Normal (whatever that means)

Are all kids weird, or just mine? Of course Jude is weird, he's autistic, he flaps and sings and only eats beige foods, but the other two aren't, they are "normal," whatever that means, but they are eccentric. Strange. Odd.

Take tonight at dinner. Jude is circling the table while reciting a Caillou episode about vegetables and Eden is yelling that his tater tot is a Pokemon and Sage leans in close so I can hear him and says, conspiratorially, "What if I had an army of chickens?"

Now, Don and I are somewhat non conformist, but we aren't that quirky, at least I never thought we were, but our kids seem to live in this nether world of imagination and surreal humor. I am not sure if I have fostered this or if it is genetic.

Sometimes the strangeness is an obvious bid for attention. When we were putting Jude to bed last night I made it clear to Sage he was not to interrupt us for a whole ten minutes. It is a complicated and delicate process, Jude's bedtime routine, and one wrong move can send us back to the beginning. Sage feels left out, even though he gets an hour of undivided attention as soon as we can leave Jude to sing along with Petula Clark at the top of his lungs and sift through his collection of unopened band-aids.

So there we were, sitting on Jude's bed, and Don is praying for Jude to have a good night, begging God really because we are so tired, and I open my eyes just in time to see Sage leaping past the open door, like a gazelle, with Eden's potty chair on his head. Just once. I wondered if I had imagined it. When we came out of Jude's room we didn't speak of it, it was a moment in time, and we moved on.

here are some other examples:
Jude used to yell HAM whenever he saw something he liked. We don't know why.
Eden goes to my mother's house, heads to her fridge, and gets out the Brunchweiger, and eats it by the handful. She lets him. What kid likes Brunchweiger, for God's sake?
Sage used to collect dustballs and pretend they were his pets. He had a little zoo. He was going to charge admission.


I admit, much of this is within the realm of normal, and perhaps our appreciation for the eccentric and bizarre has helped us appreciate Jude, who seems like a visitor from a far away land. I love my little weirdos, I do.

Maybe it's a recessive gene, like red hair. In that case, my grandkids may have a shot at normal.
Whatever that is.