SIMCHA FISHER

Behold, the week that was eleven  years long.

SATURDAY
Meatball subs, chips, root beer floats

Saturday was number 1 son’s birthday! Here he is in his happy place:

[img attachment=”102799″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”moe meatballs” /]
Sorry about the blurriness. He’s fourteen; lots of things are . . . unclear.

***

SUNDAY
Stuffed shells with meatballs, garlic bread, salad, croissants, cookies, eight pizzas from Dominos, and a stained glass cake.

On Sunday we finally had my daughter’s First Communion.

[img attachment=”102814″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”lucy first communion” /]

Poor kid was the only one making her First Communion that day, so Monsignor made a big fuss over her. This is not, as you can see by her expression, her favorite thing ever. But she survived!

We were unsure, up until the last minute, if we would have three guests or 17. I am not sure what the actual final headcount was, but we had a blast! Thank you, norovirus, for forcing us to postpone things until family was in town for college graduations. Six of the eight Prever siblings were there, and everyone brought food and beer and puppies and kids, and it was just great.

[img attachment=”102813″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”6 siblings” /]

I more or less followed this recipe for stuffed shells, but I added some nutmeg to the cheese.
The cake was a box mix of angel food cake. Then I iced it with royal icing and let it dry. Royal icing is what you want to use if you care more about having a flat, dry decorating surface than you care about the taste.

I used a recipe that was just egg whites and confectioner’s sugar. If you get nervous with raw eggs, there are varieties with cream of tartar or powdered egg, but we’re daredevils and just go with egg whites. To separate eggs, I just pluck out the yolk with my fingers and let the white drop into a cup. Is that disgusting? My hands are clean. It’s way more efficient than any other method.

When the icing was completely dry, I used store-bought black icing to make a design that I copied off the internet.

[img attachment=”102802″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”cake white” /]

Then I let that set for a while, and then used a little spoon to fill in the shapes with different kinds of jelly that I whipped up with a little water.

[img attachment=”102804″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”cake color” /]

I was in such a rush, you can’t imagine, so it’s pretty sloppy; but I do like stained glass cakes for sacrament parties. In the past, I’ve done more Eucharistic designs of grapes and wheat. I feel like one year I made a cake version of the Holy Spirit window at St. Peter’s, but that may have been a fever dream. I feel ooky about making a cross or a Host out of icing. I don’t think it’s a moral issue; it just makes me feel ooky.

Then, for some reason, I told the birthday boy that, for his upcoming party, I could definitely make an Aladdin Sane stained glass cake, just to keep that cycle of ambition and regret perking along.

***

MONDAY
Leftover stuffed shells, English muffin pizzas

[img attachment=”102805″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”mini pizzas” /]

I had run out of sauce, so we made these with sliced tomatoes, pepperoni, black olives, and cheese. Always popular. With me, anyway.

***

TUESDAY
Pulled pork sandwiches with red onions on kaiser rolls, spicy fries, cole slaw, salad

[img attachment=”102806″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”pulled pork sandwich” /]

Again with the blurry pictures. Probably if I got a clear view of the way this week is headed, I’d just go back to bed anyway.

I guess this will have to do for sandwich of the week, even though it’s not a new recipe. I covered the pork with an IPA and salt and pepper and let it cook for several hours at a low temp, and it was mighty tasty.

The cole slaw was the perfect contrast in that it was almost tasteless. Don’t ask me how I screwed up cole slaw, but there it is.

***

WEDNESDAY
French toast for the kids; mental health steak for me and Mr. Man

Date night! My husband gets home around 7:30 at the earliest most days, but the rest of us eat at 6. If we’re planning to go out for dinner, I have the worst time not eating while I’m waiting for him to get home, because I am five years old and I can’t deal with not having a full tum tum at all times. So I end up noshing on whatever the kids are eating, and then when we go out, I feel like a pig eating all over again.

This time, I was determined not to ruin my appetite. The upshot was that I broke down in tears on the way to the restaurant, 95% because I was hungry. And no, it doesn’t help to tell yourself, “What if you were in a concentration camp, eh? Don’t you think people in a concentration camp get hungry, too? But they don’t cry; they smuggle in Bibles and encourage each other! Boo, you.”

