by Cathy Lamb
After the fire department left, we explored the secret room and found a velvet satchel on a small table. Inside was a thimble, white lace handkerchief, needle, gold timepiece, and the three charms I’d heard about my whole life, the cross, heart, and star. A fourth charm was there, too, a clover. For luck. The book with the black leather cover was in there, too, and a knife with a P on it. P for Platts. Probably the one Faith/Iris Platts used for the killing the first day she arrived in America, the knife from her brother.
“I thought Faith would have been buried with the necklace and charms,” I said, awed and humbled.
“Her daughters probably wanted to save it, their mother obviously couldn’t take it with her.” My mother traced the lettering on the black book, HOLY BIBLE. “This is Faith’s. Her name’s in it, Iris Platts. She notes here how she had to change her name to Faith Stephenson because people in London had found out she was a witch and her brother wanted her to have a more Christian name and wanted to hide her identity, so they changed it, same with Grace’s.
“And here, she wrote how her name became Faith O’Donnell when she married Jack O’Donnell, along with the names of her parents, Henrietta and Oliver Platts, and their parents’ and grandparents’ names. Her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Philip Compton . . . how a mob later burned down parts of both of their mansions outside London, I remember my mother telling me that. She also writes how Grace became Grace McLeary when she married Russ McLeary. Here are all the names of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Oh my. I feel emotional right down to my Jimmy Choos!”
There were a few journals, written by Faith about her life, which I’d later find were amazingly close to what I’d heard all my life about her and Grace. There was even a note in one journal about Dwight and John, the brutal slave owner brothers in South Carolina.
Dwight died when he “fell” on an ax. That he apparently “fell” on the ax at night, far off in the woods, had raised questions, but not convictions, in town. That John had “committed suicide,” his wife’s assertion, by shooting himself in both knees and then his head, had raised quite a ruckus in Charleston. Still, no convictions, and the police did not dispute that John’s wife had come to them for protection many times.
There was also a spell book.
Yes, there was a spell book with spells in it.
There. I said it. There were curses, chants, and notes on how to perform the spells. I knew some of the spells, curses, and chants, my mother and Grandma Violet had taught me. There was information about herbs and spices and how to use them in the spells. Some of the phrases we use today were also written down: a shipwreck time of life, balls and tarnation, and a petticoats-on-fire situation, which was fun to see.
We had found almost 150 years of history.
“I told you we were witches,” my mother drawled.
“Mother, we’re not witches. We had women relatives who believed they were witches—”
“Family witches.”
My mother picked up a bundle of letters tied with pink ribbons.
They were letters from Elizabeth and Henrietta to Rosemary/ Grace and Iris/Faith, letters from their fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins. They loved them, they missed them, family news, family joys and tragedies, a baby born here and there on Faith’s side with a problem, which they blamed on The Curse, what they were growing in their herb gardens ... hints on spells, nothing blatant, one didn’t want to be branded as a witch.
“Dear Rosemary ...” they wrote. “Dear Iris ...”
I unfolded a piece of paper tucked into the back of the Bible. “Oh my. It’s a full family tree.”
Tate and my mother leaned over my shoulder.
“Whoa,” Tate said. “A queen! Look, right there!” He pointed to the top.
“Yep. I knew it,” my mother said, running a hand over her bobbed hair.
“You knew what?”
“We’re royalty. Royal witches. That’s what I’ve always told you. My mother told me, her mother told her.”
My finger gently touched each name.
“This should be all the proof you’ll ever need,” my mother said, tapping my shoulder. “Voodoo dolls, thimbles, white lace handkerchiefs, needles, gold timepieces, charms, the book with the black cover, and needles, they’ve followed us our whole lives.”
“Proof of what, Mother?”
She kissed my cheek. “That you’re definitely a witch, Jaden. Once a witch, always a witch.”
I have a new dream. It involves my love of spices, herbs, tea, and cooking.
I will probably make nothing my first year. I hope not to be in the red, financially. If things go well, I’ll make half of what I did as a hospice nurse.
I am going to follow the dream through the next seasons of my life, through the golden sunshine, the blasts of rain, the dainty snowflakes, and whipping windstorms.
I want to play with this dream.
Who said that a dream has to occur when you’re in your twenties? Not me.
The old Fischerson house was for sale. I used some of the inheritance money from my dad to buy it. I think he’d be happy with my dream. I have been to the house several times and have never met the reputed Frank the Ghost. I don’t believe in ghosts anyhow.
My café is called Jaden’s Spells and Scents Café. I will sell tea and coffee, soups and sandwiches, herbs and flowers.
Maybe one day Brooke will come and sit at one of the wooden tables with fresh lilies and hollyhocks in vases on top. I hope so.
But I know my husband, Ethan, will be there, Caden, Damini, and the triplets, my mother and her stilettos, and my son, my precious son, Tate Bruxelle.
