Author: simchajfisher

Even though I know the poem is not really about sand (or is it?), this

[more macro photography of gorgeous grains of sand here]

made me think of this:

Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau

William Blake

This is a personal note to the young woman who entered “i’m 19 i am due september 7,2012 and i am scared about giving birth and dying” into a search window and came to my blog:  how can we help?  There is a whole community of people here who want to help you.  Please contact me at simchafisher@gmail.com

Don’t be scared.  You can do this, and you don’t have to be alone.

And another reason I’m grateful for the snow:  it gives me an excuse to resurrect this post from my old blog.

Jen Fulwiler just celebrated her 35th birthday, and asked people under and above the age of 35 how they feel about this time in their life.  As someone who just turned 37, I can sum up this time in my life by what’s happening today: I’m old and mature and responsible enough to be expecting an assessor from the bank to come over in a few hours to look over the house in preparation for our refinance, which should save us a few hundred dollars on our monthly mortgage payment.

But I’m also tired and cynical and lazy enough to have put very little effort into cleaning said house, even though I know it will cause me considerable embarrassment when the assessor comes over.  Unlike the party guests we recently hosted, he will be (DOOM!  DOOM!) Allowed To Go Upstairs.

I tried to kid myself for a while that the house is simply charmingly cluttered, filled with the sweet, if somewhat chaotic, hallmarks of an enviably happy and bustling family.  I even clung to this fantasy while (not even lying, here) wiping ketchup off the bathroom mirror this morning.  Wiping, not scrubbing — which means it was fairly fresh.  Which means that someone was . . . using ketchup in the middle of the night, in the bathroom?  I don’t want to know.

But when I went to wake up the kids, I had to face the hard fact that — well, all moms say, “It looks like a hurricane hit here!”  Well, my house really looks like a real hurricane really hit, and hit, and hit.  It looks like there should be burnt-out refrigerators scattered here and there.  It looks like there should be people standing on the roof, shooting at helicopters.  Worst of all, there are actual high water marks in one room, even though we have never been flooded.  At least, I think it was water.  Uh.

A few years ago, I would have broken my back to have the place spic and span.  But a few years ago, we couldn’t even have considered owning a house, much less refinancing one.  A few years ago, we would have had more free time to clean, because my husband was working one job, not two, and I wasn’t working at all.  Our kids would  have been home to help clean, because they weren’t going to art classes or field trips or planning sleepovers with their friends, because we didn’t have any friends, because we never left the apartment.  And our credit was shot because we did things like buying things and then not, you know, paying for them.   And I would have done all the cleaning myself, and been furious about it, because my husband and I were not in the habit of communicating with each other, or helping each other, or working together.  Today, the kitchen is kind of grimy, but there are fresh flowers on the counter.  My husband brought them home for me the other day, because he thought I could use some flowers.

So, at age 37, have I broken even in the ledgers of personal responsibility?  Have I really made any progress, or have I only become more adept at making plausible excuses for my failings?  Is today a cause for pride, or a prime opportunity to do an assessment of my own soul, seeing as I’ve repaired my own spiritual credit to the degree that I probably qualify to refinance my own time, and could be saving myself years off purgatory by just getting off my behind and cleaning the bathroom for once?  What if I got a sheriff who so offends the people of Rock Ridge that his very appearance would drive them out of town? Wherever will I find such a man?  Why am I asking you?

Well, happy birthday, Jen!  DOOM!  DOOM!

Share one of my lovely moments with sweet baby Benedicta, who is now over a month old:

She’s a rather solemn baby so far, but for some reason she cannot resist the comic genius of the words, “looby looby loo.”

Don’t forget to check out Conversion Diary for everyone else’s Seven Quick Takes!

Last November, I wrote about the Stink Vote – how I wish we could tell the candidates,

Okay, you get my ballot, but you need to know that you are not fooling me for one second.  You need to know that I will vote for you because your stench isn’t quite as stenchy as the guy from the Stench Party.

But just because I voted for you, that doesn’t mean I think you smell all right.  You don’t get my trust, you don’t get my support, you don’t get my approval.  All you get is my stinking stink vote.