Anyway, we had some excellent steaks cooked by excellent Mexicans, and life seemed worth living again. The margaritas did not hurt, either. They were so good it didn’t even occur to me to take a picture. My husband did get a shot of this fine artifact on the restaurant wall, though:

[img attachment=”102801″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”aztec picture” /]

By coincidence, this is exactly how my husband and I met.

***

THURSDAY
Grilled chicken, salad, tortilla chips and salsa
This was the first time in my life I sprung for skinless, boneless, pre-cut chicken tenders. Worth every penny. I mixed the meat up with lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, and a ton of fresh garlic, and threw them under the broiler. Yum.

[img attachment=”102811″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chicken salad chips” /]

This was of those rolling salads that we’ve been eating half of and refreshing all week since Sunday. I guess it’s about time to retire it. Those tomatoes look pretty weary. Or maybe I’m projecting again.

***

FRIDAY
Korean-style tuna rice bowl

Gonna try this recipe today. And I have some asparagus and some seaweed. But I am going to skip the egg yolk, because I am just too white.

“It seems that my mother has forgotten almost everything but how to love,” says my sister Rosie in this post, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re welcome to stay.” Rosie says:

There have been a lot of comings and goings in our house lately, and my mother, who has Alzheimer’s, can’t keep up. She walked into the living room yesterday, saw my husband playing the piano, and said “oh, are you spending the night too? Well, I don’t know who you are, but you’re welcome to stay.”

Can you imagine being so generous? I’ve heard that when Alzheimer’s strips away everything else, it leaves the core personality. My grandmother, for instance, was reduced to one word near the end, but that word was “honey.” The doctor was impressed. “I’ve heard a lot worse words from Alzheimer’s patients,” he said.* “Your grandmother must have been a loving woman.”

My grandmother was a loving woman, indeed. When she could still string two words together, she once saw someone peeling a banana and crooned, “Oh, poor thing.” She would follow me around with an anxious smile, trying with her bare, trembling hands to piece together the ripped knee of my jeans. She was a mender, a soother.

My grandmother had also been an intensely sociable person who was known, decades ago, for her cocktail parties. Everyone liked her. She was a visiting nurse in the slums of Brooklyn — an ideal vocation for someone who wanted to see people and wanted to make them better. I can just see her, climbing stairs, knocking boldly, doing what needed to be done. She entertained, introduced, tried to make matches and friendships everywhere.

My mother, though? My grandmother’s daughter? Not a sociable person, to put it mildly. She always used to say that she felt a strange affinity for this tiny shack on stilts that stood in a swamp on the side of the road. You could only reach it with a ladder, and there was nothing inside but some broadcasting equipment for the local radio station. That was her ideal: to have privacy, peace, simplicity, and a beautiful, austere isolation that allowed her to send her message out to the world, but to be utterly undisturbed.

That’s not what her life looked like, at all. In a cluttered, ornate Victorian house, she bore eight living children and spent all her days surrounded by them, home schooling, feeding, and changing them, enduring sleepovers, parties, and weddings, battling her way through a profound fog of shyness and introversion to meet our friends, welcome our spouses, embrace our children. It did not come naturally to her, not at all.

So when my mother, artlessly broadcasting from the austere simplicity of her Alzheimer’s, says, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re welcome stay” — my God, that is even more remarkable than you might think. That willingness to accept people into her home is a willingness that was cultivated, painfully, deliberately, intentionally, over many seasons of life, until her hospitality grew such deep roots that it now apparently flowers on its own.

Dementia has relieved her of any real responsibility. No one expects her to make lasagna for forty anymore, or to put on a robe and find beds for eleven unexpected guests. But no one can persuade her that she can lay down that burden of intentional generosity. I joke (not really joking) that it’s a good thing I won’t know what I’m doing when I get Alzheimer’s, because it’s going to be awful. I am awful, deep down, and someday I won’t be able to hide it anymore. How humiliating, no longer to be able to disguise who you really are.

But look at my mother. Look at the flower of her love, so carefully cultivated. This is who she is, but only because this is what she trained herself to become.

