good for the soul
Happy Independence Day!
Don’t forget to thank our servicemen and women who keep it that way.
And don’t forget that we don’t do this alone, as my godson seems to recognize.
courtesy of vic
Warning: Wet Paint!
The last thing I ever thought I’d do as a writer is pull over to the side of the road and write down an idea, but it happened today.
My commute home was no more extraordinary than any other day. By that I mean that I was listening to the same CD that’s been in the player for weeks, and I was tuning it out in favor of the quite animated conversation that I was having with myself. I’d like to say that it stayed exclusively in my head, but there are no witnesses to call me out for moving my lips.
At any rate, my internal musings were interrupted by a sign I’d never seen before. It said:
Wet Paint
Do Not Drive
On Newly Painted Lanes
You know that little Guy-in-Red that resides over my left shoulder? He did a little jig before telling me to drive over a lane to see what happens.
Fear not, gentle reader. I listened to the little Guy-in-White. He was outraged at Guy-in-Red, and shot me a knowing look for having briefly entertained the idea, but I did the right thing and stayed on the straight and narrow.
That’s when I realized that there was this grand metaphor staring at me from the center of the road.
The whole thing about staying between the lines is more than just Kindergarten advice about coloring. It’s also more than just a driving lesson, albeit one that’ll keep you alive. It’s a metaphor for the choices we make in our lives – and the attention that we pay to details on that journey to keep us straight, keep us in the lane, keep us from dangerously going over the parameters of the road into dangerous ground that can hurt us — maybe even kill us.
That road also showed me something significant. A few people did veer too far from the center and crossed the lines. I could tell because the tires were stained by the wet paint and left a fading record of their error until it disappeared back into the road.
Hmm.
A little like the way we err in our lives? Dare I say sin? I will. Sin. We all do it. Sadly, it’s a mark of our humanity. Happily, we can also seek repentance and forgiveness. It’s an amazing grace.
quick, grab a pencil!
There’s so much going on right now that I have taken to writing a growing list of things that need to be done and checked off the list. Baaah. Spring makes me crazy. Spring plus graduation makes me crazier! And yes, Jonathan graduates this year. Unbelievable. Where did all that time go? Where is my pudgy little boy content to crawl into my lap for cosquillitas?
Um, he’s a big pudgy boy trying to maneuver his way into my lap for cosquillitas. Well, he won’t actually attempt to sit in my lap, but I might be watching tv or sitting in the back seat of the truck and he will plop one of his gigantic-sized limbs into my lap. So fresh.
Anyway, lots and lots and lots of other things happening over the next several months, too. One of them is the Catholic New Media Celebration in Boston, August 6-7. In fact, that’s going to be a biggie. One of the speakers, the delightful and talented Sarah Reinhard of Another Day of Catholic Pondering and the “voice” of Mary Moments at CatholicMom.com is one of the presenters on blogging! Imagine that. She blogs. She’s Catholic. She’s funny. She’s real.
And she has lost her mind and turned over her precious blog to a guest post from little ole me.
You should go over there and read it and comment on it so she invites me again. Oh, and read her stuff, too. It’s charming. And much more interesting than the phone book.
I can take a hint
Especially when I keep coming across this quotation in unlikely and unexpected places:
I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.Audrey Hepburn
I couldn’t agree with her more. Here’s to all the folks that make me laugh. Out loud, especially. 🙂
While this is the classic Hepburn poster:
It is this one, where she is doing her humanitarian work, that most appeals to me:
How lovely, not only to laugh, but to do so in the midst of chaos.
The practice of goodness is accompanied by spontaneous spiritual joy and moral beauty. [CCC 2500]
Happy Easter!
it’s a good Friday
I don’t do it often enough, but sometimes I get up very early. Very early. Like at a time that no one would ever think of getting up. Today, for example, I got up at 4:30 AM although I had stayed up past my usual bedtime to attend Mass and Adoration last night.
After a cup of coffee and a goodbye to my husband who does get up at such a bizarre time, I was left to the darkness and the dog who was untroubled by the wave of activity that was a little different from the usual morning routine.
