317/365 Twenty Two Months

She made it 22 months. Twenty two borrowed months. Leo's whole lifetime, just about.

I lay her down on the bed, on the polka-dotted sheet, and she drools, all the saliva she was choking on. She jerks a bit more, but not long. Her eyes are closed and I know she's not there.

My heart doesn't even skip. Suddenly I have ice water in my veins and I don't know how that happened. 22 months ago I couldn't even make the words come out of my mouth on the phone with 911.

She calms down. The fire engine is outside and the younger in-laws are letting the EMT in the front door. I smooth her hair, her perfect golden brown hair. She breathes. The man in navy with all the gear comes to the top of the stairs and starts talking to me. I respond to him, but I keep looking at her face. My God, she's gorgeous. Her nose is so perfect, her eyebrows look like she has them done. The shape of her mouth. My six year old has just had a seizure and all I can think about is how angelic she looks. Like I've caught a glimpse of something I don't notice every day when she's healthy. How do I miss this? How do I not see it?

And my heart is at peace more than it should be, I keep telling myself. I shouldn't be ok with this. I should be worried and sad and upset and all verklempt. But I'm not. I put on a bit of a show, I drink some coffee, I hope for but do not expect a fever spike to come. It doesn't, and while my brain has to wrap itself around this new wrinkle, while I do start the mental games and the bargaining, I don't do so bad.

Knowledge helps, I know, but other than that, it was sort of out of my hands in a very comforting way. This has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with Maeve. I can't get her into rehab or clean my house better or move to a dryer climate. This is who she is and where she is and for the first time in her life, I saw her as Maeve. Not just my daughter Maeve or Sophia's sister Maeve or Baby Maeve or any of that. She had arrived. It took a seizure but now I see her.

318/365 Not too hard persuaded

I'm not too hard persuaded.

319/365 First Sunday of Advent

Waiting.

It's palpable this year. I have to wait to get home to call Cardinal Glennon to sit on hold for how many minutes to talk to a receptionist who will schedule an appointment some time in the distant future for a doctor who will make us wait in a windowless featureless room for an interminable amount of time and then will tell us, best case scenario, that we must wait.

Nine hundred miles away, a young couple is waiting, too, for news that will devastate them and whirl them around. As if they needed more difficulty. I saw what they were going through as round two in a long road to adulthood and now, tomorrow, they will learn that they have to wait and and then spend probably most of their lives waiting.

It's enough to make you go in haste to the hill country and hide. And wait.

320/365 Choir loft in the early evening

I had to measure the first banner so I could make the other three the same length. No time like the present, I headed out after taking Sophia to practice. I let myself into the dark church and made my way up the steps--Jack said there are 39 but I keep forgetting to count which says something, let me tell you.

My tape measure is cracked and will not lie flat against the banner. I rip off the end and do the math in my head. I measure it: 10 feet from the edge to the hemmed edge below; 17 inches from the edge to the curtain rod.

The church is silent. Dark and deep, Frost would say. It's Advent but in my heart it's still the crappy end of November with drizzle and grayest, impossibly gray skies. The neurology nurse didn't call. The ice water in my veins from Friday has melted into a muddy puddle, waiting for the dry skin-cracking air to evaporate it away. I'm not adjusting to the post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas time very well. It's all going too fast but takes forever.

Numbers in my head, I walk back down. I toss the broken tape measure. I walk outside, past the dark rectory and the busy street. My car is still warm. I need to go to the grocery store. I note the boy scout tree lot with silent contempt and pull out onto the street in the darkness.

I know I will eventually exhale. It's the getting there that takes so long.

321/365 Flurry

The flurries are here. I need to go downstairs with my cell phone in one pocket and the cordless in the other, waiting, still waiting for someone to tell me to wait some more. The advent calendar needs to be set up, and we don't have a wreath on the table yet for the first time since Sophia was a baby. Rituals help and I need to get busy and get them ready.

