Merry Christmas

My oldest and I went to the parish penitential service tonight. The parish had 16 priests ready to listen to sins and a house full of seekers of reconciliation. The Spanish mass had just let out as we were coming in, so people were hanging out in and around the church and in contrast to the dark of the winter solstice, the brightly lit church seemed more social, more alive than usual. Everyone seemed happy to be going to confession.

On the way home, Veni, Veni Emmanuel was playing on MPB. I sat for a moment in the car, savoring the last moment of peace, listening to the final verses, before I re-entered the house where the kids were getting ready for bed, and my husband was directing the last round of tidying up. This song was one of my early favorites after my parents converted to Catholicism when I was seven. It seemed foreign and melancholy then; now it is familiar and consoling: an Advent song that instantly redirects my thoughts from busyness to holiness.

Our Advent is almost over. Tomorrow we’ll wake before dawn, quickly dress, steal the kids from their warm nests and load them in the car for a 12 hour trip to Gram and Pop’s. They are good in the car, and I always look forward to a long car trip: a chance to catch up on reading, both to the kids, and to myself while they watch movies. Once we arrive in OKC, our Christmas begins. I’m sure the kids will sleep lightly tonight, tossing with anticipation of seeing their cousins.

It has been a slow entry into Advent for me, and now Christmas is nearly here. Maybe it is the warm weather on the Gulf Coast, or maybe because we’re renting and I feel only half-hearted about decorating the house, or maybe because I'm getting older and time passes more quickly; whatever the reason, I'm surprised to be lighting all four candles on the wreath already.

A couple of nights ago we visited the Bellingrath Gardens Christmas lights display with some friends. Normally, I don’t go out of my way to attend these kinds of things: paying a lot of money to stand in line and look at outlines of toy soldiers and flowers. I feel like I can see the electricity meter spinning out of control with each little ornament. Trying to maneuver the traffic jams makes me feel grinchish instead of Cratchity.

from flickr: rxguy08

 

But that night I enjoyed myself. We walked instead of drove through the display. The kids were all in a good mood, having been allowed to ride with their friends on the drive over. Other than the brief moment when I lost the three yr old, they stayed relatively close, and I think the 5 yr old only disconnected one strand of lights and stepped on only a few plants. He managed to stay out of the fountain, too. (On our last visit to a botanical garden, he ended up swimming with the koi.) The sweet olive in bloom was casting its delicate fragrance all over the grounds of this former private home. And the display that capped off the walk was a beautiful nativity (spotlighted, not outlined in glowing colors) that looked like it was shipped from a church in Italy. Well done.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisamylar/4162172220/

We did end up stopping for fast food because our refrigerator is in pre-travel state: nearly empty. But the kids were so appreciative for this little gift that it was worth compromising my principles to buy them greasy food devoid of nutrition, which mostly ended up in the trash anyway because they only like the French fries. And most of them were asleep by the time we got home, so bedtime went smoothly.



Best of all, after all the running around of last week, I feel like we welcomed some Christmas spirit into the house. A good Christmas memory.

Here is our Christmas photo for 2009. The kids look a little scruffy, but this was an impromptu take using the timer on the camera because I couldn’t find a family photo in which all the kids were looking the same way.  I had just arisen from the couch, where I lay in a faint after giving blood earlier in the day.  I think because we took everyone by surprise, they stared at the camera on the first shot.

We are off over the river and through some woods – and bayous and plains – to the grandmothers’ houses we go for our Christmas celebrations with extended family. Back in two weeks.

So happy Last Sunday of Advent, early Merry Christmas! Blessings in 2010!

Quotes for Advent

Some good Advent thoughts from Watch for the Light:

In “Yielding to God” by Philip Britts: “We are human and finite, and thus cannot live perpetually in a sense of expectation, or in a continuous Advent. We are distracted by many things. .. . Although we are tempted to exert ourselves and push ourselves forward in our search for God, the desire to climb nearer to God is nothing but egotistical satisfaction and self-aggrandizement. The way that Christ took was the low way. . . . It is not that we, as pilgrims, clib to a celestial city, but that the Christ child is born in the poverty of our hearts. . . .
It is easy to feel at this time of year that God is working on breaking down our hearts, reminding us how little we can accomplish on our own. “Human love cannot redeem.”


