Over at the Register

After a long dry spell (only a week but it felt longer), here's my latest over at the Register.

Over at Aleteia Today

Hope you're having a happy 4th of July. 

Date nights are like little Sundays, retreats for your marriage. Schedule a date with your spouse this week, and the next. You won't be sorry.

A Day Without Sunshine*

by Guest Blogger, Marc Antonetti.

Today March 8, 2017 is "A Day without a Woman" day; and like a day without sunshine, your regular columnist--Sherry--is nowhere to be seen.  

The corporate big wigs at Chocolate for Your Brain however would not shut down the operation in solidarity with the movement and threatened to fire her if there was no column. So she asked for a ghostwriter (that male in her life who is rarely seen or heard from in public) today.

So how is our day without a woman going?  Well, we got up late and the kids had bratwurst and beans for breakfast. Immediately the chorus of "Where's Mom?" began. I answered with my typical straightforwardness, "Not here."  And "Somewhere else." and in homage to that great bedtime book, Owl Moon, "Maybe a fox got her."  

When they saw they were getting yesterday's left overs in their lunch boxes, a second round of "No really Dad, where is Mom?"  I replied, "Go brush your teeth, and your hair."  

I thought I was doing fine until I had to find socks and some sort of remotely matching outfit for each of the youngest two five minutes later. By then the yellow school buses had rolled past our house. It was now 9:10.  After dropping them off at school (itself operating on minimal efficiency) I headed home to telework.  

I put on a continuous loop for the "Hunt for Red October," "A Bridge Too Far" and "Crimson Tide." The day without women was looking up.  I could indulge in films without girls in them (and Gates McFadden and Liv Ulman have too few lines to count in the first two films).  I reprogrammed all the radio stations in the car from Mix 107.5 and the other pop music channels from the "80's, 90's and Today" to SportsTalk 980, the Sports Junkies, and the new AC/DC channel over on Sirius/XM.

Of course, this reverie lasted until I saw it was already 2:30 and time to make the first run out to pick one kid up from school, race home for the next four to arrive by bus and then out again to get the oldest two from after school activities.

By the time I got home, the chorus of "Where's Mom?" started up.

"Can you sign this?"
"I don't understand my homework!"
"I need something for the bake sale."
"My brother did this to me."  "She started it!"  "What's for dinner?"  "I'm hungry." 

The high of watching Sean Connery for the better part of the afternoon wore off, leaving me with the distinct desire to say "Calgon take me away!" or at the very least, "Where's Sherry?" 

On one more serious note, I will be continuing Sherry's prayer requests, so if I may, Can I pray for you?  I would also ask that we all give a prayer, of thanks for all the women in our lives without whom we wouldn't be where we are today, and for greater unity among all of us, no matter what the gender,

Sherry Green Antonetti will Return with Small Success Thursday tomorrow.  I hope.

Who Wants a World of Hurt?

No one no one no one no one no one ever wants to be rejected.  No one wants to be thought clueless, uniformed, lazy, stupid or unthinking.  We're human. We want to be in the in crowd.  We want to belong.  We certainly don't want to be written off or dismissed or ignored.

So right now, being Catholic means you probably don't want to talk about the current push for same sex marriage.  We'd honestly rather fold socks, clean out the fridge, paint the stoop, schedule a root canal, wait on hold with insurance, clean the bathrooms and deal with the I.R.S. rather than talk about this subject because we know the only way we don't get clobbered by the politically correct police is to parrot the I'm cool with that line, or be invisible, silent.  

Not a way to witness. But who wants the pain?   Then there's that nagging, "Take up your cross and follow me."  and that "denying one's self bit." and the recognition that not saying what is Truth is the equivalent of being part of the "in" crowd that went along all the way to the cross, not out of love.  The in crowd chose Barabbas.  The in crowd shouted "Crucify Him."  Being outside of the in crowd feels very very unsafe and it is, by the world's standards, but it is the only safe place, if one looks at this through Catholic sensibilities. 

How to explain being against gay marriage, when opposition has been painted as homophobic, bigoted, self righteous, angry, hateful, limited, old fashioned, unrealistic and unfair?  Why do I have to explain this at all?  Because it keeps popping up. 

Because my children will have to live in this world. 

And if I want them to understand and believe what is taught about marriage in our Catholic faith, I'd better be able to do better than stammer if I want it to be part of their hearts.  I have to compete with the 1000 little moral vipers that whisper every day, through songs, through movies, through television, through commericals and all the DJ commentary in between, all sex is permissible, all behavior is licit, there are no limits and that what they do with their bodies affects no one.     Here, have a Yaz pill.  Hit the radio, the Katy Perry song about a threesome is on.  Sounds like a party. 

It is easier to explain with other sexual sins.  Pornography for instance, hurts the person in the shot, the viewer, the producer, the purchaser, and anyone who comes into contact with the image.  It is a permanent exposure that thanks to the Internet, will live forever.  It is the transformation of the beautiful and the intimate, into the base and impersonal.  Most people can get that pornography exploits and destroys natural relationships, natural intimacy, and injures all involved.  What if all sexual sin is about the removing of the sacred, either by eliminating the relationship/intimacy or the sacrificial nature of the act itself (giving to other, open to life, part of a permanent commitment to the soul of the other)?  It is a frame of reference that demands sacrifice no matter who you are.  Single? Chaste in heart and body.  Married? Open to life and faithful forever.   Neither path is easy.  "This is hard, who can accept it?"  I believe the followers of Christ asked.  (And I would agree, it is indeed, difficult).  Are you going to leave me too?  is the next question.   No... 

But I was still afraid.  So I tabled the blog post and went to bed. 

Today, I was running behind in everything. It was a mass day at school and one child couldn't find his shoes, another his tie, a third didn't like her mass shirt. The fourth needed me to button hers, (she had it inside out and backward).  Lunches were thrown together.  Somebody's sleeve was missing a button. Two people didn't bring their band instruments.  One forgot their lunch.  Someone left a coat. I noted in the window, three needed hair cuts.  The laundry still loomed on the couch and the crazed rabid mother search for a tie and shoes and the like had revealed that at least three sets of drawers needed to be reorganized. 

I felt overwhelmed as I stopped for gas and noted the car needed to be cleaned out.  Rummaging for 4 quarters, I began the task of cleaning out the van.  Time was not my friend. I'd been late to the elementary school Thanksgiving Breakfast and discovered I only had one shot on my camera.  I had 20 minutes to make it to my youngest son's Thanksgiving party.  The problems of explaining to two children who were asking questions about same sex marriage, about Catholicism, and about what it meant, also crowded my head.  My cowardice of not writing also sat there saying, "You should have." and my own brain screamed back, "Are you nuts?" Cleaning and mentally fatigued, the phrase "Fantastically inadequate." came to mind.  It fit my mood, it fit my feelings about God's trust in me to raise these people, to manage them, to get from point A to point B on time, in faith development and in actual life.

