Good show!

Despite the fact that we had company all weekend - not only my sibs for Thanksgiving and Friday, but a couple of Navy families on Saturday and a couple of church/school families on Sunday - we did get to watch a couple of movies. The new Star Trek was family fare - other than one skipped scene, which caused us to miss a rather important plot device in the interest of preserving what's left of our kids' innocence, or at least what's left of the space in which they know more than we'd like them to know, but neither they nor us want to admit.  I've never been a Star Trek watcher, even though at our first meeting my husband and I talked about the (3-4?) episodes we'd seen. Why this made us fall in love with each other is a profound mystery. Destiny? Providence?


But this movie made me want to go back and watch old episodes. The acting and special effects put Star Wars to shame. How Star Wars became so much more popular is also a mystery. Marketing?

The other show we watched is now on my list of favorites: Gran Torino. Even though the acting was stiff, the language obscene, and the special effects non-existent, the story outshone the technical flaws. The overtly Christian message makes me surprised the movie got some critical acclaim.  Or maybe it didn't, and I'm imagining that it did because this movie was recommended by several friends.  Maybe I loved this movie so much because the crotchety, blunt old man reminded me of my beloved grandfather, or maybe because this story of an old man's discovery of meaning at the end of his life gives hope.  Or maybe because you grew to love the characters enough to feel both the pain and the joy of the sacrifice.

A Yankee does Southern Style Thanksgiving

In 13 years of marriage, I have never hosted a family Thanksgiving dinner in our home before this year. I've cooked a couple turkeys at the grandma's houses, and once 10 years ago I made a turkey dinner 2 weeks before Thanksgiving for our then small fam and a couple single sailors when my husband was going to be deployed on the real Thanksgiving. So when my little brother and his family said they would drive a really long way to spend Thanksgiving with us, I got a little excited.  Wanted to do something special, so decided to try to prepare some Southern delicacies, even if I'm not sure if I really like them.

So we had turducken (note to self: buy a meat thermometer instead of cooking 10 hours to make sure everything is dead):

Collard greens sauteed in bacon grease (note to self: grits are good with butter and cheese, but not on your collards.)

Cornbread oyster stuffing (I think my proportions were a little off; or it's obvious that I like cornbread  better than oysters):

Of course we also had the staples: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (yellow and white mixed together), green bean casserole, clover leaf rolls, and cranberry relish and sauce. My kids and husband all like these terrible cinnamon apple rings that are only in stores this time of year, so we had those, too. But the best part of the meal were the pies: sweet potato, pumpkin, Jefferson Davis (a meringue topped confection with a cream, raisin, pecan and brown sugar filling), and a most scrumptious buttermilk pie.

We had to take a couple of walks after all the sugar.  Good excuse to try out the macro on my new camera.

Someone really enjoyed the leftovers.

Catching up with last year's Oscars *(spoiler alert)

I knew when putting the DVD in the player that Slumdog Millionaire was going to tug some heartstrings but end with triumph.  I've seen the Jai Ho dance enough times to know that it celebrates the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, of love over all odds, of destiny/providence over evildoers standing in its way, but when we were finished watching the movie I felt deflated, instead of heartened.  The guy wins a million dollars and all his problems are solved? What about the mafia members and the people who knew him in the slums? I was glad the movie ended when it did, because I was afraid the next scene was going to be him getting mugged and maimed, and the girl killed.  Or does he take his money and build houses and clean up the slums - or give it to Missionaries of Charity?

Not that I didn't like the movie. Great mix of classic themes in a new setting. Great cinematography and acting. But there's a part of me that wonders when you see documentary-style films about poverty, or any suffering, what is the person behind the camera doing to help? What is the person watching doing?

Bright Spots

Although it's been somber around here with my husband gone, my dear friend sick, my sister's familial drama, pets dying, and the news depressing, there have been some light moments:

Watching an osprey feed over the bay the past couple of mornings.

Photo from wikipedia. More at cornell's bird id page

Picking up what looked like a dead box turtle on a walk and finding out he is still alive and now is recuperating in our laundry room.

Our shy friend models his scars on the dog's carpet square. My other carpets don't look quite that furry.

Listening to my kids profess their love for their teachers. Yesterday afternoon, my kindergartener called me by his teacher's name and then said "That's okay, I call her mom. That's because I love you both the same." (I took this as a compliment.) Then my second grader and my 3 yr old (who only sees her at drop off and pick up) both piped in that they loved her, too, along with the 2nd grade teacher, the computer teacher, and the art teacher.  If I'm not going to homeschool, at least my kids' teachers are loving, if they are so loved in return. 

