Male and Female

With the currency in our culture of the idea that a person can somehow have a body of the wrong sex, and thus be a male trapped in a female body or a female trapped in a male body, there's a new relevance to discussions of what gender means. A typical news story which implicitly asks this question might tell about a little boy who likes pink and enjoys playing "princess" and whose parents thus concluded that he may actually be a girl and are helping him to "socially transition".

But is liking pink or playing with dolls and princess costumes what it means to be female? Clearly not. One may talk about certain tendencies: more girls seem to like to play nurturing games with dolls and more boys seem to like to play with trucks or toy soldiers, but these are only very broad tendencies. Just because a girl hates pink and likes to play with trucks does not mean that she is not a girl, and just because a boy likes to snuggle a baby doll or host a tea party for stuffed animals does not mean that he's a girl. People and their interests do not all come from the same mold, and there is no necessity at all that a girl be interested in the things that other girls are interested in just because she also is a girl.

What then is male-ness or female-ness if it isn't adhering to the stereotypical interests and behaviors of each sex?

It seems to me that it is the experience which comes from being a person who has a male or female body. This leads to certain elements of commonality. Male bodies and female bodies tend to act a bit differently and have different hormones pumping through them. The two sexes experience sexual intercourse differently because we have different sexual organs that behave differently. This means that while there may be a wide range of feelings and attitudes towards sex among men, they all share the experience of addressing sex with male genitals, not female ones, and vise versa for women. In familial life, men can experience being fathers, but cannot experience being mothers. Women can experience being mothers but cannot experience being fathers. Setting aside family life, a man who is trying to live according to a vow of celibacy will experience what it is like to try to live celibately with a male set of genitals and hormones, while a woman who has made a similar vow will have the experience of living it out with a female body.

But within these commonalities, there is great room for variation. And within the wide set of experiences which men have, all of them are male, because they are the experiences of a person who is male. Even if some men have feelings or experiences that bear strong similarities to those that women describe, he still has those feelings and experiences as a man. And even if a woman hears much familiar in the feelings and experiences of men, she is still a woman.

Perhaps there's more that can be said about male-ness and female-ness than this, but it seems to me that if one starts anywhere in trying to explain these concepts than that they are based in having a body of that sex, one opens up to all sorts of nonsense.

Kissing Kin 3

Previous.

The waitress slid a mug of coffee across the counter. “Friend of yours, Vin?” she asked.

“My cousin, actually,” he said.

The waitress cast an eye over Vin’s pale arms, sprinkled with fine red hairs, and my olive hands and lacquered nails. “Kissing kin, huh. Your grandma found her daddy, then?”

“None of your business, Maureen,” said Vin evenly.

The cook was listening now. “Maybe she found your granddaddy.”

“I’ll take that coffee to go, actually,” said Vin. “And one for my cousin too.”

Two styrofoam cups were slapped down in front of us. “Don’t go forgetting the little people because you got a new grand-dad and a great-granddad, Vin,” said the waitress. “Nobody ever died of being a Titus.”

The cook snorted. “How you can live here all your life and never hear anything, Maureen, I’ll never know.” She dropped a cheese on a patty with easy contempt. “Y’all be real sure about being kissing kin. Last thing we need in the world are more inbred Tituses.”

On the sidewalk, Vin and I cradled our steaming cups against the damp afternoon.

“Don’t you have a coat?” I asked.

“It’s in my car,” he said.

The hubbub of the festival blared across the street. I settled my scarf and tucked my free hand in my jacket. Vin shuffled and kicked moodily at an empty popcorn bag blowing along the sidewalk.

“All right, maybe I was wrong to make a scene and stalk out,” he said. “At least inside we were warm and dry.”

“You call that making a scene?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “I should have ignored them. It just seemed intolerable today of all days to deal with the same old slurs.”

“Screw that,” I said. “Let’s go back in there and tear it up. I can handle Maureen if you take the old bird.”

Vin gave me the side-eye. “Are you sure we’re related?”

“That’s what the DNA says.”

I considered taking a sip of my rapidly cooling coffee. Vin glanced back through the diner windows, where Maureen and the cook were not making any pretense of not staring.

“Grandma Kay gets so stressed. I’d hoped we could work out a bit of the family tree before she got involved, but this place is a fishbowl,” he said. “Are you superstitious?”

“What? No.” I considered honestly. “Okay, maybe. I can be superstitious if it involves La Llorona or the Scottish play. Why?”

“There’s a corn maze a few miles away. It’s supposed to be haunted. But most people in town are going to be here at the festival today, so at least we wouldn’t have an audience hanging on every word.”

“Or any witnesses,” I said. “You could be a serial killer luring me to my death. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you don’t go into a corn maze with a total stranger.”

“Well, fortunately I’m not a stranger, just your mild-mannered cousin — three or four times removed, whatever that means.”

“I’m sure no girl was ever killed in a corn maze after a pick-up line like that.”

“Sorry. I must come off as a mustache-twirling villain. Snidely Whiplash has got nothing on me. It’s just this way I have, always trying to smooth things over in the most awkward way possible.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, you’re so earnest.  Doesn’t our family have any sense of humor?”

“Oh sure. No joke is safe around me. I’ll trip over it no matter how far off the path it is.”

If he killed me, it would only be with overly sensitive apologies. “All right. Let’s go lose ourselves in a corn maze.  Your car or mine?”  He hesitated, and I read his meaning in that.  “You said your coat’s in your car.  How about we take yours.  I don’t think it’s sinister.  Honest.”

His car was more presentable than Steed, so I felt I’d made the right call.

“One thing I’m not understanding,” I said, as we drove out of town.

“Just one?”

“If Kay is a Titus, how can you be looking for your grandfather on her side?”

“You might well ask,” said Vin. “My dad is the first Mr. Titus in our line in… we’d have to count back, but maybe to old Andrew Titus himself. It’s generation after generation of mothers passing the Titus name to daughters, and daughters screwing up like their mothers before them.”

I fished paper and pen out of my purse. “You tell me the names and birthdays, and I’ll make a chart. Maybe we can figure out where the family lines intersect. Do you want to start with old Andrew Titus?”

“No, I can’t get it straight unless I go backwards from now. So, start with me. Vincent Titus, 1994. I’m the only son — only child — of Dan and Mandy Titus. Dan Titus, 1972, is the only son — only child of Kay Titus.”

“And who?” I asked, pen hovering over the diagram.

“Grandma is too strong to need a man,” Vin said, “except for the one thing she couldn’t do without a man. She didn’t want to get married or be tied down. All she wanted was a baby of her own.”

“Wouldn’t that tie you down?”

“You don’t reason with Grandma Kay. This fellow didn’t even stick around to try it.”

“So it’s your dad looking for his father, then,” I said.

“Yes, but it’s also Kay. Kay Titus, 1950, daughter of a homeward bound soldier or a traveling salesman. Her mother was only 16.”

I drew circles with initials and dates in them. “What about teen mom?”

“Helen Titus. I’m a little sketchy on details about her, but I do know that she was born in 1934 to Lavinia Titus, and the only reason I know is because…”

“Because the name Vincent comes from Lavinia, doesn’t it.”

“How’d you know?”

“It just makes sense.”

“And Lavinia, I think, is the daughter of Old Titus, but we’d have to check that with someone who’s into the family history.”

“What about this Old Titus?” I asked. “Is he important?”

“He used to be,” said Vin. “He was the patriarch of the Titus clan, who had a big feud going with a family named McGrath on the other side of the mountain, on the level of the Hatfields and McCoys. They mostly wiped each other out in one final blaze of glory some time during Prohibition.”

“But there are still Tituses around,” I said.

“They’re some other branch of the family. We’re kind of the red-headed stepchildren of the bunch.” He ran a hand over his head. “Literally. I don’t know the red hair fits into it, but the other Tituses don’t have it.”

I studied my chart. “Here’s something odd. Helen Titus was born in 1934. So was my grandpa, Aaron Moore.”

“Really?” Vin tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, counting. “Helen is my great-grandmother.”

“Your generations are closer than ours.” I drew up another chart. “Start with me. Erin Moore Ramirez, 1997, daughter of Linda Moore and John Ramirez.”

“What’s your dad’s family like?” Vin asked.

“Oh, they’re lots of fun. Big family, tons of cousins, summers with Abuela and Abuelo…”

“Do they speak Spanish?”

I snorted. “Not much. My mom thought it would be a nice ethnic way to distinguish between the sets of grandparents. The Moores were just Grandma and Grandpa. Fortunately for the Ramirezs, the family is spacious enough to absorb another weird daughter-in-law. Everyone nodded and smiled and taught her how to make tamales.”

“My dad is a great guy,” Vin said. “But he tries too hard. He never had a father, and his mother never had a father, and so he’s all over the place, trying to be the perfect father and husband without any personal experience of either relationship. And he has a hair-trigger temper, so he would blow up first and then get upset that he’d scarred me for life, and my mom would have to pat his hand for a while. When I was a kid, sometimes he’d be the most supportive, doting dad — lessons, sports equipment, band trips, video games — you name it, he found the highest-quality version on the market. Nothing less for his son. Then my mom would tell him that he was going to spoil me, and he’d swing in the other direction. He’d put me on strict regimens of instant obedience and morning chores and after school jobs and lectures on my shortcomings, trying to build character. Then he’d worry that I might not get into a good college, so I’d have to study with him every morning, and take Latin and Greek in high school, and read the classics he never read. Then he’d hear that kids need freedom and agency, so he’d let me off my homework and tell me to ride my bike or wander the trails or learn how to take apart my car engine.”

