You Know it's a bad day at Mass when...

10) The usher tells you that he's been inspired and is going to call his mom when he gets home to thank her for putting up with him for all those years.

9) In describing what took place during the offeratory, you use the word "headlock" in a sentence.

8) Calories burned during mass via the trips to the bathroom equal or excede the value of a Dunkin' Donut's Boston Cream.

7) At the sign of peace, you get a lot of pity handshakes from fellow parishioners.

6) The woman behind you says, "Some day you'll miss this." and you think, "Not any time soon."

5) Kneelers. Toddlers. Echoes.

4) Going up the aisle for communion, a child wails, "When is it OVER?!"

3) The Eucharistic minister tells you, "There's only a drop." and you take the cup saying "Amen" and taking that drop because you need every bit of grace you can get.

2) You stare in wonder at all the well behaved children and have the eerie thought that the reason You get this battle is God knows this won't deter you from showing up next week.

1) Every one of these things actually took place within the span of one mass.

Follow-up: Why didn't you leave and come back later?
1) Three kids serving on the altar and
2) car was trapped by other cars illegally parked.
3) I did actually leave the main church three times in an attempt to regroup (during songs). Each time, it took for about all of five minutes.

Finally, when mass is over and you trudge to the parkinglot, you discover there is a black Acura parked in the firelane trapping you at the Church hall for the next hour with the bumper sticker "Chose Civility" on it's window.

Everyone here had to work to get to mass such that calling the police seems somehow anti the spirit of Lent. So the kids get to have doughnuts after all that while you wait for the parkinglot to clear and it seems that you should offer it up in sublimation because all of these little problems are merely a toe being poked into the sand of the 40 day dessert.  All you can do is sigh and say man, sublimation sometimes just really really, well it doesn't stink but man does it have to be this hard?

And then unbidden, it hits you that in the end, when you see your self truly and acknowlege that you misbehaved this much in real life yourself; that in the end, God is nice enough to still let you have a doughnut when all is said and done.

The Taste of Extinction

This past weekend, my middle son went to a party and received a goodie bag filled with one cent candies. He dumped them on the table at noon, as he himself has never been big on sweets. (Go figure). Giving a quick glance over the sugary pile, I lay odds on what would remain by the end of the day and was not disappointed. The milky ways, twix bars, tootsie rolls and familiar bubble gums were gobbled instantaneously by various siblings and I managed to score a caramel. The remaining rejects reminded me of Halloween bags on Election day. There are candies that have reached their Darwinian evolutionary end and should be allowed to die in peace or pieces as the case may be.

I speak of “Bit-O-Honey.”

I know there must be closet lovers of this unholy alliance between an eraser, chalk and a caramel without the imagination of artificial colors or flavors, but I’ve yet to meet one in real life. When I go to the vending machines, I never hear anyone saying, “Damn, they’re out of bit-o-honey!” I remember the unspoken rule of trick-o-treating; when the folks were down to chick-o-sticks and bits, it was time to go home and count the candy loot. Those sorts of odd confections ranked somewhere below the healthy home that passed out boxes of raisins and the DDS who gave free toothbrushes.

I pondered whether the company ought to consider creating an alternate market, like when you get dumped. Sending a tray of “Bitter Honeys” or "Bite Me Honey" to a girl might have some emotional cathartic value for the dumpee. I bet it would triple sales at least. Musing over the two abandoned sweets, I started to sweep them into the garbage can when I wondered, "Was I wrong?" "Why not try it?"

Had the endurance of this long maligned in my own mind sweet been somehow undeserved? I was an adult now. Ought I to give bit-o-honey its due, its chance to reveal its hidden complexities and value that heretofore my taste buds were too immature and too raptured by chocolate to appreciate? I stared at the two lonesome bit-o-honeys and summoned my oldest son. He and I would try these together and compare notes.

Unwrapping the pieces, we remarked on the not quite beige color and speculated on the origin date which was not known. This was problem number one with bit-o-honeys. There was the distinct possibility that only one batch had ever been made and like fruit cake, the unopened pieces had been traded from non eater to non eater for the past seven decades.

My son fearlessly popped it in his mouth. I watched. A minute passed. “It’s chewy.” He said. Spurred on by the fact he had not begun gagging, I too put the candy in my mouth. I waited for the taste. This is part of the bit-o-honey experience, the chewing without the reward. “It’s starting to have a taste.” My son said, still working his jaw. I have to grope the insides of my mouth for a faint hint of flavor.

