192/365 Coffee Friday

I go to coffee on Wednesdays with Astrid. We sit in the back of a little ice cream (gelato, actually) place and pontificate, knit, and solve the world's problems. This Wednesday I didn't, though, because of camp driving and busy summer for Astrid and our other friend, Louise. But Louise wanted to get together on Friday, which would be a new thing for me--I don't think the two of us ever have gone to coffee alone. Strange--it's been 4 years of going to coffee with her but never just us--Astrid is the connection between. But I think we both wanted to get out. So I got to the gelateria at 9:00--I'd told her 9:30 because I had no idea how long camp drop off would take--and there is Fr. Miguel on the opposite side of the street.

He's gotten his hair cut because it's every other Friday. So he was across the street and comes over to say hi.

Nothing much to say--it was nice to sit and chat: coffee, a muffin, kids, and then Louise showed and we talked about her vacation and other stuff. The stuff doesn't matter. What matters is harder to define than conversational topics on a hot July morning. Planting my feet in this parish, in this neighborhood--I know, I talk about that a lot--but the idea of living somewhere where I had a chance of running into my parish priest on the street and then have coffee with him? Instead of a tight lipped smile and the weird feeling of meeting someone out of context like when you see the checkout girl from the grocery store at the next table in a restaurant? And then he sends out a twitter message about running into me, and Sr. Hildegard responds that she's jealous, that she's been working hard while we were caffienating ourselves? The whole idea is like something out of a novel that I wouldn't want to finish if I were reading it.

But I'm not just reading it.

194/365 Mary and Martha

I'm an incurable Mary. Today the homily was about hospitality and ora et labora. Finding the balance between prayer and work. But also, I think, between being busy and just being. I think most people, like Fr. Miguel said, are Marthas. And I know I can be. I like to do things and prepare things and get stuff together and all that. But I also hate that. I remember so many extended family gatherings with women washing dishes and being busy--my father's family and my inlaws--and menfolk sitting in some other room watching sports, or out in the garage looking at this or that piece of machinery that can kill you. I have never felt completely comfortable making myself busy in someone else's kitchen, and I certainly have nothing to say about football games or British sports cars that wouldn't be completely derivative and passe.

I am a Martha sometimes in my own house, especially with new people. Once I know someone and have fed them a few times, though, I find myself slipping out of that role. It takes too much effort to keep treading water in my own home. This has gotten me in trouble with friends' girlfriends who expected me to be doing and instead I was just being. In trouble in a backhanded way, of course, just like Martha: tell her to help me, Martha tells Jesus. In these cases it goes something like "I can't believe she didn't...." [fill in the blank]. And sometimes I am in the wrong. My hospitality style does not involve putting on a vintage apron and polishing the silver. But it does involve the assumption that whatever is in my house is at your disposal. Stay and don't feel like you don't belong. Assume you know where the milk is for the coffee. Ask if you need to but don't read into my forgetfulness some sort of sinister plan to make you feel unwelcome. Because I want to sit and talk to you, not wash dishes and have you stand around awkwardly wondering if you should be doing something.

My friend Rachel has an older friend who has helped her out along the way who takes my style too far. Rachel made up a quote about Joan one time that went, "I would have gotten things ready for you today but I got distracted by this pretty plate." I don't want to go that far. Missy at our parish is a little like that, too. Come over and bring your child but wait, I forgot to mention that my child the same age was going to be at preschool and oh, don't you want me to read Pablo Neruda poetry to you in the original Spanish?

It's hard not to get distracted by a pretty plate or desire someone to sit and be with you all day long to the point that you forget that other people have actual needs. I do try. I don't want people to be burdened by me. I don't want them to feel like they have to cater every time they come over to my house (which has happened to me, again, a friend's girlfriend...and it was so bizarre for everyone else present). Maybe I should keep more beer and lemonade in the fridge and ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. And never read Pablo Neruda in the original Spanish to anyone.

But also not be disturbed when folks appear on my doorstep. Even if I really need a shower and ibuprofen and a bed and kids to be quiet. Because I can do all that later. I want you to come in and sit in my living room and talk about why I have marbles in a printer's tray on the wall. And give you garlic and let my kids get all riled up (it's summer after all, but even if it's not) and then stand on my porch after you leave and talk to the neighbors.

193/365 And then the doorbell rang

We'd worked on building the porch all afternoon in the hot July sun. Picked garlic and refilled the pool after my sisters' party. Dinner from the gyro place down the street. Sophia and a friend had baked in my kitchen (read: destroyed) and had spread cupcakes around a bit. The doorbell rang and I figured it was a neighbor returning a plate. So I go down because I have other things on my agenda with the neighbors involving the fact that we have to get together because I'm dying to spend time with adults this summer.

But it's not a neighbor. It's...Fr. Miguel. And Hildegard and Kinnera and their housemate Karen. And Jack and his wife Elaine. On my front porch. I open the door and after a puzzling interchange that involved my saying, "but it isn't my birthday," they come in.

They were just passing by from a restaurant a few blocks east. "Bridgett lives on this block..."

And there they were.

And that was a wonderful surprise. The Gospel this weekend was Mary and Martha. I am always and forever a Mary.

195/365 another thing about hospitality and me

Summons by Robert Francis

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I'm half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.

This is probably my favorite poem. You know I'm not too hard persuaded has crept into my language, long ago, after my first reading of this in high school. It's true, too. I'm not too hard persuaded. Sometimes I take a while getting to the point that I'm half as wide awake, it takes me a bit to come out and really say what I want to say (believe it or not based on reading me here and there). But I will. Recently I've reread this poem and see it as a mirror in front of my human relationships. Come and bother me and make me light a lamp and make you tea and find that frozen box of thin mints and talk to me to keep me in community because you know I'd be no good as a hermit. I need you and I'm game. An open house is vibrant, alive. I want that. Not too hard persuaded.

196/365 Altar Guild Part One

I was headed to my in-laws, but I needed to go to this meeting first. Basement of the rectory with Sr. Hildegard and a few other folks she'd emailed to see if they'd be interested in helping out at church. Behind the scenes stuff, the stuff nobody notices until it doesn't happen. Laundry, dishes, polishing, candles.

I drove over to the rectory thinking of the Benedictine passage about tools of the monastery. All tools of the monastery are to be treated as the sacred vessels of the altar are treated, for all tools are in fact sacred. Jobs done well, with focus and purpose, are all part of a path toward God.

And I knew that I was heading into the lion's den of meetings. I was going to leave that meeting with more to do, officially, than I had before. But I was ok with that. Kids are older, I have more time come the fall. I can take on a bit more, at least what I had going on before Leo was born.

Right?

197/365 Altar Guild: History

I used to be a part of art and environment. I was one of three people on the committee. We met in the daylight, probably before dinner, in the rectory dining room. I sat on one side of the table with Dolores, and Roxanne sat across from us. Sometimes Fr. Bill with be there, antsy and already thinking about the next thing on his agenda. I can't for the life of me tell you how I came to be there.

We'd sit. I would say very little. Dolores would tell us what to do. Roxanne would wax philosophical about stupid things. Fr. Bill would get into annoying tense discussions of dead plants. And I'd wait to see if I was handed a job. I never was.

A newcomer joined our meeting a few times, a woman named Kimberly who had a passion for stained glass. She found out that Dolores was cleaning it with windex and sort of freaked out. She called the stained glass company that had installed our windows so many decades before. On the side, without consulting the committee, she had them come out and inspect the windows. Got their word, on paper, that windex was the wrong thing to use. Warm water was all. Kimberly and Dolores had a seething bubbling tense argument about this. Kimberly with her evidence and Dolores with her "that's the way we've always done it." It lasted far too long, a ridiculous length of time. Kimberly got up and left and never came back.

When I say "never came back" I mean it. She left the parish and I never saw her again. Dolores continued to hold meetings, but I only attended one more. That was it. She was going to do it her way and I didn't even know why I was there. I had some choice words with myself and stopped going.

Roxanne and her family left the parish a few months later, and Dolores stood alone as the art and environment committee. Even though Roxanne's family drifted back in later, she didn't join A&E. There wasn't anything to join. It was just Dolores, doing all of it or none of it, whatever.

198/365 Altar Guild Part 3

Hildegard had us come in and offered us wine, or water. I chose the latter because I was driving to Cairo later and, while I probably wouldn't have enough to be over some limit, it would make me sleepy and that wouldn't fly.

Gary was already there. He'd helped out at Christmas decorating before with his fiance but I'd never really spoken with him. Susan came in soon after--a long-standing A&E member. And then we were joined by Gianna and her daughter Mary Kate. A few minutes into Hildegard's introduction, Anya came in, a new parishioner from Texas.

How I envisioned the meeting going was not how it went. I walked out of the meeting with fewer official jobs than I walked in with. Sort of. I have a definite list of jobs--Christmas and Easter, essentially. Advent, too. But there are others that creep in, and still others that I should be doing and I'm not, for a variety of reasons that start with S, M, and L and keep me busy at home.

I left with laundry on the third week of the month; season decorating; washing the altar dishes once a month in soapy water; and polishing the handrails (a job I like) every other month.