Watching a mother fix her daughter's smudged mascara. At the library. At pre-school story time.  This girl couldn't have been more than three and was probably less.  Wish I had a photo. At least I had a smile. Southern Belle in the making.

Catching the Gestalt Gardener on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.  I find myself mesmerized listening to this guy with a truly Southern name, Felder Rushing, talk about gardening in the South.  And he has some great photos of bottle trees and garden hearts on his web page, where you can see photos of him (also at MPB), but he looks nothing like his voice.

Photo by Felder of a bottle tree at the Shed, a bbq place not to far from us, and one of his photos of heart shapes found in gardens.

Waking up to the peaceful sleeping face of a petite little girl who has creeped into my bed sometime in the middle of the night.  She and her siblings seem to know when there is extra room. And warmth.

Small things to add to that gratitude list.

Change is on the way

So now it's not that important to get mammograms and pap smears any more? What other routine tests are the medical associations going to backpedal on recommending in order to make public healthcare more affordable?

Not that I'm one to go in for routine testing myself, even though I had a fibroid adenoma removed when I was in college.  Some of the recommendations do seem like overkill, as do the recommendations for vaccinations (Gardisil mandatory - really?), and the prescribing of antibiotics for every little fever, ache, and chill.  But the timing of these announcements seems disingenuous.

Aren't there any better ideas for reforming health care instead of handing it over to the government?

Prayer request

A dear friend of mine just emailed me with news that she has terminal cancer. What started as renal cell carcinoma last May has become liver cancer.  She is married with 5 children at home and one in Heaven.  Our kids match up in age, and used to go to school together when we lived in Illinois, but we both started homeschooling at about the same time after we moved.  They are still homeschooling with the help of a tutor - a gift to have the kids close at this time.

They asking for the intercession of John Paul II using this prayer:

O Holy Trinity,
we thank you for having given to the Church
Pope John Paul II,
and for having made him shine with your fatherly tenderness,
the glory of the Cross of Christ and the splendor of the Spirit of love


He, trusting completely in your infinite mercy
and in the maternal intercession of Mary, has shown himself
in the likeness of Jesus the Good Shepherd
and has pointed out to us holiness
as the path to reach eternal communion with You.


Grant us, through his intercession,
according to your will, the grace that we implore,
in the hope that he will soon be numbered among your saints.

Amen.

That he may seek a miracle for KH

An Encomium to My Sister

It is a truism in my family that my sister has been known for going a step too far. She likes to push conversations to points where people in the room feel slightly uncomfortable, and she is good at knowing what will make others squirm. But this trait is probably what makes her writing so powerful. She takes an image, a scene, and cuts out the extraneous details to focus on something (likely to be something thorny and uncomfortable) that is universally familiar, and then she ties up her story with a moment of personal metanoia.


Occasionally she has written about our family, and the thought crossed my mind that it would be interesting to tell a counterpoint version to her experience, but then I realized I lacked her courage to pinpoint the truth, as well as her gift to craft a well-written blog post. She has a writer’s knack for bringing life to her words with imagery and insight to her readers with well chosen phrasing, although she might leave out some details in preference to others, or embellish some facts. In one jocular reply to a commenter, she claims she can't tell lies. As a child, this was because her dimple always ratted her out when she tried to lie. As an adult, she doesn't lie, but edits her experiences, retells them in the distinctive voice of her online persona, and focuses on her spiritual dramas to craft interesting, enlightening, and well told stories.

I hope she continues to tell them, even if they may not always be what we want to hear.

Cultivating nobility

I 've heard it said that the South was a feudal society that not only suffered from the wrongs associated with that society, slavery, but also mirrored its cultivation of nobility. Returning to Southern lit as a reader for enjoyment rather than as a reader for a grade, I realize that I can never really identify with some of these characters who have "help" around.  I don't have any housekeepers, gardeners or cooks, and don't know anyone who does or did have them on fulltime bases.  I feel sorry for Benjy getting stuck with Versh and Luther all the time, but I feel sorry for them, too, getting stuck with him, and I'm not sure I'm supposed to.  Does keeping help around the house emphasize nobility, a kind of elevation and separation from all the lowly around? Does having lowlies around the house make moms and dads feel noble? If I'm not paying my current "help", does it still make me seem more noble? (I do reimburse with wii and computer time...)

Tragicomedy or Comedic Tragedy?

