Ordinary Time

[J] My brother-in-law and I are directing the Christmas pageant again this year. It's year two for us. Before last year, my mother was responsible for about 143 years (give or take...) of Christmas pageants, without a break. Each year, she'd invent, devise, adapt, or plagiarize a new script for the first half of the Christmas eve pageant. (The second half featured pretty much the same nativity story each time, with a few variations.) Each December, under her forceful direction, hundreds of milling, mewling children would transform into thespians straight out of the Old Vic. The original (more or less) scripts that she'd write each year allowed her to add something new to the nativity story, and to explore or invent new tales of Christmas. There are extant scripts featuring a cobbler, a juggler, talking animals, Saint Nicholas (the real one, not Santa Claus!), Saint Francis, and a wide variety of characters. Often she'd find an existing story to adapt, like the story ...

Why was it so easy to keep up the blog while we travelled? Why has it been two months since our last post? Certainly the technological challenges were greater in Viet Nam. Getting and keeping a connection felt like a real accomplishment. Back home, you'd think we could post something mildly interesting at least every week. -- But, of course, when we were travelling, there was nothing else to do. The entire world had contracted to just me and E and TM and our little corner of Viet Nam. When the boy was finally asleep after a harrowing day of getting from one meal to another, and through one meal after another, and through one great big noisy fit (GBNF) after another, it seemed easy to pour out the day's adventures to the waiting hordes back home. -- Now... not so much. Oddly, I was compelled to peck out these thoughts by two things: (1) the current GBNF being thrown by TM just across the room, firmly pinned in E's arms... and (2) reading the current adventures of Mrs....

(E) Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of the death of J's mother. A year seems both too long and too short for how it feels. She can't have been gone for just a year. The pain is still too raw and the ache of missing her hasn't seemed to abate all that much. But, has it really been just a year that we last talked together? It feels as though it has been forever since we have spoken. The best testament I can give about her is her own words. She wrote this is response to a friend's unbelief in God. WHY I BELIEVE Mrs. F. K. W. C. How do I know -- KNOW-- that there is a God? And why do I believe with every breath I draw that He has planned a life beyond this short, entrancing, sometimes brutish, often frustrating one that humans are given? Man has always worshipped. We know by all the traces of tribes and civilizations which existed before our history that humans have had a need for ritual and for order. At times of greatest sorrow in the collective life ...

(E) A few days ago it was time to sit down and work on the checkbook and pay some bills. This is never my favorite thing to do and usually the children give me a wide berth while I am doing this. I was feeling grumpier than usual about the bills this time. I haven't taught any piano lessons all summer and because of all of our travelling, J. hasn't been doing any over-load teaching. All combined, it makes for a slightly slimmer paycheck than we usually have. So I started thinking about that and the fact that the property tax bill which was higher than I was anticipating and the recent discovery that 5 out of the 6 children need both sneakers and dress shoes and the eye appointments which will undoubtedly lead to new lenses and the orthodontist....well, you get the idea. So money was seeming to be a very scarce commodity. I often read about people who receive checks in the mail just when they need it, but I couldn't think why we would be getting money from anyone. To...

(E) We just returned from a weekend spent with J's aunt and uncle at their beach house along with J's sister and her family. We always have a wonderful time when we are there, but this past weekend was particularly joyful. It is joy to see T.M. follow along with his brothers and sisters and not just watch them. It is joy to hear T.M. laugh... a lot. These are not the little laughs that never touched his eyes in Vietnam. These are great belly laughs that radiate happiness from every facial feature. It is joy to watch T.M. and D. holding hands as they follow A. out into the water. It is joy to be roused from sleep at 5 am by two little boys who had come to find Mommy and Daddy together. It is joy to see D.'s exuberant personality returning after the trauma of Mommy and Daddy leaving for 3 weeks and bringing home a rival for the toys. (Admittedly, this took the form of D. running upstairs where no less than 7 children were sleeping and shouting "Boo!") It i...

[J] So... A. and P. have discovered that they can tease M.'s pet African Clawed Frog by holding a finger up against the tank where the frog can see it and then wiggling the finger. This makes the frog leap about trying to catch what it thinks is a worm. Who would've thought that on otherwise mostly inert aquatic pet could be so much fun? M., of course, protests strongly against such teasing of her beloved frog. (Or one of her beloved frogs.)

(E) I'm feeling just a bit giddy over the number of appointments we have this month with various medical professionals...pediatricians, orthodontists, dentists, opthamalogists, etc. It is a result of having put off various appointments because we were a little distracted earlier this summer, the appointments we already had, plus the new child who needs to be checked out. And since I want to get them all done in August so we can avoid September's own unique nuttiness, it makes one feel slightly light-headed. I will admit that keeping track of and going to all of the necessary doctor's appointments is a downside to a large family. There is something to be said, though, for office staff knowing who one is. Visiting often makes one a real person and not just a name on a file, which is particularly nice if one needs to phone in a question. On the other hand, each visit seems to offer the doctors a new opportunity to squeeze a bit more income from the Currys. And, although we...