Are We Still Normal?

Are we still normal?  I feel that question a lot.  It underlies the “How are you guys doing?” and “How is Andy feeling?”.  I’d want to know too, if I were you.  Our fragile human-ness wants things to be normal, even when they aren’t.  Normal is comforting and boring and easy to take for granted. Normal can go unnoticed until someone’s life explodes with things we all fear and then we really want to know: can there be normal in all that craziness?

So let me assure you.  We are still normal. 

 

I still drive Andy crazy when I cook (Disclaimer:  he’s the cook, I’m just the substitute) because I am a disaster in the kitchen.  Things eventually turn out tasting fine (mostly), but not before every pot is used, ingredients litter the counter (the lids now missing), something on the stove smells a little too hot, and the fridge door is standing open.  He calls me the kitchen spaz (even if that’s totally not PC) and I mostly don’t take offense.  Until one of the kids says:  “seriously, we are having this for dinner?”.  Sometimes then I lose my kitchen cool.

Andy still drives me crazy with his procrastination.  I mean seriously, an email that I could shoot off in about 30 seconds takes him 10 days to just get around to thinking about sending and that’s not even counting the agonizingly long time it takes him to actually write it.  And dude, just let me organize those appointments because I’m super efficient and I can stack them up in a way that doesn’t make us have to move the car 8 times and walk back and forth between buildings 45 times AND drive back in later in the day for the last one.  And yes, I can see you are annoyed and whispering “bossy pants” kind of under your breath. 

And the girls can never agree.  I think it’s a secret arrangement they have behind our backs. They probably lay in bed and practice it at night.  It must go something like this:  “If mom says, hey, do you guys want to stop off at the park on the way home…make sure one of us says YES (very enthusiastically) and the other of us says NO (in their most whiny voice).”  Or if dad says, “Even though it’s not Sunday I’m making pancakes for breakfast!  Make sure one of us jumps up and down yelling excitedly “Pancakes!” and the other of us says in our most grumpy voice “I’m not eating pancakes again!”.

And we still have to clean the house and find the lost library book and fix the flat tire on someone’s bike.  Oh, and the grocery.  That’s normal too except with the extra bonus of this being Miami and it takes 20 minutes to drive 1.5 miles in traffic and then when you get there you can’t find a parking spot and the girls starting fighting over who gets to push the cart.  And then you get inside and there is NO room to even move that cart because everywhere you go in Miami there are 150% more people in any given space than there should be.  And the kids are so wide-eyed at all the 6 inch heels and dreads and makeup and nails and dogs in purses and leopard print spandex that they won’t let go of the cart and so I’m totally STUCK between the mangoes and the avocados.  Wait, is that normal?

Suffice it to say, we move through each day with laughter, frustration, impatience and love, just like you.  Yes, we may have moments of raw fear, deep fatigue, mounting panic and utter sadness.  That’s part of our normal, but not all of it.  And we make sure to embrace the normal wherever we find it.  Here’s hoping you do too.