One difficulty not often commented upon in the health care debate: the ease with which the government can be defrauded. At a recent wardroom social, talk turned to Katrina and its damages. The chaplain’s wife told about a man she met through an outreach ministry who was still living in his car since Katrina. A couple of other wives, who were here during the storm, quickly pointed out that he must have mental problems and didn’t know where to look for help, because help was everywhere – along with people taking advantage of it. Not only was there corruption among the government officials, but also among the government beneficiaries. When the Red Cross handed out cash, people went through the line several times, claiming to have lost their ID. Some military members stationed here accepted a displacement allowance but forgot to mention to the government when they returned home, so they continued to receive the allowance. When the government announced it was going to try docking pay to recoup its lost funds, the outcry was so severe and the process so daunting that it gave up and let people keep their ill-gotten gains. Another story was told about a pharmacist who received all her payments and allowances from her insurance company and the government, but then she decided to apply for a grant for upgrades to her property. She was sent $92,000 to make her house look pretty after it was rebuilt with insurance money.



I suppose with all stories of generosity and largeness of heart that go along with natural disasters, there are an equal number of stories of greed and debasement.

Post in which I quote someone else who knows what's going on since I don't

Is it obvious from my many blog posts that my husband is out of town, and I have no warm body to talk to? He is off to Afghanistan to make sure everything is ready for his regiment’s deployment there in a few months. I usually don’t have too many worries when he is travelling, but I made the mistake yesterday of googling the province he is visiting and noting a number of recent bombings.

Humbug.

A friend sent a copy of General McChrystal’s recent remarks about the Complexities of Afghanistan to the International Institute of Strategic Studies on October 1st.  Here is a clip:

a.The delicate balance of power

I arrived in Afghanistan in May 2002 and I have spent a part of every year since then involved in the effort. I have learned a tremendous amount about it and, every day, I realise how little about Afghanistan I actually understand. I discount immediately anyone who simplifies the problem or offers a solution, because they have absolutely no idea of the complexity of what we are dealing with.

In Afghanistan, things are rarely as they seem, and the outcomes of actions we take, however well-intended, are often different from what we expect. If you pull the lever, the outcome is not what you have been programmed to think. For example, digging a well sounds quite simple. How could you do anything wrong by digging a well to give people clean water? Where you build that well, who controls that water, and what water it taps into all have tremendous implications and create great passion.

If you build a well in the wrong place in a village, you may have shifted the basis of power in that village. If you tap into underground water, you give power to the owner of that well that they did not have before, because the traditional irrigation system was community-owned. If you dig a well and contract it to one person or group over another, you make a decision that, perhaps in your ignorance, tips the balance of power, or perception thereof, in that village.

Therefore, with a completely altruistic aim of building a well, you can create divisiveness or give the impression that you, from the outside, do not understand what is going on or that you have sided with one element or another, yet all you tried to do is provide water.

b.COIN mathematics

There is another complexity that people do not understand and which the military have to learn: I call it ‘COIN mathematics’. Intelligence will normally tell us how many insurgents are operating in an area. Let us say that there are 10 in a certain area. Following a military operation, two are killed. How many insurgents are left? Traditional mathematics would say that eight would be left, but there may only be two, because six of the living eight may have said, ‘This business of insurgency is becoming dangerous so I am going to do something else.’

There are more likely to be as many as 20, because each one you killed has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong. It does not matter – you killed them. Suddenly, then, there may be 20, making the calculus of military operations very different. Yet we are asking young corporals, sergeants and lieutenants to make those kinds of calculations and requiring them to understand the situation. They have to – there is no simple workaround.

It is that complex: where you build the well, what military operations to run, who you talk to. Everything that you do is part of a complex system with expected and unexpected, desired and undesired outcomes, and outcomes that you never find out about. In my experience, I have found that the best answers and approaches may be counterintuitive; i.e. the opposite of what it seems like you ought to do is what ought to be done. When I am asked what approach we should take in Afghanistan, I say ‘humility’.

I’ve had a sense of guilt for some time that I haven’t sent my husband on a deployment recently like most other Navy wives. Sometimes I exaggerate the length and frequency of his many planning operation trips in order to feel like I’ve had my share of hardship during the War on Terror. Operation Enduring Freedom. But now my turn to suffer is fast approaching, and as we prepare our wills and update our insurance policies, I’m more and more hopeful that this may be the only deployment to the Middle East that we’ll have to endure.