“Your dad bought you a car?”

“Sure, he thought it was the safe and responsible thing to do. It’s probably the only reason I survived high school — it made me just popular enough to be left mostly alone."

I blinked. “That is…. intense.”

Vin tensed. “I’m sorry. I tend to work my way around the edges of conversations, and then when I open up I launch on warning, and people start checking their watches.”

“Geez, you’re getting tender again. I didn’t mean the life story. I meant your dad. Mine is so easy-going unless you ask him a question about a point of law, and then he starts in on one of his classroom lectures. It’s my mom who’s the wild card at our house. I say wild card, but she’s predictable in annoying ways. Every cause, she stands for it. Every wrong, she’s out to right it. She’s the savior of the oppressed, whether they like it or not.”

“Do the oppressed like it?”

“The oppressed generally consider my mom’s work on their behalf to be of far less relevance than she does. But what do they know? They’re only ignorant oppressed people. We have to listen to their voices and disregard them when they know less about what’s good for them than we do.”

“Are you oppressed?”

“I try my damnedest not to be.” I made a few fierce circles around Mom’s initials. “Linda Moore, born 1957. She charged through college, was determined to become a professor, so she did. She found a fellow faculty member to marry her. She got tenure and had me.”

“Sounds like someone who always knows what she wants.”

“Stick around, and she’ll tell you what you want too.”

“Do you get along with her?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘get along’,” I said. “You have to clap back at her when she’s getting in your space, and then she’s offended and drops you, and it’s peaceful for a while until she gets going again.”

“And now we’re back to Aaron Moore,” said Vin. “What’s his story?”

“Orphan, 1934, raised at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage in Roanoke.”

“That’s not so far away from here.”

“The sisters taught him to work, and that’s what he did. He married a poor hard-working girl, and they had my mom and that was hard work, and he built up a company from scratch and that was hard work.”

“And where do you fall on the hard work family scale?” he asked.

“Look at you with the personal questions.”

“I mean, we are here to discuss DNA.”

I gestured expansively. “I think the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

“A very acceptable position,” he said. “Plus, your quotation game is on point.”

“And that is the end of the line.” I drew a question above Aaron Moore’s circle. “His parents were a blank until we discovered that he’s connected to you Tituses through his mother.”

“And I know the mothers in the Titus line going back to the generation before him,” said Vin. “And age-wise, I don’t know how he can match with anyone’s generation but Helen’s.”

“Maybe he’s connected to her father’s mother?”

We were now parked before a field of dried stalks, rustling and whispering in the breeze. A lurid sign proclaimed this to be Titusville’s only Haunted Corn Maze! The sun had finally broken through the clouds, giving a kiss of warmth to the air. Vin paid our admission fee and came back with the emergency maps.

“This is going to be a-maze-ing,” he said.

“It looks fun. I’ve never been in a…” My jaw slowly dropped. “Was that a pun?”

“And you don’t have to worry,” he said earnestly, “because I’m no stalker.”

“No.”

He was grieved. “I can see that you’re no connoisseur of corny jokes."

“I can see that I’ll be begging you to kill me at some point,” I said. “Come on, let’s go unpack the family baggage in the corn field.”

“You mean the corn maize?”

“Yes, that’s what I… You’re despicable.”

Next.

Kissing Kin 2

Previous

And so, a stranger came to town.

If you consult a map of Virginia, you will note that it has a boot-like profile. In the west, along the shoelace line, the Blue Ridge Mountains run in long vertical folds. Roanoke, where the Sisters of Charity once ran an orphanage now a shuttered shell, and Blacksburg, home of the Hokies, are eyelets dotting the foothills. But high up in a mountain holler, down a weathered asphalt shoelace of a road, is Titusville.

Titusville: home of Kay Titus and her son and grandson and their DNA. Kay did want to connect with Aaron Moore. After a flurry of messages, they had arranged to meet up in Titusville, Kay’s ancestral home, to see if a more concrete genealogy could be established. Kay wanted to find paternal ancestors, but given her genetics and birthdate and Aaron’s virtuous youth, the only way they could be connected was through Aaron’s mother or maternal grandparents.

“I couldn’t be her father,” he’d muttered to Mom, consulting the jumble of statistics on his account. “The DNA just doesn’t add up.”

“Dad, look at her birthday. You ought to know whether you were sleeping around at 16.”

“I was not,” said Grandpa indignantly.

My mother was out of patience with it all. “Then why would you even go there? Look, your percentage of shared DNA suggests first cousin once removed or great-great-uncle or something.”

“But what is a first cousin once removed?”

Quarreling had always been their love language. I paid them no heed as I looked at the mapped out the route to Titusville. The satellite’s-eye view showed a flyspeck hamlet in in a vast verdant sea of leaves. I had an intoxicating vision of driving through flaming foliage opening onto rolling mountainscapes and distant fields, maybe wood smoke rising from remote cabins.

“Let’s go up there,” I said. “Let’s go this weekend.”

Grandpa could not be rushed. “I haven’t done enough research. I haven’t checked any archives. I need some more time.”

“Exactly how much time do you think you have left, Dad?” said Mom bracingly.

“You don’t have to let Kay know,” I wheedled. “There’s no law against driving in the mountains.”

But Grandpa was not the sort of person who could show up unannounced. He and Kay made plans to meet on Saturday. Their schedule grew: first the local diner, then the mission fall festival, then a corn maze which was the chief Halloween attraction of three counties. My main role in this homecoming was supposed to be to drive him, because when you’re 85 you don’t get around so well, and when you’ve raised your daughter to be a strong, independent educated woman, sometimes she thinks it’s silly that you should want to wallow in the past rather than celebrate what you’ve made of yourself.

“It’s how I raised her,” Grandpa said. And then he added, more to himself than me, “Maybe I raised her wrong.”

If I had put an iota of thought into suggesting an immediate visit, I might have predicted the outcome: by Saturday morning, after all the anticipation, Grandpa's nerve, not as cast iron as it used to be, failed him. When I pulled up to his house, he refused to come out.

“I can’t breathe,” he said, clutching the arms of his recliner. “My heart is pounding. I’m going to faint. Your mother was right. Maybe this is it. I can’t go. It might kill me.”

“Nothing will ever kill you, Grandpa,” I said. “Get up out of that chair, young man. Your family is waiting for you.”

“You go,” he said, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who knows that he is old. “You just check them out. You tell me if they look like me.”

“They don’t want to see me,” I said with all the heartiness I could muster. “They want to see Aaron Moore, the long lost son-uncle-first cousin once removed.”

“You’re Erin Moore,” he said, and he would not budge.

“Erin Moore Ramirez,” I said. But I was longing to see the mountains in autumn, so I went to Titusville, doubly a stranger: a stranger in the stead of the stranger who was meant to be there.

A light drizzle was beginning to fall as I got in my trusty Steed (that’s the name of my beater car — Mom hates it) and drove out of town, past the outlying housing developments, the horse farms, and the ever-present barbed wire fencing, our first line of defense against cows. The patches of forest became deeper, the light grayer. Steed began to whine as the gentle twists of the country road tightened into the hairpin ascents of the mountain pass. And then the trees opened up and the road straightened out, and I looked out over the Blue Ridge Mountains to discover that I’d driven into a cloud. Perhaps there was a glory of fall leaves to be observed on the slopes, but I was staring into a wall of mist.

After an hour of headlight driving, I entered the glowering environs of Titusville. I was able to see some wood houses, some fields, a water treatment plant. A stone tower loomed up to mark the old downtown. In the main square, the lights of the festival glistened through in the fog. The place was not abandoned; children darted about from booth to booth and there were lines for the rides despite the rain. The diner where Kay would be waiting for me looked like a place that knew how to sling a mean hash and serve a hot cup of joe. I’d arrived early, however, on a mission.

Specifically, the mission parish of the Sacred Hearts, two hearts for the price on one. A fieldstone church outside the old town limits, mission when it was built in the 20s and mission still, which, Google informed me, had an All Souls Mass today. The mission priest was a black man in black vestments who chanted the mass in a melodious Nigerian accent. I’d felt the familiar tension of being the darkest face in the congregation, but Father moved through the liturgy with majestic serenity, unencumbered by the earthly fear of being a stranger.

A stranger, like me, come to town to pray for the dead. All Saints Day may be the holy day of obligation, for the Aaron Moores and Linda Ramirezs of the world who thrive on obligation, but I prefer All Souls Day. It’s for the schlubs like me, who are probably going to get into Purgatory by the skin of their teeth and then spend forever there because no one will pray for them. At All Souls Mass at Sacred Hearts mission in Titusville, I prayed for Aaron Moore’s parents, the Scots-Irish mother and the African father. There didn’t seem to be many other people left to pray for them, and they probably needed it. They abandoned a tiny infant, left him to be raised to work by the nuns, left him to raise his own child as strictly as he’d been reared, left her to raise her own child to expect to work for a mother’s praise and affection. With the Moores, nothing is a gift.

