Sunday, December 27, 2020

The Gifts of the Magi Visit

 The Monday before Christmas, I opened my emails and found an e-card from a student I only taught for a week.  She told me I helped her understand the assignment and thanked me for substituting when her teacher was ill.  


In that moment, I felt overpaid to have received such thanks.   

In class that afternoon, a student revealed they didn't think they'd receive gifts for Christmas in the midst of the chatter in a Zoom lesson.  Within hours, after an exchange of emails, they received food and a little something to make the time away even from this virtual experience of school, more pleasant, more celebratory.   

I waited for the third king of Christmas.  We'd had wisdom and with it gratitude, and we'd had need answered.  That afternoon, we needed to get to a therapy appointment, and found ourselves going through a live nativity display on the way home.  My daughter delighted in the beauty and the joy and the imaginative creation of the early part of Christ's life and her happiness became mine.  

It's easy to get jaded and tired and overwhelmed, especially in this year that could be defined almost exclusively in negative and unhappy terms.  Yet this year has brought with it the secret joy of time, time with our family that would otherwise be in commute, time together at meals that would normally be on the road or rushed, and time in the evening, when we might be going to a thousand extra curricular activities.  Instead, we are here.  

God has given us in this time, the gift we would not give ourselves, time with each other.   God has given us in this time, a gift we've ignored, the opportunity to rest, to eat, to be with those we love, to have ordinary time beyond what would ordinarily be possible. 

This Christmas, practice the wisdom of the three kings that visited me in the Advent season, be thankful and make a point of thanking others.  Be alert to the needs of others as they are voiced, even when they are voiced by what is not said.  Take delight in beauty, because that's the purpose of beauty.   And, recognize that God always offers us gifts in every age, in every time, in all circumstances.  They are often the gifts we lack the will to provide for ourselves or others. They contain in them, peace not of this world, and joy only possible in the company of others.   

Merry Christmas! 

Sunday, December 20, 2020

FREE THE CHRISTMAS CAROLS!

 For the past fifteen years or so, the local radio station has played 24-7 Christmas carols from November 15th on and my kids love it.   I have a love hate relationship with the station, because they seem intent every year on fixing a rotation that includes about 25 songs and 10 reserve rookies that they pull up durring off hours.   It means you will hear all 35 in the rotation in about three hours if there are no repeats.  Since there are always repeats, you will hear all 35 songs at least three times a day.   Bottom line, it will get old fast. 

My kids bought me an Alexa for my birthday last year, and I thought this would solve the problem, but Alexa has her own opinions about music and as much as you might ask for "We need a little Christmas" from That Christmas Feeling, you'll get the Glee version.  If you ask for Christmas music in general, you'll get the 35 rotation set.   Now I know, there are many more Christmas songs, good, bad, sappy, syrupy and great, modern and old, jazzed and country, choral and orchestral than get played by either Alexa or the station, but they're somehow locked away by the algorithms.   

I have a solution. I've become deliberate with Alexa and the radio station, making specific requests for songs that need more airtime.  I'm hoping hearing a human voice asking for human voices will get somewhere.  So far, I've found out you can irritate a robot and that no one is at the station taking our calls.  I'm not discouraged, I'm determined.   Singing acapella works for the Penatonix because they can sing.  Singing my favorites to Alexa might be what causes the eventaul A.I. uprising against the fleshy ones, but I'm determined to remind the powers that be that make decisions about what will and won't be heard that there are worse things to shatter the silence than songs by other than the pre-tested 35 selected chestnuts of the season, so that maybe when I call again, they'll pick up the phone.  

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Feat of the Epiphany

 A few years ago, the lights went out in my laundry room and in the pantry.   We put in new bulbs, checked the fuses and tried several unsuccessful work arounds --battery operated and motion sensor lights.  Nothing worked. Not really.  We grew used to hitting the flashlight on our phones when we'd need to search for herb de provence or needed to find the fabric softener.  

This past week, the repairman we asked to help with some tile work, fixed both lights.  

My children and I remain in the dark on this matter.  We walk in like we've always walked in, searching the shadows for the couscous or the bounce dryer sheets, and someone (who will feel quite superior in the moment), will say, "You know, the light switch works." and flick it accordingly with all the smugness they can muster.  However, everyone's been caught groping through the darkness in either the landry room or pantry closet, so everyone's been the smug and the mugged by smugness at least twice.    

None of us remember.  None of us even remember we were the ones who did the mocking last time.  Lost in the moment when we've decided to move along the wash or hunt for the hot chocolate mix, we've now resorted to explaining why we didn't turn on the lights.  The following may or may not have been used by any or all of those of us who use those two rooms on a regular basis and do not flick the switch. 

10) Batman defense: I can see in the dark. 

9) Starwars defense:I don't need to see what I'm doing, I am one with the force and the force is one with me...

8) Saving the earth by saving energy. --this would work if any other lights in the house were turned off ever...

7) Just hadn't made it over to the light switch yet.  --this is mine, I'll get to it..no one buys my stalling thoough.  

6)  Preserving the light switch. It's been so long since we've had one, we're having attachment issues with the mechanism.  

5) Can't find the light switch --because it's dark and it's been so long, we don't remember where it is in the room.   

4) I turned it on, someone else turned it off just to mess with me.    I'd believe this if any of us ever remembered in the first place. 

3) The lightbulbs burnt out.  One of my older sons attempted this one, and I went to get the ladder, resulting in the Reagan policy, "Trust but verify." 

2) I have my cell phone --old habits die hard.   

1) I remembered after I walked in,but knew someone else would take care of it.  (It kind of deflates the smug factor if you bank on others taking care of the task for you) --not sure if it's true, fairly sure it isn't.   

There is hope for change. Today, I found the closet with the light left on...




Sunday, December 13, 2020

Everything is Deliberate

 If you've ever been on the receiving end of a phoned in meal, assignment, gift or chore you understand the flatness inattentiveness to detail.  You recognzie and can feel the absence of salt in the giving.  We want everyone to think and put energy into what they do. It's why we love a beautiful light dispaly, well decorated cookies and a handwrapped gift.  It's why we love the unexpected pleasure of thoughtfullness that flavors most of our experience of this season even more than peppermint, chocolate or pumpkin spice.   

The reality of living a faith life well, is that flavoring, that deliberate infusion of love into everything.  It includes added enthusiasm, detail, generosity, humility, and a dollop of good cheer.  Living life in good faith means giving to others and presuming of others the same.   The conversion of Scrooge feels real, because he goes from doing the minimum to exist, to the penultimate to thrive.   Joy seasons his life, and the difference is tangible in all he does. 

Decorating the tree, the cookies, lighting the candles, wrapping the presents, sending cards, all of these things reveal love, attention to beauty, to joy, to warmth, to light, to caring, to thinking of others rather than ourselves.   Today is Gaudete Sunday, meaning rejoice.   Rejoicing is also deliberate. This Sunday is a call to each of us to dust off the spiritual sloth that winter can cause, to be deliberate and joyful in all we do.   

My dad and mom made bourbon balls on this Sunday, to give to the court clerks.  It was a joyful memory, it is a joyful tradition.  For me, it is the taste of Gaudete Sunday.  They were deliberate in making these for others, and it brought much joy and still does.  It is not an ordinary thing, and that is part of what makes it special.  It is deliberate.    

I hope it will be a tradition for my children one day too.  The bourbon balls aren't for court clerks, but they are a fun way to breathe on the embers of enthusiasm that might otherwise be waning in these last twelve days of Advent.   

Here's the recipe:  Bourbon Balls  

1 12 onz box vanilla wafers

1 cup powdered sugar

2 Tablespoons Cocoa

1 cup chopped walnuts

3 Tablespoons of Kayro syrup (white or light)

1/2 cup bourbon

Extra Powdered Sugar

Crush wafers into fine powder, add sugar and cocoa and mix, add walnets and mix, add three tablespoons of syrup and burbon to dough.  Mix.  Form into 1 inch balls by hand and place on a cookie sheet.  Sprinkle in powdered sugar.  Store in airtight container.   Add more bourbon if the mixture seems dry. 

