There are a lot of similarities between being a mom and being a teacher. Both jobs include constant giving : giving patiently and endlessly and cheerfully. Both jobs involve shepherding other human beings through things that they don’t necessarily want to do, whether it’s reading Macbeth or eating their peas. Both jobs are rewarding, yes, but also totally, mind-blowingly exhausting.
So I guess it’s not surprising that this teacher-mom was actually looking forward to her dentist appointment yesterday afternoon. I mean, seriously: forty-five minutes of reclining in a chair and not having to do anything? It was sheer and utter bliss. It felt like a spa treatment. I almost fell asleep.
“There just has to be music in heaven,” an elderly woman I know once told me. “If there isn’t, I don’t want to go.”
I kind of suspect that there will be. And I don’t think it’ll be all those harps that you see in the cartoons. I think it might be people with gorgeous voices singing their hearts out … because honestly, when I hear a really beautiful voice, I feel like I’m already in heaven.
One singer whose voice really moves me is Hayley Westenra, a young soprano from New Zealand. I love her rendition of Caccini’s “Ave Maria” It’s really something. Even if you can only listen to a few seconds, it’s worth it just to hear the gorgeous clarity of her voice.
I feel like I’m thinking in bits and pieces these days. Life has been crazily busy for the last several weeks — I can blame the Unending Stream of Student Essays for that — and it feels like ages since I wrote anything of any real depth. It’s one of the worst parts of being an English teacher: the morass of papers to grade. They take more out of you than you realize.
Even in the midst of all this, though, I sometimes get these random little thoughts that seem kind of worth remembering. They flash into my mind as commute to work or as I pick mushed banana out of Lukey’s seat. They are what passes for wisdom these days. Perhaps they will make you think? Or smile? Or maybe they’ll inspire you to say a prayer for my addled mom-brain, so clearly starved for sleep and downtime.
Here, in no particular order, are Random Thoughts of the Last Few Weeks.
1. Being a mom means always having laundry to fold.
2. Candy corn is simultaneously totally delicious and totally disgusting.
3. It takes me five seconds to find my cellphone when it isn’t ringing and thirty seconds to find it when it is — by which time, of course, it’s clicked to voicemail.
4. Halloween decorations have gotten a whole lot scarier than they were when I was a kid.
5. It’s okay if a three-year-old who wants a knight costume ends up wearing a plastic construction helmet covered with tinfoil rather than something purchased, at great price, from a costume store.
6. A coffee chain like Starbucks or Peet’s would make a killing if they opened a franchise at my high school.
It’s been a while since I went on a retreat. Actually — let me do the math here — I haven’t been on a retreat since before my oldest child was born. That means that it’s been nearly four years since I packed up, left my daily routine, and spent a weekend reflecting on my spiritual life in a lovely and semi-remote spot.
And oh, am I feeling it.
Honestly, though, I have no idea when I’ll be getting back into the retreat habit. Seriously, it takes intensive strategic planning just to get to the movies for an afternoon. How will I wangle an entire weekend away?
Thankfully, I’ve found a bit of a substitute out there. We’ll call it Retreat Lite. It’s the Three Minute Retreat, from Loyola Press.
If you click on the link, you’ll find beautiful photography, soothing music, Gospel passages, and guided reflection questions. Each day is a new one, so you don’t have to worry about repetition. I’m really digging them. It’s great when I have enough time to visit in the mornings before work … it’s a lovely way to center my thoughts as I start the day, and to remember that there is more to life than the vagaries of the morning commute.
Check it out. It’s not as renewing as a real weekend retreat, but there’s no babysitter required for this one — and there are no lumpy beds, either.
Okay, really quick: Who is this nun? (hint: it’s not Sally Field).
Give up?
It’s St. Catherine Labouré, the nineteenth-century French nun who forever changed the face of Catholic accessorizing (with a little help from Mary, of course).
You can read more about her, Mary, and the Miraculous Medal on BustedHalo.com.
On October 17, 1989, I was sure that I was going to die.
I was sixteen years old, home alone, talking to a friend on the phone. Then, suddenly, the ground beneath me started to sway. “We’re having an earthquake,” I said to her, calmly. ”I’ll call you back.” A blase reaction, perhaps; but then, as a native Californian, I had been through lots of tremblers. I knew the drill: get to the doorway, the strongest part of the room, and wait it out.
But as I crossed the few feet between the phone stand and the family room door, it was suddenly not just any old earthquake. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt: the swaying, the rocking, the rolling and heaving. If you’ve ever stood on a moving platform at an amusement park, you know the feeling — only it was stronger, and more terrifying, and I could not get off to safety.