The radio plays the mass every day at 10. I'd left it on in an attempt to quiet my own mood, but so far, it had only succeeded in sharpening those feelings, echoing what my heart was screaming about how unprepared I was as the first reading from Revelations talked about being prepared. I was the poster child for unprepared and at least today, so were my children.  I feel I feel I feel...Fantastically inadequate! 

And then the words broke through all of that junk, words whispered to my heart, "Perhaps Sherry, it's time to stop paying so much attention to what you feel."  and I flashed to Mary receiving the news she would be the mother of Christ. She didn't list all her anxieties, all the reasonable reasons why this was impossible or it was not a good idea or how hard life could/would be, she didn't give even voice to any of her feelings.  She said, "Let it be done to me."   To have a Marian heart is not to spend so much thought, feeling and energy on one's own mind, but to serve those around you, to surrender.  I'd been caught up in my own feelings, rather than trying to address the reality. The car was clean and my mood considerably lighter.

So I begin again.   We are called to love, we are called to holiness.  Everything else is immaterial.   No nation, no laws, no policies, no trends, no television, no popular people are supposed to alter that course.  

How do we witness?   How do I explain how we are to be, act, believe in a world that denies all of it as merely a flavor or opinion?  

By starting with what is beautiful, true and knowable.  

Dear Children,

The issue of same sex marriage, is the challenge to our faith in this age.  It is a hard cross to bear, and a harder truth to witness. But I suspect every age, every person has felt that hard pull and thought theirs was the hardest to face.   

God practically shouts at us from the scripture, from creation, from everyone around us, first and foremost, to be present.  To Wake Up!  Sin lulls the soul to sleep, sating the body, blinding the intellect, dulling the heart. Demand less, expect less, do less, love less, care less.    

There are tons of people out there who will tell you God isn't interested in what you do in the bedroom.  It is a goofy argument designed to turn the God who is Love into a harsh Peeping Tom.  But here's the thing.  God invented sex.   God created us male and female.  Even more shockingly, God has a plan for each and every one of us.  And whatever that plan is, there is one thing it does not involve:  Sin.   Sin divorces us from others and from God.  Sin serves itself.  Sin is intolerant of anything other than itself.  Sin always begets more sin.  Sin always corrodes.  Sin always corrupts.  Sin always isolates.  "And we wept precious, to be so alone." 

The only thing that saves us from this vicious insane awful cycle of self deception and self indulgence and self authoring, is love, God's grace evident in the world and in others, and sometimes, simply by itself, pouring into the soul when nothing else can reach so deeply.  God can break through the sin  --see Saint Paul, Saint Augustin, Saint Francis, Saint Peter, Saint Martha, Saint Mary Magdalen, etc, but when He does, the soul involved (in all these cases) radically alters their life (removing sin).  You can shortcut the process by avoiding the pitfalls all together, but only by your own free choice.  

To understand what is beautiful and intimate and of infinite value about marriage, one must first acknowledge there is something intimate, beautiful and infinite within the confines of marriage, the vow to be permanently present to one soul as a window through which God may be permanently present to that soul. For those of us not fully awake in our faith, the sacrament of marriage, and the subsequent children is one of the ways God breaks into our hearts to grow them bigger.  It is why the Catholic Church cannot sanction same sex marriage anymore than it can sanction artificial birth control. It is not open to life. It is not what God intended as we understand it from sacred scriptures.   We couldn't imagine not loving these children we receive, but we couldn't imagine loving anyone that much before.  To a person, we suffer from a fallen imagination, we cannot comprehend loving as God loves until face to face and struck by love and all its overwhelmingness.  Sacramental marriage marks the beginning of waking up to the adult plan we've not yet begun to comprehend, how we are to witness. 


Your heart is to be cherished and preserved for God, and whomever God deems should be entrusted with your heart.  Your body also, likewise is designed and created and even imagined in God's plan, for a single other soul, to grow that person's soul, and those you will touch by your relationship and your children.   Love is always based on sacrifice, on self denial, on eternity, on generosity, on kindness, on mercy, on truth.  It always reflects all of these things.  It also is always rooted in trust in the one who is Love.  

There is more, much more to tell on this, and I will keep working on it, but know we will always love you no matter what, and what we want most for you, is not popularity or all A's or accolades or scholarships, but true friends and a holy life.   Both are possible, but only through self sacrifice. 
I won't promise a world without hurt, but I will promise a world filled with grace. 

Love you, Mom

Tips for a Happy Marriage

My brother is getting married this summer. So I've spent some time musing over the nature of marriage and drawing upon 22 years of growing ever deeper in love with my husband being perpetually moved that it can always be deeper. I thought I'd try to craft some tips for my brother and his beloved based on my experience. Then we went to see "The Taming of a Shrew."

I had to wrestle with the reality that what Kate says at the end is true, it is how a wife can best love her husband. It is a gorgeous outpouring of love to her husband, an exposition of what it means to love.  And what does it mean to love one's spouse?  It means to obey, to wash the feet, to say yes even when it is hard, to let go of one's self, one's own ego and one's own desire to always have the last word, to always win.

I had to fight with the play and its closing message despite the fact that I'm not exactly what one would call a hard feminist.  Why? Because I like to win. I like to have the last word.  I like to hold on to something that is only mine. Who wants to submit?  And then I realized, those words, that want sounded like Gollum. Ugh.  That's even worse than being submissive, that's being dominated by self.

Here's Kate's last word on the subject.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience,
Too little payment for so great a debt.
. . .
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot,
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.

I'm not going to touch the weaker sex stuff if only because it does not hold my interest.  I had to wrestle because the story itself is problematic at best.  I struggled because the story undermined the soliloquy at the end, because we didn't get the story arc of the man becoming less absorbed in being loved, and more so in loving Kate.  I've seen other interpretations where this last long (the longest in the play) speech by Katherine is considered ironic, but that interpretation doesn't fit with how she conducts herself or how the rest of the play holds.  She hasn't been unwilling to speak before, ergo, for her to speak kindly about the role of her husband and her role as his wife, it has to come from her heart.  Up to now, Kate would not do other than she wills, for her to suddenly not do as she wills, would be out of character. It is that she now wills to do as her husband wills. 

 Modern sensibilities tried to massage the play into that place, but like a dress size too small, it didn't quite fit as much as we might wish otherwise. The director and the actors worked to trim the words of language that portrayed the man being superior...the play attempted to present that these were equals in marriage, as they were in courtship. To counter them, the courted Bianca with her new husband were only beginning to spar and find their roles with each other, now that the chase element of their relationship had ended, the same with her former suitor and his widow bride.