I know it has a taste, and that my tongue has taste buds in abundance with the capacity to recognize sweet, salty, savory, bitter and whatever that umani is. I know that I am tasting something but the taste fades before I can ascertain its nature.

Now we could go out in the car and get more bit-o-honeys in an attempt to get a better fix on the experience, but I considered this blind date with a candy to be indicative of the entire relationship, bland with a faint after the fact essence that left my mouth bored and slightly annoyed. “This wasn’t chocolate.” And so, vindicated in my indifferent prejudice, I now turn to other snacks that deserve to be shown the door to extinction.

Let’s talk Fig Newtons.

P.S. Had set up a post on Filet-O-Fish but decided it was too cheap a shot and in less than stellar taste...like the sandwich.

Not Quite the Lesson Mother Teresa Intended I'm Sure.

So today, I’ve got a toddler crying because she doesn’t want to go to the potty even though she’s practically twisted her legs into a pretzel. Carrying a screaming three year old to the bathroom that is all the time kicking isn’t a joyful mother moment. At the same time, I hear the tell tale crash of a breakfast plate by a fellow toddler followed by the on the spot news reporter play by play by the very earnest but not necessarily helpful four year old. The baby has also chosen to voice his irritation at all the racket.

Sitting her on the potty, the phone rings. I’m ignoring it as I’m in no mood to talk to anyone, nor do I want some telemarketer to hear a symphony of caterwauling children as I decide whether or not time is running out on a once in a life time offer to buy tracts of undeveloped land in North Carolina. My newscaster son nevertheless brings me the phone. “There’s a spill of orange juice in the kitchen.” He tells me solemnly, “And it’s Dad.” The cell phone has begun ringing as well.

Currently, I’m reading Mother Teresa’s “Come Be My Light.” It details her intense suffering of spiritual darkness as she persevered in helping the poorest of India for decades. Over time, she learned to embrace this gift of the silent God as His answer to her prayer to be the one to “carry Jesus into the darkest holes of India.” To truly be able to do this, she had to know the darkest holes herself. That the darkest holes of poverty were not found in the slums of India or anywhere else, but within the terrified soul that either does not know or fears there is no God.

It was a sign of her perfected faith that she underwent this great purification while on Earth. Most people did not know of her deep pain, her daily struggle with her faith, as she took it as God’s command that people should Not know. She wore her smile as a cloak to hide her suffering. It was her gift back to God, in return for His. She understood that acting in complete Faith required nothing less than absolute surrender and she gave it. She covered that suffering with a sense of humor and a generous smile. It was a shield and an invisibility cloak that rendered her transparent, so that only God shone through.

“Hello?” I cradle the phone with my neck as I’m now cleaning up from the successful pottying, handing out a few m&m’s and mentally preparing to get out the mop, fix my son’s medicine and a bottle and maybe get myself a diet coke.
“Hi Sher. The school called, we’ve got a sick kiddo. ”

Mentally trying to pull together how I’m going to shod and dress for the weather the four and under set in less than thirty minutes, navigate the icy drive way and get our daughter, drive back home, drop her off, run the toddler back in for another forced potty march and then shuttle back to the school for 2:45 dismissal, it overwhelms. I start to rant. “I want an invisibility cloak, a ring, something to mask all of this craziness.”

“Wha?”
“The Cloak. Mother Teresa’s cloak. I’m smiling.”

“You need to work on it.”
“I know.”

“You can’t be gritting your teeth.”
“How would you know? I’m on the phone.”
“I know.”

So I began the trek. Loading the four children, something prodded me to go back in and make a bottle and a complete diaper bag. I even got an extra outfit in case we didn’t make it back home in time for a potty break and snacks. I never pack snacks. I’m trying to put on the joyful smile even when one of my daughters starts to flop and refuse to get in the car. She wants to throw shovels of ice instead. I’ve brought a new music CD for them to listen to, though I’d rather hear the news. Faking a sing songy voice of enthusiasm, amazingly, they all get in the car and we’re off. I can hear Mother Teresa telling me, "Honey, you're still gritting your teeth."

Spiritually, I have learned that whenever one seeks to deepen one’s faith life in practice, the level of challenge responds. Having fastened a joyful smile to my face to stare down the struggles thus far, the front tire promptly blows out equidistant from virtually anywhere that might have been remotely useful. I am on a freeway ramp. I cannot leave, I cannot get out and I cannot drive.