All right, then. To work.

***
***
***

*My sister, Abby Tardiff, has this very important clarification.

“I do fervently believe that my mother is expressing the love at the core of her being, and that my grandmother was, too. Simcha has it right. However, I would like to add that sometimes Alzheimer’s creates paranoia and anger that is not an expression of the person’s true being, but simply an artifact of the disease.

My grandmother’s vocabulary was eventually reduced to the one word “honey,” which expressed her personality well; but a bit before that, she developed a sailor’s vocabulary that I’d never heard from her before!”

Alzheimer’s may take away inhibitions and may spare some true core personality traits, but it is a degenerative brain disease which ultimately drastically changes the personality, especially in its more advanced stages. An Alzheimer’s patient who exhibits grotesque or violent behavior is not revealing his or her true self; his brain has been transformed against his will by the disease.

I sincerely apologize for unintentionally implying that dementia patients are somehow responsible for their behavior, or that we can read the soul of someone suffering from brain disease. My intention was simply to pay tribute to my mother’s long legacy of love and self-sacrifice.

 

Cons:

• Passing truckers will honk at you.
• Every once in a while, someone’s tooth gets embedded in someone else’s skull and the sound of your femur snapping in half will haunt you for the rest of your days. Big deal. Like that wouldn’t happen eventually anyway.

Pros:

• It’s really, truly fun for all ages. As long as your neck is strong enough to support your head, you can have some kind of good time on a trampoline, whether it’s gently bopping a little baby up and down, or turning ridiculous back flips designed to freak your mother out, or just gingerly springing up and down like a big gooney gooneybird. Also popular: running as fast as you can in a circle while chasing a shrieking toddler. Optional: pretending you’re on the moon.
• It’s a great aid to those “games” where you get to lie down. The kids climb on you and roll around and, because of the motion of the trampoline, they think you’re participating. You can call it the tiger game or the mummy game or the digging up dinosaur game, whatever, as long as you get to lie down in the sun and call it “parenting.”
• It is damn near impossible to bounce for five minutes and still be mad when you get off.
• There is no better sound than the sound that can float in through the window than the sound of previously surly, gloomy, crabby, sullen kids suddenly shouting and laughing together.
• People look hilarious trying to get down.
• It won’t actually help you go into labor unless the baby is ready; but, again, hilarious.
• You always know the answer to the question, “What will we do with all these party guests?”
• If you’re completely the most amazing parents ever, you will also add a sprinkler and a boatload of water balloons to said party activity.
• No little kid can say “trampoline.” “Troppineen,” yes. “Chapoline,” probably. “Boing,” definitely. Look, it’s cute. I’ll take it.
• Add a trampoline to any formal photo shoot and get instant drama (poofy skirts and long hair are a bonus).
• It’s the best possible viewing spot for a meteor shower. You can also rest a little cocktail on your collarbone and pretend you’re watching a meteor shower, as long as it’s not actually pouring rain.
• Passing truckers will honk at you.

In conclusion:

• You should get a trampoline.

Babies come from women, so we know who to blame when babies keep turning up. We tell women over and over and over again that the worst thing that can happen to you is to have baby. The worst thing that can happen to a baby is for it to be born. The worst thing that can happen to the world is for your baby to be in it.

Of course they throw their babies away.

Read the rest at the Register. 

Little babies receive Holy Communion in Eastern Catholic Churches. How do you like that? Mark Shea tells a wonderful story about a man who was scandalized when he found out about this practice. “How can you give the Eucharist to little children?” he demanded of the priest. “They can’t possibly understand what it really is!”

“Well,” the priest replied, “Do you?”

And the guy had to admit, heck no, he did not. Not really, not fully, not even more than the tiniest little bit.

It’s a good story for us parents of first communicants to tell ourselves. I keep hearing stories about other kids who floated home from Mass on a cloud of Eucharistic bliss, begging their parents to wake them up early on Monday so they could receive Jesus again as soon as possible. I have not yet managed to raise a kid who says stuff like this. I did have one child who received his first and second Holy Communion at the same Mass. It’s possible he was experiencing an extreme hunger for the Bread of Life, but it’s a lot more likely that just he flaked out, got lost, and drifted back into line with his classmates when he couldn’t find the right pew.