I was interested in trying to shake out of the poetry, the truths that let this rusty Shakespearean relic live beyond its Elizabethan sensibilities about roles and gender. Absent a deeper meaning, the play would atrophy to join the ranks of Measure for Measure (another problematic play), and sadder fare like Titus Andronicus, a play so bad even my favorite teacher (30 +years of teaching and loving the Bard) advised not to bother reading let alone seeing.

So I sat there thinking about it.  Perfect love, is what saints do.  They love as God loves.  God wills us to love as God loves.  We are shrews to the last.  It is only God's love that brings us closer to God's love. I wondered if this again was Shakespeare playing with the notion of what it means to sublimate one's will to love, for love, by loving.  Given the recent modern speculation about his faith life, one had to wonder whether or not he was exploring this notion using humans to play out the roles?  The taming of a soul requires exactly this, sublimation, total obedience, total willing alignment of one's will with God's. The Bridegroom is Christ and we, the Church the bride and we are to be...obedient. 

And when I got to that point in my thinking, I couldn't help letting out a bit of a sigh.  Boy that's a tough and I don't really want to.  And if we're to do this with God (in Big love), then aren't we do to this in our lives (little love).  Tougher still.  Even though I could understand saying that yes and that I'd chosen and said I did want to, there were certainly times and moments when I didn't want to, didn't think I should, felt I must carve out my own.  (My precious).  Mulling this all over aloud, at this point, my husband grinned and said, "I loved the play." to which I shrewishly replied, "yes and I did too because you did." which made us both laugh, and we walked hand in hand in the rain to our car six blocks away. 

For all of us, we do have to surrender.  And our whole lives are a process of learning to do just that.

So here are my tips to aid you in the taming of each other's souls, blessings to you both.  40 days to go.


9) Laugh.  It solves almost everything imaginable, even things like taxes, like sickness, like facing a child needing surgery or a traffic ticket when you were cautioned, watch for this road; laughter is the instant band-aid to almost all pain, and it does make it more bearable.

8) Pray together and pray for each other.  This is part of your vocation.  It is also a great honor and gift you can give your spouse.  I recommend a daily prayer together either to start the day and/or end it.  It will grow your hearts towards each other better than anything else.  It always works...and sometimes in grander ways than you intended. (I would say always, because you don't know all the ways prayer works, but that presumes I  know how prayer works.  I only know, it works).

7) Play.  This seems obvious, but reality makes grown ups out of all of us at some point, and grown ups can be terribly terribly boring.  We need date nights and games and sports and plays and music and dancing and all of that, even if there are tons of chores that need to be done.  Yeah. You're married. You don't have to go on a date. TIP WITH BIG RED FLAGS: Go.On.a.Date. Call it that. Schedule it. Make it happen.  It's fun. It's important.  It makes a difference. And sometimes, you get to pick the movie.

6) Listen. Everyone talks about listening.  Listening requires more than not moving one's mouth, it requires we hear all that is said and unsaid.  Dates help with this.  Prayer too.  And Playing...and noticing what needs to be done...see, it all works together, like a casserole but better than any one I've ever tasted.   

5) Be open to being pushed out of your comfort zone. Most of us like to pretend that we have achieved an equilibrium in our habits and sensibilities and that everyone else is unreasonable.  Memo: We are all unreasonable.  Because we love, we will have to be willing to be submissive (which means sometimes, you submit when you would rather not).  This is not pick your battles, this is pick to be more generous than you planned. Plan to be more generous.

4) Pay attention and plan.  Birthdays, anniversaries and holidays matter. I hate that my husband has a Christmas memory of getting socks. So does the every day. I love that he has the memory that I get him his socks every morning. So pay attention to those little gifts of every day, and plan for the bigger gifts that are not every day.  Not noticing the little things that can be done with great love is a quick way to make a marriage dull, (or exciting but not in a not good way).

3) Forgive. It's important because I'm not a planner and so those socks could have rightfully earned me a permanent dog house spot for Christmas, but it didn't.  Love isn't never saying I'm sorry, (I always hated that stupid quote). It's being willing to say, "I forgive you."  And then making a conscious effort to make sure that you never give socks for a present again...

2) Treasure your family, old and new. Your husband/wife didn't sprout out of thin air. They are the sum total of their history, their education, their family life experiences.  The people who first loved the person you love, helped create this person you love.  They deserve your love for raising this amazing soul. 

1) Keep your heart close. Don't badmouth your spouse. Don't engage in taking tally of who has done what and who has given more. This isn't about fairness, it's about love.  Don't allow poisonous thoughts to fester, in the form of entertainment or company.  This is your beloved.  He/She should be honored first, and as such, it is your job to both keep their honor and defend it.

Finally, because this is a sacramental life you are choosing, stay close to the sacraments.  The world has a lot against living a sacramental marriage.  There are temptations, there are trials, there are enemies.  God does not send us out into the world to witness unarmed, but we must return for refreshment, for strengthening, for training on how best to reveal God's love to the world within the confines of our relationships.  We need the reminders of others, of our family, of our Church to sustain ourselves throughout this trial of life. 

Oh...and maybe next time...pick a different play to go see on date night.

Make Sure You Make Time for Me

It's the motto of every woman's magazine article that ever was.  It's the demand of every commercial that stumps for yogurt, birth control, a gym or a cup of coffee.  "Me." "Time for me." "Me time." as if all those other minutes are selfless and as such, this little oasis must be carved out of the world to ensure sanity.  As always, the world has it backwards.  These little emotional get aways are in addition to the theoretical mandatory 55 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes reading, and 8 hours of sleep that we're all supposed to get every day. Weren't those me moments too?  How much is the daily recommended amount of time we're supposed to spend on others? It isn't that people don't need sometimes the silence of isolation to think or to rejuvenate or to organize, but who loses during that "me time?"  Whoever the you is, in your life.   What does me time really mean? 

"Go away because I'm sick of serving you?" "Get out of here because I don't want to give the emotional investment you need right now?"  We're not supposed to seek "Me time." We're supposed to serve summa --all.  We're supposed to wash the feet. We're supposed to pour out our lives like blood and water, to empty everything, to surrender everything.  And no matter how often we might have done it, or how easy we might think it is, sometimes it's not just hard; it's excrutiating.

A life of love is a life of sacrifice and it isn't just little things like coffee breaks and uninterrupted writing and reading of good books or watching a favorite television show, it is 1000 sublimations in a day, getting up before we want to, foregoing a shower, fixing food for others, unloading the dishwasher and reloading, making the bed forgotten, turning off the lights and emptying the trash including the apple core and hidden pudding cup and 10 foils from chocolate kisses.  It is not going out in the evening because a child needs to talk, it is not talking when a child needs to talk.  It is reading one more bed time story and holding a baby that only wants to be held for hours and hours and hours. 

