Normal Can Be Wonderful

Just another day trying to get home from work in fire season…

Maybe the only good thing about a long, beastly heatwave is how glorious it feels and how thankful you are when things finally cool down, returning to something like normal (or what normal used to be, a few decades back, before global warming started affecting us so much). It reminds me of the feeling I get after I’ve been sick with the flu or Covid and finally start to feel better. I suddenly remember how precious it is to feel well and how lovely not to be sick. And I vow that I will never, ever take feeling good for granted again.

Except I easily forget this. Usually by the next day.

My knee started hurting the other day. In my slightly hypochondria-prone way, I started to think about all the people I know who are my age or younger who had knee pain that never went away and who ended up needing knee surgery. All those years when my knees felt great and I never appreciated them and how beautiful they were! Thankfully, a few days later, my knee seems to be healing just fine. But the pain? It made me remember how nice normal can be.

What would it take for me to live my life with a deeper appreciation for all that is ordinary, ho-hum, and commonplace?

For the hundreds of times that I’ve driven to work and haven’t come across a freeway closure that backed up traffic for miles due to a fire burning down the road (which happened to me just this week on my way to work) or up the road (Same. Also this week, but another day. On my way home this time). For the times when I’ve barbecued chicken and didn’t burn it to a crisp (which I did a few weeks ago). Or when the neighbor’s dog doesn’t bark and wake me up at 3:00 am (which happened last night, but which hopefully won’t happen again.)  For all the times when my car starts and the tires aren’t flat and we get home and take the dog for a walk and he doesn’t end up with a foxtail in his foot and the cat is his ornery self but doesn’t track kitty litter all over the bathroom floor. When the power stays on every day, like it has this summer. That there were no fires nearby today. And I pulled weeds and remembered my garden gloves so I didn’t get splinters, because maybe I have finally learned my lesson about that.

What would it mean to notice all of this ordinary and instead of being blasé about it, or a little bored, or even a little sad that something more exciting didn’t happen: what would it mean to be grateful? All the while remembering that all these things that are normal for me are not normal for so many people on our planet, that I am blessed beyond measure. Blessed to have sprinklers, and remembering to be grateful for sprinkler timers that work like they are supposed to. Grateful for my knee that stopped hurting and for the other one that doesn’t hurt at all and work and friends who take time to have tea with me on a Thursday afternoon or a Sunday morning. Grateful for a shopping trip today where we actually found shoes that seem like they will fit me and my son, too, because shoe shopping (especially with how my right foot is behaving as I age, spreading strangely in places where it should be straight) is one of my least favorite things.

So I’m grateful tonight for all the ordinary, and I acknowledge again that my ordinary would feel like extraordinary fortune for many in this world. There are berries ripening across the street, enough to make a cobbler, I think. I’ll pick some tomorrow. We bought a pizza from Costco this afternoon, so dinner is settled. I found a new hairstylist this week and I’m happy with my hair, which is more of a cause for celebration than it might seem at first. I am sitting at the kitchen table typing on a laptop that is working into a program to post this blog that is also working and there is a cool breeze blowing because the weather was beautiful today. The heatwave is over for now so it is not 90 degrees in the kitchen like it has been recently, and I am not sweating and typing, and my son just warmed up his pizza in the microwave. Time to post this and pop some popcorn and watch highlights from the first day of the Paris Summer Olympics.

Just a normal Saturday night for us. Reason enough to give thanks.