So Lucy likes to take down the spices (and extracts, and colored sugar) from the spice rack and smell them.  This is usually a harmless passtime, which possibly develops her sensory awareness, so usually I let her be.  There have been a couple of spills (sesame seeds come to mind), but, as I say, it’s all usually harmless.

So yesterday, I noticed Lucy pouring the orange sugar from the bottle into the bottle cap and eating it.  I questioned her, and she denied eating it.  I warned her that the things on the spice rack go in foods, but aren’t very tasty by themselves.  (Not true of colored sugar, but it was a general statement.)  I walked away.

I heard screaming.  I returned to Lucy, who had an empty bottle of peppermint extract in her hand.  She reeked of peppermint.  And she was screaming.  She claimed she had not drunken it all, (I’m not sure how much “all” was to start with) but it was gone.  So I hugged her, trying not to laugh but failing miserably, and poured her some water.  Thus ended Samantha’s nap, and Lucy and I had a discussion about listening to Mommy and the proper treatment of things in the spice rack.

When we told the story to Craig, I asked Lucy if she would be eating anything else from the spice rack.

Sheepish smile.  “No.”

Craig: “Lucy, why are you so intense?”

Lucy: “I’m not intense!”

Craig: “Yes, you are!”

Lucy: “I’m not in tents, I’m right here!”

Before I forget, (since I’m not keeping track of all this anywhere else!) Samantha has a new tooth, which we noticed a couple of days ago.  Bottom, left of the two front ones.  And she now loves to walk, and wants to start writing.  Sigh.

Ok, it’s a couple of days late, but that was so that I could get the pictures up.  I can’t believe she’s a year old already!  I had to go back and re-read her birth story as part of the celebration.

We had broccoli pasta and apples and squash, both of which Samantha could eat and really, really enjoyed.

We had apple pie instead of cake, since she can’t have eggs.  (There are eggless cakes we like, but the pie is really good!)

We’re planning a joint birthday party for the girls…sometime.  Things are little tight with Thanksgiving and Craig has a retreat this next weekend, so it may be closer to Lucy’s birthday.

Sorry, everyone, for the long silence.  It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, and I promised myself I wouldn’t write until I could be reasonably sure I wouldn’t be immediately interrupted.  We spent most of last week in Texas, because on October 21 my father passed away.  Even though we knew he had cancer and this was possible, it was not expected at the time or in the way that it happened, so it has still been a bit of a shock.

The Thursday before he died, Dad was feeling really well.  Then he started running a slight fever, which, because of the chemo, meant he had to go to the hospital.  They kept him over the weekend, and I last talked to him on Saturday.  He sounded good and was watching the Texas-OU game.  I didn’t call Monday or Tuesday to see if he was out of the hospital yet, and on Wednesday Mom called me.

When Mom left the hospital Tuesday night, Dad was fine.  He had not gone home yet because his white cell count was low, and when it got back up, his platelet count was still low.  Wednesday morning the hospital called Mom to tell her that Dad had had a fall during the night, and was now in the ICU.  She rushed over, and found that the hospital staff had spent most of the night trying to get Dad back to consciousness and figure out what was wrong.  This went on until around 2:30 in the afternoon, when he let go with my Mom, his brother, and his brother’s wife and daughter at his side.

I missed Mom’s call the first time, but something (my angel?) told me to check the cell phone just a few minutes later, so I talked to her before they had even finished taking out all the tubes and IVs and such.  I took the girls outside and we waited for Craig.  (Actually, I called several people to try and tell him not to go to his Campus Ministry meeting, but it had been canceled anyway.)  I must have explained to Lucy twenty times that Grandpa had died while I pushed her on the swing.  I think that helped it sink in, having to say it over and over to her.

Well, we packed up and went to Baton Rouge and Craig’s parents’ house for the night, and then drove on to Fort Worth Thursday.  We were able to see Dad that evening, then he was cremated and there was a graveside service the following Wednesday.  We think there were between seventy and a hundred people at the service.  Apparently that is a lot, but I didn’t have anything to compare it to, since I had never even been to a graveside service before.  For some reason, my parents thought they could sneak their funerals by without anyone noticing.  My dad taught almost everyone in our town, and two and even three generations of some families.  Sneaking by was really not possible.  The ladies at St. Peter’s put on a nice lunch for the family and a few of our friends, and the next day we drove back to Baton Rouge.  The girls and I stayed there, while Craig went back to N.O. for school on Friday, then joined us in B.R. for a baby shower, birthday party, and Trick-or-Treating.  And finally we are home again, the house is back in some semblance of order, and life is returning to “normal”.

Those are the basics of what happened, but there was so much more.  The outpouring of love, plants, prayers, and food was nearly overwhelming.  (And thank you for all those things!)  Knowing how much my Dad was loved and respected is wonderful, but in some ways I think it makes it even harder to miss him now, and to wonder if I appreciated him while he was here.  Believe me, it’s hard to write, or even think, anything of substance without tears.  There are a thousand little things to miss.  I know I haven’t even discovered so many of them yet.

