A complaint

I’ve been full of woe lately about moving. The reality of our transition is setting in. I've been putting off thinking about it, but the packers come in 2 weeks, and I need to clean closets. I know, I wasn’t all that excited about coming to Guam. I was reluctant to move so far from the mainland, I was afraid I'd feel trapped on a small island. And now here I am, with my fingers grasping the dirt trying to hold on to this place while being pulled away.

Driving home from our last soccer games Saturday, I was feeling tearful.  Our last games here. I’ve been impressed with how good the soccer program has been. These kids here are talented. They play on turf. Goodbye, soccer teams! Goodbye, fun flea market in the parking lot next to soccer! Thanks, coaches, for all the instruction! The kids will have to earn their place on a new team next fall.

It didn’t help that I had pulled out our old tapes to play in the car because we have to sell this car with the last remaining tape deck in our family.  I’ve always complained about our GMC. It’s a big, banged up gas guzzler. Duct tape holds a piece of trim to the door. Another piece of duct tape covers the button to open the top half of the back tail lift because it’s broken. Another piece of duct tape is taking the place of the piece of plastic that broke off the bottom part of the tail lift. It has 187,000 miles on it. But now I don’t want to get rid of it! For 10 years, it has been our faithful chariot. Even though it blends in here with all the other Guam bombs, while it probably would not pass inspection in California, and it probably is going to need something fixed soon, I don’t want to buy a new car. I looked briefly into our options. They are expensive, expensive and expensive, unless we want to buy the extended home school van, as my dad recommends. But my husband’s friend from high school was just killed in one that rolled over. Not a great safety record.

So we are going to have to buy a new car. And we are going to have to find a new house. We’re looking for a rental, along with everyone else moving to or within California, it seems. Not a lot of choices listed on the internet for four bedroom houses.  Conveniently, my husband had to attend some meetings and a class in the area where we are moving this week. In his limited free time, he is on reconnaissance for a house and schools. He has looked at a couple of places, one of which seemed like it would work, until the landlord decided to raise the rent $600 a month when he found out a family of 8 wanted to live in his precious house.  Is this discrimination? Or is it within his rights to charge more for more people? More wear and tear? Why not raise the security deposit? At any rate, I don’t want to have anything to do with this kind of landlord.

While el esposo is there, I’ve been cooking my brain looking at websites for available houses in our price range around the schools we’re interested in. If I just keep searching, perhaps in some dark corner of the internet I’ll find something. The six houses available all seem a little dated and have giant garages but tiny yards. Yet, despite the tiny yards, they come with gardeners to trim the manicured shrubbery, I guess. I don’t want a gardener. I have teenaged boys to mow the lawn, and I like planting and trimming things. Maybe I need to shift my priorities regarding schools and look further out beyond the suburbs, but then my husband’s commute time will extend. We’ve already been looking at places 30 mins from where he’ll be working. The base does have housing available that might fit our family, but the word is that the schools around the base are to be avoided.

And schools! What to do, what to do. Of course, the best schools are the ones that are in the area where the houses are too expensive. The county does have a school choice option that allows you to apply to attend a school out of your district, but do we want to spend hours commuting to school and school events?  There is a Catholic school that is potentially affordable, but is it worth the money? It’s hard to tell much about the personality of the schools from websites.  Academically, the public schools seem to be strong – and most anything is going to be a stronger school than the boys’ current school – but they are huge: 2500 kids. Do I throw the boys into the zoo and hope they find their way or pay through the nose for a smaller school?

Even though the DODEA schools here have not lived up to the rumor that DOD schools are good schools, the boys still like their school. They get to be big fish in a little pond. My oldest is excelling at track and in the classroom, and the second one got invited to do the model UN program in Korea as a freshman. Neither wants to leave, and I have the perception they are pretty safe, despite reports of kids coming to school stoned.  Since this is such a small community, I have eyes everywhere keeping track of things for me. Goodbye, extra eyes.

