What is 'normal' anyway?
A My Name is Amy
What is 'normal' anyway?
by
Amy Byrnes
When we went to get my son fitted for a tux to wear to his senior prom, he asked the guy at the rental store if they had a blue bowtie instead of the traditional black. He wanted to match his neckwear as close as possible to the Nike skateboard sneakers he wanted to pair with the ensemble rather than shiny dress shoes.
Initially, he had told me he was going to wear his ratty old Nike sneakers that he’s had since well before pandemic times and I pretty much said, “That’s stupid.”
He’s always got to give things his own spin instead of just doing what everyone else is doing, but like the homemade version of it. For instance, years ago, he was dying to play long stick and showed up for lacrosse practice with one he’d fashioned out of a broom handle and was running around with it until one of the coaches was like, “What the hell is that?”
Eventually, I bought him his long stick and that lasted about one season and he was back to using his short one. So I offered to buy him a new pair of sneaks to wear to prom and we found the perfect colored tie to match the swoosh.
***
One of the other recent projects that the 18-year-old has been spearheading is the fuzzy hair growing above his upper lip, which he had been lovingly tending to for about the last month. You couldn’t really see it was there unless the light hit his face in a certain way or if he was putting his face really close to yours so you could see how his “mustache was really coming in.”
But then he remembered that I’d bought a box of Just for Men hair dye a while back to tint my eyebrows, which remained unopened in the back of my bathroom closet. I’d just like to note that this child cannot find his driver's license right now but has a full mental inventory of our home beauty supplies.
Last spring during lockdown, when he spent his time lying in a blowup kiddie pool in the backyard or going to the beach to watch the sunrise, my fourth child started experimenting with his hair. He’d started growing it out for the lacrosse season that winter so by June, he was working a rather long and hideous mullet.
Then he decided he wanted to bleach it but panicked while the smelly chemicals were slathered on his head and rinsed it off too soon so that the result was his hair turned from a medium shade of brown to a shocking shade of yellow/orange. He looked like he’d gone to Donald Trump’s colorist. Or the Heat Miser's. Eventually, he tired of the mullet and the flaming hair color and had his sister shave it all off sitting on a chair in the backyard.
He asked if he could use some of the Just for Men hair dye on his mustache and when I said, “Sure,” he and his sister went to work mixing up the packets and slathering on his peach fuzz. I can’t tell you how thrilled he was with the result when he came running downstairs to show me 15 minutes later.
“You look like Freddy Mercury,” I told him, and he seemed quite pleased with the reference although secretly, I started calling it his “pornstache.” I just saw someone I follow on Instagram refer to her own mustachioed son as an adult film star, so I guess maybe cheesy mustaches are trending with the Gen Z crowd.
He wore it to play in lacrosse games and school, where his Italian teacher told him she thought his stache looked good.
***
Prom night started on Friday as a bit of a washout. It poured right before my son’s dad got here to do some pictures prior to heading to a bigger pre-prom gathering. My son came down wearing the rented tux and new kicks and it did not look as stupid as I thought it would. He had shaved the pornstache off earlier in the day and despite the royal blue tie and sneakers, I thought he looked presentable.
He was annoyed I already wanted to start taking pictures and did not want to walk on the wet grass in the new white sneakers, so we pulled the cars out of our tiny driveway and stood in front of my diseased privet hedge for a few photos before heading out. I stood next to my son and tried to remember how to pose for a picture. Do we still put our hands on our hips? Aren’t I supposed to do something with my leg? How do you smile and not look like a crazy person?
A family in town opened their doors to a ton of kids with their parents in tow for pictures before the seniors all headed to the school gym for prom. We cornered our son and his date to take the obligatory corsage/boutonniere exchange pics and only later did I notice that a lot of kids weren’t even wearing flowers. A also saw that a lot of the boys had ditched dress shoes in favor of sneakers and one kid was rocking a ruffled dress shirt with an open collar and super shiny red dress shoes.
We parents hugged and reconnected after almost 18 months apart and while many of them were enjoying cocktails, I held onto my espadrille and noticed that not drinking alcohol wasn't as weird as I was afraid it was going to be. We waved good by to the kids and my ex dropped me at home and I had a brief pang as I heated leftovers and looked out the window at how the sky had turned a bright blue following the storm that I wasn't still back at the party with an icy cocktail in hand.
