That quote is talking about the Mass. The more immediate reality for me at Mass is that I kneel amidst a bevy of busy boys.
We had a great weekend away. I know that when I visit these friends we will laugh and eat until our sides ache. (Al is the best cook I know and Kate is my funniest friend.) We go to Mass at their church on Sunday morning. Because of the many charismatic Catholics in the parish, the Mass is memorable for its exuberant spirit of praise. It's also memorable for its perplexing proportion of preternaturally placid preschoolers. Where do these kids come from, and how do they sit so still?
When my first son was a baby, the crusty old pastor of our church saw us coming in one morning and said, "You're sitting in the back, right?" I could tell similar stories about my younger sons, but it gets too embarrassing. One of my ongoing questions as a mother is how to impart a love of the Mass to my children. I view it as one of my most important responsibilities, but I'm a long, long way away from the goal. In fact, if birth were Boston and joyful participation in Mass were San Diego, we would be in ugly traffic on the Garden State Parkway right now.
With my oldest son, we tried rewards after Mass when he behaved well. They didn't work. I was on the verge of introducing a complicated earn-a-sticker system when I read Barbara Coloroso's Kids Are Worth It. I decided instead to do my best to set a reverent, prayerful example, and see what happened. I said, feeling ridiculous, "The reward for behaving appropriately in Mass is the satisfaction of having done it." It worked. It was a turning point.
But it was only a beginning. In spite of my determination not to get caught up in the Bad Spiral, in which I get angry and they figure, Hey, negative attention is better than no attention, and I get angrier and they think, Wow, Mom's really red in the face here -- who knew I could do that? and I approach the boiling point and they think -- I don't know what they think because by then coherent thought is beyond me. Mostly I have learned to hop off that ride before the G-forces (G for grouchy) throw me back in my seat and compel me to stay on for the duration. But not always.
There are three things complicating my efforts here. One is that I grew up in a mainline Protestant denomination, where kids were always in the nursery during church. Small children were not welcome until they could be quiet throughout the service. As a result, I have struggled with developing good standards for my kids. How noisy is too noisy? How close to the front do you sit, keeping in mind both that they behave better when they can see and that the aisle gets very long when you are escorting a shrieking child to the entryway during the consecration? (It's always during the consecration, isn't it?) What's the right balance between helping them to settle down in the pew and whisking them out so they don't distract others, especially once they learn that Making Noise = Going to the Back Where I Can Run Around and Entertain the Ushers?
Second: I try not to rely on snacks or toys as diversions during Mass. The bigger boys are old enough not to need them -- I want them to recognize the Mass as a feast, and who brings Cheetos to a king's feast? -- but they can't ignore them if they're available in the pew. Sometimes this raises issues with other families, like the day of my miscarriage when I was crying and distracted and didn't notice Joe moving in on another boy's raisins. "My raisins," shouted the boy. "MO! Mah wah!" Joe replied. [In case it wasn't clear, that's "No, my raisins," and not a plea to go to godforsaken northern New Jersey.] (The next day we were having coffee with the priest after Dominic's burial and he asked us how our kids did during Mass. "Did you hear those kids in the second row yesterday?" he asked. "Well, Father, that was our kid in the second row yesterday." He quickly backpedaled and said that he was glad to see families in Mass, even noisy families, but I'm not convinced that was his original intent.)
Third: I find that church services can be public mothering at its most brutal. Sometimes it feels like everybody's got an opinion on what your kid should be able to do and how you should make him do it if he can't manage independently. I hate that. If someone mutters under his breath, "That kid needs a good spanking," I want to say, "Hey, I am not going to teach my kid about the love of God by whacking him for acting his age," but I also want to curl up in a ball and cry. Because I am trying to get us to San Diego, honestly I am. There is traffic and construction and my kids hate long drives, but I am plugging along the best I can. One way or another we are going to get there, and I would really appreciate your patience on the days when it seems like we're lost in Bergen County.
Some weeks I sit in Mass and pray for humility because my children are frustrating me so much that I can't imagine anything else good coming from the experience. And sometimes there are surprises. Two weeks ago in Mass I was sure that I was an awful mother. I felt that I was failing conspicuously at the most important thing I wanted to do, and I couldn't even look my neighbor in the eye at the sign of peace. She smiled and said gently, "It's okay. We had seven children." She assures me they can all sit still at Mass these days.
While we were at our friends' house, Joe figured out how to put /k/ at the ends of words. He's so pleased with himself. I am, too, but I have one tiny regret. It used to be that when I asked him during the week where Daddy was he would say, "Yurt." (You might remember he has no /w/ and he used to substitute /t/ for /k/.) I imagined my husband telling me that he was heading downtown into his world of market analyses and hedging formulae but secretly slipping off to Mongolia to herd yaks. No wonder his hours are so long! That's a nasty commute right there! These days, though, Daddy leaves for yurk in the mornings -- no more yak-herding for him.
I started this post with angels and ended with yaks. Too bad my husband wasn't herding zebras -- we could have gone from A to Z. I guess A to Y will have to do.
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