What else can I complain about? I’ll miss our Mayberry neighborhood, and the friends we’ve made here.  I’ll miss not having traffic jams. I’ll miss the warm water. I guess we’ll still have nice sunsets in California, but the water will be freezing, and there won’t be coral reefs everywhere. I’ll miss the running community here – where you can run 5k’s for $5, you recognize most of the faces at the starting line, and they start at 6 am so you still have all day Saturday to spend as you will. I can’t say I’ll miss red rice, but I will miss fresh mangoes. They are falling from the trees by the hundreds right now. I don’t really love the wild bananas, but I do love the soursop, which supposedly kills cancer cells. And even though I’m sure we’ll be able to find good sushi in California, it won’t be $10 for a container of sashimi that is big enough for a small party and you know it just came off the boat because the fisherman is right there.  I’ll miss my classes at the community college, I’ll miss the boonie stomps, I’ll miss the fiestas.  Goodbye, goodbye, all of this! Farewell, happy island dream life!

Back to consumerville. I don’t want to be neighbors with Barbie and Ken. I don’t want to drive everywhere, I don’t want to deal with Target and Walmart. I don’t want to go through all our stuff again. (Although I do like getting rid of things once the clutter is gone.)  Sigh.

My mom went to a grief workshop the other day.  She called to tell me that moving is also a source of grief and requires a process. So I guess I’m in the anger and denial process. I know this will pass, too.

After all our moves, I can honestly say that we have been happy everywhere we have lived. Each place we seem to love more than the last. I doubt this pattern will keep recurring, but. . . I hope that what is good about each duty station stays with me, forms me in such a way that I acquire the virtues of the place. From Guam let me take lessons about generosity from the people who share this beautiful island and their overflowing fiesta plates. Let me remember how we much we enjoyed the slower pace of life, the lack of planning ahead, the satisfaction with having what we have and not worrying about having the perfect thing.

Let me also remember how long it took us to feel at home here, how comparing this place to that place doesn’t increase overall contentment. I may love the illustrations of spring flowers in Tasha Tudor’s books, but I also love the silhouettes of palm trees and the brilliance of hibiscus outside my door.

Even before reading The Geography of Bliss, I knew that there is no one place that has cornered the market on happiness. When I think about the places I have loved, where I was happy, or thought I could be happy, they really don't have that much in common: the midwestern community of my childhood; the Michigan beaches of our family vacations - where we always wanted to live, but only knew as a summer vacation spot; New England; the Midatlantic region; the deep South; the Southwest; the metropolis of the midwest, Chicago; this tropical island, ...  suburbs, city, country. Now we'll be heading west again. I dread living on the left coast, but I trust that the pattern of happiness will continue. The day will come when I'll be crying about leaving California as the moving van comes ‘round again.

Another reading review

In honor of the feast of Blessed James Duckett on April 19, here is a review of the little bit I’ve been reading lately. (another link to an interesting bit of Catholic trivia.)

Almost five months into the year and my reading has been slight, other than class material and a couple books for book club.  Can I blame Anna Karenina? Class? Training for a marathon? Life? So much for reading 40 books in the year before I turn 40.  Unless I count kids’ books.  Maybe it will be 40 books in the year after I turn 40… So much for that list of “Things” too.

I’ve picked up a few books that looked interesting at our very small library. Have I mentioned that our library uses a card catalog?  There are no fines for late books, because all of the books are donated. So if you lose a book, you just donate another book. I love this system. We have only lost one book, Ralph S. Mouse, because our carpool friends took it home thinking it was theirs and they ended up losing it. I donated a handful of easy chapter books, since the library already had a couple of other copies of RSM. 

I was angry a couple months ago when the library’s funding was cut and the employees terminated. A new organization now runs the library and they began at once to inventory the books and move toward a computer system. I’m glad we’ll be gone before this process is finished. Fines are imminent.

In addition to replacing the librarians, they also began removing books that hadn’t been checked out in 5 years. I was sorry to see boxes of old sturdily bound library books being boxed up. I checked out a few to save their spines. I asked if I could have some, but I have to go through the DOD department that deals with discards.  Our neighbors have found some good deals from this system – washers and dryers, shelving, kayaks. All owned by the military and sold for pennies. At least they don’t go to the landfill. But I couldn’t find the books.