Instead of feeling perturbed by the fact that I awoke suddenly and inexplicably, I brewed a pot of coffee (really? Did you think that wasn’t going to be a part of my exceedingly early debut?), chatted a bit about some mundane things until John left for work, and then kind of looked around and shrugged with that “now what?” expression that isn’t quite boredom but is going to get there quick if I don’t come up with a plan.
There’s a certain security and comfort in the house at such an hour. There are sounds that are not heard the rest of the day. The creaking and settling of an aging home, the hum of the air conditioning, the sound, almost, of the home’s pulse – the love and warmth that envelopes us as a family. And then the clock went off on the other side of the house.
I love that clock. If there was a laugh track that accompanied my life, it would be that cuckoo clock we bought in Germany years ago. It cuckoos on the half hour and the hour. It disturbs my family when they visit, but it’s just white noise to us –except, that we become very aware of the crazy things we do or say, especially when we are in the kitchen. Invariably, after making a ridiculous statement, the clock will go off, telling us we are cuckoo. I know the odds are that the clock is going to capture some silly comment since it’s literally cuckooing twice an hour, but it surprises us every time! We all laugh and someone will say, “There’s your punctuation.”
I was just sitting in the silence when the clock went off now, reminding me that I am cuckoo. Yes. Yes, I am. But that’s a good thing. It reminded me that there’s much to be joyful about, and it reminded me that there is a lot of laughter in my life. I never really thought about that, at least not in that way that would make me reflect on it.
Here I am, sitting in the dark, sipping on a cup of cold coffee, and I’m smiling. I should be reading today’s scripture. I haven’t prayed yet. I haven’t even gotten dressed yet, but I’m already joyful.
Today is Good Friday and a solemn day of reflection. The events that we meditate upon, starting with the commemoration of the Passover and Christ’s Passion as it was set in motion so many centuries ago might be cause for a more mournful, or at least a more subdued mood. I’ll certainly have that later today at the Stations of the Cross, but I can’t really contain myself right now in this moment. You see, I know the happy ending. It’s not a spoiler; you know it, too.
The Manicure
from a twitter challenge by @10MinuteWriter to do the unthinkable – 10 minutes of uninterrupted writing:
I didn’t understand the need for the right manicurist until I found her. It’s true – I can possibly be that shallow.
It’s a shocking revelation to me, too, but I suppose I always knew the truth of it. When I was a little girl, living in Pastorita and enjoying a slice of Cuban-adapted Americana by leaving the house in the morning and not returning until lunchtime, I often caught a glimpse of what our mothers were doing while we were out plotting playing.
I never really gave any consideration to what my mother might be doing or need beyond my personal needs – wasn’t she supposed to be clinging to my every need? Of course she was, just as my own children expected it of me.
So to imagine that my mother wanted – no – perhaps, needed a manicure every once in a while was beyond me. Who wanted to be girlie, anyway, when there was a great stickball game going on in the big field behind the houses? But there she was, sitting at the aluminum kitchenette with the plastic seat covers while one of her girlfriends gave her a manicure.
I remember the emerald green of the Palmolive dish soap as she soaked her fingers in the warm sudsy water, the smell of acetone mixing with the heady smell of the nail polish, the laughter, often cut short when we’d run into the kitchen in search of Koolaid, and the pretty red of her nails when they were done.
When I got older and discovered that maybe having pretty nails was a worthy pursuit I followed my mother’s model. When I got together with my girlfriends we did each other’s nails. It was always good enough. After all, within hours they’d be chipped. We may have been old enough to admire the color on our nails, but we probably weren’t mature enough to know how to handle ourselves as young ladies.
I, for one, was pretty likely to find myself caught up in a three-on-three game of basketball or calling dibs on the winner for a ping pong match. My nails were doomed even before the paint had dried.
It didn’t matter. Nail polish is a pretty forgiving commodity. If I chipped the paint, I’d slap another coat on the nail and move on. What in the world was so ceremonial about those afternoons that my mother spent playing manicurist or getting manicures?
