Why I Love Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday for me is always March 5, 2014, the day my father died.  I don't even remember if I got ashes on that day, but nothing brings home the reality of "remember thou art dust." like knowing, I cannot see Dad's face except in pictures and memory.  

It is hard to go to mass on Ash Wednesday now, because I become a blubbering mess at some point, and have to pull it back together before Anna starts asking in an outside voice, "Why are you crying?"  But I need the ashes.  They remind me of him, just as they remind me of the reality we spend most of our lives ignoring.  We will die.  Our bodies decay daily.  The roses my husband bought me last week, dry and droop within seven days.  I have a tooth needing a root canal.  Decay is ever present, but we have an amazing capacity to busy ourselves so much, we can ignore it.

I know we live beyond death, and I have great hope.  But the day itself reminds me.  It reminds me of what I haven't done, what I'm not doing, and of all the ways in which, no matter what I'm doing, I haven't done what the goal of this life is, to love unconditionally, and to pour myself out.   Surrender is the response we're asked for, the revelation to the world, I have faith.

The issue isn't to surrender once, but to surrender constantly.  The real question is, How?

How do we drop the nets today and every day from now on?  The mission is to be catchers of souls.

 How?  We go out, and speak truth joyfully.   "Beauty will save the world," Dostoevsky says, Nothing is more beautiful than a joyful spirit,  nothing draws people toward something like laughter and beauty.  We want to know who is laughing and why, to see the person enjoying life as we in that moment when we seek out the person laughing, are not yet.  We hope, by coming into contact with the person laughing, we will become like them, lighter and more full of the zest and joy of life, more alive.

It's why this humor blog persists.   Humor as a formula is pain plus time equals something healing. So get your ashes, make your resolution for the next 40 days, and tomorrow, I'll come here to write humor and chew the fat intellectually (since I gave up actual fat for Lent).   I'll regale you with all the insights that come from not being able to sate my appetite for sweets and cooking with a Paula Deen type hand with respect to butter, and a not so Frugal Gourmet with respect to Olive Oil.  I miss them both already.  Hot cocoa without whipped cream somehow tastes like something less than hot chocolate.  

40 days...

No fats.

In the words of my father, as we start this season of Lenten prayers, fasting and alms giving, "Now is the time to start the big push."

 

Why These Moments Matter

It has taken forty-eight years to grasp the reality of how good things happen, they are an act of the will on the part of someone.   As a child, Mom made dinners happen and took us from point a to point b and Dad would orchestrate game nights and visits with cousins and aunts and uncles, but as kids, we drifted from big event to big event. So to us, as kids, it felt organic, natural, ordinary. This was simply what you did.  

As an adult, I began to see the effort involved in reunions, especially in deliberately gathering for non event events.  Parties became tied to reasons for parties, like weddings, baptisms, birthdays and sadly, funerals.  The ordinariness of getting together with family became less ordinary as we all grew older, moved, and began establishing lives that focused on lesser things like jobs, homes, and school.  It wasn't a lack of love for anyone, but there was a lack of will to practice that love, a form of familial sloth that crept into relationships, rendering them a collection of fond memories, rather than an ongoing experience of each other.  

Going to a wedding, one of the last weddings of the generation of cousins, everyone began to feel the hard march of time, and how the hardening of familial arteries could cause ongoing damage if left unchecked.  We would have to will ourselves out of that funk, to will ourselves beyond our comfort zone if we were going to have connections not dominated only by whenever someone had a wedding, baptism or funeral.  We'd have to have moments of ordinary time, and to have those, someone would have to "Will it."  

So we made a start, an invitation to do things, which is again, like anything else, a beginning, hopefully of a greater experience, of all of us growing closer together.   What I hope, is everyone will make that brave start, issue beginnings, so that we turn what is a momentary inspiration born of recognizing we want to have relationships that are more than in name only, into a willful habit of fellowship, and tie us as family beyond the cumulative memories of past events.   

