Rained out

It rained buckets this weekend. And the kids and I were out in most of it. This weekend was our church International Spring festival, and I had volunteered myself and the older to work at the coffee booth (some self-interest involved, but it happened to be the booth run by the Jr. CYO, which the boys attend sporadically.) Now I’m bone tired and have a huge pile of accumulated laundry that I’m ignoring. But I wasn’t there as long as some people.

Originally. I had thought we’d work a few hours and be done, but once we started, I realized that one family was running the booth the whole weekend. And the other booths seemed to be operating the same way: the Thai family was running the Thai booth, the two families from South Africa were making samosas all weekend, the same little Philippino woman was posted up with her lumpia and poncet the entire festival. And the same group of gray haired gents were frying fish and hush puppies – although they looked like they were having a fine time, as did the large group of folks at the wine tent. Guilt kicked in, and we came back to help a little all three days.

Our parish is not small. For an event that was planned ahead for six months, it was disappointing to see such a small crew of volunteers. I’m sure it is this way everywhere: a handful of faithful regulars make the events and ministries happen, while the majority come and enjoy – still an important part. I hadn’t made any firm commitment myself. Since I don’t have a lot of treasure and talent to offer, I’m happy to give time.


But then the rain poured, and we ended up throwing lots of coffee away because the people who come and enjoy didn’t come out. Buckling to pressure from the vendors who brought rides and games, our priest agreed to run the festival again next weekend. He seems to be a genuine optimist; maybe his heritage gives him Irish faith in good luck? The “liquid sunshine” didn’t deter him from persisting as long as possible with keeping the festival open.


I’m sure in response to his good cheer, the same faces will set up their spaces and prepare their foods and hope that more customers make their investment of time worthwhile. But it’s hard not to feel a wave of dismay at the thought of dragging the kids and myself through another weekend of the glitzy, rickety rides, cheap prizes, and fried food. Anyway, we had other activities planned for this weekend that preclude us from helping as much.



As I’m getting a closer look at the organization of the event, it turns out that most of the organizers aren’t really making the effort to recruit volunteers. Maybe it’s easier to just do the work alone than to ask and train someone to help. But it seems to me that people have a hard time saying no if they are invited directly to participate in something – it’s easier to ignore a donation request that comes in the mail than the little kid who knocks on your door selling popcorn.  At some point do the regulars just wear out and retire? It's a good thing our priest is such a smiling, friendly man: people are happy to help him when he asks, which is often.  He, for one, is not afraid to delegate.

Notes from Castle on the Hill

What follows are some excerpts I want to remember from The Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge; I posted about it here, too.  I loved reading this little book.  Makes me want to go to England to try to find that lost world.  But if I took to heart the lessons that the characters learn, I wouldn't worry so much about what I want to do, and be more cheerful about what I have to do.

Not that the book is didactic, but it's overtly religious message and moral overtones might be the cause for its scarcity on library shelves. Or maybe it's not so scarce as I assume, and I've just missed out on reading Goudge until recently.

The plot: Miss Brown loses her house in London in the Blitz and heads to the country. At the stations she hears a beggarly musician playing Delius’ “Song of Summer” and recovers her spirits – and give purpose to the musician by telling him so. Then on the train she meets  Mr. Birley, a gentleman historian and guardian to his two young adult nephews Stephen and Richard. Mr. Birley offers her a position as housekeeper in their family castle. Together with two little girls sent out of the city, Prunella (terrible name), the girl in love with Richard, and a couple other village residents, these characters discover reasons for living during a time of death.


And it’s all these reasons for living, despite tragedy and disappointment, that make the book worth reading. That, and the beautiful descriptions of the English countryside.


Some quotes:

Mr. Birley on life as a game of chess between God, the master, and man the amateur who “has free will, he does what he pleases, for it was he who chose to set up his will against that of the master in the first place, he throws the whole board into confusion time and again and by his foolishness delays the orderly ending of it all for countless generations, but every stupid move of his is dealt with by a masterly counter-stroke and slowly but inexorably the game sweeps on to the master’s victory.”
And on a lost Eden: “Only a legend, that story of the lost garden, but something of the truth must lie hidden in it, for one had only to look at oneself to see those two men who are the same man, fighting down the ages, the one a rebel forever, the other straining back always after the lost inheritance . . . And nature, god-like, went on quietly creating, creating, giving man time.”