Another view: from “The God We Hardly Knew” by William Willimon: “We enjoy thinking of ourselves as basically generous, benevolent, giving people. That’s one reason why everyone, even the nominally religious, loves Christmas. Christmas is a season to celebrate our alleged generosity. . . . Yet I suggest we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story – the one according to Luke not Dickens – is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers. . . . We prefer to think of ourselves as givers – powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. . . .

“I suspect that the difficulty of receiving is a factor in marriage, too. It’s painful to be thrust into such close proximity to another human being, day after day, year after year, until one gradually comes to see that one’s identity and character are due to an alarming degree, to what one has received from one’s spouse. Marriage is an everyday experience of living in the red – debtors to someone whom we have just begun to know. . . .

This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transforms us into people we don’t necessarily want to be.”



Gerard Manley Hopkins from "The Wreck of the Deutschland":

                Now burn, new born to the world,
               Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
              Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
             Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not
                          a lightning of fire hard-hurled.

Quoting someone else's quotes

I might end my self-imposed moratorium on buying more books. I finished Michael Dirda’s Book by Book and wanting to underline, fold corners, and circle the books I want to get around to reading someday, but the library wouldn’t appreciate my commentary, I’m sure. Some notes on the book, which is a series of quotes arranged and knit together with his commentary on books and life/life with books/living through books.

I agree with his list of 13 suggestions to encourage kids to read, although with reservations I agree the somewhat controversial “Quantity matters far more than quality – there will be plenty of time for classics.” Like vegetables, classics have to be forced down every now and then until a taste for them is developed. (I would like to take this opportunity to reassure him that I have said to my child, “Just a minute, I want to finish this chapter.)”

2 books he (and others) repeatedly recommend that I need to remember to get at some point: Little, Big by John Crowley, and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.


I would like to be a guest in his guest room library.

Since the book is drawn from the quotes in his commonplace book, I thought I’d follow Dirda’s example and note some of my favorite quotes which he has quoted (and some of his own pithy one liners):


On Learning:
(quotes without attribution are Dirda’s own words) : “Erudition makes people feel uneasy; at worst it can seem vaguely undemocratic.” (a problem at school)

Anthony Hecht on John Crowe Ransom: “Mr. Ransom did not lecture, he inquired, and he invited the class to join his inquiry .. . . For one learned from him, not facts or positions, but a posture of the mind and spirit, a humanity and courtesy, a manly considerateness that inhabited his work as it did his person”



Lionel Trilling: on ‘making a life’ [conceiving human existence as a work of art]” “this desire to fashion, to shape, a self and a life has all but gone from a contemporary culture whose emphasis, paradoxically enough, is so much on self”



Flannery O’Connor on teaching: "The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands.
And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."


“Contradiction, not consistency, second thoughts, rather than dogmatic certitude, lie at the heart of humane understanding, and all those who try to simplify experience usually only succeed in narrowing it. To my mind, life should be complex, packed with questioning, full of misdirection and wasted effort – a certain number of mistakes is, after all, the price for ‘living large’." Dirda



On Work

Hannah Arendt: “The universal demand for happiness and the widespread unhappiness in our society (and these aer but two sides of the same coin) are among the most persuasive signs that we have begun to line in a labor society which lacks enough laboring to keep it contented. For only the animal laborans and neither the craftsman nor the man of action , has ever demanded to be ‘happy’ or thought that mortal man could be happy.”



“We refilled our glasses with cognac, after which all things seemed possible.” – William Gerhadie

“An unfulfilled vacation drains the color from a man’s entire existence” – Honore de Balzac

“The chief source of art is man’s pleasure in his daily necessary work, which expresses itself and is embodied in that work itself” – William Morris


On love:

“Twinned helplessness/Against the huge tug of procreation.” Robert Graves

“Romanticism is what brings a couple together, but realism is what sees them through” John Updike

Dirda: “Only critics on deadline must rush to judgment”


On music: All arts according to Walter Pater: “constantly aspire to the condition of music”



On books:

“There are books…which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences" – RW Emerson



“As with a love affair, the battered heart needs time to recover from a good work of fiction.”



“Why is it so hard to talk – not write but speak – about literature? A friend asks about a new novel or collection of poetry? Almost any response tend sto sound a least faintly prissy, hokey, pretentious, academic, or utterly banal . .. The most typical character flaw of the bookish is the desire to show off.”