I left happy and hopeful. Hopeful that Gianna and her daughter will come through on what they volunteered for. Happy there were new people raising their hands. Happy that it wasn't just me, Hildegard, and Susan divvying up the list.

Lynn didn't make it.

And so she only has one job.

But I wasn't even mad about that. She's so caustic, it was better that she wasn't there at all.

199/365 Happy St. Bridget's Day

I'm Bridgett. Two t's. Blame my father. He wanted Brigid, the story goes, and my mother rejected that idea. So Bridgett was the second choice somehow. Who knows? I grew up knowing no Bridgetts at all until 10th grade when Bridgett Bailey was a year ahead of me in high school. I've also known a Bridget Birkby and a Bridget Blaes as well--my last name was Blake growing up. Don't know what that alliteration thing is about either. Anyway, I didn't meet any Bridgettes, Brigids, or Bridgittes growing up, although people misspelled my name that way a lot. The most common misspelling was the one T, however.

When I was pregnant with Leo, I started fooling around with genealogy, I realized that the one T spelling was definitely the most common, but that ship manifests sometimes added a T. My great-great-great-grandmother is from the Irish diaspora, and her name is spelled both ways, Bridget and Bridgett. Being illiterate, it probably didn't matter much to her. And it started shifting my brain a little bit about that extra T. I no longer got my feathers ruffled when people misspelled my name. At least they weren't calling me Barbara or Gretchen (the two most common incorrect guesses at my name by people I've already been introduced to, don't ask me why).

I'm Irish, well, Irish-German-English. My family surnames range from Donnelly and Dawes to Grothhoff and Frick. But one thing I'm not is Swedish. There are two famous St. Bridgets. One is St. Brigid of Ireland, pronounced "Breed", whose saint day is February 1. And then there is St. Bridget of Sweden, who is remembered today. I've always noted the first on the calendar, not the second. But Fr. Miguel sent me a "happy St. Bridget's Day" twitter message today, and you know what? It's like the second T. Whatever. It's all good.

200/365 Juggling the Laundry

Coming home from working the Irish dance competition (feis), I was planning the rest of my day. I was already on 39th street heading home when I remembered it was my week to do the laundry at church.

Purificators, towels, a few odds and ends each time. I drive over there--it's 3:00 already and there is no time to have it done by 4:30 mass. I remember these problems in calculus class. Even if I traveled at the speed of light, I will approach but never reach my destination in time.

So I pick up the laundry basket full and take it home. Life intervenes--Leo needs a nap so we lie down together, and I fall asleep. When I wake up, 4:30 is already over so I can't just sneak them in then, either. Plus they're still sitting in the washer waiting their next step.

I iron them while I watch TV that night. I'm too tired to take them up (it's after 10 at this point) so it'll have to wait until Sunday. Which means waking up at 6:30 and going over before the 7:30 mass. Sigh. Nobody to blame but myself.

201/365 Reset

Waking up, I'm already sick of church. All the laundry is ready to take over and I grab it up and stumble out to the car. I'm in a foul mood--my 4th night in a row of 4 hours of sleep or less. Mike was out of town all week and I fear I'll never catch up. I already have my excuses and defense at the ready, should anyone have anything to say about my laundry duties. It starts with "I didn't ask for this job" and just gets angrier from there.

I walk into church--7:30 mass is sparsely populated--and take this stuff back to the sacristy. Monique is back there in her hat, going over the reading. Monique is a character. A little odd. Many of us are. She has a thing for hats. And she's always giving people hugs. I'm not a hugger. At least not often, and definitely not with people I hardly know. I know Monique from several small things I do at the parish, but she's one of the people I put up the protective coloration for. I don't want to have to try to translate my life. I keep it on the surface with her.

She ignores me as I put purificators in piles and some in a drawer. Glance out to the credence table (I think that's what it's called) and there are already ones in place. Wilma, of course, is really in charge of all this. There are, in fact, plenty of purificators in the drawer. I really could have brought my load up when we came for 10. More words in the back of my head, but I'm done. I turn and smile at Monique.

Who of course, according to strict cliche, puts her arms up to hug me. And I'm not in such a bad mood to tell her to go away. So I hug her. "Everyone needs a hug!" she announces. Maybe so.

After brief pleasantries, I go sit in the second pew. I'll stay for mass, and then go home and try to catch up on sleep. And quit all this grumbling.

202/365 Going to mass all alone

So it's worth it, even if the 7:30 mass is kind of deadly. I find myself almost falling asleep at a couple of points, I'm just so overtired from my week. But I sit in my pew and don't wrestle anyone, don't shush anyone, don't walk out to the back to listen to the homily on one of the hearing-impaired listening devices while my child runs around on the front porch of church screaming with joy because he's not trapped in the pew.

After mass, Miguel asks me why I'm there. I explain, with the laundry to do and I'm there already and so forth, but he's right. I don't belong in 7:30. I'm a 10 o'clock girl, in more ways than one. Ten doesn't feel like an obligation the way 7:30 does.

But it was good yesterday because of the lack of distraction. And the guitar they've brought in for music is much better than the former arrangement of bad piano and bad organ and bad reedy soprano voices. To top it off, I knew all the songs, which never used to happen at the early mass. So I was pleasantly surprised that way, too.

Still, though, I'm back at 10 next week.

203/365 Inner Thoughts and Filters

There are like, 6 people reading this. Maybe more--there's a woman in Portland who belongs to a UCC church there who may have spread the word. I get 70-100 hits a day over at South City but this is definitely a niche market.
And I use pseudonyms, although long-term readers or folks who know me "in real life" know exactly who Astrid and Hildegard and Lynn are. I occasionally get an email asking "ok, who is ____" and I fill them in. I write with pseudonyms because I sometimes say things that aren't 100% sweet and nice. I sometimes wish I started that long ago on all my blogs, but it would be hard to keep up the facade. Here it works because it's so specific: parish life.

I love my parish. It is intertwined in my life in such a way that there's no way I can leave at this point. As much as I have troubles with Catholicism, it doesn't matter. My parish has ruined me. I can't go anywhere else. A long time ago I thought I was convert material but it turned out I was just looking for the right community. I found it here.

Things change and especially an organization that is bound only by the words "I belong" changes. Nobody is stuck in our parish the way you might be stuck in a neighborhood or marriage or demographic group. If you don't like the parish, you can move up the way to several different Catholic choices, and there are plenty of non-Catholic options, too. People stay because it brings them life in some way. Sure, there are probably people who aren't self-reflective about why they're in the parish (duh) but if they were truly unhappy, they'd either get involved to try to change things (like my mother-in-law, who stays in her parish against all possible odds) or they would walk away to greener pastures.

I used to say things, in general, like "for right now, this is right for me," or "this is what works for now." In regards to not just my parish membership, but where I lived, where I worked, where my kids went to preschool, and so on. Things aren't permanent but this is what is good now.

The last 3 years or so, since I became an oblate, things feel more permanent. Leaving would take so much energy and so much wasted time. You can't grow olive trees in one summer season. You have to plant them for your children to raise.

So when I complain about doing "Jesus' laundry" or get aggravated with people who sit on committees with me or realize with guilty dog looks on my face that I haven't watered the plants all week and they're probably dead now--it doesn't have to do with church. Like everything I write about, frankly, it has to do with me. "Look how I screwed up again" could be the title of every blog I write. Of every entry. Of every letter I send, every phone call I make. Because that's where the story is, in the details of mistakes and annoyances and little victories. And, like Miguel said the last time I went to confession, it's hard to live under a big tent. There are folks who belong to my parish that I think I wouldn't miss. But maybe I would. What would I say? If everything was wonderful and perfect and I loved every moment, well, what good is it to love those who love you? Obviously you do that. And what good is it to write about things that are 100% "right" and perfect? It makes a better story this way. And I am so in love with our story.

I want to raise olive trees, not just cucumbers and tomatoes.

204/365 Two Hundred and Four

204 is one of those numbers I like. 17 x 3 x 2 x 2. It was the number of my first classroom and its anagram, 420, was my first dorm room. 51 x 4, my parents were both born in 1951 and had 4 children. Yes, these are the things that keep me from going to sleep at night. It's a number that shows up here and there all over the place and makes me wonder if I'm reading too much into the universe or if things maybe aren't as random as some folks would have us believe.

I read a quote at some point, I don't know if it's true or not because I can't find the reference anymore, but the gist was that astronomers are the scientists least likely to believe in God. Mathematicians are the most likely. I mentioned this to Fr. Miguel at one point and he knew immediately. "Of course. Astronomers look up into their telescopes and see the vastness and the nothingness, and mathematicians look at numbers and realize that there is a pattern in everything."

It was either Hooke or Leeuwenhoek who looked into the microscope--I think it was Hooke, now that I think again--and was shocked that man-made objects, like the edge of a knife blade, got more more chaotic the closer you looked at them, but natural objects like cork or plant fibers got more and more orderly the closer you looked.

I don't know what I believe about God. Most of the time I try not to examine too closely. But these two anecdotes (and things like prime numbers) help my faith. There is an order to the universe. The universe doesn't care one way or another what I believe--it simply is. But I have a hunch it wasn't just chance.

