making memories with Mijo

Mijo and I did some exploring this summer...

At the pumpkin farm he was interested in the train

and decided on riding in the caboose.

But then he thought the engineer's position looked more profitable.

He inquired about the position and was hired on the spot.

Look at him with his hands on his hips, trying to look all in charge, while the real engineer gives instruction to the passengers!

But there were no trains at the horse farm...

And as long as it was a horse he could ride,

he'd wear that yucky-hated-helmet all day long!

Ever wondered how a 3 year old conveys love?

"You like that horse," I asked Mijo?

"She's my daughter," he responded.

This year Mijo begins the adventure of making school memories!

Is he that old already?

This business of growing-up sure is tiring!

Dad's first Heavenly Birthday!!

We're celebrating you today, Dad ... Grandpa, Uncle, Cousin, E.H., Harold ... on your first Heavenly Birthday! There are Facebook posts, Mass intentions, cemetery visits, vases of flowers, hot toddy sippers, pizza eaters, and so many fans loving you A WHOLE, GREAT, BIG BUNCH today and everyday since you left us one year ago. Feel free to join us at any time and make your warm presence known. We miss you!

A Tribute To Mary

23 August 2008 Farmington Hills, Michigan My Dear Mary Helene, As Isaiah pronounced, “We do indeed sing this day for you. We observe this feast in your honor, as you march with your flute toward the mountain of the Lord.” What a glorious song your life has composed! Yet, even as I write these words I can hear you saying “I didn’t compose it, I just tried to sing the score God set before me.” In that case, Mary, you certainly have assembled a sizeable choir. It spans the generations … beginning with the young at IHM, “the merest children” as Matthew calls them, and ending with, well, the mature at McAuley. To young and old alike, the Master Teacher’s voice, resounding in your musical ear, was indeed revealed through you. Your harmony was exquisite; your ability, unending; and yet your robe remained simple ~ usually plain ~ and unassuming. I remember very vividly those first few weeks after entrance. While our three classmates strategized over who could get through candidacy the fastest, you and I retreated to the showers, questioning what we were doing with our lives, and singing our own rendition of Swing Lo in two-part harmony. Years later, when we found ourselves to be the only remaining members of the class of ’82, we smiled, continued to question what we were doing with our lives, and tried to figure out how to fit Swing Lo into a final vow Liturgy.

Music was a passion we shared. We could hum the Michigan fight song in every-other-note duet style, and play trios for the recorder with three instruments and two mouths. We played and sang together often, and talked about the beauty and creativity of the musical word, poetry in motion, and its vast capacity - to heal, to teach, to bring one to tears or to laughter, to leave one speechless with a musical experience. Perhaps the most powerful musical experience we shared happened in 2005. Amidst chemo treatments, fatigue and nausea, you managed to join me in San Antonio for a weekend of music and work. We scribbled and crossed out, and scribbled again on a pile of paper scraps, which eventually became musical scores and a lovely collection of songs on CD. Best of all, Mar, you finally met Anita face-to-face. And there you shared, two women Religious, teachers, musicians, highly educated and successful, battling the same illness with dignity and determination, comadres in this life, and now in the next. These past six years, Mary, have certainly been a most challenging rendition of Amazing Grace. You walked courageously and gracefully through many dangers, toils and snares, and in the end, Grace indeed led you quickly and gently home. If I had to choose just one song to describe your journey through this earthly life, I would choose the traditional Shaker tune, Simple Gifts. For amidst the numerous and prestigious accomplishments you made ~ many of which remain unknown to most ~ you never ceased to be Mary Helene: the fourth of five children, born into a Catholic, Italian (and Irish!) family, who proudly hailed from Motown. Daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, friend, student, musician, teacher … you never lost sight of who you were – ‘Twas your gift to be simple; or from where you had come – ‘Twas your gift to be free; and nothing and no one ever fell below you - To bow and to bend you shan't be ashamed. Spending this time with you, as you journeyed with and toward the Divine, has been nothing less than Sacred Grace; an enfleshed Eucharistic Moment of bread, blessed, broken, and shared. Your continued concern for the comfort of those around you often reminded me of the stories of the death of Catherine McAuley, foundress of our Mercy congregation. When she was close to death and the Sisters had traveled to gather around her bedside, she whispered “Make sure the Sisters have a comfortable cup of tea when I am gone.”

As I sat next to you these days, I found myself praying Catherine’s Suscipe over and over again. I’m not sure who I was praying for, Mar, you or me, but I figured it didn’t matter. So once more, Mary, I pray with you the Suscipe of Catherine McAuley: My God, I am yours for time and eternity.

Teach me to cast myself entirely

into the arms of your loving Providence

with a lively, unlimited confidence in your compassionate, tender pity.

Grant, O most merciful Redeemer,

that whatever you ordain or permit

may be acceptable to me. Take from my heart all painful anxiety; let nothing sadden me but sin, nothing delight me but the hope of coming

to the possession of You

my God and my all, in your everlasting kingdom. Amen. Until always, Mar … Sar, ttss

"Within this barrio" ...

