Aging

I started typing this almost two weeks ago - but it's still on my mind. 

Today, I am celebrating being a mother of 2 for half of my life - my second son is turning 25.  I have two 25 year olds for a month. My daughter told me that Rihanna, who performed the halftime show of the Superbowl the other night, is pregnant for the second time in a year - she can call me if she wants advice about having Irish twins!  When we were watching her performance (the only part of the event that I watched), I was critical of her dancing that seemed unenergetic - she seemed to just stroll around. The kids had said she had a baby who was 4 or 5 months old (internet says born in May 2022, so 8 or 9 months or so), so I thought that she was just struggling with post-partum weight, but low and behold, she is already several months pregnant! So now I feel guilty for being critical.

It is an interesting commentary on pregnancy in our culture that the announcers didn't say anything about this. Apparently, she had not announced she was pregnant before the show - but surely the broadcasters/producers/choreographers/whoever is in charge knew. I missed the introduction, so maybe they said something then, but the banter after the performance before the game started up again was inane and boring - 5 or 6 middle to old age guys in suits talking about how danceable her music is. Nothing about Rihanna being pregnant and having just had a baby in her mid thirties; she is almost a geriatric pregnancy, as they say when you pass 35. Or slightly kinder: Advanced maternal age. My daughter thought she was 36, but a quick internet search reveals she's only 34. 

Would it be more socially acceptable to talk about Rihanna having a baby or not to talk about it? Pregnancy used to be something to hide, and my daughter commented how you don't see pictures of pregnant movie stars very often. I think this is primarily to protect the privacy of their children (for instance, I saw an article about the dictator of North Korea that mentioned he had children but the age and even sex of the youngest is unconfirmable). But there is also a long history of not mentioning the ways that women are affected by their reproductive system. I had no understanding of how fertility cycles worked until I was preparing for marriage and learned about NFP. I thought I had a yeast infection the first time I had a fertile cycle in my teens.

Now I am entering that stage of life when my reproductive years are limited. I still have signs of fertility and fear getting pregnant, even though the chances of a 49 year old getting pregnant are about 1%. (I've looked it up. My cousin just had a baby at 47.) I don't have major symptoms of perimenopause other than I have trouble falling asleep and then wake up with night sweats, even though I am usually freezing when I lie down. My husband has mentioned shopping for a king sized bed because I'm like a unregulated space heater. And perhaps he would suggest that I'm moodier and more forgetful than usual. Perhaps I should say I'm seeing signs, but not suffering.

The other day I engaged in a conversation with an acquaintance that turned from elementary school news to supplements for perimenopausal women, and she filled my ears with the battery of pharmaceuticals she was taking - overwhelming! I feel like I need to do some extensive research. An recent article in the New York Times about "The Change" has widened the public conversation, also. I caught the end of an interview with the author on public radio the other night.  When the next generation of women, who were raised on the internet, go through this, it will be all over social media, but my generation is still whispering about it - or maybe I am just not in the right circles. 

The hypothesis to research is whether hormone replacement therapy has great enough benefits to justify the risks. I love being able to write "none" in the space for medications (although I admit, I take ibuprofen not irregularly), so I hesitate to take synthetic hormones after all these years of NFP.  On the other hand, heart disease runs in my family, and estrogen is supposed to protect against it.  I may look more into homeopathic supplements, although there's a part of me that is suspicious of any supplements - as well as lotions and creams.  For that matter, I am suspicious of the medical industry in general.

Not to mention the beauty industry - an article in the WSJ a few weeks ago was about how celebrities are choosing to age naturally. This is not the same naturally that I think of. They are still using creams and lotions and doing micro-needling and blading, and other procedures. They just aren't having surgery.

I am having surgery on Monday if the authorization from my insurance goes through. I broke my wrist roller skating last weekend, and it needs to be reset. I promise I didn't fall from clumsiness, although I was that - a big teen skating fast knocked me down.  Did my wrist break because I am middle aged or just because I fooshed? (fall on out stretched hand - I learned a new medical term!) Seeing as the little girl sitting on the bench next to me where I was catching my breath after vagelling also had a brace on her arm for a broken wrist, I think it would've broken if I were 29 or 19 or 9. That kid was skating hard!

More to come...

Art and Architecture

With another child reaching the second semester of her junior year in high school, talk in our house has turned yet again to college applications.  Like many people this age, this child has mixed feelings about what kind of school she wants to attend and what she wants to study. I have mixed feelings about where she should go as well, since this is our home body child who has travel anxiety. She doesn't like to fly. I could see her staying close to home -- but I'm not sure I want to call this area home for the next five years from now until she finishes college... 

