Whither thou goest, February?

At the start of the year, I thought I might do more reflective writing in this space, and for about three weeks, that was the case. Then time blew February through the doors of the past like the dead leaves of the live oaks that are just now being shed as the new leaves push out the old growth to be blown away. 

February began, as it always does, with the birthday of our third son. It included a trip to Indiana for a family meeting with my siblings, and it ended with a camping trip with my daughter's scout troop. Some soccer and track were sprinkled in.  We hosted a Mardi Gras party/fundraiser for our daughter's Leukemia and Lymphoma Society fundraising campaign which ended with a gala the third weekend of February.  Then Lent began quietly on Valentine's Day, which we talked about celebrating the day before, but we did nothing extraodinary except eat meat and sweets to get them out of the house.

 

February Track Season begins

I have been guilty of acedia this Lent - I haven't eaten meat, but I am not tempted by it. I have eaten sweets on Sundays and sampled some brownies and crumb cake that I made for others - had to make sure they were fit for consumption - so I haven't really craved them other times. And I told myself I was giving up wine and alcohol, also, but I have not said no to a glass of wine here and there at social events. As far as growing closer to Christ through prayer and giving alms, my attempts have been pathetic. On the positive side, I renewed my efforts to finish the Catechism in a Year with Fr. Mike begun last year - only 80 more days to go.  I made it to confession, and I took a wonderful walk in the woods that renewed my spirits and gratitude for the gifts we have. But my prayer life has never been drier. Much like the dead wood I've been cleaning up around the yard this week during spring break, I feel brittle, dessicated, barren. 

That virtue of gratitude does not come easy to me.  One other thing I thought I would try to do for Lent at which I've failed miserably is to cease my complaining about living here and to counter those negative thougths with renewed attempts to journal at the end of the day about the positive things that happened or moments of beauty, thanksgiving, connection. Just writing this reminds me to pick up what I set down a couple weeks ago when grading and communicating with parents increased at the end of the quarter. While I may not be vocalizing my desire to upend our lives to my husband as much this month, it is still ever-present in my thoughts. Two of our neighbors put their houses up for sale in February, and at least one of them has said they have only had one showing since their home has been on the market. This terrifies me. 

Indecision and rootlessness continue to plague me, as well. I have to commit soon either to returning to the middle school or to trying to pick up the classes I had last year at the community college and the other small college where I was teaching. I have enjoyed the day to day interactions with the middle school students. I have hated the grading and paper work and the late nights that steal my sleep as a result of falling behind on those two chores. I like the convenience of teaching where my daughter goes to school and the interactions with the community and the ability to go to Mass an extra day a week. I miss the material I used to teach and the planning of those courses and the interactions with college students. Every day I question how I am spending my days. Are the hours worthwhile? Are tah

This waffling about purpose was not a weakness of St. Francis Cabrini.  Last weekend we went to see the movie Cabrini with friends followed by dinner out with them. We all commented on St. Francis Cabrini's sense of purpose and passion. The movie downplays her religious motivation, but it celebrates her devotion to her orphan children and her determination. Perhaps that is what I should pray for this Lent. And give to organizations that help orphans. Honestly, the movie made me think about foster care again. As my work as a mother has grown less time consuming, if not less heart and head consuming, I have struggled with the best way to fill that time. 

Meanwhile, all of my adult children are convening at my mother and father's for Easter.  I'm full of envy and woe that we are not planning to go.  Our daughter who is a senior is supposed to be running in the Texas Relays on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Half of me wants to boycott the meet for being held on these holy days. If it weren't a relay race that involves other people's children, I would. Another part of me wants to allow my adult children to have their grandparents' love and attention without me there to interject my own need for attention from both generations and to celebrate their desire to spend time with their grandparents and each other.  And really, I'm selfish about time with my own parents, while we should get together with my husband's family. All of our adult children will be here at the end of May for their sister's graduation, but I'm full of self-pity from missing out on the Easter celebration. 

February in Indiana

Ft. Packer State Park

One solution is to be more intentional about planning our travel instead of being so last minute about it. I could be tempted to become a nomad, detach from all our worldly goods, and pack just essentials into a van in which to wander from house to house of those we love. Would they get tired of always providing hospitality to someone who doesn't reciprocate? Perhaps the solution is to find a place to put down roots where everyone wants to come to us. That's my Eldorado - the perfect place. 

 

This is rambling and navel gazing, but in the interest of recording something of life, here it is...

Gala going

Art and Architecture

With another child reaching the second semester of her junior year in high school, talk in our house has turned yet again to college applications.  Like many people this age, this child has mixed feelings about what kind of school she wants to attend and what she wants to study. I have mixed feelings about where she should go as well, since this is our home body child who has travel anxiety. She doesn't like to fly. I could see her staying close to home -- but I'm not sure I want to call this area home for the next five years from now until she finishes college... 

We have some college visits predetermined for us by her participation in track. The past couple of weekends have been spent at indoor track meets, which are mostly at universities because they are the only ones with indoor tracks. It's possible she might get recruited to run track in college - she is running well, but has hit a plateau in improving.  I have all kinds of thoughts about what she should do to run faster, but she doesn't want to hear them.  She doesn't trust that I have some experience of being in her position - which is both true and not true. I don't know her inner resources, her motivation, her anxieties - although I can guess at them. But I do know what it is like to be a runner, to feel stuck, to both hate and love running, to feel performance anxiety, and to feel the exhilaration of winning as well as the intense frustration of not doing as well as you think you could, even if you won the race or came in a close second or third, which to most people is doing well - just not as well as you wanted to run. I know what it is like to have coaches watching your performance, to have your future partially determined by what those coaches decide you are worth to them. To have to decide to make the commitment to run in college begins early - improvement doesn't happen without pain and sacrifice.

