“Normal”

I do not know what that term means, only that neither I nor my husband for nearly fifteen years probably do not fit most people’s description of the term.

He is from the south and grew up milking cows, mending fence, splitting wood and building his own workshop as a kid to invent things and learn physics. When he was two years old his grandmother started reading him the encyclopedia. He is brilliant.

I grew up in the country, up north, where I had access to a university, music, art, dance and was relegated to the back of the classroom with a boy during reading hours for advanced literature of our choice. Yes, he was reading sports books and I was reading Death Be Not Proud and The Diary of Anne Frank. I was six. I’m smart, too, but in a very different way.

We’ve never been considered “normal” by many standards but we met shortly after 9/11, fell in love, met the folks and eloped. My folks had split up and I didn’t want them to have to sit together or anyone to pay for anything for us. Cheers from the architect of the War of Northern Aggression, no I wasn’t born in 1800 but am starting to look like it! That’s what his father calls me, I am the cause of the Civil War. I love him!

I’ve always been a glass half-full kind of gal and my husband a pragmatic physicist and engineer, which is more half-empty. When things go kerflooy around here I take care of my family (including the dog) and batten down the hatches. He goes on as if everything is OK, and it always turns out to be OK. He just does things like normal. We change roles.

Heaven forbid, the last thing we wish to do is be normal. Come on, I volunteered for six years to take care of Greyhounds rescued from racetracks, and spay/neuter 2,500 feral cats. Is that normal? My husband didn’t think so. When we moved I had to give that up. We both had strict upbringings of very different sorts but when we are together our personalities mesh into what is our version of normal. Cheers! Dee