2/365 Cry Room

"Who set up the Utah Vestibule that way with the gates?" Becky asks me at coffee.

"I'm pretty sure that was Sr. Joanna," I answer, not sure what the impression is.

"It's great," she tells me.

"It makes a really nice space," I agree.

Our Utah Vestibule is a small room on the left side of the church as you face the front of the building from the street. When you walk into the main vestibule through the front doors, you step into the main part of the church (the nave) and turn directly left. It's another anteroom, another small space to gather yourself before you enter the church properly. It is the old baptistry, and was called that for many years after the baptismal font was moved up to the sanctuary. There is a stained glass window of the baptism of Christ and two cherub faces carved into the tops of the columns that would have surrounded the font when the church was built.

For a long time between the time when the font was moved and its most recent changes, the Utah Vestibule was a storage room. It was still a passage from Utah Street (hence the current name) into the church, with a door leading out onto the steep north side of the building and down many steps to the street level. But in in vestibule itself were random liturgical items--two astonishingly beautiful statues, one of St. Anne and one of the Sacred Heart, placed there like an afterthought; candle stands for devotions to....what, exactly, I'm not sure; plants that lingered and died under a fluorescent lamp too high up on the ceiling to really do them much good; and so forth. It was a place to hurry through and ignore.

A few years back, this began to change with the appearance on our parish's scene of a new pastor and a pastoral associate and other folk who decided finally it was time to clean up around here. I don't know all the details--I was just creeping back into parish life myself at that time and although pleased with the results, did not have much to do with it coming to fruition. This room was painted and cleaned and refurnished. Not as an afterthought but purposefully, as a sort of cry room.

I am not a fan of cry rooms. I believe that babies are part of the community and should not, with their mothers, be shunned behind glass with sound piped in through a speaker. But I also know that babies and toddlers (and Maeve) sometimes do not agree with sitting in pews and being quite for an hour or more at a stretch. I don't like to be a hindrance to others and so for a long time I'd walk to the back with a baby and stand there listening. Later, the Utah Vestibule was furnished with soft side chairs and even a rocker--and then that's where I took babies and uncooperative toddlers.

Now there are two gates, one at each entrance into the church. They're the kind with a lever you can step on to open it like a door. Nice. Now I can take a mobile child back there and let him burn off a little steam in the coming months--which I'm sure will happen. On Christmas Eve there was a mom there doing just that. It is separated from the assembly but not so separate. You can hear what's going on, but not on a speaker that makes the mass seem like it's happening on TV far away. You're in the back of church. It's your time of life to be in the back of church. At least now there's a way to make it comfortable.

24/365 It just slipped out of my mouth.

I was rushing into church Sunday morning. Just so you know, I'm always rushing into church Sunday morning. Sophia attends an atrium in the next neighborhood over and she gets out at 9:45. Just enough time to speed down Grand and scan the parking lot impatiently for a space. How I remember with fondness the leisurely walks to church 3 years ago. Not anymore. We're always in a hurry now.

Hildegard is standing in back. The procession is assembling. I smile and nod at them and she asks, "Are you children's liturgy today?"

"No," I remember back to the email. "Today is Jessica and Eva. But if they're not here, I'll do it."

We quickly moved past them and up the side aisle to the second pew, where we've decided to camp out a while. The entrance song plays. We pass the baby, we get Maeve settled. And then it hits me. I just totally volunteered to fly by the seat of my pants at children's liturgy. I guess I finally did make the decision to be that person. In a good way, I mean.

26/365 Girl Scouts

Technically Girl Scouts may not be a parish event, but we are commissioned from our church (as opposed to our school, for whatever reason) and we meet in the church basement.

Tonight we made a snack that required using a few kitchen bowls and spoons (Sr. Hildegard, if we need to do more than we did let me know but I think we cleaned it all up). We walked into the kitchen and my girls looked around at the details I don't even see anymore.

The singing fish plaque on the back of the door. The, well, everything marked "Property of Fish Fry." The sign on the wall for those serving on the line, reminding them that they are serving "our guests." Poppy asked who our guests were.

Our guests.

I was expedient and explained the fish fry. But I let that question float in my head while we learned about food safety and how to measure milk in a cup and how much milk did we need....who are our guests?

