What did your soul tell you about who you would be?

I was seven years old, it was a lazy afternoon in June and I was walking around the mall with my grandfather and grandmother. I was visiting them in Hollywood, California from my home with my mother and step-father in Dallas, Pennsylvania. I was away from home and yet felt at home.

I felt more at home at my grandparent's 16th floor Hollywood condo than I did at the home where I lived in Pennsylvania. I was in second grade and yet felt like such an important person to my grandma and grandpa. They arranged and scheduled my visits.The visit would be too short for the three of us, and not long enough for my mother and step-father who were relieved to have me out of their home. When I arrived at the Miami Airport and saw them waiting for me I knew they had been truly waiting for me to appear since my last departure the year before. Time with me mattered to them and time with them was precious to me.

The qualities of feeling I mattered and feeling at home made it a safe place for my soul to appear.

As we came around the bend from walking down one arm of the mall to begin walking down another, we saw an artist set up with an easel in the center of the walkway. I looked with interest at his displayed artwork, people drawn with very large heads and wearing what looked like costumes.

My grandfather explained that the gentleman was a cartoonist and my grandmother immediately commissioned him to draw a cartoon of me. The contrast to my parents became obvious again to me here. This time a contrast to my father, who was in fact a professional artist but had never drawn or painted an image of me. Would this man, this stranger, really be willing to draw me? Of course, we will pay him my grandfather assured.

The cartoonist asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. "A lawyer" I responded without taking time to think about my answer. I was in second grade. I didn't know personally or know of any lawyers. Perhaps I had seen one on TV. I don't know what my frame of reference would have been for wanting to be a lawyer but I knew when I said it that it was true.

Fifteen minutes later the cartoonist turned the canvas and showed me an image of myself, with a large head and a smile to scale, and a little body dressed up in a suit with sneakers on my feet. I was standing behind a lemonade stand with a sign above my head that read, "Jodi's Legal Advice and Lemonade, 5 cents. "

My grandparents loved the cartoon, complimented the artist and payed him generously with the price and a large tip. That they treasured the image was obvious to me. That they saw the truth in it was also obvious to me. My grandparents went on to have it professionally framed as if it was a fine piece of art and hung it in the hallway of their condo's formal entrance way. They were proud of me.

Though I do not remember my frame of reference for selecting "lawyer" as my future career, I remember knowing that it was my job to speak on behalf of others. To help them tell their truth or to retain their rights.

Just six months prior, just prior to nightfall in the dingy little apartment I lived in with my mother and stepfather, in the complex ironically named "Green Acres," I stood behind a large rust colored chaise lounge. My mother was seated on the lounge and my step father stood in front of her yelling at her. I stood behind her and the back of the lounge arguing on behalf of her. My step father was accusing my mother of something he deemed terrible and I pleaded with him to accept the evidence I was offering him about my mother to prove that what he accused her of was untrue.  I needed to protect my mother but do so from a range where my step-father could not reach me, not with his hand and not with his leather belt. I could not have known that this was the activity of lawyers, to plead their client's innocence.

Both my defense of my mother from behind the chaise at age six and my claim to the cartoonist that I wanted to be a lawyer at age seven were foreshadowing from my soul.

How did I know what I knew? Maybe I didn't, but the soul within me did.

Another interesting aspect of the cartoon was that it was a take on the character Lucy from the Charlie Brown cartoons by Charles Schultz. Lucy was often depicted standing behind a lemonade stand offering psychological advice and lemonade for 5 cents. This too was a foreshadowing.

As you remember back to the earlier years of your life, do you recall the foreshadowing of the future you by your soul?  Did the little person that you were know what your soul knew? Did you accept the information your soul offered?