Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
On Doing What’s Normal When Things are Turning to Shit
Normal has an extraordinary glow of comfort when things are turning to shit. Normal is your mother’s hand on your cheek. Normal is the blanket of your youth pulled up to your neck, your head deep in billowy pillows that only this morning seemed due for replacement. Normal is precious, rich, unique, a reward for suffering long or short.
When something terrible happens, we want normal. It might be just one fine thing that is normal while all around cascades terrible, freakish, unbelievable things but if this one normal thing can occur, then we can settle down, rest, and stop careening around, a BB in a bare room.
This morning’s paper detailed the criticism aimed at President Obama for going about his normal schedule in light of the plane shot down over Ukraine and the ever-ratcheted up conflict between Israel and Palestine. He should be at the White House, act like a Commander in Chief, be at the ready to call all the other presidents causing problems, show how seriously he takes all of these perilous situations by staying in his room or at least the Oval Office.
I want him to go to a party.
I want him to pat small children on the head and give them reason to remember meeting the President.
I want him to sign bills that have nothing to do with the Middle East or Ukraine, maybe do something important for poor people or speak out about reproductive rights.
I want normal.
I want the President to go eat a cheeseburger. I want him to say life goes on. I want him to show me that the thing that might happen that will have us all hiding in basements in complete fear for our lives hasn’t happened yet.
So in my mind, the President, by keeping his normal calendar, even being the star at big fundraisers and joking with kids visiting the White House, is doing the right thing. He’s telling me I don’t need to break out the foil packets of dehydrated food that have been sitting in my attic for years. It’s going to be okay.
Such an important message.
It took me years to learn this. When people are in a desperate situation, don’t underscore it, don’t commiserate, exaggerate, magnify. Say this: “What will make you feel better right now?” What is the normal you need? Where do you need to go? What do you need to do? Who do you need to see? What do you need to eat?
Many years ago, I remember it exactly that I was standing on the third stair up the carpeted steps of my upper flat, and after a long, harrowing night that involved terrible news and long watchful waiting in the deserted corridor of a hospital’s emergency room, a silent drive home in the morning, my friend asked me, “What do you need to do right now to feel okay?”
“Make soup,” I said. I needed to make soup and sit on my couch, wrapped in my mother’s afghan blanket, and smell my soup cooking, and know that I was doing something wholesome and good.
And that it wasn’t the end of the world.
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#43/100: 43rd of 100 in 100
24 Comments on “On Doing What’s Normal When Things are Turning to Shit”
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Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
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“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Oh yes, very timely, Jan!! In the midst of all the recent chaos and questions, i’ve just been cooking the vegetables in my refrigerator–cutting off the wilted leaves and black spots, salvaging what’s still nutritious.
There is an enormous amount of truth in your essay. I, too, had the harrowing telephone call and a month of traveling the hallways of hospitals. I learned to appreciate normal and so disliked it when people would tell me that this is my new normal.
This is very timely on the day when my daughter in law received bad news. Thank you.
The most wonderful of many wonderful posts, Jan. I’ll reblog a bit later so it will come up on the Reader again.
Thank you for the compliment and for reblogging. I take praise from you pretty seriously.
I never like to reblog right after you have posted because it seems a waste for people to see two versions right after each other in the reader. I’ll see how many have posted after and reblog when 20 or so have passed.
Reblogged this on Red's Wrap and commented:
Something made me think of this today. That time. That feeling.
For me, a couple of weekends ago, it was cleaning out closets. Bringing order to a world that felt like chaos. Soup sounds similar. Chopped carrots don’t talk back:). I get it.
It would take a lot to get me to tackle the closets. 🙂
The last couple of years have been upside down! My normal is sitting down to a bowl of oatmeal…let everything else go somewhere else…it’s just me and my oatmeal!
Yes, bless oatmeal.
Jan, This is so true – and is so beautifully written. I love reading your blog!
I’m thrilled that you read it!
Well said “Wilberg”!!
Thumbs up from the boss!
In the midst of chaos or when our lives feel out of control, the simplest of tasks can help us to feel some sense of normal. It may be the one thing that keeps us from losing our mind!
Reblogged this on Sally Ember, Ed.D. and commented:
This explains beautifully why I make soup every week and eat it every day. Really. Thanks. FYI the rest of you: Coping by going on with life is not always a sign of denial. All pain, grief and fear don’t have to be displayed all the time to be recognized and present for the coping person.
This explains beautifully why I make soup every week and eat it every day. Really. Thanks.
Loved this Jan…I understand too well trying to do normal
Very nicely written, Jan. The 24/7 news coverage requires that they find and make everything a crisis for everyone – until they can find another crisis. Yes, the shot-down plane is horrible and a crisis for so many people, school shootings, lost planes, wars and invasions in the Middle East, natural disasters, PTSD from previous crisis. I wish I was so powerful as to do something that others haven’t been able to do for hundreds of years (since the beginning of time?). I can’t, and I also can’t live in a constant state of crisis – it isn’t good for our bodies. I don’t watch TV – JB tells me what I need to know. I have insulated myself into the part of the world that I can impact – and God will be my judge.
Speaking as someone who is trying to live as normal a life as possible in the Middle East, I agree!
My hats off to you and everyone who is trying to live a normal life in the midst of so much conflict. Thought about you this morning while I read the paper.
Wonderful post! I think I read that you’d worked in human services and this has the air of one who knows what’s important in a bad situation. I’m feeling a bit sorry for Obama myself and agree that he’s doing exactly what he should be doing.
I do understand your thoughts on this. My husband has been ill for a long time, was just making a turn for better, and then WHAM! Today, I needed to hear that it was ok to need normal.