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.

Good show!

Despite the fact that we had company all weekend - not only my sibs for Thanksgiving and Friday, but a couple of Navy families on Saturday and a couple of church/school families on Sunday - we did get to watch a couple of movies. The new Star Trek was family fare - other than one skipped scene, which caused us to miss a rather important plot device in the interest of preserving what's left of our kids' innocence, or at least what's left of the space in which they know more than we'd like them to know, but neither they nor us want to admit.  I've never been a Star Trek watcher, even though at our first meeting my husband and I talked about the (3-4?) episodes we'd seen. Why this made us fall in love with each other is a profound mystery. Destiny? Providence?


But this movie made me want to go back and watch old episodes. The acting and special effects put Star Wars to shame. How Star Wars became so much more popular is also a mystery. Marketing?

The other show we watched is now on my list of favorites: Gran Torino. Even though the acting was stiff, the language obscene, and the special effects non-existent, the story outshone the technical flaws. The overtly Christian message makes me surprised the movie got some critical acclaim.  Or maybe it didn't, and I'm imagining that it did because this movie was recommended by several friends.  Maybe I loved this movie so much because the crotchety, blunt old man reminded me of my beloved grandfather, or maybe because this story of an old man's discovery of meaning at the end of his life gives hope.  Or maybe because you grew to love the characters enough to feel both the pain and the joy of the sacrifice.

A Yankee does Southern Style Thanksgiving

In 13 years of marriage, I have never hosted a family Thanksgiving dinner in our home before this year. I've cooked a couple turkeys at the grandma's houses, and once 10 years ago I made a turkey dinner 2 weeks before Thanksgiving for our then small fam and a couple single sailors when my husband was going to be deployed on the real Thanksgiving. So when my little brother and his family said they would drive a really long way to spend Thanksgiving with us, I got a little excited.  Wanted to do something special, so decided to try to prepare some Southern delicacies, even if I'm not sure if I really like them.

So we had turducken (note to self: buy a meat thermometer instead of cooking 10 hours to make sure everything is dead):

Collard greens sauteed in bacon grease (note to self: grits are good with butter and cheese, but not on your collards.)

Cornbread oyster stuffing (I think my proportions were a little off; or it's obvious that I like cornbread  better than oysters):

Of course we also had the staples: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (yellow and white mixed together), green bean casserole, clover leaf rolls, and cranberry relish and sauce. My kids and husband all like these terrible cinnamon apple rings that are only in stores this time of year, so we had those, too. But the best part of the meal were the pies: sweet potato, pumpkin, Jefferson Davis (a meringue topped confection with a cream, raisin, pecan and brown sugar filling), and a most scrumptious buttermilk pie.

We had to take a couple of walks after all the sugar.  Good excuse to try out the macro on my new camera.

Someone really enjoyed the leftovers.

Catching up with last year's Oscars *(spoiler alert)

I knew when putting the DVD in the player that Slumdog Millionaire was going to tug some heartstrings but end with triumph.  I've seen the Jai Ho dance enough times to know that it celebrates the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, of love over all odds, of destiny/providence over evildoers standing in its way, but when we were finished watching the movie I felt deflated, instead of heartened.  The guy wins a million dollars and all his problems are solved? What about the mafia members and the people who knew him in the slums? I was glad the movie ended when it did, because I was afraid the next scene was going to be him getting mugged and maimed, and the girl killed.  Or does he take his money and build houses and clean up the slums - or give it to Missionaries of Charity?

Not that I didn't like the movie. Great mix of classic themes in a new setting. Great cinematography and acting. But there's a part of me that wonders when you see documentary-style films about poverty, or any suffering, what is the person behind the camera doing to help? What is the person watching doing?

Bright Spots

Although it's been somber around here with my husband gone, my dear friend sick, my sister's familial drama, pets dying, and the news depressing, there have been some light moments:

Watching an osprey feed over the bay the past couple of mornings.

