The Year of the Normal

On our first day back to school after the holidays, Hubby's birthday, an in-law visit, and an inch of snow that shut down all of Asheville (a very good sign, I told myself, that such weather is not the norm, disproven, alas, by the blanket of snow outside my window right now), one of The Boy's teachers said to me, "I'm ready for normal."

Amen.

There was a time, not so long ago, that my desire for the normal would have alarmed me greatly. Life as the single mother of a velvet-eared basset hound was about motion. My calendars were adorned with notations in different colored pens to give me something to which I could count down. "Okay, it's Monday today, but tomorrow I teach a yoga class at 5:45, and Wednesday is trash day, and Thursday I'll watch Tivo, and Friday is Friday and I've made it through another week." Hair appointments, therapy appointments, acupuncture appointments, an appointment with an astrologer (just one, and it was pretty cool), lunches with colleagues, and even a date or two made my life run.

Even worse, I pulled out one of my old journals from the mid-90's the other day and found myself gasping for breath as if on a very long and very frenzied run. From the gym to the law firm (black leather book bag crammed full of gym clothes, shampoo, and, yes, hair dryer because the ones in the locker rooms at the gym made my hair frizzy and doll-like) to drinks after work or a meeting for my volunteer work at the National Zoo or a movie or . . . No wonder I experienced panic attacks if I awakened on a Sunday with nothing to do. (The cure, if you should ever suffer the same illness: run 10 miles with a section of the New York Times in your pocket to read on the subway home.)

In those days, normal was bad. Normal was safe. Normal was slow. Normal was . . . normal.

Now my panic attacks are brought on by the fact that I want life to be normal. I want to be the mom riding the slide with my boy on a Saturday afternoon. I want to be the person who eats dinner watching a half hour at a time of The Return of the Jedi or Chinatown (we aren't too picky as long as we can Tivo it for free) before washing the dishes and getting ready for bed at 9:00. I wish I knew that I would be sitting down to the same desk, the same work every day.

What could bring on such a misplaced desire to be boring?

Maybe it's moving into a house on which I actually put a 30-year mortgage. Although I owned a lovely house in St. Louis, I went for the better rate on the 7-year balloon because I just couldn't fathom living in the same place for more than seven years. (I made it a whopping four, a record for me.)

Maybe it's having a husband who's my best friend. Although in the past my best friends and I did more than look forward to watching new episodes of The Wire and driving to sleepy little towns for lunch on the weekends.

Many would say it's a Welcome to Motherhood moment. But I vowed to be a Hip Mama when I was trying to get pregnant (see "At 39, I Want the Baby Without the Blame," Newsweek, 10/10/05; don't see a google search I did on myself to see if I could include a link to a copy of the article because I found some weird comments about it out there and now it's bugging me).

I think the reason I want 2008 to be the Year of the Normal is because I can't remember the last time life was.

Certainly there's been no normal since our move to Asheville. There was that month trying to find child care for The Boy so I could get back to my work. Those few weeks with the sitter who didn't seem to do much with him except take him to Wendy's and didn't free up too much of my time because whenever I walked through the room I had to hold him until he stopped crying. And those endless weeks when his adjustment to school was delayed by: a cold; an ear infection; the antibiotics he took to kick the ear infection; a visit by my parents when he was just getting over the ear infection; a visit to his aunt and uncle's house in West Virgina followed by a visit here by his grandmother by which time he felt he should rightly be the center of all attention and not have to share toys with a bunch of other kids; and the stomach bug.

And then . . . he started liking school. I started working at my desk instead of staring at the school's phone number posted right over my computer and wondering how often I could call to check up on him and whether I'd get the bills paid before they called and told me he'd been crying for 45 minutes straight and would really like to go home now.

In fact, by early December there were even a few days he didn't cry when I left him in the mornings. When he, dare I say it, looked forward to school. I started yoga again. I found time to write.

Until the holidays came. Before I knew it, life was all about being a mother instead of a writer. Imagine the time spent shopping when you have not only a boy's first Christmas gifts, but his first birthday gifts as well. But, wait, there's more -- how about planning Hubby's Christmas gift and making it a surprise party with his out-of-town family members? There just isn't time for normal.

By the time January 2 rolled around and brought with it the start of The Boy's school again I was dead set on normal.

Which is plainly why January 2 was a snow day.

They tell me things shut down here at the merest whisper of snow because of the mountain roads, but I'm pretty sure it's just because everyone else needs a break from normal and no one cares that I am still trying to find my way back to it.

So it's now January 20 and I'm sitting in my office with the sheer brown curtains I bought in September and just put up this morning and I still have holiday cards to send out (unapologetically, I've decided) and I'm figuring that even 20 days in, 2008 has a chance of being The Year of the Normal.

Of course, not this week, because I have too much to do.