Normalized!

I survived today!

Sanj was away (again) to attend a conference in Texas.  He actually isn’t away that often, it just happened to be that the two conferences that he had planned to attend fell so close together.  As he was leaving, he handed me the dread schedule.  The hockey schedule.  I was grimacing because his face  told me it was going to be ugly.  I looked at the paper, that looked more like a map.  I felt my heart racing.  Yet, as I looked at his face, I could see he was trying really hard to make it easy.  I told him I hated him (but not really, of course) and took a deep breath.  Hockey.  It really should have been spelt with only four letters!

Thankfully, my mom is here so I didn’t have to inflict the pain onto Josh, who hates being at the arenas.  It was good.  Max’s game was fun to watch.  It was all good.

Anyway, hockey is done for the night.  I am looking forward to the clock going back.  An extra hour of sleep!  I love that.  Of course with that comes the early darkness.  It means winter and all that stuff.  Yet… there is the extra hour of sleep!

Today, as I was driving back into town for the 4th time to bring Sammy to work,  I was watching this kid of mine, who spent the afternoon on the ice helping the other teams with their practice.  He rushed home to shower and was heading back to work.  Later, he would be off to hockey again to play for Sanj’s team since he was gone.  I was watching him with pride.  Sammy usually drives me nuts with all his teenage craziness.  Yet, there was this child of mine, looking very grown up and so sweet as he was getting himself together for work.

Then I had a moment… Sammy looked at me and asked, “Mommy, do you think that JimBob and Johnny (made up names of his friends) can go to the concert in Toronto to hear such and such a group?”

Why did I have a moment?  Well, here is the thing… it was such a normal moment!  I was taken by the normalness of the question.  I had such a not normal childhood/teenage years that it is all I yearn for as a parent… to provide my children with normalness.

I loved that here was my teenager asking to go to a concert in Toronto and I loved knowing that I would say no.  I love that it is OK for Sammy to be annoyed, probably argue and all that  stuff.  We are just being a normal family.

Do you understand that?  After years of growing up, knowing we were not normal… it is such a gift to be normal!

Enjoy your extra hour of sleep!

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