“A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman” - Wallace Stevens


Note to self: memorize more poetry

John Paul II named Venerable

My friend who has cancer told me the news today about Venerable John Paul II.  She is praying for his intercession and recently received a relic from some Carmelite sisters - a fragment of one of JPII's vestments. She also got a call from Cardinal George offering his prayers! So Heaven is being stormed.  I'm sending her a medal of JP II that we picked up in Rome when we were there for Mother Teresa's beatification and JPII's 25th anniversary - a whirlwind week when we were greatly impressed by the catholicity of the Church.  We have other mementos of that trip - our favorite being a little boy with the middle name Karol.

What to take to a deserted island

When we were with my husband’s family for his sister’s wedding, we played a homemade version of the Newlywed Game (rated MG for multigenerational). One of the questions was “What three things would your spouse take to a deserted island?”

I had books down, of course, and my husband won a point by getting this right. But tonight, as I stirred up yet another batch of Christmas cookies (chewy chocolate crinkle cookies this time) for yet another classroom party, I started thinking about what three books I would want to take. Maybe it was because the Eighth Day books catalog has a book called The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton about the future of the book listed that set my mind to wandering or Mr. Riddle's comment on electronic readers. The Bible is the first choice, obviously – thereby precluding the need for another work of spirituality? And the collected works of Shakespeare is the second obvious choice. Perhaps I’m stretching the rules a little by allowing “collected work” to stand for one book.

So what next: The collected work of Jane Austen? The collected work of Charles Dickens? Dante? Dostoevsky? What would I want to read over and over if I had only one book to read? It would need to be entertaining, thought provoking, and complex enough that it would reveal something new when read and reread repeatedly. Not too melancholy because I would think if you were stuck on an island you’d need something to avert madness. I could read Wendell Berry repeatedly although I'm not sure I'd call him complex in that he tells you straightforwardly what he stands for.  His collected works would remind me of home, but maybe I would need something to keep my mind off home. To disconnect from time and place, perhaps I would bring English Fairy Tales, Canterbury Tales, or Augustine’s Confessions…


I think if a deserted island were in my future, I’d break down and get a Kindle. And a lifetime supply of batteries.

A pause

Today was probably one of the scurriest days, if not scurrilous, days of this busy season. I made 5 trips to my kids' school in between 8 and 3. And it is not just around the corner. The reason for this back and forthing was that today was Christmas party day, and I had to gather and distribute food and teacher gifts for four kids and then pick up my oldest and then go back and drop off something I forgot and then drop off something for someone else...

But since these parties and gift exchanges are now over (and were overdone - but the kids loved every last lavishment), now I feel like we can sit back and enjoy the season a little bit.  So we huddled up and finished watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which is not Christmas season faire, but we had started it last weekend and need to send it back to Netflix.  And it was well worth watching for its lessons on the dignity of life and the deceptions of propaganda and the power of truth and lies and friendship, although when this tearjerker was finished all the kids begged for me to delay bedtime a little longer because they needed to hear a funny story. I had to set aside The Little Prince, which we started a couple weeks ago, but is also melancholy, and find our Christmas anthology for something syrupy to complete a day full of high fructose corn sugar.

In the midst of all the back and forth, I spent an hour at the parish hall assisting with the St. Vincent de Paul distribution of Christmas packages. The 3 yr old and I helped sort the gifts a couple days ago, but yesterday the other volunteers bagged all the gifts and organized them for the families who had applied for assistance.  Most of the donations were typical: board games, inexpensive baby dolls, footballs and basketballs, lots of cars and trucks balanced by a mountain of Barbies, etc. There were a few really surprisingly nice gifts, notably some nice bikes among all the Huffys and some designer clothes. There were also a few things that wouldn't last long.  I think the volunteers tried to balance the quality and quantity of gifts that each family received, but it wasn't surprising to detect some envy when one family wheeled out one of these nice bikes in front of a family standing there holding their plastic trike.  It's easy to imagine the struggle of trying to be grateful for all the presents, but fighting down jealousy when another family walks away with more gifts in better condition.

Or maybe I'm just projecting my own response. I would feel envious, I'm sorry to admit. I would want my kid to get the nice baby doll, not the one from the Dollar Store.  I feel compelled to balance everything so that my kids don't envy each other's gifts on Christmas morning. But they like different things -- except Legos, which they all love, but I'm not sure my house can absorb even one more single Lego -- and so they will be getting different gifts and will hopefully be able to put any potential envy aside.

