"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now.

It's just a spring clean for the May Queen.”

Those of us living in the Midwestern United States have had a springtime in which it really feels that we “know that all creation is groaning in labor pains…” (Romans 8:22) After a disappointingly mild winter – the disappointment being the lack of a picture book “White Christmas”- which ended in several weeks of multiple snowstorms, the wintery gloom and chill have dragged on. The groundhog who predicted an early spring should look into a new career.  The labor of the earth bringing forth new life has been painfully stalled.  At last, there have been some blessedly warm days, finally bringing the beauty of buds on the trees and the first flowers of spring.  On the sixth Sunday of Easter, I can look out my window and safely say that spring has sprung.  Though I wouldn’t say I’m packing away my winter coat just yet. 

Each spring I enjoy one of the happiest perks of my job as a church secretary: a good perch for viewing the procession of school children to the annual May Crowning.  There are the eight graders, trying to look casually grown-up as they wait for one of their own to crown the statue of the Blessed Mother. We are always especially touched by the gravity of the second graders, wearing their First Communion clothes for a second time.  They are so pious and serious as they walk past in single file.  I think of the impression this is making on their young hearts, helping form a lifetime of devotion to the mother of Our Lord.

The popular Marian hymns sung at May Crownings tend to be treacly in their sentimentality.  But I’ll give these sweet tunes a pass here, as they help ingrain an unforgettable devotion.  A friend of mine brings Holy Communion to an elderly shut-in who just celebrated her 100^th birthday.  Many conversations in these calls are one sided; but a visit last week, on the first of May, had more animation.  My friend began with a mention of the date and started to sing “Bring Flowers of the Rarest”.  And she was joined by her usually quiet companion as the tune brought back memories of May devotions in years gone by:  

O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today, 
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.

 May Day and other May festivities provide a prime example of a pagan holiday sanctified rather than suppressed by our Church.  In agrarian societies, the life-giving rebirth and blossoming of nature was something to be heartily celebrated.  In “The Bad Catholics Guide to Good Living”, author John Zmirak elaborates on how, “the Church never tried to quash these festivities, only to steer them gently in a more Christian direction.”[1]  It follows naturally that the celebration of spring be given over to a celebration of Mary.  As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in The May Magnificat:

Ask of her, the mighty mother:

Her reply puts this other

   Question: What is Spring? —

   Growth in every thing—

The primal concerns celebrated in spring are now steered towards honoring the ultimate act of new life for humanity, in a woman whose cooperation with God allowed the Word to become flesh and dwell among us.  Some say that pagan celebrations have been ‘tamed’ or ‘laundered’ into Christian celebrations, but there is nothing bland nor safe in what we celebrate. We celebrate God’s Love. Love that was willing to become one of us, grow like one of us, and finally suffer the agony of the Cross for our redemption.

Since I became a Catholic over twenty years ago, I have had a special affection for May’s Marian devotions.  I always felt a little ‘robbed’ of the beautiful May Crowning, as my children had been in our parish’s religious education program, which wrapped up at the end of April.  The May Crowning has been strictly an event for the children of the parish school. 

When we began homeschooling our children I wanted to have our own May Crowning and to begin a special tradition of honoring Mary in a special place in our home during Mary’s month.  Our “school sized” forty-four inch statue of the Blessed Mother was a gift that my husband and I gave to each other.  I had found it on eBay, looking to find a substantial statue of Our Lady with a bit of money that I had put aside.  When the bidding got frantic at the end of the auction, my husband offered to double the amount as an early anniversary present.

The statue took over six weeks to arrive; the delay so long that a friend of mine was sure that I had been scammed.  But arrive it did, looking worse for the wear, with its hands fractured off.  It was obvious that the hands been bumped, jostled, and glue back together over the years.  I set about to reverse the affects of a bad repainting.  Someone with an intent to modernize the statue had painted the face, hair, and hands white, leaving only the blue cloak for contrast.  I was grateful that whoever did the job ran out of paint and/or ambition before getting to the base of the statue, leaving the original paint on the cherubs, globe, and evil serpent (complete with juicy apple!) being crushed under Our Lady’s heel.  It was the stunning base of the statue that caught my eye when I was cyber-shopping, crying out for someone to give it a little help.

The project took all that I knew about painting plus years of knowledge acquired flipping through fashion magazines and hanging around the Clinique counter.  It was more of a cosmetic makeover than paint job – and I wanted it to be dignified, subtle, and worthy of the subject.  And after painting, repainting, retouching and regluing one hand that was broken off – again! - in the process, Our Lady was ready to take her place at our first May Altar.