What Fathers Do

When our house flooded back in 1979, my sister was newly home from the hospital. She'd been a premmie like me and spent her first two and a half months at the NICU.   We'd been watching the rain all afternoon.  The sky was black and the ground was saturated.  Then I walked into my room and my carpet squished. 

For some reason, I'd thought the water would come through the front door. I'd been watching the water outside and seen it creeping towards us, but it was still a good five feet from our entrance.  But that was it. The water was coming in.  As kids, we were both delighted and annoyingly loud.  "We're flooding! We're FLOODING!" Our eyes were wide as we'd get way too close into each other's faces and state the obvious with an odd mixture of joy and panic, "We're flooding!" 

Thus began the odd exodus as we were instructed to put everything on top of our beds or on top of tables.  Shoes, stuffed animals, clothes, anything we wanted to keep.  It was fun and felt important to be stacking things.  We soon learned that we had an awful lot of things on the floor.  Books.  Socks.  Games. Dolls.  Things. Things. Things. Things.  Every table groaned.  Every bed was covered.   The block was flooded.  We wouldn't be able to get away via car.

My father loaded all of us, including our dog (we kids thought this was heroic), onto the john boat.  A john boat for the uninitiated, is a metal boat used in duck hunting. It lacks style or coolness but it's light, sturdy, strong and was very effective.  My mom held an umbrella over herself and my new little sister.  Scrambling inot the boat, one of my brothers lost his shoe.  We huddled under another umbrella and were told to be on the look out for debris and snakes. 

My dad had put on his waders and pulled the john boat with all of us in it through the black water in the pouring rain down the street to our neighbor's house.  They had a two story home, which made them ecentric by our standards.  Most homes were long ramblers and built out, not up or down.  Upon arrival, we (the kids) were completely delighted to experience the novelty of another person's home.
We would have 18 inches of water inside our own house by the time the flood crested, but to show you how little kids get it, we kept asking, "So, do you think we'll have school tomorrow?" My dad smiled and said, "We'll see."  I suspect he kept the answer vague to keep us from rioting with joy, for we were now four adults and six kids and a dog crammed into an upstairs watching the water in the streets.

Dad just did what needed to be done.  In retrospect, it was scary and even heroic, but he didn't let us know he was scared and it never occurred to us to be so as a result. 

The next day when the rains had stopped, we begged to go intertubing on the street. (We were told no).  Mom and Dad ferried us out to friend's homes where we wouldn't see the level of devastation done to our home.  We never quite saw it.  Instead of having memories of everything we ever loved being washed away, we had the story of our neighbor's cat that refused to go upstairs and sat on the island in the kitchen watching the water which was only two inches up in their home.  It was decidedly perplexed by the tadpoles or fish that were swimming across the kitchen floor.  This was the memory. 

Mom and Dad deliberately worked hard to keep the harder sharper edges of that experience, the snakes, the thrown away toys and books and like from being taken in and to a large extent, it worked.  They couldn't blunt everything but they did enough such that when we flooded again the next year, none of us felt tramatized, instead we thought, eh, we've done this before. Let's go pile up everything on top of the beds. 

Recovery from the floods was slow. We spent six months I think, eating casaroles and complaining about the hard cold floor.  The day our house was completely repaired, we sat down to dinner in the dining room for the first time and the faithful table that had held so many things for so many months while repairs were going on, collapsed under the weight of a normal table setting for six.  It was both comic and iconic, because I remember everyone's surprised faces as the thing fell. 

We still felt like everything was home because the things which made it home had been preserved. Somehow Dad's 1000 plus books and the record collection that seemed to never get bigger but always had things we loved listening to, his guitar, my little wooden chair from when I was  toddler, the copper wash basin that was my mom's mom's and possibly her mom's, a pale china blue statue of the Blessed Mother and child, the crystal candle sticks that I always tried to take apart to pretend that the crystals were diamond earrings, and the lazy susan on the table survived.  All of these little things that made up the feel as much as the sights and sounds and smells of our home.

