Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 75

On The Need For A Recovery Day

Chaos theory! :: Teoría del caos! (Photo credit: Nhoj Leunamme == Jhon Emmanuel)

It started out so well. We’d had two days of solid-packed family fun, with the promise of another coming up on Sunday, and we’d prepped all the kids that Saturday, the day in between, was the put-the-house-back-together day. So while Alex and I mowed the yard, Nicholas helped Christian in the house. When I finished, I grabbed the grocery list, and Nicholas asked to come along.

We breezed through Aldi smoothly. Nicholas loves picking things off the shelves. (Although I did feel an ominous “pop” in my right trap while lifting him to reach something.) He got to push the buttons on the card reader and deal with the deposit quarter on the cart.

stop & shop, west springfield MA (Photo credit: Rusty Clark)

Then it was on to Gerbes, and not one but two different “car carts” were there for him to choose from. We went over to the floral department to watch the woman fill balloons for a bouquet. Joy of joys!–she offered him one! Complete with an elastic wristband so it didn’t have to be tied to his wrist!

Nicholas was in Heaven. He played ice cream truck while I stopped to talk to the mother of a former student. I saw him take the balloon off his wrist. “Nicholas, honey,” I said, “you’re going to lose that. You need to keep it on your wrist.”

“No, I’m just going to hold it,” he said.

And promptly let it go.

Both I and a lovely elderly gentleman lunged for it, but that helium balloon was bent on escape, and in two seconds, it was nestled at ceiling level right above the sausage case.

And the tornado sirens went off. Oh wait. That was Nicholas.

Both adults excused themselves hastily, and I bent to hug and comfort my four-year-old. But he was having none of it. Blood-curdling screams. Ear- ripping, throat-tearing screams. I sympathized. I got stern. And then I realized it wasn’t going to stop. I had three more items to get, so I took off.

He leaped out of the moving cart and hurled himself on the floor. I twitched toward him, and as if in warning, my shoulder twinged. Okay, so I couldn’t wrestle him out of the store. Now what?

The saving grace turned out to be his terror of being left behind. If I just took off, he would leap up and run screaming after me. But whenever I stopped, he was back on the floor, screaming “I WANT MY BALLOON MOMMY!” Hands down, the worst tantrum I have ever experienced in my whole parenting career. From a 4 1/2-year-old.

We got to the front and he flung himself on the floor in the main aisle. I had to grab him under the arms and drag his preschool bottom across the tile so he’d be out of the line of traffic.

And that was about the time when I thought, “We really need a recovery day.”

When Alex and Julianna were babies, I had a strict policy of scheduling a recovery day after any overstimulating day. When we went to St. Louis or did a lot of errand running, the next day we stayed home and took it very, very easy. Books, low-key outdoor play, and long nap times. No big agenda. Just recovery.

Somewhere along the way we stopped doing that. I remember thinking, “Uh-oh, I have stuff scheduled two days in a row.” And it must have turned out okay, because the farther into parenthood we’ve gone, the more things have gotten scheduled back to back. With four kids that’s kind of the reality. And anyway, these days staying home means they’re at each others’ throats, which isn’t much of a recovery.

But Nicholas going nuclear reminded me of the value of such a day. We (speaking globally now) have this idea that we have to push, push, push. And sometimes we do. But then we get into the habit of looking for things to push toward. And sometimes you (to say nothing of kids, who have less coping experience) just need a chance to breathe, for crying out loud.

Well, Michael and I got that day yesterday. Christian and the other three didn’t; they went to a baseball game and were playing hard for twelve hours. (Unlimited carousel rides at the ballpark, baby.) When they got home last night, Nicholas was crying about his feet hurting. He was completely shot, again. And unfortunately, today can’t be a recovery day. We have well-child checks for the two older kids first thing this morning, and Julianna’s glasses have been awaiting pickup through all the days of our out-of-town adventures. (Didn’t I mention Michael SNAPPED THE EARPIECE IN HALF last week?)

A great illustration that there’s good ideas, and then there’s reality. But I think we will take it easy the rest of the day. They’re going to need it.

Sunday Snippets

It’s time to get together and share posts with other Catholic bloggers at RAnn’s Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival. I actually was pretty Catholic in my blogging this week…..

