Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity

So maybe it's a function of my age, but it seems that the wild extremes of early motherhood ~ between being carefully dressed and coiffed for rare outings and spending the balance of most days in my pajamas ~ has leveled out to a somewhat bohemian middleground. I'm only a little disappointed that I never could quite make the June Cleaver grade. But I'm happy that the days of feeling lucky to get a shower between diaper changes and nursing babies have passed and my robe is usually hanging on the back of the bathroom door by 8 am now. I'm glad to be at the point where I can comfortably dress just outside the fringes of fashionability. (Denim skirts, tees and dangly earrings are timeless, aren't they?) I've come to peace with the wild rollercoaster trainwreck that I call bangs and have given up trying to smooth them down into anything resembling the hair-do d'jour. There is a certain privilege to age (Ahem! Maturity!) which releases us from a lot of the youthful pressures of fad and fashion. Suitability becomes more important than conformity. It's good.


Nevertheless, every year at this time, I can't help but feel the same twinges of angst. If you know me or have been paying obsessive attention to my posts (Why would you do that?), you may have caught on that my birthday is coming up, and I can honestly say that is a prospect that neither fills me with particular expectation nor dread. I don't require more than a handmade card or a phone call from my loved ones and a few hours alone with my wh to make me perfectly content. The very idea of planning an occasion of my birthday gives me a rash. And, though those twinges may make you think otherwise, the passing of the years alone does not make me sad in the least. Stretching before me I see the golden days when I can dandle my grandchildren on my knee and hand them back to their parents when they're poopy. I love watching my children grow to be men and women before my eyes; it's like reading several novels at once, except I have a hand in the outcome. No, it's not the fact of aging that bothers me. It's the effects of it.


Like when I look in the mirror.


I admit it. I don't want to look old! My little girls tell me there are too many grey hairs to pull out these days; they're coming in patches now, it seems. It gets harder and harder to lose weight. Harder and harder to get up off the floor. The bags under my eyes can justifiably be called luggage now and anything that can sag is sagging. OK, so it bothers me! Is it vanity, I ask you, though, or is it self respect?


I want to recognize the girl looking out at me from the mirror. I would like her to look like the older sister of the one I fondly remember, not like her grandmother. At least not yet. I want to be attractive for my husband; that's an important consideration. We do compete, in a way, with the women in the world that our husbands meet in their daily wanderings. I don't want to come up lacking. And if I must, due to sheer mortal accountability to time, look and feel less like the energetic young mother that started this career twenty years ago, I hope I can at least replace some of the energy with wisdom and some of the youthful sparkle with radiant distinction. I can age with grace and dignity and keep a youthful perspective. I have the advantage of a positive outlook. I have healthy self respect.


And I have an appointment on Tuesday to have my hair colored. Red.

A Good and Helpful Quote

From: Holiness For Housewives and Other Working Women
By Dom Hubert Van Zeller

"Imagined sanctity is no sanctity. A religion that exists in hypothetical circumstances cannot endure the pressure of actuality. To presume to a service of God that the present framework of life does not allow is sheer pride. What sort of service can it be that has its only reality in someone else's vocation? How can obedience to God's will (which is all that religion amounts to) rest upon a concept that is not being realized and may never be?

"The only thing that really matters in life is doing the will of God. Once you are doing the will of God, then everything matters. But, apart from the accepted will of God, nothing has any lasting reality. Once you really appreciate this truth, and act according to its implications, you save yourself a lot of unnecessary heart-searching and resentment. The whole business of serving God becomes simply a matter of adjusting yourself to existing conditions. This is the particular sanctity for you."

What To Do if You Have Insomnia

1. Decide to say the rosary and make a deal with your guardian angel to finish it for you when you fall asleep. Finish the rosary (all fifteen decades), the litany of Our Lady, the extended version of your Godblesses, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star Spangled Banner. Get a raincheck from your angel.