We have some college visits predetermined for us by her participation in track. The past couple of weekends have been spent at indoor track meets, which are mostly at universities because they are the only ones with indoor tracks. It's possible she might get recruited to run track in college - she is running well, but has hit a plateau in improving.  I have all kinds of thoughts about what she should do to run faster, but she doesn't want to hear them.  She doesn't trust that I have some experience of being in her position - which is both true and not true. I don't know her inner resources, her motivation, her anxieties - although I can guess at them. But I do know what it is like to be a runner, to feel stuck, to both hate and love running, to feel performance anxiety, and to feel the exhilaration of winning as well as the intense frustration of not doing as well as you think you could, even if you won the race or came in a close second or third, which to most people is doing well - just not as well as you wanted to run. I know what it is like to have coaches watching your performance, to have your future partially determined by what those coaches decide you are worth to them. To have to decide to make the commitment to run in college begins early - improvement doesn't happen without pain and sacrifice.

My collegiate running career was all a long time ago, and yet it was so consuming, it formed indelible memories. I have hesitated to push her more because I know how obsessive the sport is, and she has to be willing to make sacrifices to continue to do well.  She has hit the point where hard work has to supplement natural talent to a greater extent. I always struggled with this question of whether the hard work is worth it, if you don't have the natural talent to be really great, only pretty good. It is a question any athlete or artist must ask at some point - am I good enough?  It's a perennial human question. 

These meets have given us the opportunity to visit some college campuses, not perhaps ones she is interested in attending, but places that provide an example of what a college in an urban area might look like (University of Houston last weekend), or what a large university in a rural area is like (Texas Tech the weekend prior). During the meets at Texas Tech, I took advantage of the long wait between the time between check in and when she was actually going to run to check out the campus. Texas Tech is located in Lubbock, which is a four to six hour drive from the other big Texas cities - we drove from Ft. Worth after my aunt and uncle's celebration of life, which was a five hour trip and returned to Austin, which took six hours.  It's not a drive with much variation in the scenery - farm land and small towns - but it is a pleasant drive, restful to the eyes and the soul after driving in city traffic, the kind of drive you can get lost in your thoughts on, instead of feeling tense about traffic or road hazards. 

Despite its reputation for being in the middle of nowhere, the campus has appeal. There is a walkable residential/restaurant area just off campus, and the campus itself, although it is so sprawling to barely be walkable, has beautiful architecture and some campus art that is more attractive than a lot of the abstract, discordant art at some other campuses we have visited.  For instance, there is a statue of a man made of books reading a book - perfect for a space in front of a library! - appealing, funny, and a perhaps a commentary on the anxiety of influence - or the comforts of being part of a reading community. I want one! Another statue was of hands cupped as if to gather water for a thirst quenching sip, only instead of water in the hands, you see letters spilling over - language, knowledge! Surrounding these hands at the four compass points are pedestals made of stone books topped with symbols of knowledge - a keyhole, a nest with an egg, a canoe, and I forget the fourth... This arrangement is located in a tree-lined quadrangle of classroom buildings; benches surround the sculpture so students can gather to share ideas, lunch, or some shade.  Also around the campus - a mobile statue of birds flying, a cowboy representing their mascot, the Red Riders - maybe culturally questionable at this moment in political history? - and, my favorite, a sculpture outside the track of a female runner that when viewed at the right angle, looks like she is a flash - see the photo since I'm not describing it well.

There is also a small museum on campus, which houses a mix of art, natural history, and Texas Tech history - sports hall of fame, a timeline of campus, a display of student fashions over the last hundred years.  Next door to that is the Ranching Heritage Center, where you can see how ranch houses have evolved over the years. They have recreated a stick house, a sod house, a wooden house, a stone house, a house that looks like a fortress tower, a house that looks like a barn. You can spend a pleasant hour winding along the path and peeking into these reproductions and imagining what it might have been like to be a pioneer, to live in one of these small homes, to have everything you need in a small space - and they seem more spacious than the tiny homes people design on TV because they don't need a bunch of cabinetry to hide utensils and stuff or big comfy beds - just a corner for a ticking mattress! I thought about Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pa here - each new destination brought a different kind of house. 

I was grateful to find someplace to wander and inspire curiosity, although I don't mind watching races for a few hours either, which I still had time to do - this meet lasted ten or twelve hours.  In contrast, the meet this weekend at University of Houston wasn't as long, but the campus isn't as pretty and the architecture is unremarkable, as well as ununified, while the buildings at Texas Tech belong to the same family of architecture, like the buildings at older universities. It's an urban campus, still sprawling for an urban campus since it's Texas,  My daughter has no interest in either school, and in comparison, she is more interested in a campus like the schools we visited in the fall in Boston - Harvard and Boston College - and the campus where we stayed last summer in North Carolina - Elon. She likes campuses that are contained, as opposed to sprawling, and although she says she thinks she wants to go to a big school, I think she would be happier at a school that is medium to small, so that she feels connected both to the place and to the people. Maybe that's me putting my spin on it. And of course, our first choice is for her to attend a Catholic University, or at least a religiously affiliated school. 

And maybe if she doesn't go to a school close to home, I'll just go to school with her... I always love being on a campus...

 

From a textiles art exhibit at TTU

 

A favorite image from the museum

Student fashion through the ages

Texas mastodon

From the Ranching Heritage Center - the milk house. I wonder how cold it really kept milk in the Texas summer heat.