A Ministry Manifesto–I would love it if people would share this post.

Thomas Merton on Politics

Four Kids, One Cousin and Two Farms in Seven Quick Takes…in which my most-commented-on “take” was about 1st Communion dresses.

Four Kids, One Cousin and Two Farms in Seven Quick Takes

(The world’s all-time record for a long blog post title?)

___1___

I practiced flute for half an hour in my bedroom at my parents’ house yesterday. Now, if you’re much of a musician you probably know that not all rooms are equal. Acoustics make playing in some rooms a pleasure and in others a chore. If I’d ever stopped to think about it I’d have known my carpeted basement lies closer to the latter than the former, but it’s the space I have and so I use it. My childhood bedroom, with its hard wood floors and un-fussy decor, felt like a concert hall. I was disappointed at being called away after only half an hour. (Which was in two parts, btw.)

___2___

We were at my parents’ because it was their 43rd wedding anniversary. Everybody tell them congratulations!

___3___

Mom pulled out her wedding gown. In the box she also unearthed my First Communion outfit. Which reminded me of my greatest childhood drama. (Prepare yourself.) When I was in the second grade, my mother told me First Communion was becoming too much about vanity, so I wasn’t going to wear a fancy white dress. I was extremely bitter, because not only was I the only girl in my entire class who didn’t wear a white dress and veil, I was the only one of my SISTERS who didn’t get to wear a white dress and veil for her First Communion.

I held this against my mother for years, until I’d been through a few First Communions as a liturgy director and decided the vanity factor is wwwwway out of hand, and these dresses are completely ridiculous. Then and only then did I discover that it wasn’t her idea in the first place, it was the teachers’.

Looking at my outfit–store bought, by the way, which says something about how bad my mom must have felt, because she never forked over the money for storebought us clothes when we were little–brought every twisted emotion I have ever felt on the subject roaring to the surface.

Now, how can I be so bitter about not having gotten to wear a fancy white dress and, at the same time, be irritated with the money-vanity factor of First Communion fashion today?

(My mom’s answer: “Then you reacted like a child, now you react like an adult. And it must have been a very deep hurt.”)

Here’s the outfit…we put it on Julianna. She fought me all the way getting it on, and then refused to take it off, even though it was way too big.

___4___

Once my sister and her son arrived, Mom sent the kids outside to pick blackberries. Alex’s comment was priceless: “These are TOTally SOOOO not storebought.”

Of course, the real attraction of being in my parents’ back yard was the big round hay bales beyond it. All four of my kids had to go out and touch one.

I had a strong memory of Finding Nemo.

___5___

Then we went down to watch my dad moving slats out of the hog barn, which is being repurposed for storing miscanthus bales.

Alex wanted to take a ride on a slat. Julianna hid behind her aunt as long as the tractor was running.

Then Dad turned off the tractor to say hi to the kids, and Michael dashed in. It took him all of five seconds to go from standing by me, relatively clean, to getting oil on his hand.

___6___

Which was followed in short order by a trip into the haybarn-turned-machine shed. While my sister and I were waxing reminiscent about jumping off piles of hay bales, Michael got on Julianna’s bad side and got pushed to the ground. So now he had oil on his hand and thick dust on his bottom and his belly.

___7___

We followed this up with a trip to another farm that raises chickens, goats, and a llama. We got to feed them peanuts. At least, Alex did; Julianna and Nicholas wouldn’t dare, but Michael had to be dragged away screaming. He thought it was hilarious. The owner let Alex and his cousin milk a goat. All I can say is that I have a real sensitivity problem with dairy operations, wholly stemming from the manhandling of the mammary organs. As a nursing mother emeritus, I spend the entire time wincing and feeling violated. I know. It’s psychotic. The farm girl can’t handle hearing about or watching animals being milked. Well, we didn’t have a diary when I was a kid.

Anyway, we got good and dirty, which meant…what, do you think? That it was a great time to go to Great Grandma’s assisted living facility for an ice cream social, of course!

Bonus: For those who don’t read all the time, take a look at this post, if you will, and consider sharing. Ministry is so important, and every parish lacks for volunteers because people think they aren’t good enough or don’t have time. This is my attempt to make a dent in that!

