For When You Cling to Normal — Rachel Nevergall

I’m afraid I will miss something.

You see her text as you glide the blade up and down across the carrots, striving for that perfectly symmetrical dice. Before you respond you slide the carrots across the cutting board and onto the cookie sheet, drizzle the olive oil in a long slow stream back and forth across the vegetables. You finish them with a hefty pinch of salt, then one more for good measure.

You are in the kitchen at 5:33, as you are most weekday afternoons. Muffled sounds of squealing children float through the window. It’s still cold on this first day of spring but they need to expel energy. He tugged coats and rain boats on their resistant bodies and from the sound of it he is making them run soccer drills. You each have your own way of blowing off steam at the end of the day—his through play, yours through cooking. Chopping, stirring, seasoning—you complete the motions that feel like muscle memory, inviting normalcy to fill up your body.

You will do anything you can to ignore how not normal life is beyond your fenced in backyard.

You don’t remember what day of quarantine we are on because you don’t really know when we started this age of coronavirus. Signs of it have flooded the news for weeks, months even. A few anxious friends brought it to your attention in January. You expressed your condolences, not for the reality of it but for the anxiety it evoked in their lives. "I’m sorry you are experiencing this" you say. The way you might say "I’m sorry for your loss," to a friend mourning the death of a loved one you didn’t know. It’s the kind thing to say, but it doesn’t really effect you either way.

But now it does. Now the loss is personal.

Now you’re the one asking for condolences for the life we are all losing. There is no school to keep their minds engaged. There are no activities for their busy bodies. No playdates, or spouse dates, or happy hour dates. You distance yourselves from others like they have asked. Because you don’t understand how to make choices when you don’t understand what is happening. So you listen and obey. It is what you know you can do.

You don’t want to call it terrifying. You don’t shake in fear or cower in the corner, although sometimes you think about it.

It is more an overwhelming weight, like you carry all the possibilities in your already crowded heart. Everything feels new and you aren’t sure what to do with it yet.

And so you focus on what isn’t new. You cook dinner on a Thursday afternoon because that is what you would be doing on any other day. And you need it to feel like any other day instead of the day that you know it is.

Her text is laced with fear too, although, familiar fear. Fear that all mothers feel with or without the threat of a pandemic. Fear that you will be so preoccupied with what is required of you that you might miss the moments others’ threaten go too fast.

You tell her what you always tell her.

You won’t. You are a great mother. I think as life simplifies you will find you notice more.

The words come as naturally as the cooking. You are a therapist. Being a counselor to your friends feels normal too. It isn’t that the words are not true. They are. But you don’t speak to yourself. You are too busy silencing your scary thoughts. Listening to your own words is risky.

You walk outside to call them to dinner. Their laughter taunts your sadness. You hate to be the one to tell them to stop, to put away fun and carry on with the evening routine. You know you shouldn’t care about keeping to a schedule. But you crave routine in the midst of none. And let’s be honest, you want to just be done with another day.

The children tear inside, shedding coats and shoes steps away from their designated bins—normal. You remind them to wash their hands. This should also be normal, but you were never very good about hand washing before now. He sings from the top of his lungs "Happy Birthday to You!" and you cringe. He doesn’t know his words are a trigger, reminders of the pandemic threatening our world, the one you are trying to forget.

You dish up the plates, and you wait for them to take your hands for the prayer, wait for them to put down their forks and their cups even though they should know not to eat before you pray, but they never remember—normal.

And then you say your prayer in unison—normal.

But you can’t finish. Your throat chokes on the words.

The normalcy of mealtime clashes with the uncertainty in your heart, creating a dissonant, painful sound. Tears stream down your face as they all finish "Amen."

"Are you crying again, Mom?" they say, less with concern and more with exaggerated tone.

"Yes. I’m fine. I’m just sad."

They carry on with dinner. Mom crying is normal. You cry about a lot of things, not just pandemics and quarantines.

But he, your husband, the man who knows the color of your eyes and how they change in fear, he keeps his gaze on you, studying your face, matching its concern.

"I’m fine." You say again, this time to him. But because you know he wants to help but doesn’t know what you need, you say "I’m going to go for a walk after dinner. I think I need to clear my head."

"That’s an excellent idea." He says, returning to his plate, relieved, for now. He likes answers to solved problems, and you just offered him one.

You are not sure if you agree with him. It’s raining and cold. But you want him to know you are trying. And getting out of bedtime management is appealing on a normal night. So you choose the walk.

You think for a moment of bringing your headphones, putting on a new podcast, an old episode, seeking comfort from another time, before coronavirus. But the battery in your phone is dead, another sign of your day spent refreshing every news feed and social media app, equally hungry for and nauseated by information.

So you go out in silence. You tug your hood deep over your forehead and venture out into the street.

You only pass a few people. You offer a weak smile, scoot over to the side, keep your recommended by the CDC distance.

The rain beats on your head, your sleeves, the tops of your rain boots. Your hood slides off of your forehead but you don’t adjust it. You welcome the shower, let the water run down your face, hoping the worry wicks away along with it.

The path you take is familiar. You run these streets on your early morning solo runs. You chase your children ahead on scooters bound for the park. These are the homes where you watch the seasons changing—tulips lining walkways in the spring, hydrangeas leaning over from the weight of their blooms in mid-summer, maple trees paving the streets in gold in fall, deep snow draping over bushes like a down comforter in winter.

But this season is less familiar. This is the season you tend to avoid walks. This is the season in between quiet white and vivid color, when the snow is gone but the plants are still asleep. There isn’t much to look at or admire, so you tend to keep your head low, hidden behind raincoat hoods and sadness.

Tonight, though, whether in desperation or in a pleading act of defiance, you let your hood completely fall off, ignore the rain on your face, and allow your eyes to search for something, anything, that is alive.

It is dusk. Lamps light up window frames. You quietly observe the activity inside the homes like actors on stage. Parents cook in kitchens while chatting with teenagers on bar stools. A woman leans over a girl seated at a computer. An elderly couple sit in chairs, one reading a newspaper, the other a book. There is nothing remarkable about these scenes, just another normal Thursday evening, much like the one in which you desperately cling.

But the tears rolling down your face tell a different story. You gasp at the extraordinary ordinary in the human experience. Gratitude overcomes you with the honor of witnessing great love in the normalcy of your neighbors’ lives. Has it always been this way? Was there always beauty hidden behind our walls, living amongst us in the form of life and love and humanity? It was like you were seeing it all for the first time.

This path you take tonight is not new, but there were always distractions, blooming flowers, needy children, loud podcasts. In the quiet rain, in the dull scenery, in the desperation for any sign of beauty, your eyes are clear to see what was here all along. And what you see is a new beauty beyond recognition.

You think of the words you shared with your friend moments ago, finally understanding the lyrics to the song.

I think as life simplifies you will find you notice more.

Your life rests in a quiet season now, one with bare branches and dull horizons. In this uncertainty, you cling to the normal like a shelter to hide behind. And yet, maybe this isn’t a sign of weakness, but rather an invitation to see beauty in the normal that went unnoticed before. Like when you catch your baby humming along to the lullaby you sing to him each night. The careful way your preschooler writes his letters with his head down low and his tongue sticking out. How contagious her giggles are when she laughs at her own jokes. These moments are not new. They have always been there for you. But this time, you promise your friend, and yourself, you won’t miss them.

As you walk home, to your normal house and your normal family, you wonder what new beauty you might find waiting for you behind your own lit up windows.

Image created by @phoenixfeatherscalligraphy for C+C, 2020.

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "All Things New.”