More high school reading

Watched Field of Dreams with the kids on Friday. They were bored at the beginning - only the older 2 care anything about baseball - but once the ghost players appeared, their interest picked up. The subtext about the reclusive author Terence Mann started a conversation after the show. When Kevin Costner's wife stands up at the school board meeting and makes an impassioned defense of Mann's book, I was worried a minute – wait, who is this author? How did I miss this guy? Kids asked about him, so we hit up trusty Google and found he doesn’t exist. Phew. I thought I had missed something.

But what I missed the first and only time I saw this movie was the implications of the wife’s speech. When I saw this movie in high school, I probably cheered the wife on. But now as a parent, I pause. I wouldn't support government censorship, but mostly because I think the government will censor the wrong things. On the other hand, I don’t think school kids should be handed every book that is praised as a coming of age manifesto. Mann apparently is based loosely on J. D  Salinger. Catcher in the Rye is a book for adults who have already lost their innocence, not kids who are still trying to figure things out. Why not feed them more challenging books with rich vocabulary, more complex characters, and longlasting value? Make them read the classics they won’t have time or desire to read on their own. They’ll find Catcher in the Rye on their own; it doesn’t need to be assigned in class.

Then again, I can see an argument for knowing what books are being talked about, what books people are interested in,what books have influence.  But how many high school students have critical skills to discern good writing from popular writing?

I suppose I should add Catcher in the Rye to my to reread list, because all I can remember of it is Holden's self-absorption and visit to a prostitute.

Why read about where you live?

From Welty's "Place in Fiction":

"It may be that place can focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its gaze to point. Focus then means awareness, discernment, order, clarity, insight -- they are like the attributes of love. The act of focusing itself has beauty and meaning; it is the act that continued in, turns into meditation, into poetry. Indeed, as soon as the least of us stands still, that is the moment something extraordinary is seen to be going on in the world."

and

"Location is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief and moral conviction that charge out from the story in its course. These charges need the warm hard earth underfoot, the light and lift of air, the stir and play of mood, the softening bath of atmosphere that give the likeness-to-life that life needs.  Through the story's translation and ordering of life, the unconvincing raw material becomes the very heart's familiar. Life is strange. Stories hardly make it more so; with all they are able to tell and surmise, they make it more believable, more inevitably so."

But sometimes, especially after long interstate drives past the same restaurants and billboards, I am afraid that places are losing their identities, paving over paradise, etc.

Then again, what place but the Gulf Coast would put a Walmart, Waffle House and Shell Stations on beachfront property?

Another list, to be continued

I started reading The Sound and the Fury again, in my attempt to reacquaint or newly acquaint myself with the literature of Mississippi. Despite having such a boggy, backwoods reputation, the state has certainly outshown my homestate of Indiana in producing literary stars. Not that Hoosiers are known for being particularly poetic, considering the best known poet of Indiana is James Whitcomb Riley, whose poetry is rarely found in collegiate anthologies, but can be appreciated for its dramatic effect.  Lew Wallace had a home near where we were living in IN several years ago, so I finally read Ben Hur and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost was a favorite when I was in middle school; I should add it to my reread list.

On that list: in addition to Mississippians (and children's books), I've been trying to reread novels or authors I liked to try to remember why I liked them.  My adolescent reading was centered around reading a list of "classics" and "recommended for college" books that I plowed through without direction to get to the end of the list. The Sound and the Fury was one of these books, and a book I've read about more than I've spent time with. Faulkner has premier status among the American canon, and although I could tell you why others think so, I couldn't tell you whether I agree, except to parrot what I can remember of the lectures of Dr. Cowan, the mythological Southern Lit professor at UD.

So now I'm trying to figure out the chronology of what Benjy/Maury is perceiving.  This subjectivity of time reminds me of what my sister-in-law told me about 2012 and Mayan calendars, which led me to compare it to Pope B's description of the nature of time/eternity in The Spirit of the Liturgy. My head is starting to spin with the remembering.

But even though reading S and F is slow going, Faulkner's genuis is evident. What inspired him to take this perspective, and to take the risk of writing this back and forth chronology/ point of view that has been mimicked, often poorly (The Help comes to mind), ever since?

Other novels I relatively recently reenjoyed:
The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter
Cry, the Beloved Country
David Copperfield
Pride and Prejudice
Abel's Island
Mystery and Manners
Short stories of Eudora Welty
The Great Gatsby
Brideshead Revisited
A Severe Mercy (not really a novel, but...)

