Light and Momentary

On Deadline

The fall semester was really hard. I hope I wasn't too whiny here, but it was AWFULLY hard. If I'd had more than one semester left, I would have thought about taking a leave of absence from the program. Or maybe just dropping out.

I knew it would be harder once the baby got mobile. The combination of mobile baby + decreased availability of favorite babysitter + TAing for a class that wound up twice as big as planned when they opened it up to undergrads-- wow, that was a tough combination.

For the first time since I started the program, I found myself unable to meet self-imposed deadlines. I'll get this done by x date, I'd say -- only I wouldn't.

I hate missing deadlines.

I have some more self-imposed deadlines looming, and I am ready to get back into Person Who Meets Deadlines mode. I need to get a chunk of my dissertation written up and sent along to my advisor. (In a moment of madness I told her I'd get it to her by Wednesday.) I need to finish a Christmas gift for someone I'll be seeing on Thursday. (I'm into the toe decreases on the second sock, so I should be okay unless I break my wrist or something.) I have some end-of-year tax stuff to finish. And then I have two non-essential tasks that I'd really like to complete. Every year for the past decade I have read a Dickens novel and a Shakespeare play, but 2009 is rapidly drawing to a close and I have finished neither. It seems a little silly to spend time on those things when I have essentials awaiting my attention. But I miss being that person who can set herself a task and be reasonably certain of getting it done, and so I am going to make the effort.

We are heading off to the library, where I'm hoping I can finish a sock toe while reading to Pete and Stella. Perhaps I can even squeeze in a half-chapter of Hard Times if they get excited about the train table. Wish me luck!

Scenes from a Birthday Party

Joe has been saying that we should make a potato cake for Stella's first birthday. (He thought the No Sweets For Babies rule applied even at birthday parties.) With sour cream, he said, and butter. She likes butterfat, our Stella does. So I made Fat Potato Fat Fat Casserole for the birthday dinner.

She approved.

The Polish side of my husband's family has an old old tradition for first birthdays: on a bench you line up a rosary, a dollar coin, a penny, and a shot glass. The baby toddles over and grabs one, and the tradition says that they're picking a destiny -- religious life, wealth, poverty, or alcoholism.

That last one strikes me as a horrible destiny to choose at the ripe old age of one, so we substituted coffee beans. My children are not allowed to get addicted to anything stronger than caffeine. Hear that, kids?

She picked the rosary. That's my girl.

Then came the cake! We practiced blowing earlier, with grandma and brothers and me all showing her how fun it is to make the flame disappear. She was willing to blow but doesn't have much puff. We helped her out.

I pulled out Whole Foods for the Whole Family and made a whole-grain banana cake -- it was a little more wholesome-tasting than some of the kids might have liked. (But kids, I should have said, I left out the nutritional yeast and the wheat germ. Want to know what your first-birthday cakes tasted like?) Stella hasn't had enough cake in her life to notice, though, and it had more butterfat on top in the form of cream cheese frosting.

She thought it was delicious. (Dress by Tracy, by the way.)

Then! Presents! Look how wide her eyes are. She's saying, Can you believe this, Mama?

But you know, a girl gets really tired after all that excitement. And then she likes to put on her fuzzy snowman sleeper, and sit down with her mama in a quiet spot, and ease right into sleep.

Sweet dreams, darling girl.

Guest Post for a Birthday Girl

Last week one of my sons had to write about a memory associated with a room in his house. He said I could post it here.

I am a boy from a large family. I have one mom, one dad, three brothers, and one sister. This story is about my sister.

My mom, having been pregnant for nine months, and having put up with all the hardships thereof, was well and truly ready to have this baby. She had been through nausea, cravings, and a nesting instinct that made her clean the individual slats of our bathroom blinds with a toothbrush, and it was all drawing to a close. The night before, I had gone to bed in hopes that there might be a new sister in the morning. As soon as I woke up, I rushed to my parents’ room, only to see a new face looking up at me. I was filled with a mix of feelings that I cannot even begin to describe. I looked around the room, my eyes passing over the wood furnishings, and the one large bed that was the dominating feature of the room. On the bed were my mom, and all of my family. My mom looked incredibly tired, yet happier than I have seen her since. In a week it will be my sister’s first birthday, and on that day I will remember all day, this first day of knowing her. The rest of the day was blur of playing with the new sister, sending her first photos to relatives, and just being in an overall euphoric cloud that could only be replicated by the production of another sibling. 

Over the past year, my baby sister has grown and changed so much. She has my mom’s hair, and I am told she looks similar to me as a baby. She has gotten in a lot of trouble, and has learned so much. She has even started to develop her own tastes and opinions, and she looks like she will grow up to be a wonderful girl, and a wonderful woman. As we approach the end of her first year, and the dawn of her second, I cannot help but contemplate that wonderful day of December 23rd 2008, and the wonderful human introduced to the world on that day.