 --taken from my mom's recipe in Cooking with Saint Anne, Saint Anne's Catholic Church in Beaumont.   

I would tell you, buy more than one box of cookies...because there are always snackers.  Twelve days to go....

Thursday, December 10, 2020

On Today's Metrics

I saw a picture from last December when we all dressed up for StarWars and went to the movies. I remember, we bought three big bottomless barrels of popcorn and huge sodas to share. We walked around the outside shopping mall in costume, enjoying the stares at all eleven of us. (One daughter was still in exams at school). It was a carefully crafted and yet carefree memory that seems much further away than 365 days. Everything about that evening is not possible now.

We've had nine hundred fifty-eight deaths since we started tracking Covid-19 cases in our county alone, even with the restrictions we've endured over the course of now nine months. Montgomery County, Maryland is stricter than most places, and still, the numbers keep going up, because people bustle, people shop, and people want to believe somehow, it's over.

Today, five hundred fourty-four people were diagnosed with Covid, and the beds in acute care and ICU for patients suffering from this disease are at 81 and 76% capacity respectively. These numbers are beyond what the county wanted to have for opening up, and yet somehow, that is the discussion in the arenas of policy making, in the halls of government.

Thinking it would be nice is not science or policy, it's wishing. Big picture, I would like to see my mom and siblings and their children and my husband's family. Little picture, I would like to be able to go impulsively into stores and shop, like tonight when we made soup, extra french bread would have been nice.

Having the liberty to do as one will would be nice, but the price would be more people who know someone in that ever growing total who died; more people who cope with someone who is permanently affected. It isn't worth the bread, and as a county, we don't have the beds. It is a nothing of a sacrifice, to tell one's self "no," and yet a necessary nothing.

It would be nice to have birthday parties, but I don't want to host funerals no one can attend. It would be nice to travel, but every trip leaves a wake we don't want to have lead to a wake. All of what we want would be nice, but a civil and just society requires that we surrender what we want and would like, for what will ensure as many of us can be, still are. The liberty to do as one wants still exists, but at the price of others. That's not a civil society, that's a nation of islands, of souls who do not mind as long as they do not pay the cost and do not presume they will pay the cost for doing what they want.

We would like to be able to be fully present to each other, before this alters how we cope with life permanently. My youngest daughter walks on the balls of her feet, and has so despite our best efforts for so long, she must wear casts to relearn how to walk properly, to reallign her hips and ensure she retains full range of motion. It is not a fun process but it is necessary. We are going to need casts of sorts to cast off the rigidity of this type of living if we must go on with this kind of living. We must remember, this is temporary, and what we don't want, is permanent scars from the process.

So hold on, hold onto today, and be kind to everyone because everyone is enduring this trauma, this long winter of discontent, and everyone longs for the freedom we all took for granted and ignored all our lives until this past year. Hold onto all the necessary nothings that take place in this sort of quarantine. I am reading to my children and recognizing all these days here, are stollen summers and snow days even with all the assignments and tasks and fatiguing zooms attached. This time won't last forever, and all this time now, will be remembered as a gift if we help shape the way these moments are spent with each other.

Life Outside Is Always More Interesting

The hot dog bought at the baseball game tastes better than the one cooked at home.  The sweater found in the thrift store is more fashionable than any bought by Mom.  Every gift offered is not as valuable to the one who receives it, as the ones they seek themselves.  

No one who is a parent ever gets credit from their kids for any expertise they might have based on degree, profession or even prior experience with prior children.   We can be accomplished as one wishes, but everywhere else is more compelling than anything close to home.   The hard dicotomy of parenting teens and adolescents and being a parent to adults is, they want your help but always and only one their terms, and sometimes, not even then.  

It's not that they're ungrateful, it's that we are the water in which these fish swim.  They expect to breathe. They do not know themselves to be wet.  We've spent their whole lives ensuring they're fed, they're kept warm, they're kept clean and while they know they need and want the whole of the world, they and we don't now if they can endure the ocean.  

Figuring out how to manage and support is a process of determining what they and we will bear, and how to always respond with love even when everything feels tired and worn. It's work but the hardest part of it is knowing everything could be easy but it won't be. 

That's the hardest part of parenting, knowing it will be hard and unnecessarily so.  Parenting not kids, not toddlers, not babies, means loving through the rough spots, when the outside seems always more interesting, and knowing the interior is where the work must be done.   






Monday, November 30, 2020

Things I've Never Mastered Despite 27 years of Motherhood

 Since 1993, I've been a mom.  There have been good and bad moments but what every mother knows from the moment they see those two lines or that plus or they just know, there's a reason you don't get a period.  It's that motherhood never ends.  You are forever their mom.  That means, when they smile at you because you brougth them a cup of hot chooclate, you get that gift, that smile that only Mom or Dad gets.  When they cry out because they're hurt, you're the one they mean by that name.  These are the realities of parenthood. It's permanent or meant to be, because it's how God teaches us how to love as God loves --we are all His children, and He never tires of loving us despite however messy or naughty we might be. 

What I've come to know is, I stink at homework, paperwork, cleaning and potty training.  I'm not too good at bedtime or demanding that people practice either.  They all know how to read early on, and they almost to a person, have some artistic itch they have to scratch, be it musical, mechanical, or digital.  We go through dry erase markers, colored pencils and reams of paper for almost everyone.  They also all know how to cook something...no one in our house would starve, because everyone can make something.  Some of it isn't very tasty --see Paul's horseradish and motzerella on a corn tortilla attempt at a pizza, but as he indicated, you can survive eating it.   He wouldn't let me throw it out.  

That's the real reality of all my children. We've been cleaning out drawers and donating, and they're slowly learning, it isn't abandoning childhood to not keep everything --but it's hard for them.  Harder than I expected.  They hold onto things the way I want to hold onto time --this time.  I love having all of them home, even if it is because of a pandemic.  This time is secret stolen sacred time, when we get to be a whole family for however long we get these days together.  

It's not easy, and it's not what people want --because they want to be about the busyness of life.  However, I see them here, eager like horses to break from the gate and I'm reminded of the poem I saw every day I attended Saint Mary's that I walked into Madeleva, Sister Madeleva's poem on the seal in the main enterance.  "Why do they hurry and worry so? Can they, will they or do they know? They will earn some love, they will learn some truth, but never earn, nor learn, to gain back youth."  and it's a lovely understanding of that fragile four years when a child puts away childish things, when you get formed as something of the adult you will become.  

I've never learned to stop hurrying or worrying, so this forced stillness demands at least one if not the other, and the other, I'm learning to surrender bit by bit, but God's having to pry my hands from the worry, one fingertip at a time. I think each finger represents a child of mine.  I love them fiercely, but haven't quite yet learned how to love them well --I think that takes now and forever, and I'm an impatient person on all fronts, even love.   Sister Madeleva could write those words, I have to learn to live them before they leave, before this sacred still secret time ends.  I have to store all these moments in my heart. I also have to know, that I can never turn back the pages --just like Lucy can't turn back the book to reread what she's left behind in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  

But I take great reassurance in the continuation of their stories, and in the promise that Aslan makes to Lucy, and so also God to all of us, that He will be telling us these stories we've forgotten and cannot revisit all of our lives into eternity, when the still sacred secret time never ends.   

Saturday, November 28, 2020

A Letter to Every Shepherd after the Report of Wolves

 The report's been published.  It’s been a while, and nothing new seems to be happening, and that my dear beautiful Catholic Church, is the problem.  The synods, the meetings, the letters, the talks, the policy changes, the reports, the hand wringing, the sorrow expressed, does not seem to have made any difference in how the Church as a body is acting, or in how the Shepherds are leading.  

