Mullis: Normal isn’t normal if nothing is getting done

We were procrastinating. My oldest daughter was supposed to be preparing piano pieces for her professor. I was supposed to be writing for my deadline. Instead, we were chatting over coffee.

That’s when it hit me – my friend needs to go back to college.

Christmas Break was the first time since she started college that my daughter was home long enough for it to feel normal. Not the “new normal,” where she lives at school, but the “old normal,” when she lived with me.

Four days into her break, she had her wisdom teeth removed. When I came to sit with her after surgery, she laid her head against my shoulder and fell asleep.

Nothing jumpstarts a mother’s instinct like an injured baby bird, even if that baby bird is old enough to sign her own release forms.

She camped on the couch for over a week, gingerly eating mashed potatoes, binging several TV shows, and eventually regaining her voice.

I didn’t realize how much I had been missing her voice, and now she was there – laughing, joking, asking if I wanted to watch the next show with her.

I did.

And then there was the music.

My daughter is a music student. Knowing she needed to practice while on break, she brought home her keyboard. We have a piano, but the keyboard has headphones, which cuts down on the noise.

It seems funny to call music noise, but when someone is learning a new piece, you hear certain sections so many times you feel insane. Instead, we heard the quiet clacking of keys.

Whenever feasible, she would play the family piano, filling the house with carols, Scarlatti and Bach. I could hear this music from the driveway, which proved – more than the piles of laundry or the empty coffeepot – that my kid was home.

While she was home, our family did as much as we could together. She was full of stories and theories, the way young adults should be, which meant we lingered longer at the dinner table and stayed up later at night.

When her siblings went back to school, it was just her and me. We both had work to do. She had only a week to finish those piano pieces and I had everything I put off to pull off Christmas.

I told her the piano was hers, no need for the keyboard or headphones. I didn't mind music from another room because I would be in my office working.

Except I wasn’t working. I was listening.

I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to hear as much piano as I could, especially with her humming over the notes, trying to noodle out a tempo, and mumbling about Beethoven being a showoff for shoving 64 second notes over triplets and now she is going to have to ghost it.

I don't know what that means, but I am storing it up like a squirrel for the long winter of her not being here.

Eventually, I brought my laptop to where she was. I rewrote paragraphs while she fumbled through Brahms…and then we were chatting over coffee.

That’s when I realized she had to go back to college.

My daughter doesn’t live here anymore, because when she is here, it is too special to feel normal.

Nicole L.V. Mullis is the author of “A Teacher Named Faith”. You can reach her atnlvm.columns@gmail.com or www.NicoleLVMullis.com.