color of their skin or whom they chose to love.
Their pain and anguish manifested in Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech to an enraptured throng on the National Mall in 1963. The following year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Five years later, crowds spilled onto the streets of Greenwich Village, New York City, when police raided the Stonewall Inn. In 1970 what was to become an annual celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride was born. Events now span the globe.
In this year’s land of COVID, many Pride events have gone online and added more colors to the rainbow in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. This week, Rescue Legacy honors those of us who raise “different” to the highest level.
There’s my sister, Sue, and her wife, Linda, who’ve doted on a menagerie of rescues through the years, one of whom was seriously mauled by a neighbor’s dog. My colleague, Alexa, and her partner, Taylor, just adopted Ruth, a shepherd-mix whom they discovered was very pregnant. The couple is sacrificing their first months as a family so Ruth can safely whelp her litter of lovelies for adoption.
Close friends, Corinne and Stacey, have spared no expense and provided every conceivable resource to confront disease and give their rescues the best quality of life. Joy, a dear friend and Rescue Legacy’s director of development, loved her Hennessy — lipomas and all — to the very end. She knows more about how to cultivate a shared life of health and happiness with a pet than anyone I know.
Elijah McClain taught himself how to play the guitar and violin. He loved to serenade stray cats because he believed that music calmed them. Walking home from a convenience store in Aurora, Colorado, on August, 28, 2019, the 5’6’ 140-pound massage therapist was corralled by police in response to a call that the young African-American looked “sketchy.” Officers wrestled him to the ground and applied a carotid hold which rendered him unconscious. Paramedics later injected him with ketamine, a powerful sedative. On the way to the hospital McClain went into cardiac arrest. He died a few days later.
Who plays for the stray cats now?
By thinning the ranks of those among us who are “different,” our world is diminished. Only by respecting the myriad of differences between us can we discover and celebrate what binds us together.
And realize how much we have to give.