Calling my husband, no answer. Calling Tripple A, I get disconnected. Calling the school to explain the situation, I hang up in mid call as a policeman is knocking on my window. He has called a tow truck and summoned a second car so as to transport all four of my kids and me to a gas station. “It’s a good thing I hadn’t picked up my whole family or you’ld need a paddy wagon." We spend the two hours at the dealership and a woman who is sitting there waiting for her car, can't believe I'm smiling.

"I've engaged the cloaking device." I think as I shrugged, "It's not so bad."
When my husband arrives to pick up the kids, I mentally send Mother Teresa a message. "Hey, I didn't grit my teeth this time."

The Velveteen Parent

When you can identify the sound of mini-chocolate chips cascading from their yellow bag into a red bucket in your no longer sleeping infant’s playpen, as being dumped by her older toddler sister for a snack, while awakening from a dead sleep, it’s safe to declare one’s self a veteran.

There are still areas of parenting within which I am a rookie. Dating. College tuition. Cars. Curiously enough, the magazines that cater to adults trying to civilize non adults, avoid addressing these later issues in extensive detail unless it’s to tell you that you should relax and not worry about the boys or the girls, sell all your cars and hire a chauffeur and have started saving money before you yourself hit puberty.

And so, one might wonder why I still subscribe to Parenting magazine. I know about time outs, mini-meals, setting aside a homework time, over scheduling, potty training…well, okay, I know the theory behind that one. What more is there that the experts could teach that I haven’t already experienced by trial? I keep the magazine to comprehend something of the ideal as personified in an incident free life.

If I were a Parenting magazine mom, the television would only be turned on for educational material that supplemented the reading I intended to present that evening…say the speeches by JFK, after viewing a brief history documentary of the Cuban missile crisis. If I were a Parenting approved mom, we would serve fresh black berries we had picked yesterday on top of homemade waffles today as I taught about maple syrup and the sugaring process while locating Vermont on a map and reading from Little House in the Big Woods. If I were a Choosy Mother’s Chose Jiff magazine certified mom, the kids would be used to fish tacos and green peppers, beg for carrot sticks and raisins and each have a shelf of the awards and certificates they had amassed over the years, complete with the write up in the local paper. They’d play on select teams and have fresh pressed uniforms every day and matching socks too.

Examining my life style with the parenting magazine’s parent, it’s clear I’m a C- student stuck in the honors class. Honor parents do not own cars that are the residence of 25 pounds of slowly fossilizing French fries, 1.47 cents in pennies and about a Pinto size pile of miscellaneous toys. Honor parents get all their kids to bed by 7:30 complete with hair washed, teeth brushed, three bed time stories and a lullaby. The teens, they lovingly dismiss to their rooms, tucking a new book of Shakespeare under their hand as they say good night. They are archetypes of the archetypes in my world. They are the ideal.

But I’m not.

Honor student parents don’t raise their voices or deliberately spend twenty minutes locked in the bathroom pretending “I can’t hear you…” hoping the stall tactic will bore the kids enough to make them forget what they were tattling about. Honor student parents don’t consider buying a large stuffed tiger that growls to put outside their toddler’s room and tell the kid, the tiger comes to life at night if you get up. We didn’t…but we did put the tiger back on the shelf with some regret.

Reading these stories and techniques, it’s like a reverse of the Velveteen Rabbit. I can’t help but wonder if these people as “experts” who say “What not to say…” have ever had a day when getting down on their eye level and speaking in a calm controlled voice just didn’t satisfy. “I know you’re upset that your brother got invited to the party but, there’s no reason for you to smack down on his head. You should be happy for him.” The kid may quiet down for that sort of speech, but very very few –and I would submit, none, become suddenly self aware and think, “I’m not really mad at my brother for being my brother, I just wish I had all the cool things he had going on…so I’m actually envious and need to stop because that’s not right or healthy.” If my kids are anything like I was, they’re thinking…right….I’ll get him later…but how?

It’s not that I don’t want my kids clean, on time, well spoken, well educated, well read, polished, accomplished and civil. I want all of these things for all eight of them, but sometimes, the best I can manage is a screech owl version of “HEY, KNOCK IT OFF OR I’M GETTING INTO IT!” that results in a five minute suspended silence born of real fear that the person driving may not be entirely stable. What galls me is that someday, when they grow up, they won’t remember when I hit the mark and got them to piano, softball and still managed to make sure they got their homework done, had a bed time story and closed down the upstairs by 8:30 p.m. They won’t remember when I made banana splits for dinner that night because everyone had had a bad day. They’ll talk about the time Mom’s face turned purple when we played Starwars with French fries in the back seat on the beltway.

Those will be the moments remembered, when the Velveteen Parent became real.