The norm

School has started and Noah appeared at my office door a few days ago saying he needed a photo of the family for a project.

And I hesitated for a second, because there was no way to do this without walking through a potential minefield, so I asked “Of the four of us or the five of us?” He wanted all five of us, which was the answer I’d hoped for, but I didn’t want to assume things for him.

A few days before that, we were sorting through papers and Christina asked me in that non-specific way she often does, if I had “those papers.” I asked for clarification and she reminded me we need to find our contract for the cemetery plot as we go about picking out the gravestone.

And a couple of weeks ago, as Emma was introducing herself to her new class, she mentioned that her baby brother had died a year ago. The teacher said Emma handled it well. Indeed, from what I heard, the teacher was impressed with Emma’s poise.

And all I can think of as I process these stories is how horribly normal this is. Like, if you squint just the right way, we’re just a family of four that happens to remember from time to time that it used to be a family of five. None of us ever signed up for this, and yet this is how we do things now. i marvel at how well we’re doing this some days, which immediately leads me to wonder how we could be doing so well and whether it’s OK for us to be doing so well and if there’s going to come a time where we don’t think about him all the time and whether I want that or not.

Probably none of this is normal. But it’s what we are now.