These things never go quite as I imagine they should.  Not having years of large-scale Marian devotions behind them, my older daughters were mortified by the large statue moved into a prominent place in the living room.  That first year the May altar was quite visible through the living room window.  I didn’t mind.  In fact, if you have a forty-four inch statue, why not share it with the world!  But for image conscious teenagers, it took a bit of getting used to.  They said it looked ‘ethnic’, though no one was sure what ethnicity to pin it on.  (May Altars first became popular throughout the countries in the southern part of Europe, i.e., the Catholic countries.  They are also known to pop up in Ireland.) Perhaps the ethnicity they were thinking of is “Catholic”.  As in, unapologetically Catholic with the appropriate devotion to Mary, the Mother of God. 

That is the kind of grousing one gets from teenagers who want so much to be like the rest of the crowd.  If everyone else had May Altars, ours might not have been big enough or prominent enough.  It’s all a matter of contrast.  Now the family is used to it.  Maybe still not 100% on board.  It is not easy to be present at the beginning of a family tradition; it is so much easier to grow up remembering that something has “always been done that way.” 

Out in the yard, many flowers have names of Marian significance (marigolds, anyone?) and most others have alternate names honoring the Blessed Virgin.   The Mary Garden is another springtime exercise in honoring Mary that has found a resurgence in popularity.  Plantings in a Mary Garden create an earthy shrine for meditation on the lives of Mary and Jesus. I have clipped articles, read websites, and planted a Mary Garden in my mind.  My tangible experience is pretty much limited to marigolds.  But just knowing the symbolism behind the random flora of our garden is another way of appreciating the beauty of the created world in which God was made flesh. 

Long before the child Jesus picked his first dandelion for Mary (or whatever was the Holy Land equivalent of the iconic American child’s love offering), people had been celebrating the rebirth of life each spring.  Our Church has made this time of celebration its own and made this a blessed time to honor the woman full of Grace.  May Crownings, May Altars, and Mary Gardens are a deliberately “ethnic” and proud way of celebrating our faith.  At my house, Catholic is what we are now – and we set aside the month of May for remembering Our Lady in this lovely, verdant way.

Bring flow'rs of the fairest, bring flow'rs of the rarest, 
From garden and woodland and hillside and vale. 
Our full hearts are swelling, our glad voices telling 
The praise of the loveliest, Rose of the vale.

[1]John Zmirak, The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Good Living, (New York, New York, The

Crossroads Publishing Company, 2005) p. 72.

It's Been a Long Time

I can't remember when I have seen a TV show that is literally a revelation.  "Mad Men" is a series that I can't wait to watch on Monday nights (buy it through iTunes; works well since it is a little carrot in front of my nose on Mondays).  The plot and characters are fascinating.  And the meticulous attention to detail gives the series a feeling of time travel through my youth. (I'm about Sally Draper's age, btw). 

The Kodak Carousel episode at the end of Season One made me shed a tear. If you knew how little I cry it would help you understand the potency of Don Draper's Carousel pitch.  It not only made me cry - it made me want to tear our house apart looking for the Carousel projector that I inherited from my parents, along with the numerous Carousels of slides documenting my childhood, Road America in Elkhart Lake, my father's gorgeous flower photos.  "... in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a space ship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called a wheel, it’s called a carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and a round, and back home again. To a place where we know we are loved."

The recognition of a drinking glass, a particular dress, or type of telephone  makes me want to drag people into my room and stop the show, while I go on and on, "We had that...really, just like that!"

Last night's episode "The Flood", centering on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King left me absolutely stunned.  It's not just that I remember King's assassination.  I watched as much as I could on TV, read all our periodicals voraciously, and listened (more or less) to  our 7th grade classroom discussions.  Technically there was nothing new for me in this episode.  Except this was the first time in 40-some years I considered Dr. King's assassination and the concomitant civil unrest surrounding it from the point of view of an adult.  I've always remembered the facts - filtered through the perspective of a 13 year old suburban girl.

The late sixties were, to me, a magical time.  (maybe some of it was hormones?)  But it was all filtered through the 3 channels on the TV, Life magazine, the Milwaukee Journal, etc.  A crazy time all taking place at a safe distance.  Not unlike the setting of one of my favorite books - Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow - “There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.”  The only black man I had met was Henry Aaron, who we'd run into at the little market in our town from time to time.  The world outside the enclave in which I was raised was changing and I lapped up all the change that I could absorb from the media.  Except for that week my family spent in LA and San Francisco* in 1969, the world was at such a such a safe distance.  And I felt so safe that I could absorb everything as though it were on some other planet.

