Short reviews

 Happy First Sunday of Advent! 

Already, yikes!  I'd like to post something thoughtful about preparing for Christ, but I'm feeling unmoved by the traditional reflections. They are ringing a bit stale - is this what happens after years of repetition or is the weariness the result of too many thoughtful social media posts urging people to be nice and good?  

Granted, I'm a little grumpy after being corrected twice in as many days by the citizen police around here. Yesterday it was the little old lady yelling out her car window that we need to stop at stop signs on our bikes.  Yes, yes, I know bikers are supposed to follow the rules of the road, and I usually do slow down significantly on my bike at stop signs.  Yesterday we were guilty of what I would call a "California right turn at a stop" instead of a California stop - we turned right after slowing, instead of after making a complete stop. Meanwhile the geriatric volunteer virtue policewoman was doing some sort of slow U Turn in the intersection - equally dangerous, I might claim. 

Today my crime was letting the puppy walk on the grass alongside the sidewalk in the park where "NO DOGS ALLOWED" is clearly posted. I know dogs aren't allowed in this park. I edged off the sidewalk because an old man was approaching, and I was talking to my aunt on my phone while I was walking the dog, so my mask was down.  I was walking in the grass next to the sidewalk because I was trying to give this guy a wide berth so he wouldn't think I was spluttering Covid germs on him, but instead he yelled at me three times, "No dogs in the park! No dogs in the park! No dogs in the park!" Geez. I was obviously walking the dog on by and not playing in the park. And anyway, I was close enough to the sidewalk that I was probably technically still in the public right of way and not in the park.  Now that I think of it, he wasn't wearing a mask as he yelled at me - if I weren't talking to my aunt, maybe I would have pointing that out to him: "Wear a mask! Wear a mask! Wear a mask!"

I know this sounds like a spoiled tweenager rant.  I understand their outrage. I have been equally irritated by scofflaws myself.  And it is proof that I need to read those Advent reflections and actually reflect on them and amend my response appropriately.  Really, I do feel sorry for these castigators. I know the self-righteous anger that wells up when others get away with something that inhibits my freedom or interrupts my peace of mind. That anger occurs when I am feeling cheated or duped or somehow betrayed or when my self worth is shriveled. 

The truth is that no exterior changes are possible without interior conversion. And that conversion is a daily commitment. How is it that again I am listening to defensive voices in my head when I thought I had learned detachment?  How is it that I am again nursing some wound from a slight more imagined than real when I thought I was becoming more forgiving? How is it that I am again seeking creature comforts and evidence of achievement and progress when I know these desires only lead to emptiness, disappointment, and envy? 

And so let us light the candle and pray for hope that our sins will be forgiven and we will someday use the grace we have been given to love our difficult neighbors.

Perhaps the best Advent reflection of the day came from the movie I finally watched last night with the youngest and from a book review I stumbled across on Touchstone's website. The movie was Sweet Bean, a Japanese movie I checked out from the library weeks ago. It is way overdue, but our library isn't collecting fines right now.  No one in the house but me was interested in watching it, so I kept it, waiting for a night when I had time to watch a movie, and the TV was free.  The 6 year old watched it with me, and although the themes were mature, it contained nothing objectionable.  It was quiet and slow, so I thought she would get bored, but she is sensitive (did I mention how she bawled watching Cheaper by the Dozen a couple weeks ago?) and enjoyed cuddling with me, so she watched the whole thing.

Spoilers ahead; The story follows Sentaro, a dorayaki chef, who glumly makes the pancakes filled with sweet bean paste in a tiny shop for customers who are primarily school girls and the occasional passerby. One day when the cherry blossoms are blooming profusely outside the shop, an old woman arrives and offers to work for Sentaro. At first he refuses because of her age, but after multiple visits from her, he finally agrees to let her work after she delivers some of her sweet been filling. It's deliciousness transports him.  When the word gets out about the new recipe, the shop begins to see a line of customers all day. But it turns out the shop's actual owner finds about that Tokue has spent all of her life in the leprosy sanitorium until it recently opened its gates.  It turns out Sentaro has been working to repay a debt after he has been in prison for hurting someone in a fist fight. Somehow the news about Tokue's disease gets out, and the customers all go away. Tokue returns to the sanitorium, and Sentaro mourns her and the business for weeks. One of the school girls, another misfit, finally convinces Sentaro to go and visit Tokue because she has to give away her canary, and she wants to give it to the old woman. The two of them visit Tokue at the sanitorium, where they meet her friend with whom she learned to cook. Their circumscribed existence exudes beauty and joy because of their friendship and the food they have shared. The reason Tokue's bean paste is so good is because she listens to the beans and takes her time, talking to them as she cooks. The next time Sentaro and the school girl (Wakana?) go to see Tokue, she has died of pneumonia, but she left them a tape recorded message. In this message she muses about how everything has a story and everyone's life has meaning; no one has to be anyone special. This is the secret that has made Tokue a cheerful, grateful old woman, who appreciated all the simple pleasures and surprises in life.  Existence is its own gift. The filmmaker shares Tokue's vision by letting the camera dwell on wind rustled cherry blossoms, on blowing leaves, running water, bubbling bean paste, sizzling pancakes.  It's a lovely little film, not at all the romance I expected from the summary on the box. I have thought about keeping it another week to force the kids to watch it, but I'm afraid I really should turn it in, and they have refused time and again. I can easily check it out and sneak it on again...

