A Different Kind of Normal

  “Yep. It’s easy. Free blog. I’ve got a voice and it’s out out out out in outer space, Internet style.”

  “I love it. I love how you talk about General Noggin.” I ruffled his curls. “Are you going to write on your blog every day?”

  “Every week. Or every day. Or twice a day. Or when there is a full moon, inexplicable weather patterns, two yolks in one egg, a new scientific discovery regarding the brain, a special report on eastern Indonesia, which I want to visit one day, or when politicians take up dueling.” He shook his head. “That will never happen. They’re all wimpy and they might mess their hairdos. I’ll write when I’m not playing basketball, the sport I love most in the world and want to play so bad I would give up an arm to do it. . . .”

  “Many variables then, to your blog writing.” I ignored the part about basketball.

  “Sure is, Boss Mom. I have to write when the mood hits. Between school, getting beat up, playing basketball by myself, my experiments, and more basketball by myself, it sure would be fun to play with other kids, I’ll write Tate’s Awesome Pigskin Blog.”

  “Send it to The Brux Fam.” That’s an abbreviation for my mother and Caden and his gang.

  “Yeah. And I’ll send it to Milt and Anthony, too. They’re rad.”

  “You’re a busy guy. Don’t do any experiments that explode again.”

  He laughed. “I’ll try not.”

  He’d had fires and explosions in his experiment room several times. The last one cracked a window.

  “I’m not putting a picture of General Noggin on there yet. I want people to get to know me without it.”

  When Tate was three years old, one of his favorite TV shows had a general on it. The word noggin came from my brother, Caden, who said to Tate one day, “You’ve got a fine-lookin’ noggin, my boy.”

  Hence, General Noggin.

  “You know, Tate, this is a really smart idea, but don’t give out our address, phone number . . .”

  “I know, Mom.” He wriggled his hands in the air and grinned. “I fear the same thing. When I post a photo of myself online, girls are going to go crazy! I’m going to have women pounding at the door, coming after me, ripping off my clothes, trying to get me to leave the country with them, so they can do with me what their passions tell them to do. It’s a risk to all of us, but”—he pounded his chest, which was quite wide and muscled—“I’m ready to take on the dangerous risk of mobs of women trying to take my virginity captive in order to get my voice out into the world.”

  I laughed. “You’re a courageous man, Tate, exceedingly courageous.”

  He clasped his hands and held them in the air, just as he’d seen his uncle Caden do when he was a professional wrestler. “Bring it on. My courage is second only to how sexy I am.”

  I hugged him. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Boss Mom. I’m hungry again. Can I have some leftover beer cheese soup?”

  I mock-gasped. “We had Heaven and Blue Cheese a couple hours ago, then you had two slices of caramel pecan pie and a half gallon of milk.”

  “One bowl. With bread. Then I’ll be full. Please, Boss Mom? And can you make Great-Grandma’s Falling in Love Lasagna with the fresh parsley for tomorrow night? Please!”

  “Okay, Tate. Come back down to the kitchen. Let’s see if we can fill your hollow leg with food.”

  He hopped up and gave me a hug. “Yay, Boss Mom! Yay!”

  I love herbs, spices, and flowers. Herbs and spices are in my blood; they are imbedded in my DNA.

  As a tribute to our family line, going back to England, we all grow, including Caden: thyme, sage, rosemary, parsley, oregano, lavender, Canterbury bells, hollyhocks, lilies, irises, sweet peas, cosmos, red poppies, peonies, and rows and rows of roses.

  My mother and Grandma Violet both taught me that herbs have been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Some worked, some didn’t. Some healed, some killed. Some were neutral, there was no effect. Hyssop was inhaled if one had a sore or scratchy throat. Large doses were terminally bad for one’s health, so one had to watch it. Horehound could soothe and calm a bite from a nasty serpent or kill worms wiggling away inside you.

  Mistletoe has been used in the past to help with heart disease and with “falling sickness,” gout, and a variety of nervous disorders. It is also, unfortunately, poisonous.

  Monk’s hood, quite poisonous, was used to kill.