Wanting to reread:
More Faulkner
Tennessee Williams
Richard Wright
Shelby Foote
Walker Percy
My Antonia
To Kill a Mockingbird
Kristin Lavransdatter (if my lost copy ever shows up...)
Howard's End

But with all these good intentions, I sat up reading Matthew Pearl's latest, The Last Dickens, last night.

What everyone is talking about it seems

The health care debate makes me feel like hiding under a rock. I am against a single payer insurance system for efficiency reasons and because I don’t want to pay for someone’s abortion or other morally problematic procedures with my tax dollars. But I am a recipient of government healthcare as a dependent of a member of the military, and it hasn’t been all bad.

Granted, there are not many people who love Tricare, the military insurance. But there are also not many people who opt out of Tricare unless the dependent spouse works for a place offering a better plan, and there are a lot of retirees who prefer it. I complain about long wait times and subpar care, but I haven’t yet opted out.


Here is what we get with nearly costfree government care:

• Tired military doctors and nurses. There are a few good ones in the system who are beneficiaries of the free education, but they seem to drop out and join civilian life as soon as they can. My worst experience was my last delivery when my baby was nearly born on the floor because the staff was unprepared. I happened to be triaged at shift change, and apparently no one was checking the lady having her sixth kid. Guess they thought I could do it alone. One of the attending residents had never seen a natural birth.

• Trouble getting claims filed: During another pregnancy, I had to resubmit a claim for maternity care over and over because the civilian doctor didn’t want to reclassify the visit, but Tricare would only honor the claim if it billed a certain way.

• No continuity of care. I am constantly repeating our medical history. Blessedly, we don’t have any chronic problems that require special attention.

• Long wait times. When a trip to the ER is free, people take advantage of it. On our last trip for stitches, I was glad I had the GermX with us because everyone in the waiting room was there with the flu. Maybe because of the Swine flu, people are anxious, but didn’t you used to just sit at home and wait for the flu to be over? Unless you’re dehydrated, do you really need to see a doctor to be told you have the flu and to get a prescription for Motrin? The system is abused because it’s free.

• Long wait times to see a specialist. Apparently this has gotten better, but you still have to jump through hoops to see the kind of dr you need to see. And now there's a bill proposing cuts to the amount Tricare reimburses civilian doctors, which mean fewer will accept Tricare and fewer appointments will be available.

If you don’t mind waiting for appointments, for prescriptions to be filled, for test results to be returned, and you don’t care if your health care providers are grumpy and treat you as a number, you won’t mind government healthcare. There’s a part of me that feels like health care has become too luxurious anyway. When the private hospitals offer labor suites with fancy coffeemakers and gourmet champagne dinners after baby is born, and ultrasounds are ordered up every month, but people still sue their doctors when their babies are born with disabilities, you don’t wonder that the insurance business costs keep going up, and malpractice coverage keeps going up.

But isn’t there a better way to control the costs without turning them over to the government?

More on dead pets

My sister just told me she disagreed with our death management practices.  Animals don't have souls, so go ahead and put them down, she said.

But my point wasn't that the animal needed a peaceful death experience, but that WE needed a nonviolent one.  If the animal doesn't have a soul, then why worry about its pain? Animals die in pain all the time in the claws of their predators.  But what about the effect of watching an animal die vs. killing it on our souls?

I agree that if your dog has rabies like Ol' Yeller, or is vomiting or excreting all over your house, then you have to put it down. Or if your horse has a broken leg and will never get up again, but will take months to die, then you have to put it down. But our rabbit wasn't a nuisance, so why should we have to commit an act of violence to put it out of its imagined misery?  It would've caused us more pain than watching it die.

It's not easy to kill a pest, let alone a pet.  What would St. Francis say? Swat that mouse, or move it out of the house, like St. Martin de Porres?  While you hesitate, that mouse is growing fatter in your larder, BD . . .

A death in the family

We have a somber household today. This morning a member of our menagerie expired. Rosie, the friendly miniature lop rabbit, is no more. A couple of weeks ago, she began drooling, and I suspected something was amiss. But we were busy getting ready to go to OKC and finishing reading fair projects, so I didn’t call the vet. And she was a hand-me-down rabbit – hard to justify spending $60 for a vet visit. About 2 months ago, I did actually take her to the vet to have her teeth trimmed because she wasn’t chewing on anything. My suspicion is that she developed an abscess or infection as a result of this trimming, and maybe the vet would have discounted an antibiotic. But we didn’t go.

