Normal Is What You Grow Up With

One of the main things I'm hoping to cover with this blog, and one I hope to get my kids involved with, is what it's like to grow up in a household with the particular issues we deal with.  They won't look like your issues--you have your own set of abnormalities with which to contend.  See, "normal" is what you grow up with.  I have a twin brother, and people always used to ask me what it was like to have a twin.  I really never knew how to answer the question--I mean, what's it like growing up without one?  It's just what my family looked like.  We were a second family to a divorced father and a widowed mother and we had several significantly older half-brothers, lots of nephews and nieces, and our parents weren't as young as most of our friends' and they didn't honestly get along all that well.

And that was normal for us.  It was a little surprising when I was old enough to really intelligently observe other people's families and find out that NOT everybody worked like that.  And most families don't operate like the one in which I find myself.  With the chronic health and circumstantial issues we deal with, my kids' definition of "normal" is a little different than most people's.  For instance, one of Social Hurricane's first words was "seizure," and THAT just doesn't happen often.  We're definitely a little on the weird side.

But then again, I've never met anybody with a completely normal family, and I'm not entirely sure one exists.  Social Hurricane is a little rare in her friends' circle because Adored Wife and I are still married and living together and she only lives in one place and she doesn't have any stepbrothers or sisters.  Basement Artist and Graphics Magician could say the same thing--in many ways we do have a "normal" situation compared to some people we know.  The nuclear family is increasingly an oddity in our culture.  In our neighborhood there are blended families and adoptive families and single parents and one young lady we know of who lives with her aunt and uncle.  "Normal" is all over the map in our community.

But take heart, friends.  We're all a little abnormal together, and we're here for each other.

God bless.