Photo from wikipedia. More at cornell's bird id page

Picking up what looked like a dead box turtle on a walk and finding out he is still alive and now is recuperating in our laundry room.

Our shy friend models his scars on the dog's carpet square. My other carpets don't look quite that furry.

Listening to my kids profess their love for their teachers. Yesterday afternoon, my kindergartener called me by his teacher's name and then said "That's okay, I call her mom. That's because I love you both the same." (I took this as a compliment.) Then my second grader and my 3 yr old (who only sees her at drop off and pick up) both piped in that they loved her, too, along with the 2nd grade teacher, the computer teacher, and the art teacher.  If I'm not going to homeschool, at least my kids' teachers are loving, if they are so loved in return. 

Watching a mother fix her daughter's smudged mascara. At the library. At pre-school story time.  This girl couldn't have been more than three and was probably less.  Wish I had a photo. At least I had a smile. Southern Belle in the making.

Catching the Gestalt Gardener on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.  I find myself mesmerized listening to this guy with a truly Southern name, Felder Rushing, talk about gardening in the South.  And he has some great photos of bottle trees and garden hearts on his web page, where you can see photos of him (also at MPB), but he looks nothing like his voice.

Photo by Felder of a bottle tree at the Shed, a bbq place not to far from us, and one of his photos of heart shapes found in gardens.

Waking up to the peaceful sleeping face of a petite little girl who has creeped into my bed sometime in the middle of the night.  She and her siblings seem to know when there is extra room. And warmth.

Small things to add to that gratitude list.

Change is on the way

So now it's not that important to get mammograms and pap smears any more? What other routine tests are the medical associations going to backpedal on recommending in order to make public healthcare more affordable?

Not that I'm one to go in for routine testing myself, even though I had a fibroid adenoma removed when I was in college.  Some of the recommendations do seem like overkill, as do the recommendations for vaccinations (Gardisil mandatory - really?), and the prescribing of antibiotics for every little fever, ache, and chill.  But the timing of these announcements seems disingenuous.

Aren't there any better ideas for reforming health care instead of handing it over to the government?

Prayer request

A dear friend of mine just emailed me with news that she has terminal cancer. What started as renal cell carcinoma last May has become liver cancer.  She is married with 5 children at home and one in Heaven.  Our kids match up in age, and used to go to school together when we lived in Illinois, but we both started homeschooling at about the same time after we moved.  They are still homeschooling with the help of a tutor - a gift to have the kids close at this time.

They asking for the intercession of John Paul II using this prayer:

O Holy Trinity,
we thank you for having given to the Church
Pope John Paul II,
and for having made him shine with your fatherly tenderness,
the glory of the Cross of Christ and the splendor of the Spirit of love


He, trusting completely in your infinite mercy
and in the maternal intercession of Mary, has shown himself
in the likeness of Jesus the Good Shepherd
and has pointed out to us holiness
as the path to reach eternal communion with You.


Grant us, through his intercession,
according to your will, the grace that we implore,
in the hope that he will soon be numbered among your saints.

Amen.

That he may seek a miracle for KH

An Encomium to My Sister

It is a truism in my family that my sister has been known for going a step too far. She likes to push conversations to points where people in the room feel slightly uncomfortable, and she is good at knowing what will make others squirm. But this trait is probably what makes her writing so powerful. She takes an image, a scene, and cuts out the extraneous details to focus on something (likely to be something thorny and uncomfortable) that is universally familiar, and then she ties up her story with a moment of personal metanoia.


Occasionally she has written about our family, and the thought crossed my mind that it would be interesting to tell a counterpoint version to her experience, but then I realized I lacked her courage to pinpoint the truth, as well as her gift to craft a well-written blog post. She has a writer’s knack for bringing life to her words with imagery and insight to her readers with well chosen phrasing, although she might leave out some details in preference to others, or embellish some facts. In one jocular reply to a commenter, she claims she can't tell lies. As a child, this was because her dimple always ratted her out when she tried to lie. As an adult, she doesn't lie, but edits her experiences, retells them in the distinctive voice of her online persona, and focuses on her spiritual dramas to craft interesting, enlightening, and well told stories.

