Nicole

My friend Nicole died yesterday.  A little less than a year ago, she delivered her third baby a bit early.  It was then that doctors discovered a particularly agressive and incurable cancer.  Quickly, it became apparent that instead of a babymoon, Nicole would spend her baby's first year planning to die--and planning her children's childhood in a way few of us ever do.

She set about to leave her three children--a four-year-old girl, a two-year-old boy, and her new little girl--little pieces of heart for every occasion she could imagine.  She asked for my help collecting a huge assortment of books.  She wanted books for each birthday, books for each sacrament, books for the first day of kindergarten, of high school.  She tried so hard to think of every possible time in a child's life that he might miss his mother and to have a book for it. Stop for a moment and think of those books.  Which ones would you include--living books that would live on in your place? Each one, she inscribed.  Her bedroom began to look like an Amazon.com warehouse. And with every day, every box delivered, she weakened.

She fought so hard for the simple things.  A couple of weeks ago, she told me story of her little boy, who had gone for a walk with his dad to get ice cream and stopped to pick her flowers on the way home.  She cried as she said, "I just wanted to see him lick that cone. I'm not asking for big things; it's all the little things I want to have and hold."

Today, do the little things.  Pick your very favorite story off the shelf and read it with your child safely in your lap.  And then have an ice cream cone together.

Please pray for the soul of Nicole and for her young family.

To Do This Year Before Michael leaves for college

A "short" to do list for the next year.

1.  Get Michael to teach me to program the TiVo.

2.  Get Michael to teach me to load and change CDs in the disc player in the new car.

3.  Get Michael to teach me to do more than "point and shoot" with my camera.

4.  Get Michael to teach me to reconnect the computer after the cable blinks out.

5.  Get Michael to teach me where the vacuum repair shop is and who the guy is who knows him by name there. (I've never been.)

6.  Get Michael to teach me to change the ringtone on my cell phone.  Though I may never want anything different...

7.  Get Michael to teach me to to program my cell phone.

8.  Choose a design for the kitchen table, so Michael can work his magic again.

9.  Get Michael to adjust the weight set for me before he goes.  I don't want it to grow lonley in his absence.  Though I'm not sure I can bear to be down there without him...

10.  Bookmark the Reading site so that I can read daily updates, since Michael won't be home to keep me abreast of Bobby's news.

11. Take lots and lots of pictures and video of Michael with the new baby.  This is the only year they will all be together under my roof.

Don't miss this one

I started my morning blog rounds at Donna's, read this and can't stop crying.  Don't read it before church or you'll have to stop to fix your makeup.

Rosary Addiction

A few months ago, a friend suggested we pray a daily rosary.  Actually, she suggested a fifteen decade daily rosary.  We were both tired, frustrated and stressed to the limits.  We had exhausted all the typical remedies for this state of being.  Veterans of this Catholic home education large-family lifestyle, we tweaked our diets, our exercise plans, our chore systems, our sleeping (well, we tried), our school plans.  We both changed parishes (we live two time zones apart but somehow we both were in the wrong church). All the tried and true remedies for burnout and frustration were failing us.  As our families grew and our children got bigger, the stakes went up.  We recognized that nothing on earth was "working" to gain for us that much needed peace.  Our souls were restless indeed.

All of this we shared with each other.  We hashed out all the usual solutions, we swapped meal plans and chore plans and lesson plans.  Independently, we took it to prayer.  That's when she came back with the absolute certainty that she was supposed to pray a fifteen decade rosary every day.  And she was pretty certain I was supposed to do the same.  Only glitch was that she had this revelation while I was reading Rosarium Virginis Mariae.  I was increasingly sure that I was supposed to shower my soul with the light of those five Luminous decades as well.  Fifteen for her, twenty for me.

I bought a CD so that I could turn driving time, walking time, bed time into rosary time.  Really, the Holy Spirit did the pointing and clicking this time.  I bought Praying the Rosary with St. Therese of Lisieux.

This beautiful CD has it all.  Lovely Gregorian chant in the background.  Soothing voices of prayer.  And every Hail Mary is preceded by a quote from the Little Flower.  Those quotes have worked their way into my soul, they are becoming me... or I am becoming them. Either way, through the powerful intercession of the Blessed Mother, that elusive peace is happening. 

My daughter, always looking over my shoulder as I blog, objects to the "Just for Mom" category.  She reminds me that she hears the CD all the time, too.  And she is increasingly devoted to both the Blessed Mother and the Little Flower.  Those quotes are touching her.

My friend and I exchange emails, coveting each other's decades.  All is not peace and green pastures.  Life is still happening.  And it is really, really hard sometimes. There are days when I beg her to offer all fifteen of hers to me and days when I reciprocate. We rarely pray the whole thing at the same time; instead we snatch decades throughout the day.  And maybe that is better, kind of like booster shots for the soul. We've shared some pretty amazing success stories. And we're both pretty sold on the power of ALL those decades.

I am from

Rebecca and Lissa inspired me to try my hand at this.  The template linked at Lissa's blog makes it really simple. I found the exercise of writing it very thought-provoking.  I'm going to have my children give it a try!

I am from...

I am from bicycle helmets long before they were required by law, from Garanimals, and much-coveted Limited jeans.

I am from many different houses, none very far from a Naval base and always on the road to the beach, where we would stop every day at a roadside stand for fresh peaches and “squirty tomatoes.”

I am from the seashore, the rocky Newport cliffs, the cabana at the beach, the sand dollars of South Carolina, the swimming lessons with Grandpa off the coast of Long Island.

I am from pumpkin bread at Thanksgiving and always talking with one’s hands, from four generations of Lizette, Lisette, and Elizabeth, all of them teachers and sticklers for style.

I am from stand up straight, act like a lady, and keep your house clean.

I am from a mother and grandmother who believed in Catholic education and spoke with perfect grammar.

I’m from a Naval hospital in Rhode Island and a frequent childhood visitor to other antiseptic corridors, my head wrapped in bandages.

But I am rooted in Italy, dripping with olive oil and smelling of basil, recognizing much too late the rich heritage of many great aunts, all of whom talk with their hands and smell like tomatoes and basil.

I’m from waving cloth diapers from those rocky cliffs while Daddy’s ship pulled away into the vast sea, from visits with Nanny where I ate blueberry breakfasts in a Clorox-clean kitchen, from playing house—and dreaming dreams-- for hours with my little sister (and only constant childhood friend), if only to keep her from running down the street, wearing nothing but a wig.

I am from a storage room on St. Dennis Drive whose shelves were lined with canned tomatoes and homemade strawberry jam and are now dissembled and dispersed, sending wedding dresses, spelling bee ribbons, and fading pictures of gap-toothed girls at Disney to homes in houses bigger and fuller than those we ever dreamed, homes, that, surprisingly are much too far from the sea.