This year, for the primary?  Well, I wrote today’s Register post “Eight Things to Cheer You Up On This Terrible, Terrible Day” yesterday, and I started with the words, “I voted today,” assuming I would do just that today.  I drove up to the polling place this morning.  I slowed down.

But I did  not stop the car.

Couldn’t get myself to do it.  No matter how I figured it, there was no possible way to cast a vote in a way that would not make me feel like I’d made life worse for everyone.   If I could have submitted an angry essay in lieu of a vote, I would have done it.  But vote for any of those guys, even to keep the other ones out?  Even I, the missionary of mediocrity, couldn’t do it.  Instead, I went home and made some meatloaf.  I think that was more productive than anything else anyone else in NH will do today.

So, I figured I would annoy a few people when I wrote about the GOP candidates the other day.  For some reason I forgot how mad people get about politics, especially this late in the game.  I was a little taken aback!

I’m not a political blogger, and I haven’t had the stomach to follow the race in detail this time around (and I may be the only American who hasn’t seen one single political ad this election), so don’t expect my thoughts to be especially consistent or admirable, or even very edited.   I’m not trying to convert anyone, or even argue.  But several people did ask (with varying degrees of outrage) why I feel the way I do about the candidates, so I’m ‘splaining myself.  You can take this little rant as a sample of what your typical semi-informed conservative Catholic voter thinks, and why I’m so mad about our choices this election.

HUNTSMAN:  He’s one of the only Republicans who is anti-torture.  Opposition to torture is a fundamentally pro-life issue — so am I morally required to vote for Huntsman?  No.  I believe that there are many ways a Catholic can interpret their obligation not to cooperate with evil.  People need to work out on their own how practical or canny or idealistic they need to be with their vote.  I really don’t see the point of voting for Huntsman.

PERRY:  What is there to say?  He’s just a useful idiot for the kind of conservative who puts the death penalty right after apple pie.  The only good thing about him is that, when people stopped liking him, it made me like people a little bit more.

GINGRICH:  Was his religious conversion genuine?  Probably.  Who knows?  Who cares?  I have a personal problem with Gingrich the man, but that wouldn’t keep me from voting for Gingrich for president, if I had a good reason.  But I don’t.  His very long political record is abysmal.  What has he done for us, as pro-lifers, and as social conservatives?  He is what’s wrong with the Republican party, so why would I count on him to bring it back to life?  I blame Newt Gingrich and everyone who admires him for creating the America that wanted Barack Obama for president.  Conservatives beclown themselves by putting any kind of faith in this man.  He is a pig, personally and politically.

PAUL:  I don’t blame people who find him appealing.  Some of his ideas make perfect sense, and he says things that nobody else is saying.  Very refreshing, when the United States has gone so bonkers so fast in the last few years (or, if you’re feeling cynical, in the last fifty years).

But there is so much wrong with him, I just can’t even deal with the thought of voting for him.  Every good idea he has brings a brain damaged twin along with it.  For instance, he thinks the Iraq War was a horrible idea — okay, good (and good for him for saying so when no one else was).  But he also thinks we had no business getting into World War II.  If you adhere to a Just War Doctrine, there is a lot to like about Paul’s distaste and mistrust of war — but he’s not basing his ideas on a Catholic understanding of the responsibilities of power.  He’s basing them on an unwillingness to get involved, period. He’s consistent,  yes, but in a Cain (as in Cain and Abel, not Herman!) way.  This is no good.  This is terrifying.  Scratch a libertarian and you get  a cold hearted SOB.

Not only are his foreign policy ideas anti-Christian, they’re incredibly naive.  All politics is global politics now — that genie’s out of the bottle.  You can’t just opt out anymore.  Many of us hate how the US pokes its nose into every other country’s business — it stretches us too thin, fiscally and with the lives of soldiers; and most of the time we’re not being altruistic at all, we’re just trying to put the squeeze on other nations.  BUT.  Can you even imagine  how President Ron Paul would comport himself in diplomatic meetings with other countries?  Whatever shred of dignity we have left as a nation after four years of Obama, that would be g-o-n-e after Ron Paul does his Rumplestiltskin “it’s not fair, leave me alone, mine mine mine” routine.