205/365 A Humble Reminder

Flipped open a simple little book by Verna Holyhead about the Rule of Benedict this morning and read the following sentence:

Personal initiative is not denied, but not everyone and everything have been waiting for centuries for transformation to an individual's personal preferences.

Well then.

206/365 Panhandler

In the city, one encounters panhandlers. Some of course are scam artists, sure, but all of them? Probably not. Many are probably addicts of one kind or another, or maybe not. I don't know. I don't know what's in their hearts. Almost every time I get to highway 44, I have a decision to make, or at least a moment when it is obvious to me and my children that the man with the cardboard sign is asking me for something.

The other night we took a bike ride. We took the bikes loaded up on the car down to a trail in south city, an easy one we do when the kids are SO DONE WITH BIKING. We pulled up to the side of the road where we usually start from, and a man, I realize, is talking to Mike as I put Leo in the trailer. I catch parts of the conversation. He doesn't have a place to stay. Doesn't know what to do. Some agency helped him out earlier that day, got him his birth certificate to replace the one he'd had stolen at Larry Rice's (a notorious homeless shelter downtown). I asked him if he'd been down to St. Patrick's, which does all sorts of transitional work with homeless men, but frankly, that's not where my energies go so I don't know everything. He'd been, he replied. He wasn't mentally ill or addicted to anything so they couldn't help him.

So he got to his big build up and asked if we had anything on us.

We didn't. We were going biking. Mike didn't bring his wallet or keys. I hardly ever carry cash and I knew for certain I didn't have any. As I started to tell him I was sorry, he apologized for asking us. He walked away up the hill, quickly, and I went back to hitching up the trailer. It was a few minutes later I remembered the altoids tin I keep in the car for parking meters. It was just spare change, but I could part with it. I said this to Mike, and we both looked up the hill towards Gravois. But he was gone.

207/365 Summer Ordinary Time

Very very ordinary. It's summer and nobody is here. We're not even here. We are, it's just like we're phoning it in these days. Nothing to really take care of, nothing to meet about. Nothing new. No one comes, no one goes, it's awful (Waiting for Godot).

It's late summer. Knee deep in ordinary time. And hardly anything to say.

208/365 Making Sense of Ecclesiastes

You know that old phrase that we've been saying probably since there were enough people speaking the same words: why do bad things happen to good people? Today's first reading at church was from Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity. You work hard and crap happens to you anyway. Awful crap sometimes.

Ecclesiastes is a fascinating little book--most non-Catholics know it from the passage about a time for everything under the sun. A time to sow, a time to reap, a time for Crosby Stills and Nash to sing a song. From the introduction in the New American: Merit does not yield happiness for it is often tried by suffering. Riches and pleasures do not avail. Existence is monotonous, enjoyment fleeting and vain; darkness quickly follows. Life, then, is an enigma beyond human ability to solve.

But we all try to solve it. We all puzzle around things that happen, trying to make sense out of the suffering and loss around us, as well as what seems like ill-gotten gains by those we deem unworthy. We read into happenstance and coincidence and wonder at God's plan. At our best moments, we simply hope to understand someday and come to a peace with the unknowing.

This was all very poignant this morning at mass because Mike's aunt and uncle, Sheila and Bill, lost everything in a house fire yesterday. Everything is gone except the people who lived there--themselves, a son and daughter-in-law, and their 3 year old grandson--and their vehicles and whatever else they kept in the garage. Everything else burned up in a house fire so hot it was still burning 8 hours after the fire department arrived. By the time Sheila's brother saw it (he lives on the same property, in rural Illinois) and called 911, it was too hot to even get the dog out. All gone.

It will take them years, maybe decades, before they come up with a mental inventory of what they've lost. My mother-in-law keeps calling with updates and I can't even give her minimal responses like uh-huh because I'm sobbing on this end of the line.

This morning three parishes heard Ecclesiastes and the gospel parable about the wealthy man who tears down his barns to build bigger ones, and then took up a collection for Bill and Sheila. Three parishes because they share one pastor, and the boundaries between parishes are pretty fluid. Each of the three have relatives in attendance, friends, people who knew them from when. St. Catherine's, the parish they personally belong to, is a building about the size of my living and dining room. Seriously. Everyone there is related to you one way or another. After mass they gave Bill the collection and there was a lot of money--hundreds of dollars from one of the most impoverished counties in Illinois and one of the tiniest parishes I've ever known of. Bill said he had money in his pocket he didn't even know from where. Again, hundreds of dollars people just pressed into his palm when they saw him in the past 24 hours or so. Sheila said she hated taking from people, but really, when this happens, all people want to do is feed you and try to do something to ease the suffering. And it's not like they have a place to put donations that aren't cash, after all. Ma in Little House on the Prairie, as she cooks up the seed potatoes because they've been forced to move on from Indian territory, sighs and says there is no great loss without some small gain. Maybe that's so.

But they will--my father-in-law is a contractor, as is probably already known here--and he said once the insurance comes through, they could get a house up fast. Like a long weekend kind of fast. Mary Helen asked if we'd come down. My goodness I wouldn't miss that for anything.

The author of Ecclesiastes has something here, too:

If one falls, the other will life up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm? Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken. [Eccl 4:10-12]

209/365 Medieval Roots of Modern Catholicism

A brief introduction, it read on the screen in the basement of the history museum. I was there with Marla and her son to listen to a professor talk about some of the roots that we don't see--deep underground and our sense of history is fleeting. Why are priests celibate? Why is the pope the center of Catholic power? Those were the two main questions he answered, and answered well. It was an enjoyable talk and I left knowing more than when I walked in. I like those times.

210/365 Catholic Dreams

I have turned into a strange person.

I have started having dreams wherein I am arguing with parishioners and Fr. Miguel about minute points of Catholicism. Like the changes to the Roman Missal, or how one goes to communion. The words of the Nicene Creed. Nothing heated or frustrating. Not arguments, I guess, but more like interviews. Panel discussions.

I'd like you to know I'm making some very good points that the audience in my head appreciates.

211/365 Food Pantry Knowledge

Some things we just know. For instance, we know that complete meals, including protein, are more valuable to the food pantry than a can of carrots. In the summer when free breakfast and lunch programs cease, fortified breakfast cereal is of utmost importance. Food pantries also give away toiletries and often run low.

When I lived in the suburbs, I didn't know these things. We had no need to know those things. None of our parishes had food pantries. I think down in Dallas, we did Thanksgiving boxes.

We have a collection on the first Sunday of the month for the food pantry--a collection of food, that is. I always try to have something, and when I think of it, I shop specifically with that in mind. This month it caught me off guard. It was a box of oatmeal and two cans of refried beans. Fail. No--not fail, because the oatmeal is important.

I sometimes wonder if we could put our garden to better use and grow some produce for the food pantry. Greens, for instance, followed by tomatoes or something from the squash family. I wonder if we would be successful with that. I know if I depended on food from a food pantry I'd love a fresh tomato or cucumber. When we had the school garden, that's exactly where the tomatoes went during the summer. So many tomatoes. But like all things, it wouldn't work without folks to do it. And I'm full up.

212/365 School Building For Sale

Big old three story school building for sale. Good location, great neighbors to the east and west, and the block is on an upswing.

I was on the parish council that picked the folks that were supposed to be the buyers. They backed out. I wonder sometimes if we should have looked more closely at our choices, but they were another charter school and "apartments" by a well-known developer in town who runs kinda dirty. The money was the best choice, but I ponder this sometimes when I pull up at church for mass. Would it be underway as something else if we hadn't chosen like we did? And what now?

213/365 Maeve's Baptism

It seemed inevitable. Maeve's baptism was going to be on the last page in a book of baptisms, the same way I was on the first page of Mary Mother's book of baptisms. The parish was closing and my girls' records would be down at some dusty library. Or shifted to another parish and be out of place. This bothered me, the physical change aspect, almost as much as the loss of community--I was on a downswing at church and I wasn't connected very well to others. But the idea that this place was soon to be no more, and the names of my children would be stored in a box in an office of records just really disturbed me. I remember asking Mike's uncle, a priest in Belleville, if maybe I shouldn't baptize Maeve at our parish, if maybe I should do it down in Cairo like her cousins and all the others in Mike's family. But he told me I shouldn't be so concerned about where a list of names was going to live. Do it at my parish. He was right, of course, and I was weird and post-partum like after all the babies.

We still had the big hot tub looking baptismal font in back--tall and covered in cheap paneling. After the homily, which had a lot to do with the tsumani that had just hit south Asia, we walked back for the baptism. Fr. Bill held Maeve, up on a step stool, with Mike next to him. I stood down on the ground level with the godparents and relatives. Bill wasn't one to skimp on the water, and doused Maeve well. And after, he looked down at her and smiled. She was grinning at him, and it caught him off guard and made him forget his lines.

I loved that moment. One of those treasured in her heart moments. As time goes by, things start to amalgamate. I don't remember, without photos, what Sophia or Maeve looked like when they were tiny. I don't recall the specific sound of a baby's laughter compared to another. But some things I keep.