And that question was answered, for me, just a few minutes later when the buzzer rang and one girl scout trailed in late. Arcelia and her mother Yvonne are not my favorite people. Actually, Arcelia is just fine. Yvonne, though, is not someone I want to spend any time with, at all. In the recent past I have been somewhat thin-lipped and thinly-veiled with my emotions. I don't even know if she's noticed. Her behavior hasn't changed at all, for good or bad. Maybe....no, I'm pretty sure I've been behaving badly.

To our guests.

She came in with a flurry of her own emotions, hands waving in the air, bending forward when she talked to me, like she was aiming for me with her forehead. She followed me into the old atrium. She chatted to me as I got the girls centered on their next task.

"Can I stay? Can I help?"

I thought of something I'd read about Benedictine hospitality back when I was becoming an oblate (I have been remiss in Benedictine reading lately...). I think it was in How to Be a Monastic and Not Leave Your Day Job or one of those books by Br. Benet. How an elderly monk was on his way to do something that was important to him, whatever it was, when the doorbell rang and people had come to tour the monastery. He threw his hands in the air and muttered, "Now I have to do hospitality!" And then went to do it.

That is exactly how I felt as she asked those questions. "Sure," I answered, making eye contact. "I can always use another set of hands." I explained the activity. She mother-henned a bit more than I would have, but she stayed and maybe that's what she wanted to do. We got the activity done, had the snack, and then she stayed to help Jana and I clean up after the girls had left (the last bits in the kitchen, that is--the girls clean up their stuff all the time). I asked her if she'd like to come a bit early next time and help set up. She said she definitely would. I'm not sure if it will come to pass--she classically falls through on her promises--but I knew she was going to volunteer with hesitation and asking her, well, made it seem like she was doing me the favor instead of what was really the truth.

It probably wasn't my most Christian example of hospitality. But frankly, visiting my ailing grandmother is easy. Inviting new neighbors over for coffee is easy. Babysitting Dolores' granddaughter in a pinch is incredibly easy compared to handling the relationship with Yvonne. I have fantasies of paying her off. Of claiming there isn't going to be a troop next year and then sneaking around behind her back. Things that won't work.

I'm stuck with her.

I don't think we'll ever be friends, for many deep reasons, but I think I can manage to be nice. I broke the ice today. We'll see if I warm up more next time.

45/365 Valentine's Day In Review

Today I ran Children's Liturgy and therefore missed what Mike called the "best homily I've heard in ages," brought to you by Fr. Lawrence while Miguel is in Haiti.

Wait. Yes--Miguel is in Haiti at a hospital working as a chaplain. His latest tweet (that would be "thing he posted on twitter") reads: I'm sleeping on a cot outside w a mosquito net. Brushed my teeth on the side of the "road". I am not a camper. I could have guessed that last line but frankly, I'm speechless when it comes to international mission trips of all sorts. It would be enough for me to say "I am not a missionary" in any statement I would make and that would be enough said. So I'm living vicariously through tweeted moments he sends into the ether and hoping he makes it back ok. I spent two years hoping that about Sophia's godparents when they were in Nicaragua.

But yes, Fr. Lawrence filled in. He's wordy, but I've been consistently pleased with what he's had to say. Today, Mike said, was no different.

"Best homily I've heard in ages" is not anything like what happened in Children's Liturgy. I prepared for the wrong year. How could I be so stupid? I realized sitting in the pew before mass began what I'd done and I quickly scanned the readings. So I went downstairs and faked it. I hate that. I hate not being prepared. But I read the readings and the gospel and did a tiny introduction to Lent. Then we reread Jesus' statements and put them into context as best we could. We went upstairs and the homily wasn't finished. Timed it bad on top of everything else. Jessica and I stood in back with the kids and showed them the statues and tried to explain why these were in our church. Then we released them. It was already almost a quarter to 11 and he was still talking.

I spent the rest of mass wrangling Maeve. She was impossible. My theory that sitting closer to the front would help is proving to be a failure. But I fear that if I give up and sit in the back, none of my children will have an inkling about what's going on. I could take her back to the new cry-room of sorts, in the Utah Vestibule, but it's become a baby ghetto. It's chock full of toddlers running amok and parents chatting. Not what I had hoped. It has separated the children, putting the gates up. I won't go back there anymore, alas, because it wouldn't be at all like being in church. Too bad--it was perfect with the rocking chairs and quiet lighting. The gates seemed like a good plan to me but now, well, I'll just say that it's not for me anymore.