I think about Professor Elemental, who is a terribly amusing "chap hop" rapper. He sings a rap song about tea, for instance, called the Cup of Brown Joy. I'm not a tea drinker most of the time, preferring the dirtier cousin, coffee, but this line sums it up for me:

when times are hard and life is rough
you can stick the kettle on and find me a cup

Ritual. I need ritual and a flurry of activity. I need to start decorating for Christmas and drink some coffee in the kitchen and finish the last three banners and a few more quilts and pet my cats and open day one day two day three of the advent altoid tin calendar and I KNOW, I KNOW that if I fake it till I make it I will find myself content.

322/365 Settling into the season

So I got my little Thomas Merton Advent book out, and a new one I picked last year but haven't read, called From Holidays to Holy Days by Albert Holtz, OSB. I'm excited about this one--the blurb on the back says it is based upon his walks through Newark, NJ. A city dweller, not out on the windswept plains of western Missouri. Today's reflection is about Christmas wreaths, which I will read later when the coffee wears off and I'm a little less, well, frenetic. But reading the title reminded me of last night.

I took Sophia to her play practice and had let Mike know that I was then going to leave for a moment to be alone. I could go get the tires rotated for all I cared, I just needed to be away for a few moments.  I dropped off the late library books (always late) and then drove out to the fabric store I frequent when I can't make it to Hancock's of Paducah (which means usually). I needed a Christmas fabric to back one of the quilts I've made; I needed to get some tapers for the advent wreath (I was going to just use white this year and put ribbons at the base--I made it this morning and it makes me happy). I wandered around the bolts of fabric and didn't think about anything except weight, hand, drape--fabric things. Successful, I then drove home and parked the car. Janet up the street was starting a business selling catalog jewelry and I figured I might be able to find a birthday present for my niece. So I walked in the BITTER COLD WIND up a block and a half.

It was warm and cozy in her house. She had a nice crowd. Astrid was there and we talked about things, all sorts of things, for a moment (I can see Astrid on Monday and then see her again on Tuesday and still have plenty to talk about). I found a few things that I thought I could fit into the Christmas-Birthday lists. Then Janet handed me the Christmas wreath I'd bought from her boy scout troop. I've done this every year, and I hang it in my kitchen to make the place smell like Christmas.

She was worried about my walking home--there's been a bit of a crime spree--but my theory was it was too cold for crime that night and I'd be fine. It is all downhill from her house to mine, anyway, and I walk fast.

I had on my German army coat (bundesrepublik, not something sinister) which I believe will cut any weather. One arm had my purse, which is huge and overfull. The other one, I carried the wreath over my forearm. I walked down and felt the bits of snow flurries hit my nose and eyelashes, just like Julie Andrews' favorite things. Under the streetlight at Arkansas, I looked up to catch the glimpse of the snow.

I crossed on the diagonal to my side of the street, my block, and looked up at the giant sycamore on our corner. I thought about how beautiful it all was, how lovely the city was when you saw it in this light, how humble and graceful my place in the world was.

Suddenly it was Advent and I was back where I belonged.

323/365 Immaculate Conception

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

I was in a foul mood. I was all knotted up about Maeve's doctor's appointment tomorrow and I had a bad cold settling into my chest. I was troubled by many things. So I went to church.

Walking in, I tossed the week 3 banner on the pew. Jack laughed, just enough to notice. I realized I was being inexcusably huffy, and I couldn't help myself, I had to turn and smile. I hadn't meant to be such a drama queen. I put the altar cloth I finally ironed away in the sacristy, said hello to Miguel, and went to sit.

The Mary altar was decorated for the feast, and will remain so through Our Lady of Guadalupe, which always makes me think of my sister Bevin's murdered friend Jesse, who had a place in his heart for Guadalupe. I think about his mother, her grief mixed with a brazen need for attention, that had repulsed me at first ("how can she act this way when her son has been murdered?") and had later caused me to be even more sympathetic. How terrible a thing to have to live with. We all grieve in our own ways.

Mass began. Dolores was the cantor; I wished Astrid was there for more than one reason. I was having a hard time engaging. My voice faltered due to the cough. At one point as we sat down for the first reading, I almost took out my phone to check my email. But I caught myself. Don't be ridiculous.