The book review that offered insight was for a book called The Squire by Enid Bagnold. I haven't read it, but I put it in my thriftbooks cart. It's the story of a 40+ year old wealthy Englishwoman birthing her fifth child while her husband is away in India on business. Bagnold, author of National Velvet, apparently worked on it for years as she birthed her own four children. She apparently wanted to write a book that realistically portrayed the experience of childbirth. According to the Touchstone review, the book gives a positive portrayal of large family life. Some other reviewers criticized it because The Squire (the woman takes her husband's title while he is gone) has servants and money that make large family life easier than it is for most, but I appreciated the excerpt that suggested that she took satisfaction in her ability to give birth and mother children - a vocation that rooted and grew as she aged.  The most difficult part of being a parent of a large family - aside from the physical and emotional burdens mothers carry for and with their children - is the perception that mothers of large families are odd or half crazy or religious zealots, which may sometimes be the case, but that doesn't leave space for the fact that each child can multiply a mother's heart, can bring more light into the world, if received as a gift and not a curse. Not to minimize the struggles of parenting with this sentimental statement - perhaps I should say that every child multiplies the love and the swords that pierce a mother's heart.  It can be hard to find support in parenting a large family because of the fear that others will think we deserve the struggle for the folly of having more than two or three children.  Happily, there are friends willing to help who countermand the judgement of strangers. Not sure where I'm going with this, other than I look forward to reading a book about a mother who is confident and excited to welcome a fifth baby into her life even at her advanced maternal age, 

The other book I just finished was Brit Bennet's bestseller The Mothers. Bennet is a San Diego native, and the Oceanside community features strongly in the book. It's the story of a young Black teenager, Nadia Turner, who has a scholarship to study at U of Michigan. After her mother inexplicably commits suicide, she hooks up with her pastor's son and gets pregnant. The pastor's wife gives her son the money for Nadia to get an abortion. That all happens early in the book, so it's not really a spoiler. The rest of the book explores the relationships between Nadia, Luke (the pastor's son), her father, her friend Aubrey, and the people of the Upper Room Fellowship. The choices Nadia and Luke make that summer haunt them the rest of their lives. The book doesn't necessarily condemn abortion, but it certainly allows space for an abortion to affect - if not haunt - the people who were involved. It's a sad book, one in which people either say too much or too little to one another.  And although I would call it a hard book to read, it's also a page turner - I was craving something like this to get lost in as a reward for grading papers all last week. 

Now I have to go back to grading the final papers of the term. I'm distracted by Cyber Monday deals, even though I stayed up way too late last night trying to please all the faces who appear in our annual Christmas card photo by finding a picture that everyone likes.  Ironically, after taking votes and wasting hours on that project because there was NO consensus between the three photos that have all 7 kids in them, I realized while checking out that it is cheaper to order more prints that less, so I ordered 100 extra of all three poses, and SAVED money. How is it cheaper to buy 200 cards than 100? Not just cheaper by the print - but overall. So now I've got plenty of extras coming! And my daughter with the good handwriting heading home tomorrow to address the envelopes...

Giving thanks

I started this a few days ago, and now Thanksgiving is here. We are a small group - just the three youngest are home. And they are a bit mopey, admittedly. They miss the crowd; we all do, but I'm glad they are sharing the feast with family.  The college kids are all at their grandparents, while our oldest is roasting a chicken with his fiancee for Thanksgiving. It has been a quiet day, but we all are healthy, and soon we will are be together. I'm grateful for the calls from the big kids and the photos they are sharing of their roasted birds and fall ambles around their neighborhoods.  And we've had a fun morning here: Mass, pie making, a walk to the beach, a few rounds of Just Dance on the Wii, more baking, a few chores; soon we'll be sitting down to eat, grateful for a slow day together. 