I blinked, and mass was over, and I’d squandered this holy time chewing on my own frustrations.

Father shook my hand at the church door. “It’s good to see a visitor here.”


“Do I stand out that much?”

He smiled. “I know my sheep.”

I felt compelled to explain my presence. “I do have family here.” The strange words sat oddly on my tongue. “My grandfather’s relatives live here. The Tituses. Do you know them?”

“There are many Tituses in Titusville,” said Father, “but no Titus has ever been Catholic, that I am aware of.”

“Grandpa is also half black,” I said, clutching at a different straw. “African-American. Half African-American. Perhaps you have ties to the local African-American community. Could you point me to anyone who could help me with ancestry?”

“I am the local African community." Father said. "It is even more unusual to be black here than to be Catholic.”

As I waited in the crowded diner, I pondered these words in my heart. Where, then, had Grandpa come from? That he still had family in this area, family from an apparently long-established line, seemed to indicate that he must have a connection to Titusville through his mother. But how did his father enter the picture? How had his parents met, mated?

And where was Kay Titus? It was past time for the rendezvous, but no one in the diner seemed to be a 69-year-old woman waiting to meet someone. I wondered if she would look anything like Grandpa. And might she recognize in my features something she’d seen in her own face her whole life? In a town full of Tituses, perhaps there was a whole clan waiting to meet the brother they’d never known, the uncle they’d only heard about. I wished Grandpa was here with me, so that we could discover together whether this was the place where he might finally feel at home.

The diner was hopping, all right, but nobody seemed to be yearning for the prodigal son to return. The harried hostess promised to call me when a place opened up, and then went outside to take hungry pulls at a cigarette. I languished on the bench by the door. The locals were there and they were hungry, and everyone on staff, from the petite waitress in training to the manager in his tie, was running orders. When I finally took the initiative and sniped a newly-deserted seat at the counter, no one seemed to realize that I hadn’t been helped, and no one seemed to see my tentative wave for service, and no one seemed to be Kay. Even if I was the wrong person, I was in the right place at the right time. The thought of my grandfather being stood up, after waiting 85 years to meet his family, began to simmer at the edges of my patience.

The woman methodically turning burgers at the grill behind the counter was in no rush to catch my eye, but at last she could pretend no longer that I was not beckoning her.

“You ready for your check?” she asked, showing her first sign of animation at the prospect of one less customer.

“I haven’t been served yet,” I said, not giving her the thousand-yard stare because I was brought up not to be rude. “I’m waiting to meet someone.”

“Aren’t we all, honey,” she sighed, turning back to the grill.

A large party began to vacate seats. As the door jostled and jingled with their exit, a man in a paramedic uniform squeezed past them and assessed the room. He nodded briefly to people he knew, but when he came to me, he stared openly for a moment. Again I was acutely aware of being the different face in the crowd, and my already fraying patience unraveled further. Someone with hair that shade of red had no call to stare at anyone else.

But he took the vacant seat next to me at the counter, the better to keep me under surveillance. I did not care for that. I don’t know much about the various gradations of people who wear a uniform, but I have cousins who’ve had less than cordial encounters with the constabulary, and I had no desire to find out anything about their hicksville compatriots. All I knew was, an ambulance comes when you call 911, and so do the police, and I didn’t want the attention of one or the other. I quietly gathered my purse to myself.

“Getcha, Vin?” the waitress asked, finally materializing for a man in uniform.

“Just coffee,” he said. And as I rose to go, he looked up and said, “Excuse me.”


“Yes?” I said, tightly.

He had the air of someone who was going to do his duty if it killed him. “This may be out of line, but I’m looking for Aaron Moore. Are you associated with him?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m supposed to meet him here, and you’re the only person in the place that I don’t know.”

“You are not Kay Titus,” I said, a statement of fact and not a question.

“And you are not Aaron Moore.”

“I am,” I said. “I’m just not the particular Aaron Moore you’re looking for. But I would like to know who wants to know.”

“Kay is my grandmother,” he said, and tapped his phone to pull up a photo. “My name is Vincent Titus. Kay can’t come today. That is, she wanted to come, but at the last minute she texted me at work and said was sick. But she wasn’t really sick. I only just got off shift, and I was worried that Aaron Moore would leave without knowing what happened.”


I sat back down. “She was scared too.”

“Just like Aaron Moore?” he asked.

“Yes." I allowed myself be disarmed by his smile. "They have that in common, at least.”

The photo on the screen was of Vincent, laughing, with his arm around a rouged woman whose artificially flaming hair had been tinted to echo his more youthful red. I magnified it and studied her eyes, her nose, the set of her chin, any feature that might connect her to Aaron Moore. I recognized nothing.

“They don’t look anything alike." To my mortification, my voice had the quaver of a disappointed child.

Next.

Kissing Kin 1

NaNoWriMo time, my dudes -- posting a few days late, but I think I'll be able to make up my word count. This year it's #Fallmark meets... well, you tell me. I hate this title, but it kept sticking in my head. 

***

A stranger came to town. That’s the end of one story, and the beginning of another.

1934. The stranger broke from the darkness of the surrounding buildings and stumbled up the steps of the convent, cradling a small bundle under his coat. He pounded the door twice and sank down on the stoop. The bundle whimpered and gave a small shake. With his head bent low, the stranger whispered soft words.

The door opened, and a nun peered into the evening gloom at the hatted stranger. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Sir.” The man’s laugh had the short, sharp tang of bitterness. “That got a real high sound.” He thrust the bundle at the nun. “You care for him.”

“But sir, who is he? Where’s his mother?” The nun’s pale hands adjusted the blanket around the baby’s wizened new face. He mumbled and stirred and turned toward her finger on his cheek.

The man too reached to touch the baby’s face, then pulled his hand away from the soft glow from the open door. “His mother is a white woman.”

“Is she alive?”

“Not much longer.”

“Does he have a father?”

“Not much longer.”

“Sir,” said the nun for the third time. “At least tell me the child’s name. Tell me where he’s from.”

“What does it matter?”

“It will to him, one day.”

The man hesitated, twisting his hands in a spasm of indecision. “What does it matter now? He was born in the mountains.”

“And his name?”

Again, broken words wrenched from an unwilling throat. “Call him Aaron Moore.”

With that the man turned abruptly and strode down the street, not bothering with the safety of shadows. He was going back into the mountains, to the end of the story.

2019. A man learned that he himself was the stranger. That’s the beginning of the story.

When he was 85, Aaron Moore — orphan, boot-strapper, entrepreneur, networker — decided to give himself the one thing he could not make for himself: the gift of a past. He had grown up in an orphanage in Roanoke, Virginia, under the strict care of the Sisters of Charity. He had married well and raised his daughter Linda with the same rigid expectations the nuns had instilled in him. He had a granddaughter of whom he was inordinately proud, and a fine retirement cottage in Blacksburg. But he had no parents, no background, no heritage to pass on, and lately he had begun to feel the weight of time compressing his days.

The granddaughter: that’s me. Erin Moore Ramirez, 22. Not an orphan, not a boot-strapper, not an entrepreneur, not a networker. My parents are both professors at Virginia Tech, and I’m their tenure baby. I attended good private schools and matriculated at my parents’ college (on a family discount, natch). The only thing I’ve ever had to do for myself is buy my own car. My mother wouldn’t hear of coddling me in that way.

“My father never bought me a car,” said the woman who had selected my outfits, decorated my room, taken me on Disney cruises. “I had to work for any extras I wanted.” And I knew better than to retort that she hadn’t done too badly out of her father’s hard work.

When Grandpa wanted to try one of those DNA services to find his family, it wasn’t Mom he asked for help. When the results came back, it wasn’t his daughter he wanted by his side. It was me, his namesake. And together we discovered that grandpa’s mother was of Scots-Irish descent, and that his father had a significant proportion of DNA from West Africa.

I had never saw my grandfather cry until the day he discovered proof that he had a father. “My father is black,” he said. “I’m black.”

Aaron Moore grew up in what my mom calls “an era of casual racism”, in which his difficult path out of the orphanage and through the world was eased only by the fact that his skin was lighter than some of the other men competing with him for jobs. He may have been swarthy, but he was White. Perhaps this was knowledge that he’d buried deep inside himself: that no matter what he looked like, the fact of his societal whiteness was a gift that had been given to him.

All his life Grandpa had sustained himself with visions and dreams of his family. He shuffled through one story after another in his mind, trying to work out who they had been and why they had left him. Now there was a concrete fact, something alien to his entire image of himself: his father was black and his mother was white. It made him a stranger to himself. It broke him a bit. His joy at finding his family was unalloyed with strength.

Perhaps in this time of high emotion he might have expected support from my mom, but compassion was not one of the lessons he’d pounded into her in her formative years. The shock of discovery takes people different ways. For Mom, it brought old grudges to the fore.

“What did you expect, that you were hidden royalty or something?” she snapped. “You’ve always been so much better than everyone else. You worked so much harder. You demanded more. Come to find out you’re just another person whose parents screwed up. Maybe now racism doesn’t look so funny, now that’s it’s you.”