Thomas Merton on Politics

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Deutsch: Zeichen 283 StVO, sog. “Absolutes Halteverbot”, fotografiert in Heidelberg (Baden-Württemberg, Deutschland) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some words of wisdom from Thomas Merton for your Wednesday. I put these quotes together from two different chapters of “New Seeds of Contemplation,” in which he is addressing “The Moral Theology of the Devil” and “The Root of War is Fear.” His context for the latter is the Cold War, but all of these paragraphs seemed to me to speak eloquently to the political and social dysfunction in our own time.

As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones. … There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men. They can love or they can hate. Hatred recoils from the sacrifice and the sorrow that are the price of this resetting of bones. It refuses the pain of reunion.

Hatred tries to cure disunion by annihilating those who are not united with us. It seeks peace by the elimination of everybody else but ourselves. But love, by its acceptance of the pain of reunion, begins to heal all wounds.

…Another characteristic of the devil’s moral theology is the exaggeration of all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong. These distinctions become irreducible divisions. No longer is there any sense that we might perhaps all be more or less at fault, and that we might be expected to take upon our own shoulders the wrongs of others by forgiveness, acceptance, patient understanding and love, and thus help one another to find the truth. On the contrary, in the devil’s theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. This does not exactly make for peace and unity among men, because it means that everyone wants to be absolutely right himself or to attach himself to another who is absolutely right. And in order to prove their rightness, they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong. Those who are wrong, in turn, convinced that they are right…etc.

We never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy.

…Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political ideals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideals of our enemies–which may, of course, be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives…

I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together.

(Emphasis mine.)

A Ministry Manifesto

If you only ever share one post I write, this is the one. Because this is important.

We need you.

And yes, I mean you.

You think you aren’t good enough to join the choir. You are. You say you’re tone deaf. You’re not. We’ve known a man who actually was…and he learned to sing. (Sort of.)

We are better when there are more of us. We blend better, we carry better, we are more confident, we worship God better when you are with us, even if your voice is only so-so, even if you can’t read a note of music. I thank God for each and every one of our core members, but all of us know we are better when there are more of us.

You think you don’t have time, that ministry is a drain on your time that you can’t afford. But you will receive as much as or more than you give. Christianity was never meant to be practiced in isolation. Those who give of themselves find that the community gives back many times over.

But even if you’re not called to minister through music, you are called to minister in something else. The value of lay Eucharistic ministers and lectors is self-evident, but the basic ministry is hospitality. When you come to church, whose is the first face you see? The person who can stand at the door and smile and welcome their fellow worshipers is the person who sets the tone for the day. If a hospitality minister breaks the ice for you, it empowers you to sit in community with someone you don’t know. It enables you to reach out to the person beside you in the pew and welcome them in turn.

All our gifts support each other. My husband and I can’t lead our community in sung praise when we have a toddler running around, dive bombing microphone stands and yanking on cords. Two weekends a month, we sit in the assembly with all our kids, but on our choir weekends, we depend upon the people who volunteer in the nursery. They make our ministry possible.

As Catholics, we don’t talk enough about the impact we have on each other in worship. Our tradition focuses on the vertical plane, and there’s a sense that it’s sacrilegious, too touchy-feely, too “horizontal” to acknowledge that our role is important, too.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that the music or the hospitality is the point of Mass. But we must recognize that if the liturgy is the spiritual food that sustains Christian living, then the way we interact with it–both what we give and what we receive–is part of the equation.

The liturgy engages the senses because we are souls enfleshed. We experience the world through our senses and through our emotions. What we put into to church matters. What we experience there matters, too. If we sit in our invisible box, pretending it’s just “me and Jesus” (or “me and the Eucharist”), pretending we have no responsibility to and nothing to receive from those around us, we’re deliberately cutting ourselves off from a source of grace.

If we want our Church community to be a force for good in the world, we actually have to be community. Faith is not lived in a vacuum. Far too many people simply show up on Sunday, expecting the Church to check off their little box and consider their obligation to Christian living fulfilled. If you want to be a real Christian, you have to give of yourself. If we’re going to spread the Gospel, we have to spread it to people.

We need each other. We need you. Yes, I’m talking to you, not the person in the next cubicle, not the person who has more time or more talent. None of us actually have time for ministry. We do it because we recognize that we have gifts that can serve the community–and through it, God.