Happy birthday, sweet girl. We're so glad you're here.

O Emmanuel

Today's antiphon calls Jesus the "legifer," the law-bearer.While Moses climbed Sinai to receive the law, Jesus came to us, bearing the law in himself. He took on human flesh with its many limitations to teach us this truth: his law is love.

From Adam's time onward, every human baby was conceived beneath the shadow of original sin. (The Blessed Mother was freed from its stain at her conception, but even she required a redeemer.) The Lord pierced that shadow with his own light. He needed no redeemer; he is redemption enfleshed and his law is righteousness.

He came to bring the heavenly food that still sustains us; he came in the innocence that would take on sin. His law is written plainly on pierced hands: his law is grace. Glory to him.

O God-with-us, our King and law-bearer,
the long-awaited of the nations and their Savior,
come to save us, Lord our God.

O King of the Nations

I don't feel very praise-y right now. A few weeks ago my husband and I had some late-night fun picking out gifts for our boys. Today two of the boys' gifts are missing, and the most likely explanation is that they were stolen from our porch. This makes me sad, and suspicious, and slightly stressed.

O Sunrise

We have lost sight of what it means to wait like watchmen for the dawn, here in our post-Edison world. We can keep darkness at bay with the flick of a switch. When Jen posted about her reckless experiment, the element that shocked me was the idea of a life's rhythm in which a day's work ends at nightfall.

I am reading The Return of the King to my middle boys. We are in the stretch where Sauron's darkness has crept across the river from Mordor, and the hobbits and the Rohirrim and the men of Gondor are all hungry for sunlight. It's something I have thought about before, that aching for light when darkness is all around, something on my mind especially here in the darkest time of the year.

Today's antiphon contains an echo of yesterday's: they both implore the Lord's deliverance for those "idling in darkness and the shadow of death." It sparked a thought for me: if you are locked in solitary confinement, or in darkness, you will likely be idle. Dr. Manette could not do the healing work he was trained to do in the Bastille; there is little work that can be done well in darkness. We tend, I think, to conflate freedom and leisure, but they are not the same thing. Christ calls us out of that enforced idleness, so we can labor gladly to further his Kingdom. It's a good thing for me to remember today, now that I've finished my grading and am looking at all the work that must be done between now and Christmas. :-) Shine upon me.

O Sunrise,
refulgence of eternal light, and sun of justice,
come and shine upon those
idling in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Key of David

Recently I was reading the Marcia Williams Dickens book to my Petely. (If you need a last-minute gift for a child, we are all Marcia Williams fans here.) Dickens, of course, knew his prisons. This time through the cartoon version of A Tale of Two Cities I was struck by its sketch of the Bastille. I could imagine the gloom, the stench, the hopelessness -- a place so wretched that Dr. Manette could not seem to believe he was no longer its prisoner.

I was 16 when I first tasted Christian freedom, sweet and heady. I was a senior in high school and I was miserable: striving desperately to be valedictorian, locked in a struggle with my parents over where I would go the next year. I went on a retreat where I met Christ as a Person for the first time. On Sunday morning after that Saturday night encounter, I sat down in the quiet and read the letter to the Galatians.

The fifth chapter took my breath away. Jesus was saying to me, "Jamie, you don't have to live this way, trapped in perfectionism and fear. Wouldn't you rather be free?" And I said, as I have tried to say every day since then, "Oh, yes. Yes, thank you."

The Key of David does not merely open the door and let the prisoners discover, if they can, that their jailer has been deposed. I am thinking about the end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Aslan and his army turn out the Witch's dungeons. "Leave no corner unsearched!" said Aslan. Our liberator seeks us out and leads us forth, blinking, into the sunlight. Lead me.

O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel,
you who open and no one closes,
who close and no one opens,
come, and lead forth from prison the conquered,
idling in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Root of Jesse

There is so much chatter. It would be easy for me to lapse into old and cranky mode --these kids today! with their Facebook and their Twitter and their cellphones and their googling! can't they just be quiet like we were in the good old days? and also get off my lawn?

But even if I didn't have accounts with Facebook and Twitter and a serious Google habit, I would have to admit that it's hypocritical for me to grouse about chattering college kids. There's always been chatter. In college I didn't talk on my cellphone while I walked from class to apartment, but there were usually elaborate imaginary conversations playing in my head. Real silence is rare.

That's the piece of today's antiphon that struck me: the silence of the kings. When the Lord comes even the mighty will hold their tongues -- even in our culture of noise we will marvel in hushed awe. Quiet me.

O Root of Jesse,
you who are standing as a banner for the peoples,
you before whom kings will clap shut their mouths,
you whom the nations will entreat:
Come to free us now -- do not delay.