The homily was about saying yes. Yes. I listened but it still didn't bring my mood around. We recited the creed and I wondered if I'd ever get that version out of my head when the language changes came. And got irritated as we said "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God." Wondered what heresy we were defending our faith from. Thought about the song "Our God is an Awesome God" and how it implied that not only were there other gods, but that also our God might not be the only awesome one. I remember laughing about that in high school. Where everything was black and white and simple all over.

Somewhere, though, maybe around the Our Father, my heart started to thaw. Receiving communion, looking into Fr. Miguel's blue eyes the same kind of blue as Leo's, how had I not noticed that before? and returning to my seat to sing the song and relax my jawline.

I hung the week 3 banner after mass was over. Jack helped me get it straight, which means not straight, because it isn't but it matches week two that way. It almost looks like I'm doing it on purpose. Talked a minute with Miguel and Jack about the banners. About my week. About my cold (Miguel is getting over a cold as well). And I walked out into the cold. Happy again.

324/365 Epileptologist Wisdom

Dr. Vashist has said three things since I met her in April '09 that will stay with me forever:

1. Let her be who she is going to be.

2. Maeve will let us know if she needs more treatment.

3. Tell your mother to be happy! Tell her you are well, that you are fine! (this was said to Maeve of course).

It's like an instruction manual for Maeve.

325/365 Liturgical Year

I'm presenting the liturgical year at RCIA this Sunday. I learned about it at atrium training and, with the symbols of the magi and the meaning behind epiphany, it was my favorite part.

After Christ's resurrection and the beginnings of the Church, his follower kept the Sabbath but also Sunday--the Sabbath because they were, for the most part, faithful Jews, and Sunday to commemorate the resurrection. As time went by, though, they started naming Easter as a great feast--yearly they remembered the resurrection in a special way.

So many new people were joining the church that there started to be an organized way to catechize them--and they started baptizing people at Easter specifically. So a preparation time grew up before Easter, and a celebratory time after Easter in order to properly welcome these new people into the church. These evolved into the seasons of Lent and Easter. We set the date of Easter originally as the Sunday after the 14th of Nisan, since that was the date of Passover. We had eye-witness accounts to assist in this, with Gospel authors tying the crucifixion to Passover.

Long after these eye-witnesses would have died, the church started to combat alternative theories about Christ, including the idea that perhaps he wasn't a person at all. Because of these sorts of heresies, it became important to set down a day each year to remember the birth, as well as the death and resurrection. But before the birth, church leaders set down the date of his conception.

There is a Jewish belief, or was, that holy people and prophets are conceived and die on the same day, usually in the month of Nisan as well. In the year 200, it was calculated that the date of Passover the year Jesus died would have been about March 25, and so the Annunciation was set as that date--the day that Mary conceived.

More later...

326/365 Liturgical Year Part Two

So the conventional wisdom holds that Christmas was picked for the Solstice because we wanted to convert more pagans, that we essentially stole their holiday. But considering the fact that we were celebrating the conception (March 25) 130 years before any mention of celebrating Christmas, that kind of blows that out of the water...

But I will admit that Christmas trees and yule logs and mistletoe and all that jazz? Totally stolen. Or adopted. Or whatever.

So anyway, now we had these two big feasts, Easter and Christmas, and two seasons of preparation beforehand, Lent and Advent. In between these two feasts is what the atrium calls the "growing time" (and it helps that it is green): ordinary time.

Ordinary time is usually ordinary, but it might be better to call it Ordinal Time. It is counted. That's all. We tick off the Sundays: 9th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, and so forth. It fills the gap between the Baptism of Christ in January and Ash Wednesday, and then between Pentecost and the end of the church year in late November. It is the time for the Word of God to settle into our hearts and take root. Because if all we had were feasts and preparations for feasts, well, you can imagine the spiritual fatigue. We need down-time. We need growing time.

