I wanted to interrupt. I wanted to step in like some bossy, snoopy, old Mrs. Kravitz (the nosey neighbor on “Bewitched”) and tell this sweet young mother that her life was NOT going to return to any old version of normal—instead, parenthood was going to bring constantly changing, newer and newer, unpredictable versions of normal…
But who am I to offer unsolicited advice, really? I still wonder what my life will be like in a few years when my kids have all flown the coop, what things might have been like had they turned out differently, and what grown up people who DON’T have any children do with their time and days. I wonder a lot of things about this whole “What is a normal life, thing!”
In fact, I would like to strike this whole “normal” word from the English language all together! We all seem to be measuring ourselves against some mythological, unattainable idea of normal and I’m not sure it’s doing us any good whatsoever. I wanted to step in and tell the new mother that the normal she used to know would not be returning and now she was going to have to get used to a new “normal”—a new normal post-partum body, life, family, housekeeping standards, etc. I also couldn’t help thinking of my own kids in earlier adolescence and their heart-wrenching plea: “Why can’t we be a NORMAL family?!”
Goodbye old normal, hello new normal. It’s not so bad, we get used to the chaos and mess and constantly changing and evolving little creatures in our house. We also get used to our own changing selves and the new sides and versions of ourselves as parents that appear and evolve as the tasks and challenges of parenthood pull us along. It’s amazing what actually qualifies as normal!