In January of 1996, I moved to Argentina to live and work with the Sisters of Mercy among the materially poor. The next 3 years proved to contain the most challenging and richest learning experiences I've ever received. The following is a journal entry written a couple of months after I arrived in the south of Argentina. Within this barrio [neighborhood] I am living and learning a life of which I have never experienced. Sweeping frogs from underneath the bed at sundown before retiring for the evening, and chasing cats from the kitchen at sun-up having entered through the window, looking for a bite to eat. Embracing children with lice-ridden heads, and filth encrusted noses and bodies from weeks without a bath. Houses with no running water and little more than bundled cardboard for walls and a ceiling; dusty, dirty, pebble and mud roads whose rising clouds of dry earth never seem to dissipate. Last evening Marcela and I went to visit a family of the parish living in the next barrio. There were 12 children ranging in age from 9 months to 20 years. The mother is 33 years old. The father works in the chakras [fruit orchards] collecting fruit, but has not been paid for three months. If he does not continue to work, he will lose his job to one of the men who line-up each morning hoping to replace an absent or ill worker from the prior day. So he continues to work each day without pay. The family lives in a two-room home, very crudely put together with a hard dirt-packed floor. We sat in the kitchen taking maté [a strong herbal tea drunk from a dried gourd and sucked from a metal straw] with 10 of the 12 children wide-eyed and hanging on every word. I spoke as much Spanish as I could possibly muster and drank enough maté, made from water taken from an old plastic bucket set on the floor beside the mother, until I thought my bladder would burst. I knew I could not ask to use the bathroom because there wasn’t one, and they would have been ashamed to show me the hole dug outside. I tried to pretend like I had been in houses like theirs all of my life; that the hoards of flies encircling the room and covering the sweetbread dough being fried and served us were of no bother to me whatsoever. I tried to maintain eye contact with the children instead of noticing the far from eye-pleasing physical conditions around me. I felt ashamed at my dis-ease and hoped it was not showing. Never had I experienced a poverty so cold and so obvious; nor had I ever experienced a welcome so warm and filled with such peace and gratitude. That evening I cried myself to sleep and prayed for a day when I would be able to notice the people so intensely that the physical surroundings would melt somewhere in the background of my unconsciousness.

Speaking of quilts ...

Speaking of quilts … Tipper of Blind Pig and The Acorn recently wrote about her love for the Appalachian quilts she’s been gifted with since childhood. She ended her post with the question “Do you have a favorite quilt?” which tugged at my heartstrings …

My Mamaw (called "Maw" by her northern grandchildren) worked at a shirt factory and brought home bags of scraps that my Great-Mamaw and Great-Aunts made into quilts.

This quilt was made for me by my great Aunt (who was also my Godmother) and was a Christmas present when I was a child. It has been used and washed and remade over the years a million times and is still my favorite. I still use it today, although one that I made now lives atop my bed.

This is a much older one made by my Great-Aunts that I was given after their deaths and it sits on a chair in my livingroom, along with a rag doll that I got when I was 6. She has a wind-up music box that still plays London Bridges. These are the things I would grab as I left the house if there ever was a fire.

gram

Clearing out a house which has been full of life for 40+ years of yesterdays yields nearly forgotten treasures of family history. One of those treasures is a handmade prayerbook that belonged to my maternal Grandmother. It was made of a simple, vinyl 4"x6" binder that she filled with holy cards, and typed and handwritten prayers.

After suffering a debilitating stroke in the early 1960s which left the right side of her body paralyzed, Grandma learned to walk anew, as well as to write and eat with her left hand. She then lived between her two daughters, spending spring and summer with us in the north; fall and winter with my aunt in the south. In her last years when her health declined, Grandma remained with us until her death in 1981. When Grandma died, I wrote a poem about her life, aging and death as experienced through the eyes of her once little, then pre-teen and teen, now young adult grandaughter, in which her homemade prayerbook was well remembered.

gram

i remember oh so well,

saddled on your loved one's knee,

rocking and bouncing til his muscles ached

with pain and boney leg ceased

its satisfying movement.

i remember disappearing,

leaving you the role of seeker,

and being coddled in your arms

once my hideout was discovered.

i remember butterscotch and lemon drops

so generously shared with all

and the bag filled with bars of chocolate

placed strategically out of my reach.

i remember riding the elevator chair,

and walking crippled with your cane.

i remember helping you up

off that frowned-upon church chair

and turning the pages

of your homemade prayerbook.

i remember your angelic voice

becoming broken and unable to keep up.

i remember short conversations

becoming longer and so painful to endure.

i remember pushing you

through unwanted exercise,

and watching your eyes bellow with tears.

i remember feeding you

in infant-size spoonfuls,

when you simply wanted milkshakes

through a straw.

i remember your forlorned features,

as we told you you couldn't come home,

and your sigh of desperation

feeling trapped with no place to go.

i remember the day we left you,

and the next when you left us.