“You are out of line,” Grandpa said, but with only a fraction of his life-long authority. “You see racism everywhere.”

“Oh yeah?” Mom was not screaming, but she was getting pitchy. “Have you ever really reconciled with the fact that my last name is now Ramirez? When I brought home John, you called him Juan from the first time you met him. You make cracks about the border wall and Mexicans. This is my family, Dad, my husband, my daughter! But now that you’re suddenly black, it’s different.”

“You’ve never had some immigrant take the job you needed to survive!” Grandpa wasn’t screaming, but only because his voice doesn’t reach that high. “When did you last starve because you couldn’t find work? Let me tell you that when I was a young man…”

I love both my grandpa and my mom, but they deserve each other sometimes. While Aaron Moore, raised white, and Linda Ramirez, Hispanic by marriage, settled into a political argument about who had stronger racial bona fides, I, Erin Moore Ramirez, half Hispanic from birth, darker than both of them and well aware of it, delved into the weeds of Grandpa’s DNA results. There were not any connections from his father’s side, but the maternal line was more promising. I parsed out the closest connection.

“Grandpa, did you see this?” I interrupted. “There’s a lady here who’s connected to you through your mother? Or your maternal grandparents?”

Grandpa and Mom shelved their argument and peered at the screen. Grandpa’s three closest relatives all shared the same last name and were connected to him in descending degrees. Grandpa’s fingers hovered over the keyboard as he stared at what he could see of the profile of his closest match, a woman named Kay with whom he shared about 6.25% of his DNA.

“It says she could be a cousin once removed,” he murmured. “What does that even mean?”

“Contact her and ask, Dad.”

Still he hesitated. “Maybe I should leave it alone,” he said. “What if it stirs up trouble? Maybe there’s some good reason they gave me away.”

“Oh my god,” said my mother, throwing up her hands in the finest telenovela tradition and stalking out of the room.

I reached over and clicked the button to connect. “Grandpa, maybe they've been looking for you all this time.”

Next.

NCR's Rage Against the Latin Mass

Probably everyone who has spent a share of time in the Catholic online world has a couple "crazy trad" stories. Insular and ideologically driven groups tend to generate this. It's similarly impossible not to collect a few "crazy prog" stories if one interacts with progressive Catholic groups at all.

I would tend to think that the lesson in all this is that all groups are subject to the foibles of fallen human nature, and that the more a group is inclined to excuse (or even encourage) bad behavior so long as it is done by people who are loyal to the cause, the more toxic the group will become.

Not everyone takes this broad lesson, however. Others take a blinkered view that "those others" are irredeemably wicked, and then they write overwrought pieces of prose like this for the National Catholic Reporter.

The Latin Mass rears its veiled head in this unholy history at several points. The last Masses my mother remembered attending took place before the Second Vatican Council, so naturally she started going to Latin Masses when she returned to the church because they were familiar. The church was going to welcome us, she thought. The treatment we got was slightly shy of the Spanish Inquisition.

Needless to say, anything in the church looking remotely female was completely veiled. The people had the humor of a gallows crowd and the pastor, arrayed in lavish vestments, was more like a Renaissance baron. After over an hour spent every Sunday drowning in incense smoke and getting sneered at, we did not feel any closer to God.
...
One occasion that remains burned into my memory was when I attended Mass at a Catholic university. It was a busy Sunday and my schedule demanded I attend Mass at a particular time. I did not know it was a Latin Mass until I stumbled over the doorstep. The atmosphere was typically medieval. I was surprised to recognize some people there. One of them was a professor who was known to be a chauvinistic person. When I saw his wife, I was shocked — and suddenly realized the ugly extent of his prejudices. His wife was a mere ghost of a woman. She was covered from head to foot. Her dress was so long that it dragged on the floor. Even her entire neck and her hands were covered. She kept her head bowed and always walked behind her husband. She carried a rosary and looked physically weak — almost ill.

The professor, by contrast, looked swaggering and hearty. He strutted around and chatted with others in church as she followed him like a pale shadow. Seeing this, I believed I had witnessed a very dark side to the professor's spirituality. His religion was a mechanism of abusive control.
...
Looking around, I was astonished to see many college-aged men and women among the crowd. The priests seemed to be in their 30s. Clearly these people were too young to remember times before Vatican II. Yet something had drawn them here. Parental influence? Doubtful. It seemed to be a shared spirit of ultra-conservatism. I found it frightening to reflect on how the closed, Latin Mass mindset had managed to replicate itself over time and spread like a virus.

Unsurprisingly, while there I had another memorably bad experience. I asked to receive Communion in the hands. Most traditional-type priests I'd encountered in my lifetime would give me the Eucharist in the hands. Not this pastor. He literally made a scene at the altar and jerked the Eucharist away from me when I reached out to receive it — as if my hands would contaminate the very Jesus who, according to the Catholic faith, seeks Communion with my soul. I seriously considered walking out of the church at that point, but decided to receive the Eucharist instead since I wanted to pray. After Mass I gave the priests a piece of my mind.

Clericalism defined the response I received. When I informed an assisting priest that the pastor had been very rude to me at the altar and asked that my views be relayed, he replied: "I won't throw our pastor under the bus. He's the pastor. I refuse to tell him to correct his behavior," the priest said.

I reminded him that, as a priest, he was supposed to be of service and value my feedback as a believer. The priest took a step back and looked at me in astonishment, as if the notion of service had never occurred to him. "Very well. I'll tell the pastor what you said," he said condescendingly. "But I don't think he did anything wrong."

His attitude was a trademark example of the culture within the Catholic Church that encourages abuse. His first reaction was to default to absolute loyalty to his pastor, then dismiss my views. When pressed further, he flat-out denied all wrongdoing. To clericalists, complainers are always the problem — not those who belong to the herd, and certainly not clergy.

Honestly, more than anything else, what surprises me in all this is that someone could manage to stumble across Latin masses so often while apparently not liking them. The times that I've sought out a Latin mass, it's taken considerable effort to do so. Additionally surprising is that NCR would publish such a poorly written piece. Yes, it clearly aligns with their prejudices, but one would think that a publication of age and reputation would insist on a little more style even when giving vent to their id.

Also of interest in how the cult of the up-to-date thinks about our own culture and history versus those of others as a section near the end of the piece:

With feudalistic rigidity, the priest argued in defense of his pastor against the traditions of the "novus ordo"—a derogatory term used by Latin Mass cultists to denote regular English-language Masses. He said the Masses I regularly attended were invented "only 40 years ago" — as if that devalued them somehow —and insisted they were only "allowed to exist, but not standardly recommended." He claimed the church only allowed Communion in the hands "in extreme cases." Of course, I know this is not true. He capped his radical fundamentalist arguments by saying the Latin Mass is a solemn rite equal to Byzantine and Coptic rites and that rules cannot be changed for anyone. He accused me of being "rude" by expecting them "to change their rites."

I feel it necessary to point out — lest readers be confused by his illogicality — that the Byzantine and Coptic rites originate in the traditions of distinct Catholic churches in foreign countries. The Latin Mass, by contrast, is merely an extinct model of tradition practiced in the United States and other countries, and was never a separate church nor imported from a foreign country. Therefore the Latin Mass can be compared to Coptic and Byzantine churches as much as apples can be compared to oranges. No ancient Romans or native Latin speakers will be disenfranchised by changes made to the Latin Mass — just hardliners unable to let go of their particular ideology.

Of course, the Latin Mass also originates in the traditions of a distinct Catholic Church: the Roman Catholic Church. What liturgical traditionalists point out with some degree of justice is that those traditions were to radically disrupted when after the Vatican II council those put in charge of liturgical reform discarded the incremental approach which arguably the council documents encouraged decided to do a complete overhaul of the text and rubrics of the mass, while also encouraging those responsible for Church music, vestments, architecture, etc. to entirely discard the history of the Roman church in favor of the spirit of the moment during the 1970s. It's precisely this kind of bulldozer treatment which the Byzantines and Copts have sought to avoid suffering. Somehow this is acceptable to church progressives because they think of these are foreign cultures that need to be protected, but within their own culture these same people see no value to the past at all, and describe an desire to maintain he beauties of the past as "hardliners unable to let go".

There are real problems that have grown up in some sectors of "traditionalist" culture, which can indeed be insular, sexist, and overly credulous towards dubious apparitions and devotions. However, the tendency to attack any desire to maintain the liturgical traditions of the Roman Rite just ends up empowering that same traditionalist culture, because it leaves them as the most obvious defenders of a liturgical tradition which is in fact valuable.

Holy Souls Novena, Day 9

We attended mass this morning at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, AL, on our way to the Gulf Coast for a family wedding. The priest spoke about how what the holy souls in Purgatory crave most from us are masses offered for them. They cannot pray for themselves and depend on us. Unlike us, they can't join themselves in spirit to any Mass being celebrated anywhere. They need us to take them with us to Mass.

So, take the souls with you to Mass today.

***

(Act of Faith:) My God, I believe in You, because You are Truth itself; I firmly believe the truths revealed to the Church.
(Act of Hope:) My God, I hope in You, because You are infinitely good.
(Act of Love:) My God, I love You with all my heart, and above all things, because You are infinitely perfect; and I love my neighbor as myself, for the love of You.