So I wrangle her in the pew and whisper sweet nothings into her ear. Like: If you can't sit still we will not go downstairs for a donut. Or, everyone can hear you when you speak out loud, you must whisper, you are 5 years old. I want to add stronger threats but she's got my number. She's just the kind of kid to yell things like "don't hit me again Mommy!" and that would be just perfect.

At the end of mass, we're standing in that lag time between the prayer after communion and dismissal, when announcements happen. Fr. Lawrence announces that he has 4 announcements and a blessing for Valentine's Day. And then a trumpet starts playing. Somewhere. It isn't the trumpet player standing next to Bev at the piano. I'm too far up front; I never see who did it. So Lawrence blesses us first, which is always awkward for me in a way that other blessings are not. I detest holidays that are simply self-congratulatory events, like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and 4th of July. Yay, I have a good life--but not in a thanksgiving kind of way, you know? More like "yay I have a good life and you should praise me for it." But he blessed us and I never found out who the trumpeter was.

We walked out with Maeve throwing a silent tantrum because she didn't get to go down for a donut...just the start to a day of Maeve tantrums and fits and rages.

Maybe like that character in Flannery O'Connor, I need someone to bless me every damned day of my life.

74/365 Banner over me is love

Do you remember that song? Was it from Hi God? Peter built the church on the rock of our faith, his banner over me is love.

I have some work to do. Palm Sunday is take down the purple, put up the red. That's only a few moments away from now. Then for Holy Week, the red comes down and nothing goes up until Easter Vigil, when the color is white.

We're not using my banner from last year, which is fine with me. I've hung it in my guest room/sewing room over a vinyl cling on the wall that says "No rest for the talented." Ha. But we're using a banner, or rather a series of banners, for Easter.

Ones I have to make. And not just solid fabric hemmed on the side and dropped down from the choir loft. I'm quilting again. I'm excited--I have the plan drawn up and I am confident that I have the skill and patience and dexterity to pull it off--and the materials since I've been to the fabric store.

Now I have to find the time. Come on Leo. Give me the time.

76/365 The Church in Ireland

So...

The pope writes a letter about the sex abuse crisis in Ireland. Which is a big thing (the crisis, not the letter). And at the end of the letter, after admonishing bishops and saying how sorry he is, he offers some concrete initiatives for Ireland.

The people of Ireland are to fast and pray and participate in Eucharistic Adoration.

THAT will fix it, right?

96/365 Latinization

Last week, I had a conversation with Maeve:

"When are we going to have candy at church again?" she asks.

"Probably at Easter," I tell her. Duh.

"But no, I mean at church, when are we going to have candy?"

"Like I said, at Easter. After mass, you know." But maybe not. She's young.

"No, in the sacritarium."

I think quickly.

"Cafeteria?" I suggest. "Downstairs? Like with coffee and donuts?"

"No," she repeats, now exasperated with me. "The sa-cri-tar-i-um."

"The sacristy?" I try again.

"No!" She says, all frustrated. "With the bowl, on the desk, in Father Miguel's house. In the front. In the sacratarium!"

"Do you mean," I say, laughing, "the secretary's office?"

"Yeah," she says with relief. "I mean the SEcretarium."

Which I guess would be one word for the office where the parish secretary sits.

99/365 Spiritual Needs

Right before Easter, Hildegard asked me if I had a spiritual director. I do, of sorts, in Sr. Jean Frances. We email back and forth regularly and she is so centered and peaceful and good. I love getting her emails because there is always something I can ruminate on, live on, for time to come. Which is good because I'm separated from the monastery for quite some time--the sisters have moved into the guest quarters while the main building is reconstructed, so there is no room for oblates. We could go stay at Conception and commute, but they strongly hinted that guests would be a burden. I can accept that, in fact, I'm glad they are honest about their own needs.

Because I should be too. This Lent was in many ways so good for me. But in other ways it got lost like a breeze in a whirlwind. I made it to Sunday mass at our parish twice before Triduum. I was here and there and everywhere and it sucked a lot of life out of me. This is good to see, in hindsight. It is, in the end, important for me to have a regular spiritual schedule. Another thing I learned this Lent.

