What is normal anyway?

I grew up in a very "normal" family.  Well, looking back we actually had quite a few quirks, but it was a very Andy Griffith/Leave it to Beaver upbringing.  Original Mom married to original Dad, three kids, a dog, a cat, brick house out in the country.  We knew all the neighbors and went to church with most of them.  We moved once, but that was just around the corner to a bigger house and it happened before I can even remember.  All three of us went to the local schools from elementary on through high school, so by the time I (the baby) got to a grade all the teachers either loved me if they had taught my sister, or dreaded me if they had taught my brother.  If they happened to have taught both brother & sister, I think they must have been a little leary about how different I might be in comparison.  I got good grades and was a bit of a teachers pet, so I usually won them over without too much effort.

But then I grew on up and found myself in love with (and then pretty quickly married to) a man raised in an entirely different upbringing.  I had never really questioned my ideas about "normal" until we started comparing our childhoods.  To him, normal was moving several times a year and changing schools at the drop of a hat.  Having parents who fought regularly and lived seperatly from time to time was a concept as foreign to me as having a Sunday dinner with nothing to serve for dessert - I just couldn't fathom it.  I had never even been to an emergency room until I had to take him to get a metal shaving drilled out of his eye.  "Normal" was suddenly taking on a new meaning for me. 

It has been a crazy ride from way back then until today, but I have come to realize over time that normal is just a matter of what you can get used to.  Life is not perfect and it changes quickly, so today's "normal" is really just an illusion, hence the blog name "Illusions Of Normal".  Welcome to my life - lets see just how much I have to say that is truly worth sharing.