There's a lazy eye that looks at you
And sees you the same as before
When you lay beside me every night
Though now you are with me no more

I can still see the hem of your dress
And the comb as it's parting your hair
And the person I held is still there in my
Lazy eye that looks at you and sees you
The same as before

214/365 Adult Education

I went to a little seminar today about RCIA. The title was "How Adults Learn" and I could have taught it. Because, frankly, it's all the same thing through a different lens. It's all college RA training and La Leche League training and teacher inservices and girl scout training and block captaining.

But what it did show me is that Hildegard, who runs our RCIA program, really knows what she's doing. We were surrounded by all sorts of folks who do RCIA at their parishes, and just by listening, actively or passively, I realized we really are doing the right thing. And the folks who come to these seminars are probably in the top percentage of parishes on the "do the right thing" scale already.

The other thing I really noticed was that I was probably the second or third youngest person in the room. What is it about my generation that has just decided to bail on church? Or on church leadership?

The other thing that struck me was as I walked into the parking lot after it was over, on my way to a girl scout training (which was remarkably good for a change). I looked at bumper stickers. And I was reminded yet again how very different my parish is from so many others. And how glad I'm where I am.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be

216/365 Minority Religions

I have several friends, in "real life" and in the blog world, who belong to, or were raised in, small Christian denominations. A longtime college friend grew up as a Moravian Lutheran. Indigo Bunting up in Vermont has Church of the Brethren roots. I know Friends and Christian Scientists and Mennonites. My best friend in 8th grade was a Primitive Baptist. Yes, I know many non-denominational Christians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, and of course Catholics, but it's those little churches that intrigue me most of all. Arguments over instrumental music versus a capella. Buttons or hooks and eyes? Drinking or no alcohol? Opposed to missionaries? Infant baptism? Creeds?

I know there is much lamentation over the splintering of Christianity. And yes, we as Christians should work towards a common ground. But in the end, almost all of us do stand on common ground (there are certain sects, I'm sure you can think of them too, that stand too outside such a patch). I think this separation is so human and so telling of our condition that I have to love it. Notions turn into ideas turn into beliefs turn into doctrine.

215/365 Asthma

"While I was in back with Leo, what did Fr. Miguel have to say?" Mike asks. He's talking about the homily.

I think. I remember the beginning, about Conrad Hilton and Bill Gates and charity. But after that, it's a blank.

"I don't remember," I admit. "I was busy trying to keep Maeve still so she could breathe ok."

She stayed the night at my parents' house. Cats. Her face was puffy and eyes glassy and she was restless. She is often restless at church, yes, but this was different. She sat on my lap and I thought about her and it was as if I hadn't gone to church at all. Dang it.

217/365 Mother

"It probably isn't cancer because thyroid cancer is rare," my doctor shakes her head. "And highly curable."

But once someone puts the word cancer into the conversation, it kind of derails your day. It makes you have one of those "life before your eyes" moments, well, hours, in which you debate how you have been living your life and how, perhaps, you should start living your life.

"I'm really glad you said something about the swallowing difficulty," she says, completely seriously. And hands me orders to go to an ultrasound place to have a scan.

On the way home, kids in the car, I started going down that terrible road. If I were to die, Leo wouldn't know me at all. Maeve would have nothing more than snapshot images and amalgamations of memory and photos and stories she was told. Sophia would remember. And maybe that would be worse. I tried to think of motherless children I knew growing up and I realized I didn't know any. Fatherless, yes, for various reasons, mostly due to abandonment. I thought about my ex-boyfriend from high school and my best friend from high school and friends from college. I thought about Nikki when her dad left for good. But that was different. He packed his bags and drove away.

I know my kids are loved and people would sweep in and protect them and be there for them. I know. But for the third time since Sophia was born, I had that moment of, oh no. All the things I wouldn't be able to say, all the things I wouldn't be able to be there for.

And then I pushed it out of my mind with a list. A is for albatross, B is for bunting, C is for cardinal, D is for duck, E is for...egret. Yeah, egret.

218/365 Verklempt

So the scan was negative and I was mostly glad that I didn't even wait 24 hours from "let's get a scan" to "your scan is normal." Still enlarged and something will have to come of this, but here we are. I was puzzled more than relieved, although I was relieved, and later after "normal" on a sonogram was explained, I had that relief. It wasn't in my head, and it wasn't going to kill me. It was in between.

So I took my kids to the Magic House for their once-a-year trip to that den of chaos. Lost Sophia and Maeve. Had to have them paged. But it was ok. Exhausting but ok. I brought them home with groceries and empty paper cups from Dairy Queen (which had been filled with mini blizzards after the Magic House). Dropped them off and went down to the Red Cross on Lindell to give blood. This had been on the schedule for more than a week. It wasn't because of my scan. But it felt so connected to that as I walked in the building. I managed to pass the iron test and they got a pint out of me. I ate my raisins and drank my water watching them clean up--I was the last appointment of the day.

As I walked out into the heat, I thought about my pint of blood. I can things in pints. I know how much that is. I thought about when my father needed two pints of blood a couple years back after some internal bleeding. I thought about my blood, my A+ blood, hopefully on its way to whatever processing it needs to wind up in an ER or an OR. Someone out there I've never met is going to, for even just a short time, carry a piece of me with them.

And I got all verklempt and had to stop thinking. Pretty much that's the order of the week: Stop Thinking.

219/365 Sts. Gracilian and Felicissima

While in jail because of his faith in the early bits of the 4th century, Gracilian cured Felicissima, a young blind girl, restoring her sight. She then converted. But under the rule of Diocletian, ya know, it wasn't such a good time to be a Christian.

They were both beheaded, probably during the great persecutions of the Diocletian era, around about 304.

And that is our Saint of the Day story.

220/365 Coffee with Fr. Miguel

He was supposed to get his hair cut. The barber shop is across the street from the coffee house (I love my neighborhood, have I mentioned?). We were chatting about vacations, mostly about Astrid's thousand-day vacation to South Carolina. He appears around the corner and comes in to chat. Keeps looking out to see if the barber shop is open yet (I don't think it ever did, for mysterious reasons).

We talk about vacations some more, about knitting, about kids, about the oireachtas (Irish dance regional competition) Sophia will probably not attend. We talked about this and that and whatever, just like any coffee Wednesday or Friday (Wednesdays are our standard, but in the summertime things get loose, especially when Astrid takes 1000 day long vacations).

It's a great way to start the day. Energizes me and not just because of the coffee. I get so much done on the days I go to coffee.

He left about 9:30, realizing he'd have to do something else about his hair (which is a quarter inch long, if that). We stayed a bit longer, but knowing we had things to accomplish as well on this hot hot day, we wrapped things up and went down the road.

221/365 Standing in the Magic Chef Kitchen

Astrid and Clark's wedding anniversary was this month sometime, and they had a party. A lot of people I know were there--through knitting or neighborhood or church. I spent most of the evening with book club and knitting folks, eating dinner on the extremely hot patio--we were at the Magic Chef Mansion on Russell, by the way--and perusing a book of plates depicting St. Louis in 1875. That could have taken my entire evening, grasping at the bits of knowledge I have about my urban poor ancestors who came here from Germany or famine decimated Ireland. Streets that don't exist anymore, houses, churches.

But I got up to get a second wedge of gooey butter cake from the butler's pantry and there was Colleen O'Toole (the O'Tooles are the only folks on this blog who have a last name because in real life, they are almost always referred to by first and last name. You would never say "I was talking to Colleen" but always "Colleen O'Toole"). She was talking with Yvette and with a couple I didn't know. I eavesdropped. I made a grand sweep of the gooey butter cake selection, slowly choosing something, and then stepped over to the sink to pour myself a cup of coffee (which turned out not to be decaf, but I didn't know that until later when I was wide awake at 2 in the morning). Sugar, cream, first sip. Then I turn around and shoulder my way into the conversation.

It's about a parishioner at a neighboring church, a leader, who was nominated to a diocesan-wide leadership position. Someone who has given his life to the church and to this particular cause. Then it became clear that he was gay, in a longterm relationship, and that was it. I have not researched the story and only know what I listened to there in the kitchen. The unnamed couple excused themselves, it was late, and Yvette went to collect her husband. Colleen O'Toole and I remained.

"This issue," she said, shaking her head. "This is what's going to get me kicked out of the church."

I thought quickly about all the issues that could get me kicked out of the church. But no--many of them are things I hold to myself and don't care that they aren't exactly in line with church teaching. None of them make me feel guilty; my conscience is clear on them. For instance, I think the Church's stance on birth control is ridiculous. I think the idea that we don't allow priests to marry is bizarre and should be reevaluated. I believe women should be given the right to church leadership. If the church has to be led by celibate men, parish leadership and clergy should be more broadly available. But these aren't things that I'm so wed to that I'm going to make a stand. The women priest movement doesn't interest me because so many Catholic feminists are so angry. I've been to prayer services with some of the women active in that movement locally and I wouldn't want them to be my pastor. Just for instance.

But there's a difference between "I think there should be changes to the priesthood" and whether we're going to close our doors to an entire wedge of the population.

"Yeah," I nodded after this split second of consideration. "Me too."

222/365 Mission Priest

"Hey there Laura," I wave in the grocery store parking lot.

"Hi Bridgett, what are your parents' names?"

I tell her and she nods, repeating them. "They sat behind us at church today."

"Yeah," I look up and away. "We skipped. Mission priests. I just can't do it."