During "The Flood" tonight I had my first inkling of facing this time of unrest as an adult. Wow.  For 45 years my grasp on these events have stayed on the level of a coddled 13 year-old.  That's another good thing about having my "Mad Men" on iTunes...so I can watch it again and ponder it more.

*visiting Haight-Ashbury felt like another Disney Land attraction; It's a Small World with scruffier 'children'.

Take Someone to Work Day

Take your Daughter to Work Day (or whatever it is now called) has come and gone.  Our little Lily, complete in her own custom-fit pink scrubs, had quite the day helping at her daddy's office.  I suppose the next time I see her she'll ask if I'm remembering to floss daily!

Alas, no one went to work with me.  Although a few of my work friends and I came to the conclusion that if we could bring our spouses and make them sit bound and gagged in the corners of our offices for a day they might have an idea of why we come home exhausted, head-achy, and unable to totally articulate the stresses of the day.  Maybe next year...

I used to take my daughters to work; more as my own statement to society about the importance of "mothers' work".  The girls were, of course, delighted to have any excuse to skip school, even if mother's work was not particularly exciting. If I were more savvy, I would have put them in charge for the day, letting them run everything except for the endless driving for drop-offs and pick-ups. (if the school system found us suspect for pulling some of the children out to homeschool, stunts like this probably sealed the deal) 

Eddie did once go to work with me for half a day, just because his father was out of town.  He sat at my desk with coloring books etc. (pushing paper just like mom) So far he hasn't expressed any interest in becoming a church secretary.  :-( 

Hey, That's Me!!!
and Cake Wrecks provides all the tribute I need.
If the copier tech can figure out why we are getting tie-dyed magenta copies on large runs, I will be a happy Administratibe Professional.

(I certainly don't look at Cake Wrecks because I think I can do better.  Except for spelling.  Usually.
I brought wedding themed cupcakes for a wedding ministry meeting.  They were beautiful - Sunday night.  They didn't look as good Monday morning and then I let the carrier tilt on my way out of the house and they all smooshed together.  I  tried to reconstruct them for the meeting - the final result was a plate of cupcakes that looked like they had been made by a third grader.  But, hey, I'm an Administrative Professional - just an amateur Wreckerator.)

Productivity May Vary

Some times I am so productive.  (e.g., Saturday I finally got my yearly mammogram, albeit four years late, had my hair 'done', did shopping for necessities and some gifts for upcoming events, did a little writing, finished reading a book, plus a bunch of tiny household tasks.) Then there are the days I feel lucky to have dressed properly, bungled my way through work, and didn't foul up much at home.  This was one of those days.  My biggest accomplishment was remembering I was on day 6 of the 7 days allowed me to pay for those tolls we 'blew off' driving home from Wisconsin last Thursday.  Hey, I didn't even want to take the toll way...but whatever.  Messing up with the tollway authority is not pleasant.  The last time we had unpaid tolls I had been under the impression that I had properly submitted my online payment.  Then came the $125 bill from the tollway people.  Ooops.  Not going to make that mistake again.  I have a screen shot of the payment confirmation, so it must be a good day.

Time to put the bothers of the day behind me.  Time to retrieve some flannel pajamas - but quit whistling Winter Wonderland - and pack it in.

It was the Seventies...What can I say?

It was the Seventies...What can I say?

First, I faced the mammographer taking my medical history.  Ever used hormonal contraceptives?  "Yeah, a couple years back in the Seventies.  It was the Seventies...What can I say?"  An hour later I'm talking with bubbly young girl who is cutting hair and discussing bad hair decisions.  Here I confess a series of bad salon perms.  "It was the Seventies...What can I say?"  How many more bad I ideas can I blame on a decade?  My whole life?  OK, they weren't all bad decisions.  But, I can draw a direct line for most of my joys and woes back to the Seventies.

The Seventies weren't all that great. Not epic in the way people speak of the Sixties.  (I could hardly stand to watch "That Seventies Show".  It was funny for a a limited number of episodes and then dwindled off.  Perhaps the first good episodes were a little too reminiscent of real teenage years in Wisconsin in the Seventies.)  There was a lot of polyester.  I wore polyester!!! ("It was the Seventies...What can I say?") Hair styles were goofy.  The music was good; even disco at least managed to get people up off their derrieres.  That was when I grew up.  In 1971 I was a clueless, geeky sixteen year old.  By 1980, I was a married woman with one and a half children.  In ten years I had managed to get out of high school with minimal effort, went to college, dropped out of college, dropped back in to college, found some bad romances, got a degree in art history and religious studies, found a husband, planned a wedding, got married, decorated my first apartment, had my first baby, conceived another....and I can't forget seeing Springsteen at the Uptown Theater in 1976. 