Many of the books we check out are newer releases that are supplied to the library through a grant program. The McNaughton foundation sends new books to the library and eventually they get shipped back. So they are library books on loan to the library.

One of these is The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. I had wanted to read it since I heard about it on NPR a couple of years ago.  Weiner is a correspondent for NPR and travels frequently abroad.  He also is an avid self-help book reader and amateur student of what makes people happy. After writing this book I guess he is a professional student of happiness.

I owe this one to the return box.  But first notes:

Weiner comments that we often speak of happiness as a place: paradise, land of contentment, searching for happiness, finding our bliss, the Blessed Isles. We think of happiness as someplace “out there,” although self help gurus all counsel us to seek within.  Sometimes we need to look outward, he points out, and quotes Henry Miller, “One’s destination is never a place but a way of seeing things.”

Studies have been done on happiness levels in different places, so Weiner sets off to tour some of these. The catch is that there is not one answer to what makes people happy, and the places Weiner visits all have very different versions of happiness. Aristotle believed a virtuous life made people happy and Epicurus believed it was pleasure. The places featured here fall someplace in between.

Weiner records some research findings: married people are happier than single, people with and without children report the same levels of happiness, Republicans are happier than Democrats, religious people are happier than nonreligious, those with a college degree are happier than those without, but advanced degree holders are not as happy as those with a bachelors’ degree. Women and men are equally happy. Busy people are happier than idle people. Wealthy people are slightly more happy than poor people. Healthy people are happier than unhealthy people. Or does their happiness make them healthy? Causal relationships can be deceiving. Most of the happy countries are happy for different reasons and sometimes surprising reasons: they are homogenous, secular, have income gaps, and have high suicide rates.  Sometimes the possibility of unhappiness makes people happier

Here's a summary of the happy countries Weiner visits and a brief list of things that make them happy:

The Netherlands – tolerance, research, marijuana, coffee

Switzerland – trust, order, regularity (boredom), clean toilets, proximity to nature’s grandeur

Bhutan – has a happiness policy: improving “Gross National Happiness.” Difficult for foreigners to visit. Religious/superstitious/spirituality, tranquil like Shangri-la. A wise man tells him that happiness is relational – depends on our relationships with others.  Weiner’s revelation after talking to locals: if he dies, “I would not have done anything differently.”

Qatar – wealth. But no culture or history. A new world full of luxury but little landscape. (recommended book by Rebecca Solnit “A Field Guild to Getting Lost.”) But they do have a connection to family – happiness comes from connections to others. Danger of being walled off in a world of air-conditioned spaces. We often crave something that doesn’t make us happy to possess. The author feels he is addicted to sadness.

Iceland – relationships, willingness to fail and start again so there’s not a lot of envy, cooperation is mandatory in cold climates, love of liquor, art, language. Happiness and sadness coexist here.

Moldova – This is the unhappiest country in the world, a former soviet block country, with no native culture or language to speak of. Income is low, food is bad, identity is lost.

Thailand – Represents a lack of worry, an unquestioning happiness. Permissive in a different way from the Dutch culture: more like a fact of life.Quotes Yi-Fu Tuan “Happy people have no reason to think; they live rather than question living.” I could incorporate some of this attitude into my life. If I thought lest about school issues my heart would be lighter. “mai pen lai” = “never mind, get on with life.” Thai smiles are authentic.

Great Britain – gets featured for a reality show about people in the town of Slough trying to get happier and then spread the cheer with the rest of the town. The people actually became happier after doing social projects and balancing their work life and randomly dancing. They also visit a grave yard to confront death and learn to vacuum with love and care. The participants in the show are supposed to plant seeds of happiness which as of yet, have not bloomed, but happiness, as Nathaniel Hawthorne is quoted as saying, is like a butterfly alighting unbidden. Robertson Davies says this: “If you are not happy, you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.”