She laughs at me. "It was long," she agrees.

223/365 Worship Commission August

Remember back this spring when I was tired of Worship Commission and Lynn and the punishing atmosphere?

We didn't have a June meeting.

We always (usually) take a break in July. No meeting.

I can't make this month's meeting.

I did get a break. Actually might be looking forward to September.

225/365 Things are important

"When you take a dirty floor and make it spotlessly clean, and then polish it until it shines, it radiates back to you the love which you poured into it; the divinity of that floor has been drawn forth" --Eileen Caddy

I just scrubbed my shower walls. They are glass, and therefore get dingy quickly. Kid hands, soap scum, hard water, the first creeping bits of mold. I scrubbed them down and dried them with a squeegee. They aren't perfect. I need to do more on them, but I also need to bring the rest of the bathroom up to at least that level. The floors, the walls--I wash the toilet and sink regularly, and wipe down the tub after baths, but these other surfaces get neglected. I need to get down on my hands and knees with a scrub brush and get the grout clean. I need to whisk away the house spider under the sink. I need to vacuum up the stray bits of cat litter that get under the feet and annoy.

Because I know that sigh of relief, I know the happiness of a clean room. A really clean room, inside and out. Baseboards and ceiling and corners and surfaces. Dust sucked up and wood polished with lemon oil and things old and new made bright and shiny again.

We are working on cleaning the girls' room--it is huge and they are scattered. It is on the 3rd floor and therefore out of my sight unless I intend to be there. We've been gathering up the fragments into baskets and sorting out legos and dollhouse spoons (3/4 inch long) and Polly Pocket shoes. Things are nearly finished, and the girls have gone to visit my mother-in-law, so I know it will be ready for them when they get back. Ready for a new school year and a fresh start in many ways.

The things we choose to surround ourselves with require care and attention. It's one thing to allow things to relax with time: the plate with the small chip, the quilt with a couple of repaired winklehawks (a winklehawk is a 90 degree L-shaped tear. You should use that word), the dresser your husband's great-grandfather built with square nails. It's another thing to neglect things so that they age prematurely. In my daughters' montessori upbringing, one of the things they learned first was a category called "practical life." Some of this was pouring and tying and using tweezers, that sort of stuff, but a lot of it was care of the environment. Handwashing. Flower arranging. Sweeping, dusting, care of candles (in the Catholic montessori atrium). Polishing of all kinds. Tending plants. These things are important, and not just for a tidy classroom. They're important because all of these things are gifts, one way or another. We should treasure them.

226/365 History: The Softball Team

Colleen O'Toole asks me if I want to play softball with some other women at church. She mentions April, Bonnie, and Melody, a trio of sisters I'm only vaguely aware of. Jessica and Nicole I know better. I stand there in the back of church writing a check for the scrip we buy for grocery stores--the parish gets a kick back, or, rather, a donation. And thoughts run through my head: I hate softball. Softball is a version of group penance. I got it, I got it, wham. Eh, don't worry about it, facial wounds bleed a lot.

"Sure," I tell her.

We go to practice in the park. We suck. Sr. Vanda is on our team. She can't run. Nobody wants to be catcher. I'm drafted, which is fine with me actually because it's slow pitch and I fear outfield.

The first game, we arrive at Forest Park to get ready. We have helmets and bats from the grade school sports locker. Our uniforms are t-shirts from a bar. Assuming most teams were parent organizations and parishes, we didn't think anything about this. Then we met the opposing team. They had the full polyester getup, hats, the tight pants and the shirts with the cursive across the front like a high school boys team. I remember these from back then, in fact, tight pants and cute boys...anyway, they are not cute on these women. These women have brought their trophies. They display them on the picnic tables around their fans. Our fans are our husbands and a few bored looking children (mostly O'Tooles).

They feel bad for me and let me borrow their catcher's mask, even though we aren't supposed to even need one.

They have one player with an artificial leg.

They beat the pants off us. 20 to 1. We're done in the 4th inning or something shameful like that. They pretend to shake our hands graciously afterward, drinking their Bud Lites and taking off the sweatbands.

"You ladies should invest in some bats," they point out as Bonnie loads our grade school surplus bats into a beat up canvas bag. "Spend more on your bats than you did on your socks."

Jessica tells me later at the bar that she spoke to one of them during an inning when she was miraculously on base. They thought they'd joined a competitive league, not a church picnic league. "Bullshit," Nicole says. "They can read the brochure as well as anyone else."

"Yeah, they were there to smash us," I agree.

But maybe not. We did go on that season to lose every game, after all. Group penance indeed.

Plus that's when I met Lynn, that first night in the bar. She made my skin crawl even then.

227/365 Oversharing at the Bar

"Well, you know Pat," Lynn says in that tone that means we should understand the unspoken context. But this is the first night I've met her and all I know is that I'm tired already from losing at softball in the most humiliating way possible, and now at the bar with this crazy lady going on and on while Nicole and I exchange glances of "holy shit did she just say that?" again and again.

But Colleen O'Toole seems to think all of this is normal. We're all drinking beer and Lynn has a hot lemonade. "It's a drink of my own making," she explains earlier in the evening, again with this weird self-importance act that makes me want to never make eye contact with her again. I'm sure the waitress was quite amused.

"He seems to be doing really well," Jessica points out, trying to save Pat from whatever Lynn is going to say. I gather that Pat is her husband.

"Well, let me put it this way," she says with a fake cough. "This past summer I went to Nicaragua and he went to the hospital."

Now Nicole can't handle it another moment. Her eyes are going to pop out of her head.

"For the bipolar?" Colleen O'Toole asks.

"What else?" Lynn cackles.

"Oh Jesus," whispers Nicole. "I've got to get out of here."

And we do.

228/365 Nicole's Big News

Last game of the season, we're at the bar. We've lost every game and Colleen O'Toole is suggesting maybe we should move on to pick-up basketball in the gym or something like that. Something less humiliating. No one fights her on this.

But Nicole has big news this last evening together. We're seated at a couple of tables smashed together and she can see everyone. "I got a job," she starts. Her kids are finally all in school and many of us knew she was looking and discouraged.

"That's great," several of us start.

"It's at the grade school. I'm going to be the secretary." She seems really excited. And I'm kind of jealous. I like teaching but the secretaries hold all the power with none of the, you know, responsibility of actually teaching. They get to sort. It would be perfect for me. But I'm not looking for a job and in fact will be pregnant with baby number 2 in a matter of months. We all congratulate her because it's a perfect fit for her, too.

"Oh," says Lynn, and even that one word is just dripping with sarcasm. It's like she can't turn off the spigot. "I'm sure that's been your life-long dream, hasn't it."

And that was it. Nicole got up from the table and that was it. The awkwardness that followed was according to prophecy, completely predictable. We started to break up for the evening. And we never got that basketball thing together. Just as well. I suck at that game too.

229/365 Stewardship August

I'm cleaning the girls' room when he comes home. Wants to know if I'm hungry. I think probably dinner sounds good. It's the end of summer, the girls are out of town, and it's after 8. He half-heartedly suggests going out, but we've been biking and Leo is tired. I give the list of what's in the house and he goes down to make something.

He comes back up while I sort through minutiae of childhood.

"What happened at the meeting?" I ask.

"We think we might get the volunteer appreciation thing catered."

"That's cool."

"And there's going to be a few nametag Sundays coming up, one at the park and one on a Sunday in October."

Nametag Sundays. At the church where I was baptized, it was always nametag Sunday. It had been a brand new parish in 1973 and folks didn't know each other. Everyone was new. My mom still has hers and my dad's nametags, in her jewelry box. They were pinback, gray with raised white lettering, done on a machine probably in the rectory office.

Too bad we can't pretend everyone is new. Too bad a great wave of amnesia can't come through and wipe it clean. Not our skills or jobs or family life. Just our membership at the church. Everyone can forget it all and start over. Sometimes I wish for that so strongly, usually after a meeting I wish I never had to go to again.

But there's something to be said for continuity and the tapestry that's woven with longterm parishioners and newcomers, people who stay and people who don't. Something very powerful to be said, in fact, in an era when this just doesn't happen anywhere for any reason anymore.

But we should still have nametags.

230/365 New Year

Girls go off to school today. Maeve's in kindergarten with friends from the preschool and newcomers grateful to have a spot. Sophia's in 4th grade with the same teacher and the same friends, a genealogy she can trace all the way back to kindergarten when it was just Jude, Jurni, Charu, and herself. They're 19 strong now, that oldest class (which is 4th-5th with one 6th grader). A new year but within the context of everything being familiar.

This is why I stay put. I had brand new in kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th. Ridiculous. I'd rather have them not have those worries. Ever, if I can help it.

It's a new year at church, too--well, a new season, well, a new ordinary time section. Ok, it's not new at all. But September is coming, quickly followed by October. Time to think about November ahead of time--harvest and death--and Advent. A new banner? Not sure. Thinking probably so.

With girls back in school, I can think about those things.

231/365 Mission

We're having a parish mission in October.

I've never been to a parish mission.

I'm mission-curious.