We never worried what might happen.  This was part of the core of what I think Dads do.

Mom and Dad made it such that no matter what happened, it was okay.  It was still home.  It was still safe even if everything had been destroyed.

Faces on Film, and a Friend I Wish I Could See to Say Goodbye

Every year we watch our wedding tape. It was a gorgeous event with over 400 guests. But it has become a sort of mini-All Saint's day as time has progressed. There are many faces I now must miss; like the Bishop who married us and gave us a large nativity set that reminds me of him every Christmas. I'm reminded how we'd lost my cousin too soon, a college friend to cancer, a second cousin to a heart attack almost a week after we wed, the son of a friend, a beloved aunt, my high school vice principal, a high school buddy I'd known since I was four and the cantor for two of the songs who also taught me theatre and junior religion and 7th grade and there are more.

Then there is my favorite picture, of me singing Happy Birthday to my grandmother. Alzheimer's was already taking her away from us at that point.  

Every year, as I watch the tape when people are being seated before the mass begins, a few more of the pews are sprinkled with souls I will only get to greet again in memory and in Heaven. Today, one of my bridesmaids is clinging and yet surely slipping out of life. She suffered a brain aneurysm last night. The MRI last night was bad, the morning one was worse and all signs are not good. To make matters worse, she has diabetes, she's in a coma and she has heart issues. That she is still here is testimony to her pure stubbornness which has always served her well. If I were to describe her, it would be strong, rock, steel, fierce. You get the trend.  She will stay until she decides to go. That is Jen in a nutshell, life fiercely lived no matter how difficult, words  fearlessly said, even when they aren't the most artful, staying and saying, doing and doing, until she decides she's done enough.

I wrote her when I asked that she be in my wedding, that I wanted her to experience something of the "foo-fooness" of life that she often dismissed; in retrospect, I was trying to give her a luminous moment, with a pretty dress and her hair done big and with flowers and all of that; she conceded to me it was fun for a day and a great memory and I considered that a moral victory of the first order. She was one of my lunch crew and we would spar daily about the issues of the day, school, books, movies, the homily, the liturgy, and mostly, our volunteer work at Logan Center. Right and Left, we were both fiercely able to defend ourselves and I think our other friends enjoyed the mental tennis matches; they never ended, we just went to our next classes.  She and I went weekly to help run a recreation program for handicapped kids, along with 25 or so other college students. She took it seriously. I thought it was fun.

We both chose it as a career in the end, both going to graduate school to get accreditation to further our service. But health issues dogged her from about the age of 30 on, and for the past 15 years, she's burned through three kidneys, gone on dialysis, had heart surgery and heart surgery and other surgery, and yet always made a point of coming to visit if she was in the vicinity. (She grew up in Virginia). She also always comes with gifts for my kids, really cool toys like puppets and things that flew or that one would fling, oragami frogs, slinkies, playdough and crafts crafts crafts. She gave gifts that everyone wanted to play with, and then we'd get on with the business of playing. 

We'd laugh, we'd eat, we'd talk and we'd wonder aloud why we do not talk more often.  We'd both promise to call more. We'd both not. 

Both of us seemed comfortable and said we didn't mind the lapses inbetween; we seemed to simply pick up where we left off.

It would have been better for both of us if we hadn't allowed ourselves this out, if we'd been more vigilant with each other, but it is what it is and now, that opportunity to do otherwise, is no longer available.  Jen always fought illness, and yet it always seemed, she was so strong, so determined, I was convinced, she would out live everyone.  She'd demand that I think things through, I'd demand that she be nice even if she was right.  Neither one of us liked losing. Neither one of us liked giving up. Neither one of us liked giving in.  We relished our stubborness; it was a badge of pride for us both.

It is a hard thing to have a friend in a hospital states and states away and to not be there to rub her feet, to make her laugh or to share the time she has left. If I could be there, I'd probably talk too fast and too much. She often told me I did.

