normal is what you know

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49886526537475723482024-09-19T09:49:49.529-07:00normal is what you knowKelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-74645949757872968032012-09-25T22:13:00.000-07:002012-09-25T22:13:27.608-07:00my turn

This summer has gone down in the record books for not only being ridiculously hot, but for being a serious kick in the teeth to survivors of sexual abuse, rape, and domestic violence.  It's bad enough to be raped. "Bad enough" doesn't even come kind of close to what it is to be raped. "Bad enough" is forty-nine billion galaxies away from the pain of rape, just stick with me here. It's

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-3308496883270337092012-05-21T07:05:00.002-07:002012-05-21T07:05:39.224-07:00

today the word beloved etched forever so i remember whenever i look down that i am.

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-3302726233284978152012-05-14T09:36:00.000-07:002012-05-14T09:36:00.546-07:00smudge

He hugged me hard. He said, "I missed you so much." I could not escape that moment; his crushing invasion. I was leaning on the end of a pew at my brother's wedding. Everyone was watching, holding their breath, wondering if I would follow my alcoholic upbringing and pretend the past nine years never happened. I was sick to my stomach. That is the moment I started to remember. I imagine that

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-31521237826236487482012-05-11T09:31:00.000-07:002012-05-11T09:31:00.152-07:00the gerbil wheel of crazy thinking

There is a family-oriented educational experience my children attend during the school year, and it has finally ended and OHMYGOD am I ever glad. It is so exhausting and I struggle to decide if the exhausting is worth the reward. Sometimes we visit with friends afterward at their home, and my darlings can barely contain themselves when they are waiting to play. To say they are in their glory

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-25132337539379886112012-05-10T08:57:00.000-07:002012-05-10T08:57:00.182-07:00scrubbing things

I washed a lot of dishes today. What an exercise in embracing futility. I did just fine for a while; I was contemplative, and found my inner zen goddess while standing still and scrubbing. And scrubbing. And scrubbing. There are some things that just refuse to be scrubbed away. I ignored all of the eating behind me, the clank and clatter of silverware on the newly dirtied plates and bowls. A

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-51079728185404459562012-05-09T08:45:00.000-07:002012-05-09T08:45:00.173-07:00crazy eights

My parents owned a cabin in the mountains.  It was amazing;  the most enormous stone fireplace I had ever seen, an oldy-old-school stove, hardwood floors, beadboard walls, no insulation, tall ceilings, spider-infused bathroom.  I loved it. My father and I drove there during Spring Break of my senior year of college.  We burned up trees that had fallen during that

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-87710701564904292742012-05-08T08:42:00.002-07:002012-05-08T08:58:28.617-07:00there are things I do not know.

I wonder how young I was when the abuse began. I wonder if I was abused in foster care, or if my adopted parents started in on me.   ***  The first time I remember completely losing my shit as an adult was when my oldest child was an infant, not older than six months. I was a complete disaster, crying, depressed, total postpartum depression case. I packed up all my clothes,

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-80262168031847630062012-04-16T20:48:00.000-07:002012-05-08T08:59:17.662-07:00it's getting crowded in here

The flashes of memories have been less flash and more streaming lately. For months now, I close my eyes and I smell and I taste and I sense.  But still no feeling. It's always the no feeling that sits beside me in the passenger seat; it sits and watches me pretend to drive but truth be told I am a passenger, too.  I'm stuck like a piece of lost luggage, travelling around and

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-64608967754974437102011-06-07T21:36:00.000-07:002011-06-07T21:36:43.117-07:00someone else's family

I went to a party, a Blessing Way, on Sunday.  A Blessing Way is how hippies have baby showers, and to tell you the truth, I'm seriously considering becoming a hippy now.   Well, maybe. It is fascinating to observe family dynamics, especially now that I'm starting to be able to clearly see the workings of my own family.  It's especially fascinating to be in the company of a

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-778032608143438182011-05-26T22:29:00.000-07:002011-05-26T22:29:05.587-07:00nothing like that.

"Were you hurt as a child?" he asked. Sure. I fell off my bike, tripped, got kicked in soccer, broke a couple of bones in an unfortunate tug-of-war accident... Yep. I did. He nodded.  "The normal stuff.  But did anybody hurt you?"  I guess.  We got spanked a lot, for any reason.  I often had bruises on my back and bottom. "So your parents hit you?  Was there any

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-19788503283678690452011-03-27T19:42:00.000-07:002011-03-27T19:42:02.815-07:00the two of them, together

One day my father told my mother he didn't love her any more and was going to leave.  This was not a surprise to me.  It was, oddly enough, a gigantic surprise to my mother.  I  was all grown up when this happened, and I felt like the world's biggest asshole for not being surprised.  And honestly, now that I've been married for a while, I find that I'm kind of shocked

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-67229913587993211462011-03-24T20:59:00.000-07:002011-03-24T20:59:17.663-07:00don't know why. but i do.

Telling stories is hard work, especially when it's a good story, a meaningful story, one that requires. There is the planning, the thinking, the rearranging, the re-rearranging, the decisions of which part do I tell you first, and is writing the story out of order going to detract from the things and the stuff. And there's the remembering.  It is hard work to remember.  I'm thirty-three

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-59251322711728315392011-03-21T00:02:00.000-07:002011-03-21T00:02:00.565-07:00there was this girl

I might be able to remember her name if I tried really hard.  She was the daughter of a friend of a cousin of mine, and she was staying with my cousin for some ambiguous, angsty, undisclosed reason. She was sort of boxy-shaped, had a close-cropped man haircut, and she milked cows. Not that any of those things has anything to do with anything.  But there are so few things I can remember

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-54953430153823022702011-03-17T20:31:00.000-07:002011-03-17T20:49:08.022-07:00advance notice

I told my husband I was thinking about starting a blog about my family.  And he's met them, so he thought he had an idea of what he'd be reading here.  I mean, he's been here, next to me, walking this life for quite a while now, and even so I have already shocked him. He's furious with my grandfather for the whole nearly-killing-my-brother-with-a-large-pillow thing.  Because in his

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-3170256225254264132011-03-16T01:15:00.000-07:002011-03-16T01:15:00.666-07:00everything's a great big secret

I remember when my mother got pregnant with my youngest brother.  Not the actual moment when she got pregnant, because Jesus loves me and kept me from witnessing The Act until I was old enough to really understand what was going on.   Praise Jesus. We weren't supposed to know, Michael and me.  It was a secret... not a particularly well-kept secret, mind you, but a secret

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-32487003364767601152011-03-15T01:15:00.000-07:002011-03-15T01:15:01.025-07:00do not mourn what you do not have

My mother called today, and yes, this is news.  She does not contact us very often.  The last time we spoke was at my kid's birthday party about six weeks ago.  I'm okay with this. "How are you?" she asks, and her voice is so devoid of any hint of feeling that I am certain she is inquiring because she feels she needs to, because she is required to ask, and not because she

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-74584517205690224122011-03-14T00:00:00.000-07:002011-03-14T00:00:40.005-07:00big pillows

I think I was seven, but that's just a guess.  My family was at home, enjoying a quiet night playing games with my parents and grandparents. We finished dinner, and my brothers were playing on the living room floor while Mother and Grandmother cleaned up after the meal. I was curled up in a chair, reading a book, when my brother Michael started engaging Grandfather in a playful wrestling

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-6851367041513260852011-03-11T18:54:00.000-08:002011-03-11T20:07:30.423-08:00how i came to be

A fifteen year-old child, brown hair, blue eyes, five feet eight inches tall had a singular encounter with a brown-eyed, brown-haired male, age unknown.  She was Roman Catholic, he?  Well, it's not on the paperwork. Where I'm from, adoptees have no rights to information.  There's a statewide adoption database, and adoptees can file pages of paperwork in order to be listed on the

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4988652653747572348.post-14441929586235297382011-03-10T21:53:00.000-08:002011-03-13T19:14:54.706-07:00where do i even begin?

It is really difficult to type and eat oreos in a proper manner.  Especially if you're a dunker, which I am.  I have a few kids who are dunkers, too, and one oddball who is the open-the-sandwich-cookie-and scrape-the-cream-out sort.  Clearly got the double recessive genes for that quality. It's impossible to say which of my qualities are the double recessive, and which are the

Kelly Normalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10509901106625692230noreply@blogger.com1