MEDITATION FOR THE NINTH DAY, SAT. NOV 2
DIVINE MERCY
Everything.  Everything from our salvation, to our power to intercede for each other, to our ability to love…all is due to the Divine Mercy of Jesus.  And so on this final day of the novena, on the feast of All Souls, we shall meditate on the Source of all Goodness.  All souls, whether in Heaven, or awaiting Heaven in Purgatory, or fighting in the trenches on Earth…all are wrapped up in the infinite mercy of God.  This meditation on Divine Mercy is from “I Believe in Love”:  “You must believe in the love of Jesus for you.  Love calls for love.  How do you give Jesus love for Love? Before all and above all by your confidence in Him.  We must have confidence, not in spite of our miseries, but because of them, since it is misery which attracts mercy.  Oh, this word, mercy—misericordia—“miseris cor dare,” a Heart which gives itself to the miserable.  Meditate on this word.  It was this Merciful Heart that St. Paul spoke of when he wrote, “Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2Cor 12:9)”  This is the Merciful Heart of the father welcoming back the prodigal son with overflowing joy.  This is the Merciful Heart that melted at the humble confidence of the good thief on the cross and swept him away to Paradise.  Most tender Heart of Jesus, it is with humble and unshakeable confidence in Your Love that we pray:


DE PROFUNDIS (Ps. 130)
Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice!
Let Your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication:

If You, O Lord, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness,
that You may be revered.

I trust in the Lord;
my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord.
For with the Lord is kindness,
and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.


DIVINE MERCY PRAYER
Eternal Father, we offer Thee the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Thy dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.  For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the holy souls in Purgatory.  Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed for whom we offer this novena, rest in peace. Amen.

Holy Souls Novena, Day 8

(Act of Faith:) My God, I believe in You, because You are Truth itself; I firmly believe the truths revealed to the Church.
(Act of Hope:) My God, I hope in You, because You are infinitely good.
(Act of Love:) My God, I love You with all my heart, and above all things, because You are infinitely perfect; and I love my neighbor as myself, for the love of You.

MEDITATION FOR THE EIGHTH DAY, FRI. NOV 1
MEDIATION OF THE SAINTS
If the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects (James5:16), who is more righteous than the purified and glorified souls in Heaven standing in the very presence of the Holy Trinity?  Each soul in Purgatory will be a saint in Heaven, with great intercessory power.  “If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we endure, we shall also reign with Him.” (2Tim2:11-12)  This feast of All Saints today is the Church’s celebration of all the glorified in Heaven—still united as one with us in the Mystical Body of Christ and interceding for us.  These glorified souls burn with God’s own perfect charity, and generosity, and gratitude.  So those we have remembered in Purgatory will surely remember us when they come to their home in Heaven.  We look to the saints for inspiration, for example, and most especially for intercession.  And in the superabundance of His love, God gives His children the power to love those of us on earth.  “Love never ends” (1Cor13:8)—love for God and love for each other.  Lord God, with perfect trust in Your and Your saints’ love for us, we pray:


DE PROFUNDIS (Ps. 130)
Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice!
Let Your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication:

If You, O Lord, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness,
that You may be revered.

I trust in the Lord;
my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord.
For with the Lord is kindness,
and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.


DIVINE MERCY PRAYER
O Greatly Merciful God, Infinite Goodness, today all mankind calls out from the abyss of its misery to Your mercy, to Your compassion, O God; and it is with a mighty voice of misery that it cries out. Gracious God, do not reject the prayer of this earth’s exiles! O Lord, Goodness beyond our understanding, Who are acquainted with our misery through and through and know that by our own power we cannot ascend to You, we implore You: fill us and the souls in Purgatory with Your grace and keep on increasing Your mercy in us. Let the omnipotence of Your mercy bless our dearly departed.  Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed for whom we offer this novena, rest in peace. Amen.  All you holy angels and saints, pray for us.
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Holy Souls Novena, Day 7

Darwin's father was a planetarium lecturer, and often he was cornered after his lectures by hobbyists who fancied themselves misunderstood scientific geniuses. Each had some crackpot explanation for life, the universe, and everything, prefaced invariably with, "And it's so simple!" So simple, and so wrong.

Here's something that's actually so simple and right: "Offer it up," as your mom used to say. All it takes is paying attention to the least thing. When we pick up the huge bucket of Legos poured on the floor, we offer each Lego for a particular person, or for the souls. Get out of bed, which you have to do anyway: offer it for someone. Bend over to put on your shoes: offer it for someone. Turn off the computer: offer it. Breathe: do it for the love of God. You have to do this stuff anyway. Just offer it up, maybe for the holy souls in Purgatory. So little for you, so much for them.

And it's so simple!

***

(Act of Faith:) My God, I believe in You, because You are Truth itself; I firmly believe the truths revealed to the Church.
(Act of Hope:) My God, I hope in You, because You are infinitely good.
(Act of Love:) My God, I love You with all my heart, and above all things, because You are infinitely perfect; and I love my neighbor as myself, for the love of You.

MEDITATION FOR THE SEVENTH DAY, THURS. OCT 31
THE MERCY OF PRAYER
What food is to a starving man…What drink is to the parched sailor riding the tropic seas on a raft…What light is to the man long blind…What restored health is to the patient invalid…What freedom is to the prisoner…All this and far, far more is release from Purgatory to a holy soul.  And when food…light…health…freedom come suddenly, unexpectedly, the human heart leaps and bounds, and the soul knows the sharp ecstasy of joy.  So it is with each prayer that we say for the beseeching souls in Purgatory.  Our prayer is bread and water and light and health; it is a reprieve and a release and freedom and home-coming.  It is the cutting of bonds, the lessening of weary waiting, the termination of exile, the sudden glorious lift that picks them up and seems almost to shoot them toward the center of their joy, God Himself.  For us that prayer is an almost careless gesture.  For us, a routine act of charity…prayer, an alms, a bit of fasting, a good deed done…forgotten in the doing.  For them, something beyond price and measure.  Christ our Light, multiply our poor efforts as You did the loaves and the fishes as we pray:


DE PROFUNDIS (Ps. 130)
Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice!
Let Your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication:

If You, O Lord, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness,
that You may be revered.

I trust in the Lord;
my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord.
For with the Lord is kindness,
and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.


DIVINE MERCY PRAYER
You expired, Jesus, but the source of life gushed forth for souls and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world.  O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy, envelop the souls in Purgatory and empty Yourself out upon them. Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed for whom we offer this novena, rest in peace. Amen.

Holy Souls Novena, Day 6

"My soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn."

I got out of bed this morning.

Darwin has gotten up extra early this week so that he can get home early, and I've gotten up with him. Normally I stay in bed if he has to leave early, but during this novena, I've been exercising my power to choose to get up with him instead of stay cozy in bed. Once I'm up, it's not bad -- we have quiet time to chat, and actually run the risk of him leaving late because it's hard to stop talking. But the first action of getting up is the hardest part.

Still, I get to make that choice, to perfect my will a bit, and to offer it for the holy souls in Purgatory. They can't participate in perfecting their will. Everything in them is bent toward God, and they cannot hasten their arrival into his presence. Like the sentinels waiting for the dawn, they are powerless to bring about the thing they long for.

I am not powerless. I can move toward God any moment I choose to. I can draw nearer to him just by willing it, by longing for it. This is unfathomable power. St. Paul says, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church" (Col. 1:24). Every soul, even the souls in Purgatory, can offer their sufferings for others, but on earth we can offer them for ourselves as well, "in my flesh".

That's worth getting out of bed for.

***


(Act of Faith:) My God, I believe in You, because You are Truth itself; I firmly believe the truths revealed to the Church.
(Act of Hope:) My God, I hope in You, because You are infinitely good.
(Act of Love:) My God, I love You with all my heart, and above all things, because You are infinitely perfect; and I love my neighbor as myself, for the love of You.

MEDITATION FOR THE SIXTH DAY, WED. OCT 30
COMPASSION AND INTERCESSION
The family bonds forged by oneness in Christ are not broken by death.  The whole Church, living and dead, is still one in Him.  So those who have gone before us remain connected to us in the profoundest way possible.  By virtue of this fact, we can still love and have compassion on our dearly departed.  “And they turned to prayer, beseeching that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out…In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection….if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.  Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.” (2Macc12:42-45)  Through our oneness in Christ, we have enormous influence in the lives of one another.  It is a profound act of love to use that influence to aid our brothers and sisters in Purgatory—to hasten their purification and speed their entry into the joys of Heaven.  “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.” (James5:16)  Loving God, take our act of prayer and apply it to the benefit of our loved ones in Purgatory as we pray:


DE PROFUNDIS (Ps. 130)
Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice!
Let Your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication:

If You, O Lord, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness,
that You may be revered.

I trust in the Lord;
my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord.
For with the Lord is kindness,
and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.


DIVINE MERCY PRAYER
Eternal Father, we offer Thee the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Thy dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.  For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the holy souls in Purgatory.  Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed for whom we offer this novena, rest in peace. Amen.