Neither one of us liked sentimentality and so we made fun of much. In college, we ate together often, we sang at mass and she and I liked signing the mass. She drove a small white car that her sister had air brushed silhouettes of animals onto.  She was my cool prickly pear friend, the wasabi to my ginger in the sushi of life, a counterpoint necessary for music to be fuller and deeper; an anchor of hard thought for the fluffy stuff that often passed through my brain.  I will miss her company deeply when she dies, because her strong voice was a something one could count on to be just that, strong. 

Prayers that she is in no pain and that she knows, she is deeply loved both here, and in Heaven.  I know I will see her every time I see that tape and recall that day; and I look forward to the reunion.

Jen passed at 1:05 a.m. on Sunday.

You Should Remember to Remember This

Growing up in South East Texas, Independence day meant being lugged to mass, even if we were at the beach. It meant singing “God Bless America” at the end and hearing a woman who had probably practiced for two months try to imitate Kate Smith. We’d complain about it, being kids, but Dad maintained it set the importance of the day on remembering that this great gift of free will, of liberty, of independence does not come without a prior generation’s cost. He'd talk about how it will it not long endure if the current caretakers are ignorant of their past, of the present, or fearful of the future. We’d roll our eyes with that knowing 'Dad' look that only kids can give grownups who obviously don’t understand what is worth knowing.

After mass, Dad would drive us to the local grocery store, and we’d sit down at the picnic table outside with popsicles that melted faster than any of us could lick. He’d ask us either in the car or while we were licking off the sticky stuff, “What were the readings?” or even worse, “What did you think of the homily?” We soon learned to speed read the misselettes before leaving Church in case our kid minds had wandered during the Liturgy, but it didn’t help when July 4th fell on a non-Sunday. Then, he’d quiz us about our country and its history and offer suggested readings. We learned to pay attention or at least preemptively cram, if only to avoid the embarrassment of flunking the Popsicle quiz.

But Dad, being a crafty parent, employed further stealth. He waited as we grew older. We’d drive home, have lunch and be lounging over comic pages from the newspaper, idly discussing whether or not we wanted to play cards or go hunting for driftwood to build a bonfire, and he’d appear with the quiz questions. He’d say the summation of the reading and ask us what Father had said. But Homily Jeopardy often resulted in a goodly amount of sibling collusion, where we’d rack our adolescent sunburnt beachcombed brains for key words we’d remembered and hope that others would fill in the blanks.

He’d read the readings over again to us and hope something sunk in during the process. Then he’d slyly offer to play Trivial Pursuit and always pick history so as to, once again, engage in parental instruction about the importance of the day. I took to studiously avoiding the yellow squares, while my brother keenly pre-read every Trivial Pursuit card’s history question and answer. It never really mattered to Dad, he was just glad we were learning it, by osmosis or repetition or sheer stubborn adolescent desire to win.

It didn’t matter what the year was, the evening of the 4th meant piling into the largest car and sitting outside on the side of the freeway on top of it and watching the fireworks with my family. It felt cool and communal to sit under the stars with everyone I loved. I wished the shows would go on forever if only because I knew the next day, I’d be back to fighting with my two brothers and Dad would be back at work and the magic and beauty of having the whole country take a break and celebrate would be over. The 'connected with everyone' feeling would dissipate from the crowds as quickly as the smoke from the last explosion thinned into nothingness and everyone scrambled to their cars and began to complain about the traffic.

My father would hum songs and makes puns in between the various stars and bomb bursts and whistling rockets and after, trying to prolong the feeling, the moment of everyone being united and at peace with one another.

Today, as my husband and I scramble to load the car for mass and make sure everyone has matching shoes that fit and combed hair, so as to make it on time for three of our children to serve, I find myself tucking the Magnificat in my purse as we run out the door. Scanning the readings ahead of time so that if I am occupied by my children or my own wandering mind, I at least had a chance to read the wisdom I may not hear in my distraction. I want to know what I might otherwise miss, because I have been taught to recognize I could miss it.