327/365 Advent Concert

The Advent concert was last night. I usually like the Advent concert. This one, however, seemed jumbled up, like we were trying to do too many things with it. Is it a concert, or is it a prayer service, or is it O Antiphons or is it Our Lady of Guadalupe. I left glad for the break from other things but really, my mind never engaged.

There is too much right now.

And to tell you the truth, I could just sit and listen to shape note singing for an hour and feel lifted up in a way that just didn't happen.

328/365 To-Do

*Trees: check, borrow truck, Saturday
*Wreaths etc: delivered Thursday to garage: is there even room? Ask.
*Poinsettias: delivered next week all by themselves.
*Lights, bows, ornaments, creche, etc: all ready for the most part. Bows, though. Damn.
*Delivery of Christmas boxes Saturday. I guess trees after that.
*Deliver of meals next Friday. Cook in the morning with Sr. Vanda.
*Ian gets to town Sunday.
*Wait for EEG results do not bite nails to the quick
*Wrap gifts
*Teachers?
*Sturm und Drang. Always Sturm und Drang.

329/365 Christmas is on a Saturday

So it's throwing me for a loop. Everything to get ready is this weekend, but then there's a week in between getting ready and doing the whole Christmas thing with the family and the tree and the gifts and the driving.

It'll be ok.

330/365 Location of Novena

Sr. Hildegard sent out an email. It was going to take a lot of work to get the Christmas Novena in place, and then back away, each night in order for other things to happen in between (like Sunday mass and choir practice). She made the suggestion that perhaps we should go ahead and have it in the chapel in the rectory basement.

I wrote back and said, basically, ok, let's have it in the chapel. I'm kind of in a keep it simple mode right now.

Rachel replied that there was no need to move it, that liturgy was messy, I stopped reading because, well, I don't have a dog in this fight, you know? Fr. Miguel wrote as well and agreed with Rachel.

Radio silence. I knew I was leading the novena on Friday but I figured I'd find out the final decision when I got there.

And then, in strict accordance with prophecy, Lynn wrote. She agreed with me. Chapel. Of course she agreed with me. It had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with disagreeing with Miguel.

Irritated, I deleted emails and ignored it. I told Mike about it. And about how I was tired of all the fuss over such things. And he reminded me, wisely, that perhaps I was a little tied down in the minutiae of my own life to care about the minutiae of liturgy. He was right.

I wonder when I'll be back to normal.

331/365 Novena Night One

Rachel's voice echoed through the barrel vaulted ceiling of our beautiful church in semi-darkness.

I couldn't help but engage.

332/365 Wreaths and Trees

It's that time of year.

The time of year when I mention Christmas decorating and the wreaths in the garage and Miguel says, "there are wreaths in the garage?"

"Didn't you leave at all yesterday, in your car?"

Sure he did. He just didn't notice any wreaths.

So I went over to the garage and found he was right. No wreaths. Nothing had been delivered.

The phone call to the wholesaler was practiced in my head and in my dreams all Friday night. When I called Saturday morning, the salesman had the audacity to ask me why it had taken until Saturday morning for me to call. Because I don't live at the church. Because I assumed they'd been delivered. I oh so wanted to get mad. I wanted a confrontation--I've had my fists balled up ready for a fight for 3 weeks with nothing coming and maybe, maybe the salesman at the florist wholesaler was going to take it.

But no. I represent the parish, not just myself.

We were written down as a pick-up, not a delivery. Which is a huge chunk of bull because I never ever would have said pick-up. And I made this order in October, when life was normal, so I didn't make the mistake.

He was unwilling to budge.

So I sighed. "How can we make this work?"

The wreaths will be delivered Monday. Thank God Christmas is on a Saturday.

In comparison, I drove out to the tree lot where we get our trees ever since the boy scout fiasco (why am I in charge of anything? I am not good with people. I should be a hermit. A hermit with a crossbow. Maybe just an assassin). I told the men standing around the drum fire (like hobos in a movie) that I was here from the church. They pointed to the office. The office had my paperwork. They had my trees. One of the hobo impersonators loaded them into the truck. We took them back to the church. All was well. The End.