I am going to die alone here, I thought to myself, as the hutch top of the bookshelf crashed to the floor a few feet away. This is the Big One. There was that sickening sound of windows rattling and walls creaking and the rumbling, that terrible rumbling — the scariest part of a quake, in many ways, a sound that makes you think, in some primal way, that you have angered the earth, that it is alive and not to be appeased. I flattened my back to the doorframe and cried and prayed, too, I think. There was no time to do anything else.
And then, slowly, it stopped, and the earth settled into place.
My sister called me from college, having just heard the news on the radio. I assured her, shakily, that I was fine, and then my grandfather called, and then the phones went down for several hours. My sister ended up being the point person, the one who told all the out-of-town family that we were safe.
It’s odd to remember that, when my parents returned home, I worried aloud about the fact that the power was out and I would not be able to study for my U.S. history test the next day. ”I don’t think you’ll be going to school tomorrow,” said my dad, and he was right. Everything, it seemed, had to be checked for cracks and damage before life could go on as normal.
And for many people, it didn’t go on as normal. Lives were lost in the Cypress freeway collapse and on the streets of San Francisco. My mother, who was hiking in the hills at the time of the quake, saw the tower of St. Joseph’s Seminary fall, sickeningly, into the building below it. A repairman was killed in that collapse. Many lost their homes. A lot of us lost a certain kind of innocence.
I guess it’s good to be reminded that things can change, so quickly, in a matter of seconds. It’s scary, though, too — and, to be honest, it’s one of the biggest faith struggles I have. The suffering that comes from earthquakes, from storms, from tornadoes and tsunamis — it’s not a suffering that we bring on ourselves, we humans, from our bad or misguided choices. It’s utterly beyond our control. It’s one piece of the design of the universe that I just don’t understand.
And yet, twenty years later, it’s good to remember what I did take away from that experience. I learned something pretty important as I clung to that doorframe and heard the rumbling fade away and realized that I wasn’t a goner after all. I learned something that it’s embarrassingly easy to forget in the crazed hectic rush of my daily life.
I learned that life is pretty damn precious, and that I’m really damn glad to be here.
And that is definitely worth remembering.
Photo of St. Joseph’s Seminary by H.G.Wilshire, USGS
“[Mary] is a genuine model to me now as she was not when I was young. As a pregnant mother and as witness to the cross, she testifies to the joy, the pain, and the promise of all human life. She unites the power of what early centuries saw in her as “male” virtue with the demanding human virtue of compassion. Above all, she reminds me of God’s insistence that all creation and every human being, no matter how poor or powerless, is truly significant.”
How do you feel about rainy days? Do you love them or loathe them?
For me, it’s a bit of both. I adore rainy days when it’s the weekend and I can stay inside and be warm and cozy, listening to the pitter-patter on the roof. On the other hand, I hate wet days when I have to get in the car and commute. Life suddenly seems fraught with peril when you are navigating the massive flooded spots on the freeway.
Today was a real whopper, rain-wise. Northern California got slammed with the worst fall storm since 1962, according to the people who measure these things. It’s not unusual to have rain here, even heavy rain, but it usually doesn’t come until January or so. I think a lot of us were unprepared.
It was a tense day: lots of white-knuckled driving and muttered prayers, lots of splashing through puddles and cursing my totally inadequate, cheapo umbrella which was doing the Mary Poppins thing in the wind. The fabric has pulled away from two of the spokes, which caused one of my female students to say, with equal parts pity and amusement, “Ms. Moyer! Look at your umbrella!” I wish I’d thought to say, “Don’t you think the school district should pay us more?”
I also cast many anxious looks at the ginormous eucalyptus trees right over my classroom, which were swaying crazily in the gusty wind. I’m no expert, but any faceoff between a massive tree trunk and the roof of a portable building is bound to end badly for the latter. Thankfully, though, falling bark and leaves were the worst we had to face.
And now: well, now it’s finally calm ouside. The rain seems to have stopped and the gutters are no longer overflowing their banks. I’m home, warm and dry, not the worse for wear. I’ve officially made it through the first storm of the season.
I'm a formerly lapsed Catholic who likes to write about faith, real life, and how the two intersect. Oh, and I love Mary -- check out my book Mary and Me below!
I feel like I’m thinking in bits and pieces these days. Life has been crazily busy for the last several weeks — I can blame the Unending Stream of Student Essays for that — and it feels like ages since I wrote anything of any real depth. It’s one of the worst parts of being an English teacher: the morass of papers to grade. They take more out of you than you realize.
It’s been a while since I went on a retreat. Actually — let me do the math here — I haven’t been on a retreat since before my oldest child was born. That means that it’s been nearly four years since I packed up, left my daily routine, and spent a weekend reflecting on my spiritual life in a lovely and semi-remote spot.
How do you feel about rainy days? Do you love them or loathe them?