By the end of the story, Mr. Birley is probably the least changed character, but even he finds that “there is a certain deep happiness that is experienced only by those who have lost, almost literally, everything. . . .He could not see that he possessed much at the moment except his immortal sou l. . . and this happiness.”


Stephen, the artistic younger brother, “Why do we keep on trying to build Jerusalem? We’ve been at it for several thousand years, and it seems a hopeless business, yet we’re for ever shoveling away the ruins of the old attempts and starting again. There’s no explanation except that there’s a model somewhere, and we’ve seen it vaguely through the debris. Man will go on till he’s got the thing right at last.” (also love his understanding of the comic under-statement of Beatrix Potter.)


He latter comes to terms with his revulsion for war by serving on the detail that digs bodies out of the rubble in London: “I’ve never loathed myself as I have since the war broke out; somehow seeing how bestial man can be shows one how despicable one is oneself. . . but it cuts both ways. And I’m happy because I know now that I shall never go to pieces; nor will humanity; we’ll win through.” After he uncovers a couple locked in an embrace in death, he becomes reconciled with death and life because he glimpses the peace beyond. After a more personal encounter with death, he understands “Separateness is only an illusion, a sort of curse on us because of sin. We refused to be children of God, we wouldn’t be brothers of each other, and so there was egotism and the hell of loneliness. But it’s only an imaginary hell. You can break out of it if you break away from yourself.”


Observations of Miss Brown: “It is a bitter draught that you love more than you are loved and there are few whose pride lets them face it. But it was Miss Brown’s habit to face everything . . . Requited love gets as much as it gives, but unrequited love gets nothing for itself and so it must be the best sort of love that there is. Perhaps it will teach me how to break away from that circle of myself.”

Mrs. Heather, an old village woman who leads tours of the castle, tells Miss Brown why she is always so happy even though her husband died leaving her 12 kids to raise, after she tells how she grew to love him by serving him: “You may know there’s sun outside a shuttered house, but you’re still in the dark, you don’t see till summat breaks the shutters open an’ you cry aloud for joy.”

And this: “[Life] has me, I thought, an’ naught can alter the fact that it has me, an’ if what I knew down there in the valley, with the sap risin’ in the branch under my hand, be life, then it don’t stop at death an’ it be the grandest thing God ever made; so I’d best cease complainin’ an’ let it do what it likes with what’s its own… Life’s very like a husband you know, my dear; it makes you bring forth fruit.”

Mrs. Heather’s view on putting one foot in front of the other, washing, drying, putting away, after a tragedy, helps the other characters endure their losses, as well. It takes Miss Brown some time to discover “the how and why of living,” but it is in a death to self that she finds it by the end of the book. And that is a death that no one mourns.

Parenting with prayer

Mass was packed on Mother’s Day with adult children accompanying their mothers to church to make them happy. We got hemmed in the middle of a pew, with very little wiggle room left. The toddler was relegated to my lap. A mistake: She is getting too big to sit on my lap. And lack of room does not stop my kindergartener from wiggling. His wiggles only encouraged my daughter, who had been at a sleepover the night before, to exhibit her grumpiness.

I was not a picture of motherly love by the end of Mass, and only because of supernatural graces was I able to fend off the desire to shake and pinch these youngers. And although I really did make a heartfelt apology to the lady next to me in the open toed shoes, whose exposed toes were crunched multiple times, I had to fight the urge to say, "Sorry, but you should've found another place to sit, Lady."

I’m used to being told by older ladies behind me “I’m praying for you,” but the worst was that my big-enough-to-behave daughter wasn’t even trying to get along. Normally, she follows along in the missalette, sings the songs and is mostly well mannered. Her lack of sleep the night before must have really thrown her off because she was very contrary.

So I got caught up in wondering whether I should let her go to her third communion or not. At one point I tried to send her out to wipe off the tears from her face, but she refused to leave. Then I told her she needed to say an act of contrition before going to Communion. But I didn’t outright tell her NOT to go to communion.