My collegiate running career was all a long time ago, and yet it was so consuming, it formed indelible memories. I have hesitated to push her more because I know how obsessive the sport is, and she has to be willing to make sacrifices to continue to do well.  She has hit the point where hard work has to supplement natural talent to a greater extent. I always struggled with this question of whether the hard work is worth it, if you don't have the natural talent to be really great, only pretty good. It is a question any athlete or artist must ask at some point - am I good enough?  It's a perennial human question. 

These meets have given us the opportunity to visit some college campuses, not perhaps ones she is interested in attending, but places that provide an example of what a college in an urban area might look like (University of Houston last weekend), or what a large university in a rural area is like (Texas Tech the weekend prior). During the meets at Texas Tech, I took advantage of the long wait between the time between check in and when she was actually going to run to check out the campus. Texas Tech is located in Lubbock, which is a four to six hour drive from the other big Texas cities - we drove from Ft. Worth after my aunt and uncle's celebration of life, which was a five hour trip and returned to Austin, which took six hours.  It's not a drive with much variation in the scenery - farm land and small towns - but it is a pleasant drive, restful to the eyes and the soul after driving in city traffic, the kind of drive you can get lost in your thoughts on, instead of feeling tense about traffic or road hazards. 

Despite its reputation for being in the middle of nowhere, the campus has appeal. There is a walkable residential/restaurant area just off campus, and the campus itself, although it is so sprawling to barely be walkable, has beautiful architecture and some campus art that is more attractive than a lot of the abstract, discordant art at some other campuses we have visited.  For instance, there is a statue of a man made of books reading a book - perfect for a space in front of a library! - appealing, funny, and a perhaps a commentary on the anxiety of influence - or the comforts of being part of a reading community. I want one! Another statue was of hands cupped as if to gather water for a thirst quenching sip, only instead of water in the hands, you see letters spilling over - language, knowledge! Surrounding these hands at the four compass points are pedestals made of stone books topped with symbols of knowledge - a keyhole, a nest with an egg, a canoe, and I forget the fourth... This arrangement is located in a tree-lined quadrangle of classroom buildings; benches surround the sculpture so students can gather to share ideas, lunch, or some shade.  Also around the campus - a mobile statue of birds flying, a cowboy representing their mascot, the Red Riders - maybe culturally questionable at this moment in political history? - and, my favorite, a sculpture outside the track of a female runner that when viewed at the right angle, looks like she is a flash - see the photo since I'm not describing it well.

There is also a small museum on campus, which houses a mix of art, natural history, and Texas Tech history - sports hall of fame, a timeline of campus, a display of student fashions over the last hundred years.  Next door to that is the Ranching Heritage Center, where you can see how ranch houses have evolved over the years. They have recreated a stick house, a sod house, a wooden house, a stone house, a house that looks like a fortress tower, a house that looks like a barn. You can spend a pleasant hour winding along the path and peeking into these reproductions and imagining what it might have been like to be a pioneer, to live in one of these small homes, to have everything you need in a small space - and they seem more spacious than the tiny homes people design on TV because they don't need a bunch of cabinetry to hide utensils and stuff or big comfy beds - just a corner for a ticking mattress! I thought about Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pa here - each new destination brought a different kind of house. 

I was grateful to find someplace to wander and inspire curiosity, although I don't mind watching races for a few hours either, which I still had time to do - this meet lasted ten or twelve hours.  In contrast, the meet this weekend at University of Houston wasn't as long, but the campus isn't as pretty and the architecture is unremarkable, as well as ununified, while the buildings at Texas Tech belong to the same family of architecture, like the buildings at older universities. It's an urban campus, still sprawling for an urban campus since it's Texas,  My daughter has no interest in either school, and in comparison, she is more interested in a campus like the schools we visited in the fall in Boston - Harvard and Boston College - and the campus where we stayed last summer in North Carolina - Elon. She likes campuses that are contained, as opposed to sprawling, and although she says she thinks she wants to go to a big school, I think she would be happier at a school that is medium to small, so that she feels connected both to the place and to the people. Maybe that's me putting my spin on it. And of course, our first choice is for her to attend a Catholic University, or at least a religiously affiliated school. 

And maybe if she doesn't go to a school close to home, I'll just go to school with her... I always love being on a campus...

 

From a textiles art exhibit at TTU

 

A favorite image from the museum

Student fashion through the ages

Texas mastodon

From the Ranching Heritage Center - the milk house. I wonder how cold it really kept milk in the Texas summer heat.

Everything you need in one room ranch house

A reproduction of a table for a larger ranch with many ranchhands

 

Woman/en running statue in front of the track building at TTU in the day and at night

An attractive doorway on a new building

My dream man

 

The egg of intellect? A statue for eggheads? 

Fulfilling the thirst for knowledge

While we were in Lubbock, they were going to the Father Daughter dance

Happy New Year!

2022 is almost here. It's hard to believe that another year has passed. A sign of aging - the slipperiness of time. Granted this was a busy year, perhaps one of the fullest we've ever had, and hopefully, the busiest we will ever have.  Blessedly, the past few months, although full, have given us time to breath. And although December was busy, it was a very normal Christmas season, almost quiet. We had all the kids home for a few days, which was wonderful. They enjoyed each other's company, and we enjoyed their company. We didn't do much - a light show and concert, a dinner out, a short hike, several delicious meals at home, Mass, gift exchange. We made some cookies for the neighbors, sent Christmas cards, and lounged a lot. A quick trip to visit grandparents and some of the cousins was made at the end of the month. And the two middle kids took off to Germany, a trip with a few bumps, for a week together, and then our oldest daughter will spend the semester there. All in all, the last few weeks were restorative. Now we are ready to start another year. Resolutions coming soon!

Photos of the last two weeks below: