Define normal

Fifteen years ago, on what remains as possibly the most unhip day of
my life, my entire family, all nine of us, went to have our group portrait
taken at a local photo salon. As a result of that hot and endless sitting,
the nine of us spent the next fifteen years trying bravely to live up to
the corn-fed optimism, the cheerful waves of shampoo, and the air-
brushed teeth-beams that the resultant photo is still capable of emitting
to this day. We may look dated in this photo, but we look perfect, too.
In it, we're beaming ear- nestly to the right, off to-

ward what seems to be the future but which was

actually Mr. Leonard, the photographer and a

lonely old widower with hair implants, holding

something mysterious in his left hand and yelling,

"Fromage!" When the photo first came

home, it rested gloriously for maybe one hour on

top of the fireplace, placed there guilelessly by my father, who was shortly thereafter pressured by a forest fire of shrill teenage voices fearful of peer mockery to remove it immediately. It was subsequently moved to a never-sat-in portion of his den, where it hangs to this day, like a forgotten pet gerbil dying of starvation. It is visited only rarely but deliberately by any one of the nine of us, in between our ups and downs in life, when we need a good dose of "but we were all so innocent once" to add that decisive literary note of melodrama to our sorrows.

BRADYISM: A multisibling sensibility derived from having grown up in large familes. A rarity in those born after approximately 1965, symptoms of Bradyism include a facility for mind games, emotional withdrawal in situations of overcrowding, and a deeply felt need for a well-defined personal space.

Again, that was fifteen years ago. This year, however, was the year everyone in the family finally decided to stop trying to live up to that bloody photo and the shimmering but untrue promise it made to us. This is the year we decided to call it quits, normality-wise; the year we went the way families just do, the year everyone finally decided to be them- selves and to hell with it. The year no one came home for Christmas. Just me and Tyler, Mom and Dad.

"Wasn't that a fabulous year, Andy? Remember?" This is my sister Deirdre on the phone, referring to the year in which the photo was taken. At the moment Deirdre's in the middle of a "heinously ugly" divorce from a cop down in Texas ("It takes me four years to discover that he's a pseudo-intimate, Andy—whatta slimeball") and her voice is rife with tricyclic antidepressants. She was the Best Looking and Most Popular of the Palmer girls; now she phones friends and relatives at 2:30 in the morning and scares them silly with idle, slightly druggy chat: "The world seemed so shiny and new then, Andy, I know I sound cliche. God— I'd suntan then and not be afraid of sarcomas; all it took to make me feel so alive I thought I might burst was a ride in Bobby Viljoen's Roadrunner to a party that had tons of unknown people."

Deirdre's phone calls are scary on several levels, not the least of which is that her rantings tend to be true. There really is something silent and dull about losing youth; youth really is, as Deirdre says, a sad evocative perfume built of many stray smells. The perfume of my youth? A pungent blend of new basketballs, Zamboni scrapings, and stereo wiring overheated from playing too many Supertramp albums. And, of course, the steamy halogenated brew of the Kempsey twins' Jacuzzi on a Friday night, a hot soup garnished with flakes of dead skin, aluminum beer cans, and unlucky winged insects.

I have three brothers and three sisters, and we were never a "hugging family." I, in fact, have no memory of having once been hugged by a parental unit (frankly, I'm suspicious of the practice). No, I think psychic dodge ball would probably better define our family dynamic. I was number five out of the seven children—the total middle child. I had to scramble harder than most siblings for any attention in our household.

The Palmer children, all seven of us, have the stalwart, sensible, and unhuggable names that our parents' generation favored—Andrew, Deirdre, Kathleen, Susan, Dave, and Evan. Tyler is un peu exotic, but then he is the love child. I once told Tyler I wanted to change my name to something new and hippie-ish, like Harmony or Dust. He looked at me: "You're mad. Andrew looks great on a resume—what more could you ask for? Weirdos named Beehive or Fiber Bar never make middle management."

Deirdre will be in Port Arthur, Texas this Christmas, being de­pressed with her bad marriage made too early in life.

Dave, my oldest brother—the one who should have been the sci­entist but who grew a filmy pony tail instead and who now sells records in an alternative record shop in Seattle (he and his girlfriend, Rain, only wear black)—he's in London, England this Christmas, doing Ec­stasy and going to nightclubs. When he comes back, he'll affect an English accent for the next six months.

Kathleen, the second eldest, is ideologically opposed to Christmas; she disapproves of most bourgeois sentimentality. She runs a lucrative feminist dairy farm up in the allergen-free belt of eastern British Co­lumbia and says that when "the invasion" finally conies, we'll all be out shopping for greeting cards and we'll deserve everything that happens to us.

Susan, my favorite sister, the jokiest sister and the family actress, panicked after graduating from college years back, went into law, married this horrible know-everything yuppie lawyer name Brian (a union that can only lead to grief). Overnight she became so unnaturally serious. It can happen. I've seen it happen lots of times.

The two of them live in Chicago. On Christmas morning Brian will be taking Polaroids of their baby Chelsea (his name choice) in the crib which has, I believe, a Krugerrand inset in the headboard. They'll probably work all day, right through dinner.

One day I hope to retrieve Susan from her cheerless fate. Dave and I wanted to hire a deprogrammer at one point, actually going so far as to call the theology department of the university to try and find out where to locate one.

Aside from Tyler, whom you already know about, there remains only Evan, in Eugene, Oregon. Neighbors call him, "the normal Palmer child." But then there are things the neighbors don't know: how he

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