This is where scrupulosity kicks in. She was not in the proper frame of mind, but she also was under the influence of sleeplessness, so some of her culpability was removed. But she knew she was being naughty because she said herself she probably shouldn’t go to Communion. I decided to assume that she said her act of contrition when she stood up to go to receive the Eucharist.


Her first communion was the weekend previous to this past one. She was so nervous the night before that she woke up three times. Fortunately, the kids had to be at church at nine, so she didn’t have too long to wait in the morning because she couldn’t sit still.

She wanted her dress on at 7 – not that she was so tickled about the dress. I sweated more about it than her. Disappointed by the choices in my price range, I decided to make a dress – not bright considering I haven’t made anything to wear except costumes, which don’t have to fit right. Then the pattern I had didn’t have her size, so I thought I’d estimate… needless to say, the dress looked very homemade. She was willing to wear it because she loved the shoes I had found to go with it – little ballet flats with a pointelle effect. But I was too self-conscious, and had her wear a dress I found on sale.

When we got to church, she blended right in, but there were a couple of girls in sentimental dresses that had been their mother’s – or in one case, her grandmother’s. I was a little sorry I didn’t have her wear the dress I made just for the memory (she did wear it for her second Communion). She also wore my wedding veil and the little gold cross I received for my First Communion – which was then lost. And found: St. Anthony came through for us, happily – the cross showed up the next day in the hallway where we all had walked 100 times the day before.


I’ve been concerned all along that I wasn’t doing enough to catechize her before her sacraments, but every time I’ve informally questioned her, she’s made the right responses, so I think her teacher has done a good job. But after this weekend’s display, I realized I need to communicate more. I need to do a better job of talking about faith and its practice as a part of our everyday conversation.


I received my own First Communion shortly after being baptized at age seven. My siblings and I were baptized shortly after my parents were received into the Catholic church, so they had had their First Communions just a few months before mine. Only my youngest brother happened to be baptized as a baby. So my parents were still learning about the culture of Catholicism as we were growing up. We didn’t celebrate saints’ days, pray the rosary, or go to adoration. On the weekends my mother worked as a nurse, sometimes we would just play Mass at home with my dad, instead of going to the real thing.


But even so, having converts for parents helped encourage my own faith development, not because they went around evangelizing when I was growing up – they do that more now – but because as a teenager I thought to ask why they chose one church over another. I had a friend who went to a fundamentalist church, and she was concerned that I wasn’t truly baptized since I wasn’t immersed in water. So I began to do a little research to answer her challenges.


After I checked books out from the library on comparative religion, read some of the Catholic books and magazines my parents had around, and started to go to Mass an extra day a week one year during Lent with my dad, I decided they had made a good choice. I didn’t change my friend’s mind about the status of my soul, but I began to take responsibility for my faith life.


For a number of years, I felt I had to catch up on learning about my faith. I read and read, went to Mass more, learned to pray the rosary. In a way, my college years were my convert years: I experienced that thrill of discovery and a resulting burst of zeal as I began to read Church documents and Catholic authors. My affection for my future husband was confirmed when I found out he went to daily Mass. And we started our marriage committed to the ideals of Church teaching on the matrimonial sacrament.

That commitment hasn’t faded, but the zeal has. Years of interrupted sleep tend to dampen fires. And so I feel a little disappointed in myself for not being more involved in my daughter’s First Communion preparation. With the three older boys, I was more engaged; as their primary teacher, I made notebooks with them, read more scripture and saints’ stories, spent more time participating in the life of the church, doing things like Armata Bianca and delivering Meals on Wheels. I miss being as involved as I was when we were home schooling, but with home work every night and sports, straight up catechesis doesn’t happen often …


I could make more excuses, but frankly, the problem is me. I haven’t made my beliefs as much a part of my everyday vocabulary as I could have. I’m not naturally talkative about my faith.

But you’d think with my children I could be. I think I sort of sat back a little, feeling proud of myself for doing so much for the older boys, but my daughter was a baby when we were reading lots of Bible stories aloud.