Weiner mentions several people who are culturally one nationality but find themselves more at home in a different one. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t be happier in England. I like reserved people, bookish humor, cottage gardens, pragmatism, bad teeth.

India – acceptance of contradiction: poor/rich, chaos/peace, foul odors/ perfume, beauty and ugliness all coexist without irony. Weiner visits the ashram of a contemporary guru. and although he questions the guru-worship, he does leave feeling more peaceful after initially being unhappy about no caffeine rule. The lesson again is that love is more important than making yourself happy, a commitment to service can bring happiness. Have no expectations. Accept imperfections. More platitudes.

America – “happiness is home.” After all his travels to happy places, Weiner is happy to be home. He tries living in Miami, but doesn’t like it there. America is 23^rd on happiness list. We are losing our connections to community (See Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone). We are wealthy but waste our money on toys.But if you want to live in a happy place in America, try Asheville, NC, - Beautiful nature, kind people, good food…

In the Epilogue Weiner meets a bartender names Happy. The secret to being Happy: Be yourself. Keep on smiling. More than one path.  Happiness is sometimes beside the point. 

“The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth,” says Yi –Fu Tuan. Sometimes in our desire to find happiness we forget about truth and beauty.  

Weiner's work is interesting, but impersonal. What I feel myself is that happiness is harder to find when you're looking for it.  And after all our moves, I can honestly say that we have been happy everywhere we have lived. Each place we seem to love more.  I'd say happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with physical location, but everything to do with the location of your heart.

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With the kids I read A Wrinkle in Time. It had been so many years, I remembered very little – images of the soup with the mother in the lab, the blobbish brain of IT, the supergeniousness of Charles Wallace, and the return in the vegetable garden were bits that were familiar, but the rest of the book was like reading anew.  My neighbor and her daughter, along with one of her friends, and my daughter and I have our own little version of Mother-Daughter book club, and this was the first book.  We talked a little about the theme of free will vs. perfect happiness, but the girls were mostly interested in the possibility of time travel and whether or not Calvin and Meg should have a romance. It’s been a lot of fun to listen to the girls talk together. Now we’re reading an abridged version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, which isn’t as much fun since it’s abridged. I keep meaning to dig out the full book since I have never read it, to compare.

The other book I finished is Exiles by Ron Hansen. I like Hansen’s books, but this one didn't stir up any stronger emotion. A fictional biography about Gerard Manley Hopkins writing “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” Exiles was a quiet book, but hearkens back to Mariette in Ecstasy. Hansen tells each nun’s backstory, as well as Hopkins’ struggles and eventual death. The narrative of the death of the five German nuns on the Deutschland in 1875 is a bit morbid, but told dispassionately, unlike Hopkins’ own poem, which is hard to read. I still haven’t finished the other Hopkins book I picked up –  Mortal Beauty, God’s Grace, a Vintage Spiritual Classic collection of Hopkins’ poems and spiritual writings.  I haven’t yet finished all the poems, nor started on his spiritual writings – I’ve just finished the biographical remarks by Brad Leithauser. Hopkins’ life was marked by struggle with inner conflict. He felt he must suppress his desire to write, and yet he felt ill when he did so.  Still, he managed to create poems that outlive his friend’s, the former British Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges.  His originality and vision in poems like “Spring and Fall” and “Pied Beauty” may have confused his superiors, but his future audience has loved them. (Some of whom, were they to read his more explicitly religious poems, would be thoroughly put off.)

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I’d like to blame my inattentive reading to class planning, but I didn’t add many new works to the syllabus. In fact, I cut several things, although I replaced “Fences” with “The Glass Menagerie” because that’s the piece that the University was performing. The class enjoyed Tennessee Williams’ work, but I think “Fences” went over better because it has a happy ending. My class has been complaining about all the death in the stories we read. I try  to balance it out, but so much literature is produced by sorrow.

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Perhaps if we were reading more Victorian literature – I have to admit that more of my reading time has been lost to television than ever before.  My neighbor loaned me her copy of the BBC’s productions of three Elizabeth Gaskell works: North and South, Wives and Daughters, and Cranford (a mashup of 3 novels).  Can I tell you how much I love them? Lovely costumes, lovely sets, lovely voices.  The older boys even liked watching North and South with me. These period dramas have the best dialogue and love scenes. And although they may be marked by death and sorrows, they almost always end with a marriage. Ah, romance!