It is running the errand to Target and to Walmart and then to Michael's on Sunday night (to allow for a project that got forgotten) to be finished.  It is reading with the same enthusiasm for the 1 billionth time, Green Eggs and Ham and Harry Potter and those deadly summary of the plot line by line Disney books that you bought back when you could get suckered into those 1 cent book clubs.   Dreams of degrees and being world famous don't die overnight. There isn't a moment when we say, "Die dream..Die!"  because it isn't a death, it isn't an abandonment, it is a surrender of the self.  Surrendering of the self is a perpetual struggle.  Telling yourself "This will have to wait." because they won't doesn't mean it doesn't sting, doesn't mean it doesn't tempt, doesn't mean it doesn't remind one's self that this is a sacrifice, this is a gift.  Further, the battle has to be won again and again and again because the ego doesn't like taking no for an answer.  

Surrender of what one wants begins with marriage, with falling in love.  That surrender continues and it extends and grows as a marriage grows, and as a family begins.  The radical sublimation of the woman's body to another is a mirror of what the soul, all souls, are supposed to orient themselves towards becoming.  Every cell in a woman's body goes into overdrive trying to protect and feed and nourish the baby, even allowing for the depleting of calcium from one's teeth to make sure the new bones grow.  Nothing is withheld even if the mind and heart of the mother is not yet fully on board. 

Then we see that little face and wonder how we could ever love so much, how we could bear not looking at him or her, how we could bear not holding them, how our hearts could bear so much love and not burst for joy.  Time stops for a moment, when the heart and mind finally catch up to the body that has just delivered everything that it had.   The rest of life is learning to reorient all three towards that perpetual complete surrender and the battles of appetites and prior selfish habits to reassert themselves.  It is ugly, halting, clumsy and fierce.  Even when we think we've reached a moment, we haven't.  We've just come to a momentary plateau.  More surrender is in the works.  There is always more to give, always more to surrender, always less we could demand for ourselves.  Absent love, it would all be drudgery and frustration.  Love changes everything. Love makes even the most meaningless of tasks --like laundry and dishes and diapers, meaningful, because it makes those acts gifts of time, of attention, of sublimation of self.

This isn't to say that a life so ordered won't be filled with feasts or epic moments of sheer awesomeness, only that we aren't called to make our lives such that they read like an Epic or a Resume of the beautiful, successful and accomplished.   We're called to live for others, to be successful at creating beauty, to accomplish the beatitudes today and every day, and that if fully embraced, leaves no "me time," only time for others, and a cup brim filled of memories of the daily labors of love.

The Vocation of Mother and Wife

This weekend, I had the chance to snatch a bit of a mini-retreat being held at my church.  It featured a pastor from another parish who had once been an associate pastor at ours.  He'd been a good friend and was much beloved. I remembered his zeal for the sacrament of confession and his absolutely resonating homilies and wondered if my memory had gilded over time.  It didn't matter.  I also knew I needed the break, needed the silence of listening, of being that came from going to the church without anyone and being there.

Standing in the church hoping to  steal the sacrament of reconciliation to top it off, there were people gathered for a wedding.  I stopped to admire the deliberate beauty, the details that included everything, even the men with their silk embroidered shirts.  There was a luminous quality to all these details and in the guests faces, waiting for the mass to begin.  Here, we cannot multi-task. Here, we cannot email or check websites or be distracted beyond the temptations of our own minds to run down rabbit holes.  We need this still place.  I stood in that stillness, knowing that I needed it and yet was restless.  I opted to let my sins stand as the line was still six deep with the organist warming up and headed back down to try and sit for the lecture.

Alas, I do not sit well. It is not in my nature to be still.  We'd barely made it through the opening prayer when I was fidgity.  I thought I'd take notes so I scrounged for paper in my purse.  There wasn't any.  So I went to the table for notices like 40 days for life and took a sheet.  While there, I noticed a woman wrestling with four.  This was familiar territory.  I went to help.  We wound up taking her smaller ones to the playground. We exchanged names, we shared stories and I felt better, that I needed to hear this woman and see what others see when they see me, and watching her, I could see how good it was, how much of a witness she was holding her daughter and caring for the other three in tow.  I felt blessed to meet her. 

Returning to the hall and the talk finally, I caught the tail end and I don't know what was said before, but he saved the best for the finale.  He spoke of priests living out their vocation, of saying each mass as if it were the first, their last, and the only.  And I thought, substitute being wife or mother and you have the prescription for how we are to pour out our lives.  We are to live each day as if it is the first day we are blessed to be his wife, each day as if it is the last day we will have that blessing, and to hold that title as only.   Likewise, we are to be mother to our children, to each as if it were that first day when we first inhaled the divine smell of them, as if it were the last day we'd be so blessed to hold them, and as the only, for each of them, as if they are the only.  

The mind reeled with the idea of seeking to treat each day as a birthday, a honeymoon, a sacrament, a mass, a feast.   It made it hard to fathom how life could be other than luminous even with all the scourges of minutia that awaited me. It was hard to wait, being so impatient to come back home, to fix lunch, to change diapers, to fold laundry, if only as part of pouring out whatever it was I'd kept in reserve.  If we do this, if we pour it all out, the best will be served later in the feast. 

This world does not understand motherhood or fatherhood or wifeliness or husbandness.  It views the first two as chains against freedom, the later two as utterly unnecessary.  The world views the product of such unions, a pure burden.   The world does not understand treating people with such permanent lavish love, or loving beyond what is easy.  The world talks of making time for "me" or balancing life.  We aren't called to be balanced, the world on one side and our faith/God on the other with us at the fulcrum.   The two aren't equally weighted.  It is us that weigh each according to our own heart's scale.  What we measure, we limit in value.  This is how much I will love, no more. 

We are not called to a limited life.  We have a limited life.  We are called to unlimited love.  We are called to love with abandon, forever, today, the people we have been given.

It's hard in even beginning to grasp that concept, not to imagine how wonderful today and all the todays to come will be, but now I can't wait!

A Beautiful Dozen Roses

Twenty years of marriage and you discover that the roses of every day bloom all around in a way they didn't in early courtship when they showed up long stem in a box.  The seamless invisible courtship of a heart that takes place in everyday life doesn't make for good television viewing or summer reading, but it satisfies and lingers long after the actual moment.  Today, I got up to wash the dishes (I'd fallen asleep on the couch and then gone to bed without so much as a glance towards the kitchen when my husband had woken me).  Half of what I would have to do had been done and he'd moved the laundry along.  These are the little things that weren't expected but made the morning easier. 