All Souls Novena, Day 5

(Act of Faith:) My God, I believe in You, because You are Truth itself; I firmly believe the truths revealed to the Church.
(Act of Hope:) My God, I hope in You, because You are infinitely good.
(Act of Love:) My God, I love You with all my heart, and above all things, because You are infinitely perfect; and I love my neighbor as myself, for the love of You.

MEDITATION FOR THE FIFTH DAY, TUE. OCT 29
DURATION OF PURGATORY
God does not measure time as man does.  “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2Peter3:8)  The People of God waited thousands of years for the promised Savior.  Dare we assume that Purgatory is somehow short by human standards? How swiftly the memories of the living fade away.  The rush of the days and the cares of the world fill the minds and hands of those still on earth.  In her wisdom, the Church yearly reminds her flock of the beloved deceased.  With the feast of All Souls, our hearts and our love and our generosity are expanded again to include even those we can no longer see with our eyes.  Jesus Christ, Savior of the World, out of compassion for those who have no one to love and pray for them, we pray:


DE PROFUNDIS (Ps. 130)
Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice!
Let Your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication:

If You, O Lord, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness,
that You may be revered.

I trust in the Lord;
my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord.
For with the Lord is kindness,
and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.


DIVINE MERCY PRAYER
Eternal God--in Whom mercy is endless, and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible--look kindly upon us, and increase Your mercy in us, so that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your Holy Will, which is love and mercy itself. Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed for whom we offer this novena, rest in peace. Amen.

All Souls Novena, Day Four

A friend put together a group to pray the All Souls Novena, to end on Nov. 2, for the souls in Purgatory. And since it's never too late to start, I thought you'd like to pray it with me. Here are the meditations for the first three days.

There is a place for the purification of souls which, after death, are yet stained with venial sins, or have not yet entirely satisfied for their pardoned sins. By the light of the flames of Purgatory, I understand better Your holiness, Your justice, Your mercy, O my God! "Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His Holy Place? The innocent in hands, and clean of heart." (Ps. 24) "There shall not enter into Heaven anything defiled." (Rev. 21:27) Oh my God, You are all holy and perfect purity. No sin can enter Your presence without destruction. Purgatory is the chamber of Your mercy where all sin is finally eradicated from the soul in preparation to see You face to face. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction." (2 Cor. 1:3-4) 

Just as it is on earth, so too after death, the burning away of selfishness and attachment to sin is painful.  And in Purgatory there is nothing to distract from the terrible pain of purification, as there so readily is on earth.  Scripture compares the purification of the soul to the burning of fire.  “For You, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried…we went through fire and water; yet You have brought us forth to a place of abundance.” (Ps.66:10-12)  “Behold, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.” (Is.48:10)  So too, after death: “Each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.  If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.  If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” (1Cor.3:13-15 

The darkening of the intellect that came with the Fall casts a fog over our human perceptions.  In our weakness and selfishness, we choose lesser goods over the greater.  We choose ourselves over others.  We choose things over God who is Everything.  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully.” (1Cor13:12)  In the clear light of Purgatory, the soul can finally see the countless times he exchanged gold for dung, chose dust over diamonds.  So many opportunities lost, so many chances rejected.  Pointlessness chosen over acts of eternal significance.  And the pain of regret is excruciating.  “I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.” (Ps.50:5) 

I've been chewing on this theme of the powerlessness of Purgatory.

Anyone who's given birth knows the agony of transition, that point when your body is preparing to push the baby out. It is miserable, and there's nothing you can do -- you shake, you are racked with pain, your guts are being ripped out, and there's no stopping anything at that point. You cannot help or hinder the process. All you can do is endure. You are not changing -- you are being changed.

A more universal example is losing a tooth. Not long ago, my son came into my bedroom moaning, because his molar was at that stage where it was twisting and hanging on by a thread, but it was going to hurt even more to just pull it and get it over with. It had been years since I'd remembered the waiting pain of losing a tooth, but I could feel my own molars throbbing sympathetically.

Purgatory is transitional. We are being remade, through fire. Everything that is not God is being burned away. And we cannot change. The change is done for us. That happens on Earth, certainly, but here in life we can take an active part in our changing, hastening, hindering. In Purgatory it is done to us. How much better to transition now, while we're still alive and can actively participate in our own purification.

Because let me tell you, ain't much worse than the pain of transition, and I'd rather only go through it in this life.

All Souls Novena, Day 4

(Act of Faith:) My God, I believe in You, because You are Truth itself; I firmly believe the truths revealed to the Church.
(Act of Hope:) My God, I hope in You, because You are infinitely good.
(Act of Love:) My God, I love You with all my heart, and above all things, because You are infinitely perfect; and I love my neighbor as myself, for the love of You.

MEDITATION FOR THE FOURTH DAY, MON. OCT 28
THE PAIN OF LONGING
Nothing else is humanly harder to bear than painful waiting.  All the souls in Purgatory are sure one day to reach Heaven.  They know how wonderful Heaven is and how desirable is God.  “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1Cor2:9)  But they cannot follow the violent impulse that drives them toward their happiness.  One can hear their anxious eagerness echoed in the words of the Psalmist: “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me for ever? How long will You hide Your face from me?  How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” (Ps.13:1-2)  They must hunger for God and still be withheld from the possession of Him.  So in Purgatory there is hope and certainty and love and eagerness—and long periods of waiting…waiting…  Father of Mercy, out of love for our departed loved ones, we pray:


DE PROFUNDIS (Ps. 130)
Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice!
Let Your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication:

If You, O Lord, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness,
that You may be revered.

I trust in the Lord;
my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.

More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the Lord.
For with the Lord is kindness,
and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.


DIVINE MERCY PRAYER
O Greatly Merciful God, Infinite Goodness, today all mankind calls out from the abyss of its misery to Your mercy, to Your compassion, O God; and it is with a mighty voice of misery that it cries out. Gracious God, do not reject the prayer of this earth’s exiles! O Lord, Goodness beyond our understanding, Who are acquainted with our misery through and through and know that by our own power we cannot ascend to You, we implore You: fill us and the souls in Purgatory with Your grace and keep on increasing Your mercy in us. Let the omnipotence of Your mercy bless our dearly departed.  Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed for whom we offer this novena, rest in peace. Amen.

The Eye of the Piggy

Our skittish guinea pig, Hilda, took a flying leap from my daughter's arms into her cage, and scratched her eye. We've patted the bars of the cage, looking for any sharp spot or protrusion, without luck, but there it is -- poor piggy's eye is punctured and cloudy. Per the vet, we're giving her eyedrops three times a day, and painkiller twice.

Last night, as I was trying to drop the medicine into her squinty eye, Darwin said, "You know, I think her eye is shrinking."

And you guys, it is shrinking. I'd thought she was just squinting a lot, but no, her eyeball is getting smaller day by day. It fills me with a kind of horror to think about it. The vet had warned us that she might lose her eye, but I hadn't thought of seeing it happen bit by bit. We go back to the vet tomorrow for a follow-up. I don't think we need to take heroic measures to save her eye, even if such a thing is possible at this point. But we'll try to keep her as comfortable as possible as she heals.

It's not anyone's fault -- piggy has to be taken out of her cage so it can be cleaned; she is just a small fluffy pig who can't help being jumpy; what on earth did she bang herself on anyway? -- but it is sad to think that this small thing in our care is going to be maimed. Granted, her life is pretty sedate otherwise. She goes around her cage with her daughter Ruby. She sits in her house. Sometimes, if she is feeling feisty, she even flips her house, and then squeaks for someone to turn it back over. All these things can be done and done well with one eye. And other than her panic when we pick her up for her medicine, she doesn't seem to be suffering, as best we can tell.

We are not the most doting pet owners by any means, but we try to do well by these creatures in our house. The two old cats are sometimes frustrating, and the older one, at 19, seems well-nigh immortal, but we are responsible for them. Even when they pee on random fabric items on my floor, we don't hurl them outside. We buy them the expensive cat food because they don't throw it up. We even moved the litter box downstairs, to the far back corner of the kitchen by the washing machine, so that they'd stop pooping on the floor because they didn't want go up to the attic. It horrifies me to have a litter box in my kitchen, by my laundry. It drives me crazy to live in a house that sometimes smells like cat pee. When these cats die, we are done with cats. Done. But for now we have them, and we have to take care of them.

Lately, though, I've felt that I will indeed be judged on how I've treated our pets. Not on the amount of money we've spent on them, which is pretty negligible by pet-owner standards. Not for how often I've taken them to the vet, because they never go in unless they are in obvious distress. No, I feel like I will be judged on throwing the cat in the middle of the night because it's on my pillow, or for pushing it away when it stood on my puzzle trying to get me to scratch its head, or for the times I've called it stupid. Not because these are big things, but because they are little things, the littlest of the little, of no consequence to anyone or anything but my soul. The cats are God's creation too, and how I respond to them reflects upon me. I don't think I need to pamper them, but I need to at least respond to them as something that God thinks is good.

By the back door, there's a spider who's made its home in the old trellis on the porch. In days past I would have brushed the web away and smashed the spider if I could get it. But it's not harming me. It has a little hidey hole woven down into a corner of the trellis, and sometimes when we come out the back door it hides, and sometimes it sits out. I nod to it as I go past. Maybe it's catching bugs. Maybe it's just living, and as long as it's not in the house who cares? The back porch looks rather sloppy with the triangular web by the door, but it's of a piece with the rest of the place. God made it, and saw that it was good, and that's good enough for me.