I hope she continues to tell them, even if they may not always be what we want to hear.

Cultivating nobility

I 've heard it said that the South was a feudal society that not only suffered from the wrongs associated with that society, slavery, but also mirrored its cultivation of nobility. Returning to Southern lit as a reader for enjoyment rather than as a reader for a grade, I realize that I can never really identify with some of these characters who have "help" around.  I don't have any housekeepers, gardeners or cooks, and don't know anyone who does or did have them on fulltime bases.  I feel sorry for Benjy getting stuck with Versh and Luther all the time, but I feel sorry for them, too, getting stuck with him, and I'm not sure I'm supposed to.  Does keeping help around the house emphasize nobility, a kind of elevation and separation from all the lowly around? Does having lowlies around the house make moms and dads feel noble? If I'm not paying my current "help", does it still make me seem more noble? (I do reimburse with wii and computer time...)

Tragicomedy or Comedic Tragedy?

One difficulty not often commented upon in the health care debate: the ease with which the government can be defrauded. At a recent wardroom social, talk turned to Katrina and its damages. The chaplain’s wife told about a man she met through an outreach ministry who was still living in his car since Katrina. A couple of other wives, who were here during the storm, quickly pointed out that he must have mental problems and didn’t know where to look for help, because help was everywhere – along with people taking advantage of it. Not only was there corruption among the government officials, but also among the government beneficiaries. When the Red Cross handed out cash, people went through the line several times, claiming to have lost their ID. Some military members stationed here accepted a displacement allowance but forgot to mention to the government when they returned home, so they continued to receive the allowance. When the government announced it was going to try docking pay to recoup its lost funds, the outcry was so severe and the process so daunting that it gave up and let people keep their ill-gotten gains. Another story was told about a pharmacist who received all her payments and allowances from her insurance company and the government, but then she decided to apply for a grant for upgrades to her property. She was sent $92,000 to make her house look pretty after it was rebuilt with insurance money.



I suppose with all stories of generosity and largeness of heart that go along with natural disasters, there are an equal number of stories of greed and debasement.

Post in which I quote someone else who knows what's going on since I don't

Is it obvious from my many blog posts that my husband is out of town, and I have no warm body to talk to? He is off to Afghanistan to make sure everything is ready for his regiment’s deployment there in a few months. I usually don’t have too many worries when he is travelling, but I made the mistake yesterday of googling the province he is visiting and noting a number of recent bombings.

Humbug.

A friend sent a copy of General McChrystal’s recent remarks about the Complexities of Afghanistan to the International Institute of Strategic Studies on October 1st.  Here is a clip:

a.The delicate balance of power

I arrived in Afghanistan in May 2002 and I have spent a part of every year since then involved in the effort. I have learned a tremendous amount about it and, every day, I realise how little about Afghanistan I actually understand. I discount immediately anyone who simplifies the problem or offers a solution, because they have absolutely no idea of the complexity of what we are dealing with.

In Afghanistan, things are rarely as they seem, and the outcomes of actions we take, however well-intended, are often different from what we expect. If you pull the lever, the outcome is not what you have been programmed to think. For example, digging a well sounds quite simple. How could you do anything wrong by digging a well to give people clean water? Where you build that well, who controls that water, and what water it taps into all have tremendous implications and create great passion.

If you build a well in the wrong place in a village, you may have shifted the basis of power in that village. If you tap into underground water, you give power to the owner of that well that they did not have before, because the traditional irrigation system was community-owned. If you dig a well and contract it to one person or group over another, you make a decision that, perhaps in your ignorance, tips the balance of power, or perception thereof, in that village.

