This summer on our way home from an Eras road trip, my 15-year-old granddaughter asked for my birthdate. I recited month, date, and year.

“Ah! They’re all odd numbers…,” she observed, “… just like you!”

We had a good laugh, for I am, in fact, a bit of an oddball. If life were a marching band, I’d be the one perpetually out of step. As a child, I lived with my head in the clouds and my nose in a book. Then and now, I thought too much—pondering, mulling, ruminating, journaling. My firstborn once told me that I think about things more than anyone she knows. But worse, she added, “You think weird.”

It’s true. I’ve grown to accept such reflections like the prizes at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box: unexpected little novelties. It wasn’t always so, of course. During my school years, I wanted desperately to fit in. Most of us do, don’t we?

Early on, I realized that presenting my true self in the mainstream posed a real threat to my social survival. I changed my outward behavior because who I was inside felt far too fragile to expose.

Luckily, I was seen and mentored by a handful of educators and kin whose quiet respect helped me become, by degrees, more fully myself. These days, when my granddaughter calls me an oddball to my face and we laugh out loud, we aren’t just sharing a joke—we’re celebrating our native oddities, quirks, peccadillos, and genius. To truly know and accept oneself, and to offer that same grace to another, is the heart of living fully.

As a friend once said, “We are our own gifts.”