I have even tossed out the Popsicle question on my kids over breakfast bagels. My kids know more than I did at their age -- about their country, about their government and about the need to be involved and engaged in the world -- but they too look sometimes shocked at me as they grope to remember all the things or some of the images presented during the mass. And when I begin to chide or lecture them about it, they give the look that only children can give to parents who want them to recognize something they think they already understand but don’t.

So this 4th of July, I intend to take my children to mass and sing my best Kate Smith imitation, and ask them afterwards about how our independence is secured and endowed by our Creator, and what the Priest said. And then, we’re going to sit outside on top of the cars so they can one day recognize that communion feeling of being surrounded by everyone they love, watching beauty explode outward overhead. Because the fireworks may fade but the memory of these moments, when everyone stopped and took pleasure in each other’s company, lasts longer than the Popsicles or the last rocket’s red glare, giving proof through the night that this people are still here.

I’ll hold onto each of them at some point, hoping that the grip of my hand in theirs helps seal in their hearts and minds, don’t miss the opportunity to remember this.*

Originally ran August 11, 2009

Why Even if I had a GPS, I'd Still Get Lost for not Listening Closely Enough

By coincidence, my safe driver discount and new insurance card came in the mail today.

A conversation in the car.

"Hey Mom! Can you count to 100?"  "Yes."
"Now?"  "No."

 "How about you count to 100 by 9's."
"9-18-27-36-45-54-63-72-81-90-99" 
"Can you count to 100 by seven's?"
"Mommm? I'm hungry."
                                     "We just had breakfast."
"But I'm still hungry.  There's a McDonald's. It's right there. I see it."
"No."
"But I'm starving starving starving."

             "Where are we going?"
                     "We're going to..."
"I bet we're going to the library.  Last time I went to the library, we got a book and I lost it but then I found it and it's in my book shelf. It's on zebras." 

"You lost a book?

What book?"
"I don't remember. So are we going to the library? or for ice cream?" "Neither, we're going to..."
"Hey MOM! I can count by fives.  5-10-23.  Can you help me count by fives?" "Still hungry."
"What's seven plus 15?"
 "What is this a quiz?"
"Mommm! Can you count by fives with me?"
"5101520253035404550556065707580859095100 AMEN!"
"Mom! You said Amen! and we're not even doing prayers." Giggles start.  "She's not saying prayers." the other two start giggling.  "Amen!"  "5678910AMEN!"  "3 AMEN!"  "75 AMEN!" More giggles.

"Hey Mom?"
"What?"
"Where Are we going?" "22 Amen!" "55555Amen!" Giggle giggle giggle.

..."Mom?"

And I realize I honestly can't remember.
"Can we get lunch?"  "AMEN!"

**I made a wrong turn trying to get to my pediatrician's office of now going on 13 years as a result of attempting to remember all of this...the things I do for you people.

The Best Nest for the Littlest Reindeer

With my associative only memory and nine children, I live in perpetual awareness that I am forgetting something. Seldom do I discover what those little unanswered worries are.

Last week, I thought it might be that I'm still sweating over a library book, "The Best Nest" from when my oldest, now about to be 17, was 20 months old and I took him to a biblioteque in Houston. We moved shortly after the visit and the book was shipped up to Maryland where it promptly got lost in the one hundred and fifty thousand books that first time parents must buy for their child so as to ensure they won't become illiterate before the parents become broke. If I'd known I would have eight more kids, I might have paced myself a bit better on the book buying front but I doubt it. Moderation is also not a watchword in my brain.

Many years later, "The Best Nest" was unearthed when I began searching for an alternative to "The Littlest Reindeer," a book that had been donated to us and which my daughter had fallen in love with, but which I personally could not abide after the 15th night of reading the treacle melancholy of the crying reindeer. "The Best Nest" suddenly was in my hands, but what to do about it. "The book was long since replaced." I reasoned. The ten year fine at that point would be astronomical if I ponied up admission, and yet the book sat there like a scalding nag on my record. Even worse, the book had been checked out under my son's name.