I am learning to let go more. It’s a hard lesson for me. I am learning to let light into my life, and to dance with my rainbow, as my mother would say. I am learning to love watching Tate dance with his rainbow, to his own beat, and to not hover or interfere with his dance.
Together, Ethan and I are dancing with our own rainbow, sometimes in our red poppy field.
I am changing. I am liking the change. It is not too late at all. I am going to have a new life.
It will be a different kind of normal.
I cannot wait.
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
I am going to MIT. This is a photo of Boss Mom, Boss Dad, Nana Bird, Uncle Caden, Damini, and the triplets. That’s Hazel in the witch outfit, Heloise in the cowgirl outfit with the red gun, and Harvey is the snowboarder with the helmet on. We’re all in front of MIT. Notice I am holding a model of a brain. That’s what I’m going to study. Brains. Yes, there is a hamburger with lettuce and pickles on top of my head. We were at a picnic and I wanted to save one.
Here is a photo of Indonesia, which I want to visit one day.
Here is a photo of a brain of a drug addict and a healthy brain. See the difference? Don’t do drugs.
If the world has a college for nerds, this is it, and I think I’m going to fit right in. I hope they don’t care about my big head. I think they’re all smart enough to look past it, and see me.
I hope they will.
I think they will.
What are your plans?
Blog count: 62,000.
Tate’s career was most impressive at MIT.
He and his friends built a six-foot-tall spaceship that landed on top of the library. The spaceship was named “General Noggin.”
They put motors on their skateboards to get to class quicker. They painted out all the numbers of pi on a strip of white material and wrapped it around a building.
He was only arrested once, with six friends, for a prank. In the pitch blackness of the night, they constructed a volcano in the middle of campus. In the morning, with all the students hurrying here and there, they pushed a button by remote and boom boom. The volcano started spewing pink smoke and steam and ketchup poured down the sides. They were charged with disturbing the peace, littering, explosives, etc., but it certainly added humor to the day.
The boys went to court.
The judge was most impressed with the pink volcano, which he watched on video, as Tate recorded it. The charges were dropped, although the boys each had to complete twenty hours of community service. They went to local elementary schools, where they did neat exploding experiments to get students excited about science.
All the schools asked them to come back again and again.
At MIT he studies, among other subjects, brain and cognitive science, molecular neuroscience, biophysics, cell biology, and organic chemistry, as he planned. He has also learned that he loves ceramics and baking pastries. He is dating a young woman named Marie Sorenson. They’re in the same field, she’s a former model, and she is fun and warm and, most importantly, adores Tate. “I want six kids, Jaden, six!” she told me privately. I told her that would be outstanding.
He hopes to continue at MIT for a doctoral degree in neuroscience and have a research lab of his own one day. The name of the lab?
General Noggin’s.
“But I’m going to have a photo of you and me, Boss Mom, on my desk, all the time,” he told me. “We’ll be standing together with apples on our heads in front of your greenhouse. I’ll be holding a basketball and you can hold your herbs.”
He was born with a big head.
And I have loved him, with all my heart, with all that I have, from that day forward.
Please turn the page for a very special Q&A with Cathy Lamb!
On one of your blogs you wrote that you “work in images.” What images did you piece together to write this story?
My first image was of a teenage boy with a big head. A hospice nurse popped in next. I was thinking of witches and spells at that time (I don’t know why). I was also wondering about my ancestors, who have been traced back to England, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany. I started thinking about family lore, slavery, wacky mothers, drug addiction, funny triplets (I have twins), the pathetic state of orphanages in India, red hair, herbs and spices, a greenhouse and, above all, family relationships.
I combined them all together, swirled them around, did a lot of sketching and journaling of plot lines and characters, and pieced together the story ... one stitch at a time, only banging my head on the keyboard occasionally.
Why did you make Jaden a hospice nurse?
I made Jaden a hospice nurse because I greatly admire hospice nurses and the work they do. I’ve been on the receiving end of their gentle kindness and help several times when relatives were dying and I have never forgotten the comfort and outstanding medical care they offered. They’re both angelic and highly capable. Talk about a tough job. But what an honorable, courageous, and meaningful way to live your life—caring for people at the end of their lives.
How did you choose the other characters for the book?
I wanted Jaden to have an edgy mother to counteract her intensity, so I invented a glittery Rowan who is outrageous but incessantly sincere.
I invented Caden because I wanted to show what life is like for single fathers. We hear a lot about single mothers; I wanted the other side.
I developed Brooke because drug use is so prevalent in our country, and I wanted to show the impact on family members, not just on the user.
I developed the triplets because the story needed humor, and I developed Damini to show how families are brought together in many beautiful ways.
I developed Grandma Violet, who was a witch/healer, because I wanted to show the impact of grandparents on the next generation and I wanted to continue the ancestral story of Elizabeth and Henrietta, Faith and Grace.
I invented Faith and Grace because I wanted to show how we all come from someone. We did not just magically appear on this planet; our ancestors have struggled, cried, laughed, and had adventures. It’s fascinating to find out more about them and their journeys.
