Light and Momentary

Et Verbum Caro Factum Est

We went to St. Louis over the weekend, and I will post again soon about all the fun we had.  But this is a post about a change in our weekend plans, and an exhortation:  if you are anywhere near one of the venues of the remaining Tallis Scholars performances, go now and buy a ticket.  Stop reading this post -- go buy a ticket.  You can work out the details later but you have to see this group.

We first heard a recording of the Tallis Scholars when we were engaged and we have been partial to their music ever since.  While he was reading the St. Louis paper at our friends' house on Saturday, Elwood saw that they were performing in the St. Louis Cathedral on Sunday night and asked if we could work out a way to go.  It didn't seem very practical.  What would we do with the kids?  If you don't quail just a little bit at the thought of occupying four boys out past bedtime in a strange city, you're made of sterner stuff than I am.  But it was the Tallis Scholars, and so we bought a ticket.  I'd see the first half, Elwood the second.

And here is where words fail me:  I wish I had never used the word "exquisite" before, or "sublime," because then I would have a word to tell you what it was like.  I've used those words about chocolate cake, though, and as good as chocolate cake may be it doesn't come close to this music.  The concert was astounding.

Spring is my favorite time of year and St. Louis was blooming:  bright forsythia, lacy fruit tree blossoms.  It's such a fitting time for Holy Week, when it seems as if the rocks cry out, pointing to the one who says, "Behold, I make all things new." To be in that beautiful consecrated space, hearing those voices singing Holy holy holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory -- indescribable.

Sunday was the feast of the Annunciation, and so the concert was especially well timed.  I always think, on March 25, about the eternal possibilities amid the quotidian, about the ways I can say in my mundane tasks, Be it done unto me according to thy word. It goes without saying that the Tallis Scholars were amazing technically.  As a speech pathologist with an interest in vocal music, I can tell you what was happening physically during that concert:  which muscles were responsible for adducting and lengthening the musicians' vocal folds, how the ossicular chain in my ear carried acoustic information from their vocal tracts to my cochlea. But I cannot explain how it stirred my soul.  I am still thinking about the mystery of mortal bodies with eternal souls, and about the gift we have been given in being able to bring beauty into a broken world.

I went outside at the intermission and Elwood asked me how it was.  I started to cry.  The boys all piled in around me, asking me why I was crying and patting whatever parts of me they could reach.  I felt like a dork for crying, but I couldn't stop for a few minutes.  I was crying because it was over, I told them. (To which Elwood generously said, "You could see the second half instead of me if you wanted." I told him, and I'm telling you, Go.) I told them I was crying because of the purity of the voices and the complexity of their interweavings, because it was so beautiful that it made my heart literally ache. But I think I was mostly crying because for almost an hour I was surrounded by lush and ethereal voices proclaiming the majesty of God.  It was, I think, a foretaste of what heaven will be like, and the memory fills me up with hope, and with yearning.

That's My Boy

Joe was telling me about preschool.  "Miss Linda asked us what dairy products we could name.  I said, 'Milk chocolate!'"

The Mom at Joe's Preschool

A couple of you asked to hear about the mother at Joe's preschool but I have worried a little about telling the story because I do hate the whole mommy wars thing.  This woman went back to work full-time when her daughter was eight weeks old.  For about a year, from five months to eighteen months or so, this little girl sobbed heartbroken sobs when her mother left.  She would be okay when the mother looked back in later, so the mother concluded that the daughter was trying to make her feel guilty.

Now the context:  I was talking about how Pete had been really clingy that day, and how I had been feeling uneasy about my decision to be away from him part-time.  She might have thought her story would make me feel better.  But instead it makes me sad.

We mothers are so quick to point fingers at each other:  I've seen a pediatric resident (and mother) call it child abuse to decline routine vaccinations, and I have a non-vaccinating online pal who calls it child abuse for a mother to work the hours required of pediatric residents.  My definition of child abuse, personally, is more along the lines of putting a cigarette out in a child's arm.  So my intent is not to trash this woman, not to say, "Can you believe the insensitivity! The lack of awareness about psychological development! And whatever else might, if exclaimed loudly enough, dampen my own feelings of ambivalence about being around less for Pete than I was for his brothers!"

When Alex was a baby people told me I stayed so close because he was my first.  When you have more you'll be dancing out the door if somebody offers you a break, they said.  But the truth is that I like to be near my kids when they are small:  it's what I do.  Except now I don't.

Pete will be two next month and I am away from him about ten hours a week.  (The employed moms among you are rolling your eyes about now, that I am feeling angst about ten hours a week.)  But I just this minute put my finger on the problem (thank you for your patience while I dithered on and on up there):  I'm on the cusp here.  I think it makes sense for me to see these kids in this new job of mine.  I think I can do the work reasonably well, it's very flexible, the money's good, and we need a little more income.  But once I start (and therapy appointments begin this week) I will have a commitment to these kids.  I won't want to bail on them but I don't know how it's going to go, having a job and four kids and a fun little part-time doctoral program on the side.  Maybe that's why I'm nervous.