I wrote down thoughts as all this was going on, on a note card which I’ve pinned to the bulletin board above the computer screen.  They are some of the things I’ll be thinking about and working out over the coming weeks.  But the most glaring thing I’ve noticed is, how can anyone grieve with little children around?  When they aren’t keeping you busy with diapers and other basic demands, they are snuggling, laughing, and doing outrageous things that keep your mind from wandering.  There is little room for moping, or sitting and thinking.  I’m having to devise a new way of grieving, both for a new kind of loss and a new situation.  It’s different.  I feel almost guilty for the hours I spend without a thought of my Dad, and the joy that wells up so often in spite of what I think I “should” feel, but the moments of realization are strong and effecatious.  I’m sure that is the wrong word, but I can’t think of anything closer.  And I remind myself that maybe now Dad’s enjoying watching Samantha walk (which she started doing in earnest in Texas), and Lucy run and laugh and learn more than he ever could here on earth.

And I question why I ever wanted to be so far away from my family, what pride made me think I was too good for my hometown and needed a bigger, better place.

Meanwhile, Samantha is walking.  She’s a different baby (toddler!) from when Dad last saw her.  Craig got a part-time youth ministry job in B.R. at his parish from high school, St. Jean Vianney.  Which means our ends really do meet again, and our schedules will be getting tighter.  The JustFaith group I was possibly going to lead fell through, which in light of Craig’s new job may actually be a blessing.  Life goes on.  This might be the hardest part to deal with so far.  The world doesn’t stop when someone dies, even someone very special and very important, at least to me.  My girls keep growing, the boys Craig teaches keep being boys, bills are still due, Fall keeps marching towards Winter.  The Saints keep winning.  We still need groceries and diapers and soap.  And tomorrow is Samantha’s first birthday.  It is difficult to keep it all in perspective, or even to hold it in (or near) my mind all at once.

So for now, we press on.  It seems anti-climatic, and maybe it is.  Where is the climax to this story?  Where was the climax to Dad’s story?  I’m not sure he thought he had even reached it yet.  Do our stories even fit the narrative structure we learn in literature classes?  Maybe it’s not the building to a climatic moment, but rather the small, quiet nows that make up a life.  The story might not play well on screen, but it wasn’t designed to.  It was designed to play in a human body, in a family, among friends and a community.  There is an online guestbook attached to the obituary in the newspaper, and there are so many people who commented that Dad touched them as a teacher or principal.  They were just small moments for him.  But clearly each of those small moments, each of those few words, each of the smiles he gave so generously made a difference.

If it is the small moments that matter, I have a lot of work to do.  If our magnum opus is not so much a single tower as a meandering pathway made of small, carefully laid bricks, I must be much more careful how I make breakfast in the morning, how I speak to my girls, how I welcome my husband home, how I treat the lady working the check-out.  Merton, among others, speaks of focusing on living in the “now”, being present to the people and situations around us at a given moment.  That seems especially hard right now, but also especially important.  I can’t change anything I said to my Dad, no matter how much I dwell on it.  But I can still decide how I treat people today and tomorrow and the next day.  I can make them feel special and important like Dad did for so many of his students.

It’s good to write, even if it gets to be rambling.  I don’t realize what I’m thinking sometimes until I see it on the screen, and there it all works itself out.  It’s a strange way to think.  But anyway, thank you for your patience, and especially for your prayers.  Please keep praying for me and my family.  We are missing a large part of our selves right now.  But I don’t doubt that the prayers help.  I know that they are that little push I get when I need it most these days.  So thank you.  Believe it or not, I don’t have anything else to say!

Thursday night, Samantha took her first steps!  We were sitting in the living room, and she toppled forward (it seemed to me) like she had tried to walk, so I picked her up and pointed her toward Craig, and she took two or three steps to him, then back to me, and back a couple more times.  I am not ready for two walking children, but apparently Samantha thinks I am!  She hasn’t done much more, but she spent most of today in the stroller at the zoo anyway.  Things are happening fast here!

Big news the last couple of days.  Samantha said her first “word” in sign language two days ago (Monday).  It was “milk”.  I was quite excited.  Today we were playing, and I put a bowl on my head, and then on hers.  Then she took it and put it on her head a few times and laughed.  And I wondered, “where did that little baby of mine go??”  She’s grown up!

Then tonight, while we had a living room full (and I mean full) of high school students for one of Craig’s Theology and Eat sessions, Lucy (who had insisted on wearing panties all day and only had one accident so far) went into the bathroom and used her potty all by herself!  It was a momentous occasion.  Ten years from now, she may wonder why I needed to broadcast it over the internet, but since I’m doing a pretty poor job of keeping track of these milestones otherwise, this will have to do.

