• My mother wanted so much to be normal/to project normal. She had rules for behavior. Don’t borrow from others, nor lend.

Don’t go where you’re not wanted.
Be nice, say thank you, be sorry, don’t tell the neighbors our business…

Not toxic shame, but some healthy guilt was often the fuel behind the words. She was consistent with them and she was insistent. This was what she needed to feel Okay.

But there was anger in that home. And it threatened the semblance of normalcy as it lurked around the corner, just out of reach of her control – Potentially triggered by the spontaneity of her children.

A church scene – a boy and girl sitting in the pew taunting one another behind her back as she sat in the middle, a referee, an obstacle that we had to reach around. Then I felt it, a barely imperceptible yet sharp, stabbing sensation, a tiny series of baby pinches Administered in quick succession to the soft flesh on the inside upper arm designed to bring us back in line, which of course it did.

I remember once being so angry with her – my 22 year old self,  flaunting my lack of concern with  maintaining HER facade of normalcy, running out into the yard still angry, angry and yelling, and incensed.

My brother was the topic  – she had had him “hospitalized” while I was away; didn’t want the neighbors to know.

She ran out after me, red-faced, wrinkles of desperation lining her forehead. “He was acting crazy, I was afraid, I didn’t know what to do, He got ahold of some thing and hasn’t been acting right. Renae, please come back in…the neighbors…”

“I don’t give a damn about the neighbors.” I had said. I think in fact that I had wanted her facade of normal to crack. I needed to see her suffer under its weight as I was suffering while she threw away my not normal brother.

Normal – what’s that?