That was the decade that laid the foundation for the rest of my life.  I'm going to accept it for what it was. (yes, there is some disco on my Spotify playlist; I didn't understand the motivation for Fifties nostalgia back in the Seventies - now I do)  But quit using it as an excuse. 

Bad perms.

Maybe...

Maybe...
Maybe spring has been a long time coming, with too many in-between days.  Maybe I've overdosed on too much Treme and family tension.  (Maybe its my crush on Michiel Huisman - I'm old enough to be his mother.  I should be ashamed.)  I'll chalk it up to spring fever.  And squash the fantasies of "running away from home."  My skill set is limited. There's no hidden busker in me.  I don't tell fortunes or do splendid chalk drawings on the sidewalk.  I doubt if my pastor would write a letter of recommendation to some parish in Louisiana - not that I have little to recommend, but someone who packs up and runs away from what's bugging her doesn't deserve a recommendation. And I know I crumple at the first hint of humidity.  But one can dream a little...

Hulga’s Revenge or Joy’s Return?

Domestic violence is not entertaining.  And I don’t spend my time scanning news sites looking for more sadness than that which usually jumps out at me when I check the Chicago Tribune each morning.  But…  There was an incident that caught my eye on a popular news/chat/gossip site a few days ago.  And my first response was to send it to a friend with the brief comment, “Hulga’s revenge?”

Flannery O’Connor fans know who Hulga is.  A joyless woman, possessed of a degree in philosophy but little common sense, Hulga - née Joy - lost a leg in a childhood accident.  She lives with her mother on the family farm, where her position is, in today’s parlance, resident “Debbie Downer.”  In a tragi-comical turn of events, Hulga seduces a Bible salesman who she takes to be an innocent rube, and instead winds up as his victim.  The Bible salesman is not what he appeared to be and Hulga, in her haste to shame him, allows herself to be shamed.  Not only is Hulga shamed, she is left in the loft of the barn while salesman takes quick leave of her – carrying her prosthetic leg as a trophy.  (This is better told by Flannery herself.  If you don’t have a copy of her collected works I would advise that you find one.  And make “Good Country People” one of your first choices.)

How could Hulga not come to mind when I read of a woman in South Carolina  who stabbed her boyfriend and then threw his prosthetic leg into the yard to keep him from chasing her?  And this woman was thorough!  She didn’t just through his leg out in the yard; she tossed his spare leg, too. I wonder if any other fans of Flannery and “Good Country People” also saw it as some sort of turnabout on Hulga’s tale. (That is all I know of this sad story, except that it coincidentally took place in the south, reminding me of what the great author said about that, “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”)

The frailties of the human body show up frequently in Flannery’s work.  As a Catholic she knew the importance of the human body as being an offer of Divine Grace.  Each human body.  In the Resurrection, it will be our bodies, glorified, that will rise.  God himself became human, incarnated in a body of flesh and blood – bones, tendons, corpuscles and muscles.  It is easy to see to make a connection to the divine if one looks upon a body in its prime – adorable babies, Olympic athletes at the peak of their fitness, gorgeous women on the covers of popular magazines, men so good looking they must be deported. 

Then there are those of us whose bodies don’t draw an immediate connection to the divine: the Plain Janes, those missing limbs, those with weak chins, weak intellects, and chemical imbalances.  These bodies, too, are offers of Divine Grace.  Afflicted with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Flannery O’Connor knew more than enough about the trials that can afflict the human body.  My family has seen their share of suffering and challenge.  Lately I have been doing more reading on lupus and other autoimmune disorders.  This not only helps in our immediate situation, but also reconnects me with the background of one of my favorite authors.  I can read Flannery’s work with knowledge of her understanding of the incarnational nature of Catholicism as well as with fuller insight to the suffering and vulnerability that she faced in her own body.  (I did find a good Flannery quote that has been a help; with a bit of humor consoling one of my daughters as she faces illness and the baffling maze of our American medical system: “Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.” A sense of humor in the face of suffering is grace indeed.)