2. Go downstairs and get a mug of hot milk from the kitchen. Go back to bed and think about how many calories were probably in that milk. Go over everything you ate that day, including the chocolate chips you stole from the pantry when nobody was looking. Remember how you were going to lose weight before your birthday. Your birthday is only 12 days away. Start thinking about how you're going to be both fat and old. Slap yourself mentally for your lack of will power. Now you're even more mentally awake.

3. Roll over and try to get more comfortable. Rearrange your pillows. Start relaxing every muscle in your body, starting from your feet and going up, like they taught you in Lamaze class so many years ago with your first baby. Start thinking about that first little baby, how he's a grown up man now. Start thinking about him getting married before you know it and having babies of his own. Now you're really awake. Start praying again.

4. Turn on the bird and flute music very quietly on the cd player near the bed. Start thinking that this is not your cd player and whose is it actually? Shake yourself and try to concentrate on the birds. Thinking about the birds... You always wanted a bird. Remember that African Grey Parrot you met and how it asked you if you were talking about him when you were. Start thinking about how people must really think you're some kind of loon, and probably talk about you behind your back. Sit up and fix your ponytail and realize you must be having delerious delusions of paranoia... Or not...

5. Think about going downstairs to watch Blue's Clues, as that is bound to put you to sleep. Decide against it, as the sound of it is bound to penetrate the sleeping brains of the little ones and wake them up.

6. Listen very carefully to see if you can hear any of the children snoring. Get up to check on all of them. They're all peacefully asleep. Probably dreaming of getting up early for Rice Krispies and bananas. And you're going to be exhausted because you've been up all night.

7. Go downstairs and sit down at the computer to write a post on your blog about insomnia and start to get sleepy. Drape your arm over the chair next to the computer and

Lamplighting

This year in our homeschool we've decided to use a couple of whole year unit studies to tailor to the girls' use. Our four Big Boys are away, either at school or making their way in the world, so our family culture has shifted dramatically away from the "boy culture" we had stormed and belly-crawled through for so many years. This is now a Ladies' Household. =sigh= It's lovely. And this Mama is delighting in the opportunity to play dress up and have tea parties and turn it all into homeschooling. So, with that goal in mind, we are immersing ourselves in The Little House and Anne of Green Gables series.

Our oldest daughter (age 12) is soaking up the Lucy Maud Montgomery books and the manners and means of the early twentieth century, while daughters 2 and 3 (ages 8 and 6) are traveling west with the Ingalls in a slightly earlier time period. We're only a week and a few chapters into our unit studies and all the talk among the girls (besides the plans for the next tea party) is what it would be like to live a hundred years ago. At first glance, it does seem a very romantic notion. Of course, we'd love it!

But, would we really?

We were having a discussion about the realities of Victorian life the other night, after we tried to read a litany by the light of an oil lamp. The lamp had been long unused and dirty, and it took me quite a while that afternoon to clean it out, replace the oil, shine up the chimney and trim the wick, and I told the girls that this would likely have been the job of one of the children of the household a hundred years ago ~ and that there would likely have been many lamps to clean. Once the whole parade of 19th century chores was trotted out, daughter number 2 had to finally admit, "It would be pretty inconvenient."

Laundry, cooking on a woodstove, cutting wood, hauling or pumping water, traveling by horse, or more likely, by foot everywhere you wanted to go... Life was not easy for our great, great grandmothers! The prospect, when seriously pondered is daunting! The lazy among us would swoon, or hide ~ unless you were one of the lucky few who could afford servants (I somehow doubt that would have been me). It really was a hard life.

But is hard bad? Well, no, I don't think it necessarily is. People a hundred years ago were required to do more physical labor ~ this saved on health club bills. Many had to rely on the food they grew themselves ~ eminently healthier for them! Folks were less mobile ~ they loved their homes and relied upon their communities. People died younger ~ they were faced far more often with the prospect of their own mortality, hopefully to the betterment of their souls. Fewer things were taken for granted by those who had to work hard for everything.

