Young Adulting

 Lately, I've been involved in a series of conversations with our recently graduated daughter about budgeting and unhappy realities like insurance. She needs to get her own car insurances, since she is now on her own.  Only one of her 3 older brothers has his own car. The other two are now in Boston using public transport.  I didn't walk through the options for deductibles, collision and comprehensive coverage, and liability with the oldest, although perhaps I should have. How do you learn that it hurts to have a $1000 deductible when you have a couple car incidences in a row? (hence we once again are paying more for the $500 deductible, which I am grateful for as we just bought a new windshield for the new car after a rock created a chip that grew much too quickly and aggressively in the Texas heat vs. a/c combo.) 

I've been promising a life skills tutorial. I'm envisioning crafting something like a power point +video narration for all the young adults, but it's one of those projects that I've started and never finished because it grew too complex. I did make a really great video about how to clean a toilet and a bathtub WELL - not just a swab with a Clorox wipe. Think heavy duty cleansers, wiry scrubbers, and a lot of elbow grease. 

I do intend to finish this powerpoint at some point. I've started one that divides adult skills into the four pillars of formation - mind, body, soul, and community.  In the "mind" category, I have finances and lifelong learning. In "body," I have health care information and living space care ideas - because where else do I put that?  Then I made a couple slides for "faith" - one for personal and one for communal practices. And then I have a random assortment of  "community" topics - voting, taxes, keeping up with current events - to an extent, volunteering/giving back, hospitality. But here's where it gets complicated = taxes are really with finances.  House keeping could grow too large.  I haven't included car care yet. Beautifying the home could actually fall under mind or soul or finances. 

And really, I need to share the marriage resources I have compiled over the years with all the kids. I have all these thoughts and articles and another powerpoint somewhere that we used to use with marriage prep that now my own kids are ready for. But I haven't ever sat down with them as we have with engaged couples we aren't related to. 

And what other information do I want to tell them? There is so much to learn in a short lifetime; surely, I should give my kids some shortcuts to wisdom?

The reality is that they will figure out their own way of doing things - just like they have in the kitchen.  They'll share laughs about mom's housekeeping videos when she was no great shakes at house cleaning. I have thoughts; I just haven't acted on them all! 

Would it be great to have a resource to turn to when starting out in life? Or is it more fun to figure it out on your own? I don't remember getting much advice from my parents about how to do taxes and buy insurance - I just was aware that they did these things, so we should, too. I remember my mom teaching me to use a toilet bowl brush, but I don't remember having to scrub the shower tile grout - she did that.

And maybe that's all kids need: an example of action. Here's hoping we've modeled those ideals and practices we wrote about in our marriage prep presentations and patched together as we went along. 

Church Cleaning

The other day, our school had a luncheon for volunteers, but I was not invited. Ouch. As a former volunteerist, that hurt. Sure, I have helped out in a few small ways at our new parish when seasonal help has been sought – setting up booths for the fall festival, divvying up toys for the Christmas distribution, - but I’m not in charge of anything. I’m not teaching or facilitating anything. I used to volunteer to do things like teach CCD or run marriage prep workshops or give witness talks about NFP, stuff that allowed me to show off what I’d learned.




But since I had overextended myself the last few years, I am trying to not to raise my hand for everything, but to find ways to do smaller things. My most regular ministry has been helping clean the church on Sunday evenings. As my friend who is in charge of the cleaners commented, this is not a glamorous job, but it is valuable work. Being from Colombia, she has been subject to some racial stereotyping and offered jobs by a few people who find out she cleans the church, even though she has a postgraduate degree in psychology. Cleaning someone else’s bathrooms for pay is different from cleaning the church’s toilets as an act of service, but neither is going to win you much attention.




The cleaning crew gets to go into the quiet and partially darkened sanctuary and run vacuums back and forth, back and forth, while the sanctuary lamp burns more noticeably in the dimness. With a Lysol wipe in each hand, I glide at a monk’s pace between the pews, wiping their backs, cleaning off the remains of sneezes, sticky finger marks, baby saliva. Ready for the next teether. I even sort of like cleaning the bathroom where I get to be a combat specialist in the battle with those devilish germs. Mopping takes on the rhythm of a chant, with its scrub, scrub, pull, pull movements.



I can’t say that cleaning the church has helped me to be a better housekeeper. Despite being someone who likes to help out, I don’t really like to do my own work. Cleaning God’s house is a small way of saying thanks be to God and spending a little extra time with Him. And not stepping up to do something more visible is a way of trying to be a little more humble and to see the contemplative aspect of cleaning as a ministry to those we love.