333/365 Christmas Deliveries

A Delivery of Christmas Past:

Saturday before Christmas, parishioners gather in the parish hall, say a prayer, and then go forth in their trucks and minivans and hybrids out into the community. Mike and I, with our girls, have done this every year (Thanksgiving, too, although that isn't quite so involved). Sometimes we show up at doorsteps of immigrant parishioners who aren't even sure what this whole thing means. Sometimes it's grandmothers on fixed incomes who want to give my girls candy for coming by. Young families with big screen TVs that dare us to say something. One older woman who wanted to sell us her treadmill. It's always an adventure, and over the years, has made me, at least, realize that poverty in my neighborhood is veiled in many ways. People who can get by except that it's hard at the end of the year, or people who spend money in ways I might not, money they don't have. People who send their money home in envelopes with red borders.

Last year, we had an address a little further south--in a rougher area of the parish (our parish just consolidated a few years back and gained territory I don't know as well). It was an old side-entrance flounder house (which put it probably as the oldest house on the block--they are peculiar to St. Louis and Alexandria, VA, old and odd, like half a house), and before I even stepped onto the porch, I could smell it. It was something I hadn't pulled up since I worked in the housing projects the first year I taught. A sweet smell, but rotten somehow, stale. Poverty. Scent and sound make an impression on my brain like nothing else can, and I am suddenly taken back to Jarvis sitting next to my desk with this angry look on his face while I hunt around the room trying to find what smells so bad...and then I realize it's him, and I just make it through my day without another word.

The woman answered the door, and behind her I could see the filthy kitchen. Mike asked if she wanted him to bring the things back. No, she told us. Just hand them to her. Her five kids, all pale tow-heads, too thin, half dressed, like images out of a Bosnian war film, were slumped on the bunk beds in the too-hot room in front of the kitchen. The woman was about my age, and the look on her face said it all, right? Maybe. Mike, who is better at this sort of thing, asked if she needed anything else, and she shook her head, staring at us as we stepped off her porch.

There wasn't much to say on the way home.

334/365 More Christmas Past

On my birthday, 1983, the Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed. My uncle, and godfather, Patrick, was supposed to be there--sort of the story of his life, actually--but drew the short straw and was sent to Honduras instead, out of contact for months. My family had no idea whether he was in Beirut or sitting pretty in San Diego, or what. After it was sifted out that he was alive, not in Beirut, and not somewhere he could talk about, everyone halfway relaxed.

That Christmas, I remember hovering around the big oak kitchen table at my grandmother's house, hearing but not understanding most of the stressed conversation. When it was time for dinner, my grandmother said grace. My grandmother, Penny, is a liturgically liberal charismatic Catholic, and she held her arms open and palms raised like a priest in the Eucharistic Prayer. She thanked God for those gathered--seven of her eight children, all her grandchildren but two, her siblings, their families--and prayed for "those who could not be with us here tonight." Meaning Patrick and his daughters. She then promptly burst into tears and ran from the room.

This was upsetting when I was 9. But looking around the tight little kitchen, nobody was much impressed by her performance. Patrick had always been her favorite. The siblings exchanged annoyed glances, the in-laws passed the plates around. When my grandmother came back in, calmer after the traditional Christmas phone call from officers overseas, she had me sit on her lap and held me too close while I alternated between resistance and resignation.

335/365 Christmas Trees

Every year, my family goes out to find a tree. We go to little family-owned tree farms in dells around Missouri. A couple of years ago, we discovered a place in Washington, Missouri, that grew Canaan Firs, which was the Great Christmas Tree Compromise. Mike grew up with balsams from the Optimist Club lot, I grew up with whatever we managed to find growing nearby. Canaans smell and look like balsams, and I was the hero of Christmas a couple of years back when I discovered them. My parents and sisters take the truck, Mike and I with the girls in the minivan, head down to Washington.

