this last month, i kid you not, i have gotten a bajillion million baby birth announcement things. okay, maybe one or two less than that. but still. this is the right time of my life for that; my peers are happily baby-fying and that is totally normal.
the problem here is that N-word. yeah, i said it, "normal." i sort of alluded to this in my last post, but i've been thinking a lot more about it lately. it's a weird little piece of semantics; on one hand it implies that You Too can be part of a big group of ordinary folk; on the other, it indicates that You Are A Freak O' Nature because nothing normal happens to you or for you.
the last nine months i have watched someone in close proximity to me get normally pregnant; have a normal, healthy first pregnancy, filled with normal joy & anticipation & innocence; go normally into labour; and finally, have a normal, natural live childbirth resulting in a normal healthy baby. i have felt often that i am clearly living in a parallel universe because what seems so normal over there is totally shocking! breathtaking! astounding! over here. other people in that parallel normal place you know, just get pregnant and have babies and are happy. in my version of normal, it is a struggle to get pregnant and then maybe you're actually not going to have any babies, and you will cry a lot, and if you actually do get pregnant on your own and actually do deliver a real live healthy child then it will be A TOTAL EXTRAORDINARY JAW-DROPPING MIRACLE for heaven's sake.
of course, any normal mother will tell you every single one of her kids is a total extraordinary jaw-dropping miracle, right?
i guess i am normal after all...