I appreciated the attitude of a man who smilingly came up to me as I was leaving and asked how to get on the list. I didn't know the answer to his question, but he continued in his good mood and said that his sister's kids would love to receive those great gifts.  He was too far away to be able to see what they were, but he could tell that every one was walking away with something, and he finished by saying "That's just great!" He had his own gift for being able to appreciate other people's happiness. And the people did seem to appreciate even the small things, just like my kids like the little doodads they received in their goodie bags today.

A good reminder to be thankful for all small gifts and for the fact that we all have different ones...

White Christmas - Gulf Coast Style

No snow, but a blanket of fog.

An early gift

Oh joy! As good as any present -- the new Eighth Day Books catalog is here!

I know what I'm doing tonight:
                        grabbing a cup of tea
                        and a pen to circle everything I want.

Small talk

On Saturday night we went to a party held by one of my husband’s co-workers. I hadn’t met 90% of the people there, so I spent most of the time feeding my children and myself. I would’ve fed my kids more, but they eventually found the game room where they became happily ensconced playing air hockey, foosball, video games and Nerf basketball (do I want one of these rooms?), so I had to make conversation. Although I’m not naturally a socialite, I have learned to chitchat about weather, food, Christmas shopping, vacation plans…

Just when I was looking at my watch, my husband introduced me to another co-worker who looked more socially awkward than myself. After brief introductions, it came out that this guy was a math major who wanted to return to academia after getting out of the Navy. At first I thought this was where the conversation was going to stall, when it turned to favorite teachers. And then we found common ground, sharing stories of teachers who had made uninteresting subjects seem fascinating with the talent of drawing perfect unit circles, or passion for obscure military battles, or gift for telling stories and making connections between esoteric math concepts or obscure literary figures and the way of the world. These memorable teachers had another gift also, I think, of connecting with their students as individuals.


At one point in time, I wanted to emulate these teachers, but I’m not sure I have that gift of sharing my love of a subject with my students in a way that inspires their curiousity. Certainly I didn’t inspire a love of Latin in my Latina Christiana classes at our homeschool co-op, since they started a KAL club (Kids Against Latin), although I think they had fun trying to compose a play with their limited vocabulary. And I’m afraid I forced my British Lit class to swim in excess information, so they ended up nearly drowning. When I taught the physics for middle schoolers class, I had the unfortunate experience of having about 75% of the experiments we conducted not turn out as planned. (I have the consolation of remembering that my ESL physics-for-liberal-arts-majors professor in college had a similar outcome.)



Lately, I’ve been trying to decide if I want to take a few classes to get certified to teach in a regular school, now that my kids are in school. But while subbing, I was reminded of how much policing school teachers have to do. I’m happy to report that I subbed for one of those teachers who will be remembered by his students as a favorite, but that may be because he is good at incorporating media into his class.

Periodically, I wrestle with the little voice that says “get a job, get a job.” I wonder if this voice is a relic of the progressive feminist mentality I’ve subconsciously absorbed, or a sincere desire to do something more productive than blogging. It’s only compounded when I read articles like the one in Sunday’s paper that cited a study saying that the mental health of children whose father was deployed was better if their mother worked outside the home, than if she were a stay-at-home mom (presumably because she has adult interaction and occupations to make time pass quickly).


At any rate, I haven’t any immediate desire to add complications to an already busy schedule next semester when el esposo is in Afghanistan. And I have a long list of books to read.

Weekend watching

Although maybe we should have watched a different movie in honor of today's feast day, last night we watched Molokai: The Story of Father Damien, which was recommended by a friend.  The 3 yr old fell asleep quickly, but the other kids were engaged, and the 5 yr old was fascinated by what he initially called the "leprechauns." I hope the boys were inspired by Fr. Damien's example, although it is easier to identify with Dr. Clayton, who visits but can't stay on the island.

Slowing down

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe! If we weren't going to a party tonight, I'd make enchiladas. Before we moved, we gathered with friends who every year on the Sunday closest to this feast day organized a prayer group in front of the nearby Planned Parenthood and then had a fiesta at their house afterwards.  The party was a good carrot for the kids (and for myself) who found it uncomfortable to stand outside and pray for 15 minutes. 

This feast day comes at a good time. I need a reminder to celebrate. I've been in a foul weather mood the last couple of days because I earned myself a speeding ticket one morning while taking the kids to school. The irony is that I wasn't running late. And I didn't even realize I was speeding because I was, I'm ashamed to admit, talking on the phone.