Everything you need in one room ranch house

A reproduction of a table for a larger ranch with many ranchhands

 

Woman/en running statue in front of the track building at TTU in the day and at night

An attractive doorway on a new building

My dream man

 

The egg of intellect? A statue for eggheads? 

Fulfilling the thirst for knowledge

While we were in Lubbock, they were going to the Father Daughter dance

Birthdays and blessings

 This week the kids have been home from school three days in a row because of an ice storm. All over the community, trees are down, and power is out. The kids won't go back to school again tomorrow because of power outages and road hazards, even though the rain is over and the temps are warming.  The ice did quite a bit of damage to trees and power lines.  I'm pretty sure some of my landscaping plants won't recover. Goodbye, lavender and rosemary! Goodbye, salvia and Sago palm! And good-bye to some rather large branches from our spreading live oak tree in the front yard.

Today was our first day to venture out after two cozy days in relaxing in our pajamas most of the day. At noon youngest and I went to Mass for the Feast of the Presentation - forgot to bring candles. Then we stopped at the grocery store and picked up a birthday present for her friend.

The days off of school were welcome opportunites to spend time together, and the second day happened to be our third son's 23rd birthday. His gifts were not exciting, but we had a delicious Italian dinner to celebrate. He is the one who spent the summer with the Benedictine nuns in the Pacific Northwest, and then decided not to go to Spain and teach English and live on peanuts. He's still looking for full time work, although he did have a seasonal part time gig. I love having him home because he likes to experiment in the kitchen and helps with errands. Yesterday he made bread and butter (by overwhipping whipping cream), and concocted a ragu sauce with roasted tomatoes and peppers that simmered all day into deliciousness. 

When I was looking through pictures for some baby photos for the yearly birthday social media post, I was reminded of how much I used to do with the kids - there were the fancy birthday cakes (for example, a cake shaped like a guinea pig for the 23 yr old's 7th birthday, when his present was his first guinea pig. Actually, we just bought him the cage; we made him save up for the purchase, which we told him was $100 to postpone buying the rodent. The party was taking him and 4 or 5 of his friends to the fun pet store that had all kinds of animals that customers were allowed to pet, like a large tortoise and a parakeet room, The kids think they had small monkeys, but I think this must be wrong. Probably sugar gliders? Although there was a pet shop in Norfolk that sold wolf hybrid puppies behind the counter...) We also did things to celebrate the liturgical year - All Saints day costumes, special dinners for the kids' patron saints days, crepes for Candlemas, throats blessed on the Feast of St. Blaise, which we always thought would be a cool name for a boy, but too cool for us. 

Of course, it is natural that as the kids have grown up, we set aside some of these traditions, although I am sad for our youngest that she didn't experience them, and the older kids seemed to have forgotten - I myself had forgotten many of the memories captured in these photos. A good reminder that I need to print some more photos from the last eight years! 

I have been grateful, though, for the days at home with my two girls who got to stay home from school and with the 23 yr old.  We made crepes today for Candlemas and enjoyed the left over eclair dessert that served as a birthday cake and made bracelets and Valentines and walked around the neighborhood to look at the ice damage and pretend for awhile that we live in a crystal palace. Tonight the ice is almost gone - melted away by warming temperatures, although the sun is still in hiding. 

We also read and loved Kate DiCamillo's Beatryce Prophecy, the story of a young girl in a long ago and far away place who is destined to unseat the king and cause great changes in the kingdom. With the help of a vision impaired monk, an orphan boy, a demon goat, and a mad runaway king, she makes her way to the palace to right wrongs and fulfill the prophecy. It was a fun book to read aloud while wrapped in blankets on the couch with tea and cocoa.  My reading has been spotty lately, mostly books for class, although I have to reread the Odyssey for a training at the community college where I am teaching one day a week in hopes of getting a humanities class next fall, although I'm still not sure if I should seek out some other career rather than continue adjunct teaching for little pay and irregular hours.  At any rate, all I seem to be able to finish are books for young people - this book, the March books about John Lewis, the book for book club West with Giraffes, a book about the cross country travel of a pair of giraffes destined for the San Diego Zoo and the young man who drives them, which is in the adult section but seemed appropriate and of interest to middle grade readers.

Time for bed now before the day is officially over. More time to catch up on life tomorrow. 

Resolutions at last

The past weekend we celebrated the lives of my aunt and uncle in Ft. Worth, one week after the reception in Indiana with my maternal relatives and their Indiana friends, of which there were many. As they were not Catholic, the service was not a funeral Mass, but included a lot of singing and music making, a homily by their pastor that included a reading from C. S. Lewis on grief, and reflections from my aunt's brother-in-law who is also a retired pastor.  Over 500 people came - family, friends, former students and athletes, the members of their "share group" - a group of 6 couples they had been meeting weekly with in their homes to share the Gospel and their lives for over 45 years.  They loved and were loved deeply by many people.