Therefore, with a completely altruistic aim of building a well, you can create divisiveness or give the impression that you, from the outside, do not understand what is going on or that you have sided with one element or another, yet all you tried to do is provide water.

b.COIN mathematics

There is another complexity that people do not understand and which the military have to learn: I call it ‘COIN mathematics’. Intelligence will normally tell us how many insurgents are operating in an area. Let us say that there are 10 in a certain area. Following a military operation, two are killed. How many insurgents are left? Traditional mathematics would say that eight would be left, but there may only be two, because six of the living eight may have said, ‘This business of insurgency is becoming dangerous so I am going to do something else.’

There are more likely to be as many as 20, because each one you killed has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong. It does not matter – you killed them. Suddenly, then, there may be 20, making the calculus of military operations very different. Yet we are asking young corporals, sergeants and lieutenants to make those kinds of calculations and requiring them to understand the situation. They have to – there is no simple workaround.

It is that complex: where you build the well, what military operations to run, who you talk to. Everything that you do is part of a complex system with expected and unexpected, desired and undesired outcomes, and outcomes that you never find out about. In my experience, I have found that the best answers and approaches may be counterintuitive; i.e. the opposite of what it seems like you ought to do is what ought to be done. When I am asked what approach we should take in Afghanistan, I say ‘humility’.

I’ve had a sense of guilt for some time that I haven’t sent my husband on a deployment recently like most other Navy wives. Sometimes I exaggerate the length and frequency of his many planning operation trips in order to feel like I’ve had my share of hardship during the War on Terror. Operation Enduring Freedom. But now my turn to suffer is fast approaching, and as we prepare our wills and update our insurance policies, I’m more and more hopeful that this may be the only deployment to the Middle East that we’ll have to endure.

More high school reading

Watched Field of Dreams with the kids on Friday. They were bored at the beginning - only the older 2 care anything about baseball - but once the ghost players appeared, their interest picked up. The subtext about the reclusive author Terence Mann started a conversation after the show. When Kevin Costner's wife stands up at the school board meeting and makes an impassioned defense of Mann's book, I was worried a minute – wait, who is this author? How did I miss this guy? Kids asked about him, so we hit up trusty Google and found he doesn’t exist. Phew. I thought I had missed something.

But what I missed the first and only time I saw this movie was the implications of the wife’s speech. When I saw this movie in high school, I probably cheered the wife on. But now as a parent, I pause. I wouldn't support government censorship, but mostly because I think the government will censor the wrong things. On the other hand, I don’t think school kids should be handed every book that is praised as a coming of age manifesto. Mann apparently is based loosely on J. D  Salinger. Catcher in the Rye is a book for adults who have already lost their innocence, not kids who are still trying to figure things out. Why not feed them more challenging books with rich vocabulary, more complex characters, and longlasting value? Make them read the classics they won’t have time or desire to read on their own. They’ll find Catcher in the Rye on their own; it doesn’t need to be assigned in class.

Then again, I can see an argument for knowing what books are being talked about, what books people are interested in,what books have influence.  But how many high school students have critical skills to discern good writing from popular writing?

I suppose I should add Catcher in the Rye to my to reread list, because all I can remember of it is Holden's self-absorption and visit to a prostitute.

Why read about where you live?

From Welty's "Place in Fiction":

"It may be that place can focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its gaze to point. Focus then means awareness, discernment, order, clarity, insight -- they are like the attributes of love. The act of focusing itself has beauty and meaning; it is the act that continued in, turns into meditation, into poetry. Indeed, as soon as the least of us stands still, that is the moment something extraordinary is seen to be going on in the world."

and

"Location is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief and moral conviction that charge out from the story in its course. These charges need the warm hard earth underfoot, the light and lift of air, the stir and play of mood, the softening bath of atmosphere that give the likeness-to-life that life needs.  Through the story's translation and ordering of life, the unconvincing raw material becomes the very heart's familiar. Life is strange. Stories hardly make it more so; with all they are able to tell and surmise, they make it more believable, more inevitably so."

