There’s No Such Thing as Normal People — Only Normal Feelings

I was hanging out at the nursing home with my 81-year-old mom this morning, waiting with a crowd of seven for the music program to start in the rec/dining room, when up in her wheelchair rolled a resident I’d never met before.

“What’s your name?” she asked as she eased to a stop, locking on to my eyes as though she would be refusing to let them escape her gaze. Her tone was half plain old curious and half unintentionally interrogating. It’s the memory care unit, though, so you cut people some slack. Especially when they’re just trying to be friendly and sociable.

“My name’s Pete,” I replied.

“Peter?” she asked.

“Yup, Pete,” I said. “And this is my mom, Nancy.”

Awkward pause.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Delores.”

“Nice to meet you, Delores,” I said as I shook her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” she echoed. And then, without even a millisecond of delay:

“How old are you?”

“I’m 48,” I replied.

“Really?” she said with surprise. “You look much …”

My brain: “She’s going to say I look much younger! Yay! All this working out and healthy eating I’ve been doing  — it’s all paying off! Growing my hair long must be working too!”

Back to reality:  “… older.”

My brain: “Ow. Slack schmack.”

“Thanks, Delores,” I replied as I reached out to … pat her on the arm.

“Do you have children?” she asked.

Holding my breath a bit now, I responded: “Yes, I have four,” then quickly rattled off their ages.

“I have four too,” she said. She then proceeded to tell me their ages and where they’re living now, noting at the end of her spiel that her youngest child, now in his late thirties, lives in a group home just minutes away.

Awkward pause. Long awkward pause. Then Delores threw the curve.

“Were your children born normal? Are they normal?”

My brain: Sudden Delayed Response Disorder accompanied by internal howling laughter. Crickets chirping as background music for the whole spectacle.

“It depends on how you define it, Delores.”

Awkward pause.

“Are they retarded?”

Very awkward pause, which bought me time to consider a surprisingly wide assortment of appropriate and inappropriate responses.

“Um … no,” I replied.

And then I learned what was really on Delores’s mind.

“My youngest was born with Down syndrome,” she said. “And they’ve only brought him to see me one time since I’ve been here.”

Sad silence.

“I’m really sorry to hear that, Delores.”

My brain: “And I hereby forgive you for that wisecrack about my age.”

What is normal? Are my kids normal? Are yours? Are Delores’s? I haven’t a clue in the world on any of these fronts — though my initial instincts and my sense of comedy both scream “no” where my own kids are concerned.

But normal is almost always relative, a moving target, an illusion we cook up to make ourselves feel better. Everyone’s normal. No one’s normal. Normal is in the mind of the beholder. So it’s a dangerous, fruitless, and ultimately pointless way to classify people.

But it works for feelings.

To wit: It is absolutely and unambiguously normal for a parent to miss a child, no matter the age of the parent or the child. And Delores is missing her youngest child, today and likely every day, as she adjusts to life in the nursing home memory care unit.

She just wanted someone to know. And that someone, today at least, was me.

Even if I can’t pass for a guy in his late thirties. Or forties.

Peter Vogt

I’m a writer. An essayist, to be more exact. I tell stories here—true stories, from my own life, in hopes they will make a positive difference in yours.

I share laughs and tears, insights and observations, frustrations and realizations, relying all the while on the storytelling wisdom of Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write.

It is a great paradox that the more personal, focused, and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.