What is Normal?

These past few weeks, more than usual, I've been challenged to dig for the answer to the title question. After a shaky parent conference with my son's two, well-intentioned teachers I've been looking at my son through a new lens--not the rosy tinted parent-prescription that I've gazed at him through the last few years, but with the clinical eyes of a stranger at worst, an educator at best. My son is not abnormal--whatever that means--nor is he, being the product of two very, decidedly not normal parents, at all what Highland Park folks constitute as "normal". The little red flags waving at these dear folks are flapping because the breeze has been blowing this child from place to place like a dandelion seed aloft on a gulf hurricane.

Take a look at this child's upbringing to date. Two non-conforming souls thrown together as a result of a few encounters of the physical kind bring a child into the world, amid their own host of problems, obstacles, and a very tenuous link to one another. Despite many dear friends and relations voicing their opinions about this, we pushed ahead in a foolhardy way, which is the hallmark of my lifetime, and I think the same goes for the other half of this equation. We've been served well by following our crazy guts, the two of us, whether or not we have had similar results or paths that meshed well...which they didn't. Yet each of us brought our signature stubbornness and our endearing, if unwise optimism. As time went on and things fell apart, as divined by all of our loved ones and bystanders, I took the helm of this ship and steered a hazardous course back to where it all began: home. That word conjures up something so precious to all who hear or see it. Just the thought of a place where you're comfortable, can be yourself, maybe a log fire crackling, maybe the smell of something delicious coming from the kitchen (brownies in my case), friends and family surrounding you.
Pipe dream #473...
A few weeks into this return to the fold, I was hard pressed to find suitable childcare for Diego. Why? He didn't fit into the "normal" mold of the kids who were raised here in the 'burbs. He didn't want to sit and do art projects, gather around for group times, or eat his lunch. He certainly didn't want to lay down for a nap. His exhausted caregivers would exchange a silent, but thunderously clear look of triumph when I would arrive to collect my little charge.
Of course--this is a child who spent 9 months in the belly of a person who was stressed, frightened and pretty much alone. This is a child who came into a world where the expectation was that he behave in a way that would allow me, the consummate pipe dreamer, to bring the child with me to whatever work I could find. After a few disastrous attempts at interviews with the little papoose, I found "the farm", where I was smart enough by this stage in the game to leave the bambino behind for the initial encounter, and again for my second, fateful interview where I first met the man who would become our biggest defender and protector over the course of the next two years. Sweet soul, this unsuspecting creek-eyed man certainly couldn't predict what was about to unfold as I continued, one hand on a baby, the other in the dirt, to eke out a living and a life at Pennypack Farm. A very special person in his own right, I'll avoid going off on a tangent about this fellow that has become so dear to us both. Suffice it to say, we're both achingly grateful to his enduring presence in our lives.
Again, is this a normal way to do things in this day, age and country? My romantic ideas of working in the fields like some rural South American princess with my baby slung across my back were a far cry from leading children in farm-based educational activities, attending meetings, visiting schools, and orchestrating volunteer days for families. Not to mention the harvesting itself, which was never easy with a child strapped to me, picking up on every nuance of stress and fear that vibrated through my body for two years as I persisted on this path of narrow focus. Determined not to do what is normal, like sleep-training, cry-it-out, or day care, I forged ahead blindly, without a lot of knowledge about what to do but mostly the desires of not doing what everyone else does. Without complaining or defending the other party in this, I can only fault myself for being at best, unrealistic. And anything but "normal".

Fast forward to the present, is it any wonder that my child is not coming in as "normal" in the barometer of these North Shore suburbs that brought us such enduring classics as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" , "The Breakfast Club", and "Pretty in Pink"? He spent the first two years of his life strapped to the chest of a self-described crazy person who worked at a farm. At any moment in time this one-and-a half year old could be found hoisting himself over the chicken fence, popping out of rows of cabbages, and climbing stacks of construction materials with rusty nails threatening his bare feet. Diego had the fields and forest as his classroom, a front-mounted bike seat as his preferred mode of transit, and the two zaniest parents a divine comedy could think up. Reflecting on the multi-faceted net of the world today, I had to laugh aloud at the idea of the cosmos, creating itself in every form imaginable, somehow feeling the need to include us, meaning my funny little family, in this vast mysterious web of life. Each day we are lucky enough to awaken anew, taking in the unfolding graces of spirit, whether we are aware of it's glory or immune to it. I am learning to flow within the ripples of life and just accept each moment as it envelopes us in the stream that flows to the ocean of life. Grateful to be here, uninterested in normalcy, I think we'll do fine. After all, this is all we can ever hope to have. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.