For a long time I resisted  getting a cell phone because 1. I was home most of the time, and 2. I have enough distractions in the car with six kids that I felt I might be a liability on the road if I were trying to carrying on a conversation with someone else. Plus I figured that were I to be in an accident, somebody on the road would have a cell phone and call 911 for us. But when we were getting ready to move here, and we were going to have to drive in separate cars, we bought a phone for me. And since I now spend a good portion of the day in the car, I use it a lot more than I intended.

My fear came true: I was driving distracted.  I wouldn't be surprised if the officer gave me a ticket instead of a warning because I was on the phone. And I don't really blame him.

Add to the frustration that I had just said to my husband when we bought new shocks for the car (after buying a new windshield and 8 new tires, sigh) that at least we got some value for the money, unlike when you get a speeding ticket. My kind husband has not rubbed this in to me.

When I was complaining to my mom, she used it as a chance to teach a spiritual lesson: "Think of this as a message from God telling you to slow down."  So I'm working on that.  I repent of speeding, one of those venial sins that I've committed so often it has escaped my conscience.  I'm sorry that I was irritable to everyone.  And I'm trying to think of all the good that the City will get from my fine . . .

Joy to the ears

We just finished listening to Ramona Forever read by Stockard Channing (whose nasally voice turns out to be just right) on our drives to school. Although the older boys groaned, no one wanted to get out of the car when we pulled up to our destinations before a chapter was ended. Funny, dear Ramona - she far outshines Judy Moody and Junie B. Jones! Dear Mrs. Cleary, you have a gift for understanding the angst of an eight year old who doesn't understand why grown-ups don't understand their troubles. You end each book with a hopeful resolution, even if you don't tie up all the loose ends into neat little bows.

Poor Mr. Quimby, surrounded by all these woman, and resigned to working in the Shop Rite Market. While I think him awfully kind for being so considerate of his wife and daughters' desires, I wonder why he doesn't at least make a visit to the one room school in rural Oregon which offers him a job. The Shop Rite is always there. Perhaps Mr. Quimby finds a job as an art teacher in the next book, or perhaps it turns out he is happy to have a job that pays the bills and isn't so wistful anymore about his dream.

On the other hand, there's Aunt Beatrice, who runs off with Uncle Hobart to Alaska so soon after meeting up with him again and rushing into marriage. Couldn't she at least have waited until after Mrs. Q's baby came? I was surprised that Mr. and Mrs. Quimby didn't send Ramona and Beezus to stay with Mrs. Kemp when baby Algie is on the way. And how did Grandpa Day make such a quick exit back to California after the wedding?


But these questions don't detract from our enjoyment of spending time with the Quimbys - Ramona is always entertaining.

My latest affair

Loved this quote from Sara Nelson's So Many Books, So Little Time, which follows her discussion of reading Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary:

He [her husband] thinks of my compulsive reading and writing as ‘work,’ and he doesn’t much quiz me on it; I’m not about to tell him that I am, just like Anna and Emma, an adulteress. My books are my secret lovers, the friends I run to to get away from the daily drudgeries of life, to try out something new, and yes, to get away, for a few hours, from him. He doesn’t need to know that my books are the affairs I do not have.

I've tried to justify in many ways the hours I've spent reading and the $$ I've spent on books: I'm doing research on other cultures; I'm reading for spiritual direction; I need to have things to talk about any party I might go to someday; I'm trying to stall coming to bed because it's phase 2; I'm trying to keep up with what the kids are reading . . . but escape is a top reason. And love of books and even just the idea of reading.

My dh did get a little jealous one time of a relationship I had with a book: Lizzie’s War, which resonated so much with me that I felt like I was reading the story of my life, even though all the details were different. I loved it so much I bought copies for my sister and friends and wrote the author an email saying how much I loved his book. Turned out he lived in our area and wrote back. Suddenly this book was a real person. I went on to take a writing class from him at a little writing workshop in our neighborhood. It was an interesting diversion that resulted in no real progress in my writing, other than it forced me to face the fact that I am a reader and not a writer. And my husband’s jealousy dissipated when he realized that not only was this author old enough to nearly be my father, but he was no competition for my abiding love.

