Until a few years ago, I thought my family was normal. My family is on my Facebook and Myspace pages. They are the speed dial numbers in my cell phone and the most frequent recipients of my email. They are my neighbors, my friends, and my confidantes. A good friend's family is the same way, so it seemed normal to me. After all, this was all I'd known.
At some point, however, I began paying more attention to other families. Maybe it was when I started teaching and reading what teenagers wrote about their own families. The sabotage, mistrust, abandonment, distance, and damage amazed me. Maybe it was another of those "getting older" features that seem to have joined forces in my life. It doesn't matter what made me realize; the point is that I do realize. My family is not normal. Not normal at all.
Nope. If we were normal, we wouldn't have spent all of a Sunday working in a field of trees. Normal people wouldn't care that soft maple trees have overtaken the field and filled in what should be a 10-foot space between trees. A normal family would have gone to church then maybe have had a dinner, but would certainly not have dragged out every cutting tool they could find, rounded up chainsaws and bodies, tied back the hair, and started cutting. A normal family certainly wouldn't have enjoyed work that left some of us sick and all of us exhausted.
Of course, normal is relative, even with relatives. Our family has its tomboys and girly-girls, sweat-soaked guys and well-dressed men. Somehow, we all fit, just as the crazy cuts of a jigsaw puzzle eventually fit together to make a picture. In our family, it is perfectly normal to have many people laughing to the point of gasping, crying, and clutching their sides. It is also normal, a short few minutes later, to see those same people crying, but not of laughter.
We may not fit in the normal puzzle of family, but our puzzle is far more interesting, challenging, and beautiful. Most of my life I've avoided being like everyone else. That drive to be different is partially conscious and partially subconscious. Even now, as in love with my family as I am, I am not like everyone else. And just as with my quirky wardrobe and funky hair styles, I wouldn't change a thing. Normal is overrated.