I was encouraged to see the post on Like Mother, Like Daughter about making the practice of faith at home an easy thing – not a production or a lecture. I could beat myself up for not making a scrapbook, or I could continue on with what we’re doing, as minimal as it may be at this point: grace at meals, religious pictures and crosses hanging around the house, nightly prayers.

And I can hope that these little things add up to an experience of a lived faith that the kids will carry with them and eventually adopt as their own. A devout friend who had led a wild adolescence once said that his parents couldn’t control him and his brothers, but they continued to pray for them, outloud, and this is what led all the boys back to the faith in their adulthood, confirming the experience of St. Monica: even when you are tempted to despair about the vices of your children, hold on tight to the hope that your prayers for their souls will be heard.

First Communion                      and               Second Communion

Wrap up

I don’t have a single photo of this mother’s day, but it was wonderful – breakfast in bed with a menu of puffy oven pancakes with sautéed apples, buttered grits, strawberries, fresh coffee. Mmm, want some right now… had enough time for a short run on a cool morning (a “lake” morning: sunny, clear, and cool like the mornings in Michigan where we used to vacation for a week each summer) before Mass, where I didn’t hear a word of the homily because my kids were wiggly and constantly stepping on the open toed shoes of the lady next to us. Then home to lunch al fresco – hot dogs and chips for them, hummus on flatbread for me. Someday they’ll learn.

Then to the beach for a glorious afternoon with some friends who were nice enough to let us tag along on their family fun. The kids played in the water with black mud which made me fear that they were slathering oil all over their bodies (petroleum jelly?) but my friend said no, the mud is always there.



Everyone all crashed happily into bed after washing all that mud down the bath drain. And I sat up reading blogs, wandering if the night visitor who woke my dog last night will return:

I’m just glad it wasn’t a bad guy.

I didn't forget

Blessings on all the mothers out there, especially my own mother, my mother-in-law, my grandmother and grandmother-in-law - soon to be 90!, and my sister and sisters-in-law, all of whom are wonderful mothers, even if sometimes they think they aren't. 

Personally, I'm sometimes embarrassed by the fuss of Mother's Day.  I don't like to be the center of attention - and gift giving isn't my love language.  But my kids are telling me to sleep in, don't get up early, don't spy around my desk -- and I'm happy they are plotting some act of generosity like breakfast in bed - which is probably as much or more fun for them to make than it is for me to eat it, while trying to avoid having my coffee jostled and my juice sloshed as they hover on the bed, craving my compliments.

In case they get up early and read my blog, here's what I want for Mother’s Day:

  

• Immediate Obedience
• Cheerful demeanours
• Helpful Attitudes
• Respectful manners
• Cooperative Play
• Unsolicited tidying up
• Unhurried time to read aloud and play outside together
• World Peace – so my kids’ dad and all those other deployed parents could come home

No jewelry, no spa treatments, no flowers, no new appliances, no thank you.


A few happy Mother’s Day memories:

Maitre'd and wait staff of Chez Cuire, fancy restaurant:

On St. Johns, VI, after one of the most inspiring Mother's Day masses ever: we're all smiling so grandly because the priest preached so stirringly about remembering to "Celebrate, Gratitude, Hope"

A picnic and hike in the woods, a favorite family activity (I think this photo is from my birthday, actually)

 With cows and cousins in Lancaster last year:

Gator sighting

Drove down Highway 90 along the coast Wednesday and saw orange vested workers laying out large black garbage bags – full of trash or material to fight oil? Also noticed large areas marked off with sand fences to protect the nesting least tern. Maybe they’ll hatch their broods before the potential catastrophe hits.

from National Geographic

The irony is that we went in search of nature this weekend while my parents were visiting, and here are these terns right down the street. We drove out to Pascagoula to find this estuarine research area I had read about, but the directions I had transcribed made no sense in the locale. While wandering cluelessly, we happened to pass by a shed with a sign out front reading Gator Ranch, so I circled back to ask directions. The Cajun in charge didn’t know the place I was talking about, but he offered us a swamp boat ride. The price was too stiff for our large crowd, but we did pay $5 each to see the gators at the ranch.

We received a personal tour from one of the newer Cajuns on staff, who told us he got the job because he just loved running swamp boats. He showed us the baby gators and the toddler gators and then we got to look around on our own to see the teenager gators. It was worth the five dollars to see him walk into the gator pen barefooted.