But sometimes, especially after long interstate drives past the same restaurants and billboards, I am afraid that places are losing their identities, paving over paradise, etc.

Then again, what place but the Gulf Coast would put a Walmart, Waffle House and Shell Stations on beachfront property?

Another list, to be continued

I started reading The Sound and the Fury again, in my attempt to reacquaint or newly acquaint myself with the literature of Mississippi. Despite having such a boggy, backwoods reputation, the state has certainly outshown my homestate of Indiana in producing literary stars. Not that Hoosiers are known for being particularly poetic, considering the best known poet of Indiana is James Whitcomb Riley, whose poetry is rarely found in collegiate anthologies, but can be appreciated for its dramatic effect.  Lew Wallace had a home near where we were living in IN several years ago, so I finally read Ben Hur and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost was a favorite when I was in middle school; I should add it to my reread list.

On that list: in addition to Mississippians (and children's books), I've been trying to reread novels or authors I liked to try to remember why I liked them.  My adolescent reading was centered around reading a list of "classics" and "recommended for college" books that I plowed through without direction to get to the end of the list. The Sound and the Fury was one of these books, and a book I've read about more than I've spent time with. Faulkner has premier status among the American canon, and although I could tell you why others think so, I couldn't tell you whether I agree, except to parrot what I can remember of the lectures of Dr. Cowan, the mythological Southern Lit professor at UD.

So now I'm trying to figure out the chronology of what Benjy/Maury is perceiving.  This subjectivity of time reminds me of what my sister-in-law told me about 2012 and Mayan calendars, which led me to compare it to Pope B's description of the nature of time/eternity in The Spirit of the Liturgy. My head is starting to spin with the remembering.

But even though reading S and F is slow going, Faulkner's genuis is evident. What inspired him to take this perspective, and to take the risk of writing this back and forth chronology/ point of view that has been mimicked, often poorly (The Help comes to mind), ever since?

Other novels I relatively recently reenjoyed:
The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter
Cry, the Beloved Country
David Copperfield
Pride and Prejudice
Abel's Island
Mystery and Manners
Short stories of Eudora Welty
The Great Gatsby
Brideshead Revisited
A Severe Mercy (not really a novel, but...)

Wanting to reread:
More Faulkner
Tennessee Williams
Richard Wright
Shelby Foote
Walker Percy
My Antonia
To Kill a Mockingbird
Kristin Lavransdatter (if my lost copy ever shows up...)
Howard's End

But with all these good intentions, I sat up reading Matthew Pearl's latest, The Last Dickens, last night.

What everyone is talking about it seems

The health care debate makes me feel like hiding under a rock. I am against a single payer insurance system for efficiency reasons and because I don’t want to pay for someone’s abortion or other morally problematic procedures with my tax dollars. But I am a recipient of government healthcare as a dependent of a member of the military, and it hasn’t been all bad.

Granted, there are not many people who love Tricare, the military insurance. But there are also not many people who opt out of Tricare unless the dependent spouse works for a place offering a better plan, and there are a lot of retirees who prefer it. I complain about long wait times and subpar care, but I haven’t yet opted out.


Here is what we get with nearly costfree government care:

• Tired military doctors and nurses. There are a few good ones in the system who are beneficiaries of the free education, but they seem to drop out and join civilian life as soon as they can. My worst experience was my last delivery when my baby was nearly born on the floor because the staff was unprepared. I happened to be triaged at shift change, and apparently no one was checking the lady having her sixth kid. Guess they thought I could do it alone. One of the attending residents had never seen a natural birth.

• Trouble getting claims filed: During another pregnancy, I had to resubmit a claim for maternity care over and over because the civilian doctor didn’t want to reclassify the visit, but Tricare would only honor the claim if it billed a certain way.