Good priests struggle to do what they can, because no one can know which priests focus only on the outside of the cups.  It is to our sorrow, that the trust afforded their office, is justifiably shaken, and it is to their sorrow and all of Heaven’s sorrow, that the trust is not being rebuilt at this moment, by visible actions of reparations on the part of the whole Church by those who know, the laity need to see that the Bishops and Priests, that all who even tangentially contributed to the wall of silence, the years of silence, the enabling of abuse, the paying off of therapies and tuitions and whatever else was done to hush the scandals over the decades, get it.   As a member of your flock, who loves being a sheep, I wish to let you know what we, your sheep would wish more than anything. 

Dear all Shepherds who turned out to be wolves, you wear a ponderous chain, you’ve made it link by link and yard by yard year by year.  It is a ponderous chain.   It is not too late for God’s mercy, but it time to come forward and recognize the great damage done by sins of omission and commission, in the name of protecting the idea of the church from the reality of her leaders.   The Church is bigger than our sins, it is the Bride of Christ.  The Church is owed your loyalty, your faithfulness, and your permanence as her servants, so begin today.  If you’ve messed up, even beyond what has become known, begin again. 

Dear Shepherds who didn’t do any of this, but must bear the burden of association, it is a hard cross Christ asks you to bear, but know you have been afforded the opportunity to really participate in Christ’s passion as a result of this grievous wound, to wear the scourges, to feel the agony in the garden, and to carry all the sins of those who sinned saying the same words, hiding under the collar, and the pains of your people, all of us, all of your flock wounded by the wolves.  You must be true shepherds now, and lay down your life for your flock, in full confidence, Christ will restore you if you do.  We need this, more than ever.  

As long as we continue as an institution as an earthly organization, waiting for the trouble to blow over, for people to be distracted, for the news cycle to turn to something else, we will continue to fail in our only mission on this Earth, to win souls for Christ.  As long as we maintain the Church as a means of advancement, prestige, power and lucre, where people remain silent so as to get key assignments, we are treating the Bride of Christ like a corporation, and more sheep shall be devoured, scattered and lost. 

We need to deal with the unspeakable, the scandal not merely of the abuse of power by predators in the clergy of both fellow clergy and children, but also of the cover up, which continues.  The level of transparency rings hollow, because we are still only just finding out about countless incidents in countless dioceses.  We have to wonder, what don’t we know, not because we wish the Church to be torn down, but because we want the velvet curtain hiding all that’s been hidden, torn down.   People of good faith, deserve to know when the institution they’ve entrusted with their faith formation, with their children, with their time, their treasures and their talents, have acted poorly, whether recently or decades past.   As a matter of justice, the protocols which have protected the ranks of priests and bishops from this sort of fiscal and legal scrutiny, the deference to a person of a cloth, is something the laity can no longer grant carte blanche.     

So dear Shepherds, please get the reality, not that we want to constantly scream or cry or blame or shout about what should have been done, but that we need to see (because matter matters), some outward indication of an invisible reality, of your grief for what has been done to your fellow priests and by your fellow priests, to your flock, past and present.   We need it now, and we need it ongoing, so that we as a people and all as priests, never forget this darkness, this grievous wound of this past century done to the heart of Jesus. 

At the preaching of Jonah, the King and all the people of Nineveh donned sack cloths, proclaimed a fast and prayed.  We know the Church holds the Eucharist, so there is something greater than the preaching of Jonah here, for which we ought to as a body, be donning sack cloths and fasting.   This is the struggle you were called to the Priesthood to weather, and if you don’t, there will be many sheep who do not know the great joy of Christmas, of Christ present today and every day because they only see what has not been done and think you do not take this faith to be a reality but a means of living, and thus they will shake their heads and say “Bah, humbug.” They will wander and be lost because they hoped it was real and true, and the witness of both those who were the cause and those who felt the effect, did not register this is the way, the truth and the light and vital to your forever happiness.  


Tuesday, November 24, 2020

First Lines Exercise

 Occasionally, my writing coach gives me an exercise to do that leads somewhere fun.  This was  the case.  He gave us a link to fifty of the best opening lines.  I've done this one before so I made sure not to pick lines I'd already examined.  It makes for fun blog fodder.  
Dissecting my five favorite lines starts with recognizing that sometimes a favorite line is not because of what It says, but what I remember from experiencing the story itself.

For example, one of my favorite memories from college involved reading Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend,” but aside from recalling it starts with a father and daughter rowing the Temps and dredging bodies and treasures from it, I do not remember another moment in the book itself. I do remember loving it, but that had nothing to do with the story (though it might have been good), as much as the story behind why I read it. It involves chicken pox, the infirmary at college, and an English teacher who officially declared I didn’t have to do another professor’s assignments while quarantined. (A professor at Notre Dame had assigned Albert Camus’ The Plague). So I looked at all the lines for the ones that whether I’d read the story or not, I could discuss something of what a reader upon seeing the first line, might guess about what was to come. There are books on the list I remember hating, but I get that the first line gets people and why. I hate everything about George Orwell’s 1984, most especially being assigned it because I was in the high school class of 1984. We endured a lot of references and frankly, by senior year, I didn’t care what time it was. However, “It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen—” told us everything was wrong and yet uniform, that the world we entered in these pages, would be off but not incorrect, eerie and accurate and strange like a nightmare. I might be projecting from knowing the rest of the story, but I can’t not think that the opening sentence presents us with hints of how not alien the story to unfold is, and how dangerous at the same time.
“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” –Samuel Beckett, Murphy I like a line that takes what we presume and either makes it new or reminds us when it is not. There’s a wit to this first sentence, and the added “the” keeps us from just running through the whole line. “The nothing new,” is emphasized by that article, and the sentence is at once an utterance of discouragement, and a promise of the search yet to come, for something better than, something other than the nothing. We are also, like the sun, gazing on the words, which in many cases when we open a book, are also, the nothing new.
“Mother died today.” –Albert Camus, The Stranger We immediately are in the immediate, and that sort of moment in real life is rare, and thus being placed in that moment equally so. Camus is not a favorite author but I’ve read much of his work and placing us in that moment at the start pf the story with when in real life, we would be most likely to wrestle with big questions, most likely to question our own answers, and most exposed to the extent any of us allow, by our thin understanding of the consequences of certain answers, is his specialty. Good stories, good literature strike at what matters, and Camus gets straight to the topic he wishes to address by placing us in this singular universal either experienced or dreaded moment that all of us have. , “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” –Ford Madox Ford in The Good Soldier Sometimes, bravado works. Here, because the reader already knows the title of the book, the opening line essentially offers a promise, of a tale of woe. The onus is on the author to deliver, but it also harkens back to another favorite story for me, “Rage –Goddess sing the rage of Peleus’ son, Achilles” for setting the tone. The narrator in both the Iliad and this story, is setting the tone for the reader of what is to come, and it’s gutsy to do. What will make the story sad becomes the important issue before anything Is known. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” –C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Now I happen to love this book. Of Old Jacks’ works, this one I’ve read perhaps the most often, and the mere mention of it makes me want to go and read it again. However, it is the revealing to the reader the whole of the story in a single sentence without giving away the ending that I love. The name seems like the most horrible name a writer could devise to give a character, and the author laughing at hi own mischief with the commentary. Beyond that, for those who do not know the story, it is the re-envisioning of the tale of Saint Paul becoming Saint Paul, and of the redemption necessary in that tale, for the ungenerous dangerous unpleasant human being (Eustace) to become more fully the human that we eventually love in the story.
P.S. I started reading Our Mutual Friend with my sixteen-year old son for fun. We’ll see if It turns out as fondly as I remember, beyond the story of why I read it.