Why did I think a 20 month old needed his own library card? I chalk it to first timer madness. But why did the library see fit to issue a right to check out books card to a 20 month old? Again, I subscribe to the, "Don't mess with the Momma there, she's a first timer." theory. Veteran Marion the Librarians know better than to tangle with the women with pristine strollers and matching diaper bags; they just nod and smile and think, "Schadenfreude when she gets to number three. She'll be grateful to have me check those books out with her Driver's license or phone number since the cards will have been long since lost in the wash."

I did the cowardly thing; I returned it with the other stack of books that needed to go back to the local library. Maybe they had a universal central processing unit based on the Dewey Decimal system that would scan said book and return it to its point of origin, hopefully without the capacity to access such archaic Windows 2.0 materials such that the actual responsible party would remain unknown. I could hope. That week, I expected the lost book to return to my home via the mail like a bad horror movie. But after a week, I stopped reaching into my mailbox with trepidation. It hadn't come back and seemed to have returned if not to its natural surrounding, an appropriate adoptive home.

Why did all this come up? My oldest is taking the SAT. He's looking at colleges and I'm wondering, if he goes to school in Houston, will the book police be out in force to get him? And which will cost more, the library fine or the first semester of tuition? As I sat at the computer looking over several emails from potential universities that I might have to rule out to prevent an investigation into my past or my son's, my husband called. "Hi Sher, don't forget, the kids have altar training tonight at seven." And sheer relief flooded my being. That's what I'd been forgetting all along, I had nothing to worry about, my son's future was secure at least, as far as libraries were concerned.

Then the doorbell rang. It was the mailman with a small flat package. I don't know what it is, but I'm dropping off "The Littlest Reindeer" as a donation at the local library as a safety precaution and then, I promise you I'm not opening it.

Ordering Out

Going through a drive thru is rather like taking a leap of faith with my brood. Or at least, it used to be. I'd write the order as follows:

W: Big Mac, root beer
B: Ten Piece, Chocolate Shake
M: Mighty Kids Double Cheese, Chocolate Shake BOY Toy (even though she's a girl)
P: Mighty Kids Chicken Nug/BOY TOY ONLY, Chocolate Shake
F: Happy Meal Hamburger/GIRL TOY ONLY, Sprite
J: Happy Meal Cheeseburger/BOY TOY, Chocolate Milk, Apples
R: Happy Meal Hamburger, GIRL TOY, Chocolate Milk, Apples
Me: Diet Coke, resign self to eating whatever order got messed up.
Order four more hamburgers and two four pieces to cover the bases and sigh as oldest produces three dollars to buy six pies.

After writing things down and having errors, writing things down and handing it in and having errors, writing things down and having the kids change their minds, I placed an ultimatum, either cope with what comes or no more golden arches.

This quelled internal dissent at least publically, but getting people to hear the order took time. I considered running through the drive thru twice, as five seems to be the cut off at which the cashier assumes you're done. Instead, I've channeled my inner Julie Andrews.

It is fortunate for me that blogs have not yet progressed that you would hear my words in my own voice. Imagine I'm in tune and very musical.

"A flat please maestro."

They laugh and then they listen. And, I almost never get any mistakes anymore.

(Sung to the tune of twelve days of Christmas)

"For our drive up order please listen to me please

Three happy meals, 2 with hamburgers and one with just cheese.

We'd also like two chocolate milks and an apple juice for drink

and six apple pies!

One big mac meal. A ten piece too

And two Mighty Kids Meals.

One is Cheeseburger, the other chicken!

Three Medium Chocolate Shakes and One Root Beer

And for me a diet coke!

and four hamburgers and 2 chicken four piece

from the dollar menu.

And two girl and Three Boy Toys....."

My only issue is if the kids change the order.

Goodnight Everybody!