Normal

My daughter lives in her own head. She has big brown eyes that stare dreamily, and you think she’s listening until she blinks and says “what?” Or she asks a question answered by the same conversation Joe and I have been having in front of her for ten minutes. Something gets her off track and she is gone, lost in her own world, floating in the currents of fantasy. She is exactly like me.

But sometimes it’s scary in your own head. Your fears take up more space than they should, and everything gets bigger than it needs to be. 

We drove to Nashville on a gorgeous fall afternoon. Leaves were just beginning to turn, and the air was still warm enough that my kids were in shorts. Joe played music just a touch too loud. Our daughter wrote a story in the backseat. Our son talked and talked until he fell asleep.

I tucked my feet under me and cracked open another library book, one I had been anxious to read. The sunroof poured bright light over our heads and I closed my eyes. This was how perfect days were made.

I thought back to a year ago, in the midst of the pandemic, when we also drove this same road, the first time we had done so in several months. The roads were clear, no construction, no traffic. The I-65 loop around downtown was smooth with no stressful bottlenecks. Downtown looked cold and gray even in the sunshine. We felt like we were in a scene from Station Eleven.

So much changes in a year, both for good and for bad. I’m glad to have this space here on the Internet to process it all, to help me notice it, to help me not forget. 

This year, as in every other year, leaves are still green and changing to golden. The stores are lined with pumpkin everything. I have a stack of library books to read. It’s tempting to hide in my own head and let my imagination define the world where I live. But I’m trying to notice what’s going on, what’s different from last year, and what gifts from isolation I want to keep, even as the world drifts slowly back into what I always thought was normal.