It could be argued that the overall benefits outweighed the inconvenience.

Hometeaching is hard work. We have to keep a focus on each of our children, and everything going into each of their heads, in a very intense way. We have to make them be the ones that want to learn. We have to keep it interesting. We have to take care of all of them, body, mind and spirit. We have to truly be everything to each of them. That can be hard. But, in a way it can be easy, too. It's like that lamp I cleaned out. There was a lot of background work at the kitchen sink. Getting that wick straight and level took a couple tries. But, once I'd done all the "groundwork," the lamp lit as soon as I put the match to it, and glowed beautifully. If we have been carefully doing our background work as Catholics parents, as people who are excited about education ourselves; if we've carefully trimmed the wick of our daily habits, that light, we've found, can catch easily and burn straight and true.

We've graduated two young men so far, and we are proud that they are intelligent, hard working, good Catholics. We continue to pray for their strength and steadiness in the winds of the world, but they're off to a good start. The products (for the most part) of homeschooling. Two lamps going out into the world to light more lamps. It was worth the hard work.

Are We There Yet?

So are we?

Are we almost there?

You know, I really have no right to get irritated with my children when they keep asking that question on one of our long drives to see their grandparents five and a half hours away ~ or from my three year old walking down to the park, five minutes from home. I can't very well justify my annoyance with them, either, when I just cannot seem to get to the end of the "why?" sequences with my toddlers, or the "why nots?" from my teenagers. I should have endless patience with my little girls when they're constantly pestering me to know what's next on the schedule, later in the day, tomorrow, next week, next month, next Christmas... And about those "Can-I-haves," especially... The answer may still be "no," but I should be smiling and not gritting my teeth.

Why have I come to this conclusion? Well, I recently realized that I have been an insufferable pest to God. The sound of my own prayers are reverberating in the halls of my conscious now: "Can I please, God?"
"Could You make this happen sooner rather than later?"
"Can't we have this now?"
"Can't this be over now?"
"Are we there yet?"
Over and over.

He did say, "Ask and ye shall receive." And I take comfort in that. I know He expects us to petition Him and He said He'd answer us. Of course He didn't say how, and he didn't say when, and that's where I seem to get hung up.

"Aren't we there yet?"

Do you suppose He's used to being pestered? He must almost expect it. But then, it must be really nice to not hear whining coming from a customarily noisy backseat occasionally. It must stand out to Him, in fact, when we're just taking the ride in stride, behaving ourselves, minding our business and trusting Him to decide when to take the rest stops.

This is the analogy I've been thinking about, and it's why I decided to title this blog as I did. Here we are, here and now. Our Heavenly Father is driving the van and He certainly knows where He's going. I'm just one of the kids. Do I doubt that He knows the way and that He'll get me there safely? It never even occured to me as a child that my Dad couldn't find his way to one of the moons of Saturn, and get us there safely and on time. But, I had the same problem then as I do now on a larger scale. I just couldn't resist asking for candy at the gas stations, and I just had to know when, when, when? I know it drove my Dad nuts; it drives me nuts now as a parent.

It's good to know God is more patient than we are. He is all-perfect, all knowing and all merciful. It's such a good thing. Because I realize I am still a pest, here in my early forties. I think I'm a well-meaning pest, but I can't help myself.

So, ok. Now that I see myself in the heavenly rearview mirror, what am I going to do about it? I know I need to work on being more trusting, more compliant to His will, and better practiced at living in the moment. Certainly, my own failing should lead me to better understand my children's impatience. And, of course I'll try to instruct them in the fine art of forebearance, but I will try to be merciful about it...

I'll try to remember that God knows how I need to get to where I'm going and what I do and do not need along the way. (He knows when I do not need a Snickers or a Dr. Pepper, right, Dad?)

And, now when I say "Are we there yet?" I'll try hard to be looking forward to my ultimate destination: Heaven.