The pursuit of normality

I happened upon the following quote while watching a TED talk:

The pursuit of normality is the ultimate sacrifice of potential. The chance for greatness, for progress, and for change die the moment we try to be like someone else.

- Faith Jegede
TED, November 2012
What I've learned from my autistic brothers

I believe Faith. I concur whole heartedly. It's been my life long unofficial credo. And because I have believed this my entire life, I can tell you the downfall of this ideology.

It's lonely.

I imagine that it is so much easier to just follow, to get along, to fit in. I imagine that being like everyone else means that you always have a friend. And that friend is like you in enough ways to make it worth being friends. I imagine moving to a new city would always be easy when you just fit in.

It seems like there are some places where being like everyone else, or normal, just makes sense. At church, school, work, and families.

I live in a place where sameness and conformity equals peace and happiness. Where I live, the majority of people I know were born and raised in the same city. They grew up going to the same schools and same churches. They went to college together, and while they were in college they all married each other and moved back to the same neighborhoods that they grew up in. These people have similar perspectives and paradigms. They have depth of character, because every one has their individual struggles and challenges. I am convinced that you don't need to leave home in order to suffer. Suffering comes to all, which suffering gives us our richness. These people are different, though, because they come to the table with their personalities and dynamics. In so many ways they are the same. But is that normal?

I live in Utah where being Mormon is normal, but I am from a family where I am the only Mormon, which makes me abnormal. I grew up with Deaf parents, which makes me normal among my CODA peers, but which makes me abnormal amongst my friends with parents that can hear. I want to get my Ph.D and write a book and travel the world and see the aurora borealis with my own eyes, which makes me abnormal among my friends who see staying at home with their children as the ultimate satisfaction in life, but normal among my ambitious peers.

What I am finding is that in my pursuit to be abnormal, to stand out in a crowd, to be different, that I am, in fact, just like everyone else. Because whenever I am abnormal in one way, I'm perfectly normal in that way to someone else.

I keep thinking about the Incredibles. Dash and his mother, Elastigirl, or Helen, are talking about being special. "Everyone is special, Dash," the mother says. "Which means that no one is," replies Dash. It's lonely yet comforting to know that we are all special, but not really.

Grandma's story

"How does Grandma Rae know how to talk?"

"How does Grandma Rae know how to sing?"

"How does Grandma Rae know how loud she is being?"

Those are the questions that Emma and Liam asked before bedtime.

I explained to them that it is not easy for children who have never heard before to figure out sound.  I showed them how Deaf children are taught to speak.  I held Liam's hand before my mouth and I made the 'p' sound.  Can you feel that?  Make that same breath on your own hand.  Did you feel it?  Now the 'n'.  You feel the vibration of the 'n' on either side of the bottom of the bridge of your nose.  Can you feel it?  Deaf children learn how to speak by tactilely feeling and by seeing mouth formations.  It's a lot of work, I explained.

"Tell the story of when Grandma went to school," said Emma.

I put aside Shiloh, the book we're reading as a family, to tell Grandma's story.

She was six years old when she watched her mother pack up their clothes, but she had no idea where they were going.  Her mind was alive with curiosity, but she couldn't ask her mother the questions, because at the time little Rae Etta Marquis didn't have any words.

She rode the train with her mother.  They rode for hours.  She didn't know where they were going, but little Rae Etta trusted her mother.  They got to what later Rae learned was the school for the deaf.  Her mother went into the building to discuss matters with the house mother, meanwhile, little girls, also six years old, took little Rae to one of the bedrooms at the school dorm to look out of the window at the man in the moon.  By the time Rae Etta turned around to find her mother, her mother was gone.

There was no way for her mother to tell her that she was leaving Rae there at the school and that they would not see each other for three months.  There was no way for her mother to tell her that she would be happy, that she would learn words, or that she would finally be able to have meaningful friendships.  There was no way that her mother could have told her that this was for the best and that someday the little girl would thank her.  So, because those things couldn't be communicated, her mother left.  Without saying a word.

Emma and Liam were alive with questions.

Why didn't her mother hug her?

Why didn't she go home again for so long?

Why ____?  Why____? Why____?

I answered their questions the best that I could.  Grandma Rae learned how to communicate, but never comfortably at home.  Her parents never learned sign language.  She came to long to be at school when she was home.  At school she was free to express herself in a language that she felt the most comfortable with.  At home she felt shut out.  She was loved, there is no question that her family loved her.  But getting to know each other took effort and work.

By the time I was wrapping up Grandma's story, Liam was wiping his eyes.  "Please don't tell that story again."  Liam, are you crying?  He was.

Grandma Rae (6 1/2) and Roger (1 1/2) at Minnesota School for the Deaf. Note the red dutch hat that her mother made. Her family including her paternal grandparents came up to visit Grandma Rae at the School for the Deaf in Faribault, MN every year in March. This picture was taken on March 1945. She lost the hat at the beach along Lake Superior sometime in the summer of 1945. 

