Tag Archives: holidays

A Mother’s Day Prayer

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On the bathroom counter — right where he knew I’d come first thing this morning — Kevin left me a sweet, sweet Mother’s Day card.

It lay atop a photo album open to a picture of me, in a blue hospital gown, holding a swaddled still-newborn Atticus with a little, curly-haired toddler Lucas by my side on the hospital bed.

The card begins, “Today I’m remembering how you looked that very first time you held our newborn child so tenderly in your arms…”

I’m crying because it’s so, so sweet, not just the card but the thought he put into choosing it and placing it.

And I’m crying because I miss him and can’t tell him what I’m typing right now until he returns home from his third day in a row working a more than 12-hour shift in the prison…no matter the holiday…

And I’m crying because he just doesn’t do cards. Usually. What a surprise!!!

And I’m crying because not only will I miss my sweet, considerate husband today, but I will also likely only see a third of my children today.

One is with me always, the way I know God intended from the start. The other two got caught in the fault lines when old relationships quaked. One ended up on the other side of the crevasse; the other still walks the thin limb between from week to week.

And this is not even counting the ones who have gone on before me, leaving me with a signature aching to ever hold them tight.

This morning, I pray for them all.

I offer up my joy and my pain for my children, in varying states of distant, and for my husband, who understands and feels with me all this and much, much more. Mother Mary, keep them safe and help them always to know they are loved.

And I pray for all mothers in varying states of longing for children here and gone — including my own mother, who has seen more than her share of suffering from my own distance and woe. May God bless you all and comfort you.

The Easter Dye

The dyeing step of the Easter egg process is much more fun for everyone (but more so especially those of us who don’t have to clean up afterward).

We used a water, vinegar, and food dye mixture. It didn’t make for as vivid eggs as we’re used to, maybe, and they’re a bit splotchy, but it was more like “cooking.”

The kids loved stirring up the dye liquid and pouring it over the eggs. They liked mixing up the colors a little, too.

Thank goodness I put down the old cloth. We survived with relatively few dyed areas, furniture, skin, or otherwise. :P

The Easter Boil

The Easter Egg is a process.
Today, we boil; tomorrow, we dye.

This feels like it’s going somewhere poem-like with some word play on the boiling and dyeing, a big metaphor for life or something. So I’ll stop here and spare us all…

~*~

What I wish I could’ve posted tonight is a picture of Lucas and Atticus holding their little candles at the Easter Vigil Mass.

You know how the forecast will give you two temperatures for any given time? One is the real temperature, and the other is the windchill temperature — the way it really feels? Well, with little kids up after their normal bedtime, the two hours we spent there felt like at least four. ;)

And one fake candle shattered its glass bulb on the tile floor, and Kevin had to search for the shards with the other candle in the darkened church.

Still, it was a beautiful service with beautiful music (although we wish there would’ve been more Latin, like last year!) and a good number of new people joining.

42/365: Dum-Dum-Da-Dum (alternatively: Valentine, Be Mine?!)

Getting Valentine’s Day cards ready for Monday, Lucas helped check off the names of the kids in his class until he got check-happy and checked half the class before making their cards.

That’s when I stepped in and marked with a line each one we’d already made as he called out the names.

It was interesting watching Lucas decide which card (and which flavor Dum Dum) to give to which of his classmates. He wrote all 17 of them. Pretty neatly, too, if I may add.

Atticus picked out a few of the cards he’s taking to Susie’s (our sitter/preschool teacher) but was distracted as usual, so I got to pick out most of those and write all of them.

And by the time Kevin came home with dinner from Pizza Hut, we were done.

Lucas, pointing to the box: It says, “Dum Dum Pops.”
Kevin: Don’t say that! They’re probably pretty smart.

;(