How A Boy Got His Normal Back

Some memories sift around in our minds, snapshots of a scene, a word spoken, a favorite childhood smell that wafts unexpectedly, wistfully. Others we might rather forget, shoving them in the background of our mind's eye hoping they behave and sit quietly, unremembered forever.

Then there is the memory of a five-year-old boy. A few months ago, our east coast clan arrived for a family vacation. The plane landed late in the evening, and with the three-hour time difference I figured our grandkids would be exhausted and ready for bed. Our five-year-old, who hadn't been to our house for nearly two years raced downstairs to the toy bins, he had other ideas than going to bed. The clock ticked a minute. 

"Where are they? It's not here!" His distressed cries rose through the house like a fire alarm. Running back up the stairs, eyes leaking sad, he plopped down on a step, wrapped his arms around his knees, bowed his head. A hunch thread its way into the moment. Slowly, I inhaled recognition. I gave some of  them away. I know what he's looking for. I tidied up a bit too much and is that ever possible?

"I just want things to be normal!" A look of despair crossed his unblemished face. "They aren't there! Where are they?" he cried out accusingly. A tear slid down his cheek and he swiped at it dejectedly. And like a thief who stole the necklace you wear every day, the one your grandmother gave you on your eighteenth birthday, my guilt and regret dripped onto the wood floor. One discarded toy at a time. Don't we all want everything to be normal? For nothing to change? For the things we remember to wait patiently for our return, or better yet, that we never have to leave or let go of our version of normal?

I have marinated on this scene a thousand times since August. Analyzed, pondered and dissected it. How our youngest grandson lamented over his lost toys, his normal replaced by a grandma's eagerness to downsize. How the past year-and-a-half we have had to adapt our normal routines, our normal way of life, even at times our normal way of thinking. And maybe this is all good. Maybe it's God's grand design, His way of showing up, to shake things up a bit to help us realize all over again that we really aren't in charge after all. I wonder at that one too as I tighten my face mask for the zillionth time.

Normal shifts, changes color, employs a new scent, writes a virgin paragraph in your story, one your twenty-year-old self never saw coming. 

A hummingbird flaps its wings up to seventy times per second, and isn't that a beautiful normal to behold, to marvel at? 

Counting gifts can shake the earth beneath your feet, tuck new treasures into the heart, shape a fresh normal of praises, drowning out the cacophony of discontent. 

And for the boy who thought he lost it all that late summer evening? There hiding amongst the remaining toys and books lay one of his favorites, something stored in his memory and now held firm in his delighted hands, a wide smile pasted on his face. A new version of normal. For the moment.