As someone who has needed help many and many a time, I do not trust a man who apparently prides himself on not wanting to help — whether it’s through foreign policy, or domestically, in the form of welfare or even taxes used for the public good.  I remember when he spoke out in favor of a couple of local tax evaders who stockpiled weapons in their home, expecting a gun battle with police (over no issue other than non-payment of taxes).  He called them heroes, and said it was civil disobedience.  That was when I first started to mistrust him.

Plus, YES, I think he should give back the money the neo-Nazis gave him.  Even non-Catholics should be able to understand that giving scandal is bad news.  And yes, I think he should ask himself why it is he appeals to neo-Nazis in the first place.

Moreover, he has absolutely no facility for getting things done, as far as I can see.  Blame his fellow congressmen if you like, but his record shows that he has lots and lots of bad ideas, and is such an a-hole in general that nobody wants to work with his good ideas.  After a certain point, it’s all his fault.  How would he be different as president?

These are just a few things off the top of my head that give me serious pause when I consider giving Ron Paul any sort of real power.  He’s said enough things that jar and disturb me to make me realize that he’s not just a quirky, honest-to-a-fault, down home guy — there’s something really wrong with him.

SANTORUM:  I don’t hold it against him that he had to do business with Arlen Specter.  Santorum is enough of a political adult to realize that you have to return political favors.  The other 99% of the time, the guy is decent and dependable (and I guess that’s why people got so extremely upset when I made fun of him in what I thought was a mostly harmless way).  But I just don’t see him beating Obama, at all, at all.  He is prissy and querelous and always speaks like a man with a grievance, which is tiresome and uninspiring.  Gotta bring in the guy who has a chance of beating Obama.

Which brings us to ROMNEY.  Yes, I resent the political machine which drags up these ridiculous stooges and waits for us to take responsibility for voting for them.  The guy is an empty suit.  I see this.  I used to be so angry at the Republicans, and say that they were just as bad as the Democrats — that there was no real difference, just a different flavor of corruption.

Well, after life with Obama, I think differently.  I would be immensely grateful to have a president who only does a little bit of harm, instead of striding around the globe with a meat cleaver, the way Obama has done.  All right?

So that’s why I’m voting for Romney.  I don’t really think he’s terribly pro-life . . . but he’s not avidly pro-abortion, like Obama.  I don’t really think he gets what’s so bad about Romneycare . . . but he’s not going to use heathcare as a Catholic-persecuting machine, like Obama did.  I’ll be voting against Obama, and I think I have a serious responsibility to do that.  I’m not thinking about four years down the road, or what “message” I’m sending to the GOP by appearing to support a joke like Romney.  I’m  just trying to stop the bleeding.

The beginning of this election season was like moving into a new house.  Oh boy, a chance for a fresh start!  You look around and make all these wonderful plans:  going to paint all of this part, take this wall out, maybe put in a little Japanese garden outside the kitchen window.  The possibilities!  So you start to make inquiries, and realize that everything costs more than you expected, and the only workmen in the area are druggies and ex-cons.  Okay, so you lower your sights.  Maybe just a few, really simple changes — even that could make a big difference.

Then the furnace blows up.  At first you think, “Okay, we’ll use the renovation money to upgrade the furnace instead.”  But then you discover that the previous owners, apparently just out of sheer awfulness, had jerry rigged the furnace in such a way that the vibrations it caused were steadily wearing away the foundations of the house.  So never mind getting even a very basic new furnace:  what you need to do is put up some emergency beams to keep the house from collapsing, and

– oh, you’re still cold?  Pick up a $30 space heater at Walmart on the way home, just to get you through until the spring.

Mitt Romney is that space heater.  Nobody’s pretending he’s a long-term solution.  He’s certainly not what you wanted, or even what you need, and when you think about your original dreams for your country, just less than a year ago, you laugh bitterly, and curse the former owners.  But you have to do something, just to get by.  At least it’s better than leaving things the way they are.  Meanwhile, you have some major repairs to do.

I took a week off writing and forgot how to write.  So here are some miscellaneous word-thingies about life with our lovely Baby Benny, who is six days old today.

THE NAME:

We originally chose Benedict Renée Fisher, thinking “blessed and reborn” was pretty awesome, with the bonus of a tribute to our beloved pope and St. Benedict.  But then we realized her initials would be BRF, which any self-respecting sibling would immediately and permanently identify as BARF.  So Renée was out.