232/365 Today's Note

The nature of water is soft, that of stone is hard; but if a bottle is hung above the stone, allowing the water to fall drop by drop, it wears away the stone. So it is with the Word of God, it is soft and our hearts are hard, but the one who hears the Word of God often, opens his hard to the fear of God. --Abba Poemen (Sayings of the Desert Fathers)

I'm thinking of putting a water garden in my backyard this fall, to be ready to go next spring. Nothing huge or overwhelming, just a small pool on the west side of the backyard. I've been reading garden how-to books and have changed my mind several times about what I want. Formal or natural, preformed or flexible liner, moving water or just a filter, fish or no fish, so on and so on. I know whatever I choose will be wonderful and wonder-filled. I love backyard water "features" even if they're just a preformed black plastic liner with a couple of goldfish swimming around by the umbrella plants. Or even a fountain on a wall or table. That sound, the focus my brain gives to it, blocking out all the neighbor-kids-cars-ambulances-city hum.

I have a bucket of worn out water rocks waiting to sit by the water's edge.

233/365 Maeve's Our Father

Our father, who are in heaven, let that be our name.
When thy kingdom come, life will be done,
whether if it's on earth or in heaven.
Let us pray over our daily bread
And don't have trespasses against us
Lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil. Amen.

234/365 Stewardship Report

It arrived in the mail yesterday, a glossy pamphlet equivalent to four 8 1/2 by 11 sheets of paper. We're in good shape financially (for once), bucking the national trend of donations being down 2% with ours being up 10%. That page looked good, and it often has looked bad.

But what struck me was a column estimating the number of people involved in getting it all done. How many people in music, how many servers, how many fish fry workers, and so forth. And it was surprisingly small. I do so many things at church that I guess I just didn't realize how many people don't. We have 501 families officially, and I know many of the numbers listed are the same people again and again (I assume I'm counted in children's liturgy and art & environment and worship commission, for instance). I stared and stared at those numbers.

It's not like a private school, where you can mandate volunteer hours. And it's not a family where everyone is expected to pitch in. I guess being a member of a church doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. I know I've waxed and waned in my involvement, mostly based on how old my oldest child at the time was, but I've always had at least a thread connecting me to that place. I think about the people on my block, and I suppose not all of them are involved in their congregations either. But the ones who are, it just so happens, are the ones I'm closest to. The emerging church family two doors down is very involved, and Leo's godmother is an elder at her Presbyterian church. Marla and her husband belong to my church and volunteer here and there--I think she's testing the waters slowly (she moved over to us when her parish became a Latin Mass Reservation). Another neighbor was very involved with the Jesuits at our local university, although I'm not sure what their plan is right now--but I know it's important. I don't know. I guess those who check off the list (Mass, communion, first out of the parking lot) each Sunday just don't have as much in common with me as I wish they did.

But then, why bother joining at all? I mean, some folks are certainly homebound, and others maybe have language barriers or time constraints--but we all have time constraints. What does it take to bring someone in?

235/365 Looking Backward

When I raised my hand in 2005 and said that I might just be interested in parish council, I had to write some essays. This is funny to me now because writing is one of those things that just happens for me, but I'm sure it was used as a weed-out activity. Get them to jump through this hoop and whatever applications we get, we'll consider at that point. One of the questions was, Over the next five years, what are the three most important areas in parish life at St. Pius V for growth and vitality to be cultivated and sustained?

My first answer involved drawing out new leadership at the parish level, which I admitted then and still think now, is a problem at any parish, in any organization (I know this from being on the ground floor of a new school and my involvement in La Leche League and Girl Scouts). So that wasn't any big thing. But I was rereading my second answer this evening and it really struck me. Not that I'm some kind of prophet, but here we are 5 years later and I think we have cultivated in this area.

I wrote that I thought St. Marge was more of a threat than a neighbor. I wrote that while Mike and I automatically chose our parish because it was in a public location, because my grandmother recommended it (she knew Fr. Bill), because we tried out a few other parishes and ours fit best, while Mike and I did that, all our other Catholic neighbors at the time belonged to St. Marge. One even told me during a conversation about parishes, that she hoped we'd still talk to them if they chose St. Marge over us. I asked her if she'd ever been to our parish. She shrugged. She wasn't interested in an immigrant parish, in a parish in trouble.

And we were in trouble. We had about 300 families and our school had closed. We'd merged with another school, one that was already supported by several parishes. And within a year of that conversation with my neighbor, we were threatened with closing. She was right that way. It was a struggle and it was amazing that we came through.

Five years later, our school is growing. The bulletin mentioned they have 200 children starting this year. We have just over 500 families registered. I don't know how St. Marge's parish is going overall. I don't know their ups or downs. I know their kindergarten and preschool is booming but I also know they are bleeding out middle school students, their families dissatisfied with what's going on there. Not a big surprise to me, since I did some pre-teaching work there, and later I worked at our school and saw the difference in our math abilities. We might have had hard to pronounce names and shabby textbooks, but they weren't doing algebra by eighth grade. Anyway, that's an old grudge of mine.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't seem to matter as much now. I'm not on parish council anymore (sigh) but I wasn't on it when I wrote that, either. St. Marge just seems like another south side parish instead of the slick jocks or cheerleaders who keep the goth kids down.

And my neighbors? The Catholics on my block are no longer monolithic. Three families go to our church. Two go to St. Marge. An older couple goes to the Italian church nearby, mostly because they have the earliest Sunday mass around here. And the family that was worried we might not talk to them anymore never settled at St. Marge's after all--their kids go to another Catholic school further south, and that's where they've put down roots. Even my parents on the next block gave up on the Jesuits and joined our parish.

We're not the same place we were 5 years ago.

237/365 Maeve Goes To Church

Mike and Maeve were down at his parents' house for the weekend, helping build a house for his aunt and uncle. And Sunday morning, Maeve was going to go with Mike to the job site since she didn't want to go to church. But she also didn't want to go to the job site...so she settled on staying with Gran and going to church. Mike warned his mother that Maeve is, to put it bluntly, a spazz at church.

They met up at lunch at Mike asked how it went. Wonderfully, his mom told him. She was just fine. "And afterward as we were leaving, she turned to me and said, 'That was short!'"

Ah well. Here's a hope and prayer that my kids learn to appreciate good liturgy as opposed to simply short liturgy (although short does have its place).

236/365 Update on the Utah Vestibule

It was a child-intensive mass this morning. Leo made it to the gospel. I took him to the back, as always, and eventually let him venture into the little room with the gates (that are still up). A girl who was one of my former girl scouts was back there, and I informed her that this room was really only for babies and toddlers under 3, and that since she already made her first communion, she should really be part of the congregation. Sometimes I can't believe what comes out of my mouth. She put the books away and wandered out without a word.

One of Leo's age set, one of the boys who was baptized the same Easter season, came back with his mother. And a little girl about 2. Then this clueless dad and his verbal child--at least 3--came back, but he entertained the little boy. I say he was clueless because every time he left, he didn't close the gate behind him (but when he came into the room, he always did--he knew how the gate worked, I figure he just couldn't be bothered?). Things reached that point where all toddlers decide it's ok to be loud, and so I left with Leo.

Another dad had a baby in a carrier, bouncing her in the back. Two other parents walked to the back to distract children far better behaved than Leo. I let him run in the very back, in the main vestibule, and then took him back over to the side room, which had emptied. And filled again. And we left again for communion and lasted out the announcements and most of the closing song back in our pew up front.

It seemed more like what it should be, frankly. I'm still not its biggest fan, since the gates mean that folks expect me to take my child back there instead of just to the back of church where I can still hear and participate (several folks have mentioned that THAT is where the babies belong...but it isn't any quieter there...and I can't hear a thing...I'm torn). But it felt more like a cry room and less like free babysitting and chat time. There was no chat. Maybe that made all the difference for me (that, and the lack of older children).

238/365 Gardening

I had a good, but unexpected, garden this year. Tomatoes, my usual standby, produced nothing. Beautiful plants, blooms, green tomatoes, and nothing went anywhere. Green fruit rotted on the vines. My cucumber plants, however, were insanely productive. I "put up" 18 quarts of pickles. Crazy. The basil and parsley produced average years, turning in to pesto for the freezer. And the garlic was prolific, mostly because I neglected to harvest much last year.

Each of those plants tells me a story. It's so hard, the older I get, to not see things through a parable lens. I expected nothing from the cucumbers, for instance, because they have always, for as long as I've lived here, let me down. I put up poles from them to climb but otherwise did nothing. They were planted only because I needed to let that side of the garden rest from several years of tomatoes being planted there. It was time to rotate but I wasn't going to help them. By the time I picked the last cucumber, they were covered in aphids and ants and ladybugs and parisitic wasps and caterpillars and cucumber beetles. They gave their all. Maybe I just hadn't given them what they needed in terms too much attention or not the right location. Sometimes you just need to be left alone to do what you need to do. In the right place.

Tomatoes have always produced. Some years they're better than others, but we always have salad tomatoes and something to put up--either tomato sauce or frozen tomato puree or even salsa verde if there's an early frost warning. But they've always been at home on the east side of the garden, and I moved them to the west to give the soil a year to rest from their needs. And they obviously were not pleased with the relocation. Who ever is?