What were the themes you were working with?
Sacrifice. Letting go of kids when they need to fly on their own. Seeing parts of life as different seasons that will continually change.
What’s the most challenging part about writing a novel?
Sitting down and writing it. I am distracted by the following things, not in any particular order: my kids, my husband, my cat who meows at me and expects me to meow back, coffee, chocolates, silly shows I should not be watching on TV and will not admit to watching, live theater and the symphony, lunch with girlfriends, walking, daydreaming, going to the beach, reading tons of books.
What’s next?
More storytelling, more blogging. Visit with me on my website: CathyLamb.net
A READING GROUP GUIDE
A DIFFERENT KIND OF NORMAL
Cathy Lamb
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included to enhance
your group’s reading of Cathy Lamb’s
A Different Kind of Normal.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Who was your favorite character? Why? If you could spend the day with one character, who would it be, and what would you do?
2. Jaden says, “I know that my years of free-flowing panic have shaped me into someone I was not before. I am overly serious, and a bit controlling; okay, maybe more than a bit controlling, and I overprotect too much, and I struggle with pervasive worry over Tate, which comes out as anger and a mouth that won’t quit when I feel cornered.” Would you be friends with Jaden? How would you describe her to someone else? What do you have in common? How do you differ?
3. Tate wrote in his blog, “I have been made fun of my entire life. In preschool, the other kids wouldn’t play with me. Some of the kids in my class cried when they saw my face, I remember that. I was three. One kid said I was ugly; another kid said I was scary, like a sea monster. A girl with braids told me I had a face like a person on one side, and a face like pigskin on the other. I remember going to sit in a corner and crying almost every day.” What would it be like to be Tate? To be Tate’s parent?
4. Jaden said, “Another reason I became a hospice nurse was because I crave raw, honest relationships and have zero patience for superficiality. When you are working with people who are dying, all pretenses are off. There is no shallowness, no silliness. I don’t have the patience for relationships that float and skim across the top of human existence, relationships that have no depth or that are based on shopping, manicures, gossip, men, clubbing, etc. I want real relationships.” Can you relate to this? Was Jaden a competent hospice nurse? Did it make sense for her to move on to another career by the end of the book?
5. What was your favorite scene in the book and why?
6. Was Jaden right, as a mother, to allow Tate to play basketball? What would you have done?
7. Grandma Violet and Rowan concocted a mixture for Grandpa Pete to swallow so his terminal suffering would end and he would die. Jaden said, “Do I think my mother and Grandma Violet, at that time, with the medicines they didn’t have, did the right thing? Yes, I do. Absolutely.” Did they do the right thing? Was it consistent with their characters?
8. Brooke said, “I destroyed a lot of lives to make money. I am up nights wondering how many people I killed who took the drugs I sold them. I am up nights wondering how many pregnant women took my drugs and what that did to their babies. I am up nights wondering how many mothers’ sons are now addicted to my drugs, how many fathers’ daughters are drugged out and doing scary things with terrible men because they’re addicts, like I did.” Do you like Brooke? Was her drug addiction portrayed correctly?
Do you think she will stay clean? Why or why not?
9. Here are a few of Damini’s Daminisms. “Every time you eat, be grateful you’re eating. Be nice to animals. In your next life you might come back as a slug, remember that. Read a lot of books, because they are delicious and if you don’t read, how do you learn anything? Watch the seasons. I wear short skirts with ruffles, sequins, and fluff because I love them. I’m not gonna hide my leg. Don’t hide anything about yourself. I know what it’s like to sit in a dark room in a crib alone and feel as if no one loves
you. Love a lot of people for a happy life.”
What are your Daminisms?
10. What are the themes of A Different Kind of Normal?
11. What did the seasons symbolize? What did the greenhouse symbolize? The herbs and spices? The Canterbury bells, hollyhocks, lilies, irises, sweet peas, cosmos, red poppies, peonies, and rows of roses, which all the women in the family grew?
12. Jaden says, “I’m Earth Momma with an explosive temper meets cowgirl. She’s [Rowan] firecracker meets perfume.” How was Rowan as a parent? A grandparent? Using the same type of phraseology, how would you describe yourself?
13. Tate says, “Fitting in perfectly means that you never have to reach outside yourself. You don’t have to go through the same kinds of challenges, prejudice, judgment. Is it actually the best thing to fit in with everyone else? It’s easiest. But, man, how do you grow? How do you learn to think on your own, or do you simply think what everyone around you thinks? How do you learn to be more compassionate of others, more generous, if you’ve never had to feel like you’ve been lost and stuck on the outside with no one being compassionate or generous to you?” Is Tate right? Was his big head a blessing or a curse for him? What did other people learn from Tate?
14. Jaden says, “I don’t believe in witches, or curses, or spells. No, I don’t.
I really don’t.
It’s a legend. A story. A colorful history to laugh and chuckle about in our family line.
It is a fanciful tale. I am sure of it.