In 2006, snow on the ground, we found the perfect trees quickly, but then had a lovely snowball fight. Sophia and Maeve attempted snow angels. We sawed the trees and drug them back through the snow to the lot where they net them and we pay. Each tree gets a tag, and you keep the other half. Of course, there is the obligatory hot chocolate or cider, and we stood around for a moment chatting, looking for heart-shaped rocks in the limestone gravel path. Mike grabbed our tree, started dragging it back to my dad's truck, and..my parents' tree was missing. Nothing matched the tag. The guys in flannel and boots went through the parking lot--sometimes things disappear accidentally. Don't check the tag, take home the wrong tree. No luck. No extras lying around by mistake, either.

The owners of the farm graciously let us go find another, even though we probably should have taken better care. My dad and I trekked back out to find another--they are all lovely, of course--and he said, "well, somebody must have needed a tree a lot worse than we did." The owners later agreed with him--each year they lose two or three to outright theft.

We laughed once we got back home, though, because my parents live in a 1904 era house with huge ceilings. The stolen tree was over 9 feet tall, and most houses built after 1930 in Missouri stick to the 8 foot standard. We turned on bluegrass Christmas music and reminisced about years when it would have been a good option to steal a tree. Life is good.

336/365 Christmas Meals Prayer

From the Rule of Benedict chapter 35:

Let the brethren serve one another,
and let no one be excused from the kitchen service
except by reason of sickness
or occupation in some important work.
For this service brings increase of reward and of charity.

...

Immediately after the Morning Office on Sunday,
the incoming and outgoing servers
shall prostrate themselves before all the brethren in the oratory
and ask their prayers.
Let the server who is ending his week say this verse:
"Blessed are You, O Lord God,
who have helped me and consoled me."
When this has been said three times
and the outgoing server has received his blessing,
then let the incoming server follow and say,
"Incline unto my aid, O God;
O Lord, make haste to help me."
Let this also be repeated three times by all,
and having received his blessing
let him enter his service.

What I said:

By blessing kitchen workers, often alongside those who will proclaim
the word of God for the week from the ambo, Benedict is saying something very
important about the nature of spiritual and manual labor. We don't pray without
working, or work without praying. They are intertwined and both are important.
There is no lofty pursuit that is not supported by basic work. Both are pleasing
to God.

As we prepare to send these meals out to our brothers and sisters home on this
Christmas Eve morning, let us consider our work in this context. O God, come
to my assistance, O God, make haste to help me. Bless this food we have prepared,
bless those who will partake in this meal, allow our own happiness and love to
shine through its simplicity. Bless and protect those who are about to go forth
into the community to bring our labor to fruition. Blessed indeed are you, O God,
who have helped and comforted us.

Amen.

337/365 Big Sister Moment (double posted)

This December has been filled with moments. Here is one.

I'm the oldest of 4. My brother Ian is 4 years younger than I am; Bevin is 5 years younger than him, and Colleen is 2 years younger than her. Spread out, kind of like my kids, actually. Enough time between that it's been hard for me to realize that my siblings have started catching up with me--there's a huge difference between 21 and 17, but not so much difference between 36 and 32. Not so much at all, in fact.

Ian and Ashley visited this Christmas. We all went to Christmas Eve mass (10 pm, not midnight, thank goodness), all but Mike, Leo, and Maeve since Maeve had a fever (of course). We sat in two front pews, my parents, Ian and Ashley, and my niece with Sophia. My sisters and I sat behind them. Snow was still falling outside but the church climate was warm, so we kept taking off and putting on coats and dripping from shoes and boots. Sophia and Kennedy were both dressed in party dresses for reasons I never really gathered fully. They'd worn them the night before to my parents' party and I suppose they equated them with Christmas. Anyway.

Sometime around the offertory, Ashley leaned her head against Ian's shoulder, and it totally caught me off guard. My brother is just over 6 foot and must weigh close to 270. He's huge. Ashley is barely 5 feet tall and one of those 120 pounds soaking wet kind of girls. That might even be more than she weighs when she's not pregnant. Tiny.