My latest affair is with Evelyn Waugh. Today I finished Put Out More Flags while I was substitute teaching. (I might comment on that at a future point.) Not one of Waugh's that I had heard anything about, but I passed its spot on the shelf while at the library and picked it up.  It's very Waugh: satirically funny, darkly biting depiction of an ensemble of the British uppercrust trying to get involved or avoid getting involved in WWII.  None of the characters is at all likable - they are flippant about the horrors of war and the effects of their careless ways on other people - but I found myself wanting to find out what they did next; to linger at the edge of their party. I wish I could live in one of their manses or villas or flats, despite - or because of - their gentility and decadence even in the face of imminent destruction. Waugh succeeds at making you pity these people despite their scornful selfishness.  Maybe because we all have a little scornful selfishness hidden somewhere, a sense that we know better than the fools in charge (not that they aren't fools). At least some of the characters, perhaps the most self-satisfied ones, realize they, too, are foolish and desperate; perhaps that is their redemption, if one exists. Or am I just looking for one? I was sorry the book was over, but I didn't put it down with a sense of closure, although the anti-hero, Basil Seal, does finally attempt to undo his betrayal of a friend and to volunteer to fight in the war.

St. Anne and baby Mary from http://www.ourcatholicprayers.com/novena-to-st-anne.html

Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception!

I am always on the lookout for a beautiful statue of Mary as a young girl that I saw at a friend's, who had received as a gift (so she didn't know where it came from). It was a very simple stone statue, contemporary looking, but I was attracted by the depiction of Mary looking so human and young, more lovable, less distant. Her eyes were downcast and one hand touched her heart and the other hand was extended palm up in that familiar gesture, but the girlishness of Mary made it seem more affective than it does in the more queenly images of her. 

Advent realization

Part of the reason that video in the last post resonated so deeply for me is that I spent a good part of last week worrying that I was pregnant with what would be our seventh child. I woke up one morning with a sinking feeling that you are not supposed to have when you are married. And for the next couple of days, I fretted over how to fit another car seat into the car, how to respond to all the negative comments we were sure to receive, how to give up my increased liberty of movement and time, all very self-conscious and selfish fears.

But what I was really worried about was how I could parent another child when the ones I have seem so desperate for attention that I seem unable to satisfy. My 3, 5 and 7 yr olds fight over who gets to sit next to me at meals. After school my other kids are constantly yelling over each other to tell me things or reaching out to me for hugs, while instead I give them stiff little pats. I am not the affectionate type and feel like all elbows and bones when people try to hug me. While I have no trouble loving and holding little babies, I have a harder time responding to the demands of the bigger children they grow up to be.


Maybe I’m overanalyzing their needs. I didn’t read the Time magazine article about “overparenting,” only reviews of it, partly because I’m afraid I might recognize some of myself in it. Perhaps I try to make up for what I lack in affectionate behavior by over-managing homework and play time.

Anyway, my anxiety ridden response to a possible pregnancy surprised even me. I’ve been sort of expecting that we would have another child – a surprise baby in our last years of fertility. I haven’t given away all the baby clothes, and I’ve been listening sympathetically to a couple of older friends, both of whom have 5 or 6 kids, talk about how they’d like to have another. For a while I liked to say we “practiced” NFP and weren’t very good at it, but 3 years after our last, maybe I was starting to get a little overconfident. And a little too comfortable in the status quo.

In my frustration at making a “mistake,” I moaned and berated myself, grousing and griping and being very unpleasant to be around. Sorry, family. And here it is Advent, when we’re supposed to be eagerly anticipating a Baby, the gift of Life.

Then one afternoon while driving home from school, I started thinking of names that we haven’t used yet. And by giving this potential thing a name, I finally began to think of it as a baby, as a person, as someone new to love.
Snuck into Confession before going to a Christmas party, and finished the weekend without so many worries, only regret that I’d been such a bear to everyone, especially so unnecessarily, as no telltale signs of pregnancy have showed up. And now maybe I am a little sorry not to add a little more drama to life.
Perhaps a benefit of this little episode is that it has heightened my commitment to an Advent resolution of putting aside fear about the future. So in that vein here are a couple good quotes from Watch for the Light:

This from Fr. Alfred Delp who died in a Nazi prison:

There is perhaps nothing we modern people need more than to be genuinely shaken up. Where life is firm we need to sense its firmnees; and where it is unstable and uncertain and has no basis, no foundation, we need to know this too and endure it. … And now God strikes the earth till it resounds, now he shakes and shatters; not to pound us with fear, but to teach us one thing – the spirit’s innermost moving and being moved.