It's Tuesday and it was raining so I ran some of the garbage out, figuring the rest could wait until Friday when hopefully, the weather would be better.  Walking back up our long winding driveway in the rain, my husband pulled back into the driveway from dropping off our two oldest at the Metro.  He opened the door for me to get in and ride the rest of the way and took the remaining cans himself while I went inside to deal with the school kids who were finishing up breakfast.

Folded fresh white socks, a gassed up car, a birthday card for my sister and unexpected imported olive oil brought home from a gourmet vendor and a rub of the neck unsolicited while I'm doing the dishes, all of these are roses by another name.  Leaving to take the second flotilla of kids to school, "I left you the last diet coke."  A kiss goodbye and though he has left, I can feel traces of his presence everywhere in the house.   Grateful I'd made him lunch and laid out his things for easy pick up, I begin the next part of the morning. 

My daughters were coloring and dancing to Taylor Swift's Love Story and singing it full throttle and their little brother joined in.  It was a celebration (as they are five and three and two), of what a child sees when they see a fairy tale and all I can think is, "Oh honeys, you have only a snatch of the richness that is coming after that part of the tale, when the happily ever after unfolds."

Survival of the Dullest

It’s summer. We’re going on vacation and once again, it’s near my birthday. Every year I suffer from the annual temptation to prove I’m just as big an idiot as I sometimes know that I am.

On my thirty ninth birthday, we went to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. My husband and I took turns staring at the Top Thrill Dragster, a 420 foot high monster that essentially launched its cars and halpless passengers with air craft carrier type precision. We’d take the kids to the mini coaster and the log flume and come back to stare. We got food and drinks and took in a show but we came back just to look. At some moment, we became desensitized to the fear factor and began to mention the idea of each of us having a go. We’d laugh and demand to know who was going first. The danger point was when we were walking back from the haunted house. My husband noticed, “The line’s not that long.” The ride had suffered a malfunction and so people had cleared out. I’d just worked up the nerve to get in line when we discovered, the car with people in it was stuck suspended 374 feet up and just now getting freed to come back down. Cowardice or sanity, take your pick, it prevailed and I did not proclaim my foolishness or temporarily gain back my youth by defying death as a result.


At 40, my annual danger lust sought again to be sated when the local sporting goods store put up a climbing wall. I so wanted to climb it but I was six months pregnant and even extreme sporting good stores it seems, have limits. My husband breathed a sigh of relief. I told him I’d be back next year but the place closed that part of the store down for some reason.  At 42, I got roller blades.  Nuff said.

My desire for something beyond the ordinary occasionally allows me to sometimes impress my children, like when I dive off the high dive or do stand up. Weirding them out I think is an equally desired reaction. It has also resulted in the occasional trip to the emergency room, like after I tried to do the monkey bars at 32. However my carefree spirit conflicts with my equally natural maternal instincts which scream No! when my sons or daughters propose engaging in reckless activity like wanting to take the metro to downtown DC to catch a movie, biking to the 7-11 for ice cream or proposing a roadtrip with friends to California after graduation.


The “AHhhhhhhhh are you NUTS?” gene activates and their somewhat show-offy daredevil mom becomes the safety first and always and only mommy. Regardless of my own predilections to court danger, I’m not about to oblige my children’s wilder sides. Why not?  Because I'm the Mommy that's why.  Because I like their insides inside of them and their outsides just the way they are. They can risk their necks once they’re middle aged like me and they’re someone else’s worry.

This year, we’re going to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for a family reunion. Our family has vacationed here before. When last we visited, there was a pending attraction, the Zorb. For the uninitiated, Zorb is the latest import from New Zealand designed to kill off much of the existing population between the ages of 11 and well, I’m turning 44. It has the added bonus of being legal. The Zorbonaut or victim (take your pick), is strapped into a plastic clear globe inside of another plastic clear globe. For variety’s sake, you can opt for a wet or dry Zorb run. The wet one has the added bonus of water in the outside globe and being shot down one of two water flume tracks so the rolling and drowning occur within a controlled setting. In the dry scenario, you add the bonus of random gravity as you are thrown down a cliff/hill and left to bounce until you stop or die whichever comes first. I can readily attest to the absolute idiocy of paying to potentially die, drown, become a broken pile of bones or paralyzed in the name of fun. I must also concede the siren like call of this thrill ride is not without appeal.

In the meantime, my shrewd husband uses my dual nature to his advantage and my long term viability. In planning for this trip, having seen my eyes gleam as I mentioned, “Zorb is up and running,” and in an effort to make sure he isn’t suddenly a widower with nine children, he’s shown the promos from the web for Zorb to my oldest four. They all now desperately want to go. That sly dog just guaranteed I’ll be pool side reading books the whole week even if my life insurance is paid up. It just goes to show, you marry what you need and the species survives.

Baring Space Bars Except in Space

There are times when you can brown bag it, and times when one should hand one’s spouse a five spot and a kiss to cover everything. Learning when this domestic advisory rule applies is part of the early marriage process. That my husband willingly still submits to my meals at noontime is testimony of his endearing devotion to me, but in my defense, we were saving for a house at the time and this fell under the unseasoned wife rubric of “reasonable sacrifice.”

Once a week trips to the store meant usually limping to the weekend by Thursday. Early in our marriage, as part of an agreed upon plan to cut expenses, we declared a ban on fast food and no purchased lunches. Because my husband was running a bit late that morning, I gallantly offered to make his lunch. I felt very wifely. We were a team, working to scrounge like ants for a bigger place, the American dream, a home of our own. I would do my part by eliminating his need to go out during the day and buy food.

In fatter financial times, this mid day consisted of a sandwich, some crackers or chips, a piece of fruit, a few sodas, a napkin and something sweet. Cobbling together something so he could work through the noon hour when the refrigerator, closet and pantry all showed signs of being mostly bare, would require creative thinking. However, that day I learned that even thrift must sometimes give way to function, and that good intentions without the proper plan lead to the lunch from hell.

First, there was the sandwich. I’d found two ends of two different loaves of bread, one a cheap white, the other, multi-grain wheat with nuts; neither was full sized. Not having any lunch meats of any kind, I scraped the inside edges of the peanut butter and applied raspberry seedless sugar free jam liberally. Then things began to fall apart. The box of triscuits resembled the dregs of a shredded wheat cereal box. What I thought was a jar of pickles turned out to be jalapenos. Most sensible people would abandon the quest at this point, but self reflection is something I tend to experience after I complete a task, not prior.