Their deaths have me thinking a lot about how I want to live and be remembered. They are a reminder of how selfish and myopic I can be. Yesterday morning, I came across a quote from St. Francis de Sales (it being his feast day) on Amy Welborn's site in which he provides guidance on how to live according to God's will - basically: live our own lives without lusting after other people's lives or wishing for personal happiness and fulfillment.  Be where you are. Avoid disquietude. Just do the next right thing and love others. 

I also listened to the episode on Bible in Year from the Letter of St James that is about how faith without works is dead. This is always convicting to me - I like work! I find "to do" so much easier than "to be" But it also is a reminder that faith must feed those works - am I doing what I do out of love for God and neighbor? 

My aunt and uncle's actions revealed their faith - and their words did, too, They weren't shy about being believers. I mentioned my uncle was a missionary with Christian Sports Outreach International. He was happy to carry on the tradition of preaching started by my grandfather - my other uncle was a pastor of an evangelical church, also, and now his son, my cousin, is a lead pastor, too - the reception in Indiana was held at the big new church where he is leading a community.  Sometimes the question was raised in my family about whether CSOI was focused not on converting nonbelievers to Christianity, but on converting Catholics to Protestantism. No family is without its disagreements and dissensions - and religious and political pluralism is evident in my family. Although this pluralism sometimes caused tensions in my parents' generation, it also was a way for the younger generations to see how people can have different views on important topics, but still love each other. 

These signs are all reminders that one of my resolutions this year needs to be to work on being content where I am, and to live the Gospel here. How can I be the arms and feet of Christ to someone else here?  I've spent an embarrassing amount of time over the last year wishing I were somewhere else, and trying to figure out what to do next.  What I need to do next is simply the next right thing, whether that is the laundry, the dishes, grading, reading, helping someone else, praying, serving.  I keep thinking I need a new job, but maybe I just need to be content with the jobs I have - they are, after all, service jobs. I hope sometimes a poem I share makes a mark on someone, or a conversation in ESL class helps a student make a doctor's appointment or something. I received a nice thank you today from one of my ESL students, and we've only had 2 classes. She has lived in the US for 40 years, but is still self-conscious about her English. 

This has been a resolution before. Obviously, as a spiritual pilgrim, I still have a long way to go.

More practical resolutions: I want to write some handwritten letters this year - I set aside a stack of Christmas cards from people I want to write to - even though I sent them cards, too. This should be an easy one to fulfill. But it also means I need to plan the time. I definitely need to be better about reaching out to others - particularly in my own family.  I have thank you notes sitting her for my parents and in-laws for Christmas - need to get those in the mail! And I have a card for a friend whose birthday is tomorrow. That won't make it in time. But I'll get it in the mail by the end of the week! 

I also have been thinking about inviting people over more this year. We have had those big parties for the team dinners, but we have not been good about developing new friendships with couple friends - this is something I've missed. One reason is because we have traveled more, but also because I have hesitated out of self-doubt. We need new chairs. It was too hot in the summer. I have a lot of excuses. And the truth is, we do spend a lot of time in the car, that eats into the time we have for socializing. Driving and utilities use up my time and money for entertaining. But if I am going to feel rooted here, I need to make some friends. To that effect, I did go out to lunch with some other moms with kids at ND - good food and good conversation. Hungry for more.

I looked back at last years' ideas - I did not make a decision about my future, except that I did not apply for another PhD program. Time is out for that. I keep thinking I'll do more writing, like most bloggers, I suspect, but need to carve out the time for that. Since my teaching load is a little lighter this year, I may try again to set aside 30 minutes a day for working on a project.

I did print out some photos - and put about 75% of them in an album. Almost done with the year 2015. Now to move on to photos from 2016! With the passing of members of the older generation, I realize the family history needs to be preserved - something else to be intentional about. 

Since I'm teaching on Tuesday/Thursday this semester, I can't do my Thursday morning Bible study which was a real boon, so I am hoping our parish has a Lenten reflection series. They have a women's study on Thursday evenings, but they want participants to commit to attendance, and I was going to have to miss too many because of trips. So spiritual reading needs a boost, as I noted in my reading wrap-up. I may just need to assign myself some reading. Or start another book club.

So here's what I have to work on this year: Let go of disquietude/be content about where we live and what I do. Be more attentive to the people around me and lift them up. (Next fall, our sixth child will be a high school senior. Need to make good memories with her this year.) Write letters. Practice hospitality (which means buying new chairs or upholstery fabric!!! a leftover goal from last year. I just can't find what I want...need to settle for good enough).  Maybe read St. Francis de Sales in toto instead of as small quotes here and there. I've started it before. But make a list of spiritual reading. Keep working on photos/family history. Write more. Make memories - go see family and friends.

And of course, drink water, keep trying for 7 hours of sleep, and do more weight lifting to protect my aging bones! My husband and I turn 50 this year! It's a party all year! 

Here is a poem from our new Norton Anthology that my students enjoyed, new to my syllabus - it won't copy, so here's a link.

