Sunburned Mermaids

If I were a mermaid, I'd be a sunburned mermaid. I spent most of my life sunburned. I was the only Irish looking child among a family who mostly took after our Native American descendants. Yes, in my family, even the multitude of lifetime blondes managed to have olive skin. Not me. Freckles and various shades of white and pink. White to pink and back to white again. Sunburnt! Yet my parents were sure they could "tan" this out of me. I just needed moderate daily exposure (10 minutes here and there to get a base tan, you'll see!) You see where I'm going with this? In 9th grade when my hair changed to strawberry blonde it all made sense. Newsflash! I'm not supposed to tan people!

So what does that have to do with the mysterious, beautiful, mythical creatures of the deep? Well, nothing. Wait, something! I feel like a mermaid, at home in the water, beautiful, taken with sailors (just a little). It's all in the portrayal. Some mermaids are good, some evil, some want to be human, some want to lay in the sun. I imagine somewhere, some mermaid dad is saying to his daughter, "go to the surface, you're too pale!" So she does, and she likes the sun. But she gets sunburned. One day she realizes, I kind of like my pale skin so today I'm going to go drag a cute guy down to his watery death instead of laying out. Choices! It's all about choices.

We all eat things, say things and do things we know we shouldn't, things we are told not to do or don't do things we know we should, like exercise. Sometimes we are just plain crappy to people, people we love and people we don't even know. We are all Sunburned Mermaids. We wake every day with free will, the opportunity for choice in the facets of our day [Do Good, Be Good]! Whether or not we actually succeed is something completely different. Occasionally, even a mermaid slips up. But I assume most days, she wakes up with the desire in her heart not to drag cute guys down to their watery deaths. (Pet him nicely or you'll hurt him...that's it....goooood). So she does. It's about learning. It's about choices. It's what makes us human, it's what makes us mermaids. So stand in your truth, that flawed part of you, and embrace your Sunburned Mermaid.