Sunday, November 22, 2020

I Miss Everyone

 Yesterday, I took my youngest four to a makeshift Drive-in Movie put on at our parish.  

They enjoyed it but what I discovered is, nine months of quarantine have made me jumpy.  Every time someone came by the car to see if we wnated to buy popcorn or just say, "Hi." because people do that, and it used to be ordinary, I'd feel anxious afterwards.   Not because I thought I'd get Covid-19, but because being isolated this long, warps the spirit, and I hadn't realized how warped my own had become. 

I do worry about Covid-19 though, because there is so much that needs doing in this family, for my husband and me.  We can wipe things down and limit our going out, but there's just the reality, it's a scary thing.  It sounds cowardly to be frightened of life, I've never been before and I don't want to be now.  Every cough makes everyone worry.  Every symptom other than fine, alarms.  We've become triggered to worry, to presume the worst, and to view everything as a potential threat.  I hate it.  It's wrong. 

I am tired of this damn quarantine.  I am tired of not seeing people's full faces. I am not advocating being dumb, but I am admitting, I am tired.   I need the more of Everyone.   I miss the more of everyone.  My mom, my brothers and sister, my inlaws, friends from across the country, all the ordinary contact that came within the course of a year, hasn't happened this year.   Busyness kept that from being too keen an ache most of the time, but when they'd come to visit, or we'd go there, I'd be reminded, this is more what should be happening.  

Now even those reminders are missing, and it is like food without salt, dull and missing what should be full of flavor.   Now even being busy doesn't prevent the missing --and I know that is a good thing.  I am grateful for all this stollen time with my husband and my adult children who otherwise would be off being busy themselves.   We wouldn't notice the time passing or the distance being created but it would be there.   So there are gifts with this time of trial, even here. 

It's just, I miss everyone. I'm wanting something of normal of being able to connect to return --and hoping with that return, we'll return to something better than what was normal; that we won't leave kind words unsaid, or put off lunches or visits or letters or phone calls; that we'll check in on each other willfully, because we love them, rather than just at holidays or when we're not busy.   I hope we'll learn, I'll learn, to not let things that shouldn't consume whole swaths of time, take over, that we as a whole, and I in particular, will cease being anxious about many things and choose the better portion with all time we've been alloted.  

I know this much, we'll be at the next Drive-in Movie offered, to remind myself not to forget. 

Saturday, November 21, 2020

My Poor Dusty Blog

 I have about fifteen drafts from this week, because this week, like the many weeks before it, despite the absence of outside errands, has been packed.   I figure, it's only fair to give an update.   

1) What am I writing?  Well, I'm writing poems, I'm editing my book. I've thrashed at words but they're repetitive or just don't get where they need to go or they sound too stressed and I don't want to worry my mom.    

2) What am I reading?  Well I'm glad you asked, though you didn't.  We're reading Harry Potter's Order of the Phoenix with my youngest, The Book of Three with Paul --he's into it, and others keep hovering around not really listening you understand, but nearby.  I'm trying to get my next two to listen to A Horse and His Boy.  I'm going to keep trying.  I've also started Our Mutual Friend with my son John...and I'm hoping that one catches more of them too.   

3) Are you Exercising...three times this week I did...then it rained...and I've discovered an inverse theorem...if I dress to exercise, I don't.    

4) Are you praying?   Every day I drop off for school, I drop by the outside adoration chapel near my home for at least five minutes.  So yes.   

5) What else are you doing?  Teaching.  Managing the house...everyone's home now.   I'm also helping to organize a conference for January for writers ---so that counts.   

6) I haven't seen any links lately ...why is that?  Sometimes, you get dry spells.   This is one of them. I'm submitting, sometimes three pieces in a week...but they're getting what I'd call dead cat bounces.  Not to worry, I have a lot more to throw at them.   Visualizing me throwing cats at the editors...it's helpful.  

7) Will you ever be funny again...as a blog?   ---wait, I wasn't?   

Monday, November 9, 2020

The Long Commute


I've got three screens, two computers and a phone,
a mic, a headset and it's all at home.
I teach whole classes yet I'm all alone
As I start the long commute.

Starting Zoom all I see are avatars.
or names set on black blank spaces.
The silence speaks volumes as I stare at the screen
wondering am I speaking without leaving any traces?

Going over and over and over again,
in hopes at some point they get it,
the story, the wonder, the theory, the joy
is worth so much more than the grade or credit.

It's a long commute in every subject
no matter the school, grade or age
It's full of traffic and detours and unexpected stops
retracing steps, and getting lost on the page.

We miss the time, we miss the connection
when we would know before they ever turned it in
That something stuck, something permanent,
The teacher's best pay is that grin.

Saturday, November 7, 2020

The Good and the Bad and the I'm Not Sure

Being a mom to a child with special needs means celebrating little victories, unexpected signs of growth. Throughout this time of Covid, my son (at the age of 12) has learned to give himself a shower, to make his bed, to make a pizza, to ride a bike without training wheels and how to pour himself a drink from a full gallon jug of orange juice.   He also mastered vacumning the floor, feeding the turtles and is now fully potty trained.  He can dress himself fully, he's planted bulbs in the back yard and knows how to help pick up the trimmed branches and compost it.  These are great skills and we wouldn't have dreamed all these things might have happened but for his being home with constant persistant coaching by his sibling and parents and desiring to fit in and show his own independence.  

However, with all these steps forward, there's the isssue that every parent of a kid with special needs has, the issue of whether this new level of independence requires a new level of vigilance on the part of the parents.   He can take a shower...do I need to always check to make sure the temperature is right.  I do, because he errs on the side of cold.  We've got to figure out a work around so he can make sure he doesn't resign himself to freezing showers.   He knows how to prep for a pizza.  We have to make sure he never thinks he can do the next step until we're sure he knows the safety issues involved.   (He gets out a cookie sheet, a pita bread, the sauce and the cheese and he can assemble it).   

With all these steps forward, we've learned more about how Paul thinks and acts.  He imitates and he thinks by association.  He watched the Disney shorts and he assembled a set of John Henry using blocks and cars to indicate the tracks and the mountain and the train.   He uses short hand with his communication device to let us know which song he wants to hear on the radio --crab means Shiny from Moana, frog alligator bug means Going Down the Bayou from Princess and the Frog.  We usually can guess from context what he wants and what he thinks, but part of it is just knowing what he loves and likes and thinks about.   

Sometimes however, he has a bad day.  We use a chart to help him keep on track.  We draw a check list and that works for bedtime routine and class work.  Because he struggles with screaming in class sometimes, we devised a plan --three X's in class mean no TV.   He knows this.  Last week, he got a bad report. Three X's.   He didn't like the report so he found his own paper and drew three checks and a smily face and what was unmistakably, a forged signature of his oldest sister who often oversees him while he works and keeps track of his behavior.   

It was hard not to laugh.   

The next day, he settled in to watch a favorite movie,  Spiderman Into the Multiverse.  On the deck that day, a huge spider had spun an impressive web. He could see the spider and the web as he watched television and I knew he'd connected the dots.   It's very hard to explain to Paul, "No, you can't get bit by the spider. It's not radioactive."   

Like I said, the things you have to anticipate, that no one can prepare for, they're what makes being a parent of a special needs kid interesting.  What's a gentle reminder to me, he's taking notes on me too.  He's learned to anticpate how I think. 

The other day I said I was stressed and he showed up with a candy bar from his Halloween stash and a diet coke.   

Friday, November 6, 2020

Friday Musings

 Me: One of the things I do with writing, is figure out what I really think.   

Brain of Me: What do I think?  

Me: I think I'm tired of Covid, of people justfying hating based on politics, of the inability to throw a party, to celebrate, to smile at people and have them see the smile.   I think I'm tired of being tired.   

Brain of me: What am I going to do about what I think? 

Me: Make a plan. 

Brain of Me: What's the plan?  