Poetry Makes Nothing Happen? by Julia Alvarez (2003)

And here is the quote from St. Francis de Sales from Amy Welborn:

We must consider that there is no vocation which has not its irksomenesses, its bitternesses, and disgusts : and what is more, except those who are fully resigned to the will of God, each one would willingly change his condition for that of others : those who are bishops would like not to be ; those who are married would like not to be, and those who are not would like to be.

Whence this general disquietude of souls, if not from a certain dislike of constraint and a perversity of spirit which makes us think that each one is better off than we ?

But all comes to the same: whoever is not fully resigned, let him turn himself here or there, he will never have rest. Those who have fever find no place comfortable ; they have not stayed a quarter of an hour in one bed when they want to be in another ; it is not the bed which is at fault, but the fever which everywhere torments them. A person who has not the fever of self-will is satisfied with everything, provided that God is served. He cares not in what quality God employs him, provided that he does the Divine will. It is all one to him.

But this is not all : we must not only will to do the will of God : but in order to be devout, we must do it gaily.

If I were not a bishop, knowing what I know, I should not wish to be one ; but being one, not only am I obliged to do what this trying vocation requires, but I must do it joyously, and must take pleasure in it and be contented. It is the saying of St. Paul : Let each one stay in his vocation before God. We have not to carry the cross of others, but our own; and that each may carry his own, our Lord wishes him to renounce himself, that is, his own will. I should like this or that, I should be better here or there : those are temptations. Our Lord knows well what he does, let us do what he wills, let us stay where he has placed us.

For this is the Christian life, isn’t it? That balance between acceptance, finding God in the present moment, but also being willing to follow him to where he calls.

Persevere in thoroughly conquering yourself in these small daily contradictions you receive ; make the bulk of your desires about this ; know that God wishes nothing from you at present but that. Busy not yourself then in doing anything else : do not sow your desires in another’s garden, but cultivate well your own. Do not desire not to be what you are, but desire to be very well what you are ; occupy your thoughts in making that perfect, and in bearing the crosses, little or great, which you will meet. And, believe me, this is the great truth, and the least understood in spiritual conduct.

Every one loves according to his taste ; few love according to their duty and the taste of our Lord. What is the use of building castles in Spain, when we have to live in France ? It is my old lesson, and you know it well ; tell me, my dear child, if you practice it well.

Year End Reading in Review

In between shopping out flights and making travel details to go to Indiana for my aunt and uncle's memorial service this weekend, I have been prepping for my next semester, which started in the classroom Tuesday. I am working on getting my new calendar updated. This means it's time to update my reading list and add a new tab for Reading 2023.  I need to minimize the last couple of years, also. 

Just my youngest and I will go to the memorial this weekend. A larger ceremony is being planned in Texas in the near future, so a bigger group of us will gather for that. Even though that ceremony is the "official" celebration of life, I wanted to gather with my siblings and cousins in Indiana to relive memories and toast our aunt and uncle. It will be good to be together to honor them before we move back into the routines of the school year. One of my resolutions for this year is going to be go... 

But to review: 

Number of books: 66 listed here. I think I have missed a few.  I also read a lot of the Norton Anthology Shorter 13th edition and Home Fire twice for class, although I listed it once. Youngest and I read quite a few books aloud, but we were a little slower this year because of weekend activities. 

Of the 66

• 37 were novels
• 11 were read alouds - Easy chapter books mostly. Two by Melissa Wiley that I have been meaning to read for years.  I need to check if I missed some of these. I feel like we might have finished more. I didn't list picture books, but I read much fewer this year.
• 6 of those 64 were journals of short stories, essays, and poetry.
• Only 7 were spiritual reading - way down from years past when I had my Catholic book club. And these were all pretty light. 
• Only 2 books of poetry
• 12 were rereads, mostly the read alouds
• 23 were nonfiction. 
• Of those, 10 were memoir type books
• 2 were collections of essays by Ann Patchett that were primarily memoir
• 3 of them were about gardening and trees.

Of the 36 books of fiction.

• 10 might be considered classics - some of the children's books and the Cather books: Shadows on the Rock and Death Comes for the Archbishop. The Bobbsey Twins and Pippi Longstocking are perpetual favorites, but I also love Misty of Chincoteague and I had never read Edward Eager's Magic or Not
• A unexpected trend: I read 5 books about Korea/Korean Americans. This was not intentional, but educational.
• I listened to 2 audiobooks - Greenlight, which was probably better as an audio book because Matthew McConaughy has such a great reading voice, and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage also read by the author Ann Patchett. I need to line up more audiobooks for our hours in the car now that I'm almost done with Bible in a Year. 

My favorites:  This was not a year of "You've got to read this!" but I did really enjoy Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, and Memphis by Tara Stringfellow. Four very different novels. 

My favorite nonfiction book was The Heartbeat of Trees although I am reading Braiding Sweetgrass, still, and really like it - for next year. I also would recommend Jo Harjo's memoir Poet Warrior. Her life story makes interesting reading, and it is interspersed with poems that complement the narrative.

For spiritual books, I would probably pick Liturgy of the Ordinary. If The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Francis Schaeffer counts as spiritual reading, I'd list that - or a very different book by a very different author, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Both of those are guided by spiritual insights. 