The Individual Grief of Miscarriage

October 15 is Pregnancy Loss Awareness Day, as proclaimed by -- I'm not sure really; I don't know who has jurisdiction to just proclaim a day and make it so. Simcha Fisher has written a lovely reflection on grieving a miscarriage and seeking physical reminders of a loss that leaves barely any physical remains.

I want to write about a different way to grieve, because there is no one right way.

I had a miscarriage at about 12 weeks, over the Triduum of 2005, a few months before we started this blog. I don't remember the dates without looking it up, but I discovered I was bleeding on Good Friday, at church. A friend took my almost 3yo and my 18mo home for the night, and all night long I bled and feared.

All day Saturday I bled and grieved, a process made more complicated by Darwin being so miserably sick that I had to drive him to the urgent care. I sat in the office and rocked myself in labor pains and cried into tissues while the doctor proclaimed that he had a double ear infection and bronchitis. She looked at my pile of tissues with trepidation. "I'm not contagious," I moaned. "I'm having a miscarriage."

"Okay?" she said, and backed out of the room without fulfilling my fantasy of prescribing me industrial-strength painkillers.

Darwin was barely conscious, so I had to drive him to the pharmacy to pick up his prescriptions. Focusing on the road was a nightmare of concentration and pain. Every stop light was a misery of waiting. When we got to the store, he had to go in, sick as he was, because I couldn't stand up without blood dripping down my leg. And while I was sitting there crying, the phone rang -- the lab confirming that I had indeed lost my baby.

Then I realized that the pain was subsiding, had stopped, and I stopped crying, and the grief died with the pain.

On Easter morning we went to mass alone, as the girls were still in the care in friends, and when we came home I passed the baby, painlessly, silently. We were able to open the sac and see and hold the perfect tiny body. Fingers, toes, little bottom, little nose, and a huge blue eye. We buried it under the rose bush in the back yard.

Friends told me to name the baby. Friends told me that I would be sad for a while, that I might cry at random times. I did none of those things. God knows the child's name, and one day so will I. Six weeks later I got pregnant with my daughter (now a beautiful, disciplined, ferociously effective 13yo) and I did not grieve my miscarriage any more. The next time, and the last time, I cried about it was a few years later, as I sat with a friend who'd just had her own miscarriage, and my grief was more for her than for myself.

It's not that I never think about Baby. I have, in the pocket of my bathrobe, a plastic model of a twelve-week fetus. It's a bit larger than my child, but it's very accurate to the little baby I held, except that some child has chewed up the plastic toes. Whenever I walk down the hall to the shower, I hold the baby in my pocket and remember, and pray for my child and all babies just beginning life in the womb. Sometimes the kids get out the plastic baby and talk about it. And I feel no pang.

It's okay to mourn a miscarriage for a long time. And it's okay not to mourn a miscarriage for a long time. There's no correct way to grieve, and no one should tell you how to feel. Every loss is individual. Baby's brief existence is a joy to me, unalloyed by grief, and there's nothing wrong with that. That doesn't make me a cold, hard person. It simply is what it is. I have my memories of a tiny body, and an immense blue eye looking up at me, and they are good and sweet.

Personal Influence

Everyone knows the shock of catching oneself on video, a charming exercise that combines the seeming objectivity of seeing yourself from the outside with the subjectivity of nitpicking your own presentation for flaws. I had this informative experience this weekend at the cast party for our show, as we watched last year's show and kibbitzed. I can't tell you anything about my performance, because all I saw was that although I'd thought at the time that I was standing straight, the video showed every leaden ounce of the ten extra pounds I was carrying then, weighing on the base of neck, pressing my head out in a cruel slump.

This is why it's crucial to live in community and relationship. Left to myself, I see a photo or a video and immediately pinpoint what I see as the flaws. Look at my chunky legs, my strange posture, my shapeless face, my hair laying the wrong way. Who else would I judge so harshly, by appearance only? Which of my friends would I categorize by appearance, except as a delightful reminder of the personality within? Indeed, the only lasting effect we have on other people is the effect of personal influence, the witness of the totality of our life and convictions on those around us. And we will be heard and believed in proportion to our devotion, however quiet and unimpressive it may seem externally, to the Truth.

The newly ordained St. John Henry Newman spoke of personal influence as the unsurpassed, and indeed, the principal means of evanglization and of the transmission of divine Truth:

Such views of the nature and history of Divine Truth are calculated to make us contented and resigned in our generation, whatever be the peculiar character or the power of the errors of our own times. For Christ never will reign visibly upon earth; but in each age, as it comes, we shall read of tumult and heresy, and hear the complaint of good men marvelling at what they conceive to be the especial wickedness of their own times. 

37. Moreover, such considerations lead us to be satisfied with the humblest and most obscure lot; by showing us, not only that we may be the instruments of much good in it, but that (strictly speaking) we could scarcely in any situation be direct instruments of good to any besides those who personally know us, who ever must form a small circle; and as to the indirect good we may do in a more exalted station (which is by no means to be lightly esteemed), still we are not absolutely precluded from it in a lower place in the Church. Nay, it has happened before now, that comparatively retired posts have been filled by those who have exerted the most extensive influences over the destinies of Religion in the times following them; as in the arts and pursuits of this world, the great benefactors of mankind are frequently unknown. 

38. Let all those, then, who acknowledge the voice of God speaking within them, and urging them heaven-ward, wait patiently for the End, exercising themselves, and diligently working, with a view to that day when the books shall be opened, and all the disorder of human affairs reviewed and set right; when "the last shall be first, and the first last;" when "all things that offend, and they which do iniquity," shall be gathered out and removed; when "the righteous shall shine forth as the sun," and Faith shall see her God; when "they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars, for ever and ever."

I read these words yesterday with stinging eyes, as I reflected on a recent interaction. A wonderful lady I know asked me where I went to church. She wanted her family to join a church and start going regularly, but she hadn't decided where.

"I go to St. Mary's," I said.

"I was raised Catholic," she said, "but I want to find something non-denominational."

And instead of suggesting that she look into Catholicism again, or try RCIA, or offering to join her at mass, I mentioned the names of several local non-denominational congregations to which other friends belong.

Now I believe in the truths that the Catholic Church professes, with my whole heart. I believe it possesses the fullness of truth, as we can understand it here on earth. I would die for the faith, and I hope I would suffer for it. But how do I know what history my friend had with the Church? How do I know what past influences may have made her want something else? How do I know what burdens she's had to bear that may have been made worse by particular Catholics?

How, for that matter, do I know whether I'm a good personal model for someone looking for a church? Do I come across as someone who makes the faith attractive, or (as has been implied to me before) a goody two-shoes whose life has little to offer to people in difficult circumstances? That happy marriage, all those nice kids -- what does MrsDarwin know about my broken background, my current suffering? What can her faith have to offer me?

What I did know was that she asked a question, and I listened, and answered to the best of my ability, and that St. Newman might agree that that kind of personal interaction is a better witness than all reasoning or eloquence. And I think he would agree that we cannot know the force of our personal influence, for good or for ill. How can we know the totality of ourselves? How can we truly have an objective view of what we look like to others? All that matters is that God works through our weakness to show forth his love and beauty and truth to the world, as Cardinal Newman says in his last paragraph above:

Let all those, then, who acknowledge the voice of God speaking within them, and urging them heaven-ward, wait patiently for the End, exercising themselves, and diligently working, with a view to that day when the books shall be opened, and all the disorder of human affairs reviewed and set right; when "the last shall be first, and the first last;" when "all things that offend, and they which do iniquity," shall be gathered out and removed; when "the righteous shall shine forth as the sun," and Faith shall see her God; when "they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars, for ever and ever."

Immediate Prayer Request

Friends, requesting your prayers for a Cincinnati friend looking desperately for immediate help for a late-term, high-risk pregnancy. Please say a quick St. Thérèse prayer or Infant of Prague novena for this life-and-death situation. She says:

"My once-trusted obstetrician has a terrible office, and they dropped the ball on numerous important things. As I approach the end of pregnancy, everything they missed is coming to light and gathering into a pretty fraught situation here at 36 weeks.

The first issue is that I have tested extremely close to the diagnostic cutoff for a condition called intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), which carries up to a 15% stillbirth risk. The only way to save babies whose moms have ICP is delivery at 37 weeks. I should have been allowed to speak to my doctor about this, but his office has prevented me from direct contact with him for over a month now.

The second issue is that I was not given the standard tests for anemia at all during this pregnancy, which allowed me to become severely anemic and affected my heart rhythm to the degree that I ended up in the ER—and also helps explain why I was basically unable to function all summer. I have been told over a week ago that I require immediate iron infusions at the hospital to help prevent hemorrhage during my c-section, but to this day, the obstetrician's office has not successfully put in the order for them despite repeat requests from both me and the hospital.