O Adonai

Betty Duffy wrote recently about a tiny baby in a Tupperware coffin and I have been thinking about my two miscarried babies, buried next to the homes we were renting at the time. One would be celebrating his fifth birthday around now -- I was due on the 17th of December -- and one would be almost 14.

After the first loss, our priest came over for the burial and then came back a few days later to celebrate Mass in our home. I have never felt more loved than I did that night, when so many people came to be with us that we could not even fit them all in our living room. 

The priest had asked me if I would say something brief after his reflection on the gospel, and I did not know if I could manage it. It was my first up-close encounter with a painful truth: sometimes you pray faithfully and wholeheartedly for something good, and the sovereign Lord God says no. I had implored him to keep my baby safe; instead her little body was cold in the ground below my dining room window. And I knew that it was an opportunity to grow in trust and faithfulness, and I knew that God had good plans for us, but right in that moment I did not want to do any growing and I was not very interested in plans for the future. I only wanted my baby.

I stood up in front of our friends and I said, I believe that God is sovereign, and I believe that he purifies us through our suffering. But, I said, I'd never thought about the purifying from the perspective of the ore, the hunk of rock that says to the refiner, "What are you doing with that dross? That's part of me."

Moses was amazed when he saw that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. How much more amazing that God has chosen us for a dwelling place, that the flame of the Holy Spirit can shine forth from us to bring warmth and light into the world. Though it burns away our impurities, we will not be consumed. He says, "I am Lord over the heartbreak, and I am the Refiner whose fire transforms ore -- rock with potential -- into a beautiful and enduring precious metal." Cleanse me.

O LORD and leader of the house of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in a red glow of flame,
and who gave him the law on Sinai,
come to redeem us with outstretched arm.

O Wisdom

I was driving back from campus tonight with a stack of finals. Partly cloudy, the forecast had said, but I was not expecting the beauty of the stippled clouds. Harvest was unusually late this year because we had so much rain in the fall -- there was corn in the fields at the end of November. But they are shaved down to stubble now, waiting. The trees' bare branches were black against the setting sun, waiting.

I watched a sheet of cloud scud from north to south, sweeping across the sky. I thought of my own smallness, as I listened to the voice in the back of the van say "How much farther now, Mom?" Twenty-five miles, sweetheart. I imagined the skies behind the clouds, boundless space and tremendous stars, and I thought about the might of God that wrought those realms and somehow chose to be contained within a human frame, a baby's frame. I sang, "The universe declares your majesty," but I didn't sing very long because I had to stop and say, Twenty-one, Pete. Only twenty-one more miles.

The sunset was violently orange, but the underside of that sheet of cloud shone in an improbable fuchsia. I thought about how things that threaten to occlude the light of God can still reflect its beauty. And I thought about wisdom. I love this prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas, its idea that the light of God drives out ignorance as well as sin, so we can seek holiness and understanding at the same time. Teach me.

O Wisdom, you who have proceeded from the mouth of the Most High,
mightily reaching from end all the way to end
gracefully ordering all things
come to teach us the way of prudence.

Joy

Welcome, anybody who's new, and thanks for stopping by. Thanks also to those of you who liked that last post enough to link to it. Please say hi if you're so inclined.

I have a confession: I'm often cranky in December.

Much of it is seasonal affective disorder, because the amount of sunlight in my life has a predictable effect on my brain. (I have a light box but I have trouble finding time to sit in front of it.) Some of it is seasonal expective disorder (I made that one up), arising from all these messages about what Christmas should be like for my family and me (chestnuts, sleigh rides, steaming cocoa, carefully wrapped presents that are exactly what the recipient had hoped to receive).

The idea of Advent as a penitential season, in which we reflect on the growing darkness and the coming light, speaks to my soul. This post was sparked by Linda's first comment and by a reread of a post about Santa from my old blog. (I was going to post it here but it is a little too mouth-frothy. Maybe I will edit it.) Those two things made me wonder: am I trying to spiritualize my own grumpiness? The fruit of the Spirit is still joy, even for people with SAD, even for mothers of five with untidy houses, even for dissertation writers who are feeling overwhelmed by structural equation modeling.

Today, Gaudete Sunday, I am going to set aside the cranky to the best of my ability. I steeped saffron overnight to make beautiful golden St. Lucia buns. (Does that sound like good planning? It was not. I meant to let the dough rise overnight in the fridge but was summoned to bed by a cranky baby. I left the saffron steeping instead of leaving the dough rising.) I am going to serve them to my family and pray for eyes that see the light of God in all circumstances. I am going to teach them to sing today's first reading.

And you know, it's not going to be Hallmarky. I expect they will think the buns are a little weird. They might ask for toast instead. I expect the two oldest boys will sing reluctantly, though they may be enticed into clapping their hands by the baby who loves to clap. I'm not going to stress out about their reactions, because it's harder to find joy if you're looking for approval. But I do believe there's joy here, if I will give it room to flourish.