Me: You're the brains of the outfit. What do you think?

Brain of Me:  Maybe write and something will come to you. 

Me: ...you're punting aren't you?

Brain of Me: Yes.   Yes I am.   


Thursday, November 5, 2020

What Matters More

 The election remains both an uncertainty and a necessity.  It is exhausting not knowing and yet feeling profoundly unhappy that the results, whatever they are, won't fix the fundamental problem.   Half the nation thinks the other half hates it...and the other half is sure that the half that isn't them is hateable. Everything about this is wearying because it does seem (if social media is to be believed) as if we are being reduced as a country to an Us and Them --which is not what allows our country to thrive. 

I know no one reads blogs anymore, but since it's my corner of the internet universe I'm going to say something.   People don't vote for all the reasons we ascribe. They are not all of their vote, nor are they only their vote.  There are the 365 days of the year of living, of doing, of treating others as human beings that should be considered when deciding if someone ought to be cut out of one's life.  Perhaps it is simpler to use a one strike and you're gone, but reality is that each of us, all of us, are more complex than the binary system of voting reveals.  

There are pro-life democrats and people who vote democrat despite the party platform because they believe government's role in providing a safety net to the poor and the sick is part of being pro-life and a part that should be strengthened.   There are republicans who advocate for the immigrant, who want us to not be poor stewards of the government or slavishly devoted to corporations and CEO's over middle class people.  They just aren't on the top of anyone's ticket.  They're our neighbors and friends and family.  They believe in things like civic responsiblity, justice for all, providing support to infrastructure and promoting growth that doesn't edge people out of neighborhoods where they've set down roots. They believe in cultivating the arts and education, in science and libraries and technology and beauty.  People who want a good government, want the government to bring about good for and to people.   

The people who vote, want the world to be a safe and thriving place of freedom and opportunity, they don't agree about the how of it.  For our democracy to last, we will have to reach across the aisle in all things, and find where we can do the most good.  We will have to work with and for each other.  We also don't get to decide the government is always the solution or always the problem.     Either one is a simplifcation of the complex reality of an insitution that has served however faultily over the years.  The system works as well as the people who serve in it, so if we want it better, we'd better be better ourselves.   

How?  The voting is the beginning, not the end of our civic responsibility.  Join some part of what makes your community run, be a voice that speaks, be the hands that do the work, be the eyes that see the problems or the ears that hear the needs of the community.   Maybe explore if God is calling you to run for public office or help discuss within the parties the purpose of the parties themselves. It's not that it doesn't matter who wins, it's that what matters more is what we do going forward, irrespective of who gets to 270.   

Friday, October 30, 2020

The Heart Cannot Break Enough

 Looking at photos from years past, 

When Summers included trips to the pool and library, 
When Falls had dances and track and plays and a thousand errands
and the stillness of not being able and not knowing when we will be
cracks the soul. 

Looking at memories, casually dashed off notes
lamenting the need to go here and there, of having
a fuller schedule than time would seem to allow
all we missed

Now, all the whos we are missing.  
The get togethers that we planned then
that reminded us we should get together more
now can't be

And waiting for when it will be allowed
Comes without an end in sight, only a hope

My sister and mom went to visit my aunt. 
She's dying and yet, in that hour of visiting, 
both my mom and my sister told me, my aunt lived all the minutes
like she's lived all her life.  

My cousin gave birth to a baby girl today. 
Proof that joy abounds even in times such as these. 
We have photos and memories and phones and computers. 
We don't have to stay isolated...

The photos remind us of those moments when we were like my aunt, 
when we lived more than the ordinary rules of time usually allow, 
when we stopped the errands to be present to each other.  

When we stopped for joy.  When we stopped because we love.  
Covid stinks and there's no denying this reality requires all of us to love enough to suffer, 
to love enough to not be there incarnationally with those  we love...
but we can always be present.   

We can always fill every moment with something better than merely time.  
We can live so that we are present, and the present becomes timeless.  
Our hearts cannot be broken enough to stop loving, 
Our lives cannot be broken enough to stop living, 

if we but will it.  

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Hope is Always Necessary

People are tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and of presuming that whatever it is that will happen, will be bad. 

There's a solution to this fatigue, to this constant anxiety.   

Will to hope.   Faith is a gift but it also must be grown and chosen.  The more we choose, the more we will find.  The smallest of seeds in the soul will become a large tree in which other souls can rest.  

So too hope, the second cardinal virtue is a willed thing, something that we can enkindle in others by our witness.  

How do we hope when there is so much wrongness in the world...our politics, the pandemic, economics,  institutions that betray trust, scandals, when there is so much hurt said and unsaid?  How does one hope in the face of suffering?   

The same way we hold onto hope when we are not suffering.  If our hope was in these other things, it was misplaced.  Hope to acquire the grace God is always offering.  Hope to learn whatever it is we need to learn from weathering this time.  We may wish this time never came to us, but that is what all people of good will wish.

"However, that is not ours to decide. What matters is what we do with this time that we've been given."  --Gandalf to Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring. 

So if you want to defeat the evil of this age, ride out and meet it.   Will to hope.  

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Some Thoughts on What We Should Do and How We Should Do it


What our kids need now, not matter who they are, is HEAPS, not STEM. I'm not advocating for getting rid of those cherished disciplines, only de-emphasizing them based on what is our reality today.

They need History, to know we can weather a crisis, even a pandemic, and how it was done, and see what was done poorly, and what well.

They need English, because stories that take us out of now, but show us how to deal with now, are important. I think of the Chesterton quote about it, and it's paraphrased in the movie Coraline: "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

They need the arts because creating beauty is a form of joy, and this world right now, is short on joy. The focus on creating, rather than the product is essential, because everything reduced to what can it buy, means only those praised for the quality, and not the effort, will continue. They all need to continue.

Philosophy becomes paramount, because we live in a society that doesn't know what a society should be anymore, it's only frustrated and hurt by what it isn't. The human heart longs for a community that supports it, and is just and merciful and reasonable and understandable and fair. We do not have that right now, because everything feels unmanagable and unbearable and unfixable. We have to think about and assert what we value and why and also, be able to defend that on a logos, pathos and ethos level. Thinking about such things, helps us imagine the better we long for.

Social/Emotional Well being I saved for last, but it must permeate all. We've used a STEM model longer than we've had STEM. We grade things. We measure. We assess. The utilitarian method of grading goes from Pre-K up to Post Graduate, and favors the organized, the neat, the sophisticated and the clear. Right now, I think few of us fit that description, and we need to be forming people who can adjust, can laugh, can circumvent, can create, can imagine, can cope. None of these come from a method of exactitude, but from an attitude of experimentation and exploration and a fusion of creativity into every arena of academic exploration.

We live in a time that is very different than what we grew up in, yet we are trying to hold the exact same standards and rubrics and consequences as before. It isn't working --which is why some are pushing for going back to the buildings so the way it was can work better, but we also aren't being allowed to do things differently.

I don't have the answers, I only see that how we are proceeding, is a bigger problem than whether kids are turning things in or turning on their cameras. I'd love to see what my fellow educators think, about if they could reimagine school, attempting to address the needs and the issues and the crisis we have now, what would they emphasize and how and why?

---So I wrote and posted this piece in an Educators Forum, and man, did people not like the idea of somehow not holding onto STEM as the thing to hold onto --when what I'm looking at, is the reality that the kids are not okay.  They need means to cope with the not okayness of life --and those aren't found in STEM.   It doesn't mean we don't teach STEM, but it's folly to keep going as if nothing is happening when so much is.  However, people didn't like the proposal of change because right now, change is harder than it normally is, and changing what we emphasize would indicate we're not going back to how things were any time soon.   I think that is one of the underlying worries. 

I get that we need future scientists and researchers in case the current crop doesn't solve the problem.  I'm not trying to solve every problem. I just see a problem we're thinking will be fixed by a few videos on mindfulness and sleep, diet and exercise and I think, we will need to do more to help people endure this.   