When we returned from our trip, she looked worse: a bald patch appeared under her chin from drooling, and her cheek looked swollen. I finally called the vet to schedule an appointment on Friday. But Friday afternoon she had blood under her nose and was wheezing. She also had shrunk from not eating. I hemmed and hawed about taking her. I didn’t want to pay for treatment for a dying animal. I also didn’t want to look like a bad pet owner to the vet and my kids. After consulting my rabbit killing father, my husband agreed to put her “to sleep” himself. I cancelled the vet appointment.
By the time husband returned home, the rabbit was lying on her side. She looked like she was going to breathe her last any minute. Why knock her head with a blunt object or smother her if she was just going to fade out on her own? The kids all patted her and went to bed bawling about how nice she was and how sad to wake up with one less pet.

But she was still alive in the morning.

I started to feel a little guilty. Should we put her out of her misery? She didn’t seem to be suffering visibly. Neither I nor my husband wanted to be the one to “put her down” with a swift bludgeon to the head. Why is it that we feel compelled to kill animals near death? I try not to anthropomorphize our pets, but if they aren’t miserable, why go ahead and kill them? Is there a little unconscious sadism at work? How many dogs die naturally these days? Of course, dogs start to pee the carpet and get snippy when they are dying. This rabbit was just lying there. And eventually she died, like my 11yr old’s rat, who spent about 4 days shrinking until he finally breathed his last.
If we keep our small pets partly as teaching tools for our kids, they are useful for teaching about caring for the dying as well as the living, a reminder of that forgettable 7th corporal act of mercy. I was a bit squeamish about touching dead things, but my kids reached in and patted the rabbit and carried her out to her grave in the backyard, and wept as they shoveled dirt on her already stiffening body and said a few prayers of thanksgiving for her life.
The younger kids were similarly without fear this past summer when my grandmother lay in her coffin. They reached in and patted her hands and stared and said goodbye without self-consciousness, while I held back and felt awkward standing at her coffin. This grandmother was free with her commentary on the appearances of corpses, and I think she would have been pleased with her own appearance, although she looked thin. May she rest in peace and find happiness in Heaven.

Friday Quick Takes

Some good Christmas ideas from Jen at conversiondiary -- is it already that time?

***

We just returned from a trip to OKC. Another 24 hrs in the car round trip. But this was one of our easier trips: maybe the kids are getting used to getting carted around for days. Movie fare on the little TV included Anne of Green Gables. Even the boys liked it. The tension between Gilbert and Anne is much more thrilling and realistic than Twilight’s Edward and Bella.

***

I didn’t get much reading done in the car because Husband drove when it was dark, and I took the afternoon shift.  But I did get around to listening to part of Walden and then to the Dalai Lama’s book on the Mind and Life, which had been downloaded for me on my ipod by my brother in law.

It has been years since I read Walden, and hearing it made it seem as if Henry David was in the room telling me about his experience. At first I envied his detachment from material goods, but then I grew a little frustrated. His continued insistence that to work is enslavement began to bother me, because work also has a liberating side. Work well done is cause for satisfaction. But then he means more the work for pay done by the people living in the little shanties like the one he buys.

***

The Dalai Lama’s book was definitely interesting. He talks to a lot of scientists about how the mind works. Every time he would say something like “in Buddhist tradition,” I was struck with the similarity between Buddhism and monastic Christianity. From what I can determine, a chief difference is that Christians focus on love for others and transcend suffering by accepting it and trying to see/make something good in it, whereas Buddhists transcend suffering by detachment from the things that cause it. The Buddhist looks within; the Christian looks outward.  Wish someone other than Richard Gere read it; I can't get his smarminess out of my mind.

***

We were greeted at the Texas/OKC border by a huge new casino decorated with facsimiles of famous buildings around the world. It rises up in a no man’s land, garish and glitzy. Like the casinos near my parents’ house and near where we vacation, these casinos, though somewhat remote, have huge parking lots. Here, there are parking garage after parking garage. Where do the people come from?

***

The wedding was one of the least stressful weddings we’ve been to. There wasn’t the rushing to be places on time that seems to accompany weddings. Instead, it was a 3 day series of parties. My biggest stress was fearing that my 5 yr old, the ring bearer, would do something inappropriate during the ceremony.  When he started getting antsy on the steps, his father made him sit down before catastrophe ensued.

***

The second biggest stress was my bad haircut. Why oh why oh why do I always seem to get bad haircuts before picture events? Why are my worst haircuts the ones I spend the most for? Maybe if I spent 45 mins doing my hair, using good products, and a straight iron, I might look something like the stylist intended but instead I look like I have helmet head. Where’s my bandanna?