Tarcisus and Imelda, my kids ain’t. However, there’s a reason they call it First Holy Communion: It’s the first, God willing, of many. Many, many, many. Catechism class generally ends for the year around this time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to your kids about what it all means.

As I’ve mentioned, we started reading The How-To Book of the Mass in the evening, right after family prayers and before the little kids go to bed. They start trying to kiss me goodnight and scamper away, and I shout, “Wait, wait, don’t go anywhere!” There is groaning and sighing and flopping and a sudden interest in getting math homework done, and I ignore it all. It’s part of my grand plan to fling bits of theology at the family without ceasing, and hope some of it sticks. This goes for the kid who just received her first communion, and for the kids who’ve been receiving for years, and for the kid who still spends most of the Mass under the pew. And it goes for me and my husband, too. Like the little Ruthenian Catholic baby, we can’t possibly understand what the Eucharist really is. But we’re working on it.

We only read for about five minutes. I’ve found it more helpful to read quick little bits of spiritual reading often, rather than longer chunks less often. The key is to keep going, keep chipping away at it, keep coming back to it when we fall off the wagon and forget to do any catecheis for . . . oops, yikes, mumbledy-mumble waytoomany weeks. Keep coming back to it.

Even if the kids don’t understand everything they hear, at least they are hearing about their faith all the time, so it’s not weird to hear the name “Jesus” outside of Mass. This way, if they do have a question, they will have a natural time to ask it, rather than remembering on their own to broach the topic of religion. (And it’s ten thousand times more useful to answer spontaneous questions the kids have, than for parents to bring up questions they don’t care about.)

Keep coming back to it. That’s the only way we’ll ever make any progress at understanding the unimaginable gift of the Eucharist. That’s the only way our kids will ever make any spiritual progress under our guidance. That’s the only way to live, whether you’re a baby or a callow youth or an exhausted parent. Keep coming back to the well of information about the Faith, just like you keep coming back to the Eucharist. That’s what it’s for!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a sucker for a good story about old married couples. The older I get, the less likely I am to get over this predilection!

As Joanne McPortland cannily pointed out, such books for children are “not common, on purpose, since the original roots of children’s tales are teaching how to survive in a world without the stabilities of home and family.” She’s right, but boy, have things changed. Maybe stories of couples who are stable and still in love are likely to become more common, as the idea of old married love becomes more of a fascinating fantasy, something that has to be learned and striven after, rather than something that is inevitable.

In Caleb and Kate, written and illustrated by William Steig,

[img attachment=”102232″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 1.42.41 PM” /]

Caleb storms out of the house after a fight, and is turned into a dog. He realizes that the only way he can stay with his wife is to be her pet, so that’s what he does. She grows to love him, but does not realize who he is. His fidelity is rewarded one night when robbers invade the house, and everything is restored, better than before.

A common theme in books about old couples is that they love each other and have a pretty good life, but they certainly wish they had children. It’s a very old story indeed, hearkening back to Abraham and Sarah. Thumbelina, Snow White, The Gingerbread Man, and other traditional fairy tales pick up this theme, where a loving but barren couple finally get the child they longed for — but there’s a catch.

Various children’s books salve the sorrow of childlessness in various ways:

In Millions of Cats, written and illustrated by Wanda Gag,

[img attachment=”102233″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 1.32.53 PM” /]

the old husband sets off to remedy his wife’s loneliness by searching for a pet cat. He stumbles upon a valley of millions of cats     (My smart-alec kids insist that the one, small, homely cat was not so much a survivor as an all-devourer.)

In The Rainbabies, written by Laura Krauss Melmed and illustrated by Jim LaMarche,

[img attachment=”102234″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 1.34.35 PM” /]

a sudden rain brings an unexpected gift: a shower of tiny, perfect rainbabies, each small enough to be cradled inside a drop of water. The devoted foster parents care for them and protect them from a dangerous world, but eventually get some unwelcome news — and then a reward. I always found this story a little unsettling, but the outstandingly lovely illustrations make up for a lot!