A bag filled with rejected apricots, raisins and one dried pineapple wedge from a nature hike qualified as the fruit. The vegetable storage yielded a few mini-carrots that lacked the vibrant orange color most people expect in such vegetables for a zip lock. With nary a diet soda in sight, I plopped the one coke and a frozen water bottle in his bag hoping the unhealthiness of one would be canceled out by the other. I’d made a sandwich, a snack, a side and provided two drinks. As sad as the offering was, it still could be considered a lunch if I foraged a dessert.

Frantically scanning the shelves, there were no crackers, no chocolate bars tucked in the freezer for emergency purposes, no microwavable popcorn or lone abandoned granola bars to be found. Then, I spotted something. Granted, it wasn’t normal fare and it had been sitting for a good six months in the closet after its purchase but the date was still good. Impulsively, I popped it in the bag. Who could resist the lure of freeze dried Neapolitan ice cream bars from our last trip to the Air and Space museum?

In the halls of fame of bad wife moves, giving your husband a stale slightly crushed space bar for lunch ranks only marginally above infidelity, but I was too flush from the success of my hunter/gather adventure to recognize this before I kissed him good bye for the day.

Four hours later, the phone rang.
“Hey Sher?”
“Yes Love?” I answered.

“Remember how when we lived in New York you used to walk over to the bakery on Bleeker street and buy Semolina braided bread while it was still warm and then go to the Grand Union and get a stick of butter, and then to the butcher for half a pound of baloney and the Chinese grocer for a tomato from the vine?”

“Yes. We called those sometimes better than ...”
“Sandwiches, yes! Remember how romantic I thought it was that you would walk all over Greenwich Village just to fix me lunch?”

We sat on the phone the way married people sometimes do when they don’t have anything to say but don’t want to hang up.
“Sher?”
“Yes?”

“About the dessert.”
"How was it?"
"You think there might be a reason that particular souvenir hadn't been eaten in six months?"
"Maybe."
"Do you like freeze dried anything?" I sat there thinking about the fact that freeze dried ice cream tastes slightly worse than the smell of styrofoam peanuts.
"Oops." I said.

Bemused, he issued a husbandly edict no human could disagree with, “No space bars in lunch bags unless accompanied by the ambiance of being in an actual shuttle orbiting the earth.”

Seeing as I almost always like to squeeze in the last word, I issued a corollary: in a true marriage, even when all you have is space bars for lunch, you can still “feel the love.”

It’s just nicer to be on the giving side of that meal.

And Now, Equal Time

Anyone who thinks sexual morals discarded as easily as a wardrobe do not have an effect outside the two people enaged in the throws of whatever, need only look at the most recent example, the South Carolina Governor and his girlfriend in Argentina.

If you read the injured wife's piece as posted on Real Clear Politics, it is a beautiful reflection of what this man has lost, and it isn't his position of power in the world, but the relationship, the communion with a good woman and their four sons. Four young boys who must be heart broken to see suddenly themselves taller than their father at tender ages, and who now must shoulder a burden unasked for, trying to defend their broken family from an unloving prying world while each nursing their own individual highly concentrated pain they do not understand.

As an outsider, we can easily scorn, easily condemn, and easily judge, but this wife still loves this man and as outsiders, we should honor and mirror her behavior. Hers was a holy response to a complete betrayal, without being a doormat or an enabler.

In an age of instant access but no actual intimacy, this is what we as a society have, 24-7 armchair coaching/commentary on anyone and everyone who falls into the public eye. So keeping one's dignity when one is emmeshed in an undignified situation becomes difficult. She has managed it.

He has not.

In an age of blackberries, twitter, facebook, cellphones, Youtube and cameras placed everywhere, no one should consider themselves capable of living an anonymous life. And no one should be certain their worst moments as human beings won't become the subject of fodder for millions; least of all, politicians and people in positions of authority.

Perfection in our public leaders should not be a prerequisite of electability, but honesty and ethics ought to be at least skewed in the right direction. On a tangent, I have to rant, "Where to the Republicans go to find these sorts of people?" There have been moments when I have heard people remark that "This is the best." and then they reveal something, a school, a book, a show, a movie, a politican. And my first thought almost always is after I've read/watched/ listened, tasted, "If this is the best there is, then MAN are we in trouble." But I also know that my heart likes to try and harden, to be clever and cynical and that I have to beat that impulse down with a stick on a daily basis, but the world keeps giving me targets.

And then I remember, this is one family put under a microscope because of one family memebers' supreme stupidity and lack of moral and political judgment. I don't care how respected he was six days ago, he was stupid in his life and careless with those he professed to love. Dumb is the only word that is charitable in this circumstance. It is difficult not to want to unleash a score of seemingly righteous word rage on this person.

Fidelity is the first obligation of a spouse. It ought to be a willingly given given. Mark Sanford may have been a competent governor, but he put a woman before his wife, before his sons and before his God. Fortunately for him, his God and his wife love him enough not to strike him down, but those who do not love him, have struck and will continue to do so. If he had any sense, he'd understand that he is the most fortunate man in the whole world if he only lost the Governorship and the mistress. But if he had that same sense, he probably would have recognized, he had everything and surrendered it willingly for the wrong things.

I'd excoriate the man except I'm tired of all these cads and all these cackling harpies who glory in the destruction of a family as much as they do the emoliation of a career for political reasons, or because it justifies their own behavior, or because they hate the morals professed to be held true by those who have fallen.

So I've made a promise to myself to be restrained the next time and the next and the next and the next and the next and the next, regardless of political affiliation, because stoning the adulterer is not good for any of us, and this world encourages emotional and intellectual stoning. The men who left the adulteress behind had been the recipients of Christ's mercy as much as the woman herself.

I know I shouldn't have enjoyed raging at the Democrats for lining up to defend Bill Clinton, and I shouldn't stand with the firing squad to shoot Mark Sandford, because we aren't called to set fire to people, only to light the world on fire with the purity and holiness of our spirits and our lives.

And I've made myself a promise to give up being a snark about this President. This does not mean I will not disagree or fight to articulate why I disagree with his policies when I disagree with them, only that I don't get to be mean to satisfy my own spleen with ooh...that's a good line, that will get 'em type commentary.

Being funny by being clever and catty and making being funny a goal just to get attention is self serving and soul scorching, and I have to remember that for me, humor is supposed to be merciful, healing. Humor without mercy is satire, and I conceed, I have a natural progression, from quips to bites, from Horace to Juvenal, from Pope to Swift. The humor gets more acerbic and less merciful the longer I focus on a subject. The truth of the matter gets lost in the shuffle of clever phrases for the sake of a few comments and a few extra hits on the blog counter.

So pray for this broken family and all those who do or do not make front page news or go viral, to be healed by the only thing that can, God's love.

Stand Up!

When I proposed the idea of doing stand up to my 14 year old son, he said,
"You should do it Mom."

I tried out some material. He laughed. Of course, I am his mother and I do give him a nice allowance. He's not exactly objective you understand.

So every morning I drive him to high school. In two years, he'll have a license and then my life will be radically better.

"Son #1, take child #6 to activity #47."

"I'll be a chauffeur?" He asked.
"As long as you have my car keys."
My son was silent as he wrestled with this revelation.

"How is it you turn every joy into an errand?" he finally asked.

"See, I've been 16. It won't matter that you're chugging kids all across town. You'll be so pumped. You'll say, "Hey Mom, do any of my siblings have an evening activity that you don't want to deal with? I'll be glad to drive."

"It won't matter that you drive to the same places I've been taking you for years. It won't matter that it is only ten miles from home. You'll pull into the parking lot of your elementary school and you'll drop off your brother for Cub Scouts and be thinking....(drop voice half an octave) THIS IS SO COOL.....I'm driving....with the windows down....and the radio on.....it's 23 degrees outside....It's still cool.....there's my elementary school Spanish teacher....yeah....I remember you....I had a "C" in your class....it kept me off the Principal's list....I've got a two ton vehicle at my disposal.....(Raises voice artificially high, waving) "Hello Mrs. Bailey...." (Drop voice again) I'll just rev the engine....just to make her nervous."

I am a mother of...counts on fingers...five, six..no eight, EIGHT? yes eight children.....I was never very good at math.

See...if I had been good at arithmetic, I'd understand exponents and multiplication and compound interest.

You're thinking...where is she going with this I know. Hang with me.

See, if I had paid better attention in math, I'd know that if it takes three hours to do the laundry for one child, one for wash, one for dry, one for fold and put away....that having a home with ten people, plus sheets and towels would take....counts on fingers...wait a minute...carry the 2....and...okay, 36 hours. That's Day ONE.

If I got math and it's tricky things with numbers, I'd know that fixing four meals a day for seven people, (Breakfast, lunch, dinner +snacks), that that comes out to 40 meals a day, Times Seven which results in 280 plates served in a week. If each meal takes an hour, that's 28 hours spent in meal prep. DAY TWO.

Now it gets tricky. See...I've spent 54 hours feeding people and doing laundry and I haven't brushed my teeth...and I don't know if anyone noticed, but there wasn't any sleep in those two days either....

I'm not sure if I should be operating heavy machinery at this point, but driving is a big part of my every day too. I estimate three hours are spent in the car and an additional three getting kids into and out of it. Six hours a day equals 42 a week...there are 168 hours in a week. I'm up to 106 and haven't showered.

It's getting bad.

But hey. I still have 42 hours left.

The reason I bring this up...is that I'm here. I haven't had to cook a meal..I haven't had to do some laundry...I have all this free time on my hands...so naturally I thought...Let's do some standup comedy.

It's either that or step into the back of the hotel and ask if I can do some dishes...I have all this time! I'm thinking of taking up learning cuneiform. Really, there's all these unscheduled minutes. What do I do? I've already brushed my teeth six times today...just because I can.

I'm here.

When I told people I was going to a writing conference in Dayton. They looked at me funny. "What are you going to do with the kids?" they asked.

I looked at them. "What?"

"I mean...we own a microwave.
...And a TV.
...They have a phone."

"Did you get a babysitter?"
"No."

"No?"
"No. I'm not paying their father ten bucks an hour to watch the kids. I'm just not doing it.....He did ask."

"I agreed to order pizza....

They'll be fine."

“When you have eight kids, you get asked a lot of odd questions. From really odd people. Don’t you know how this works? Are you going to have any more?

Questions that I naturally like answering to complete and total strangers on a regular basis.

The worst of it though was when I went shopping for a twelve passenger van.

“Are you part of a church or something?”
“No, it’s for my family.”

“So, you need a vehicle that big?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” His voice is getting squeaky and high.

“Really. “

“What? Do you and your husband just every few years get the urge?”
And I said….”Yes.”

“He’s really, really …really really….really really ….good.” Raise eyebrow.

Now my husband is my editor and vets my writing and stand-up bits whenever he gets the chance.

He said I should really have another really in there…just for comic effect you understand.

Love you Sweetie!

Joining the Gamers' Club

What we don’t know innately, we marry.

For example, my husband has a built in GPS in his head. He can tell North on a starless night without a compass or those pesky Auroras Borealis. On the other hand, I still navigate the town that has been our home for thirteen years with mild trepidation. There is a Bermuda Triangle within its radius that plagues me still to this day. The directions for getting to the Victory Center where our daughters play basketball have imprinted on my brain such that I cannot get there….without getting lost first. I have come to terms with my faulty brain. I don’t take them to games anymore.

I dance, love musical theatre and enjoy reading the classics. He reads history for pleasure and can remember it without a test the next day. In other words, ask me if you’re playing Trivial Pursuit for the brown or the pink slice of pie, ask him if you need the history one. I don’t even remember what color that pie piece is.

Where are my…?

During our dating years, I marveled at how organized and put together my future spouse was. He never lost anything. I lost my purse and found it later the second night we met. My I.D. card fell out of my pocket in December. When the snow finally melted that semester in April, I found it again.


I have learned to look in the place where things ought to be first when beginning a mission to retrieve lost objects. Cue Mission Impossible music here. I am now the GPS for all items within the household.

"I can't find my music stand."

"It's next to the computer in the study."

"We don't have lunch boxes!"

"They're still out in the car where you left them."

“Where are my papers from yesterday?”

“They’re on the table under the lunchbox in the kitchen.”

Actually, I’m more like the brown paper envelope in the middle of the Clue Game. I have the answers, I just need the right question.

Scrabble, Upwards and On Words…

We play cards and strategy computer games and every board game there is in our house. My husband is the master of the set battle plan, thus he usually wins at hearts and always at “Go.” My method of play is more on the fly, I school him at chess and occasionally have a run of victories at cards. Where we both are evenly matched is Scrabble. He can plink down amazing words.

Because I’m a non-speller, my victories have been mostly moral ones, but there was one where I put down the “J” on a triple letter score to catapult to the lead, forming the word “Jo.” “That’s not a word. I challenge.” It was a bluff, but I lucked out. It means sweetheart. I tried calling him that for a time, it didn’t stick. It’s a stupid word and even I concede, I won, but with dishonor. (You have to say that last part with a Klingon accent).

Speaking of Klingons,

If anyone in cyber space has Quest for the Throne, the Klingon version of Star Fleet Battles (STB), I’ll buy it from you. Back in my sophomore year of college, he bought the game to teach me about STB quickly and I was undefeated in seven tries despite being an absolute rookie. Then the game vanished mysteriously. He promises he didn’t throw it away.