And this from Johann Christoph Arnold:

Love is a tangible reality. Sometimes it demands hard work and sacrifice . . . As my great-aunt Else laying dying of tuberculosis, a friend asked her if she had one last wish. She replied, “Only to love more.” If we live our lives in love, we will know peace now, and at the hour of death. And we will not be afraid.

Sharing a link

I was going to write something else, but then I watched this.  Worth watching every second.

A bag full of books

We went to the library the other day to kill time between pick-ups. I didn’t intend to check out anything, and didn't even bring in a bookbag. But of course I came home with a stack large enough to fill 2 bags. The librarian, who was very kind to us when we first applied for cards, now seems to groan almost audibly when I approach the desk to check out.

This is what happened: While the kids played on the computer, colored and did puzzles, I meandered by the Christmas books, looking for an Advent meditations book. Found 1, Watch for the Light, a companion to Bread and Wine, which I love, from Plough Publishing House. The Christmas books were by the books about books. Hmm, couldn't resist. So I brought home 2: Book by Book by Michael Dirda and Sara Nelson’s So Many Books, So Little Time. Then I espied 2 large, beautiful coffee table books: At Home with Books, which is photos of rich people’s home libraries, and Treasures of the Library of Congress. I want to ingest these things, the pictures are so mouthwatering. Every time we go to DC I intend to go to the Library of Congress, but the desires of others in our party usually outweigh mine.



I’ve been loving Sara Nelson’s book, although it’s a little dated, from 2003. This Jewish journalist, wedded to a SNL set designer, gets a dream job: write about reading a book a week and relate the books to your personal life, instead of critiquing them. She comments that the books she likes are the ones that feature characters who are most like herself, and maybe that’s why I’m enjoying this book so much. Of course, there are the major differences of faith, lifestyle, and political bent between Ms. Nelson and myself, but I identify with her love of books, her reluctance to loan them or get rid of them, a burning desire for more shelves, an itch to discover the next big thing combined with a prejudice against the current big thing, a fear of running out of books while on a trip.

Another difference: she came to a voracious appetite for books later in life. I spent maybe 75% of my youth curled up in a blue velvet wingback chair reading book after book. I have a list I made in about 6th grade of the 256 novels I read that year. In high school, my goal was at least a book a week, if not two, from a list of college bound reading material. Granted, I was more about quantity than quality, but at least I gained a passing familiarity with a number of classic authors, some of whom I revisited in college, where I studied, what else, Great Books and English. So again I was really a survey reader.


Now my reading life is relegated to a few hours late at night, a few moments waiting in the school pick up line, maybe half an hour on the stair stepper, or, dare I admit?, in the WC, where I have been known to hide much longer than necessary to finish a chapter. But I have tried to read more attentively, at least some books, looking for lines to remember or images to return to. And I’ve tried to be a more social reader by participating in book clubs when convenient, and now reading book blogs. My own blog could perhaps use a more focused approach – i.e. just being a blog about what I’m reading – but it’s also my substitute for Facebook and my attempt to try to capture thoughts and events that mark my life: a response to blog envy, or a way of reminding myself that I have plenty of things to be thankful for in my own life.



Part of what I’m enjoying about Nelson’s book, is not, surprisingly, the book lists because I don’t care for most of the books she reads that I’ve read and don’t want to read the books she recommends (lots of biographies and bestsellers), but her humorous articulation of the resonance between her books and her life. Often I make only general comments about a book because I am intimidated by the feeling that I have to say something that shows insight instead of just sharing a response, and usually I don’t have time to process “insights,” so I don’t often spell out why I love certain books.


I like Sara for her love of books; I envy her job; I wonder at her willingness to spend a day in bed ignoring her husband and son to finish a book - reading can be alienating when you find yourself hiding from your family to finish a book, forgetting to make dinner.


Library disappointment: I’m Santa Claus and I’m Famous by Marjorie Weisman Sharmat. I thought I read a book of hers I liked, but this one made me wonder how many insipid holiday books can exist at one time, and why did I check this out? This one is the comic book style story of a boy who wakes up and is anointed by Santa to be his replacement, so he spends his life getting fat, building toys, taking care of reindeer and cultivating a beard. The schtick is that he is telling this to a group of school kids at a career fair. So at the end they all want a job as Santa, too. The gratuitous “meaning of Christmas” message at the end is that the kids can all practice by giving out love and kindness.