Now I must put away movies and books and get on with sorting, purging, and planning. We have a move coming up in about a month.

On Boston and Marathons

My parents called early yesterday morning to alert us to the news about the Boston Marathon explosions.  In disbelief and dismay, we connected to the internet before breakfast to find out details, which were few, but tragic.  Loss of life, injury, chaos, fear.  I offered the discomfort of my own morning run for those affected by the blasts. 

Now reports are out that an 8 year old boy, a 29 year old girl, and a girl from China who was a student at Boston University were the three people killed.  The details make their deaths more real, the loss of life more tragic.  I have seen numbers ranging from 140 to 180 people injured, dozens of whom lost limbs. Several of those injured are still in critical condition with head wounds.  But still no reports about why or who.

Checked Facebook to look for more rumors.  I had a couple messages from friends who knew via Facebook that I had qualified for the Boston Marathon in the Guam International Marathon a little over a week ago.  I let them know that I qualified for the 2014 marathon – or maybe it’s the 2015… I have to check.  The Boston Marathon is so popular, you have to sign up more than a year in advance.  And so competitive that you have to qualify to run. They don’t take just anyone’s registration money.  Which is part of the tragedy of this event – some people work for years to get to the Boston Marathon.  I read quotes from runners were steered off the course after the blast and not allowed to finish. There were hundreds in that position, who trained and sacrificed and anticipated and then were prevented from crossing the finish line. I feel almost as sorry for them as for those who were injured. In addition to the physical injuries caused by the bombs, many people suffered from the loss of their dreams. 

The outpouring of prayers and consolation have been encouraging. Politics and positions have been set aside for a moment. Everyone here is wearing race shirts today. I've already seen posts about memorial races. 

I can’t help but hope that these were random acts by a disturbed individual acting alone. Random acts of violence seem like one time only events, compared to premeditated, coordinated attacks like those threatened by North Korea’s leader.  I heard a news announcer list the number of attacks in the third week of April, around Patriot’s Day: the siege on Waco, Texas, the Oklahoma City bombings, the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech. Any connection? Knowing a cause doesn’t mitigate the sorrow and pain caused by the attack, but it makes it easier to understand.

So will I register for the next Boston Marathon? If I don’t, it won’t be because of fear.  This was probably an isolated event.  Remember the bombs at the Atlanta Olympics? There might be a more heightened sense of camaraderie and encouragement next year as a testimony to those who suffered this year.  Those affected by the blasts may be invited to race next year.  Perhaps some will have to race in the wheelchair category. 

After reading several news articles that all said the same thing, I googled the results. The winners from Africa were insanely fast. Will a man break the 2 hour mark soon? Incredible. And the women aren’t that far behind. I would have been an hour behind the leaders with my time of 3:23, which was fast enough to earn second in the Guam event. (The girl who won was from South Korea). I was pleased with the purse I won, but the Boston race offers prizes ten times as big.  Enough to live comfortably for a year, considering the American cost of living. I imagine in Ethiopia or Kenya, someone could live for a couple years off of that prize. 

These athletes train for these races as a full time job.  I trained early in the mornings as a hobby. I didn’t stress about the quality of my workouts, and I spent much less time and effort training for this race than I did for my last marathon, back in Dallas in 1995.  Back then I was coming off of a college track season. I was in great shape and I was young, still single, a grad student with time to train. I ran hundreds of miles, some as intervals on the track, some round and round White Rock Lake.

Now I am nearly twice as old, have six kids and a part time job. I rarely lift weights or run intervals on the track. But I have a beautiful place to run. And my time was only 10 minutes slower than what I ran at age 22.   I ran a smarter race, remembering the advice of a more experienced friend: “It’s a 20 mile warm-up for a six mile race.”  During the race, I thought about a running friend from Mississippi who died of cancer this year. I thought about my late grandfather who earned a track scholarship to college. When I ran by the Cathedral I was already halfway through the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the perfect prayer for pacing.