Gifts and Gift Giving

November 15, 1992 A day that remains pivotal in my spousal relationship. No, it’s not our anniversary or the anniversary of an anniversary or anyone’s birthday. It’s the day we stopped being newlyweds and became a “settled” couple. My husband came home and saw me putting away some shirts from the drycleaners. After dinner, he gave me a pensive gaze and said with recognition in his voice, “You don’t iron for me anymore.” I laughed.

December 20, 1997 We were wrapping up the last of the loot when it occurred to me I hadn’t bought my beloved a present. Expecting a baby, I could have punted and just allotted the oversight to pregnancy hormones. My admittedly feeble attempt to rectify the situation was worthy of spousal scorn, but he’s a very gallant man. My folks were in town for the holidays and I had purchased several books. Having overheard my mom talk about having read one of the books I had bought for her, I regifted on the spot. The problem was, he knew about that book in particular and the fact that it was originally intended for my mom. The inscription on the inside says it all. “I was thinking of you as I wrapped this book, Love S.”

The other day, my husband called me about a sign he saw talking about giving your wife a rock to remember. “How about some quartz?” he offered. “Wow. That would be great!” He showed up with what I estimate to be a 90 lb. boulder that looks very nice in our back yard. The sparkly earrings came later. I countered by getting him something I swore when we dated I’d never do, some practical gifts, fresh pants and socks. Then, feeling bad, I impulsively bought him a beautiful red blanket, and “The Man of LaMancha.”

Romance may be about getting hearts and flowers but love isn’t about getting what you want. It’s getting what you most profoundly need, even if it’s to be told to shape up. We’ve both demanded that the other become more of the person God intended us to be over the years. We diet and budget and struggle with organizational systems to manage our many charges together. He’s learned to bring chocolate on any occasion and how to dance, and I’ve discovered the History section at the book store under his tutelage. I’ve introduced him to musicals and classic film and he’s taken us to civil war battle grounds and explained the campaigns. He’s even navigated me over the phone to the basketball center. And together, we’re a tough match in cards or Trivial Pursuit.

Think I may buy an ironing board, just to surprise him.

Fun with Treadmills

There have been many fitness fads and I have tried them all. In my closet and basement are the remains from past overzealous new convert obsessions that, over time, lost their luster and ability to steer me towards a size eight or even ten jeans, as I returned to the comfort of daily chocolate, large fries and the occasional Krispy Kreme. Jazzercise t-shirts, Jane Fonda tapes, Tae-bo equipment, the ill-conceived daily jogging regime pedometer and walking log, along with ankle weights and the never opened Abdominator await the next garage sale or call to 1-800 Got Junk. None of these greatest crazes to encourage exercise can compare, however, with the impulsive decision one Christmas to buy my spouse and myself home fitness equipment, specifically a treadmill.

Looking at the huge steel nagging machine, my husband sighed, “As if working every day didn’t sometimes already feel like a steady sweaty march to nowhere.” Even the red ribbon I had artfully placed on the monitor didn’t help.

Still, I tried to explain how this would give us more energy, fight the middle-aged pounds and in the long run, cost less than a gym membership. “So we can stare at a gym at home we don’t use instead of staring at a bank statement each month for a gym we don’t use.” My husband grumbled. He was less than excited by my Christmas gift to “us.” That evening however, he dutifully got on the machine and started walking.

We had small children so in the interest of safety; I placed the machine near the computer in the corner of our basement. The person on the machine could watch a DVD, help critique an article or talk to another person on the computer while working out, but they couldn’t watch TV, it was on the other side of the stairs. This was perhaps an error on my part. College football was on and so as soon as Notre Dame started playing, the treadmill was abandoned. Notre Dame didn’t play very well that bowl game, so his heart got a good work out anyway.

The next evening, I tried the “machine.” My husband was playing Civilizations II. I normally served as domestic advisor in these games, reminding him to adjust the tax rate and move the citizens around to ensure the greatest levels of production, encouraging him not to go the “Let’s annihilate everyone route!” every time and build magnificent cities instead. After five minutes of trying to explain while walking that I wanted him to make a road from Paris to Rome and initiate a peace treaty over the noise of the machine, I watched as he declared war on Caesar and most of the known world. Having no need for a non war-time counselor, I tried reading a book.

Reading while on a treadmill can be done, but it cannot be done well and it cannot be done with books that require any degree of thought. I have an obsession with “quality” literature and keep trying to finish all the English assignments I had in high school. The Sound and the Fury is hard enough standing still. On the machine, I experienced free-form stream of consciousness reading, as I constantly lost my place when the lights would flash or the display would dutifully beep as I had failed to keep pace or my heart rate had dropped below the prescribed level for my age and weight. Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have picked Faulkner for a maiden voyage but I gave up after rereading the same sentence the eighth time and not for the life of me knowing what it meant.

Undaunted, the next night I returned with an Ipod, armed and ready. I prepared to zone out into music land when my then four-year-old son came down. He was delighted to see how this machine worked and instantly set about finding hot wheels to send shooting off the back of the machine at three point five miles per hour, his mom’s top treadmill speed at the moment. It was a fine game except I was terrified he’d get his fingers caught. Instead, the back wall had hot wheel sized dents. Exercise would be regulated to hours when children were in bed.

Alas, this perfect storm of children and treadmills resulted in a few days passing where it sat unloved as mom and dad were too tired to work out that late in the evening. We’d try morning instead.

That proposition never even bothered to materialize once. The alarm would go off and I’d slap the snooze vowing to get to the damn machine later in the day when the kids napped. This also never occurred, but that may have been due to the fact that the kids never napped. Weeks went by as the treadmill became part of the house like a load bearing wall, never noticed or loved. I’d vacuum it from time to time after a smart alec ten-year-old daughter wrote “You never use this thing.” in the accumulating dust with her finger.

Then one day it happened. That same four year old boy that liked shooting hot wheels off the back, got on the machine. He pushed the buttons and was sent back at the same rate as his cars. The machine had caused my baby to get a sprained wrist –he fell on his hand. I unplugged it and cursed it and it sat for months without so much as a guilty feeling. It became a place for laundry. It was great for hangers. Sometimes I’d clear it off and walk a mile or so, but most of the time, it was where I sorted socks.

The treadmill would still be my laundry station if not for the revenge of the no longer four-year-old. At five see, they get experimental and scientific. They prove that cups of soda and treadmills do not intermix happily, as the soda short circuits the motor when it spills into the component parts, and that such actions cause a machine to smoke impressively.

When we moved, I had the movers escort the remains of the machine to the curbside, and I began wondering if I should get an elliptical for our new basement.

ran in Beaumont Enterprise for free