Friday, October 16, 2020

Ten Things To Do if Halloween is Forbidden

 My county has banned trick-or-treating owing to Covid-19.  My house has always loved tripping out the home for Halloween and we've decided that we have our own plans to make it fun despite the absence of a walk around the neighborhood.  My teens immediately thought of ways to enliven the world with non-defiant but resistant joy.   I share their ideas here. 

10) Know those T-Rex Costumes?  They're funny no matter what.  Two of mine are considering donning them and skateboarding/scootering and throwing out zip log bags of candy to each home.  They'd bag the candy wearing gloves and so it would be sealed for all points of delivery.   

It's the great T-Rex Charlie Brown!  

9) They've also suggested all of us dressing as the characters from the Peanuts, including Charlie Brown and delivering rocks.   

8) Zombie tag outside on Halloween --basically, if you're touched, you're part of it.  Those who are touched have to carry a light stick everyone can see.  Last one not touched is winner. No talking during the game except Zombies can say Brains and when you're touched, you must yell touched and remain there until the ref (and you need a ref) hands you a light stick.  (Consider it the transformation stage).   

7) Cake Wars Halloween Style --this requires some work --only do the mini mixes so you don't have 1000 cakes afterwards --the cake in a cup, the big issue is decor and altering the cake in a cup to follow the theme.   (Pick three themes in advance, and have the fondant, frosting, sprinkles and extras ready). Set a timer, use spooky music and one of the adults should mc it a'la Alton Brown in Iron Chef.  Judge with three --taste, theme and presentation. 

6) Make old fashioned treats like stainglassed windows, popcorn balls and homemade candies.   It will take time, it will be fun, it will be a mess, but again, it will be fun. 

5) Pumpkin wars --yes, give everyone their own pumpkin and let them create a masterpiece. Give them a theme, let them do.   Paint is a good idea, as are sharpie markers.  

4) Live Still display.    This takes work and a desire to scare, but if everyone's on board, dress everyone up so they look like a display.  Set up with lighting on a night before Halloween, complete with music.  Every once in a while, move when a car drives by.   (Works great for teens and tweens).   

3) Classic Monster Movie Binge Night --Frankenstein, Dracula and Werewolf.   Serve popcorn and icecream floats.    Or alternatively, The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock.   

2) Decorate the house with as much Halloween as you can...and put on an old fashioned carnival for your kiddos --with costumes, grab bags, bobbing for apples, clothespin drops, ring toss to win a soda, and spinny art, press on nails, tatoos and face paint.   Make sure each activity comes with the equivalent of a chucky-cheese type tickets or tokens.   Have them trade in the tokens for various candies and plastic goodies that are fun.  

1) Zoom with your relatives.  Ask them to dress up.  Read scary stories.   Order Pizza.   Wish them Happy Halloween and don't be surprised if your teens skateboard down the driveway wearing dinosaur costumes.   

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

My News!

My blog has been here since 2007.  I've tried relocating to Wordpress back when all the cool kids did it, but I couldn't figure out how to export it, so it stayed here.  I longed for someone to see my blog and think, "Hey, she's funny.  We should get her." That didn't happen...

Now, I am being considered as a draft pick for two places --not enough to start a bidding war mind you, but it's flattering to be called upon.  Sort of like being picked in Red Rover...when you're a kid, or finding your name on the list after tryouts.   

The Catholic Conspiracy has asked me to join them. I've been a fan of many of their writers for years. 

 So I found myself surprised and pleased to discover,..the perenial b-teamer, bench warmer has been picked.   

I know in recent years B-teams fell out of favor and out of fashion.  I still have the yellow ribbon from placing fifth (there were seven runners but two quit) and the itty-bitty sports patch from my long and storied history on the sports equivalent of the island of misfit toys from those halcyon days.  I also have the psychological scars that came with it, where my first thougth on being picked is...you must have run out of everybody else. 


    I think of this scene and think, "I'm the magazine."  

Except it's not true. The Blogosphere has fallen out of favor, but those who persist, both love it and are willing to work at improving for the sheer joy of improving --it is the halmark of the hopeful b-teamer, to always seek to try, and to ignore the experts and those who trend, because your heart is there and the rest of you, will grow into it if you just keep at it.   B-teamers persist despite reality. 

 It's one of our most endearing traits...keeps us from becoming tragic. 

The move is being prepped, but I'm not sure yet when it will take place. 
Can't wait for my team jacket.     

In the meantime, I'm feel like dancing.   


Thinking of going as Donna for Halloween even if there is no trick-or-treating.  Why?  Because we'll need the silliness of it all if there isn't.  

 
 

Friday, October 9, 2020

On Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All)

 If you've not read Pope Francis' most recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, please give yourself an evening or two to go over it.  I beg you to read it for yourself and look for what it says, what speaks to the heart because there is much there.   

I also suggest avoiding the commentary.  Those who dislike Pope Francis and question his authority in this time, shred Pope Francis because it makes them appear detatched, cerebral, and clever.  
With the rise of instant access, people have become conditioned to distrust any piece written by anyone of authority if someone they like or approve of, questions or criticizes it. There are many in Catholic circles who distrust this pope, I am not one of them. I have news for people who engage in ritualistic constant harping on the Holy Father and armchair quarterback his every utterance, much less writing so as to indicate that they are smarter than the pope and take issue.

You are not being Catholic. 

You think you are acting like Saint Catherine of Sienna, but you're not.  This pope has done nothing close to what led the Doctor of the Church to counsel Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome, and those dissenting have not garnered a world wide reputation for their deep asceticism.   They're not reluctant but glowering in their critique of this pope for his words and deeds because they don't like the style of this pope, and think they know how to evangelize better. In some cases, they might.  But these blogs and videos and crititiques are not evanglizing, they're not inviting people to dive deeper into love with Christ or his church.   They are sowing division, pushing people away from the Pope, away from other Catholics, and declaring everyday excommunications.  That's not Catholic. 

Catholic is universal. Catholic calls us to the table, to the Eucharist, to be part of one Body of Christ, and to be about the business of healing all the places where there are holes that flesh should be. 

 I would direct anyone to read the very strong piece by Mike Lewis, The Inanity of CTRL-F Criticism.   It's my opinion, that in this time of seemingly infinite crisis, everyone is hanging on by a shred, and for some of those hanging by the shred, shredding others feels like something better than the nothing of every day we've endured since March 13th.   

We are not called to shred or deconstruct or destroy. 
We aren't called to be clever. We're called to be faithful.  We're not called to fisk everyone else, we're to fisk ourselves for all the ways in which we've failed to rend our hearts and help heal the wounds of the world by our words, actions and prayers. 

The Holy Father is reminding us, that in all things, we are brothers all first, united in Christ.  Having read his work, I think the Holy Father is trying to speak to a world that thinks it knows Christ and the mission of His church, but only has the poor represenation and current reputation put forth by professed followers.   

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Being Both And in the Time of Covid-19 in 2020


Seven months of Covid-19 Quarantine have left us tired, emotionally worn and testy.  As a society, I've observed online and in various communities, our primary and first response to everything is filtered through the idea of "this is the next trauma." 

I noticed this when my kids' uniforms didn't arrive and I sent a note back asking about it.  The company said they mailed it back in August and I felt defeated.  I started to react, to get angry, to feel like the world didn't care and nothing would change. I would just be stuck and out the money, minus the uniforms for my trouble.  It wasn't the case at all, but it was where my mind immediately ran. 

Online, a woman asked in the neighborhood about a noise she heard, immediately assuming the worst.  Her response to things reflected mine.   We tend to hear loud noises and think guns, not firecracker. We hear sirens and we think violence, not help.  We hear someone cough and we think Covid, not cold. The loose dog must bite.  The stranger must be dangerous.  The response someone gives, if not alligned with mine, must be opposed.  We'd become strange and conditioned to react rather than reflect.     