***

Although the trip was long, and we're still putting away laundry, the time spent with all the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents was worth it. Love those guys. Thankful that we have extended family whose company we enjoy.

Marriage musings

After a whirlwind weekend in Oklahoma for my sister-in-law’s wedding – the last of the siblings to marry – we have been slowed in the return to everyday life by frequent reminiscing about the weekend and about our own wedding. At both, we danced and laughed and ate and drank and enjoyed the party, which lasted all weekend long. This wedding was a reminder of how much we’ve grown up: at my wedding, this sister-in-law was the age of my oldest child. During the couples’ dance when the DJs call out the amount of time people have been married, we were one of the last 5 couples dancing. (OK, this was a small, young crowd.) We were the first of the siblings to get married, so at ours, like at this last wedding, everyone seemed to have a good time without sweating about details.



Blessedly, I didn’t have too many preconceptions about what our life would look like when we got married. A college professor, an emissary of Heaven perhaps, had assigned Familiaris Consortio around the time my dear esposo and I began dating, so my expectations of what marriage should be were elevated. I jumped into marriage without planning where we would live (the Navy would take care of that), how many children we would have (although I think I thought conceiving them would take longer), or caring how we’d earn our daily bread (again, the Navy); I had been inspired by the idea that self-gift was more important than any of these practicalities.

Numerous people told us that marriage was going to be work, that we shouldn’t go to bed angry, and that we’d have to learn to be good at saying sorry. For more than our fair share of years, we honeymooned, wondering what these people were talking about. Marriage was easy! Having babies was a little bit of work, but the marriage part seemed effortless. We owe a great debt of thanks to JPII for these happy years.

But of course, honeymoons don’t last forever, and eventually we had to roll up our sleeves and get to work. I remember reading somewhere during our marriage prep training that the 7 year point is a tough one for a lot of couples, and maybe it was around then that we started to hear about friends’ and family members’ divorces. Is it because people get tired of self-giving? Our biggest arguments haven’t been about large problems but over petty irritations. Does the heart begin to contract as we age? All those passions of youth fade among the dirty diapers and long hours. Maybe it gets harder to make sacrifices because more people are asking you to make them.


When I initially read JPII on marriage, I thought that what would carry our conjoined souls up to God was that euphoric wedding day love, which overflows onto everyone around and transcends all the muck of life to transform it into a mirror of that love. But as these working years stretch, I wonder if it is not also the humbling of self, the slow, chiseling away of selfishness, which, if we dwelled on it too much, could leave nothing but dust. Yet if we keep trying to give, eventually what is left beneath that crust of self will be raised up. Like the widow of the parable, if we keep giving when we have nothing, our sacrifice will be appreciated all the more than if we give of our excess.


In the car I read Eudora Welty’s short story “Circe” about Odysseus’ visit to the daughter of the sun from her perspective. Circe wants to keep Odysseus, alone, with her forever. She intuits that their lives are similarly grounded on passion, and she keeps him in her spell for a year. But then one morning she sees him in a circle of his men, preparing to depart. She begins to understand the mystery of fickle, mortal love. Odysseus will turn his back on a life of pleasure for the sake of his men – and perhaps Penelope? (my own romantic interpretation) Whereas Circe’s passion consumes, Odysseus’ is directed toward the good of his men.


My memory isn't serving me well but I think that Plato says something like this: Where passion turns lovers' eyes so they can only see each other, true friends learn to look out with the same eyes at others.

Thankful for sickness

My kindergartener stayed home from school the other day, after I was shamed by his teacher for sending him in with a cough the day before. So we had a little home school time and discovered a treasure: Crepes by Suzette by Monica Wellington. Suzette owns a little crepe cart she pushes around Paris. Mixed media depictions of famous places in Paris (Notre Dame and the Louvre, of course, and also L’Opera and the Tuileries.) are the background to Suzette’s day as she serves crepes to cartoon copies of personages from famous paintings: Cassette’s mother bathing her child, Mona Lisa, Degas’ Little Dancer, Seurat’s circus performers, and Chagall’s Bride and Groom. I love books like this that combine history and art into a new story.

So after we finished reading we followed the simple recipe in the back of the book for crepes. They would’ve been better with Nutella, but melted chocolate chips tasted awfully good.
Add crepes to my lovelist!

And add sick days to the gratitude list. Nothing like a day at home with a schedule cleared by germs for enjoying a stack of library books.