Hildegard and I, though, were standing in the parking lot. "Have you considered going down to Pevely, even just for a night and staying the next day? What about down on Ripa?" I knew what Ripa meant--the SSND compound--but Pevely only meant a defunct Benedictine monastery to me. I mean in a Catholic sense. Pevely is also the location of one of the Girl Scout camps, but I figured that's not what Hildegard meant. I queried and she explained. Hermitages.

And I heard all those familiar nagging voices in my head. I have a baby who doesn't sleep through the night yet (yes, that's right, he's 15 months old). I have, oh, not a single weekend between now and the 5th of Never that I can easily claim for myself. I just can't trot off...but why could I just trot off to the monastery? Because they put out the weekend schedule for the year every January? They got on my calendar early?

Eh.

So she told me she'd be asking me later about it. I drove home and got things in order. Went back that evening for a Holy Thursday potluck and she handed me a one-free-night coupon to this place in Pevely. She found it by accident as she unloaded a basket to take to church for the collection that evening. There it was. Lo.

One time in Borders Books, before I was an oblate, I was searching through garbage Christian fluff, things like "The Idiot's Guide to Mary Magdalene" and crap centered around the idea that Jesus wants you to be rich--trying to find something worth my time. Maeve was wriggling in the stroller and I was about to walk away when Sophia said, "Look, Mama, a key." There on a low shelf was a key, an ordinary house key. Sitting in front of Joan Chittister's In Search of Belief. Look Mama indeed. A key.

I do not believe in coincidences. So I suppose I'm going to have to find my way to Pevely.

100/365 Maeve Trickery

"Do you want to go up to communion with me?" I whisper to Maeve as I stand up to get in line. She nods and takes my hand. As we get closer, she lets go and stands behind me. Fr. Miguel is the eucharistic minister and I hear him bless her as I walk away. I head back to our pew and Maeve is still right behind me. I sit down and take out the song book. Her little hand rests on mine.

"How does he know who gets to have the bread and who doesn't?" she asks, looking suspiciously up at Fr. Miguel.

I know what she's tried. Maybe I can just go ahead and have my first communion right now.

"Honey, Fr. Miguel knows us. He knows you. He knows you're too young."

Her eyes narrow at me. "Three years is too long to wait."

"I know," I agree. It's a long time from now.

103/365 Children's Liturgy Moment

I wake up early enough on Sunday to check to be sure I'm not in charge of Children's Liturgy. I'm not. I've missed so many homilies the past two months. Please not today as well. But no, luck on my side, I get to sit at church and listen instead of do.

End of the opening prayer, Fr. Miguel invites children up to be dismissed for Children's Liturgy. There's Sr. Edith, standing up there with the lectionary. Lots and lots of kids come up. A huge number. They head back and I realize she's alone. I can't recall who her help was supposed to be, but she's not there. A mom is heading back with her 3 year old (maybe?)...there will be another adult. I catch Hildegard's eye. She shrugs, not knowing either.

The first reader is approaching the ambo. I should head back. I should go downstairs with Edith and all those kids. I should. But. I. Don't. Want. To. Mike is in the back with Leo and both my girls are downstairs and I have a moment. I can listen and be here.

I look back at Hildegard one more time and she kind of shoos me away with her hand. Don't go. I have permission. Or at least I have a similar opinion.

It strikes me as we stand for the gospel that this might be one of the Sundays the deacon is going to give the homily. In which case I should have taken one for the team and gone downstairs. I hold my breath. And it turns out just fine.

115/365 Babies change things

I drop out of parish life after Sophia's baptism. It's the way it had to be. I needed to breathe a moment and concentrate on other things. I barely went to church that fall, and when I finally did in late November, I ran into Joey.

She's a big gal and I didn't want to ask, but she told me before I hesitated. She was pregnant.

Babies change things. Her daughter Hannah was 6 months younger than Sophia. They went to Atrium together and played some. She came to a few birthday parties. And it was ok.

I never trusted Joey, not really, but I could see that babies changed things. She changed. She lost some of her edges. Hannah had some problems and Joey became a kind of advocate for her. She didn't do all the things I assumed she would--hire a live in nanny and keep going with all her volunteer work and important meetings. No, she trimmed her lifestyle a bit and focused on Hannah. And it changed things.

They moved a few years ago but I still get the rare email from her. She had to leave for me to get back into parish life, I realize now. Even though babies changed things, we couldn't have managed together.