The basil and parsley are low-maintenance crops, growing wherever and always producing--since their crop is just leaves, and they aren't prone to bolting (and bitterness) like lettuces, they don't take much. Just hot sun and watering. The most basic of needs and the most basic of returns--but if I fussed over them, they wouldn't produce any more than they do this way. You give what you can if you have what you need. More is not always better.

And the garlic? Give them more time to grow and you get better results. They drop their own seeds and I already have next year's seedlings sprouting up where the cucumber plants have been pulled up. They're a weed in my yard, the best weed ever, and we get along just fine. This year I did clip the scapes (the top flower) on about half of them, to get a bigger bulb to grow, but not all of them. Some of them have to seed and drop for next year. I can't have everything I want or else there's nothing for the future.

See? Not deep or profound, but everything is a lesson these days.

239/365 The Bosnians

Other parishes had them. Fr. Bill didn't understand why we didn't have them. That's how the story was trickled down to me. Why didn't our school have Bosnians? There were 35,000 Bosnians in town. Why weren't they at our school?

"Aren't they Muslim?" the second grade teacher asked flatly. True, they were, but our school was also full of Buddhists.

"Don't they live in other neighborhoods?" the eighth grade teacher asked. Also true. They were south and west of our neighborhood. The immigrants and refugees we lived by were from southeast Asia and from Africa at that point. Bosnians, like most immigrants, were settling together, just like the Italians on the Hill or the Irish in Dogtown (although as a descendant of St. Louis Irish who were too poor to move to Dogtown, this assumption grates on my nerves). The Bosnians were at other churches if they were at any Catholic churches at all. We weren't in their neighborhood and not on their radar.

But the issue was pushed. I won't say by whom because I'm not certain, but suddenly we had a Bosnian family enrolling. Yanko and Talaitha Avdo showed up on a Monday in October. They had 5 children in tow and Talaitha was very pregnant. Ben, the translator, had a grim look on his face as he helped them with enrollment forms. Three children would be attending, on full scholarship, starting that moment. Drina was in my class, a room with four girls and 9 boys. I was happy to have another girl, but worried because I already had a new girl, Minh Thu, who spoke no English. Another ESL student in a school where the ESL teacher was a waste of space was not going to go well for me, or for her.

Still, I took Drina upstairs and, through gesture and simple words, was able to get her to a desk and find some basic supplies for her, mostly pencils and some blank paper. I gave her a math textbook, which was my focus subject.

She sat quietly staring out the window during homeroom, and then I tried my best to explain that classes were going to switch. It was so much easier with Vietnamese students. Even though Minh Thu spoke almost no English and understood only a bit more, Cuong sitting next to her could at least get her to the right page in the book. Drina, I feared, was going to be lost.

Oh how lost.

240/365 Emerging Awareness

Terri and Joey stood in the hall looking worried. I let my kids out the door and down to English, welcoming in the 7th graders who were my homeroom the year before.

"The rules are long on that family," I caught Terri saying. I glanced over and she nodded for me to join them. "You have one of the Avdos in your class?" she asked.

"Yeah, Drina."

"I've got Aisha. Did Sr. Fern talk to you?"

"No--she said to come down on my break."

"Yeah...they're Muslim."

"They're Bosnian. We should have seen that one coming."

And then Terri gave me the rules. She was not to attend mass or music practice in the church, even though all the non-Catholic Christians and all the Buddhists did. She was not to go to religion class and instead would spend that time with Sr. Agneta in the ESL classroom.

"You're kidding me," I blurted out.

"Nope," they shake their heads. "And Ben, downstairs? He passed me in the hall and told me they're not even Bosnian."

"What?"

"They're Gypsies."

241/365 What?

"What do you mean they're Gypsies?" I ask with a laugh. I'm envisioning decorated wagons and violin playing 19th century men. But Terri and Joey are serious.

"Roma. Ben said they're too dark to be Bosnian."

I think about the family standing in the office doorway just a few minutes before. They did have dark complexions, but so?

"He said the language was funny, too," she adds, and this sounds more realistic. I go home that night and look up gypsies. Roma. I go to the library. I find a few children's books in Bosnian (which is essentially Serbo-Croatian but with our alphabet) and a language book on Romani. I approach Drina during math class the next week with both books. I open the Romani book and say something akin to "Do you speak Romani?"

She looks at me with a practiced blank face. Now 10 years later I look back and know what that meant. It meant "an authority figure is trying to trick me and she's not going to win."

Then I opened the children's book in Bosnian and read a bit. Her face brightened and she said something to me in Bosnian. I don't know Bosnian--I took Russian in college and so bits are similar. So I handed her the book and asked her to read some. She shook her head and put the book down.

I went over to my desk and got a pencil and paper. I wrote "Drina" on one side of the paper and the same name, in Cyrillic letters, on the other side.

"Drina," I pointed to each of them.

She shook her head.

I wrote, in both scripts, "My name is Drina."

Nothing.

I stepped out in the hall after thanking her with a smile and taking the book with me. Often right before class changes, teachers stepped out to chat a moment and catch up on what was going on with kids.

"I don't think Drina can read," I tell Cynthia, the English teacher.

"She doesn't speak English, Bridgett," she points out.

"I don't think she can read her own language," I clarify.

We both stand quietly waiting for the bell. We know this isn't a good sign, at her age, having to start from scratch.

"Let me think about it," Cynthia says finally.

242/365 Faculty Meetings are the Best!

"About the Avdos," Jane, the second grade teacher says during a pause in the faculty meeting the next week. "I have Luca in my classroom and he speaks no English, but I don't think he knows his letters or numbers, either."

I glance at Cynthia, who clears her throat. "Aisha and Drina are illiterate as well."

Sr. Fern looks alarmed and, eyes wide, signals to Terri, who shakes her head. "Yeah, we figured they probably couldn't read. Their mother can't write her own name."

"What about the father?" Jane asks.

"I think so," Terri shrugs. "I just, I wouldn't worry about it. They won't be here long."

"What does that mean?" Sr. Agneta asks, sitting up from her half-snooze on the couch.

"They're Gypsy," Terri explains. "They're just going to take what they can and then they'll be on the wind," she brushes her hand away from her in a wave. I stare at her. Jane and Cynthia stare at her. Sr. Fern stares at her.

"Look, they've been in the country, what, 18 months? And that time, they lived in New York and Drina was the only one who went to school and that was only for two months because she said that the kids were mean to her," Terri fills us in on more back story.

"Eighteen months and no English?" Jane wonders.

"It's not like the Vietnamese," Terri laughs mirthlessly. "Plus, maybe they're just playing us."

"Well, she certainly knows no English when she comes to visit me," Agneta mentions. "And she's so desperately poor. I'm thinking of doing a clothing drive for those kids."

"Yeah," I pipe up. "Why aren't they in uniform, anyway? They've been here almost a month."

"Drina said she has no clothes to wear," Agneta contradicts her previous claim of no English. No one else seems to catch this. "Such a poor sweet girl. I wish they were all like that. I think there's another one who's stealing from my room," she adds.

"Who?" Sr. Fern asks her. We're getting far afield but I'm curious what story Agneta has concocted in her head.

"I think it's That Frank," she says like it's his full name. "Every time he and Minh and Drina come up to my room, when they leave, there are things missing. Just little things, you know, change from my desk or pencils. It's not like Frank needs me anyway, he's from Liberia. They speak English there."

"I'll keep Frank during English class," Cynthia reassures her.

"Yeah, but the stealing won't stop," Terri mumbles under her breath so I can hear. "Look," she says louder, "bring her some blue pants and white shirts, maybe, but don't waste too much time on her. They'll be gone soon, trust me."

243/365 Clothing Drive

"Bridgett," Sr. Agneta breathlessly says my name at my doorway. It's a half hour before school begins, the quiet moments before students invade my pristine classroom and wreck it like every day.

"Hi," I wave at her. She comes in pulling a large white trash bag.

"Clothes," she points. "For Drina. I got her some things, too, but I want to present them when she comes up for ESL."

"Did you buy things?" I ask, a bit dismayed. I'd started to note that things were missing from my room, too, and I knew it wasn't That Frank.

"Well, just a few things. She has so many needs. Her mother, you know, is about to have that baby--she's so thin! And Drina and her siblings just have nothing. Their father," she shakes her head. I don't ask.

"But I thought you could give her these things," she points at the bag, "since this is homeroom and all. No reason for me to drag it up another flight just for her to drag it down."

"Indeed," I agree. She leaves and I drag it into the cloakroom. Poverty is common at our school and few kids have new things across the board. But I'm not going to present Drina with a trash bag of discarded clothing in front of her classmates.

I have Robert take my kids out at recess and I keep Drina behind. I show her the bag and she goes through it, sorting it into two piles.

"I take," she points to one pile. And then she shakes her head and points to the other.

"Uniform," I pick up a pair of relatively unattractive navy blue pants out of the reject pile. "For school. Skola."

"No, I not take."

And she doesn't. She shows up the next day in new clothes from the acceptable hand-me-downs and nobody says a word to her or her family. But Jillian and Beth, two of the girls in my room, start to notice and ask me why Drina doesn't wear a uniform. I try to explain best I can, but frankly, it comes down to language barrier. They both get a set to their jaws.