Thoughts from Tuesday morning:

The holidays are drawing near, and I am EXCITED! I am very nearly done with one of my toughest semesters ever, my big kids are coming home soon, and I've got a real hankering to hunker down with them and share warm drinks and books, or popcorn and movies, and conversation or games or whatever they want to do.  I am so grateful that my kids are growing into young adults with whom I like spending time. If they don't want to get jobs and just want to live at home in the basement, I don't really mind, as long as they do laundry and dishes and scrub their own toilet and shower - and take turns cooking. I have one fantasy future life where my husby and I buy a little Winnebago, and we drive around and take turns living in their driveways, and my other future fantasy life is that we find a big mountain lake home with a great wrap-around front porch and a fishing pier, and they all take turns coming to live with us.  

But right now I am grateful we don't have to split our time between spending hours with them and spending hours prepping for hosting Christmas parties or getting dressed up and going to parties. 

Don't get me wrong; I love a good party. I love getting dressed up. And I am really sad that my husband's last year in the Navy is during this Covid pandemic because there will be no last Christmas wardroom party, no last Seabee ball, no last dining out... I picked up a new cocktail dress last year at the end of the season, and now I have no place to wear it! What if he never gets to wear his dress blues again? (which are really black) Will I ever see him in his Seabee tartan tie and cummerbund, bee buttons, and OK City Seal cufflinks again? Woe. 

BUT back to pandemic plusses: one party a season is enough for me, and some years we have multiple parties. And as much as I like the idea of hosting holiday events, they wear me out and leave me anxious about party faux pas (a sign that despite a busy social calendar, at heart I am an introvert). I love the Covid version of hospitality: a couple friends stop by on their evening walk while we are sitting on the front porch watching the sun set with our pre-dinner glass of wine, and they join us on the porch - outside, six feet apart, of course.  This has happened only a couple of times in reality, but in my faulty memory, it may grow into a legend of frequency. 

What does our holiday really look like this year?  My husband came home from the grocery on Sunday afternoon and cheerfully announced he bought the smallest turkey he could find. We did not plan before he went to the store, so my first response, was "Oh no, why?!"  I want leftovers! Since it was so cheap ($5 for 13 lbs at the commissary - not an organic, farm raised bird), I sent him back for another one. 

He bought this tiny turkey because we are only going to have 3 children at home for the Thanksgiving meal. The college kids will return just after spending the holiday with their grandparents, and the oldest in Arizona will be home for Christmas. He had planned to come here and go to my brother-in-law's with us, but because of the recent surge, we all are staying put.  His work has instituted a 2 week work from home policy for anyone who leaves the state.  He'll do that after Christmas. 

So for now our dinner will be petite. We may include our daughter's friend and her mom, who have been a part of our "bubble" since the beginning of the pandemic, but they haven't responded yes or no, yet. I think they are waiting to hear from their older sons to see what if they will return or not. We still intend to make all the dishes except stuffing - mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, corn pudding, cranberry relish,  homemade dinner rolls, the turkey and something green - probably brussel sprouts. We'll still make three pies: pumpkin, cherry, and apple, because not much is better than pie for breakfast.  And we've got a bottle of prosecco and some good cheese for the pre-meal snack, and some decent wine and Martinelli's for dinner. We'll feel festive and full. 

And I'm happy to have had the opportunity to do some good deeds this past week, also. The kids and I helped fill Thanksgiving boxes for a local school for homeless students, and we helped pick up leftover donated Halloween candy from various schools for the orphanage in Tijuana our church serves.  It will be distributed with other gifts. I have mixed emotions about the value of donating Halloween junk food, but joy comes in many forms. I finally got around to sending some overdue wedding and new baby gifts, made a dinner for a friend who is sick, and wrote a few thank you notes for past kindnesses. In between having the opportunity and the ability to serve, the time to give, and the generosity of others to recognize, we are feeling very grateful. 

This won't be the most memorable Thanksgiving, but in some ways we feel more aware of how very blessed we are to be healthy, safe, well fed, and loved. We pray for those whose struggles make this day a difficult one, whether they are alone or just lonely, ill, hungry, cold, homeless, struggling with mental, physical, or financial problems, or weighed by grief and anxiety. Whatever their burdens may be, may God be with them. 

November feasts

Happy feast of All Souls and a belated Feast of All Saints!  Our celebration was marked by eating lots of candy left over from Halloween, which conveniently fell on a Saturday before Fall Back time changes.  What could have been a great excuse to have a late night party was just a good excuse to watch scary movies past midnight. (Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer, anyone? Sorry, Abe, I couldn't stay awake to see how your honesty might be tested, and I forgot to ask the kids how it ended. The kids also watched the original Ghostbusters, which is the inspiration for some cute little kid costumes for the DIY crowd, but I wonder how many of those littles will be begging to watch the film before they are old enough to overlook the innuendoes...) 