121/365 Atrium?

"Faustina told me she doesn't think Atrium will continue next year," one of the moms I know in several different circles mentions to me.

"Really? She just got everything set up," I point out.

"She said she can't make the rent."

"She needs to partner with South Side PSR," I opine. "Make it open to all the parishes involved in that endeavor. You know? Even if just for level one--she could have 5 sessions of level one and that would pay the rent."

What I think but do not say: And let my kids go through atrium through confirmation. Please don't close....

But something tells me she'll rely on the Grace of God and won't do any marketing. Like always.

122/365 Homily

Children's liturgy. The woman in charge is up there, waiting for kids to cluster around and then follow her downstairs. But her helper--whoever that was this week--isn't there. And there are too many kids to make this work. I get up. I need to go.

Hildegard catches my eye as we head out. "If Miguel does the homily I'll come get you," she promises. And this lightens my step. I go downstairs and set up the environment for Helen. She has a plan. I listen to readings. I note how our regular kids just aren't a problem anymore. Even the one family of foster children who were, well, difficult to handle even for the strongest teacher-esque personalities there (read: me), have settled down and know the routine.

Routine. That's part of Catholicism. The familiar allows for the moment of inspiration.

I sit in the back of crowd of kids, Maeve next to me. And Hildegard comes in and taps me on the shoulder. I don't pretend. I get up and go upstairs.

124/365 I need some of that peace

I know who's running Children's Liturgy. I see her there, sitting next to Kinnera and Hildegard. I checked last week's bulletin to be sure. And then Fr. Miguel calls kids up.

Jenny, the helper this week, is there, looking nervous. I glance over at Sr. Cheryl, but she just sits. Doesn't even notice. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I get up and join them in the back with a missalette. Jenny leans over to me as we head downstairs: "I didn't plan anything. I'm not the catechist this week."

"I know," I tell her. "Sr. Cheryl is."

"Right."

"Look, I'll get something ready at the table. Go ahead and read the readings and the Gospel and we'll get something together."

The gospel is a harbinger of Pentecost. I leave you my peace. My gift of peace.

So we sit in the circle and talk about peace--inner peace, not world peace. When is your most peaceful time of day? I ask them. And they respond. Mornings. When my sister isn't home. When my dad leaves for work and my mom is in the kitchen. Right before I go to sleep when the nightlight is on.

We pray for relevant things--the people of Haiti, shrimp fishermen on the gulf coast (honest, that wasn't me). And we head back upstairs to the double baptism around the font.

Perfect.

126/365 Zoo

"When you took Leo to back," I ask Mike after church, "did you go to the Utah Vestibule?"

"Nah," he shakes his head. "It's sort of become a zoo for choir folks' kids."

It has.

I go back and forth on this now. I sat back there on Sunday for a bit after Leo got away from me in the pew at the offertory. Dolores' daughter and her two wild ones were back there, their mom leaning against the wall looking tired. The little girl came up to me after I sat down and handed me a book. "Read!" she shouted.

"I'm trying to listen to church. You can sit on my lap, but I'm not going to read," I told her quietly. She climbed up on my lap.

"Read!" she demanded again. Her mom picked her up, embarrassed or at her wits' end (oftentimes, when I'm one, I'm the other as well). They left with her brother to go downstairs instead.

There was a little girl, a daughter of one of the choir members, coloring on the floor and yelling at her little brother. They are Maeve's and Leo's ages. Leo played with the little boy for a few minutes and then sat on the floor holding a ball someone had brought. The two kids' dad was more engaged, but they had definitely come to play. And even stranger, one of my girl scouts was back there. A third grader. Sort of helping out, sort of causing trouble indirectly, playing with the 5 year old girl.

But what to do? Complain? Mention to the girl scout that maybe she should join her dad in the choir? I didn't want to get her into trouble.

"You're Bridgett, right?" the dad asks me.

"Yeah, we've met before," I say, friendly. "At Astrid's houses, halloween."

He nods. Our sons play together a few more minutes there on the floor, and then it's time for communion.

Zoo, yes. Unnecessary cage for children, maybe. Allows some families to come to church? I don't know. I'm torn.

140/365 Children's Prayers

It's not always for their dogs.

I've witnessed a lot of prayer at Children's Liturgy over the past two years. Sometimes it is for their dogs--or for all dogs--but oftentimes it is for things that are so real and important to them it makes my heart ache.