Born

I have been trying not to be so grinchy about commercial Christmas. True, crabby thoughts spring spontaneously into my head when I hear "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," but I try to squelch them. (Okay, actually, in that case I don't try very hard because whoa, that is a TERRIBLE song and I still have unhappy memories of the college choir director who made us sing it with [shudder] added choreography.) When I hear others of the same ilk -- "Silver Bells," "Winter Wonderland," "Sleigh Ride" -- I'm trying to suppress my automatic inner grimace.

But I am having an Inigo Montoya moment today. (Not the "you killed my father; prepare to die" kind, the "I do not think that word means what you think it means" kind.) Christmas in these songs is all about cozy leisure activities. Chestnuts roasting by an open fire-- we're warm, we're toasty, we're getting ready for a nice snack. Jack Frost nipping at your nose-- he can't really sink his teeth in, though, because it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Christmas is not about cozy.

We are getting ready to celebrate a birth. That means work, not idleness. Before the baby comes, you prepare. You think hard about what the baby will need from you and you find it. Even if it's costly, you figure out a way to obtain it -- it's for the baby, after all, and nothing is more important than the baby right now. You get everything ready. You clean the house. You wait -- not idly, wondering if the chestnuts are toasted yet -- but expectantly, eagerly. Your whole world is about to change.

Birth is not about comfort. There is a pious tradition that the Blessed Mother did not experience pain during the birth of our Lord, but I am quite certain that she worked hard to bring him forth. Birth is like that. 

We tend to romanticize the Nativity, but I think often of how hard it must have been. Can you imagine? A first baby, a young mother, a cave in the middle of the night (or so tradition suggests). I think of the smell, the noises of livestock, the steam, perhaps, rising from a wet little body in a chill night. Hands moving swiftly to swaddle the baby, before he could get too cold. Did they think, "Why now? Why here?" I know I would have, had I been there.

I think he chose that time and place to say, Where there is privation, I am Lord. Where it stinks and you have to watch out for the piles of dung, I am still Lord. When it is not what you expected, not what you would have chosen, I am Lord even then. In the humblest circumstances, my glory is undimmed. The angels saw it and sang out: gloria in excelsis. Often we imagine the same tableau, strange and humbling, and we sing out too: our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we.

My oldest son was posterior and in labor every position except sitting was painful. So I sat. When things weren't progressing, the midwife told me I needed to to turn him by moving out of my comfortable chair. She said, "This baby needs you to be uncomfortable." I am thinking of her words this Advent: what does the Divine Infant require of me? Where am I sitting placidly, reluctant to do the work he is asking of me because it is uncomfortable?

I always think, when I think seriously about birth, about the prospect of my own death -- in late pregnancy I always get to confession, always try to have my house in order. You never know what's coming. To prepare for the birth of Christ is to prepare for death to self, one more time.

This post sounds very gloomy, like Eeyore's Advent Musings. All through the writing of it, though, I have been remembering the joy of baby Stella's arrival, bright and warm and palpable in the middle of that icy night. The thing is, that kind of joy doesn't come cheap. You can't manufacture it with a cup of cocoa and a Bing Crosby album. Christmas is bigger than cozy, bigger than comfortable. I find that its joy runs deeper when I am willing to lean into the work -- the work of preparation, the work of yielding -- that comes beforehand.

I doubt they'll be changing the soundtrack at Starbucks, but you never know.

One year later

A year ago today I was nervous as a cat. My prelim was scheduled for noon and the roads were icy. I narrowly avoided an accident on the way to preschool, when I skidded at a stop sign.

It all worked out swimmingly last year, because the weather got warmer and the prelim wasn't grueling at all. This year I am going back to campus to hear my students' final presentations, and it is supposed to be icy again. The forecast isn't bad enough for me to bail, but I hate driving in bad weather. Would you say a quick prayer for me, that Stella and I can stay safe? We'd appreciate it.

Finished!

This is my daughter, whose brothers call her "big standing up girl," in her February Baby Sweater. I followed the pattern as written except for knitting the sleeves in the round. Why purl + seam when both can be avoided?

This is her mother in the completed February Lady Sweater. Hurray! The baby version says to decrease the stitch count by 10% between the end of the lace and the beginning of the garter edge; I did the same thing with the adult sweater.

I have trouble picking the right size for tops. Imagine a person with slender legs and big, say, knees trying to buy pants: the ones that fit the small frame don't accommodate the unexpected bulges. I blocked the sweater aggressively to give it more room laterally, so the buttons would work with my, um, knees. I am hoping to wear this sweater for years and my figure will change as my baby gets older. (Knees-y come, knees-y go.) The next time I block it, I'll aim for more lengthwise stretch and not worry about the buttons.

Here we are together. We may have missed the autumn leaves, but this picture makes me smile anyway.