Back to Normal

After Labor Day passes, Mike Hosti owner of the Tybee Markey normally has the sign out front of the grocery store proclaim “Back to Normal!” The tourists are gone and the island is ours again. The letter N is typically backwards because Tybee’s sense of normal is not quite like anyone else’s. It’s one of the many reasons that I love living here.

For the first time in my life I have not returned to work on the day after Labor Day along with everyone else. It’s a bit strange but I have list of things to do today:

(1) Go to the Drug Store for prescriptions which I was to have picked up on Friday but never got around to it;

(2) Swing through Wall Mart because Goddess keeps eating everything in the house and she needs new stuff;

(3) Attend the Bored Meeting;

(4) Maybe go to Johnny O’s to watch squirrel feeding (or as his wife Judy calls it when I sit on their porch “It wine and Whine!”)

(5) Call my mother because she’s leaving me messages to call her and I haven’t gotten around to it yet. (Mom, I am not sure why this is number 5. You know you’re number one but my computer keeps dropping you to fifth. Technology!)

(6) Have Goddess take me for a walk.

(7) Try to come up with an answer to Mom’s question when I finally do get around to calling her. She ends every conversation with “What are you doing for dinner tonight?” because she knows that I have no idea and will often not even bother with it.

(8) Breeze by my 30-going-on-17 year old daughter Kristen’s weekly beach volley ball tournament and watch her be the only girl to beat the boys.

(9) Attend Roma’s weekly pool tournament at the Quarter and try to get their in time to actually play.

(10) Brush Goddess on the beloved back deck, prop my feet on the rail, sip a glass of wine and dance with the stars.

A few years ago, Union Mission went through a very difficult period and I had conversation with Aretha Jones. We both acknowledged how much of our self identity was tied up in our jobs. Who we were was determined by where we worked.

I now understand that this is a perverse way of living life. God created us to be …us. Not to work for the man (or woman)! Sure work is something that we do but it is not who we are. I am at a place now where I am trying to get back to Normal…to be the unique “me” that I was born to be.

I think that each of us reach a point in our lives where we have to face ourselves. And we either do or we don’t. And those who do embrace themselves for who they are grow closer to God in the process. And those who don’t lose a little bit more of themselves every day.

So I am working on getting back to normal by facing myself as just me and doing my best to embrace me for me.

Of course, the N is backwards in my normal. Just as God intended it to be. She’s smart that way.