And maybe, even, that's why Pete is more anxious about our separations.  He's teething, too, which is never good for a toddler's disposition, but kids are little anxiety sponges and I bet that's part of his trouble.  So maybe I will say, "Okay, God, I think this is what I need to do, but Pete needs to be all right with it for me to be confident in that decision."  And we'll see what happens.

This ended up being way more about me than about the mom from Joe's preschool.  But hey, the power of blogging -- I feel more settled. I'll keep you posted.

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

The boys have swimming lessons on Wednesday afternoons, and lately I've been running during Alex's lesson while the three younger boys play in the childcare room.  Yesterday I dropped them off and said, "I'm really not sure how Pete is going to do.  He's had a clingy day.  Please overhead-page me if he has any trouble -- I don't want him to cry." 

There's a window between the childcare room and the track, and four laps later I saw him standing alone by the door -- I knew he was saying, "Mama? Mama?"  Two laps after that I saw him crying in a staffer's arms.  A lap later I stopped running and went to get him.  He was red-faced and wailing;  the staffer said, "Oh, he's fine."

I understand that they deal with a lot of parents who don't want their workouts interrupted, who are irritated if they're summoned to come get a crying child.  But if I say, explicitly, "Please let me know if he's unhappy at all," is that complicated? 

I wouldn't even be posting about it except for the comment:  "Oh, he's fine."  You know, in my little corner of the world, fine ≠ crying inconsolably.  If she had said, "I was going to call you in three more minutes if I couldn't settle him down," I wouldn't be grumpy about it today.

This was going to be a longer post -- I was going to tell you about the mother at Joe's preschool whose theory is that kids only cry to make us feel guilty, and not because they're actually sad -- but Pete is still pretty needy today.  And it would be the height of irony for me to keep telling my own unhappy child to go entertain himself so I could complain dramatically about all the people in the world who don't CARE that young children have REAL NEEDS etc.  So I won't.  Off to hold my little guy.

More Appreciative Sniffing of the March Air

Everyone around me is complaining about the change in daylight saving time, but I love it.  I love it love it love it love it.  It makes my soul sing and my appreciatively sniffing nose twitch like the nose of an eager bunny in a salad bar.  It says, Spring! The winter is past the rains are over and gone --all in one enthusiastic burst of run-on-iness.

Hm.

I am eating just a leetle ice cream because it is Sunday and Elwood P. brought home some very delicious toffee ice cream with a caramel ribbon and those tiny chocolate cups with caramel filling.  Yum.  Perhaps the sudden inrush of sugar has gone to my head.  Perhaps I should go eat the rest so it doesn't tempt me during the week, yes?

Probably not.

Anyway, my seminar project is just about ready to go -- I need to do some last-minute tidying tomorrow morning and send it off.  I started my job at last (delay caused by scheduling problems with the first family on my caseload + bureaucratic state gov't hassles with a change in my paperwork) and I'm excited.  Tomorrow I will also need to see if I remember how to dictate an evaluation report.  Here's hoping it's like riding a bicycle and not like throwing a bowling ball.  Though maybe if I had ever really learned to bowl I would not find it so painful to pick up a bowling ball again. ANYWAY.

Huh, wonder if there is a bad blog writing award that pays attention to things like starting and ending the same paragraph with anyway, a word (an adverb? anyway is an adverb, yes? must be) used to obscure the sad realities of incoherent sentences and unwillingness to bother with transitions.  I suppose someone looking for bad blog writing could find lots and lots of things to keep her busy besides anyway abuses.

All right, friends (first typed that as "frineds" -- who's got a good definition for a frined? sounds to me like some kind of Middle Earth creature), I am taking my slightly spazzed-out self (this is the flip side of SAD, see; the spring sunlight revs me right up) off the computer.  Gute Nacht.

Waving From Inside My Cave

A couple of weeks ago I was Overwhelmed, capital O.  I had eight things to get done by today, each requiring hours to complete.  (In a few cases it was hours as in two -- plural but just barely.)  My professor gave us a one-week extension on the last and largest task, and the other seven are done.  Done well, even.  Huzzah!

Today was the last meeting of my Other University seminar.  Today I also met with my project director, who says I'm "very close" to having a draft ready to give to my committee.  Huzzah huzzah!

I still have to hunker down and get this final project finished, but I am feeling much better.  Warmer temps and sunshine help too.  Picture me standing in the doorway of my cave, sniffing appreciatively at the early March air.  I'm turning around now, to head back inside and get some work done (I suppose it's a pretty technologically advanced cave, if it has electricity and a high-speed internet connection), but I'm getting there.