Running a marathon is a bit like having a baby – you spend days thinking about each step of the race, analyzing what you did right and wrong, and planning for the next time, even if there is no next time. For those in Boston, their memories will be forever returning to the finish line where blood and debris marked the loss of life and dreams. Sadly, for many people affected by the Boston event, there will be no next time.  But for others, standing at the starting line again will be a way to carry on, to confront fear, to challenge the body and the will, and to memorialize this tragedy.  The Boston Marathon has been run since 1897, and will continue to be a symbol of the human spirit's capacity to striving for excellence. 

Runners are a tough bunch. They can run alone. They like to hang together. The route we ran for the marathon was an out and back. The best part of the race was the overlap - cheering on other runners and being cheered by them. When you meet another runner, you know something about that person.  You immediately have a connection. Whether you're the fastest in the pack or bringing up the rear of a race, you feel like you belong to something when you're out there on the road together.    

A more hopeful view

We are soaking up the beauties of Guam while we may before moving or being bombed. Fortunately, we now are the fun owners of the sportastic Gopro underwater action shot camera. 

Here is how the Gopro captured the crosses of Good Friday:

And here is how the Gopro captures the underwater world, where threats and worries go unheeded.

Camera readiness and green sea turtle sighting FINALLY coincided.

These creatures are truly stunning. I can't describe how lovely they really are. Large but graceful. Gentle but powerful. 

This guy, on the other hand, is a strange sea cucumber. Cool and unusual.

Descending the reef, an underwater mountain. We didn't reach the bottom, because we are cautious about going deeper than 80 feet.

A school group on the go. 

I have to get mad at this kid for touching the reef, but he loves to explore.

With my 10 year old. Unlikely relative to a mermaid.

Following the leader.

Prepare for the worst. Pray for the best.

I don't want to believe that Guam is in danger of being bombed by North Korea, but my employer is sending out this information. They also attached fact sheets that include this image showing how to "shelter in place."  Some instructions: Seal everything off and have your bomb shelter kit stashed away in your windowless room. Go against every parenting instinct and leave your children at their school or daycare. Try to contact your family on the mainland to tell them goodbye. Have your food, medicine, radio, and comforting toy ready.



Release No. JIC-10
Important TIPS in the Event that RED Condition Is Called
1:45 p.m., Thursday, April 11, 2013
For Immediate Release
The Joint Information Center released four fact sheets over the past three days about what Guamanians can do to prepare for a North Korean emergency. If one does occur:
1.      The military immediately will call the Governor, who then will simultaneously place the island in RED condition.
2.      The Joint Information Center immediately will notify the people of Guam via media partners, email, government alert systems, the alert siren system, the consulate offices, the school systems, and the mayors that an emergency is upon the island and that everyone is to shelter in place.

These are the most important tips of what to do as soon as you are aware of the RED condition:

-          IF YOU ARE AT HOME: Shelter in place. Follow the steps outlined in Fact Sheet 2, including closing and locking all windows and doors, and closing any blinds. Take your family and pets with you to a room without windows or with the fewest windows. Keep a phone with you, preferably a land line. Keep a battery-operated radio with you and stay tuned to official reports from the Joint Information Center.
 
-          IF YOU ARE AT WORK: Shelter in place at work. Do not leave the office. Do not send away customers or co-workers in your office. Close and lock all windows and doors. Stay as far away from windows as possible. Keep a phone with you, preferably a land line. Keep a battery-operated radio with you and stay tuned to official reports from the JIC.

-           IF YOUR KIDS ARE IN SCHOOL OR DAYCARE: Do not pick them up. School staff & teachers will help students shelter in place. They are safer in school than on the road. Schools know what to do to keep your children safe.
 -           IF YOU ARE ON THE ROAD: Pull over. Stay in your car. Keep your body clear from the windows. Keep the radio on, and wait for the ‘all-clear’ from the JIC.

