Resurrection week in review

Christ is Risen, Alleluia,

He is truly risen, Alleluia!

 … so much to say. Time for quick takes:

• Good Friday: A drawing by my son.    

And a mountain climb: On Good Friday, it is traditional in Guam to walk up part of Mt. Lamlam (the highest mountain in the world if you count the miles underwater to its source at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.) and pray the stations of the cross. A group led by our chaplain (really followed by our chaplain – the kids were a little quicker than he) met at 8 to pray our way up. By this time, most of the crowds were heading down.  The biggest group goes up before dawn. They carry up a new wooden cross to erect at the Mt. Jumalang crest.  Some penitents go up on their knees we’ve been told. We also were warned that we might see some people practicing physical mortifications, but we didn’t.  The kids were fascinated, though, by the blood left by some penitents on the small white crosses that mark the way.

 

• Holy Saturday: Spent the day making Too Much Food.  At the last minute we decided to go to the Vigil Mass. Yet again I was in a twit at my husband, because he spent the day running around shopping for a new camera, but didn’t buy one. Short-tempered from lack of food, I was peeved he wasn’t around to help with cleaning. Not the best attitude for the highest Mass of the year. But as the candles were lit, illuminating the expectant faces of the congregation, that dark cloud in my heart was banished away.

• Easter Sunday: Alleluia! Joy! Candy! Mimosas! And one spot of woe: In my rush of cleaning the day before, I mopped the back porch, where the rabbit and chick live and roam uncaged, with Lysol. But I didn’t take the time to move the animals to their outside cage.  When I went to feed them in the morning, the poor little chick, which was tame enough to come and sit on my lap on the porch swing, was quite stiff with rigor mortis.  And I felt quite guilty for causing its demise.  So we had to have a brief burial, a prayer of thanksgiving for the gift of pets, and some tears.  

• Then we were able to spend the morning celebrating the Resurrection with eggs and cinnamon rolls, before we welcomed a crowd to celebrate with us the rest of the afternoon.  I’m still not quite sure how many people showed up. What started as a get together with a couple of families grew and grew. And the food just kept coming. Everyone must have felt like showing their Easter Joy by cooking, because no one showed up empty handed. We ate well, then the teenagers hid some 500 plastic eggs for the thirty or so little kids. God smiled on us with beautiful weather.  Note for future parties: invite teenage girls who like to play with little kids. They got a kickball game started and kept the youngers entertained. Since the kids were happy, many of our guests stayed long enough to eat again.  And they all left with balutin.  But we’re still eating ham.

Palm frond Easter baskets

The dessert table

Add caption

• The rest of the week has been devoted to eating candy and learning to scuba dive.  It’s relatively cheap to learn to dive and to rent equipment here: $169 for the class –including a free boat dive!  We’ve been talking about doing it for months and when our trip to Japan fell through, we enrolled.

Scuba diving was not my idea. I love swimming. I love snorkeling. But I don’t love being underwater. I do not like being dunked, which probably dates back to the summer days of childhood spent at the YMCA, when my older brother thought dunking without getting caught by the lifeguard was a fun game.  That pool was always packed with screaming kids – I’m surprised there weren’t more drownings or asphyxiations by chlorine and suntan lotion.

My husband and older three sons really wanted to learn, and my husband, who turns 39 today, wanted me along for the fun.  I could handle the classroom work – aced my quizzes – but I was not much fun on the first dive.  First I couldn’t get my ears equalized, and then I couldn’t figure out how to clear my mask. You have to take your mask off, put it back on, and then breathe – or snort – out the bottom to clear the water. I snorted up the water, instead of clearing it. Then I started to panic. My sons stared on in amusement as their mother tried to ascend while the instructor pulled me back down.  I finally partially cleared the mask, and then the instructor swam with me back to shore to practice filling and clearing the mask about 100 times.

I went home exhausted and had terrible nightmares that night. They weren’t even about drowning – they were about having bowel accidents and trying to hide them. Odd.  I woke up about 4 in the morning and lay in fear for the next 2 hours before I finally got out of bed. I wasn’t really in fear of drowning, just in fear.  My stomach was in knots. I couldn’t get comfortable. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I kept trying to come up with good excuses to get out of the class. I hoped I would throw up.  I can’t remember being this scared, not since the night when I was about 13 and I heard noises in the middle of the night. I thought we were being robbed. Turns out it was my grandparents arriving to babysit while my parents took my sister to the ER for an appendectomy. I wasn’t even really scared after our recent robbery.

But I had to confront my unfounded fears. I tried to come up with a mantra for when I grew nervous – I was thinking of the Divine Mercy chaplet. “For the sake…”: breathe in; “Have mercy …”: breathe out.  My husband suggested the yoga class closure: “Shanti, shanti, namaste” (We’ve been going to yoga once a week on the base – a fun, elasticizing date night while the kids are at soccer practice). But what kept going through my mind was “I am a fish, I am a frog, I am a waterlogged dog.”

So Thursday, I had to get back into the water and do the same skills we had practiced the day before and some new ones, like breathing out of my buddy’s extra regulator after having my air cut off.  And doing an emergency ascent exhaling for 30 feet.

And I did it. Fears defeated! My legs were like jelly when it was all over, and I was shivering like mad.  Gotta get my $169 worth.  For our last class this morning, I was able to get a good night of sleep and wake up undeterred. We had one last skills review, before we were able to go on an exploratory dive, and I was able to clear my mask on the first try.

Now I am a certified diver. But I’m not planning to dive again soon. I’m happy to snorkel with turtles rather than dive with sharks.  My kids are sharks though. My oldest didn’t lift his head out of the water after the last dive until his knees were bumping into the rocks of the shore.

Day One in the water

Ok, Buddies

Day three - much happier in a wet suit

• Front page headlines today: Fire Code Violations at a government facility. Island life.