I would like to pray for my auntie who is the hospital with a new baby and the baby is sick.

My brother is going to Iraq.

We should pray for the people of Haiti.

My mom's dad is really sick.

My Aunt Mary fell off a cliff and got really hurt (it turns out, after I asked the mother, that this happened 20+ years ago and everyone involved is fine now).

My mom and dad because they're not living together anymore.

I'd like to pray for my new baby brother.

I want to pray for her new baby brother, too.

Let us pray for people who don't have place to live when it's so cold.

I want to pray for my family because we might have to move.

My friend Brittany at school? Because her mom died.

Today is my mom's birthday.

For my mom who just had a baby.

My dad to find a job because he lost his and needs a new one.

For my dog. And for all dogs. And all pets. And other animals, like in the zoo.

Let us pray to the Lord,
Lord, hear our prayers.

160/365 Utah Vesti-friggin-bule

The law of unintended consequences is at play here.

One thing, a minor thing, but still a thing that I always liked at our parish is that we didn't have a cry room. We didn't have a glass-walled piped-in-sound enclosure for mothers and infants to sit and sort of be a part of things. And because we didn't have that, babies were a part of our community just like everyone else. Yes, an unruly toddler would be taken to the back, and a crying baby would be handled out in the vestibules. But there was no assumption that children would be neither seen nor heard.

As time went by, though, and more children did appear in our church, the Utah Vestibule was set aside as a place for a mother to sit with a tired crying baby. A place for toddlers to look around for a moment as a distraction. Still a part of the community, still seen and heard, but a nice place, cleaner than before, without dangerous mechanical objects or giant statues or dead plants in the way.

Then a member of parish council made the suggestion that the room be made into an even more child-friendly space, with gates at the two doorways and a rug covering the tile floor. I saw this and thought, that is really smart. That way, a wriggling toddler could be placed on the floor a minute to walk around but not be able to run up the aisles and disturb everyone else. I thought it was so nice that we had this spot, not a cry room but still a place to go. It seemed brilliant.

But like all technical and scientific advances, there were unintended consequences. Through the winter and spring, it became a place for the choir to dump their children--with spouses or babysitters, but there were too many older kids. Kids brought toys and threw them around or fought over them. Cabinets got opened and the contents dumped. Food came and got ground into the rug. Children hung on the gates and squealed.

I began to notice more and more mothers of small babies, the ones who used to go back to that room and nurse or rock, were standing in back instead. I wouldn't go in with Leo unless it were empty. Fathers took their young toddlers out onto the front porch, or downstairs to the basement.

I walked in today, and there were four kids already there, before mass began. One was the wife of the parish council member. The other was the choir babysitter with two children of one of the choir members and one from another (the "babysitter" is actually the wife of one of the singers--not like a teenaged girl or something). Two of the kids, though, were 5, and had taken the furniture apart to build a fort.

I'm a teacher and am not afraid to call out errant children, even in front of their caretakers. This does not make me popular, but it keeps me sane. I told them they weren't doing the right thing, and I rearranged things so that this wasn't her playroom. They had brought lots of toys, and the babysitter explained to me that she had brought even more to leave here in the room for future children. So the floor resembled a sloppy daycare room and Leo proceeded to fight over a puzzle piece with one of the other toddlers. But that didn't bother me as much as the 9 year old who just walked in and started playing alongside the other school aged children, or the two boys who just showed up, with no parents, and started climbing on the gate.

I shooed them away, but they came back after I'd had enough. The family whose baby was baptized today showed up in back with their older child, and a few other children from their entourage. Adults sat around and chatted. There was no connection at all to being at mass. A traditional cry room with piped in sound would have been better. The kids reached critical mass, and I walked out with Leo to pace in back instead.

Gone was the distraction and in its place was a noisy mess. My father commented to me on his way out after mass that he probably could find a cheap swingset to stick in there if we wanted to. He had been sitting about 6 pews from the front and could hear it all the way up there.

When you create an attractive nuisance, children are drawn to it. Children weren't drawn to the Utah Vestibule before--it was a place to sit quietly for a moment before moving on to some other distraction. Now Maeve asks me why she can't "go back and play in the playroom" since she has age-peers sitting back there doing that very thing.