One of my goals for next year is to be more intentional about picking a spiritually nourishing book to read. Now I did do several Bible Study books with my ecumenical Bible Study group, but those books are workbooks, so not really "reading" themselves. Without my beloved Catholic moms reading group (I need to start another one), I don't pick up as many books that feed and instruct my soul. I did read most of a Thomas Merton book and most of Devotions by Mary Oliver and part of a book on the Eucharist - to finish in the near future. I need to do some research about what to read for Lent.

So another resolution is to finish what I have started - if it is worth while.  I've got a few books in the stack. I also have a big stack of books I haven't read on my nightstand - I need to cut that down without adding to it. 

I'm reading along with the Moms and Millennials book club in San Diego from the Book Riot Reading Challenge. Some of hte categories are a bit esoteric or niche, but I like reading things I wouldn't usually choose. I won't finish it, but I think last year I read books from 21 of the 24 categories. 

Finally, I want to add a big classic to the list again this year - maybe this is the year I finally read Bleak House!

Out of time. I need to pack for our trip. And decide what books to bring along...

Memento Mori

  

I was planning to sit down and write my traditional new year's reading wrap up and resolutions post this afternoon, but instead I'm going to share some memories of my uncle who just passed away very unexpectedly.  He had a massive heart attack while riding the exercise bike at his apartment complex.  The ladies in the office went in to check on him, and he was already gone.

The irony of this is that my aunt, his wife, had just started hospice care.  For three years, she had been fighting cancer that began in her lungs, metastasized to her brain, and the moved to her skull.  The tumor on her skull was only found recently but was already stage four, so although she fought back from lung cancer and then seemed to be recovering, or at least living stably with the brain cancer for a year or so, over the past couple of months, she rapidly declined, and there were no more treatments left for this last type of cancer.  As I write, she had not been told yet that her husband died, as this just happened. By the time I share this, who knows what will happen.  Her days were already limited; now that she has lost her husband of almost fifty years, who was her primary caregiver, she may have even fewer days. 

*** Edited to add - I started writing this Saturday late afternoon. On Sunday evening, my aunt also passed away, quietly. Her two children, 3 granddaughters, two remaining siblings, and her siblings-in-law, including my mom, were all at her apartment throughout the day, but as these things often happened, they had all just stepped into other rooms - my cousin to get her girls ready for bed in the other room, the others for a bite to eat or to make a phone call - when she faded away. She survived my uncle by about 36 hours. Her death was a mercy after a long struggle - now to join her husband.***

My uncle is my mom's older brother. They are about two years apart. They have a younger brother who is about seven years younger than my mom because my grandmother had secondary infertility and my grandfather had polio in those years. So my mom and uncle were close in age, but according to their stories, they were antagonists for most of their childhood - it sounds like he was a big tease, and my mom may have pushed his buttons in return. Their dad was a Disciples of Christ minister and my grandmother was the quintessential preacher's wife, a gracious hostess, lovely and kind. So, of course, the kids may have fit the stereotype of naughty preacher's kids in their youth, and in high school they fit other stereotypes: my uncle playing the role of golden boy, star football player and high achiever, and my mom the cheerleader and social butterfly.  

Despite the arguments and name calling they mythologized for us (Laurie Leadbottom being a classic name for my mom), they became very close as adults.  Part of the growth of this relationship may be attributable to my grandmother's Christmas Eve traditions, and perhaps some to the memories formed while growing up moving around as my grandfather was called to different churches, - or maybe because my mom found in my aunt the sister she always wanted. They and my other aunt loved each other greatly.  My uncle met my aunt after he went to college to play football in Oklahoma and then got a high school football coaching job in Fort Worth, where my mom's family had once lived, but by that time they were settled in Indianapolis, where my grandfather worked for the Disciples Church headquarters. My aunt was a high school English teacher who loved her subject and her students. She introduced me to Jane Austen and the beauties of Masterpiece Theater literary adaptations. 

Every summer and every Christmas, their family drove from Texas to Indiana for a week's vacation and reconnection with family, until about five years ago, when he and my aunt moved up from Texas to help their daughter take care of her three little girls after her husband left. 

That action tells you something about the importance of family to my uncle, but his entire life was a testament to the love he had for his family, including his nieces and nephews. Although he had a busy career as a high school football coach and then a second career as a missionary coach for Christian Sports Outreach International, twice every year, their family would drive the 15 hours from Fort Worth to Indianapolis to spend a week with the extended family. And every visit he would take the nieces and nephews out to a movie and a treat. My earliest memories are of going to Roslyn Bakery in Indy for their famous big yellow smiley face cookies (the original emojis - they might not have gone out of business if they could have latched onto that marketing scheme). Some years it was Steak and Shake or Dairy Queen. There were six of us for a long time and then four more younger cousins came along around the time my brother born and my younger uncle finally got married and had kids (I was their flower girl, and my first babysitting gigs were for them). We would all cram into my grandfather's long station wagon, a couple lucky ones getting to sit in the rear facing pop up seats in the trunk. Some years my uncle took the cousins in two groups - the older ones and then the younger ones because we older ones would want to see movies like The Goonies that had inappropriate parts. Those trips were pretty much the only time we went to the movies except for occasional drive ins during the summers at the lake, until I was in high school and could pay my own way.