I didn’t know that gators could grow a foot a year until they are about six; then they only grow about an inch a year. Their metabolism really slows down.

I also didn’t know that snapping turtles can live up to 200 years. One of the more excited incidents from my youth spent next door to a retaining pond, was the capture and barbecuing of a large snapper. The one at Gator Ranch is supposedly close to 110 if his rings can be trusted. He was also in old man metabolism mode and barely moved.

I can’t decide if this counts on my siting list.

Got back in the car to find the nature center and ended up at a city park that had a playground, lake with walking path, and a little building designated the nature center, which was closed by the time we arrived. Driving up we saw some nature in action – a mallard trying to mate with a scovy. So we stopped and ate our picnic supper with the ducks and gulls, then walked around the pond. The kids surprised me by not complaining. Instead they had a great time picking up trash off the bank. They ended up finding a collection of balls in the scum at the edge of the pond. The balls and a couple of plastic toys ended up in the back of the car to take home. Now I have little black beetles in the back of the car.



We tried to find an old Spanish Fort that is supposedly in Pascagoula, but again were frustrated. Instead we ended up at a pier where we watched the sunset and then drove slowly home down the beach road, admiring the large homes with coastal views until we hit the end of the road: a big lot where some big building had been destroyed by Katrina right across a little inlet from Northrup Grunman. The lot was full of fishermen, trying to catch their dinner at dusk, I suppose. It must be a hot spot. We also spotted these handsome ducks, which even my father, the birdman, didn’t recognize.

After checking the bird book, I think they are black breasted whistling ducks.

So we didn’t make it to a trail through the wilds, but we had a good time exploring.

Beachwalking

I ran on the beach on Friday morning. I didn’t go there intentionally to see if any oil had made its way to the shore; in fact, I was nearly done with my run when the thought crossed my mind to look for oil coated trash. Never crowded even when oil is threatening to pollute it, the beach was still populated by a few families – vacationers? - with small children playing in the sand, a few walkers, a jet skier taking advantage of the warmer weather. Plenty of trash along the waveline, but no oil yet.

On Sunday we were in Pascagoula and walked out on the pier and stared into the horizon but couldn’t see smoke from burning oil. A friend closer to New Orleans said she could smell the oil. We are still waiting to see if the disaster will be as catastrophic as everyone seems prepared for it to be. Perhaps a sense of impending doom is inevitable after the Katrina tragedy. If the oil spill wipes out as much fishing and tourism as the pessimists predict, this area will have an even harder time recovering. But I’m sure people will stay.



What I did notice – and stuck in my pocket – were a couple of pearly pink shells that reminded me of some shells my grandmother kept in a small glass box in her living room. Hers looked like boats with a little seat for a tiny sea man to row upon. She also had a little sanddollar in her box, some scallop shells, and tiny conjoined pink shells that looked like butterflies.

My memory may be fabricating, but my impression was that she had collected them on a trip to Florida. These shells were nothing like the dusty white ones we would occasionally find among the stones along Lake Michigan where we vacationed every summer. Florida was an impossibly far locale for a family with four bickering children in a station wagon back then. We went to Michigan and camping for vacations. And I give my parents credit for taking us to Colorado, also. But these shells, arranged artfully in their display box, seemed like treasures from someplace exotic.



The sand dollars eventually were crumbled into dust by eager hands. And the wings of the butterfly shells were halved after too many vigorous simulated flights. The boat shells were sturdier, but the collection finally disappeared without notice from the side table where once it had been centered prominently. When my grandparents broke up housekeeping to move in with my aunt and uncle, I don’t remember seeing the little display case among the household effects distributed to family members, nor would it have been a treasure that someone would have said, “You know that box with shells? I would really like to have that.”


The collection meant something to my grandmother, and I wasn’t the only grandchild who liked to push up the little latch on the little box to handle the smooth shells inside, but in the end, it was just a box of random shells. I don’t even know if she gathered them on the beach on a sunset stroll with my grandfather, or on some lonely walk by herself, where her mind wandered from past to future while her eyes selected random treasures that would trigger memories of a lost moment.