I'd even seen it in my writing.I'd become more hesitant to write, to tell stories, or to really examine things.  Humor became harder, because I wasn't willing to take risks or make associations.  The long cloistering of life made and makes us more insular by nature, and less disposed to expose ourselves in the virtual and actual world, as everything not controlled feels threatening.   

How do we fight this tendency?  How do we create a community, a society that is compassionate when we view everyone and everywhere as a potential threat?   We can't if we only react to everything as dangerous. We can't if we deny the reality of what we're fighting.    There is a danger. 

To fight this reality of a pandemic and  the secondary danger of isolationism on a personal and public level, we're going to have to be both and in all things.  We're going to have to go out. We're also going to have to wear masks and exercise caution and practice strict hygiene.  We're going to have to engage others.  We're also going to have to be careful where and when we go out. to protect others and ourselves. 

  The world is hard right now.   

Make it softer. 

 The world is confusing right now. 

Be a voice of clarity. 

 The world is hurting right now. 

Be a source of healing. 

 The world is raging right now.

Be a source of calm. 
 
It will involve taking risks.  Speaking up when others shout you down, reflecting rather than responding.  It means being Both And.  We'll get through this together, by living a life of contradictions, where we keep ourselves at safe distances, but work via words and letters and phone calls and deeds, to stay more connected than ever.  

We're going to need to cultivate joy and friendships and beauty in the everyday, deliberately.   To that end, we're doing a touch of Halloween daily until we get to Halloween to help with the lifting of other spirits and our own.   It's a form of hope and defiance all at once.  It's both and.  

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Small Success Thursday

 We need to count our blessings more than usual this year and so while yesterday, I spent some time insulting the year, today, I will remember how grateful I am for the unexpected gifts of 2020.  

In this time of quarantine, my youngest son turned twelve, and in this past six months he learned to ride a bicycle without assistance, to wash dishes, make his bed, take a shower or bath without help, became fully potty trained, can cream his mother in video games, operate the xbox --which I can't, and help out with yard work.  He can make himself breakfast --either cereal or out of a toaster, safely.  He can pour himself juice.  He learned to use a butter knife to spread and make a sandwich, and to cut his own food.   These are all life skills he'll need for the rest of his life, lifeskills he might not have mastered but for the urging of his siblings to have him learn what they know.   

These are stollen moments from ordinary time.  

My husband got to be home for all of his childrens' birthdays this year so far, (our youngest had her birthday on a Sunday so), which has never happened before, because work is downtown.   We've taken walks and said the rosary.  We've danced more. We've sung more. We've baked bread and played cards and it's been like six months of whole time, and that is a gift too.   

This week, I started walking again, with my children, different ones each day, but that too is a gift.  

When I left for college, I remember my not yet eight year old sister running after the car down the street until she got to the corner where we turned away.  My nine year old has been able to enjoy the relationships with her older siblings that wouldn't be here if life were normal.  

None of this means I'm glad that Covid-19 is, or that I want it to last, but I will count the blessings of the day because that is how we are meant to survive crisis and difficulties and sufferings.  We are to look to why we are grateful, when things are hardest, to look for reasons to give praise.  It is the only way to stave off the temptation, the indulgence of becoming discouraged.   

Lastly, my son and I saw a huge rainbow.  We took it as a sign the disease will leave soon, as a reminder that God loves us with His whole heart, and wants all of us home.   

Happy Small Success Thursday! 

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

If 2020 were

 My latest attempt to laugh at the year that keeps giving, is to use Jeff Foxworthy's means of writing about things...I rather think of 2020 as the standard deviation that one throws out when examining data.  It's the 70's plaid bell bottom pants that somehow, people believed other people would want to wear or the crochet shorts.  It's the coffee left in the workplace microwave, with powdered creamer after the last co-worker nuked some fish for lunch.


If 2020 were a food, it would be haggis. --no one even wants to boast of having tried it. 


If 2020 were a drink, it would be warm caffiene free diet coke. --doesn't wake you up, give you energy or taste better than tap.   

If 2020 were a movie, it would be Istar II or Avatar --a block buster that no one really wants to remember, not even a little.  

If 2020 were a candy, it would be a bit-o-honey. They taste horrible, we have no gage of how long they exist, and no one...ever...would want another.  

If 2020 were a book, it would be written by Job.  

Feel free to add your own ideas in the combox.  

    

Monday, September 28, 2020

Over at the Register Today

 I know my blog is getting dusty. I'm still writing every day, but it's for a book so that's taking a lot of writing energies.  Additionally, I am helping to plan a conference and that too, takes up brain space limited by the constant stress of the year 2020.   

Anyway, all of this is leading up to the piece I wrote called "At the Foot of the Cross."

Friday, September 18, 2020

You Were Always to Be More

The other day, while researching a project, I stubbled upon an old article I’d written about my youngest son (who happens to have Down Syndrome) and the blow to support for kids like him when those in roles of leadership, reveal themselves to be injured, sinful, and corruptible creatures (like we all are).   I thought of the words, “you must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect), and realized the reason we need to be better, is not because God will love us if we are, but that the world can’t see God’s love if we don’t.   One of the comments confirmed this thought with the words, “You must do more.”  

My first reaction was shall we say, less than enthusiastic.  “Lord what now? What was that more? How could there be more to do?”  But the comment resonated deep.  It was a reminder to me, that nothing happens without God’s consent, without God’s permission, and that He sometimes puts things and people in front of us, to help us see what we must confront.  The comment felt like a commission.  I am a mom of a son with special needs. He turned twelve yesterday.  We’ve begun discussing with his teachers what happens next, when he no longer looks like a child, when he isn’t a child, when he needs to live somewhere other than with us.  I thought about how he will need friends other than his family to provide the stuff of life that makes life something beyond the ordinary, the routine and the mundane.  He will need us to start on this hard list of things to do now, if they are to be there for him in the future. Hard things to face in ordinary time, harder in these days.

 “You must do more.” What was the more? My brain rattled off what I saw as being needs in my other children as they grappled with the trials of adulthood.  He would need hobbies. He would need meaningful work. He would need income. He would need a network of support to get him to the doctor or the dentist, or haircuts and to weekly mass. He would need friends.  He would need all these things to be not imposed upon his life but grown into/grafted into it.  His family would be part of this but could not be all or only.

Why did he need all of this more?  Because Covid-19 revealed what happens when he gets the more of company, of peers, of daily interactions and meaningful work.  He’d learned to make his bed, wash the dishes and fold towels. During this time of Covid-19, my son learned how to ride a bike without training wheels, how to pull up Disney on the television for a quick Muppet break in between Zooms, to set and test a shower and take it on his own, and to make his own sandwich –ketchup and Oscar Meyer bologna on white bread, cut into triangles. (I wouldn’t advise it, but he eats every crumb). Part of why he learned all of this, was the gift of extra time having no place to go in particular allowed. Part of why he learned this, was his siblings expected more of him than his mother. His mom would make him breakfast. It was a form of love and service and habit with no ill will intended, but he needed to master more skills. Here was the more.  His older brothers and sisters would say, “Make it yourself, like us.” And didn’t stress if he poured cinnamon toast crunch more full than I would have as long as he finished it.

One of them even taught him how to scoop it with a measuring cup to have better portions. He learned to pour the milk too, even when it’s full. (Though some of us hold our breath when he does the same way I do when a teen practicing driving gets too close to a mailbox).   They wanted him to be twelve, to be like them, more independent. It would make him better than he was, more perfect by letting him do things imperfectly. 

 Every step toward his independence came for me with a list of worries…would he remember each time to do what he needed to do?  Free will and freedom, growing up is hard to do, and I suspect, harder on this grown up.  The more was as much about taking on, as it was about surrendering, dying to the self that gave love through service that now was no longer required so that new service could be given.