I discovered it many years later, after I was grown and had my own family. The ritual of the manicure, at least for me, has less to do with looking good and more to do with getting out of the house and doing something for myself. It’s something that we often forget to do, especially when we are in those years with the little ones running around clinging to us, and expecting us to be an extension of them.
That’s when a little escape, even if it’s just to slap a little paint on the nails, can be a big break – a little vacation for the sake of sanity.
I don’t need that escape anymore – if I find myself needing some time to myself I just ask for it, or close a door. I’m not likely to have my children’s fingers reaching in to me under the door anymore. If one of them did at this point, then they’d deserve having their fingers stuck.
But I still enjoy a manicure. It’s an escape that never loses its allure, even if I go home and chip it right away when I put away the dishes.
Vivaldi’s Birthday!
That’s all. Just thought I’d share since I love The Four Seasons. Here’s a piece that I drove 700 miles round trip in a day to hear my son sing. Not as commercially known as the other, but if you know music (or the mass) you’ll probably recognize it.
Enjoy. It’s a short clip and exquisite 🙂
Dr. Seuss (rhymes with toys, not juice!)
Today is Dr. Seuss’ birthday, or well, Theodor Dreisel’s anyway. People all over the place are probably dining on green eggs and ham, which I ate, appropriately, when my kids were small. Having sacrificed myself for their little sakes, I have no intention of ever repeating that dining experience, but I’m game if anyone wants to join me. You only live once, and I wouldn’t want anybody named Sam following me around all day with the same pestering question.
Like most kids who grew up in the 60’s and early 70’s, watching the Dr. Seuss specials, when those magical Special Presentation promos popped up on NBC or whatever, were cause for celebration. My all time favorite Christmas special remains How the Grinch Stole Christmas even though I have never, ever, read the book. Let’s just say that no one narrates better than Boris Karloff. Ever. Jim Carey is an imposter.
The theme of the Grinch still serves us well today, and another one of his stories, Horton Hears a Who has a magnificent tag line : A person’s a person, no matter how small. There is talk, even controversy (mostly led by his widow) that the Pro-Life movement has latched onto that as a battle cry.
Whatever. Geisel claimed that direct moralizing in his stories would ruin them because it becomes obvious and manufactured. I agree. To look at that line in isolation is to discredit the whole story, except that, wait a minute, that line encapsulates the whole story. His widow can get over herself. Quick.
I love Horton Hears a Who precisely because of its subtle, but so profound theme of respect for life. Here’s a little venture into that great big vault of old blog posts, this one resurrected from the files of Rosary Army when I was writing a weekly Monday Musings. It’s brief, but captures something about the joy of that story.
from March 27, 2006
This weekend my son finished a run as the Cat in the Hat in his middle school production, Seussical. It was elaborate and required a great deal of hard work on the part of the cast, crew, and adults who supported it at all levels. I’m proud of him and his classmates who managed to pull off such a huge endeavor.
Were there mistakes? Sure. Was anything so disastrous that the show fell apart? Nope. In the end everyone worked together to fulfill their roles, whether large like the Cat or Horton, or small like JoJo or a propman. They lived the theme of the play, loosely based on Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, that “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”
That message, as a Catholic theme, was not lost on me. Today’s society puts to the test the Church’s teachings on social justice. Like the Who’s in Whoville, too tiny to be heard, the Church identifies “the least of our brothers” to be heard above the din of our noisy distractions.
The Church, in her wisdom, calls us to be like Horton. Do we hear the voices of the unborn? Do we hear the voices of immigrants? Do we hear the voices of the homeless, or poor, or ill?
Christ calls each of us, personally, to hear those voices. Like the fictional Horton, can we hear — and more importantly — act?
I have a soft spot for Dr. Seuss. He did much for literacy, and much more for instilling and supporting a value system in his readers. I discovered, as an adult, that he wrote one final book that was published posthumously, My Many Colored Days, and illustrated by some contemporary artists. I used it for many years when I taught high school, and it remains my favorite Seuss book. It’s listed as a children’s book, but with a talent like Gesel’s, you know it’s just as much for adults.
another cup of coffee 