Library joys: Lovely version of All Things Bright and Beautiful illustrated by Bruce Whatley. I’ve loved this poem since reading James Herriot’s Irish vet books as a preteen. I don’t remember knowing the poem before reading those books, despite having spent the first 7 yrs of my life as a Protestant. This version has light watercolor images of a girl on a farm, perhaps reminiscent of Herriot.

A better Christmas book for a preschooler: Who is Coming to Our House? by Joseph Slate and Ashley Wolff. Simple illustrations accompany a repetitive poem about preparing the stable for the coming of baby Jesus.

Rediscovery of The Best Loved Doll, a favorite from my girlhood, by Rebecca Caudill. The illustrations are monochromatic, not stunning, and the story about a girl who decides to take her beat up but beloved doll Jennifer to a friend’s birthday party, instead of one of her showier dolls, verges on saccharine. Betsy's favorite doll looks bedraggled - nearly hairless - next to the other girls’ dolls, but ends up winning the award of the title at the end of the party. What did I love about this book as a child? The fact that the dolls could talk? The idea of the birthday party? The message about love being more important than looks? Betsy sacrifices a prize to take Jennifer so that she will have fun at the party. Happily, even though I had to force my seven year old daughter to sit down and read it with me because she wasn’t attracted by the looks of the book, she ended up loving it herself. A problem at our home: So many toys, even after a radical downsizing before our move, that most of my kids do not have a favorite toy. Time to downsize again.

And a find for the older boys: The newly published third installment of the Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. We all loved the first one. I never got around to the second, but they are fighting over the third.

December already? Advent greetings

After the excitement of Thanksgiving company, Advent snuck up on me. I’ve been scrambling to find the Advent wreath, buy new candles, collect the things scattered in the move - prayer book, Jesse tree ornaments, nativity, - and to recollect my Christmas disposition. Every year, my husband and I start the season with a discussion about how to avoid the frenetic last minute shopping and the money hemorrhage and instead capture some of a peaceful Advent spirit. We’ve tried to incorporate some penitential practices like giving up sweets – hard for our weak wills when confronted with weekly parties and cookie exchanges. We tried decorating for Advent: purple ornaments on the tree, waiting to put up lights, but usually we forget to trade the purple for red until after we return from holiday trips. We’ve incorporated a few Advent traditions: a Jesse tree, a paper chain with a prayer intention written on each link, moving Mary and Joseph and the wise men around the house until they reach the manger, adding blessed hay to the nativity, having a little Advent wreath lighting ceremony on Sundays, etc.

But every year we end up cutting these practices short to take our annual holiday trek to see family. And every year we debate the merits and detractions of staying with the grandparents for Christmas instead of having our own immediate family Christmas celebration.

When the older kids were little, I thought it would be boring to be home with just a couple toddlers on Christmas morning. And back then both of us had younger siblings still living at home. But now all the siblings are married, and some of them are bucking the “gather at Grandma’s” tradition in order to do their own thing. I feel a little cowardly – do I lack the courage to stay at home with my own kids? Am I selfish in wanting the older generation around to bolster my Christmas spirit?


I do love being with the extended family for Christmas, and the kids do, too. They want both to have Christmas at home and with the cousins, but distance has always been a deterrent to this solution. So far the joy of being together with extended family has outweighed the inconvenience of travel and the prickliness of being crammed into a house full of too many bodies with various expectations. My big fear is that the when the kids grow up, they won’t want to come to our home for Christmas because they don’t have memories of Christmas with us. But then again, maybe that will liberate them to celebrate with their own families. With the rootlessness of our lives as a military family, I wonder if they’ll ever find more of a place to associate with “home” and “Christmas” than their grandparents’.


Yesterday while walking with a couple of other moms from the school, one of whom is from Columbia, this topic came up. The mom from Columbia rarely gets to visit her family because of the distance and expense. But she misses the experience of growing up in a multi-generational family. Although my grandparents didn’t live with my family growing up, they were close enough to be present at our birthdays, sports events, holiday celebrations, Sunday dinners, etc. As an adolescent, I feared letting the grandparents down – their disapproval was a great deterrent to misbehavior. I hope that my own children feel connected enough to their grandparents to desire as strongly their approbation.


At least, we truly observe a penitential practice when we load all the kids, the dog, and the gifts into the car to drive about 2500 miles.