Busy Day
the girl
Spring Monday
We looked out the window this morning to a surprise: the men who'd paved our street a couple of weeks ago had returned to rebuild the now-incredibly low shoulder. After the Boy finished his breakfast, I called him to the front door. His response was predictable: "Wow!" We quickly got on some warmer clothes -- though it was sunny, the temperature was still cool -- and headed out to watch the workers.
The girls, in the meantime, headed down to the trampoline, and soon enough, the Boy wanted to join them. After all the cold rain yesterday, we were all determined to spend as much time outside as possible today.
After lunch, we headed to a local park. The Boy discovered he could literally hang just about anywhere.
Spring Saturday
We feel this way every single spring, the relief that the winter is over, that the cold has passed, that bright sun is the norm. No matter the severity of the winter, we all feel this way, especially here in the South, where we're not really sure what to do with cold weather anyway.
Today was the first warm -- truly warm -- Saturday we've had in the yard. Last weekend we had guests; next weekend is Palm Sunday. From here on out, weekends are not for working in the yard, so we made the most of this beautiful day.
We started with the shrubs in front of the house. The boxwoods are a distant memory, but some of the replacements have not fared well, especially the Indian Hawthorns. We did everything we could, even apparently resurrecting them one spring, but they are stubbornly fragile, so I pulled them out today. Literally -- all it took was some rocking and tugging and out they came.
The Boy came out to help me, but the Girl was still in bed. E showed me how he walks in preschool when they have to be "super quiet." I would imagine he has little trouble following those directions, though: he's so concerned about following instructions that he gets upset now when he sees his schoolmates taking off their shoes. "It's against fire code!" he fusses, echoing what his teachers told the class at the beginning of the year. Thinking of some of my own students' disregard for rules and regulations, I was tempted when he first explained the fire code dilemma, to let him know that once he got to public school, it would become the ironic norm.
The Girl finally woke up, and it was straight to the driveway for racing. She never lets the Boy win, which frustrates him at times, but mostly he shrugs it off. It's difficult to imagine her doing the same thing when faced with a seemingly-endless losing streak, but that's one of the many differences that make them both precious to us.
From the Mountains
The Sleep-over and Aftermath
Burnt Norton
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
Everything I do in life teaches my children something. I try to remember that, but it’s not always in the forefront of my thoughts. Still, whether I remember it or not, such is the reality. How I treat K teaches L how a man should treat a woman, how a husband should treat a wife, and E learns the same lessons from the other perspective. How I respond to disasters, real and imagined, teaches them how they should respond in such situations. Their future, in other words, is contained in our present.
I, in turn, learned how to behave by watching my own parents, and they from theirs. Being human, we sometimes give good bad examples, but that’s part of the limitations of humanity — concupiscence, as the Catholic Church describes it:
In its widest acceptation, concupiscence is any yearning of the soul for good; in its strict and specific acceptation, a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason. To understand how the sensuous and the rational appetite can be opposed, it should be borne in mind that their natural objects are altogether different. The object of the former is the gratification of the senses; the object of the latter is the good of the entire human nature and consists in the subordination of reason to God, its supreme good and ultimate end. But the lower appetite is of itself unrestrained, so as to pursue sensuous gratifications independently of the understanding and without regard to the good of the higher faculties. Hence desires contrary to the real good and order of reason may, and often do, rise in it, previous to the attention of the mind, and once risen, dispose the bodily organs to the pursuit and solicit the will to consent, while they more or less hinder reason from considering their lawfulness or unlawfulness.
A fancy way of saying our tendency toward the less refined appetites in life.
And then there are the other lessons: teaching the kids how to raise kids. Playing with them is always critical, but sometimes those lower appetites get in the way, the selfish appetites, the desire to do one’s own thing because “I’m tired” or whatever silly excuse.
Incomplete thoughts on an incomplete evening…
Free Monday
A Monday with no school means fussing over who gets to help make the coffee, playing school, playing board games with apple and peanut butter snacks, working puzzles, helping warm up soup for dinner, watching the weather for possible ice, and digging out old Pooh Bear costumes and honey.
Field Trip
Last night, L and I went to see the last performance of Matilda the Musical here in Greenville. She’d read the book earlier and was eager to see the show, and K gave me tickets for us as the sweetest and perfectly thoughtful birthday present I’ve received. And so we headed out in the late afternoon and came back in the late evening completely enthralled with what we’d see and talking about what we might see next. (Junie B Jones is coming later, but I think I’ll let K take the Girl for that particular one.)
Ironically, we went on a school field trip to the same venue this morning.
Odd, the difference between taking your own daughter to a show and taking 250+ thirteen-year-olds…
Sunday Afternoon
Serve
"Do you have a sponsor?" A simple question several years ago in RCIA as I moved back toward theism and turned toward the Catholic church. A simple answer: "No." "Well, we'll have Joe C. be your sponsor then."
I'd seen Joe, a tall, lanky gentleman with a clean-shaved head, serving as emcee during Mass, but I had no idea who he was. Shortly after my short response to the simple question, though, I found out who he was. And in talking to him, I found out what kind of man he is. Quiet, humble, kind. A runner who gets up before four in the morning to complete all his rituals -- running, prayer, adoration on some days -- before heading to work, possibly to the 6:00 a.m. Mass beforehand. Always ready to serve, it seems like.
Today, he and seventeen other men -- four men total from our parish -- were ordained to the diaconate. K went to sing in the choir; I went to support my sponsor. Perhaps not as he'd supported me, for he is my elder chronologically and spiritually.
And the rest of the day?
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