• No continuity of care. I am constantly repeating our medical history. Blessedly, we don’t have any chronic problems that require special attention.

• Long wait times. When a trip to the ER is free, people take advantage of it. On our last trip for stitches, I was glad I had the GermX with us because everyone in the waiting room was there with the flu. Maybe because of the Swine flu, people are anxious, but didn’t you used to just sit at home and wait for the flu to be over? Unless you’re dehydrated, do you really need to see a doctor to be told you have the flu and to get a prescription for Motrin? The system is abused because it’s free.

• Long wait times to see a specialist. Apparently this has gotten better, but you still have to jump through hoops to see the kind of dr you need to see. And now there's a bill proposing cuts to the amount Tricare reimburses civilian doctors, which mean fewer will accept Tricare and fewer appointments will be available.

If you don’t mind waiting for appointments, for prescriptions to be filled, for test results to be returned, and you don’t care if your health care providers are grumpy and treat you as a number, you won’t mind government healthcare. There’s a part of me that feels like health care has become too luxurious anyway. When the private hospitals offer labor suites with fancy coffeemakers and gourmet champagne dinners after baby is born, and ultrasounds are ordered up every month, but people still sue their doctors when their babies are born with disabilities, you don’t wonder that the insurance business costs keep going up, and malpractice coverage keeps going up.

But isn’t there a better way to control the costs without turning them over to the government?

More on dead pets

My sister just told me she disagreed with our death management practices.  Animals don't have souls, so go ahead and put them down, she said.

But my point wasn't that the animal needed a peaceful death experience, but that WE needed a nonviolent one.  If the animal doesn't have a soul, then why worry about its pain? Animals die in pain all the time in the claws of their predators.  But what about the effect of watching an animal die vs. killing it on our souls?

I agree that if your dog has rabies like Ol' Yeller, or is vomiting or excreting all over your house, then you have to put it down. Or if your horse has a broken leg and will never get up again, but will take months to die, then you have to put it down. But our rabbit wasn't a nuisance, so why should we have to commit an act of violence to put it out of its imagined misery?  It would've caused us more pain than watching it die.

It's not easy to kill a pest, let alone a pet.  What would St. Francis say? Swat that mouse, or move it out of the house, like St. Martin de Porres?  While you hesitate, that mouse is growing fatter in your larder, BD . . .

A death in the family

We have a somber household today. This morning a member of our menagerie expired. Rosie, the friendly miniature lop rabbit, is no more. A couple of weeks ago, she began drooling, and I suspected something was amiss. But we were busy getting ready to go to OKC and finishing reading fair projects, so I didn’t call the vet. And she was a hand-me-down rabbit – hard to justify spending $60 for a vet visit. About 2 months ago, I did actually take her to the vet to have her teeth trimmed because she wasn’t chewing on anything. My suspicion is that she developed an abscess or infection as a result of this trimming, and maybe the vet would have discounted an antibiotic. But we didn’t go.

When we returned from our trip, she looked worse: a bald patch appeared under her chin from drooling, and her cheek looked swollen. I finally called the vet to schedule an appointment on Friday. But Friday afternoon she had blood under her nose and was wheezing. She also had shrunk from not eating. I hemmed and hawed about taking her. I didn’t want to pay for treatment for a dying animal. I also didn’t want to look like a bad pet owner to the vet and my kids. After consulting my rabbit killing father, my husband agreed to put her “to sleep” himself. I cancelled the vet appointment.
By the time husband returned home, the rabbit was lying on her side. She looked like she was going to breathe her last any minute. Why knock her head with a blunt object or smother her if she was just going to fade out on her own? The kids all patted her and went to bed bawling about how nice she was and how sad to wake up with one less pet.

But she was still alive in the morning.