RED condition means the threat level is high. In this case, it may mean North Korea launched a missile. It does not necessarily mean the missile is coming this way. RED condition is a precaution taken because we should not take chances, and we should protect ourselves from the worst. This is why it is so IMPORTANT to pay attention to media partners before, during, and after RED condition.

Looking back at Holy Week

The pace of life around here has been hopping more than usual. Our upcoming move has something to do with that – there’s been paperwork to fill out, closets to clean out, a walk through with the housing officer who pointed out small repairs we have to patch, school arrangements to be made, online real estate to stare at, eyes glazing over, along with the mental fixation on “what needs to be done next.”

Holy Week offered a distraction from the minutiae of moving, but had its own activity. Wednesday we had three events at our house: Bible Study, a mother-daughter book club meeting, and the military spouses’ book club.  At least all three required only one day of cleaning and then maintenance.   

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The book club met to talk about Anna Karenina. It was a rowdy bunch – the group stayed till 10, talking and laughing and keeping my kids awake. The kids didn’t complain though. They love when ladies who don’t eat much come over with all their snacks and treats and leave the leftovers for them.  I tried to make Russian food, but everything I made had a flaw, except maybe the cabbage soup a la Russe, which was pretty yummy.  The pavlova, which took two attempts, tasted good but cracked when I tried to take it off the pan and melted under the fruit. The pirozhkis were a bit dry. And the cranberry/pickled beet relish was just weird.

Worst of all, I may have poisoned everyone. I tried to make this walnut honey dessert that never hardened even though I thought I was watching the temp on my candy thermometer. I ended up mixing it with poppy seeds and using it as a filling in crescent rolls. Russian right? The next day as I was washing the candy thermometer I realized the bulb was broken, and the mercury was stuck at 200 degrees. The box I kept it in had little beads of mercury rolling around in it. TOXINS!  I opened all the windows and threw everything out and prayed no one came down with mercury poisoning. At least the Chablis and champagne, choices inspired by Oblonsky’s picks at the club dinner with Levin, washed everything down smoothly.

At the meeting, we actually talked about the book  -  but more about adultery. I was surprised how many  of the women did not sympathize with Anna, but saw her as completely manipulative and mad. One lady tried to suggest maybe she had syphilis from Vronsky, but I can’t see support for that in the text. Vronsky was a flirt, but did he sleep around?   I felt a little sympathy for Anna, like Dolly does on her way to the country house.  We talked little about Levin’s conversion, although with the consummation of Anna’s passion in the first eighth of the book, the book seems to be more about her descent into madness and Levin’s learning to love and believe than the actual infidelity.  Wish I had referred to the text more during our meeting.

Before everyone came over, I spent a long time reading about Tolstoy himself. I read his Confessions years ago, but didn’t realize the parallels between his story and Levin’s, even though Tolstoy’s radical years come after the publication of Anna K. Apparently Tolstoy also wrote a letter to the Hindus in India that greatly influenced Gandhi.  It’s interesting that he was interested in their revolt when he is critical of the attention given to the Serbian war at the end of Anna K. Levin’s inability to come up with an answer to the multiplicity of faiths is prescient to Tolstoy’s own amalgamation of belief systems.  

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I was struck with my own feeling of inadequacy about expressing my faith Wednesday morning during Bible Study – We read the Easter Gospel, and one of the study questions was what would I say to convince someone to believe?  Why would I want to say anything? After reference to Scripture and history, how can you share faith? All I could come up with is that faith is a gift.

And at Adoration on Holy Thursday, I felt that. I felt the presence that seemed absent earlier in Lent. A product of my desire to feel it? I don’t know, and to a certain extent, even with more reflection, all I can really come up with to convince someone that Jesus exists is that love exists and that love that is sacrificial is true love. As my feet cramped up from kneeling, I realized how much I’ve missed adoration.  God has seemed distant, but it is I who has absented myself.  I have been too busy with entertainments to seek him in solitude.

In the small chapel, surrounded by my family, my neighbors, the rest of the congregation, the priest, the altar servers, the incense, on our knees facing the altar, the Monstrance, it was obvious that Love was there.

