Because We Should Stop

As writers, we're supposed to take everything in, and pull from our memories, from our heart, and weave together associations through sentences that bridge the gap between the experiences we've all had, and the ones only some ever endure.  Yesterday, a friend on Facebook announced her son battled demons and lost.

I know countless mothers who hold their breath at such stories, because thus far, their children have won, but there's always the chance tomorrow, it will be them taking down the body of the child they carried, because they weren't there at the right moment to make sure this horrible moment didn't happen. 

The internet makes us voyeurs into each other's lives, it can even create real relationships, but it won't let us be flesh and blood to those friends when flesh and blood is what aches. Her heart's cry pierces the internet, because it cannot be answered. It cannot be comforted, not by anything here.
Suddenly, the internet revealed in addition to being a community, it is dust and amusement. We can be cheerleaders and encouragers, we can even be provocative, but what we can't be, is anything other than virtual in this moment when tangibility means everything, because death is such a tangible, bodily thing.

There are no words to give to a mother who found her son hanging in the garage other than, "I'm so sorry."

These sort of moments, the only appropriate response is to give some tangible form of a hug. Food. Watching her little ones. Offering to help with the mass, anything. Instead, I'm here, my thoughts churning over the children I work with, my own children and their trials, and over her. The rosary in my fingers feels inadequate, and yet I know she holds to it too, along with her other children who must also weather this terrible pain. They hold to it like a safety rope, and I want it to be for them. I have to hope it is.

Everything feels too new, too raw, too simple, too pat to be real. This unreality feeling, facing the deepest and worst we can face, will even make the sounds of cars and doors and phones and the television feel alien. Music will cut the air, and conversations buzz through without leaving an impression. As I feel the round beads in my hands, the realness of her raw reality works against allowing me the comfort of doing the familiar. It must. It is immediate. It is too soon. It is too near.
Her pain cannot be rushed or wiped away or easily healed; it must merely be endured. The rosary too, cannot be rushed, not if it is to be prayed. She will grope through the grief. We will all grope through prayers, hoping to add to the graces she receives, and lighten something of the hard cross she carries. So I'm praying for all of the trials to come, for her to feel as she should, and for the whole rest of the world to stop, and be gentle as it can for as long as possible, to give her leaking heart time to be bound.

My friend Simcha has details on how you can give tangible help. Please keep their whole family in our prayers.

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.

Mom Myth Buster

"You have a lot of kids so the older ones must help out a lot right?"  I get this bit of folk lore from well meaning people and I know other moms of more than two do as well, particularly if there's any sort of gap.  It's not that the older kids don't help out.  It isn't that they can't help.  It's that the presumption when people say such things, is that once children hit twelve, they become something other than teenagers, they become reliable staff.

I can only presume the people or person who created this bit of commonly held wisdom never knew a single twelve to twenty-one year old, and never experienced being anywhere close to that age themselves.  They just skipped all of adolescence and immerged on the scene at twenty-five with a full Wikipedia approved understanding of how to raise multiple children which they generously impart to anyone who has them but doesn't seem to grasp how to do it properly. (Meaning me).

Here are just a few samples of where I've been told, the older ones should pitch in, and where I've found, for various reasons, it's not happening.

Homework:  "The older ones help the younger ones." No. This does not happen.  Not because they can't. Not because they won't.  It's that they have homework too.  Besides, I don't blame them.  I wouldn't want to do one of my younger sibling's homework either.  None of us liked it the first time around and it hasn't become any more beloved a task as part of somebody else's responsibility. Also, the older kids had to put up with my inept support in math, I suspect they've banded together to 1) ensure I maybe one day master 5th grade fractions and 2) no one younger gets out of having to figure it out for themselves after being told the next day by the teacher, they did it wrong.

Laundry:  Despite having a machine which does the washing and another which does the drying, this task remains a labor of either the desperate or me.  No one likes their clothing co-mingling unless they're the squatter adding in, in which case they can't see what the problem might be.

One caveat:  Everyone will very helpfully point out, so and so needs to do laundry, or so and so needs to put away their laundry.  They are also quite willing to serve as nag-o-ramas whether asked or not, to the child who needs to catch up on their wash.

Dishes: I've been told by helpful strangers, to assign each task to two children.  Like all things proposed, it works in theory.  Whenever I try to do pairings to have an older kids work with younger ones, either the older one masters the art of exploitation, the younger one becomes a ninja, incapable of being discovered, or both collude to find something so mommy-tear-jerkingly-beautiful to do I won't insist on the original task.  This third ploy, though seldom used, always works.  I've caught them playing cards, reading stories and practicing music together.  They've made castles, puzzles and colored together.  The result (I'm a sap) is I see this precious moments facade, fall for it every time, and wind up finishing the task for them.  

So yes, the older ones do help the younger ones...to master the art of the dodge.  But what will the younger ones do when they mature and there are no younger ones to use as  human shields to avoid work?  Probably collude writing "How to Parent Properly Such that Your Kids Do Chores Books" and offer to sign one for me provided I pay an additional fee.