I started to feel a little guilty. Should we put her out of her misery? She didn’t seem to be suffering visibly. Neither I nor my husband wanted to be the one to “put her down” with a swift bludgeon to the head. Why is it that we feel compelled to kill animals near death? I try not to anthropomorphize our pets, but if they aren’t miserable, why go ahead and kill them? Is there a little unconscious sadism at work? How many dogs die naturally these days? Of course, dogs start to pee the carpet and get snippy when they are dying. This rabbit was just lying there. And eventually she died, like my 11yr old’s rat, who spent about 4 days shrinking until he finally breathed his last.
If we keep our small pets partly as teaching tools for our kids, they are useful for teaching about caring for the dying as well as the living, a reminder of that forgettable 7th corporal act of mercy. I was a bit squeamish about touching dead things, but my kids reached in and patted the rabbit and carried her out to her grave in the backyard, and wept as they shoveled dirt on her already stiffening body and said a few prayers of thanksgiving for her life.
The younger kids were similarly without fear this past summer when my grandmother lay in her coffin. They reached in and patted her hands and stared and said goodbye without self-consciousness, while I held back and felt awkward standing at her coffin. This grandmother was free with her commentary on the appearances of corpses, and I think she would have been pleased with her own appearance, although she looked thin. May she rest in peace and find happiness in Heaven.

Friday Quick Takes

Some good Christmas ideas from Jen at conversiondiary -- is it already that time?

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We just returned from a trip to OKC. Another 24 hrs in the car round trip. But this was one of our easier trips: maybe the kids are getting used to getting carted around for days. Movie fare on the little TV included Anne of Green Gables. Even the boys liked it. The tension between Gilbert and Anne is much more thrilling and realistic than Twilight’s Edward and Bella.

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I didn’t get much reading done in the car because Husband drove when it was dark, and I took the afternoon shift.  But I did get around to listening to part of Walden and then to the Dalai Lama’s book on the Mind and Life, which had been downloaded for me on my ipod by my brother in law.

It has been years since I read Walden, and hearing it made it seem as if Henry David was in the room telling me about his experience. At first I envied his detachment from material goods, but then I grew a little frustrated. His continued insistence that to work is enslavement began to bother me, because work also has a liberating side. Work well done is cause for satisfaction. But then he means more the work for pay done by the people living in the little shanties like the one he buys.

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The Dalai Lama’s book was definitely interesting. He talks to a lot of scientists about how the mind works. Every time he would say something like “in Buddhist tradition,” I was struck with the similarity between Buddhism and monastic Christianity. From what I can determine, a chief difference is that Christians focus on love for others and transcend suffering by accepting it and trying to see/make something good in it, whereas Buddhists transcend suffering by detachment from the things that cause it. The Buddhist looks within; the Christian looks outward.  Wish someone other than Richard Gere read it; I can't get his smarminess out of my mind.

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We were greeted at the Texas/OKC border by a huge new casino decorated with facsimiles of famous buildings around the world. It rises up in a no man’s land, garish and glitzy. Like the casinos near my parents’ house and near where we vacation, these casinos, though somewhat remote, have huge parking lots. Here, there are parking garage after parking garage. Where do the people come from?

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The wedding was one of the least stressful weddings we’ve been to. There wasn’t the rushing to be places on time that seems to accompany weddings. Instead, it was a 3 day series of parties. My biggest stress was fearing that my 5 yr old, the ring bearer, would do something inappropriate during the ceremony.  When he started getting antsy on the steps, his father made him sit down before catastrophe ensued.

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The second biggest stress was my bad haircut. Why oh why oh why do I always seem to get bad haircuts before picture events? Why are my worst haircuts the ones I spend the most for? Maybe if I spent 45 mins doing my hair, using good products, and a straight iron, I might look something like the stylist intended but instead I look like I have helmet head. Where’s my bandanna?

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Although the trip was long, and we're still putting away laundry, the time spent with all the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents was worth it. Love those guys. Thankful that we have extended family whose company we enjoy.