Trip to the library this morning for fairy-tale books.  The castle was closed so the girls actually looked at books and did the coloring sheets instead of running around in it.

Lucy spent close to an hour sitting on the couch looking at (non-library) books before lunch.

We went to the Pax Christi peace liturgy – time for socialization, cookie sampling, music watching, saint statue and stained glass identifying, and liturgical experiencing.  Part of the evening is that everyone processes to the front to sign in a book that they pledge to live peacefully in the coming year, and Lucy signed her name.  And she actually tried to write it, not just draw a squiggle like she usually does.  There was a definite ”L”, an upside-down “u”, about three attempts at a “c”, and finally a nice “y”.  I was very proud.  Samantha signed her name with a squiggle that looked like Lucy’s usual work, which was also impressive for her.  This is the first time Lucy has really attempted to write her name on her own like that.  So it was an exciting day, all in all.

But ice cream aside, (or inside, as the case may be), I now have the problem of which of the hundred things I’ve thought about writing about in the last few weeks will actually make it on the page.  Well, enough stalling.

These days, Lucy is busy making Christmas cards.  Watch your mailbox, they are scheduled to arrive sometime before Epiphany.  In two days, I think we’ve completed about eight.  And I’m a slug about digging out addresses, so I can’t blame it all on Lucy, or on the fact that we can only work when Samantha is asleep.  She prefers scattering the stamps, glitter, etc. all around the room rather than putting them on the cards.  Maybe next year she will be more helpful.  If we attempt this again next year.

And to those of you who get the glitter cards, I apologize in advance about the mess.  You may want to display this artwork outside.

Craig has been busy saving the world.  He had his first official youth function last Wednesday (did I mention that he’s now a youth minister at a parish 1 1/2 hours away from us?  Well he is, at St. Jean, the parish he attended in high school, and where we ran confirmation retreats while we were at Tulane.  This means lots more time with the BR grandparents.)  It was a walloping success – I made 76 or so cupcakes, we ordered 6 extra-large pizzas (I didn’t know they made extra-large!) and had four youth and four adults show up.  That’s counting Craig and me.  We are still eating cupcakes.  But don’t be dismayed by the small numbers, they were a lively and interested group which is more than we usually expect from high schoolers, and way more than we should be allowed to expect, considering that there have been no non-mandatory youth events at this parish in two years.  At any rate, the eight of us are off to a good start.

Craig also had to speak at all five masses this weekend, which went well except for the exhaustion.  He’s feeling extra holy this week (between that and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), so he volunteered himself and several of the boys he teaches to help an elderly woman who was being evicted move out yesterday.  He got home at 10 pm.  Which is actually better than I was expecting.  They moved her whole house in under six hours, and the new place was about half an hour’s drive away, and they made two trips.  I think they did quite well.

And here’s the moral delimma:  if she was evicted because the house is condemned, and the house is condemned because the landlord refuses to make the repairs necessary to keep it in livable condition, shouldn’t the landlord at least have to pay for the moving truck?

Ah, well, that’s why we didn’t buy the piano the guys standing outside Guitar Center were trying to sell the other night.

But if you know of a free or nearly-free piano in our general area, let us know.  Craig has taken up violin (on my grandfather’s violin, which we brought home from Texas after Thanksgiving), and it’d be nice to be able to accompany him.

Oh yeah, and Lucy turned three last Thursday, so we had a party for both the girls in BR on Sunday.  (Which was amazing, since the annual family Christmas party had been at Craig’s parents the night before, and that involved weeks and weeks of planning, test cooking, decorating, cooking…our party involved one run to Party City and leftover cupcakes.)  But that was fun and the girls enjoyed it, and the new toys and clothes.  And I’ve added those thank you notes to the pile of Christmas cards and other things I need to get in the mail…sigh.  I guess I should get busy with some of that.

So when I say we’ve been busy, well, I guess we actually have.  If I’m forgetting something, Mom, or somebody, feel free to add it in the comments.  Hopefully, things will be settling down soon.  But I feel like I say that often.  At least we don’t spend much time being bored.

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!

I have been musing on the implications of this sudden change for a few days now. Shortly before Samantha was born, I was having a conversation with a friend who is an artist and stay-at-home mom by trade about how now, as her daughter is reaching a year old, she is finally getting back the creative energy which had seemed lacking since the birth. I think we both attributed the difference to the fact that her energy was being spent breastfeeding and raising an infant when her husband is out of town much of the time. But after my experience over the last two weeks, I have started to wonder if there may be another factor in my own lack of creative energy than simple exhaustion.

The birth of our first daughter was not at all what I had expected or prepared for. We went through Bradley classes and were prepared to have an unmedicated and as uninterviened-upon a birth as the local hospitals and birth culture would allow. After twelve hours of labor in the hospital, our doctor realized that he had missed the fact that our daughter was in a breech position, and in a matter of seconds I went from a low risk, unmedicated annoyance to the nursing staff to an automatic C-section. It was devastating, to say the least, despite the fact that we ended up with a beautiful, healthy little girl and no major complications.

I’m not sure that that day was when I lost the creative impetus that I remember having in high school. It could have been earlier, in four years of undergraduate focused on other people’s research, or the year of master’s work when my eyes crossed almost daily from reading so many texts. There was little time for creating for pleasure when I had three or four 12-15 page papers to write each semester.

I should note at some point that the lack of creative feeling was never total. I sewed, sometimes with a vengeance, and throughout college I went out of my way to find and capture beauty with my camera. But I have, for too long I fear, been away from all non-academic expression of the word.

Long history aside, I wondered what could have happened in the last two weeks that would renew my desire to write. Why do I suddenly feel compelled to put words on a page, and why do care so much less what any given reader may think now than I did even a month ago? I’m not sure, but a have a couple of theories.

First, this may be simply pragmatic. I have experienced both ends of the birthing spectrum now, and have a desire to share this experience with others, so that they can share my joy and possibly avoid some of my suffering. What easier way to accomplish this than web publishing, and how else could I reach such a potentially large audience?

Perhaps I have been given a glimpse of how fragile life is and want to leave something behind. Perhaps I am merely hoping, like the ancient Romans, to have my name remembered by later generations, and writing seems like a good way to go about it.

I think it more likely, however, that this demonstrates yet another instance of how power, or an apparent lack thereof, can change a person’s perceptions and actions. When I was rolled into the operating room for Lucy’s birth, I was entirely powerless. Sure, I could have refused to sign the waivers or go through with the C-section. That never crossed my mind. From the moment they said “breech” I felt trapped. My baby was kept away from me for hours. I was physically incapable of even standing up to do anything about it if I had thought to. Bonding was difficult. Breastfeeding was difficult. I had no control over the way my child had come into the world, her first experiences, or how she was treated by the adults around her. It is almost an example of Maslow’s Hierarchy for a Psyc 101 class: when safety is not present, creativity is not a priority and will not be pursued.

The birth of my second daughter somehow seems to have exorcised these demons. I chose exactly how she would come into the world, and we were blessed enough to have a midwife who was supportive and caring and respected our wishes as long as they were reasonable. She did not deliver my baby, nor did she deliver me from my baby and the work of birthing her. She empowered me to birth my own baby exactly as my body directed me to. She allowed me to prove to myself that I am powerful. I have been granted by God the power to bring new life into the world by the amazing, overwhelming working of my body. It is a holy thing to labor, and yes, to suffer, in this work. I am convinced it was sanctifying in some small way. And the awareness of the power of my body to participate in creating something so astonishing as a tiny, helpless child with an immortal soul has surely convinced me that I am capable of creating, even if my medium be something so lowly as mere human words.