Disconnected

On Friday evenings we go to the library for our summer reading club prizes. This week my three-year-old won a little pink pail and shovel. “Just what we needed to go to the beach!” I told the librarian. My poor kids have been taking empty chlorine buckets to the beach because none of the stores I frequent carry pails and shovels.

She lifted up her pail and shovel and asked, “We go to the beach now?”

“Not now, honey,” I answered, wishing that I had time to take them that weekend. The salty air would help with clearing up my allergic cough.

She carried that pail and shovel around the house and yard with her all weekend, repeatedly asking until bedtime, “We go to the beach now?”

So finally Monday morning comes around with promising weather and nothing on our schedule. We go to Cedar Beach in Mount Sinai, carrying nothing but a jug of water, lunch bag, and towels.

I’d spent the morning answering emails and telephone calls and, with my cell phone turned off, I felt free of electronic communications as soon as I left the house.

My husband has been joking that I am going to be sucked into “The Matrix” because I have been spending so much time on the computer. Now that I have my laptop with wireless internet, I can keep it on all the time and go back and forth between that and household business whenever we are in the house.

I carried it upstairs to my desktop computer one night so I could copy my favorite websites from one to the other. I started to get confused working with two computers at once, typing on one keyboard and wondering why it wasn’t showing up on the right screen. That’s when Kevin came up the stairs and made his Matrix joke.

My husband hates computers, the internet, and cell phones. Never mind that he now needs the computer to run his business; he has me to take care of that end. I also forced him to get a cell phone after he got a flat tire in Deer Park at 9:00 one night and had to walk three miles to find a working pay phone.

Our “best man”, Ted, who works in management for the software business, is up on all the latest technology. He laughs at Kevin’s beeper. “You have to make the technology work for you,” he says, as he lays his Blackberry on our kitchen table. A call comes in; he looks at the caller id and ignores it. “See?” Then he explains why “peoplepc” is not an acceptable email suffix for professionals and convinces me to switch over to Gmail.

Really I am an outdoor girl at heart. The computer is just a tool for my writing. I wish I could sit up in a maple tree, as I used to do when I was little, pen some stories into a notebook, and send them anonymously to a publisher, like Louisa May Alcott. Things don’t work like that anymore.

I used to think that it would be great to have a laptop and sit at the beach and write. But once I get there, I am happy not to have it with me. We sit on the white, rocky sand and stare into the face of a white pigeon. The sky is a light blue with puffy little white clouds here and there. Little boats sit beyond the buoys and I wonder who is on them. The older three kids plunge into the water and my three-year-old, shovel and pail in one hand, holds her other hand out to me. We go down to the water. She dares herself to go up to her neck and a speeding boat sends a wave that spills into her mouth.

“Are you okay?”

She laughs in response.

And I realize I haven’t coughed once since we got there.

“Be still and know that I am God!” Psalm 46:10

Moses before the Burning Bush
Domenico Feti, 1613-14
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Meowing Toddler in Church

Some days, our little one is quiet in church. Others, I feel the grey hairs springing up as I struggle to keep her noise down to a minimum. This morning, still in a partying mood from her little cousin’s birthday party last night, she sang “Frosty the Snowman” on our way to church. We knew we were in for trouble.

I get so distracted trying to keep her shennagans to a minimum, that sometimes I wonder why I even bother. But, when we were asked to go to a birthday breakfast this morning, we knew we couldn’t skip Mass for it. Attending Mass together is the one thing we are committed to doing together as a family. It is my husband’s only day off from work, and he likes to sleep late. We seldom arrive quite on time for the 11:00 Mass. But the ushers know we will be there, and often have six seats ready for us when we walk in the door.

Attending Mass together sets the tone for the entire week. Without it, something is off. Although I will rarely hear all, or even most, of the homily, I pick up bits and pieces; morsels that I really needed and thus was meant to hear. Joining hands to say The Lord’s Prayer and sharing the sign of peace, not to mention receiving the Holy Eucharist, are highlights of the experience.

My daughter was in rare form today. She started in as soon as we got into our pew, refusing to allow me to take off her coat. “No Mommy! I do it!” The best thing to do at this point is to leave her be. People staring at us probably are wondering why I don’t do something. My not touching her is preventing a bigger scene, please believe me. I really wish I could be invisible as her little voice crescendos during the most quiet parts of the Mass.

She was a really chatter-box today, her voice sweet and little as she talked to herself. I have to continually poke and stare at the older children to not provoke her into more obvious silliness. I only thought her meowing was not too awful when it became the low growl of a tiger – all in good fun, of course.

By the time the homily was over, she had decided she wanted to rest in my arms and be quiet. I tried to forget all she’d put me through in the past half hour, and buried my nose in her soft hair.

“People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them, and when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them.
Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, "Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it." "
Luke 18:15-17 (NAB)

Painting above by Robert Campin 1375-1444 Netherlandish Painter
Virgin and Child in an Interior Oil on oak, National Gallery,London

A Day Out with Dad

Today my husband took the children to his mother’s house while I painted the children’s bathroom. It has cathedral ceilings, so quite a large proportion of working time is spent moving the ladder around.

I was working for a full hour in absolute silence, when I dropped my edging brush from the top of the ladder. It fell twelve feet down and hit the bathtub with a resounding CLANG. I reacted, thinking, “Ooh, I hope that didn’t wake up the baby!”

I am so used to doing this sort of work during her naptime, enjoying the solitude and silence, that I had completely forgotten she was not at home! This was quite an odd experience for me.

I could play music! I could play it as loud as I wanted! I ran downstairs to select some fun working music. I turned the volume up so I could hear it way up at the top of the house.

I played three CDs and returned to the quiet. Quiet work is soothing to the soul. I can think my thoughts and pray unceasingly and maybe even hear a word the Lord has for me at the moment.

Several hours later, I had just finished cleaning up when the husband and kids came through the door. They had had a terrific day. They even went to their uncles’ hockey game. They got to stay out late and play video games at the sports complex. They were dirty and smelly and all smiley. A day with dad certainly agreed with them!

“Be still and know that I am God.”
Psalms 46:10