Tempus fugit.  Much faster than I care for it to, really.

Here’s the latest on my Dad.  He had his stint taken out yesterday (and replaced?  I haven’t called to find out if they had to put one in again) and today he has his fourth round of chemo.  Here is the novena, which I will be starting again.  The good news is, this is the halfway point for the treatments they have planned.

Sorry the posts have been few and far between lately, the girls aren’t sleeping as much as they had been.  Or maybe I’m sleeping more… : )  There are pictures coming, but I have to do them from Craig’s computer, which means in the evening, which is really hard.  But soon…

Ah, it’s been a while.  Things have been slightly crazy.  Dad had his third chemo treatment, and that is still going as well as can be expected.  He’s tired and sick, but still in good spirits.

Craig’s mom needs prayers now, too.  She had a biopsy done Tuesday and will find out September 9 if is it something they will have to treat.  In the meantime, she’s recovering from the biopsy and the anesthesia, and trying not to worry too much about what the test results will be.  When it rains around here, it pours!

Part of the reason I’ve been so slow to post is that our computer was stolen two weekends ago when our house was broken into.  Fortunately, the only took that and the change jars I was collecting for the girls.  Unfortunately (?) that means they took less than our home owner’s insurance deductible, so we were on our own for replacing the computer.  (Which, I don’t think I mentioned, we had only had for about three weeks.)  But Deus providebit, and one of the priests from Craig’s school, who knows lots and lots and lots about computers, heard what had happened and built us a new desktop from pieces he had laying around.  Which is how I am now able to write this for you to read.  God sure has strange ways of going about things.

I’ll be updating the homeschooling things soon, but I seem short on time lately, so that is what has been neglected.  Some of the time has been going to rearranging the house, including trying to get our front bedroom in the sort of condition to be used as the homeschooling room.

But you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with “pirate prayer”.  On a rare (these days) occasion, I drop by other Catholic homeschooling mommy blogs (if you know of other good ones, I’d love to hear about them), and I found a jewel today.  Here it is.  Enjoy.

[A note:  I started this post on June 14, 2009, and finally was able to finish it today.  That explains the time differences, if anyone would have noticed them!]

I hope I never forget those afternoons last May when we were going without air conditioner.  (We mostly made it until June, by the way, but I’m not strong enough to do without when it’s getting up over 90 degrees every day!)  I’d be trying to get the girls down for a nap, and it seemed so hot, and just a little breeze would come in through the open window, and it felt so cool and refreshing…how I praised God for those little breezes!

I had occasion to remember those afternoons yesterday while I was helping my father-in-law shovel dirt/tree shavings from a pile the size of our living room into wheelbarrows to deliver to various gardens around the house.  It was too hot, and just the time of day when we probably should have been inside, or at least in the shade, but my father-in-law doesn’t believe in leaving for later work that can be finished now, so I was out helping.  And here and there we would get a cool breath of wind, and well, I would almost fall down in rapturous praise.

Silently, of course.

Because my father-in-law, though respectful, is not a religious man.  (Unless you count the cult of LSU in some way, which I do not.)  He does, however, have a great appreciation for nature.  He and I share a yearning for mountains and forests, wild things as yet untamed.  He brings what he can of this nature into his gardens, where he spends hours digging, potting, transplanting, mulching, and doing all those little things which I hope I’ll learn as I try to grow my own little patches of paradise.  It is not worship, I don’t think, but there is certainly sacrifice involved!  For me, as I think I’ve said before, gardening can be a very spiritual experience, a chance to slow down and appreciate the wonderous creation God has put on this earth for us.  I had to wonder, as I tried not to swoon from joy during one of those welcome breezes, what does my father-in-law feel out here?

Because it seems to me that if there is anywhere that it should be easy to meet God, it must be in nature.  Of course you can meet Him in the Eucharist, in other people, in great art; but I think that in these sort of places, you more often have to be looking.  God can give you the flash of knowing, like Merton on the street corner in Louisville, but I have to think that experience would be hard to take when you are not disposed to try and see other people as your brothers and sister.  Out in His creation (as opposed to our concrete creations – there’s another post!), where He made the rules, there are fewer hangups – no race, to gender, no strange clothing or hair colors.  No maniacal drivers to dodge.  No repetitive, square, bland, (and did I mention repetitive?) buildings.  Everything sings the praise and glory of our God, every creature joins in extolling how wondrously it is made, how carefully its designs fit together with its surroundings so that all survive and thrive.  It is a simple kind beauty, in the way, I think, that we speak of God as “simple”.

So standing there, wondering these things, shovel in hand, mother-in-law’s straw hat on my head, those little breaths of wind brought me more refreshment than relief for my steaming body.  They carried to me, for those whom I love who doubt, a little breath of hope.