***
If you had told me five years ago that I’d have a son wear a colored bowtie and sneakers to a prom, I’d tell you that you were nuts. Or that I wouldn't care the prom was held in the gym and they had food trucks come to serve them dinner. And you couldn’t have convinced me I’d be at a pre-prom party sans cocktails.
Had there been a thunderstorm for any of the other six pre-prom gatherings I have attended as a mom over the years, I would have been so agitated for the kids. For not being able to score those social media-worthy pics of what a prom is supposed to look like.
The pandemic changed all that for me. I find that lately, I have less of an attachment to any notion of how things are supposed to be. I’m trying to let things just be. I was just happy they even had a prom.
The only thing that I did not just let be for pre-prom was my shoe wear. I had surgery almost four weeks ago to fix my big right toe and have been faithfully wearing a surgical boot since then. But I’d bought a pretty dress that I wanted to wear for prom pics with my son and the black boot just didn’t match the Stevie Nicks vibe I was going for so I jammed my still-swollen right foot into an espadrille and just avoided putting any weight on it for photos.
I actually carried that shoe to the party while wearing a single animal print Croc, which I thought to be more stylish than the boot. I posed for exactly 30 seconds worth of more pictures and then wound up carrying the espadrille around the party for two hours and standing on my feet wearing that Croc. That night in bed my right foot was throbbing so badly I couldn’t even read and took some melatonin to fall asleep and woke up the next day with a searing spasm in my back.
***
Yesterday, I went to a beautiful bridal shower for a good friend’s soon-to-be daughter-in-law and it was cozy and intimate and I wore the same dress but with the black surgical boot and probably two people noticed it.
Maybe someday my ego will shrink enough so that I can’t really hear it when it starts to whisper stupid ideas to me. When my ego tells me I should ditch the boot I am supposed to be wearing to help my toe heal instead of a stylish Croc or jam it into an espadrille for a photo op.
I won’t pay attention when that voice tells me to try to micromanage prom attire or the children's appearances in general. These are not part of the official job requirements of parenting. In fact, adding your two cents can often be detrimental to all involved. When the weather takes a turn for the worse, I will let go of any notion that my fretting and complaining will do anything about it. As if any of that stuff even matters.
And when everyone is walking around with cocktails, I’ll remind myself why I shouldn’t drink alcohol. I'll recall how it tends to gum up the machinery of my life. It keeps me from being who it is I really want to be.
Things are going back to normal, but they will never be the way they used to be for me, and that’s not a bad thing. I think I’m in the surgical boot stage of my new life. Things are on the mend, but I’m working my way to wearing sneakers. Sometimes I will feel a throbbing pain, but it only means that things are slowly knitting themself back together inside. That I am on the mend.
I’m not even looking to wear high heels at the end of the healing process, to continue this shoe metaphor. I'd be happy to get my foot into a nice pair of espadrilles. That would suit me just fine.
xoAmy
SUNDAY SHARES: read + watch + cook + buy
I think it's interesting, and a blessing, that one of the post-pandemic fashion trends is long, billowing dresses. I got a ton of compliments on this cream-colored confection I just bought this week at Madewell that not only covers my winter white legs but also cloaks the troublesome upper arm region.
Interestingly, since foot surgery, I have purchased three pairs of shoes (four if you count the new sneakers that just arrived from Zappos). These slides will be a chic upgrade to the OOFOS I wore throughout the pandemic summer and since I will be heading into an office at some point soon-ish, I bought these loafers that I saw my very cool colorist, Lorraine, wearing recently that have cushiony soles.
Speaking of Lorraine, I am also very into my hair color right now and am getting a lot of compliments on that, too. She's in high demand but, in my opinion, she is so worth the wait. She's the co-owner of Gerber Salon in Keyport and you can get all the details for appointments here. She is a hair color rock star.
OMG: Mare of Easttown.
Also just finished last year's beach read from Jen Weiner, Big Summer. Easy. Breezy. Fun.
Finally, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of my daughter's kidney donation, otherwise referred to here as her KIDNEY-VERSARY. Her recipient ordered the CUTEST cake shaped like a kidney, which sounds disgusting but was absolutely adorable and tasted DELISH. Even better, all the proceeds benefit an organization called the Bloom Again Foundation, a local nonprofit that provides financial assistance to working women who are suffering financial setbacks because of an illness.