The Christmas trips were marked by additional traditions. Christmas Eve was reserved for celebrating with my mom's side of the family. The Texas and Indiana cousins all met at my grandparents' house for a big dinner followed by a talent show of sorts where grandkids played a carol on an instrument they were learning or sang one with my grandmother accompanying them on the piano. Then my aunt would recite Luke 2, the Christmas story, by memory, and the aunts and my grandmother would tear up. Only after the Christmas message was proclaimed were we allowed to open gifts, one at a time, from youngest to oldest.  In those days, the aunts bought small gifts for all the cousins, and my grandmother would have 3 gifts for all the grandkids. Although most years, these gifts were tokens of love, not large gifts, when we cousins were teenagers, my uncle surprised everyone by secretly shopping at the cool stores - the Gap, Forenza or The Finish Line - and wrapping gifts from "Son of Santa" that delighted us - T-shirts or sweatshirts that were in style brand names, what teenagers wanted, not the usual grandma clothes.  Again, as an adult, I see the love in this more clearly. He let my aunt buy us our little gift, and then he splurged on his coach's salary for an additional treat, and kept the magic of Christmas alive for the teens, who were reluctantly still listening to scratchy violin solos by the younger cousins on Christmas eve. 

Those gatherings haven't happened in years. In the early years of our marriage, my husband and I would alternate spending Christmas with either my family or his family, so we kept participating in the Christmas eve gift exchange while the younger cousins were teens and my grandparents were still living. One of the last Christmas eve gatherings was around my grandfather's hospice bed. We all sang the carols around his bedside and my aunt tremulously recited the Nativity story. We took turns saying something to him as he lay locked in paralysis from Parkinson's disease. The next morning, back at my mom and dad's, as our kids were opening their Santa gifts, my mom got a call that he had passed away early that morning - gone to celebrate Jesus's birthday in Heaven as she told our young children. 

But when all of the cousins reached college and young adulthood and were getting married, that tradition slowly faded. There were a few years when our parents tried to gather us on an evening other than Christmas Eve, but the last year we went back Christmas was before we moved to Guam in 2011. 

Nonetheless, we still gathered with the cousins when we could. When our youngest was born, my aunt and uncle drove up from Ft Worth to Oklahoma City to meet her for a few hours - a six hour round trip drive for lunch at Sonic and some baby squeezes. They were almost as close as a third set of grandparents to my older kids. I will always be grateful to them for welcoming me and our two oldest, who were 1 and 2 at the time, to live with them in their little 3 bedroom house while I finished my last semester of grad school. Dan was deployed that winter, so I moved from Virginia back to Texas with the little boys for a semester. I remember trying to write papers on an old desktop computer in their back bedroom after putting the boys to bed, where I could also crank out a couple emails that the ship would get when they pulled into a port.  A couple students watched them on campus during my daytime classes, but I had a once a week night class, when my aunt would feed them and put them to bed after a long day of teaching high schoolers. On weekends we'd watch Masterpiece together or Rom coms. My uncle would chase the boys around the back yard and take them for rides in his classic convertible. Those days are like a long ago dream now, but I am still inspired by their willingness to take us in. That I was bold enough to ask them to is proof that I trusted in their generosity. 

Now they are gone, together. Their fiftieth wedding anniversary was approaching. Although Uncle Trent had had heart trouble in middle age, and had a triple bypass surgery at some point, he was still in pretty good shape, so his death was a surprise. He had been giving his all to caring for my aunt, while also still helping my cousin with her kids. He picked them up from school and helped get them settled back at whom while their mom finished her nursing shift. Then he would take care of my aunt, and continue to go back to Texas regularly to take care of his house and business there, and to spend time with their son, who was living in their house. They were planning to go back to Texas soon, since their granddaughters were now all in school and my cousin's hours were more regular. What a gift that they made that difficult decision to root up their lives so that they could care for their granddaughters and daughter and have those few years together. 

The last time I saw them was this past summer. We sat on the porch at my sister's house and told stories and laughed. My aunt seemed to be regaining strength at that time. We thought we might see them at Thanksgiving, but they had made the trek to Texas to see their friends and family there. And maybe that trip took too much out of them. Or maybe that trip was a blessing that squeezed more love into the world before they left. 

I'll be heading up to Indiana for the memorial service this weekend with our youngest, and then we'll all go to the service in Ft Worth when that takes place. Their lives are an inspiration to spend our time and money on connections, on loving others - which may be my resolution this year. Just go. 

Back to blogging

 I will never be a prolific blogger, but I am happy to see I wrote more posts in 2022 than in 2021, which should be surprising considering the time at home during the pandemic - but then EVERYONE was at home, and I have a hard time blogging with background activity. Hence the reason I never finished that last post before Christmas - I had to watch movies and play games and talk and listen to the kids. 

** Best movie of the season? Maybe Miracle on 34th Street. We've watched some duds - like The Prestige the other night. There were two other magic movies we watched that were better - Now You See Me 1 and 2 - they reminded me of National Treasure, but they were pretty light weight. We rewatched The Greatest Showman and While You Were Sleeping which were both fun, and then the girls got hooked on a Sandra Bullock kick. Bullet Train was way too violent for me, and The Heat suffered from over the top the foul language, and Bullock and her co-star Melissa McCarthy didn't convince me that they were actually good agents - they kept bickering and playing into stereotypes. One of the kids has gotten hooked on Kath and Kim, which is a ridiculous, raunchy Australian sitcom from the early 2000s, but it does make me chuckle.  What I'm really looking forward to is the new season of All Creatures Great and Small, which starts on Sunday. 

I am also happy to see some familiar favorite blogs being updated these past few days. I should be prepping my Blackboard shells for classes, which start next week, but instead I'm distracted by blogs - it's like reconnecting with old friends - I need to check in and see how their gardens and their kids have grown and what pasttimes have changed or stayed the same. I've been enjoying the chatty tone and the quotidian topics - rather than the push for views that so many social media users seem to be about these days or the marketing of some new organizer or motivational series. I think I wrote a while ago about the sympathy I feel for young moms these days - everything seems to be about monetization - how to sell your product and yourself.  Can you just share information any more or do you have to market it? And do you need an expert to tell you how to do everything?  I saw an email from our family practice's office the other day about a series on toilet training that they want patients to pay for. Do you need training to potty train your kid?  Maybe. It is intimidating. So I appreciate these other blogs that write about daily life and what not for free. Free advice here! So while I've never done much to increase traffic to this here space, there is something motivating about recording bits and pieces of daily life for the occasional reader, even if it is only my mom and a record for the kids. If I describe the memories while they are made, the impressions will be stronger.

On that front - today was the first day back at school for the two youngest. After dropping them off, I went to a parent teacher organization meeting (I'm the coffee chair - every other month there is a "community coffee" for parents to hear what's going on at school. It used to be called "coffee with the principal" until the principal resigned after the homecoming kerfluffle. For now the school president is taking on the role of principal, until this spring when they will begin interviewing candidates.) The meeting itself was brief because everyone was still getting used to getting up early this morning and figuring out what's ahead, but I did have an interesting conversation with another parent afterwards about the perils of flying and his grandfather's Naval service.  Another reminder of why recording family history is so important - those memories fade and are lost forever if they aren't captured in time. 

Then the rest of the day, I worked on classwork, updated our budget and started organizing financial info for taxes and financial aid forms. The two middle kids had dentist appointments and one had FIVE cavities - the kid who just started college. I don't think he has been brushing his teeth. I'm thinking I might make him cover part of the cost share to motivate his dental hygiene habits. Either that, or look into another dentist - I am always a little skeptical about dentists. I feel like some look for cavities and fill teeth that just have "soft spots."  Not that it hurts to have those filled, but when they don't do silver fillings anymore, it adds to my suspicion that they are trying to maximize their profit margin because the insurance doesn't cover the amalgam fillings at 100% so they can bill us the overage. Can you tell I am a medical skeptic? 

I feel the same way about car insurance. I'm debating canceling the comprehensive coverage on our teenager car because it costs almost $400 for 6 months - which is about a 10th of the value of the vehicle. The only thing preventing me is the fact that our most recently licensed driver had two major accidents last year.  I hate shopping for cars, but I'm afraid our second car is at the point where we don't really want to drive it even as far as Dallas. It's got 10 years and 140K miles on it. My husband wants to sell the third car - the teen vehicle, demote the second car to teen car, and buy a new/lightly used car for his daily commute. I'd be open to this if we didn't buy two cars last year! (The family vehicle and the teen car, the one that is expensive to cover and which doesn't drive very well - maybe because it is a 4 cylinder, maybe because it is 11 years old. He wants to get rid of it before we have to fix it, but I'm of the mind that fixing it might be easier than doing the research for another vehicle.) Husband also wants to go to Ireland for the Navy - Notre Dame football game and go see his cousins in North Carolina again and take a trip with his brother for his 50th bday and a lot of other things...  hence my budgeting activity today.

Well, it seems I have no real advice - just examples of what you might get advice about. Now I need to get back to work on this course update, but I'm planning to write down some resolutions and book reviews in this space soon - or some plans for the new year if you don't like the idea of resolutions. I love them! But I've already failed to go to bed before midnight every night in 2023, and I bit all my nails off last night. I was doing really well at not biting my nails until I broke one and had to even it out...  yes, I am almost 50, and I still bite my nails. It's a terrible, disgusting habit that I have tried again and again to quit.  There's a resolution I need to make... 

A freebie! Delight of the day: this free illustrated excerpt from The Wind in the Willows from Cricket Magazine.