Maybe the families of some of those toddlers wouldn't feel welcome if we didn't have a cry room. That's what Astrid suggested to me. But maybe if the whole community realized that children are part of the Kingdom of God, we wouldn't feel like we had to be necessarily separate from the childless adults in the congregation. And maybe there's a way to make a room like that work--maybe limit it to toddlers and babies and their parents only. Maybe take away the gates, or the rug, or both. Make it less like a family room in your basement and more like church.

I walked up to Fr. Miguel after mass and expressed my annoyance. He put it back on me (fairly): how do we make the change, how do we educate or dictate or whatever needs to be done to make the place welcoming to parents of somewhat unruly children without creating a loud and obnoxious nuisance that draws in older children and parentless children to come play?

I'm thinking about it. I think taking the gates away would be a good start--as nice as they were when Leo was by himself or with one other child back there, they make the room an easy place to dump your kid and stand around and chat. Simply taking the gates away would make it far less attractive, and maybe make parents realize they need to do more with their kids at church than just bring a bunch of toys and let them jump on the furniture.

It's like free parking. Everybody likes free parking. Can't get enough of that free parking, and so there's never enough. But if you charge people to park, then some people will walk or ride a bike. If we build a room designed like a nursery that takes away all adult responsibility, tired parents are going to drop that responsibility like a hot potato. But the room pre-gates was never treated like that. You could nurse a baby back then without being disturbed. A parent and toddler might wander back for a minute to sit and look at a book, but parents had to be engaged because they were, essentially, paying for parking--it wasn't a free ride. Parents of seriously unruly children would have to take them outside or hold them in back like I had to with Leo today. Parents won't see those gates and think "I'll just let my kids wander back there and play."

Because this was, yikes, totally over the top. And I know the child-free amongst the congregation heard all that noise and were not impressed. Critical mass, like I said. We need a better way.

161/365 Gate Keeper

I do want to say, just to say, that when it was first put together, I was all for the little toddler spot back in the Utah Vestibule. It's only in recent practice that it has really gone downhill.

But in other news, I got this mysterious email today. It was a reply to all, from one of the children's liturgy folks, to all the children's liturgy folks. It said she wouldn't be attending the meeting tomorrow.

Which puzzled me. Do I have a meeting to attend tomorrow? Hmm.

165/365 New

Mike's grandmother died in February, 2004. Sometime later, once it was summer, we went over to her old house down in Cairo to look over things, see if there was anything Mike wanted. This is a hard place to find oneself as an in-law. I barely knew this woman and here I am being asked if I want this or that. I want nothing that will cause a rift between my nuclear family and any of yours. But since Mike refused to have an opinion from afar, we went over there one visit to Cairo and looked around.

How much everything had already changed. Most everything was gone, the house was closed in and hot. Mike sat down and went through dusty books. My mother-in-law offered us a quilt made of double-knit, total kitsch from my point of view 40 years after it was made. Trip Around the World. Of course I took it.

They were trying to get the house ready to sell. Eventually it would, only to have tragedy strike the family who bought it. It wound up on the auction block and sold again for a shockingly low sum. Another Cairo house to fall to pieces. Nobody in the family had enough money to keep it up simply as an ode to idyllic childhood. Already in 4 or 5 months it needed a great deal of upkeep, compounded by several decades of benevolent neglect.

Sophia was just turning 3. I was pregnant with Maeve, having a hard time breathing in the stuffy house, no windows open, no air conditioning on. I was ready to head back out and sit in the van, wait for them to come out with their books and odds and ends. Sophia holds my hand and asks,

"Why did Grandma Stout die?"

"Oh," I sigh, "because she got very sick. She was old, Sophia. And old people die."

Her little brain worked on that a minute and then she answers, "But we're still new, aren't we?"

"Yes, Sophia, we're still new."

168/365 Hallelujah

Baby I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Why did he live alone before he knew you?

Well, it's just really something in the song. I guess he's just saying he knows what it's like to be alone.

But alleluia is a song of praise. Why come it's a broken alleluia?

It's hard to explain, honey. It's just, really, I guess it's just hard to sing praise sometimes.

But why? Why would it be cold?

Sophia, it's really just a grown up song. It's hard to explain.

Then why is it on a kids movie?

Now, that is a question I have too. I don't really know, though.

I just don't think an alleluia can ever be broken.

You're right.