So here’s my challenge. If you aren’t committed to a ministry, call up your parish today and ask where the greatest need is–and sign up!

And if you recognize your parish in this, share this post. I never say that, because it feels bigheaded, like I think my little corner of the blogosphere is the center of the universe. But in this case, I’m willing to take the risk. I’ll make it easy. See that little “share” button at the bottom? Hover over it and see all the ways you can share it.

God is the source, the center and the end point of our worship, but that doesn’t mean He has to do all the work. If we expect to build the Kingdom on earth, we have to do something about it ourselves.

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

–Teresa of Avila

In Which I’m Rediscovering A Piece Of Myself

Sometimes I forget how blessed I am that what I do and who I am are the same thing. I may have a crazy-busy life with too many irons in the fire, but if you were to boil me down to the essentials, you’d be left with wife, mother, Catholic, creator. With very few exceptions, what I spend my days doing is who I am.

Not everyone gets to say that. A lot of people enjoy their jobs and are very good at them, but very few people get to go to work to do exactly what they would do anyway, because it’s who they are at the core.

Photo by Bookmouse, via Flickr

A few weeks ago I set a goal of preparing a recital. Out of all my “irons,” my flute playing has been the one that’s fallen by the wayside. The chops you need for playing church and weddings just aren’t the chops you need for playing Lieberman and Ibert (the centerpieces of my senior and graduate recitals.) So I haven’t had a lot of motivation to keep up the daily habit. But the creative muscle you exercise is the one that produces, and besides, there are little flurps in my playing now that nobody else can hear, but that drive me crazy. Fingers that don’t want to lift in unison. Lack of fluidity. Uneven, unpredictable tone quality. The only remedy is regular practice. But I’m spread too thin to be able to practice just because. Ergo: a recital.

I did pretty well as long as I was discerning a program, but then I started trying to figure out how to prepare an hour’s worth of music when I only have half an hour to forty minutes a day.

My head nearly exploded. I know how to prepare a recital with four hours’ practice a day. Forty minutes of tone study. Run the scales. Do an etude. Then pick one piece at a time and spend the last two hours thusly: hit either the problem spots or run it through for musical phrasing and endurance. That’s how you prepare a recital.

On half an hour a day? I got nothin’.

I stopped practicing altogether for about ten days.

And then I took myself in hand. Pulled out a piece of paper and started a practice log: what pieces, what movements, and what I’d worked on.

I’ve practiced 3 hours and 40 minutes since the 24th of July. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. But it’s regular and anyway, it’s all the time I have. Getting downstairs for ten or fifteen minutes, as I did a couple of days, and digging in on one small spot, is better than deciding it’s not worth it at all.

It hasn’t been as productive a summer as I’d hoped on the writing front–I set my expectations pretty low, and managed to undershoot them by a mile–because with my mix of kids who need naps, kids who think they don’t need naps, and kids who are clearly too big for naps, I have virtually zero undistracted time. It is really hard to focus on putting words, themes and concepts together when you have a constant narrative of bickering and barely-comprehensible shouting and Christmas songs and “Twinkle Twinkle” in the background. (To wit: at present, Michael’s on my lap grabbing for the mouse, putting his hands on top of mine and pushing the keyboard platform in and out; Nicholas is singing while moving his tongue back and forth across his mouth, and Julianna’s shouting “Alee! Alee!”)

Flute practicing, though–that I can do with kids around. I can’t hear everything, but I can hear enough for what I’m working on, and a lot of it is in the feel, anyway.

Why yes, I can in fact read all those ledger lines at a glance.

And it feels good. I’ve missed this part of myself. There’s a particular warmth in the hands and the lips after I’ve practiced, the warmth of small muscles well exercised, and the hum in my veins, as if my blood is carrying music around my body, filling me up until my whole person hums with it.

It hasn’t translated to musical output yet (i.e. composition), but mostly I think that’s because I don’t have time to sit down at the piano. When school gets back in session, two of the kids will be gone altogether, and another will be gone two mornings, and Michael will still be napping twice a day. Until then, I’m just trying to get done what I have to get done.

To keep myself honest, I’m going to report in periodically–probably mostly via 7 Quick Takes. Hold me accountable, people. And if you’re one of my local readers, come hear me play when the time comes. It’ll be sometime next spring.

