We had a fantastic day today. I think that bears repeating — we had a FANTASTIC day. Mimi did not have any tantrums, and only a very brief moment of pouting/withdrawing when presented with something that was a huge trigger for her. And I also had a very strange experience.

So we went to a pig roast. One of the moms in my adoption parenting group owns a farm with her husband, and they do this giant pig roast thing every August. Fortunately the actual roasting of the pig is done in one of those giant closed barbecue things, so we didn’t have to see it. We did see live, non-roasted horses, cows, chickens, and one very large cranky goat. There was a metric ton of food along with the pork, including fresh roasted corn-on-the-cob brilliantly accompanied by butter melted in a crock pot. You just picked up your cob, dipped it with tongs into the pot, and voila, hot buttered corn. I’m telling you, brilliant.

Mimi and Boo had a fantastic time playing in the wading pool, visiting the horses, feeding the chickens, playing tetherball and horseshoes (plastic horseshoes, fortunately), and running around getting gloriously dirty. Mimi even managed the hayride on it’s second go-round, despite the fact that the hay was scratchy and the tractor kind of loud. The first time they loaded up for the hayride she got upset and didn’t want to go, which I told her was fine, some people like hayrides and some people don’t. Then after they came back, she saw some other kids playing in the hay on the wagon, and joined them. After that, when they loaded up for a second go-round, she was enthusiastic. That’s my girl.

The day finished up with a bonfire and smores, which Mimi and Boo both rejected as too sticky and chowed on tortilla chips instead. Mimi enjoyed the process of roasting marshmellows, just not the product. We walked back to the car under a gorgeous full moon with Boo proclaiming “bye horsies! bye barn! bye food! bye pool! bye chickens! bye ball!” until she passed out in her car seat mid-wave almost as soon as we got her strapped in. Mimi kept her eyes open, just barely, until we got home but fell asleep fairly peacefully about an hour ago.

All in all, it was an excellent day and just the reminder I needed that sometimes things are ok, after all. No one who interacted with Mimi today would have guessed that she is not an average healthy well-adjusted five-year-old.

Almost no one, that is. And here is the weird strange part of the day.

I was introduced to a woman — let’s call her Alison — a friend of our hosts, while I was in line for food. She asked me if I was in the parenting group with our host, and how old Mimi was, and where she was from. And how long she’d been home. Fairly innocuous questions, so I answered them, but noted that she seemed extra-interested in Mimi so I kind of had my guard up. You never know if someone is interested because they have an adoption interest, or are just nosy, or what.

An hour or so later I wandered back into the barn in search of dessert and saw our group leader talking to Alison. I went over to say hi and the group leader said “I’ll leave you two to talk” and hurried off. I thought that was bizarre. Then Alison said to me, “I wanted to talk to you about Mimi.” She pulled her chair over close to mine and proceeded to basically tell me that she (Alison) is psychic and got some very strong energy and information off my daughter. She explained a little bit, and basically what I think she said is that she picks up on psychic energies and things buried in the subconscious.

So here’s the part where I open myself to ridicule from the internets. I think I have a fairly open mind when it comes to this stuff. My general motto when it comes to the psychic/paranormal/supernatural world is “there are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I know there are things out there that are inexplicable, I believe in intuition and to some extent, that there people with something extra. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt in that I think they are generally sincere and well-meaning, unless they seem to just be out to make a buck. And I think there probably are people more open when it comes to other people, who notice and figure out things the rest of us don’t. Whether that’s paranormal or perceptive, I don’t know.

That said, when some stranger comes up and starts telling me about my kid, I tend to get a little uptight. I didn’t volunteer any information to this woman, and she definitely picked up that I was kind of put off by her approach — I don’t think that it took psychic ability to figure it out, either. She said that she didn’t want to upset me , that it “wasn’t good” but that she wanted me to know if I wanted to hear it. And I thought, what the hell. Mimi and Boo were playing in the pool with Mark watching them and there was no one around to overhear if things got weird.

Well, Alison proceeded to tell me some things that let me tell you, freaked me out more than a little. Some of what she said certainly could have been pulled out of thin air, given that we know nothing about Mimi’s origina, but some couldn’t. Specific stuff, about injuries and scars that Mimi has, and how they got there. Ongoing behavioral issues we are currently dealing with. Things that jive with suspicions we’ve had that we have no way of confirming, and haven’t talked to anyone about (and before anyone says it, not anything I’ve mentioned in the group that could have been passed on to Alison through our mutual friend).

So yeah. Super freaky. As I said, I am not completely closed off to the possibility that some people do have the ability to pick up on things the rest of us don’t. I guess the thing that really bothered me, if I accept that Alison really did have a window somehow into Mimi’s subconscious, was that that’s another kind of invasion. If someone really has psychic abilities, do they automatically pick things up, or do they have to look a little bit? Does that make sense? I didn’t think to ask because honestly I was so weirded out by the experience. I felt kind of like, “stop poking around in my daughter, lady.” I don’t know what to think.

And yet I found myself wanting to believe her. Not because she told me Mimi’s life had been puppies and rainbows before we met her, but because if the things she claims to have picked up on are even halfway true, it explains a lot, and could give us another place to work from in beginning the healing.

Yeah. Bizarre.

But all in all, still a good day.