March 25 of this year would have been Flannery O’Connor’s 88^th birthday.  What beauty there is in the birth date of such an ‘incarnational’ author being the Feast of the Annunciation!  I can only wonder how a woman with such a keen sense of humor felt about having a birthday which was a Feast day which was movable dependent upon its falling during Holy Week.  This year, for instance, we celebrated the Annunciation on April 8.  Would she have moved her birthday celebration?  Celebrated twice?  I know I remembered her birthday on both days this year.

Our bodies are important.  They are not just disposable, fleshy vehicles for our souls.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit.” (CCC 364)  God himself became one of us – incarnate in a human body: an actual human body prone to colic, rashes, fevers, and vulnerable to extreme suffering.  And death – death on the cross.  Is that not the most potent endorsement for the gift of our bodies?

So here is an offer of Divine Grace.  We have only to run with it.  Figuratively speaking. If we cannot run or walk or think with extreme acuity, we still just pick-up where we are and go forward to embrace and accept the offer of grace to the soul incarnate in the human body.  In that offer of grace is also a charge of responsibility, for our bodies are indeed temples of the Holy Spirit.

He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself. (Philippians 3:21)  Until that time when, what in some translations are referred to as our “vile bodies”, are brought into conformation with his glorified body – while they are under our care – we must keep them in proper perspective.  Naturally we should nurture and care for them properly.  We should also understand our imperfections and accept the offer of Divine Grace that is inherent in them, to cast off the Hulga and bring back the Joy; respecting and honoring our own bodies, the bodies of others…and even their attendant prosthetics.

Counting my blessings.
Yes, the fecal matter is dreadful.  But I didn't wake up to find my car in a sinkhole.  So I'm counting my blessings.  (Though I'm not forgetting the little sinkhole in front of my house - which the township road maintenance people keep throwing asphalt patching material into.  I think this picture will keep coming to mind.  There's only so much a little hot mix can do.)

Out of Practice

I have a good work rep for making top notch posters  - this is not one of them.

It's been a long time since I've made anything resembling a protest sign!  But seeing the number of children interested in stomping in the ponds that appeared in the street, I was moved to put up some warnings. (And maybe shame the Township people who thought the problems on Smith Avenue could be solved by quickly probing the storm drains....even though they have known for years that there are massive rocks blocking the storm sewers.)  Given the number of homes on our street who have had to solve the sewage problems by siphoning the effluent into their sump pumps, which are just sending the sewage into the yards which are draining back into the street...etc.  No one should be hopping in these puddles.

Since I already had to make a run for bleach, Lysol, and other necessary disaster clean up items, it was easy enough to pick up some neon poster boards.  I think they are helping.  A couple little kids got off of the school bus, looked at the sign and just walked on.  I'm a little worried about the fellow who looked to be about 12.  He studied one of the signs.  And then walked to a deep part of the 'lake' and just stood there.  Is he illiterate?  Does he not care about what e. coli and heaven only knows what he may track into his home?  Someone else gave him a word to move along before I opened the window to yell something along the lines of, "What part of fecal matter don't you understand?"  Obviously my little sketches of e. coli weren't scary enough.

And yes - there were fish.  I don't even know where fish would have come from.  Fish?

3 gallons of bleach, one cheap mop to dispose of at the end of the day, a bottle of Clorox cleaning spray, one aerosol can of Lysol, a jumbo box of Clorox wipes, 3 neon yellow poster boards....?  A necessary expense.

The chance to be a "please don't play in the $#!+ laden water" community activist?  Priceless!!

Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control

Two day stay-cation has been expanded to a third.  Not so much fun today. 

Fran woke me up at 4:00am to let me know that the storm sewers were overloaded to the extent of spillage into the sanitary sewers.  (i.e. - "OMG - there's sewage coming up the laundry sink!)  The township sent someone with a pole to poke in the storm drains; same thing they do every time this happens.  No one understands (or wants to understand) that the storm drains on our side of the street do not empty anywhere.  Anywhere!!!  Fran has been on the phone all morning with various local entities (who are also worrying about the Des Plaines River flooding north of here); everyone refers her to the North Shore Sanitary District.  Of course, the NSSD has had their phone off the hook since 5:00am.  Even the Sheriff's Dept. cannot get through to them. 

We're doing OK - as long as we can keep draining the sink into the hole drained by the sump pump. 
What's really icky is that a bunch of people on our street have this sewage draining into their yards...and the water all runs towards us and then the neighbor to our east.  They have well water.  I don't think you need to call in the CDC to question why this might be a problem.  They also have sewage coming out of their washing machine.

And then there is the flooding and sinkhole in Chicago.  So it could be worse for us. 

Oh, well.  Time for a bleach run.