When it became clear that the little stinker intended to be born in December, and not November, we started to think about more Marian names.  Maribel is for Mary, of course, with a nod to Our Lady of Guadalupe (whose feast is one of three due dates I was given) because . . . um, it sounds kind of Spanishy.

I tried really, really hard to give birth on Dec. 7, but the pious child simply wouldn’t budge until the feast of the Immaculate Conception (two minutes into Dec. 8, to be exact).

Furthermore, when I was in early labor, I had the sudden idea to use the Sh’ma Yisrael(something I haven’t thought about in years) as a mental chant while doing my useless breathing exercises.  The Sh’ma is a short prayer derived from the Torah.  It’s sort of the anchor for all Jewish prayer:  “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”  You say it in the morning and in the evening, and, if you can manage it, as your last words before you die.

So I went with it.  After the birth, my mother reminded me that Edith Stein, the great Jewish philosopher, who converted to Catholicism, became a nun, and was martyred in the Holocaust, took the name Theresa Benedicta with her vows.  So, Benedicta again!  This child has, at last count, four patron saints, including one with an apparent penchant for making cryptic suggestions to women in labor.

THE BIRTH STORY:

I hate, hate, hate giving birth, and this one was, to be honest, one of the most scary and unhappy labors and deliveries for me, although it’s hard to say why, since there were no medical complications and I had so much care and support from my husband, family, friends, and doctors.  So I will spare you the birth story, and instead I’ll take Jen Fulwiler’s advice and put it into haiku form:

THE BIRTH OF BENEDICTA MARIBEL

Everybody prayed,

And I appreciate it!

(I threw out those socks.)

And we got us one of these:

So that turned out okay.  Let’s see, what else?

THE OTHER KIDS:

The kids are all more or less bonkers over her.

Irene, who is 2 1/2, did not get the memo about how the birth of her baby sister would turn her little world upside down.  So far, the only thing that’s upset her is the horrible belly button — she burst into tears the first time she saw it, and we were all much relieved when the scary stump fell off.

Yesterday, she said, “Mama, fanks for building Benny in your belly.”

She and Lucy (the little ones at home) are slightly disgusted by my negligent care of the baby, and are constantly reminding me, “Remember, don’t sit on the baby!  I fink she’s hungry, Mama.  You should feed her.  Be careful, don’t get jelly on her.”

MY HUSBAND:

It’s a good thing I’m married to my husband, because it would be very awkward to be this much in love with a man who’s shown such tender, generous care and attention over the course of this year.  I had such wild expectations of how very happy we would be when we got married and had lots of kids, but this is more than I was even capable of imagining.  Thanks for the babies, Damien.  I love you.

AND EVERYTHING:

I’m so very, very behind in thanking everyone for all the prayers and good wishes on this blog, on the Register, and through Facebook and email.  Please do know that I was glad and grateful to read every one!  I know it’s not easy to spare prayers and concern for others when everyone’s lives are so full and complicated.  It’s truly wonderful to have so many friends, and to know that my little one is so welcome in the world.

And my wonderful mother-in-law, HM (I’m not being discreet — she goes by “HM”) dropped everything and cared for everyone for some long, long days while I got back on my feet (more or less).  And my daughter’s friend’s grandmother showed up with enough food for an army, just when I was thinking, “Ugh, can’t put off dinner any longer.”   And my parents made the trip to see their 36th (?) grandchild, bearing presents and bagels:

AND THIS IS AWKWARD, BUT:

Jen Fulwiler has been hosting a sort of virtual baby shower for me over at Conversion Diary, and even went to the trouble of collecting a few pieces I wrote.  Jen has been a constant, gracious, and genuine support for my writing for many years, despite her incredibly full schedule of speaking and writing profound but accessible insights into the spiritual journey of a modern convert!  I can think of no better way for me to show my appreciation for her than to let her write me a check after people send her money for me.

She also told me that I ought to tell you all about it (she will be taking the “donate” button down on Dec. 16), in case you accidentally forgot to spend enough money Christmas shopping this year, and have been wondering how to make your bank account a little more lithe and manageable.

Phew, there, I did it.  Let us never speak of this again!  Hey look, here’s another baby picture: