Dinner With Norm.

Norm was a General Motors man and we were a GM family. He had worked there since his early 20's. GM had put food on our plates. Norm told us many stories at dinner time. Some co-workers would drive cars to work that were not GM produced. While sitting in the employee parking lot, these cars would get 'keyed', long scratches along the sides of the automobile, by loyal employees. He would also tell of the blizzard of ‘77, the only time in his entire working life that he took a taxi to work. Norm wore ‘work clothes’, beige, gray, faded black. He said hello to strange men in the grocery store who called him Joe because he worked with them, yet they didn't know his real name. He was such a quiet man at work and never corrected them.

GM was his life.

Norm took an early retirement though. I was never officially told why he did this, but I assume that it was because of his psychological problems.

It was my job, beginning when I was about 7, to set the table. My mother’s mother, known to all of her grandchildren as Nanny, taught me a little tune to help me with setting the table. I would always sing this song while I took the dishes out of the cupboard.

“Salt and pepper, bread and butter, sugar, milk, and tea.”

I was careful to set everything in its place as the words skipped around in my head. There were always four plates. One for my mother, one for my older brother, one for me and one for Norm. My little song had to be altered though, for Norm.

“Salt and pepper...”
I dreamed that I was a waitress, setting a very special table.

“bread and butter...”
I took the butter out of the fridge and set it on the table with a silver knife.

“sugar, milk, and tea...

and pills.”
I went to the pill cupboard after putting out the tea cups. The pill cupboard was full of intriguing odds and ends stacked on a double-storied, plastic lazy susan. I spun the pill carousel and looked for the dinner time pills for Norm. I placed the various pill bottles near his plate and his pill taking glass, that had once been a shrimp cocktail container, along side of them. Lithium, and God only knows what else were set in order.

While setting the table, I could hear the familiar shuffling sound of Norm’s feet in the living room. He was anxious about the paperboy being late again. It was already 4:55  and the paperboy was nowhere in sight! Norm mumbled about the paperboy not coming on time, that he may have chosen to miss our house this evening for some unknown, paranoid reason that could only exist in Norm’s broken mind. But tonight was like every other. The paperboy arrived sharply at 5pm and put the paper into the mailbox. Norm would hear the sound of the metal mailbox clanking open and shut and would alter his shuffling and mumbling to determined steps. He would throw open the door and grab the paper from the chilly evening. Barely had the front door closed when Norm would shout out the night’s headlines.

“They are calling for another lay off at the plant! Oh and ground beef is on sale at Dominion for 59 cents a pound!”
All of the news was highly important to Norm and dinner could wait for that one sweet moment when he absorbed all of the town’s information.

Norm’s stomach would suddenly interrupt that sweet moment though with a growl of discontent. He would stomp into the dining room asking for his dinner. He would sit at his spot at our little round wooden table and would demand to be fed. My mother would hurry things up to satisfy him. Once the meat and potatoes were placed on the plates, my brother was called up and we were all sitting together, my mother wanted to pray to thank God for the food.

"Thank you God for this food that we are about to eat and make us mindful of the needs of others. Amen."
I remember Norm would eat while she prayed making slurping and desperate crunching noises to which my mother would simply call out his name as a mother does to a child, "Norm!" He would stop for a brief glance at her, and she would complete the prayer.

Norm always needed more salt and pepper than was used in the cooking of the food. He would sprinkle at first, then he would shake, then his hand would convulse with the determination of a man desperate for salt. Pepper would be next. It is just too light to truly fall properly so no sprinkling took place only frantic shaking. It was also my job  to take the plates off the table and wash them. When I removed Norm’s plate, I would always marvel at the beautifully clean circle that the plate would leave behind with a white and black grained ring all around it!