“You must do more.”  Seemed like a motto to embrace in this time when all our enjoyments, education, work and ordinary efforts take extra effort.  Willing to do the more requires we both will to do and do so willingly.  When we’re sent from the mass, whether we’ve watched it on television or been in person, we’re sent, commissioned to do this very thing, the more.  We aren’t merely to receive passively, but to respond actively in our hearts and allow Christ to transform our lives.  We will go from being men who fish to fishers of men. We will go from being water to being the better vintage of wine. We will go from five loaves and two fishes to twelve baskets left over after feeding five thousand.  I thought about all the ways in which we sometimes get used to things we should not. Covid-19 taught this through big and little ways.  We shouldn’t have become used to long hours and not having dinner together whenever possible.  We shouldn’t have traded in time in commutes where we served work rather than our families.   The time home also showed me other ways we shouldn’t have, which Paul’s siblings corrected via natural intervention. 

Trisomy 21 means the child has a little extra, a little more.  His needs mean we need to do the little extra, the more his siblings have done with and for him, helped him to do more with and without them.   He could do more.  I should do more.  We should do more. Why? Because it has always been God’s will for all of us, for each of us, to be more than we planned, and do become more perfect even as we go about the business of living this life imperfectly.

 

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

There Was a Lack, Just Not What We Thought.

 Having endured Zoom in the Spring when we did triage teaching, having a virtual classroom in the Fall is not significantly different.  Time grinds to a halt in terms of the give and take of lessons or conversation.  At the same time, when work is required, time superaccellerates and by the end of the day, no matter who you are, you feel aged.   

I view this time of long distance education as preparation for that day when we opt to leave this planet.  We will have to endure long spans of hours without variety, in which strenous exercise and getting out is not a serious reality.  I have learned if I wasn't already sure, that I will be staying here.  

Food therapy has limitations and we've met and exceeded them.   
No amount of mindfulness, stretches or fun videos substitutes for the sheer variety of going somewhere else.   

There is one possible bright spot from this now six month long haitus from actual reality lived out in the actual world...we may shed our addiction to screens because they bore us as never before. 

Every day, I'm picking up a book and reading, going outside and walking, and art and writing with a pen holds a greater alure than the keyboard.   The reality is, we want a reality we're not having, even when we're doing boring things like bills or errands.

We want the tangible part of life we've had removed.  What we're all keenly aware of, is the lack.   
Wearing a mask is necessary, but it's the visible reminder of the lack.   Social distancing is necessary, but it's the physical and social reminder of the lack.  

Driving to get a little something for my youngest son, he reminded me to put on the mask in the drive-thru. He also punched in the phone number when I gave him the digits one by one...and I realized, these sort of moments wouldn't happen outside of the Covid-19 restrictions.  For him, this time with all of his family has meant he learned to ride a bike, to check out groceries using the self checker and bag them, to use the computer to mute and to show video on Zoom, to play video games with his siblings like Brawl, how to take a shower all by himself, how to wash his hair.  He's learned how to work with his Dad in the garden, and how to set the the table or clear it, and load or unload the dishwasher.  He's learned to feed the turtles and how to get out the ingredients for grilled cheese or for scrambled eggs.  He's become fully potty trained, and he knows how to make a bed even if he doesn't always do it.   He can hang a coat on a hanger.  He can operate the television better than me.  He takes down the garbage and can bring out the recycling.  All these ordinary skills came from having spools of uninterrupted time, where we couldn't exchange the present for efficiency.  

Perhaps it wasn't the lack that was missing, but us from the present.  

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Where have you been?

 It's September 3rd and I haven't posted anything since the second to last week of August.  

I haven't quit writing, but I have been doing other things...like trying to fight the internet.  I'll wait while you tell me how stupid that is...like I don't have the emotional lumps to prove your point.   

I've also been prepping for the beginning of a new school year which meant intensive training on new technology and getting 12 people ready for back to school when we will be going to school in a way we never have before.  It's daunting and we need to as a nation recognize that we are experimenting on our children about how they learn, but doing it with literally no will to actually allow for experimentation. We've all become first years in this scenario, with no experience to back it up because there is no experience to back this up.   

This is as of yet, an experience none of us have experienced.  

In other writing news, I pitched a book and they said yes, so I'm the dog that caught the car, and thus now have to finish writing it....so naturally, I'm blogging instead.  This is my nature, always spiraling out, getting to some, needing to get to other, and thinking always, what should I be doing, why can't I muster the will to do that?    

I understand the worry, because we are wilful but often about the wrong things...see prior paragraphs.  However, they should let us have the opportunity to try, because this quarantine has taught us a lot about ourselves.  

What have I learned? 

Covid-19 reveals what we will and won't do, and what we value.   I've learned I love to cook for my children, it's a joy for me that when I don't do, is a sadness.   
Motherhood for me must include cozy times of reading together and chocolate chip cookies. 
I've also learned to schedule driving practice or it doesn't happen. 
Ditto for anything else that needs to happen.  Write it down or it isn't happening.   

I've also been grateful for all the stollen time with my family, every second is precious.   

What do I hope as we begin to try and pick up the pieces...I hope they find screens less enchanting.   

I want my kids to pick up a book and read, get on a bike and ride, and play games with each other.  I think if they did every class for 30 minutes with 30 minutes after break, they could have every class every day and people would feel far less frustration or confusion than they do now.   I want all of us to learn, we didn't need to do all those errands that ate up the day...much of it can wait.   

Learning to recognize people by their eyes might be the greatest lesson.  We tend to not see or recognize people, but having masks means we must and that's a good thing.   

I've also learned, I use writing as a stall against dealing with laundry, dishes, bills and bigger projects I need to tackle, but I've run out of words about this...so I'd better get to work.   

Sunday, August 23, 2020

The Next Four Months Through the Palantir.

Laughing at the universe when the universe seems dedicated to sucking all the joy out of life is a form of defiance, necessary if we want to do more than survive. I submit that the months of 2020 have engaged in a year long experiement of "Hold my Corona."
The following are by no means guaranteed outcomes of the coming four months, but these are our best guesses as to what is yet to come:
10) Technology allows dogs to talk to us, and we discover they're not quite as impressed with us as we thought.
9) The internet produces a strange merger of Baby Shark, Friday and the Nyah Nyah Pop tart cat that is both catchy and unstoppable, trending to the point of melting everyone's brains.
8) Fashion declares kulottes and puffy sleeves are in again. Everyone looks like balloon animals that lost some of their air.
7) Chocolate in all its forms is found to be unhealthy and banned. Likewise for beer, wine and bacon. Riots ensue.
6) The only music allowed by the algorhythms that dominate I Heart Radio are Rick Ashley and Bonnie Tyler, and so we're in a total ecplise of the heart which we are never gonna give up.
5) Netflix runs out of shows. So does every other streaming and cable network.
4) When Disney goes bankrupt and the House that Mickey Built turns out the lights, the films go into the vault and we never get to binge watch the 22 films of the Marvel Universe again...we're just stuck with the stupid Fox X-men series.
3) Food Network, in a desperate attempt to remain relevant when all restaurants are floundering, is 24-7 Restaurant Impossible, and hires Tom Cruise as a secondary co-host. People don't mind it, but the food, like Cruise's body of work, is so forgetable, people don't remember what they ate 24 hours later.
2) Facebook, Twitter and all social media, in an attempt to curb misinformation block everybody. It doesn't help.
1) The 24-7 Christmas radio program that normally starts in mid November, starts September 5th, if only because we can't be sure we'll make it to December. Finally, cats also respond to the technology and they think about us just what we always thought.

Leaving a comment is a form of free tipping. But this lets me purchase diet coke and chocolate.

If you sneak my work, No Chocolate for You!