In One Potato, Two Potato, written by Cynthia DeFelice and illustrated by Andrea U’Ren, 

[img attachment=”102235″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 1.35.57 PM” /]

the couple has had their children, but they are all grown and moved away. The poverty-stricken husband and wife are entirely devoted to each other, out of affection and necessity, sharing a coat, a blanket, and even a chair because they’re too poor to have enough for both of them. But they long for friendship, beyond what the spouse can provide. In their direst day, digging up the very last potato in the garden, the husband finds a magic pot which gives them everything they need.

My kids think they should have kept the pot, but I think they buried it again for future generations to find, when their need is so strong that they dig deep enough to find it.

Yonder, written by Tony Johnston and illustrated by Lloyd Bloom, 

[img attachment=”102236″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 1.31.55 PM” /]

is less a story about a specific couple and more a narrative poem about the seasons of the year and the cycles of family life.  Gentle and moving, with plain language and illustrations that glow.

Not a book, but the movie Up is probably my favorite story of an old couple. As internet wags have noted, the first eight minutes of it — which almost wordlessly tell the story of how the couple met as children, how they fell in love, married, built a life together, suffered together and found joy together, and were finally separated at death — is “still a better love story than Twilight.” Heh.

But it’s just the introduction! What blows me away is that the rest of the love story — the rest of the work of the marriage — happens to Carl after his beloved Ellie is dead.

[img attachment=”102238″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 1.39.11 PM” /]

Carl thinks he is honoring his wife’s memory by pulling off one final, spectacular adventure and bodily dragging their home to the mythical Paradise Falls. In tribute to her, he rejects the old folks’ home and moves his entire house to the land of their dreams, meeting their childhood hero in the process. But in the end, what she really inspired him to do was to allow himself to be carried up and away — away from the static, nostalgic, scrapbook-bound story of his life, even giving up all the last physical reminders he had of their love together.

Because of the kind of person she has helped him become, he can ultimately respond to the people (and creatures) who actually have need of him. The wonderful thing is, in order to be a hero, he does not need to become a new kind of person. His lifelong old-mannish ways are exactly what is called for in the end. As a child, his wife likes his stolid ways (“You’re weird. I like you!”). And because he loves her, he undertakes adventure, which is how he comes to be thrown together with Russell. And finally, as an old man, he finds himself back home again — and how delighted Ellie would have been to see him fathering the boy in his stolid, old-mannish way. As Russell says, “That might sound boring, but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.”

It’s an extraordinary book that can make “the boring stuff,” which is the bedrock of married love, into a good story. I heartily recommend all the books (and of course the movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must!). Which are your favorites?

***

Movie still from Up (2000) via Pixar Studios

 

It was on Tuesday of this week that I first started saying, “Whew, at least it’s finally Friday.”

But it wasn’t.

I am not sure if I can fully convey how stupid this week was, but I will try.

When it first began, we had no idea what we were in for. We thought we had a busy week coming up, but nothing we couldn’t manage.

SATURDAY
Tailgate Ham and Swiss Sandwiches (there are a bunch of amazing, thrilling, and infuriating sandwich ideas at this site, Saveur)

These sandwiches were tasty! Mini ham and swiss rolls covered with savory sauce and baked until fabulous. I’m very glad to know this recipe for future parties.

[img attachment=”101919″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”IMG_20160430_183721″ /]

I think I’ll use way way way less butter next time, though. They more than met Dr. Nick Rivera’s criterion for the kind of food we’re apparently seeking out.

[img attachment=”101918″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”IMG_20160430_184320″ /]

It’s your window to weight gain!
SUNDAY
Roast chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes, string beans; apple crisp with ice cream

Sunday was supposed to be Lucy’s First Holy Communion and then an afternoon party with a bunch of guests, and I was planning stuffed shells, garlic bread, salad, and a stained glass cake. But she suddenly got violently sick on Saturday night.

Possibly a case of too much damn ham, right? Poor kid. We reluctantly cancelled FHC plans, to be on the safe side, and started rearranging our schedule. We went ahead and did the final shopping and packing for my son, who was off for a week-long nature camp with his class. With the day suddenly free of parties, I relaxed and had a nice, peaceful day cooking with the kids.