To mark the holy days, we pulled out some coloring pages and lit a candle with saint stickers on it. Usually I set up the photos of the great-grandparents and line up our selection of pewter saints on the table. Maybe tomorrow... Our pewter saint selection contains patrons of each of the kids' name saints and most of their confirmation saints, but St. Elizabeth of Hungary was sold out this year. I waited months before finally contacting the company and asking for a refund.  They offered to send one of those cheap plastic saint statues painted by machines that miss the exact placement of the eyes and lips, but I declined. 

We actually did have a festive brunch with homemade cinnamon rolls that didn't quite complete their second rise. Our oldest came home for the weekend - well, he stopped in at the house as a rest stop on the way to and from visiting his friend in Ventura whose first baby was baptised this weekend. Almost like a grandbaby! The baby was born a couple weeks ago, but I haven't sent a gift yet. I have about 5 different books in the cart, but can't decide which ones to send.  Do you like to send books as baby gifts? Do you have a favorite go-to baptism gift for a young Catholic family? I'm thinking A for Altar to read and appreciate now and The Clown of God to appreciate later, but I like some of the newer baby board books out right now. Such pretty designs! We often send Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever as a baby gift, so I might send that, too, along with a stuffed lion in honor of the baby's name. Richard Scarry never gets old. 

For dinner tonight we ate baked chicken tenders that looked like bone fingers - as close to pan de muerto as we got.  I forgot about making it, partly because I spent all day talking to students in Zoom conferences. While these conferences have been the highlight of the semester, they have drained my days and my energy.  I met with some students in person one day on campus, masked and sitting across a six-footish table.  It was truly a delight to see them in person and talk to them instead of looking at their distracted faces or avatars on Zoom.  And it was a thrill to be on campus. The school where I teach is located right on the coast, along a cliff that overlooks a favorite surfing spot. People come to this school for the view.  We could easily hold class outside almost every day of the year, but it would be a bit distracting on a warm day to watch the surfers crest the waves below. 

Although I found the conferences to be really fruitful and a great way to give the students a chance to talk freely, they took up four entire days. Now I am behind on everything, grading, laundry, planning, dishes, teaching the first grader, motivating the high schoolers, exercising, making special feast day treats -- you name it.  Oh well. The end of the semester is three weeks away, plus an additional week for finals, which I hardly count. I'll be ready for a pause.  I've a big stack of books to read, after all the holiday prep is done... or the Covid Christmas version of holiday prep. The Christmas card letter will be short this year.

This week is full of big events, right? Tomorrow we can stop being confronted with election ads, even if the election decision continues to be postponed to count straggler mail in ballots.  Our church is holding a day of adoration and prayer for peace. I've signed up for an hour to pray for peace, for an end to the pandemic, and for all the people and things on my prayer list, even though I won't be praying for either candidate to win, and will instead be praying for peace in our hearts and peace in the whole world. 

I know my position as a conscientious objector to this election is not popular - I have been told by people on both sides that my refusal to vote is actually a vote for their opponent - so they each get a vote! Or ... neither does -  neither will be able to claim my vote in their tallies of the popular vote.  I did send in a ballot and voted for other offices and referendums after doing a little research. I am grateful we are still registered in Illinois as that ballot had about 8-10 bubbles to fill in, while the California ballot had dozens.  Our four young adults over the age of 18 each received a ballot at our home address, even though only one lives here, and one is not registered in California anymore.  It has the most complicated propositions in the nation, I would hazard to guess. 

I am not going to explain why I feel like I can't in good conscience vote for either candidate here, - but I am expressing my surprise at the number of people who responded negatively to Peggy Noonan's article in which she expresses her reasons for refusing to choose between Biden and Trump, and instead writing in a candidate. I looked it up online after reading it in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal because I was thinking about sharing it with a friend with whom I had been discussing this idea since we both had similar perspectives.  However, when I read it online, I was surprised to see that 901 people had taken time out of their day to write comments on this article.  How many of these 901 would take the time to compose a handwritten letter to the editor that might be printed in the hard copy of the paper?  I hazard to guess only a small portion - although I could be mistaken.  I was surprised to see how many angry commenters there were - which led me to keep reading, wasting my own time.  These angry commenters appeared to take both positions: How dare you not vote against Trump and for Biden? How dare you not vote against Biden and for Trump? (there seems to a be a number of people who see voting as a way to vote AGAINST someone instead of FOR someone else.) 

Here is a long portion of what Noonan wrote.  I can see why some people might be angered by her position.