She's pregnant, in the category of high risk. They will know how high come January at the "big ultrasound" that we all do and none of us notices except if we're looking for the baby's gender. It has never hit me that it is truly an anomaly scan, even when the tech is measuring thicknesses and looking at the roof of the baby's mouth for a cleft. Craziness. Never had to worry. Ian and Ashley have to worry. The baby has Down Syndrome and that can bring with it a whole mixed bag of physical problems, most worrisome being heart defects. We just won't know until we know and on Christmas Eve that was still a long way away.

Earlier that day I'd picked up a baby book when I was at Catholic Supply getting the last Christmas gift (my parents have a creche that we add to each year, an unbreakable creche, I might add, although the woman at the counter said that dogs like to chew on Baby Jesus sometimes. My parents don't have a dog so that's ok). And a little cross to hang in the baby's room, one of those God Bless the Child etc. kind of sentiments. I was standing in line and there was a neighbor in front of me, a woman who goes to my church and lives on the next block and we know each other but I can never remember her name. She and her husband are going to be grandparents in the new year and she's glancing at the baby book and asks me who is having the baby--probably thinking it's me, after all, with my 3 and my youngest at almost 2. And it's Christmas Eve and I'd had a minor brush with death earlier in the day and it's snowing and I'm exhausted and I start to cry. Jesus. I'm not handling any of this well because I'm his older sister and if I could do anything on earth or in heaven to help them I would and I would, without a second thought switch places and have this baby and take this cup from them? You know?

Of course, my neighbor and fellow parishioner has a twin sister who has 7 kids and the last one in that row has Down Syndrome and we talk a moment (it's like everyone comes out of the closet when you break the ice, whether about DS or epilepsy or whatever). The girl behind the counter in her Notre Dame sweatshirt waits patiently. I'm in Catholic Supply, a store I usually detest going to but it was open and I realized I'd forgotten the damned creche and I had no time to make the ridiculous trip over to the shrine in Illinois where I'd rather shop for these things but, did I mention it was Christmas Eve and there was quite a bit of stress? And I'm crying at the counter in front of this woman who is just almost a complete stranger and I pay the girl and I walk out into the snow.

So it's later that night and my daughter is sick again and my heart just won't come to the point where it admits what day it is and Ashley puts her head on Ian's shoulder.

My brother, I should mention, has always been the type that worried me. The adulthood part, I mean. He always reminds me of the passage in that David Sedaris essay about his younger brother and finding out he's going to be a father. Something like my brother was the type who would disassemble the baby and then get distracted by something else, like the chance to eat 100 chicken wings, and forget to reassemble the baby. I'm paraphrasing but that's Ian in a nutshell.

At least the Ian I knew. The Ian who sat on the couch with his 6 year old and watched "Snakes on a Plane" while my girls hid in her bedroom, afraid of scary movies. The Ian who eats habanero peppers to prove his manliness. The Ian who used to drink amazing amounts of alcohol, the Ian who took 47 years to get his bachelor's degree. And so forth. Not an adult.

We'd spent the week together, doing St. Louis things like the Arch and the City Museum and eating Italian food on the Hill because Ashley likes toasted ravioli and even though you can get them in the freezer section nationwide, perhaps, they still are kind of a St. Louis thing. Kennedy, my niece, has grown up a lot. She's 6 months younger than Sophia and is a grade behind her due to birthdays, but she's smart as a whip and nice. Nice counts for a lot when you're the aunt. Later that night she would open my present to her, a sampler quilt with colonial lady blocks, and she would be genuinely happy about it. Nice.

And this week together had shown me that Ian's edges had been worn down in similar ways that mine had. He didn't tease Kennedy, or Ashley, the way he used to. He didn't talk politics with me to get me going unnecessarily. Things were subdued, but not bad. He was more like my friends and less like the people I avoided in high school.

So Ashley puts her head on his shoulder and he puts his arm around her and I suddenly realize he's an adult. She is too, but that wasn't the shock. He's about to be the father of two, one of whom, a little boy, is going to need a lot of care and love and prayer. A baby they're planning to name Ethan, which means steadfast.

