Normal for Rob and I on a weekend morning is lounging about in our robes, eating a leisurely breakfast, checking out what is going on in the world via our computers and sharing what we find and think with each other. Is that everyone else’s normal too? Probably not. I have long suspected that what the world calls normal and the way people actually live are two separate things. The first is a fantasy perpetrated on us by the self-appointed arbiters of life, and the second is the way things really are and are supposed to be.

There is much talk among the widowed about returning to what they regard as normal life. I guess I was never much of an enthusiast for the idea because my normal before Will died was anything but that, especially when I looked at what most people consider to be a normal life. Even before Will was in the hospice, and the nursing home before that, normal was skewed by his yet unknown to us by name illness. I really have no basis for what is normal married life or normal family life. My own family and upbringing may have been typical for the neighborhood I grew up in, but an alcoholic father makes for a pretty unpredictable family life, and as I grew my younger brother’s drug addiction just made that life more turbulent. Is it normal to lie awake until your little sisters fall asleep so you can push the bedroom dresser in front of the door because your brother threatened to kill everyone as they slept? I am thinking not. Probably not anymore normal than spending Sunday mornings spoon feeding Cream of Wheat to your nearly vegetative husband in a nursing home while your two year old looks on.

What is normal? Is it one of those eye of the beholder things? Or does it really even exist at all? Is it perhaps one of those middle class ideals they sell you through TV shows and movies? I am not too concerned about whether or not my life is normal these days. It is what it is. And mostly what it happens to be is pretty darn good. But it was no accident or lucky break because I don’t really believe in those things anymore. Life changed because I did and continue to do so. I chose not to wait for the day I was happy again and went looking for it. 

Today while my handsome husband is at work, I will tackle the household chores and rearrange furniture, in a likely vain attempt to make sense of the blending of stuff, and then take my daughter to her first day of kindercamp. Normal enough? I think so.