Program (tentative; also not the most ambitious ever, considering I’ve performed two of these before, and another is high school level. But hey, it’s a place to start):

Carl Reinecke: Sonata “Undine”

Paul Hindemith: Acht Stucke

Maurice Ravel: Piece en forme de Habanera

Ernest Bloch: Suite Modale

Pierre Sancan: Sonatine

Sunday Snippets

It’s time for another round of Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival, hosted by RAnn of This, That & The Other Thing. (She’s a great book reviewer, by the way. If she gives a book an “A,” go get it.)

For Sunday Snippets I’ve always shared everything I write, because I figure that faith underlies all my reflections, even when they aren’t overtly about things Catholic. But I’m starting to feel like I’m cheating, so I’m going to pick and choose a bit more.

One not-overtly-religious post I think people of faith might find interesting is about maintaining weight loss. Because let’s face it, there’s no weight control without self-control, and there’s no such thing as self-control without God.

And here’s one for moms who have reached their breaking point.

Here’s the followup post, which actually does talk about a book club at our parish, too.

Finally, just for fun, Julianna & co. made an appearance in a short story this week. Care to speculate how much of this story is fact and how much is fiction?

Mostly Michael (a 7QT post)

___1___

It seems to be one of those universal truths of parenthood that when you reach a frustration point sufficient that you break down, everything automatically gets better afterward. Maybe it’s because of hormone shifts. Or maybe it’s because when you break down in the presence of your kids, it puts the fear of God into them and they shape up. In any case, whatever the reason, it’s been a much better week. Michael gave up being stubborn about the toilet and is in full-on, extremely successful toilet training mode. Despite his lack of words, he’s even telling me when he’s gone. (It’s in the tone of voice.)

___2___

Last night when I was getting him back in his diaper for bedtime (hint: toilet training seems to work better if you just remove the clothes altogether!), I was nibbling on his nose, and he was giggling about it and signing “more.” By the time we were finished, I’d chewed on his thighs and belly and arms and ribs and cheeks and pecs. That giggling is more addictive than baby skin itself, and that’s saying something. And I thought back over all the times someone has countered my I’m-overwhelmed-and-all-these-tiny-kids-are-driving-me-crazy moments with You’ll-miss-these-days-when-they’re-gone. I said to Michael, “Now this I admit I will miss!”

(Because even chewing on 4-year-old Nicholas, when he permits it, just isn’t the same. Boo hoo.)

___3___

This weekend is Christian’s birthday, and that means ice cream pie. On the way home from choir practice this week we were discussing what flavor he’d like to have in it, and we got to talking about a really interesting/funny thing that happened the last time we got both our families together. We had two choices for ice cream. One was black raspberry-dark chocolate, the other was some chocolate peanut butter concoction. As we went around the table asking who wanted what, every single person in his family asked for the raspberry-chocolate, and every single person in mine went for chocolate peanut butter. In my own little family, everyone went for chocolate raspberry except me, because I don’t like chocolate and fruit together. Now there’s gotta be a whole study in nature vs. nurture contained in that anecdote.

___4___

I got stung by a wasp last week and it itches like the dickens.

___5___

So we realized this week that there are six Avengers and six of us. Halloween is decided. Now we just have to settle who gets which hero. Exhibit A: A few Christmases ago my mother gave Alex an Iron Man helmet that talks when you touch the “ears,” and when you put that with the well-worn Iron Man costume, it has become hot property in the house. Exhibit B: The other night we were watching the final battle scene from The Avengers. The Hulk appeared and flung his arms out and went, “RRRRROOOOOOOAR!” Nicholas leaped off the couch, flung his arms out and yelled, “RRRROOOOOAR!” And then Julianna flung her  arms out and went, “RRRRAAAAAAAHR!” which was the funniest thing of all.

Meanwhile, Michael was in the corner like this:

The best part? Well, there are two. #1: We cannot convince him to put it on any way but backwards. #2: He sticks both hands out, palms flexed, as if he’s shooting pulses or rocketing. This kid is only twenty months old, people. That just makes me laugh!