  The witches in my family line have always grown herbs and used them in food, for healing sicknesses and giving someone a sickness, for love, revenge, protection, and to make people die they thought should go. They’ve also been used for spells and chants.

  It was those spells and chants that got two of my ancestors, born Iris and Rosemary, into trouble.

  Iris and Rosemary, the rebellious daughters of Henrietta and Elizabeth, who started The Curse in our family, were literally chased from their estates outside London by a torch-wielding mob that wanted to flog them after they cast a few drunken spells in a bar.

  “As they thundered away on horses,” Grandma Violet told me, peering through her glasses, blue eyes serious, “one of the witch’s petticoats caught on fire. You’ve heard your mother and I use the term a ‘petticoats on fire’ problem? There’s where it came from.”

  I remember gasping. “She was on fire?”

  “A spark from a torch hit her. Her brother and her cousin’s brother ripped the petticoat off and they all hopped back on those horses and galloped down the road through the night to the port. The brothers told them to change their names from Iris Platts and Rosemary Compton, to Faith and Grace Stephenson, before they scrambled onto the ship to America.”

  My grandma reached up to a shelf to reorganize her endless, clear bottles of herbs and spices. “They figured that if they were named Faith and Grace, not only could they hide their identities as reputed witches, they would appear more holy, more Christian, and less likely to be accused of being witches again. Faith and Grace never forgot who they were, despite the torch wielders, and they taught their daughters everything they knew about herbs and spices, spells and chants, like I teach you, Jaden.”

  I do not grow herbs for spells and chants, because that is ridiculous, though my otherwise sane and deeply intellectual mother and Grandma Violet taught me a multitude of them as a child and both said often, “Once a witch, always a witch.”

  I grow herbs in my greenhouse to make my meals yummy. I grow herbs and flowers because then I feel connected to my mother, Grandma Violet, and all our women ancestors who grew the same herbs and flowers that I do. I grow them because I love to nurture living things, especially since I deal with death so much.

  I also grow herbs for therapy. I call it Herbal Therapy.

  Here is the weird part of myself that I do try to keep somewhat secret: Several times a week I plug in white strands of Christmas lights and light a handful of scented candles that match the season, for example strawberry for summer, pumpkin spice for fall, vanilla for winter.

  Next I stand at my butcher-block table and I cut a handful of herbs up and inhale their scent. I have to touch them, crunch them in my fingers, rub them between my palms. I have a spice rack in there, too, and I add sprinkles of this and that.

  I use crystal plates owned by Grandma Violet and silver spoons owned by Faith, and I mix herbs and spices together. I have normal spices and less known spices including: Szechuan pepper, boldo, annatto, lemongrass, wasabai, galangal, peppermint leaves, black lime, and zedoary. I mix cinnamon with nutmeg and lemon mango tea. Parsley and oregano and mint leaves. Szechuan pepper and garlic. Bay leaves and dill.

  The scents wrap me up soft and tight, soothing me. There are flowers blooming and growing all around, my favorite books and journals are on a nearby bookcase, and when I leave, after a cup of tea, I feel better. I call it Herbal Meditation.

  We all have our odd quirks; herb and spice obsession is mine.

  But there’s been a problem the last weeks. When I start my chopping and
blending and mixing, I smell death. Not the death

  that is usual with my work as a hospice nurse, either.

  Death, as in someone I know is going to die. I do not smell death when I am cooking with herbs and spices in my kitchen; it’s only here, in my greenhouse, during Herbal Therapy, that the scent winds around me.

  No, this does not indicate that I am a witch. No, I don’t believe in witches. No, I don’t believe the women in my family were witches, even though my mother says that Faith and Grace brought their “talents” to America, and I have them.

  This death-smelling “talent” is not witchly; it’s an inexplicable thing about myself. That’s it. I don’t get it, I don’t understand it. It’s there.

  What I do know is that the putrid, pungent scent scares me; it makes me feel threatened, as if a black plume of doom is swirling around me.

  I have smelled death a few times before.

  I smelled death before that terrible night.

  I smelled it before Grandma Violet died.

  I smelled it before Grandpa Pete died.

  As I bent over my butcher-block table I was almost shaking in my cowboy boots.

  Who? Who would it be this time? I didn’t want my mother to die, or Caden, or Brooke, but I especially didn’t want it to be the kids.

  Not Damini, please, not the triplets.

  Not Tate, I prayed. Not Tate.

  Take me, not them.

  Please.

  Grandma Violet used her herbs, and maybe something else, to kill a man. My mother helped her. My father knew about it.

  I’m sure she learned at least part of the concoction, if not most of it, from Faith and Grace, via her own mother and grandma.

  My mother knows the recipe for it, and though I love recipes, I have refused to learn that one.

  I didn’t ask many questions that night.

  I knew she loved him.

  3

  Gwendolyn Parker was packed and ready to go.

  Mrs. Parker is seventy-seven years old. She is suffering from brain cancer and I am her hospice nurse. She is getting somewhat confused and scattered, but mostly she is peaceful and gentle. The cancer has spread, an insidious octopus inside her head, the tentacles sticking here and there, but we have watched her medication carefully and she is in no pain.

  I was glad to see her, and her family, because I love them all. Mrs. Parker is African American and looks fifteen years younger than she is. Her modern glass and wood-beamed home was designed by her son, an architect.

  “I’m pleased you’re here, Jaden, what a wonderful surprise,” Mrs. Parker told me. She was sitting on her leather couch. Two of her sons were there and six grandchildren. She was wearing a fancy pink silk dress and her best jewelry. “Might as well dress up in my best clothes,” she’d told me when she was put on hospice care. “Don’t have much longer to wear them.”

  She looked lovely, cheerful. People expect relatives and friends on hospice to look deathly, but that isn’t always the case. I’ve had patients on hospice for five months, and it’s only in their last few days they start to go downhill.

  “I’ve packed my suitcases and I’m ready to go.” She smiled at me, serene and calm.

  Her sons looked at me, worried.

  “Did you pack a sweater?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Slacks?”

  “Yes.”

  “A coat?”

  “Yes. No. Taylor, go and get my coat and pack it in my brown suitcase.”

  Taylor, the oldest son and an ex-pro-football player, dutifully went and found her coat and tucked it into her suitcase.

  “Then you’re ready,” I told Mrs. Parker.

  She nodded at me. “I’m ready. I’m going on a trip soon.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going away to somewhere nice. I think it’s on a train. I think I’m going up some stairs. I’m not sure. I think this will be an exciting trip.” She leaned toward me and whispered, though her family heard, “I don’t think I’m coming back.”

  Packing up a suitcase is not unusual in hospice care. Talking about an upcoming trip is also not unusual. Through the fog of disease and effects of treatments, the patients often know they’re going somewhere else.

  “I’m ready to go,” Mrs. Parker told me. “I’ve done everything here I wanted to do. The kids are fine. The grandkids are fine, too. The house is clean. I’ve done a lot of loving and living and I’m ready for my trip and I’ve said I love you I love you I love you.”

  “I think you’ll have a magnificent time.”

  “Oh, I will, Jaden, I know I will.” She stood up and gave me a hug, her expression somewhat vacant. “You all will go on a trip one day so you always have to be ready to go. You don’t know when the train is coming, when you have to climb the stairs. The invitation can arrive at any time, so make sure your house is clean and make sure you tell your family and your friends and the butcher and electrician that you love, love, love them.”

  “I’ll do that, Mrs. Parker.”

  She kissed my cheeks. “You were the perfect traveling companion while I was on this trip, Jaden.”

  I try not to cry much over my patients.

  You can see why that quest is difficult.

  I spent an hour in my greenhouse that night and cried tears over my white daisies and tomatoes for Gwendolyn while I ate red cinnamon Gummi Bears.

  Somehow the Gummi Bears comfort me.

  Maybe it’s the tiny smiles on their faces.

  I enjoy eating the smiles.

  “I took off my leg and I hit him with it!”

  “You took off your leg?” I laughed, thinking of Damini, Caden’s daughter, my daring niece, taking off her prosthesis and whacking a boy. “How did he react to the leg beating?”