Dinner time was Norm’s time to get his watch adjusted. He wore an analog watch but didn't know how to set it at all. He would ask me for days to get the time properly. He was always concerned with time and how fast or slow it was moving. Of course I was never told anything as a child, but these strange happenings were the result of having a father who was mentally ill. I was a teen and didn’t want to spend anymore time with this strange and lonely man than I had to. He would ask me to just set his watch five minutes ahead of what it was so that it would be perfect, obviously not knowing that time itself was never perfect and that humans could never harness time. I would avoid him. I would see him coming down the hall and I would dodge him and go into the bathroom, a haven more secure than my bedroom, where he would pound on the door asking for ‘watch help’. The bathroom was where female mysteries took place so Norm stayed away from that door. I hated that Norm needed me, his daughter, to fix his watch. All he had to do was turn a simple tiny dial. I had told him this many times. But Norm just couldn’t understand and continued to harass me. I wanted my father to be strong and intelligent, not weak and stupid. I would come to the table after about one week of this avoiding/harassing pattern to find Norm’s watch sitting on my clean dinner plate! My blood would boil inside of me while I stood over the table glaring at my plate. Norm would come into the dining room and would say, in the exact same tone that he had been using all week, “Could you fix my watch?”
I would fall exhausted  into my western style wooden chair, giving into this man's fixation and in a matter of seconds would turn the dreaded watch to the perfect time of Norm’s choosing.

I sat in that same wooden chair on the morning of one of my exams in my last year of high school. I ate a piece of toast with jam on it while Norm sat drinking his coffee. He made small talk with me, a rare occurrence. He asked me if I had an exam. I answered that I did indeed have an exam. He should know this because I had been studying all week for it! I kept my patience though because I felt that he just didn’t understand how school worked these days. I ate my toast and drank my juice. Five minutes passed. Norm looked up from his coffee and asked me if I had an exam, like it was his very first time asking. I answered that I did have an exam as I got up and walked out of the room, not wanting to become angry with this strange man, but also feeling the frustration building inside of me. I got dressed and pulled my hair back. As I walked through the dining room, Norm looked up and asked me where I was going. He wondered if I had an exam. I replied that yes, I did have an exam, a little more shortly than I had planned. While getting my shoes on at the back door, Norm stood up and came over to me to ask once again if I had an exam. This was just too much for me now. I replied with frustration in my voice that I did have an exam and that he had asked me this same question 20 times already!!

When I was an adult, I found out that the shock treatment Norm had received for his bipolar disorder had taken away most of his short-term memory. I didn’t know how to feel about this. I didn’t feel sad for him, or for myself. I just walked on in my life mindlessly with these facts floating just above my head, out of reach.

Dinner time with Norm usually ended with the same event. Norm would begin to choke. He would begin to sputter and cough. All three of us would ignore this behaviour hoping that he would just settle down and everything would be normal. But our family was far from normal, no matter how many church services my mother went to, no matter how many secrets my family kept. Norm would continue to cough with spittle beginning to slip from his quivering lips. My mother would begin to look concerned. She would quietly say my brother’s name. My brother would continue to eat his meat and potatoes. My eyes would go from Norm’s sputtering and coughing to my mother’s worried eyes, to my brother who would give in and ask if we should take Norm to the emergency. My mother would always say that we should go quickly. So my brother and I would get into the Impala with Norm in tow, choking loudly now. It was a fifteen minute drive to the General Hospital and the emergency room. We wondered if we could make it in time. Norm’s face was turning from bright red to a deep purple red. As I sat in the back seat, I imagined what colour would be next. Just as my brother reached the Queen Elizabeth overpass however, Norm’s choking would subside. It was as if whatever was causing such trouble in his esophagus just slipped down and everything went back to normal. Norm would announce that we could now drive back home. My brother would turn the car around, with barely visible beads of sweat on his forehead. I sat in the back seat rubbing my hands together wondering what had just happened, again.

I continue to walk on in my life without Norm now, but his stories follow me. I have come to realize that living with this man helped to make me who I am, not someone who is crazy like I had at times worried about, but someone who cares deeply about people who come into my life with their stories.