Normal is as Normal Does

I used to live in Normal.  Normal, Illinois, that is.  That's where I finished my undergraduate studies and took my master's ---- Illinois State University.  I was always amused by the thought of living in Normal, even though I knew it derived from the fact that the university used to be a "normal school" --- a training college for teachers.  That's what they called them, back in the day.  Don't ask me why.

So did living in Normal make me normal?  I suppose it depends on your point of view. If paying enough money, putting in enough work and jumping through enough hoops to be awarded two degrees is normal, then yes.  I was normal.  As a matter of fact, considering the heavy emphasis on education and academic achievement that I learned at home, I felt as though it was not only normal, but imperative to earn a graduate degree.  That's how you become a good person in order to lead an upright, normal life.

But did I consider myself normal on the inside?  Not in the least.  Since I had long since developed the habit of comparing my insides to other people's outsides, I always felt like a mess.  From the inside out, it felt like I was always on the verge of collapse, ever in peril of being discovered to be a fraud.  I went through all the motions, and I developed real skill at hoop jumping, but I never felt that I earned my diplomas like other people did.

Now I feel pretty normal, for the first time in my life.  And this is in spite of living a life that many other people would consider abnormal.  Two Old Broads --- that's us.  Enjoying wedded bliss.

DIGRESSION ALERT: I've been annoyed lately about the word "lifestyle" being used to describe how I, and others of my tribe, live.  Lifestyle is what you buy at the mall. I didn't purchase lesbian at Pottery Barn.  Being gay is one of the aspects of who I am.  It defines me in a limited, but profound way.  I'm also short ---- very short.  Not even 5 feet tall.  But I assure you, I don't live a "short lifestyle".  END OF RANT

Normal.  When I was growing up in the 1950s in rural Iowa, it was normal to go barefoot a lot, to have the run of the town and surrounding countryside without adult supervision, to create your own games and amusements out of whatever raw materials were available, and to be fed candy and cookies by any kind lady whose porch or kitchen you fetched up in, whether you knew them or not.  That was normal because that's how most people lived.  It would have been abnormal to cosset your kid indoors in front of a screen all the time and away from other people.  Folks would have thought there was something wrong with you, that you were not parenting your kid correctly.

Now I'm not saying that was right and people do it wrong now.  Not at all --- I don't have a cane to thump on the floor while declaiming "Back in my day..."  What's changed is what NORMAL is.  Normal comes from the root word norm.  Norm is defined as a standard or average.  What is most common?  Today, because of changes in society, changes in parenting standards and educational practices and employment, it is more normal for kids to be in structured activities or institutional settings during what used to be playtime.  More people live in neighborhoods where it is unsafe, or it is felt to be unsafe to let kids play without direct supervision.  So the new normal involves a great deal more direct supervision and less opportunity for chance discoveries or encounters.

Normal has shifted in so many spheres --- watch a few episodes of Mad Men or better yet, old 50s and 60s sitcoms, and it's easy to see the underlying assumptions about relationships, roles, behavioral expectations, etc.  It's startling to see how many people smoked and where they did it, now that the norms have shifted so much.  Drinking and driving?  It's always been a scourge, but time was, you'd get off with a warning or rarely even be stopped in the first place.

At my doctor's office there is a sign above the scale that says "Normal is just a setting on the washing machine."  What's the worst part of going for a checkup?  Not the fasting, not the needles, not the long wait in a flimsy gown --- it's the scales.  It might as well be SCREAMING --- "You pathetic excuse for a human being, you waste of oxygen, get the hell out of here and don't come back till you lose forty pounds!"  The sign doesn't drown it out, but it helps.

For most of the last decade,  my normal was working 60+ hours a week and never being done.  It was always thinking about school, the kids, the job, the unfinished tasks, the new things to try, the things that didn't work.  Normal was guilt about being an inattentive wife, a negligent daughter, an unavailable mother, an infrequent friend.  Normal was putting self-care dead last on the to-do list.

I'm glad I live in a new normal now.