___6___

We found out this week that Alex has been accepted into EEE, which is a sort of gifted program done through the public schools. He didn’t make it in the last time he was tested, so I’m pretty thrilled, because I’ve heard nothing but glowing praise of this program.

___7___

Okay, to end on a more serious note. Christian and I participated in a book study at our parish this July. The book was Matthew Kelly’s The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic. Aside from wishing he’d stop wasting words saying the same thing three or four times in a row, it was a very interesting book. 7% of Catholics do 80% of the work in any given parish, his surveys indicate, and those people have these traits in common: methodical approaches to prayer, study, generosity and evangelization. So he outlines them and suggests ways to incorporate them in our own lives, with a long-term goal of engaging others so it becomes 8% instead, and thus increase what our parishes are able to do for the world. This week we wrapped up with a really good discussion, and I’ve got something percolating in the back of my mind. Stay tuned.

(So maybe this post wasn’t mostly Michael, after all…..)

Fiction: The Encounter

The trail map claimed it was only fifteen feet’s worth of elevation change from the parking lot to Copeland Falls, but it sure felt like more. Donald felt the weight of every year he’d lived, and some he hadn’t. The insulated backpack bounced heavy against his spine; every step required unreasonable effort. He’d never planned to take this trip by himself. Ellie had seen a picture of Bluebird Lake wreathed in wildflowers, and it had topped her list of trails to hike. But now the loneliness pulled him downward, away from the heights. He wished he hadn’t promised Ellie he’d make this trip, even without her. But today of all days, her absence gaped.

The air was still, the faint warmth of cinnamon and butterscotch wafting from ponderosa pine. The promise of the quiet was what had caught Ellie’s imagination. But as he walked, the roar of water falling emerged from the silence, along with voices, faint, but growing louder every moment. Soon they came into sight: a family, three boys, one of them in a backpack, a girl wearing an oversized ballcap, and their parents. They were moving slowly; in a moment he had overtaken them. He was prepared to pass them without speaking, but the girl, who was holding her father’s hand, turned and spotted him. He had only a moment to process the almond-shaped eyes, the curled ears, and recognize Down syndrome, before her face lit up. “Oh hi, Geepaw, hi!” she shouted, the word “hi” drawn out at either end.

Despite himself, he smiled. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said.

“I be see!” she yelled, thrusting a tiny hand, palm flexed, toward him.

Nonplussed, he flicked his eyes toward the mother, who smiled ruefully. “I be six,” she interpreted.

“Is today your birthday?” he asked, surprised.

“Yah!”

The roar of the falls justified the shouting now. The boys ran to look at the crashing cataract, but the little girl stopped walking as Donald bent down. She clasped her hands in front of her and tipped a heart-shaped face up toward him. Her smile outshone the sun. “Well, I’ll be,” he said. He gestured to the symbol on her hat: an orange circle with a large W in the middle. “Wartburg?” he said. “Wartburg College?”

“You know Wartburg?” said the father. “I work there.”

“My wife graduated from there.” Donald looked up at the man. “Today was her birthday, too.” Ellie had spent her whole life teaching kids like this one to read and write. It all seemed like a little too much coincidence. His eyes misted. “You know,” he said, pulling the backpack off his shoulder, “my Ellie died last month. I promised her I’d have cake and ice cream at Blubird Lake on her birthday. But I’ll bet she wouldn’t mind if I shared it with you here instead.”

*

I had more I wanted to do with this “ice cream and cake” prompt, but I’m out of time and out of words. In case you hadn’t intuited it from the photos and the family described, I based this in part on some encounters we had with other hikers along the Wild Basin trail at RMNP in June. But most of it is fiction. We certainly didn’t have ice cream and cake at Copeland Falls. Although we did have peaches.

The Day After

thank you (Photo credit: adihrespati)

First, I just have to say thank you for your response to yesterday’s much-needed venting. You uplift me. And apparently I hit close to home, because I haven’t had that many hits in a day since I don’t know when. So thank you. For what it’s worth, getting it all out of my system yesterday helped me have a vastly improved attitude. I imagine it also helped that Alex started theater day camp, too, so our house had one less lightning rod for fighting and minding everyone else’s business.

Today I’m directing you to my latest column at Catholic Mothers Online, which is all about saving money on groceries. And I’d really love to know what other people’s tricks are!