I’m not sure we remember the first time my mother proclaimed us “such a normal family,” but it was absolutely said by her, more than once, and with no justification for the claim. If anything, we had decades of evidence that we were not normal but she stood by it. And even now, nearly eight years after her death, we still quote it and mock her — just as we did when she was alive. I do think I know what she meant though: we could certainly be way less normal.
But “normal,” it turns out, isn’t a measurement so much as a point of view — the one you were issued at birth, in the house you were raised in, by the people who happened to be yelling in it.
In our family of five, we had open communication, family dinners together, healthy teasing (because, “you only tease someone you love”), a lot of family singalongs, and in general, a high level of function and mostly liking each other. Most of the craziest family examples lived outside our home but their visits and stories helped validate the “normal” label we’d applied. Many of our “least normal” moments were driven or instigated by extended family members, so in my mother’s defense, abnormal came to visit but didn’t necessarily live under our roof. Except, of course, for the stretch when it moved in.
When my mother took her annual extended work trip, my dad’s mom came to stay with us since I was in fifth grade and my dad worked long hours. Presumably, the idea was that I would bond with Nana and my father would experience less stress knowing I was being well cared for. Except that Nana and I both have strong personalities and we argued all of the time.
This is my Substack and she’s dead so this is likely biased, but my memory is that I was always both correct and reasonable (as one expects from a fifth grader). We had a range of fights but the most memorable was the one that started with me explaining that we preferred Charmin toilet paper to single-ply and her saying “I guess you don’t need me” and driving away, leaving me to walk home from the grocery store by myself, Charmin in hand.
There was eavesdropping on phone calls when my dad checked in on me and one time when I baked a tray of brownies and Nana ate most of them when I was at school. When I asked where the brownies were, she tried to tell me I didn’t remember how many we’d eaten the night before. There are select topics where I have a mind like a steel trap: moments of extreme mortification, early seasons of Real Housewives, and inventorying food that I like and am excited to consume. To retaliate, but also to assert myself, I hid the remote control from Nana when I went to school the next morning so she had to get up to change the channel. I’m sure I spent that whole day with a satisfied smirk on my face knowing that I’d won that particular battle. I don’t remember too many things beyond my dad not seeing any level of stress reduction and Nana not returning to babysit in the future.
Overall, most of our mode was out loud: we had “tough” conversations, we convened a rehash as soon as everyone else left the party to talk about it, and generally feedback or thoughts were shared pretty directly. Like when my mother told me the day before my wedding that it was too bad I hadn’t done Invisalign two years beforehand so I spent most of my wedding hoping no one could see my offensive lower teeth.
But when you get married you have a new family and I went from my mostly normal family to whatever Jeff’s is — both extended and with the kids. The family rule seemed to be: no one said the thing. Silently ignoring the elephant in the room and never asking any questions was the norm, which I found… so weird.
While I adjusted to different foods and Midwestern passive aggression and someone crying and literally everyone ignoring it instead of asking what was wrong, I kept calling my mother for her advice, not realizing that neither one of us could translate a totally different culture or dynamic. Once there was an email that went around for a holiday meal plan and people were asked to sign up to bring a salad or apps or dessert or sides and the first cousin who replied just said “I’ll bring the rolls.” Horrified that anyone would get directions from a host on what to bring and not follow them, I forwarded to Jeff with “what’s wrong with him?” Jeff didn’t get it so I forwarded to my mother and she immediately called me to discuss and attempt to make sense of it together.
It took me so many years though to realize that both Jeff and I have had major cultural adjustments to what is considered normal in our respective families. Jeff, the man who doesn’t sing, has to participate in a Christmas hootenanny, sing an off-key “Happy Birthday” via FaceTime for every single member of my family (also he didn’t know what a key was), and line up Christmas morning to sing “Deck the Halls” while slow-jogging to the tree. And I, the person who is allergic to awkward silence, married into a family where that’s the native language.
Jeff grew up on Log Cabin poured over pancakes. I grew up on real maple syrup from the farm of my dad’s best friend from college, poured over H.R.M.’s Favorite Waffles, a recipe I’d committed to memory. There was a Food Network segment a few years ago where they did a blind taste test of pure vs. imitation maple syrup and found that people who had pure maple syrup growing up could accurately taste the difference while those who grew up on Mrs. Butterworth and friends thought imitation maple syrup was the real stuff. I locked this into my memory as an actual scientific study and not just Richard Blais at a grocery store, but I could only find studies showing that Americans overwhelmingly prefer fake maple syrup and nothing formal that supports the Food Network segment. Maybe no one wants to invest money in research that serves purely to reinforce common sense? We each taste our own childhood and call it the truth.
We’ve since signed a treaty between the audible and the silent. I turned Jeff into a great rehasher; he taught me to occasionally let a thing go unsaid (best handled by me excusing myself from the room to avoid temptation). And I’m the one who buys the syrup so there’s no concern there. All of which feels very… normal, or at least my mother would think so.
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I'm betting Jeff, like my husband, grew up not sharing dinner entrees, and you, like me, would NEVER order the same entree as your partner because then you couldn't taste two entrees at the same meal.