A good quote

From C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism:


But in reading great literature I become

a thousand men and yet remain

myself. Like the night sky in the Greek

poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it

is still I who see. Here, as in worship,

in love, in moral action, and in knowing,

I transcend myself; and am never

more myself than when I do.

On a lighter note, we just read John Updike's A Child's Calendar.  I could love this book with its delightful illustrations by Trina Schart Hynan providing an appealing subtext about a biracial family who appears to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, judging by the  December illustration. Updike's poems read well and have enough action to keep my 3 and 5 year old's attention. But I realized while reading this, along with other kids' books about fall, that there exists in children's literature a prejudicial preference for a New England/Midwest year: cool spring, warm summer, colorful fall, snowy winter. What about all the kids who live in the south and west? Where's the book about the year in the desert and the subtropics? How do they identify winter if they are looking for snowmen?  Palm trees and live oaks don't turn color.

Counting for something

On Friday NPR did a short feature about the retiring chief of police of LA, William Bratton. He came to LA from NYC, and cleaned up the LAPD’s image and crime at the same time. At his retirement he said,

"I think in my almost 40 years as a policeman, my life has counted for something,"

That statement has been under my skin all weekend. I envy Chief Bratton’s confidence that he has done his job and done it well. I know in my head that raising my children “counts” for something, but parenting is a vocation that doesn’t offer predictable results, and in my heart I wonder if I'm doing my job well enough. I can try to do all the “right” things, and my kids may still become criminals, or, worse, lose their faith.  Or they may just not turn out the way I imagine.  And then there's that tricky question of just what all the "right" things are...

I have to remind myself to surrender my expectations, and hope and pray that the kids at least get the basics: love for neighbor and love for God.

And I have to remember not to measure my “success” as a parent to an image of perfect parent from a magazine or a book. For instance, I finished reading Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods this weekend, and while it motivated me to make outdoor play a priority, it also added to my anxiety about being a good parent. How I can find a time and a place for my kids to build a tree house so that they don’t suffer from nature-deficit disorder? When can we buy a farm so that they learn to appreciate creation and their role as stewards of it?  Have I helped them cultivate a sense of wonder or is it too late?

On the tail of reading about the Trapps, who wandered the mountains and countryside near their home, celebrated feasts and sang prayers together, reading this book has thrown me into a state of mild despair that I am failing to give my children a better life. How can I make their lives richer? Is all the moving around that we do robbing them from a sense of connection with a place called home? Will they understand what it means to be a part of a community? Is my discontent a sign that we need to make radical changes?

Or is it rather a sign that I lack gratitude for what we do have? After the kids went to bed Friday night, Dan and I sat outside on the lanai (southern for patio) with our cups of red wine (don’t like to wash stems) talking about our blessedness. We have had so little real suffering in our lives that we wonder if calamity will strike sooner or later. Our culture is so fixated on avoiding pain that an absence of suffering could actually be detrimental to the soul. (Another anxiety: how can our kids acquire virtues if they don’t feel a little pain?)

One minute I think that all my worries will go away if we just make a few major changes – but the next I realize that most of my anxieties could be eased if I made a few minor changes of attitude. Maybe it wasn’t Bill Bratton’s achievements that allowed him to know his life “counted,” but his perspective.

The affliction is easy to diagnose; the cure, harder to effect.

Another grave

Another cemetery we visited recently was dedicated to the Confederate dead, on the property of Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis's summer home, which was rebuilt after Katrina and recently reopened. Jeff Davis' father, Samuel is buried there. Not sure if this is his original resting place or not. He died in 1824, a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He did not live to see his son elected president of the Confederacy.

Happy All Saints' Day

At the cemetery where I ran yesterday morning, many of the graves were decorated with silk flowers in fall colors: big chrysanthemums, calla lilies, sunflowers. It is a small, well visited place, although there is a corner in the back where a few headstones are stacked, displaced by Katrina and unable to be returned to the grave they once marked. Several of the gravesites have benches, many have small statues of Mary or the Sacred Heart. Most have some flowers, a couple have a teddy bears. I passed one grave decorated for Halloween, complete with plastic black fencing around the plot, fake tombstones, cobwebs, skeletons staked like they were coming out of the ground, and lots of orange flowers. “Tasteless,” was my first thought, until I saw the Hispanic name on marker.




Ah! Now I felt like I had been invited to someone’s party. Had wine been poured out for the dead? Time to go home and make pan de muertos and remind my kids why we celebrate Halloween.