Addie Schmeeter's Resolve Helps Her Get By While She's Waiting for Normal

Several months ago, I read Linda Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect, a middle-grade novel about a girl named Zoe learning to play the organ and to adjust to the many times in her life when things don't go just as planned. The young narrator faces disappointments, but she always manages to overcome them, with some help from her small circle of close family and friends. I found myself reminded of Zoe this week when I read Waiting for Normal, another middle-grade novel by Leslie Connor. It, too, is narrated by a spunky young aspiring musician who occasionally longs for a much different life. Addie Schmeeter doesn't dream of Carnegie Hall; she yearns for normalcy, which she explains as "being able to count on certain things. Good things. And it's having everyone together - just because they belong that way."

Addie is 12 years old, a couple of years older than Zoe, and the challenges she faces are so severe that most readers might well marvel that she is such an optimistic, compassionate, well-adjusted child. In the first of 49 short chapters ranging in length from two to 12 pages, she and her mother - Mommers to her and her half-sisters, Denise to everyone else - move into a tiny trailer in an empty lot in Schenechtady, New York. Immediately, her mother launches into a tirade of complaints about the home that her ex-husband, Dwight, has provided for them, but where Denise sees "a tin box on a tar patch," Addie sees possibility. She finds the miniature kitchen charming - just her size, which is fitting, since most of the time, she's the only one who uses it. She likes the bunk bed at the head of the trailer with the curtain that closes for privacy and the view of the stretch of grass sprinkled with flowers. And she loves the fact that just across the parking lot is a gas station run by a large, maternal woman named Soula and her best friend, a jovial neatnik named Elliot.

At school, Addie soon makes more friends, bonding with the delicate Marissa and the portly Helena and eventually getting on chummy terms with Robert, though she initially terms him a "reprobate" for welcoming her to the school by offering her an ice cream sandwich he had just squished. She also likes Ms. Rivera, the orchestra leader at school who gives Addie her flute music early to accommodate her slow learning process; while Addie doesn't discover this until much later, those familiar with the condition are likely to quickly recognize in her the signs of dyslexia. Though school is difficult for her, Addie makes the necessary adjustments that allow her to get through her classes, though she is embarrassed that she doesn't, as Mommers says, have the "Love of Learning". One of her methods of combating this is creating a vocabulary notebook, which she fills with every big word she encounters.

For Addie, this is a year of big changes and eye-opening experiences. She discovers that Soula, who affectionately calls her "Cookie," is fighting for her life, and that the cure for her disease is almost as harrowing as the disease itself. She meets Rick, the owner of a nearby greasy spoon, and learns that he and Elliot are a couple. She undergoes the uncomfortable beginnings of puberty, and the experience is worsened by her mother's insensitivity. Mommers is the reason that Addie has such a deep desire for a normal life. There's nothing normal about having to catalog the food in the nearly-empty cupboard and ration it out because her mom has been absent for days and she doesn't know when she's coming back. There's nothing normal about having to be almost totally self-sufficient because Mommers spends all of her time glued to a chat room or away on "business meetings". Nothing normal about her mother having nothing but derision for almost everyone Addie loves, from Soula and Piccolo, Addie's pet hamster, to Grandio, whose son, Addie's father, died when she was three, and Dwight. Especially Dwight, the gentle man who has been as good as a father to her for almost as long as she can remember.

As the year progresses, it becomes increasingly painful to watch her put on a brave face and take care of her train wreck of a mother while secretly longing to be taken care of herself. Visits with 6-year-old Brynna and 3-year-old Katie (collectively called the Littles) and Dwight become especially rare after he moves out of town to renovate a mansion in the country. When Addie is able to pay them a visit for several days over Thanksgiving, she learns that Dwight has fallen in love again, and Hannah is everything her mother is not: stable, affectionate, reasonable. Before the weekend is out, Addie loves her too, but she aches to think of Dwight starting another family, one that definitively does not include her. Returning from that den of warmth and laughter to her cold, empty trailer is so crushing that Addie begins to wonder whether it might be better to cut them out of her life entirely and concentrate all of her resolve into getting Mommers back on her feet. But how much responsibility can a 12-year-old be expected to shoulder?

Leslie Connor has crafted a book that is at once desperately sad and relentlessly hopeful. Addie's remarkable ability to look on the bright side of life makes her a heroine who is very easy to root for, and after nearly 300 pages in her head, some of that can-do attitude might just rub off on the reader. Because of some of the mature issues that arise, I'd recommend Waiting for Normal to a slightly older readership than A Crooked Kind of Perfect; I wouldn't go any younger than 10, and parents of pre-teens may want to preview the book for themselves so that they can be better prepared to discuss some of these topics. Addie is a girl who must deal with more troubles than any child should, but her capacity to find the best in each situation helps her to rise above adversity. Look through her eyes, and you'll come to appreciate just how beautiful normal can be.