We spent the next three days surrounded by our Chapel community: Friday morning we hiked up Mt. Jumullong-Manglo, praying the stations of the cross. During the hike, my husband more than once told me to talk more quietly, to be more prayerful, but my heart was happy to see everyone there, to be with the crowd, and I couldn’t help talking in between stations. Even laughing. Helping carry babies. Snapping pictures. A beautiful morning.

That night we reconvened after rehydrating back at the chapel.  I love Good Friday. I was quiet at that service, but my focus was interrupted by the arrival of our new friends, a young JO couple who is just the kind of young Catholic couple that it makes you rejoice for the church to see: they are both reverent and happy, they both did a year of service overseas after college, which is how they met, they are earnest and interested and excited about homemaking. But they haven’t yet conceived a baby in 6 months of marriage. But in they walked with a new born, after we had hiked with them that morning. They had signed up for foster care and received their first charge straight from the hospital. The baby’s mother is incarcerated, and the baby was beautiful and tiny.  I wanted that baby!  So all during the service, I prayed for that baby, and other motherless children and homeless children and for openness to adoption or foster care in my own heart.  We didn’t linger after veneration, but headed to the back of the church to greet the baby and hold her. My kids asked all the way home for a baby.

Saturday was a day of preparation. We had a going away party to go to at the beach, but managed to get nearly everything ready for our own Easter party the next day.  While rapidly cooking and cleaning, I reminded myself that when a bunch of people are at your house, no one can really see the floor. 

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We finished up in time to get ready for the Vigil Mass at 7. A new spouse had asked me to be her sponsor, an honor I was moved to receive.  But I have to admit, I didn’t do very much for her.  Since there were only 3 candidates, they met with Father in a small group while I was teaching CCD.  None of the sponsors went to the meetings, and only one week were there scrutinies for the catechumens, and the sponsors weren’t asked to stand. At other churches we’ve been to, sponsors have been much more involved in the RCIA program, so I felt kind of lame. But I picked out a nice rosary, my husband painted a cross, and I bought George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic, which I really liked.  Now to remind myself to continue to pray for and connect with my neophyte friend, even though we are moving away.

Is there anyone who doesn’t love the Easter Vigil? The darkness, the candlelight, the exsultet, the litany.  We didn’t get all the readings at our parish, but the service still felt momentous. The only thing I missed: a great Alleluia and a triumphant recessional.  Our choir doesn’t do triumphant. They like music that would be good at Lifeteen masses.

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Easter Sunday dawned beautiful.  Despite the late night, the kids were up early to hunt their Easter baskets and down some chocolate eggs before getting ready for Mass.  We decided to go again on Easter Sunday because our oldest had been away at a Linguafest in Okinawa and didn’t get home until Saturday night.  In the past I have been more generous with Easter gifts in an effort to make Easter as big of  a deal to the kids as Christmas. Gifts are perhaps not the right answer, and this year, with our impending move, and our limited shopping options, I did not overload the baskets. I even skimped a bit on candy.  But no one seemed to mind, and later in the afternoon we had our giant Easter egg hunt with dozens of overloaded plastic eggs. The money eggs were a bigger hit than the candy.

At the party, no one could see the floor. Bodies were everywhere. Food was everywhere else.  I hope everyone had fun. As hostess, it’s hard to tell. I try to move from group to group to visit a little with everyone, but then I don’t have meaningful conversations, and as soon as someone starts in on a long talk, I feel trapped because I’m worried someone else has no one to talk to. 

So at the end of the day, I felt that traditional post party depression.  We took a walk in the evening with the family, a peaceful close to a long day, high in emotion.   I question whether having a big party is spiritually wise – should we be more prayerful on this day?  But I want the day to stand apart, to be a celebration, to share the joy of the resurrection, the joy of coming out of the desert, of being redeemed.  As long as the party doesn’t make me more stressed than celebratory, I feel like hospitality is a form of evangelization.  This year I came close to being stressed, until Easter morning itself, when everything seemed to come together.