These little bureaucratic dysfunctions are adding up to serious consequences for me and my baby. I still have no c-section date scheduled, let alone one that takes into account the potential for ICP. I have attempted to transfer my care to well-respected high-risk obstetricians at nearby hospital groups and been told that their cutoff for new patients is 36 weeks.

As for the loop monitor drama, in case you're wondering—I finally got that successfully ordered and covered by insurance, and then had to cancel it days before due to all of these complications."

Darwiniana: Gripe Session

Next week we return to our regularly scheduled programming. This week we didn't have the flu, but at a certain point I thought we did, and believe me, everything else went by the wayside. It's the sinus thingie with fever (confirmed by urgent care), and it's a week-long event, but that week has been staggered throughout seven children who are getting cabin fever. Bonus: the house has been thoroughly disinfected, and the urgent care doc told me that all OTC sleep aids are basically benedryl, so if you have children with feverish insomnia, take this to heart. 

Also this week: the big van died in the middle of our street. Haha, two alternators in two different cars in just over two weeks! We'll have it back after the weekend, I hope, and thank goodness that we're now a three-car family, but oof.

Also oof: the plumbing job to make our low-pressure shower run more smoothly initially had an estimate of $600. What was supposed to be a one-day job ran into complications, cost 50% more than estimated, and has left us with a hole in the bathroom wall, a shower with the water shut off, and a further estimate of $1200 to finish the work. NB: this is not the bathroom with the hole in the ceiling, where the shower works just fine.

Speaking of the bathroom with the hole in the ceiling: the living room ceiling under that shower has started to bulge. We are familiar with bulging ceilings, which means plaster that must be replaced. Fortunately, the bulging plaster is held in place by paper, which we suspect that previous homeowners put up to hide previous water damage to the plaster. Cost to repair: unknown as yet, because I'm turning a blind eye to it until other things are paid for.

Ah, fall! Time to bake some bread! That is, if you have a functioning oven. But this past Saturday, while the girls and I were at the theater, while Darwin was doing some baking, he noticed a bright flash in the oven. Opening it, he saw a spark, like the flare from a welder's torch, moving along the bottom heating element. As it traced its way along the wire, the wire seemed to melt. Very interesting. Also now very unfunctional. We are told that this is an easy part to DIY, which is good financially but disappointing from the standpoint of having bought this thing as a placeholder for the good gas stove we'd like to get one day, and it's not dead enough to replace yet.

None of these things are insurmountable, and most of them are predictable, especially the old moneypit problems. In the grand scheme of things, none of them are really terrible. Most of them can be solved with money and time, both of which we have. Yet it does feel oppressing to have them all come at once, and in a show week, natch. But it's been lots of little opportunities to die to self, and that's better than no opportunities to die to self.

A Waffle Making Dad

This was one of those very parental mornings. The little kids had been passing around one of those viruses all week that manifested itself in fevers at night and no detectable symptoms during the day -- the sort of thing you can't take to the doctor with any satisfaction and which doesn't even slow them down much during the day. Last night the malady made the jump to the older kids as they came back from the first performance of their show with MrsDarwin. Thus there were calls and visits from various people during the night. At few times were there less than two small to medium children wedged into our bed with us. MrsDarwin dealt with much of this. Through long years of being a single income family we've fallen into a routine where I wake up easily to my alarm and to strange noises during the night, while she wakes up to sounds of children. This fits with the fact that I get up early and head off to work, while the kids tend to sleep till 7:30 or 8:00 and thus allow her to get another hour or two of rest.

So having slogged through the night, I got up with the alarm to make breakfast. MrsDarwin had to leave to teach religion class by 9:15, and whichever kids were healthy would be going with her. In honor of general civilization, I try to make sure the family gets a hot breakfast at least one day out of each weekend, and usually that day is Sunday. This morning I made waffles and bacon, with the earnest help of the five-year-old who loves to stand on a stool and help add and mix ingredients in any such project.

 Now it's the moment of quiet, where I've got everyone fed, settled the sick ones down to rest, got MrsDarwin out the door (fed, coffeed, with all her stuff) and there's a pause of relative quiet -- "Dad!" Comes a cry from the other room. "I had a spill." -- before I need to get the next set of logistics going to cover mass, errands, getting people to the play, to youth group, making dinner, to bed. So I'm writing. Why not?

Some time ago, I recall another Catholic guy having written something about how one of the benefits of marriage is that it domesticates young men. Given that many within the Catholic blogging world seem to have been trying to catch up on fifty years of previously scorned feminism over the last five years, this inevitably caught him a fair amount of grief. "It seems like you're asking women to pay an awfully high price to teach men to make waffles," quipped one critic.

Well here I am. Waffle making man. It's not always waffles. My breakfast repertoire for feeding all the kids stretches to pancakes, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, homemade bagels, hash, and egg-sausage-bake. If I'm just making a breakfast for MrsDarwin and myself I make an omelet or eggs, but many of the kids don't like eggs, and it's hard to make an omelet big enough for seven kids anyway.

I've read compelling writing by women writers about the emotional labor they do to keep a family going. I wouldn't claim that for my tribe, we waffle making dads. We're not particularly emotional. But we try to do our labor. We make weekend breakfasts and dinner once or twice a week when we're around in time do to the prep. We do the "you'll have to talk to your father when he gets home" conversations, and the careful diffusing conversations with daughters entering their teens who at times decide that their mothers don't understand them at all and Dad is the only person they will listen to. We mow the lawn and take the trash out and get the oil changed more or less on time. We pay the bills and track the finances and deal with a host of practical issues while having the unfortunate tendency to assume that everything is okay in people's emotional lives unless they actually tell us otherwise.

The waffle making dad can seem like a pretty out-dated archetype these days. The up to the moment guy is a sensitive feminist ally who admires kick-ass women and decries male privilege -- a sort of Joss Whedon about the house. Of course, waffle dad replies, the danger there is that he might... turn out to be like Joss Whedon.

I'm not sure how to address that whole set of ideals and concerns, the people who snappily say that women are giving up a lot to teach a young man to make waffles, so I'll just leave that to one side. My words are to the young men of the world. And I'll say: being a waffle making dad is not a bad aspiration. In a world that can't seem to make up its mind what, if anything, it wants from masculinity, many of the archetypes available out there are not great.

There's the "crusading knight of the West" archetype which gets a lot of play in traditional circles. I like my history as much as the next fellow, but let's be honest with ourselves: Constantinople fell some time ago and getting too caught up in the idea of being a knight while in fact working 9-to-5 (or more realistically, 8-to-6) just starts to look like being involved in a roll playing game.  Heaven forbid, you may some day be asked to fight for what you love, but don't stake your sense of self an mission on that possibility.  The small daily struggles are more important than the possibility of huge risks and sacrifices that may never actually come.  Then there's the super-sensitive feminist ally archetype, but if there are any of those that aren't secretly creeps, I'll be the more surprised.

The former archetype endorses a semi-mythic hyper masculinity in search of some sort of great deed to accomplish. The latter attempts to defuse criticism by essentially becoming "one of the girls". Neither of these is doable. What is doable is to work your job and take care of the needs of those you love. Being a stable support to your family and getting things done that add to their security and comfort is something that you can do and that is, in the end, probably close to being the most worthwhile thing you can do with yourself.

I remember my father making pancakes for the family as a weekend breakfast. I remember him patiently letting me help mix them up as a child when it would surely have been easier to do it himself. I knew his patient service to us in that way, as in others, was a sign of his love for us. Those breakfasts were not just breakfasts, they were a symbol of the quiet toil and support with which he cared for us. I don't think there are many better ways to be remembered.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go do the dishes.

History That Wasn't: The United German Republic of 1919

I've been reading Robert Gerwarth's The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, a history book dealing with ways in which the collapsed of the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans and Russia created regional conflicts and tensions that in turn led to WW2. It's a very worth reading book, especially if one's prior exposure to the topic is limited to the summary that often ends up in textbooks claiming that the war guilt clause the reparations were the primary things which played into the rise of the Nazis.

One of the fascinating things that he covers is that in 1918-1919 as the Austrian and German successor states were being put together primarily under the leadership of Social Democratic parties (in the climate of the place and times, think of social democrats as being the stable middle ground between communists on the left who wanted actual revolution and the imperial/military right which in many cases didn't want parliamentary democracy at all) many social democrats in both Germany and Austria were pushing for a union of the two countries into a single German-speaking nation. This seemed to be in keeping with Wilson's 14 Points, and it would have both provided Germany with something to focus on other than its territorial losses to Poland and Austria a way to continue to exist as a stable country after being stripped of its primary agricultural and industrial areas through the dissolution of the empire. Austria in the winter of 1918-19 was a rump state with a third of its population in Vienna and not nearly enough agricultural land to feed its starving people.

The allies did not want to allow the unification of Germany and Austria even if it seemed in keeping with the principle of national self determination, because it seemed impossible to explain how they had fought and died to defeat German militarism only to green light the creation of a larger and more unified German state than they had faced in 1914. And yet, it's possible to imagine that if the Social Democrats had been able to deliver a united German Republic as a channel for national aspirations, this would have given them the credibility to stabilize and lead the country into a better future.

With unification definitively denied, uniting the countries became an aspiration of the far right and another example of how democratic government could never provide a path to the national greatness for which many people yearned in a period of defeat.