  “He said, ‘Ow, Damini, now I’m gonna get you!’ ” Damini threw up her arms, as if to say, “Whatever.”

  The morning sun cast gold prisms through my nook as Caden, my mother, Tate, and I laughed. Outside the maple leaves were turning to a burgundy wine color, butter yellow, and pumpkin orange. It was nature art, in my mind.

  Caden pushed his black ponytail back and passed me the coffee. I passed my mother the cream. Tate passed Damini the syrup, then he and Caden cut up the triplets’ chicken pancakes. Chicken pancakes are the size, sort of, of a chicken, hence their name. There’s no chicken in them.

  Caden’s three-year-old triplets were dressed in Halloween costumes even though it is not yet Halloween. Caden buys Halloween outfits in bulk because that’s how the kids insist on dressing. If they’re not an imaginary character they throw fits. He is a single father to four. He prefers fewer fits.

  This morning Heloise was a vampire. She growled. Hazel was dressed as a bunny. She hopped. Harvey was an orange with a pirate hat. He yelled, “I got a bottom!” I don’t know why. I love them dearly.

  “Do tell us more about hitting Brett with your leg, Fire Thrower,” my mother said to Damini, swirling her orange juice, careful not to let it splatter on her white, straight-lined designer dress. “After you slugged him with your leg, what happened next?”

  Damini sighed, ever the dramatist. “Brett’s all mad and I can tell he wants to chase me and I said, ‘Brett, I gotta get my leg on and then you can come after me,’ and I hit him again so he got the message.”

  “You hit him with your leg again, a second time?” I asked.

  “This above all: to thine own self be true,” Tate intoned. “That’s Shakespeare, and what he’s really saying is, Damini, bare all your emotions, even if it involves a leg punch or two. It’s fortunate for the Bruxelle family that we didn’t give you a sword to swing.”

  “What did he say to the second hit?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘You have one minute, Damini, that’s it, and I’m gonna crunch you to bits.’ ” Damini crossed her hands back and forth in front of her. “I real quick reattached my leg and yelled, ‘Slowpoke,’ because Brett is slower than me and I ran off and he could
n’t catch me and pretty soon he’s yelling, ‘I can’t catch you, Damini, wait up!’ ”

  “That’s my girl!” Caden said, pounding the table, rattling the coffee mugs. “Outrun the boys!”

  My mother raised up her orange juice. “Cheers to you, Damini. There is nothing so scrumptious as outrunning a male. It makes their egos seethe and croak.”

  Damini picked up her milk glass, Caden picked up his tomato and carrot juice, I picked up my water glass, Tate picked up the salt and pepper shakers in both hands, the triplets held up their grape juice, and we all clinked them together. “Cheers to Damini!”

  Tate said, “Another lightning experience.”

  “Here here!” Caden said.

  That’s what we call Damini’s interesting experiences. “Lightning experiences.”

  Damini’s Hindu name means “lightning.” Think of Damini as lightning and you will get an accurate picture of her. Do not get in her way. Her skin is soft, resembling light brown chocolate, her black eyes enormous. She has a tiny nose, high and striking cheekbones, and full lips.

  She pulls her long, thick black hair into a ponytail. She is not interested in makeup. She wears skirts above the knee. She told me once, “I love wearing skirts. Nana taught me all about the importance of sequins, ruffles, and satin on skirts. If someone doesn’t like my fake leg that’s not my problem, I’m just glad I have a leg.”

  She wears T-shirts that say, HIPPIES RULE and FLOWER POWER JUNKIE and VOTE FOR EINSTEIN. She also has a shirt that says HELL’S SNOT. On the back it says, HELL’S NOT GOOD FOR YOU.

  When she’s older, she is going to be model-gorgeous. She’s tall and thin. She has the face of an angel so when she says edgy things, for example, “You’re a pain in my keester, Tate,” and, “shit-ola,” and, “My friend’s horse has the longest penis I’ve ever seen. Dina and I studied it for about an hour the other day. Men’s whoo whoos are not the size of horses’, are they, Aunt Jaden?” it’s always a bit surprising.