voices

THE NEW NORM

Moms know how to roll with changing times. We’ve been doing it since our kids were born. | BY CHERYL BASHANT-THIRTYACRE

What is the new norm? Aging and conquering all the challenges involved with raising children into adults gives a whole new meaning to the new norm. I’m not referring to the continuum of this pandemic life, but the one that comes with life-altering changes.

My generation started raising our families in our mid- to late20s. The ensuing 20-plus years are spent having our identities morph from an actual individual person to “mom.” Your name no longer has meaning because you’ve slowly over decades lost the person you were, that independent adventurer who had one thing they had to be responsible for, to every moment consisting of family life. You sacrifice sleep; you forego eating; your social life consists of carpools, homework, practices, games, sleep overs, and the like.

Then suddenly, after years of praying that you will survive the teen years, like a slap in the face, off they go to college. You cringe and hope that you did your job well enough and that they will make it out there without you to take care of everything. Meanwhile, they’ve been planning their great escape since they were 10.

You’re then hit with the realization of now what? The days are longer, the silence is actually more deafening than the chaos of 15 of their closest friends hanging out. OK, so you manage to survive that and find a new norm. The quiet norm. The WOW-I-get-to-pick-what-Iwant-to-watch-on-television norm. Then, for some of us, that journey that you were ready to take shoves a new norm your way: having to be single after raising your children. But that’s not entirely the new norm.

You’re adjusting to the empty nest syndrome, being single, creating a career after years of diaper changing, school meltdowns, the youth dating dilemmas, new drivers, school dances, the never-ending standardized testing, SATs, what college do they apply to — it’s endless — but now you’re learning to live the new norm during a global pandemic.

Well, the new norm is proving to have an entirely new meaning. Thanks to your ability to adjust at the drop of a dime from your years of practice having but one identity being mom, you’ve become a pro at accepting and just restructuring. The new norm is that nothing is considered normal. Who created the term normal? Who decided what was normal and what was not? My new norm is my kids come home for visits from college and our time is filled with laughter and free of drama. My personal time is spent however I want to and whenever I want. I’m embracing the quiet moments. My new norm is whatever I choose it to be.

Cheryl Bashant Thirtyacre is co-owner of All Custom Detail, LLC, mother of two college-age boys and an avid writer.

RAIN OR SHINE

Cape Coral residents Hazel Edison, 5, and her brother Elijah, 2, hold hands as they go for their lunch walk November 9. The kids, along with both parents who are not visible in the photo, go for a daily walk to exercise together as a family. During this walk, they had to brave a bit of rain as the weather was impacted by Tropical Storm Eta.

PHOTO BY RICARDO ROLON