"Drina isn't very nice," Jillian starts to explain. I tell them to go back to their seats, that this is what being in a classroom with lots more people means. They do. But they're not happy.

244/365 Lice

"Mrs. Wissinger?" Jillian runs into me in the hallway as I'm chatting with Cynthia. Everyone else is doing their work.

"What is it?" I ask her. Jillian rarely has anything to say. For 3 years, the only girls in my class were Beth and Nikki. Jillian moved in last April and had to vie for a spot with them. It's only half worked. Minh Thu balanced things better for school work and playground games but she didn't understand enough English to really chat at lunch. And then Drina moved in and Jillian practically stood with her arms blocking Drina's way to Beth and Nikki. Jillian was a little rough around the edges and had been in and out of our school, according to Jane and Terri. Jane had hotlined the family, in fact, at one point. Things seemed fine from my point of view now.

"It's Drina," she begins. "I walked past her desk just now, and there were, you know, bugs in her hair."

Crap. Lice. Cynthia rolls her eyes and tells me she'll talk to me later. I go in, over to my desk, and pull out two pencils. Been there, checked those heads before.

"Drina?" I say quietly. "Can I see you in the hallway?"

She follows me out. Her hair is tightly French-braided. I stand over her just a bit and can see there's no lice. No nits, no bugs. "Never mind," I tell her. I don't even touch her with the pencils.

"Jillian?" I call at the door. "Your turn."

I check Jillian's head for lice. "But it's Drina who's got the lice, Mrs. Wissinger," she protests. And then I check everyone else's head to cover my rear.

The next morning, Mr. Avdo is in the office. Hot. He sees me and walks over to me with his fists clenched. "How dare you say my daughter has bugs in her hair," he says. I see Drina in the doorway of the office with her still very pregnant mother. He yells at me in at least two languages and then storms out. Sr. Fern catches him.

"Mrs. Wissinger was just following procedures," she tries to reassure him. But he blows right past her and down the steps to the parking lot. His wife follows with two little children. Drina stands there in the office.

"Drina," Sr. Agneta comes out of the office with her. "Let's go upstairs." And as they step into the stairwell, Agneta smiles the fakest smile I have ever seen. "Sorry," she says.

Fern turns to me then. "Tell me you did follow procedure, that you checked all the children in your room, not just her?"

"Yes," I say truthfully. "Look, another girl said she saw something and I felt like, well, I felt like I didn't want to get lice--"

She laughs. "Tell me about it! When I worked at a school in Cincinnati, we had to close down for a week there were so many kids out with lice. What a pain!"

And it's over. I'm not in trouble, Mr. Avdo doesn't kill me, and Drina shows up in my classroom a few minutes later like nothing happened. Bah.

245/365 Puzzled

"I'm just so puzzled by that little Drina," Sr. Agneta says with a sigh at lunch. "I gave her a new backpack and all these notebooks and pens and books and workbooks. But it's all gone. She pretends she doesn't understand me when I ask her where it all went."

Terri, Cynthia, and I just smile at each other.

"They. Are. Gypsies!" Terri says again for the hundredth time.

"Terri," Cynthia chides her. "Really? Are we going to continue with the stereotypes?"

"Look, I'm just telling you what Ben told me. They are nomadic. They take what they can and move on. He believes they speak English even if they probably are illiterate. I still would bet any money they'll be gone before Christmas."

"I think that's a terrible thing to say about them," Agneta says, straightening her back even more than it's already straightened. "Drina is just lovely."

"But she lies?" Terri says, eyes wide. "And steals things? And pretends not to know English?"

Agneta wipes her hands on her napkin. "I was just wondering, you know, if maybe Frank or someone in your class had stolen the items."

"Oh, leave Frank alone," I tell her. "You don't know a damned thing about Frank."

She stares at me, like she's sizing me up, seeing if she can take me in a fist fight. She can't, but that isn't really what she's checking. "I know plenty about Frank. And he's my thief."

"But he hasn't been up to your room in weeks, Agneta," Cynthia reminds her.

"So now he's stealing the things I gave to Drina. She's terrified of him. Of his," she circles her face with her finger. "Blackness."

Terri laughs out loud, breaking the tension, thank God.

"You know what I mean," Agneta snaps back, picking up her tray. She walks out and Cynthia turns to me shaking her head. The moment is over.

"So, Danny brought his step-son over last night with Tanya. I hadn't seen Wesley since their wedding. You know his dad is out of the picture, so Tanya put him on my lap and said, 'Wesley, here's Nana!' Well, I just about burst into tears right there, the whole thing was so sweet........"

246/365 Bundle of Joy

Drina walks into my room with her mother, who is suddenly no longer pregnant. She's carrying the tiniest infant I've seen in person, wrapped up in a sling of sorts. She continues her not-smiling routine. Drina goes over to her desk and pulls out a few folders and a book. Hands them to her mother, who walks out without saying anything to me or acknowledging my presence (or anyone else's in the whole room).

Drina sits blankly through math class and goes with her classmates to other classes and sits blankly there, too.

The next day she's not there.

"New baby," Sr. Agneta guesses. "Number 6. I don't know how some women do it."

"I'm the oldest of 15," Sr. Fern mentions. Agneta shudders at this. So do I, but only in my head.

The following day Drina and her siblings are still not there. When a full week passes, Fern sighs loudly in the faculty lounge. "I'll call Ben, see what's going on."

247/365 Bye Bye Bosnians

"They've moved," Sr. Fern tells us at lunch. "They didn't have a phone, so Ben called the landlord. He went over there--they were late on the rent anyway--and they'd cleared out."

Terri nods, satisfied that her version of reality came true. "Told you."

"And he asked Ben where they might have gone, because not only did they not pay this month's rent, but they also took the stove, the refrigerator, the carpet from the living room, and the poles in the closets. Mini-blinds, an air conditioner in storage, and another tenant's washing machine."

Now even Terri is shocked.

"The landlord said there's no way their deposit will cover even half of what's missing, and that doesn't include the damage and cleaning he'll have to do. He said it looked like they'd been sorting trash in the living room and living on pallets on the kitchen floor. Piles of kids' clothes and baby stuff and food trash and all sorts of crap."

And then suddenly it isn't a crazy funny story. Suddenly it's 6 kids growing up like this, illiterate, barely understanding English, moving from place to place with parents living in a culture they can't escape from in their heads. Fern isn't smiling. Terri isn't smiling anymore. I look over at my class eating lunch, my normal kids from normal families (within a range of normal, at least) and having nothing in my brain.

248/365 Blast from the Past

"So Sr. Ursula just got off the phone," Sr. Fern says to us, one eyebrow up. It's late March and live has marched on at it's normal pace. "Guess who was calling?"

We look around at each other. Someone guesses the archbishop. "No," Fern shakes her head. "Far better than that. It was a public school in Bottineau, North Dakota. They had a new family move in, and they listed us as the previous school attended by their children Drina, Luca, and Aisha."

Cynthia puts her head in her hands. My milk almost comes out my nose. Everyone at the table waits for her to continue.

"I told them we didn't know much at all about them, but that they'd left in a big hurry back in October. They were trying to get some information because they hadn't even figured out what nationality the Avdos were. So I just told them we never were sure ourselves. But good luck to them."

And so ended the Great Bosnian Invitation.

249/365 Setting an example

Today's reading from the Rule instructs the abbot/prioress of a monastery to always have words match deeds. Do not live a "do as I say not as I do" kind of example.

Today at dinner, Sophia said a word that falls out of my mouth all the time. It wasn't one of the big 2 or 3 rated-R words I catch myself saying, it was further down the list but still definitely a PG-13 word. And as opposed to Maeve, who sometimes pushes boundaries because it's fun to get a reaction, I realized that Sophia didn't even know this word shouldn't be said.

"Just because your mother has a potty mouth doesn't mean you should," Mike admonished her, but gently because it was obvious she was genuinely misled by my lack of self control.

Something to look forward to for Lent, perhaps?

250/365 Prodigal Son

Today's Gospel reading, in the park under the trees, our annual mass in the park, was the story of the Prodigal Son. Fr. Miguel's homily was in first person, the older son telling his side of the story. I love homilies like this, that tell a story from a different perspective and illuminate our own situations. Because I am the older son. Always and forever, the oldest child in a family of 4. Or the valedictorian who is passed up to say the speech at graduation because I don't have a magnanimous heart (yes, that's what the principal said to me). I don't think I've ever been in the position of the younger son (at least not that I can remember), and rarely am I the one waiting for someone to return and bring them back into the fold. I am always the older brother.

I sat there looking at my kids, wondering about the dynamics of family and how things will go as they get older. My siblings and I get along remarkably well. Bevin and I are closest, probably, with proximity helping that a bit. Colleen and Bevin, though, are closer to each other than to either me or Ian. Down in Texas, Ian is geographically separated and easily could have been the younger son. But nothing so dramatic as all that. Our lives, as Mike puts it, are emotionally entangled in a way that not everyone's sibling relationships become. I keep telling Maeve that one day, she'll appreciate Sophia and Leo, that as she gets older things will smooth out and it'll be good to have siblings.

I hope that's true.

251/365 Mass in the Park

252/365 More Mass in the Park