10 August 2012

The upside to un(der)employment

Our family motto is:

See the good in all things

So with the spirit of staying true to our motto, I'd like to present the top 10 great things about un(der)employment:

10. Thanks to our current administration, we feel rich, even though we should feel poor

9. Affordable health insurance for our children (who can beat $25/month for four children!)

8. Day time dates with Dean

7. Finding jobs from my computer at my kitchen table, watching the gopher make holes in our backyard

6. Spending lots of time with our kids

5. Finding cheap entertainment (We do fun things that we wouldn't have thought of doing when we had money rolling in)

4. More time with friends

3. An increased reliance on spiritual things

2. An increase of gratitude for every little thing

1. An endless feeling of hope and optimism. Anything and everything is possible when looking at a blank piece of paper.

Rejection aka the job search

Recently I brought my car in for its annual pap smear, or what they call it in the state tax world: Safety and Emissions. I knew before I got the results back that our car would not pass. We had a crack in the windshield the size of two mini football fields. The crack started the day after my husband lost his job. Which is, coincidentally, about the same time that our dishwasher and refrigerator broke. From experience I can say that knowing that I’m going to fail beforehand does not alleviate the pain of failing. The same was true for the car inspection. The bolded 150 point text reading REJECTED was on the state inspection paper, but it was really as if it were written on my forehead in a cruel and melodramatic way. As if each letter bored into my eyeballs and the recesses of my brain and burned onto my forehead with laser point accuracy, etched from the inside out. 

That is what job searching feels like. However, the rejection is so much more personal when looking for a job. So much more deep. How can it not be? You’re baring your soul again and again saying please take me. Have me. I’ll give you everything you want. And the person being offered your world just looks at you point blank and says no thanks, there is someone better than you.

Better than me?! How can anyone be better than me? I am confident! I am educated! I am passionate! I am... “intense”? You think that I am intense? You don’t like me because I’m intense? Oh. I see what you’re saying. I am intense. It’s bad to be intense. You have every reason not to want me because I’m intense. Why does anyone like me? Do my friends and family think that? Maybe I should just stay in bed today. Just until my personality changes. I don’t want to be intense.

REJECTED. 

The fact is that I’m right for someone. I was right for my husband, or so I like to think. I will be right for my future employer, because someone will value my intensity. My mom always did say people would like me just as I am (and she was right surprisingly often.) How much do I need to change to fit the needs of some unknown entity? How much do I need to fake in order to get accepted into an organization? How does one fake being non-intense? People do, I’m sure, but I don’t know how (weed probably). I’ve never been one for theatrics. 

So I’ll stay in my warm flannel knee length polka dot pajamas until noon. I’m going to allow my furry pink and white mid-calf length socks to soak up warmth and healing to the very depths of my soul. Yes, even intense people have souls. I’ll don my running clothes and lick my wounds while I burn off my frustrations. I’ll come home, take a shower, then hit the job search market again. Next time I will be less intense, but today I will harness my intensity to shake off my rejection and persevere.

In the beginning

"Never laugh at live dragons, [Amy] you fool!" [s]he said to herself... "You aren't nearly through this adventure yet," [s]he added.

Actually this is what Bilbo Baggins said to himself in The Hobbit, but since I read it, I've been saying it to myself. Life is easy, it's the dragons that are difficult. Marriage problems, money struggles, raising children, finding work, losing a job, death of a loved one, health issues, and caring for aging parents are all examples of life dragons. 

When I was in Junior High a girl wanted to fight me. I accidentally squirted ketchup on her so she threw a red slushy on my sister's white cable knit sweater that I "borrowed". Instead of turning the other cheek or punching her, I yelled with as much gusto as I could muster (which wasn't much), 'What did you do that for?!' She shoved me, I shoved her back, but not with any power. The kids dropped their books and came running yelling 'FIGHT! FIGHT!' My strength failed me. I had spaghetti arms. It was like a bad dream. I wanted to hit her, but my adrenaline booster failed me. I swung at her like a rag-doll being controlled by a drunk puppeteer. Thank goodness a teacher came and broke it up. 

That's how I approach my dragons. I sit there and take it. I don't budge much, I don't punch back very hard, I don't run away very far, I don't scream and yell as loud as otherwise could. I take a few punches while attempting a few weak attempts at hitting back. Then I cry in frustration. Then I laugh at the recollection of my weak attempts at fighting back. Most of the time the narrative in my head echoes the Hobbit:

"It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of [Amy's] experiences, and the one which at the time [s]he hated the most - which is to say it was the one [s]he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterward."

Because at the end of it all Gandalf turns to Bilbo and says, "'My dear Bilbo [and Amy]! Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.' And then they crossed the bridge and passed the mill by the river and came right back to Bilbo's own door."

"So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!"