Sheer gift

Yesterday evening was a blessing.

The weather was wonderful, terrific for baseball.

When the game began, Mr C came out of the home team dugout to tell me he couldn't go to karate or they would forefeit the game. It has been many weeks since I got to watch the game until it was over. It's been way too many weeks since I had the joy of sitting outside and just soaking up the wonders of spring.

Last fall Mr C was on a team that, even with a few terrific players, couldn't seem to pull itself together to win.

Although winning is still a matter of some hit or miss among fourth and fith graders, it's still nice when you see a team improve, as this one has -- very close to the end of the spring season.

The final score? 10-2, and that included a double by Mr C (a better chess player than he is a baseball player). For this mother, who has felt cheated of almost an entire season of watching her son's evolving boyhood, it was an opportunity to cast off temporarily the personas of priest and writer, cheering and biting my nails and taking my sweaty, hungry son (he'd already eaten) out for pizza and ice cream -- a wonderful feast on a lovely evening.

Technomoron

It was supposed to be a happy day for our little family. Mr. C, his dad and I sat in a pew at our Lutheran church, watching the DQ, robed in white, as she walked down the aisle to be confirmed. I had run in just as the service started with pants for Mr. C, camera and videocam at the ready to catch the service. Other congregants probably looked and me and thought: what kind of a barbarian is she, taking pictures during the service.

They don't know all the many years I don't have on video -- or how clumsy I am. This Sunday, the memory card was filled up. And we didn't have a good view of the sanctuary. Not to mention that Mr C's pants had apparently been baptized in dirt at some previous, pagan basketball game.

What's a mother to do? Overwhelmed by my ineptitude, I cried, in front of God and everybody. Well, especially God. But walking away after communion, watching my lovely child smilling as she sang in the praise band, I thought -- does Jesus care? I doubt it. And if He doesn't, perhaps....perhaps...it's not all that important that my grandchildren' won't have pictures of the confirmation.

Not to mention, that being the Episcopal and Lutheran child of two opinionated clergy, she's being confirmed again next year.

Dogpaddling

There's a certain voyeurism about reading this tale. And yet it's an uncomfortable emotion, like finding out the neighbor next door is having an affair with a fourth grade teacher at your local elementary school.

If a NYT finance reporter, who should have known much better, went under water, could it happen to us? He identifies one of the forces that pushed him under as love, and he should know (more than me). But here's what I think I perceive, too -- the desire to recreate your life, and somehow seal off the challenging remants of the old one, is sometimes too tempting to abjure.

Great quote of the day

"With the movie “Angels and Demons” opening on Friday, he has been
issuing public broadsides and giving interviews on radio and
television by the fistful, pounding at what he says are historical
distortions about the church’s history in the book’s plot. “They even
have a scene where rats eat a bunch of cardinals,” he said. “Can you
imagine any other religion where this would not be viewed as rank
religious bias?”




Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, profiled in the New York Times

A real Steele

Michael Steele (chair of the RNC, not the DNC, in case you didn't notice)is a total loose cannon. Read this paragraph from a recent AP article:

"Remember, it was the base that rejected Mitt because of his switch on pro-life, from pro-choice, to pro-life," Steele said. "It was the base that rejected Mitt because it had issues with Mormonism. It was the base that rejected Mitch, uh, Mitt, because they thought he was back and forth and waffling on those very economic issues you're talking about. I mean, so, I hear what you're saying, but before we even got to a primary vote, the base had made very clear they had issues with Mitt because if they didn't, he would have defeated John McCain in those primaries in which he lost."

Here's the whole article, in case you wish to be further entertained. I know he must drive some of the "base" crazy, but the guy's candor is quite rare in a world in which Democratic and Republic pols (well, maybe not Jim Bunning) watch every word that comes out of their unnaturally whitened teeth because they are so concerned about what some Beltway bloggete will write about them. I mean, Mitt Romney is likely to be a Presidential candidate in 2012. If Steele lasts that long in his post, he's going to have to get his name right...

Small choices towards less stuff

I wanted to contribute to the viral nature of 20 minute (don't say I didn't warn you) video of what happens to the "stuff" we want, and buy, and then dispose of -- it's simple, but powerful -- a kind of simplicity that hits you right on the kisser.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/


You probably won't get rid of your favorite things, but maybe...you'll hold on to that cell until the contracts up (or past the date)...use one water bottle instead of buying 20 at the store every week...store your food in china bowls instead of plastic. One step at a time. I think I better look for new pillows. The DQ says she's sleeping on the floor from now on.

Mothers and aunts

When my grandmother got old, and we didn't feel great about the crime in her neighborhood, my folks and my aunt decided she had to move. My aunt and mother must have worked something out, because we were fortunate enough to have grandma move in around the corner. And then, fairly soon after, my Aunt Jennie left her Flatbush apartment to move to Lincoln Place.

We'd go visit them and drink weak tea, eat cookies, and tease my grandmother, or look at my great aunt's afghans or needlepoint. Grandma was always getting us to sign a petition or take some pamphets on a sane nuclear policy -- her home was a haven in which all of us wildly diverse idionsyncratic nieces and sisters and cousins sat peacably at dinner, trading stories, teasing each other, linked in love. Sibling rivalry dared not speak its name.

If my mother had lived, my sister and I probably would have battled to get her to move in with us. So it is with the women and the few elderly men on that side of our family.

Isn't she lucky to have children who both wish that she'd live with them? said a friend of another, older friend we both think is fabulous. But I think it's more than luck that both her kids would love to have Peg. It is a mystery -- one created long ago, in a mother's compassion, humor, and ability to love through rage and chill and thunder into reconciliation. She is the tie that binds these children.