[img attachment=”101921″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender (4)” /]

Shortly after this, it became abundantly abundantly abundantly clear that we were dealing with . . .

dun dun dun . . .

Norovirus.

So much vomit. So much vomit.

The rest of the week was an insane amalgam of sick people doing everything backwards (sleeping through the day and wandering around at night, normally hungry people refusing sips of water, normally workaholic people barely able to peels their heads off the pillow) and non-sick people rushing around like maniacs (work, choir practice, interviews, field trips, doctor appointments). There was a lot of pounding on bathroom doors and a lot of, “Well, I told you I had to get in there.”

One kid was sick throughout the weekend, and recuperated on Sunday, so we kept her home from school on Monday. On Tuesday, she was better but we forgot to wake her up, so she missed school. On Wednesday, she was fine, but we forgot to wake her early for a field trip, so she missed school. We kept on sleeping through alarms, because there really hadn’t been any night to speak of. That was the day I went to pick up Corrie from the arms of my almost-dead husband, and didn’t realize Benny had crept into our bed with another werewolf dream, and so I sat on her. So it was like that.

MONDAY
Complete blur. Lots of bowls.

TUESDAY
Hot dogs without buns, grapes, because a few of the children were still able to work their jaws.

WEDNESDAY
Chicken nuggets because the dog expected it.

THURSDAY
Roast chicken thighs, rice, salad. 

By Thursday, I was just so tired of everything being crazy, I got mad, and I was determined to get back into some kind of normal routine, even though I ended up making something like seven trips into town and back, and even though we’re in a diocese that actually has Ascension Thursday on actual Thursday.

But dammit, I roasted those chicken thighs. My husband was feeling almost completely better at this point, but we were so accustomed to feeling terrible that he made a big batch of margaritas in honor of Cinqo de Gringo. Tequila is the one kind of alcohol that makes me do really stupid things, so I usually stay away. Turns out when you’re old and decrepit, having a second large margarita is about as stupid as it gets.

I feel fairly hung over today, but that’s mostly because I ate some of the marshmallow fluff I put in the car as a crowd-calming measure. I had brought the baby and four-year-old along with me on the fifth trip out, because I had left them in the care of my teenage son for the previous jaunt, and when I got back, he screamed, “OH THANK GOODNESS.” (He’s not normally a screamer.) Apparently he had spilled hot chicken grease on his arms, and then on the floor, and I guess he cleaned it up with some baby shirts? And then the baby was crying, so I guess he gave her some rotten ham? The dog ate a bunch of feathers. There was bird seed all over the house, again. Anyway, I elected to bring her with me after that.

FRIDAY

???

Did you know it’s not just in cartoons that your eye starts twitching after a while?

My son should be home from camp today, so we’ll find out whether we sent him off in time to miss the stomach bug, or maybe we didn’t and he infected everyone and we’re the worst people in the world. There’s a formal concert tonight, and another one tomorrow, and Saturday is my son’s birthday, and of course that First Communion party is Sunday.

My husband asked me what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day, which is also Sunday. I feel like the only answer is more tequila. It’s my window.

Dear Father,

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve said, “Quit telling priests what to do.” You guys are super busy and already working harder than anyone could reasonably expect.

But I’ll give one of those imaginary dollars back today, because I’m going to tell you what to do this Sunday. Trust me, it’s for your own good.

This Sunday is, as you no doubt know, Mother’s Day, and a lot of your parishioners are going to expect you to acknowledge it. Also, a lot of your parishioners are going to be mad if you acknowledge it.

A good portion of your congregation feels that the world despises motherhood, and they look to the Church to be the one place where they are appreciated for their sacrifices and their hard work.

Another good portion of your congregation feels that the world only cares about women if they are mothers, and they look to the Church to be the one place where no one despises them for not being mothers.

Some of your parishioners are pregnant, and they’re miserable about it. Some of them desperately wish they were pregnant, and are working hard not to hate their fertile sisters. Some of them look pregnant, but are just fat, and if one more well-meaning priest blesses their unoccupied abdomens, they’re going to sock him in the jaw.

Some of them look pregnant, but they’re the only one who knows that the baby they’re carrying is already dead.

Some of your parishioners are the mothers of children who are already buried, or children whose bodies went straight into the hospital’s incinerator while their mothers wept and bled. Some of your parishioners paid to have their children put there.

Some of your parishioners have been wretched mothers, and they know it. Some of them have been excellent mothers of wretched children, and everyone assumes that wretchedness must be the mother’s fault.

Some of your parishioners hated their mothers. Some of them just lost their beloved mothers yesterday. Some of them never knew their mothers at all.

Some of your parishioners are excellent mothers who pour their heart, soul, mind, and strength into caring for their families, and as soon as they get home from Mass, everyone expects them to get right back to cooking and cleaning and making life easy for everyone else, the same as every other day.

And then, of course, you will have the people who are mad that you mentioned a secular holiday during Mass. And the people who remember how much better it was when Fr. Aloysius was in charge, oh yes, it was much better then. It’s a shame.

So, what’s your plan, Father? Gonna make all the mothers stand up and be acknowledged? You’ll be forcing a lot of women to make a statement they may not want to make. Gonna pass out carnations? Same problem. Gonna make us extend our hands over mothers in blessing? Well, you’re the priest, aren’t you. We would rather keep our hands to ourselves.

The real answer would be for Americans to just calm the hell down about motherhood, and not to expect the Church to cater to their every emotional need. But that’s not where we are right now. It’s a mess, and you’re right in the middle of it. Sorry! But I really do think you can thread the Mother’s Day needle without getting poked if you offer something like the following blessing before the end of Mass:

On this Mother’s Day in May, which is Mary’s month, we remember that our Blessed Mother was honored above every other human being besides Jesus Himself when she was asked by God to bear His Son. We ask God’s blessing on all women, because all women, no matter what their state in life, are specially privileged to bring Christ into the world. Mary is our model in joy and in suffering, in trust and in sorrow. We ask Mary to intercede for our earthly mothers and for all the women who cared for us, and we ask the Holy Spirit to increase our love so that we will always honor the women in our lives. We ask this through Christ Our Lord. 
Amen.

Then scoot out the side door before anyone can yell at you.
Amen.

***

Image of woman who is disappointed in you via Pixabay

Today, I fulfilled my Ascension Thursday tradition and put out a frantic question on Facebook: IS THURSDAY A HDO IN NH OR NOT???

The answer is: Yes, in my diocese it is. All of New Hampshire is the Diocese of Manchester, which is a part of the Ecclesiastical Province of Boston, which, unlike most places in the U.S., has not moved the feast of the Ascension to Sunday. Thursday is a Holy Day of obligation in New Hampshire, and also in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Our family’s schedules are crazy go nuts, so I was trying to figure out if I really needed to excuse my kids from a mandatory final dress rehearsal or not, or if we should tell the carpool kid we can’t get her because we’ll be getting to our three schools late because we need to go to the morning Mass, or if I should cancel today’s doctor appointment and have all the kids go into aftercare so I can get to the vigil Mass in a town forty minutes away. I mention this in case you’re wondering why I don’t just say, “I love Jesus, so we’ll go to Mass whether we have to or not.” I do love Jesus, but, see: crazy go nuts.

Anyway, there was some back-and-forthing among my Catholic friends around the country, and one of my non-Catholic friends commented:

I ask this in all sincerity as a non-Catholic, so please forgive me if it seems disrespectful. But if it takes a 40-person Facebook discussion, a set of trigonometric tables, and a slide rule to figure out if Ascension Thursday is a Holy Day of Obligation, does it really matter that much to God? I mean, is He going down the list and saying “Sinner! Oh, never mind, she’s in the Diocese of Omaha and it’s Daylight Saving Time”?

A fair question! Here is my answer.

There are some things we are obligated to do because they have intrinsic moral significance, and there are some things we are obligated to do out of obedience. So it’s not a question of God trying to keep up with the rules that the Church has created. It’s a question of whether or not we believe that God has given the Church the authority to define doctrine and to impose discipline.

That’s what we’re talking about here: doctrine vs. discipline.  Everything that the Church obligates us to do falls under one or the other category.

What’s the difference? The classic example illustrating doctrine vs. discipline: the male priesthood vs. the celibate priesthood. The first is doctrine, and has intrinsic moral significance; the second is a discipline, and we’re obligated to follow it out of obedience.

The male priesthood is the doctrine that says only men can be Catholic priests. Doctrine never will be and cannot be changed, because the Church has decreed that there is an unchangeable theological reason for this teaching.  The Church simply does not have the authority to decide that women can be ordained priests, and Catholics have always been obligated to acknowledge that women cannot be priests.

The celibate priesthood, on the other hand, is a matter of discipline: it’s something that the Church can change and, in fact, has changed. So if there was a married priest celebrating Mass, God wouldn’t look at him and say, “Hey! You have a wife? Sinner! Oh, wait, it’s only the year 1 AD. Never mind, you’re fine, bro.” The Church has the authority to change this discipline.

But here’s the key: We are obligated to obey both what the Church teaches as doctrine and what the Church imposes as discipline. The first will never be changed; the second might. Whatever the Church currently imposes as a discipline, we are required to obey that, because we recognize that the Church has authority over us.

So, back to the current question about the Holy Day of Obligation and the scheduling shenanigans. I discovered that tomorrow is a Holy Day of Obligation for us in New Hampshire, so we are obligated to get to Mass if we possibly can. It’s a discipline that the Church has the authority to impose on us, and if I know that this is the case and it’s reasonably possible for us to get there, then we need to get there. Not because God is just cuh-razy about Thursdays and gets mad when people go to choir practice instead, but because God has given the Church the authority to define doctrine and to impose disciplines.

It’s fitting to talk about these things on Ascension Thursday since that was the day that the work of redemption was completed. When Jesus ascended into Heaven, He left behind His Church, having given His Church the ability to define doctrine and to impose disciplines. God is not bound by the Church’s rules. Instead, He has given us the Church as a way of helping us learn to come closer to Him. When we obey the Church in legitimate matters of Faith, then we are obeying God. Which we do because we love Jesus, crazy go nuts or not.

***

Image: photo by Waiting for the Word (license)

So there we were, all throwing up. If that’s too much information for you, just consider: I never even mentioned what else we were all doing, besides throwing up. You’re welcome!

When a stomach bug goes roaring through a big family — a big family, I might add, who’s had “make second toilet operational again” on the to-do list for over a year now — it looks a little something like this:

The first part is all, “Well, well, here we are on a fine spring afternoon. What shall we do with our day?” And then . . . you find out.

So anyway, the baby has not gotten sick. I attribute this to my superior mothering skills, which include letting her eat dirt, letting her eat hot dogs, and letting her eat dog food. I also notice her coat is sleek and shiny and her foot pads are supple.

However, having a healthy baby living amidst the valley of the almost-dead is not necessarily a recipe for domestic happiness. She wants to run around shrieking and hitting people in the face and dancing on the ottoman like a drunken sorority girl, only with less clothing. Normally, we are fine with this, by which I mean we are scared of her and don’t know how to make her stop. But when we’re all sick and enfeebled and our heads are going to fall off if she doesn’t stop shrieeeeeeeeeeeking at us, something must be done.

Using the last working part of my brain, I had a brain wave. I took a milk jug, rinsed it out, cut a hole in the side, and handed it to Ms. Nu Upsilon Tau (head sorority sister at NUT House, ha), along with a bag full of clothespins.

She. Loved. It. If you can’t imagine why, just picture this: You can drop a clothespin in the hole, and it will fall into the jug! You won’t be able to see it anymore! But it made a loud clattering noise, so you know it’s got to be there somewhere! So you stick your hand in the hole in the side, and there is a clothespin in there! And if you take it out, you will have a clothespin! But wait, there’s more. YOU CAN DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN!

This miracle of physics kept her busy for a blessed twelve minutes, and she didn’t even try to murder us when we suggested to her that she might want to play with it again later in the day. Babies are insane. Thank God.

If more than 24 hours goes by and you don’t hear from me again, please send more clothespins.

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image by Loadmaster (David R. Tribble) Creative Commons