It was one of those moments. I've been having a lot of them lately. The most recent one was Maeve's seizure, realizing how incredibly beautiful she is, while she lay there in a post-ictal cataonia. And here it was again. It was another beauty in fear and worry moment. They're here, they're together, they're adults.

What was that I said about life persisting?



The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

Bring me all of your dreams,
you dreamers,
Bring me all your heart melodies,
that I may wrap them in a blue cloud cloth,
Away from the too rough fingers of the world

338/365 Banners I and II

Already gone, of course.

It's been a crappy advent for me.

Here are the first two.

Week one: you know not the day nor the hour. Sort of a sun rise sun set kind of thing. Note the dot theme. It continues.

Week two: make straight the highway for God.

I suppose these will have to be Advent Year A, now that I consider it. I don't know if the readings match very well next year...

Clark said to me, at his house when I was sitting there with Astrid on the Thursday before Christmas, that he was watching me take pictures of something on Sunday. And then he turned and saw the banners for the first time. I don't get how people could miss them. But I was glad he saw them before they were gone.

339/365 Banners III and IV

The third is from the letter of James from that Sunday, something about how the farmer waits patiently for the plants to grow. It is my favorite of the four. I think that's because it's the only one I came up with entirely out of my head--no flipping through webpages or books for that one. It's all mine.

The fourth is something to do with Joseph's dream. I don't know if that's the Holy Family in a trio and the fourth dot is? Or if that's a trinitarian symbol and the fourth dot is Joseph. I guess it can be what you want.

Sr. Patrice was very very impressed. I said to Hildegarde before we went upstairs to take them down that if I can make things that nuns like, I'm doing something right.

340/365 One last before they go

I liked these a lot.

I think I know what I want to do for next Christmas, mostly because Rachel and I hate the pathetic pine roping that replaces these Advent banners. But I'm going to let it percolate a while. I have other things on my plate.

Like a set of dish protectors for Fr. Miguel.

341/365 You do a lot of singing

"What is up with your church?" my brother asks as we walk into our parents' house for post-Christmas-Eve-mass-presents-and-hoo-ha.

"What do you mean?" I take off my coat and slip my shoes of.

"All the singing. Man, you guys like to sing."

342/365 Things Not Done

I never called our floral wholesaler about the missing wreath. I'll dig through that in the coming year. See if they charged us, for instance. Complain later.

I never asked Flora about new bows for the wreaths. I think we could doctor what we have. I know she would do them. I just ran out of time.

I never got confirmations from folks about decorating. On Sunday we had enough people, but Tuesday was slim and by Thursday it was just me, really, and I left after I'd done what I could in the silence of the afternoon.

It wasn't my best Advent. I've done better. I kind of phoned it in. Granted, my brother and his family were in town and so I was essentially "on vacation" to St. Louis with them. Maeve had a seizure, of course, right before Advent started, throwing me for a bigger loop than I want to admit. I had quilting and sewing to do. I never baked a single anything. I hardly got presents wrapped or the tree up.

Something about this Advent still doesn't feel like it's over.

343/365 Fever

Maeve's fever. What's up with that, anyway? This strange mystery of her brain, which leads me to ponder the strange mystery of parenting. And the infinite capacity to not know.

Not only not know, but not be able to do a damned thing.

344/365 Snow on Christmas

It's like a special gift to children, snow at Christmas. This year, too, it was a gift for me. A gift to watch my niece watch it fall the first time. To scurry around and find extra snowpants and makeshift boots (rainboots with two pairs of wool socks) and waterproof gloves. My brother heading out to the park with the girls while I stay home and let my mind relax a moment.

We didn't leave Christmas Day. Maeve had a fever (still) and we wanted to give Christmas travelers some space. So we went over to my parents house and ate pancakes, no rush. Did typical Blake things (bitched, mostly, in unison).

The snow is 4 inches deep at least. Heavy, good snowball snow. The girls made snowmen and a "fort" that was about 8 inches high. Neighbors joined. It was Christmas Eve and there was snow falling. Lots of it for St. Louis in December.

Going out to the car to head over to mass, I smelled it in the air. That clean snow smell. I remember.