Usage you can use: Voilà

Most everyone uses "voilà" [vwa la] at some point in her life. This is likely because voilà [vwa la] is a French word. We Americans like borrowing things from the French. They are just so fashionable.

Voilà [vwa la] has all the expected subtleties in its native form, but we barking Anglophones tend to use it to mean, "Ta da!" This is a fine usage, given that voilà [vwa la] could be translated to mean, "lookit!" or, "here it is!" So carry on, friends. Carry on.

But do not ever spell it "walla" or I will laugh at you.

Gestating, please hold

Not so long ago, I had a Very Serious discussion with my husband about a Big Decision that our family needs to make. He was, as always, appropriately empathetic as well as cautiously solution-oriented. And like the rational person that he is, he tactfully (like the wise man that he is) suggested that perhaps the throes of early pregnancy, in the midst of household illness, were not the best time to finalize decisions like these.

Since there is, or at one time was, a rational bone (or at least some quasi-reasonable cartilage) somewhere in my body, I could see his point. Hormones, fatigue, nausea and emesis, sleepless nights with sick and cranky kids…

But, OK, so I’ll eventually have this baby and not be pregnant anymore. Why, I’ll be postpartum! Maybe that would be a good time to make big decisions! And then after I’m postpartum, I’ll be endlessly nursing and chasing, and in all likelihood, people will be sick again! And then….well, the whole thing might just start all over again!

Yeah, so, I guess I’m just kinda wondering when exactly I can expect to be right-minded enough to make a responsible, rational decision about anything more important than what’s for supper on a given day. And I’m coming yet again to the disturbing conclusion that this—whatever point on the continuum this happens to be at the time—is as good as it gets.

20 years, that is.

Plaid to the bone

The LL Bean catalog (aka Mom's Guide to Coveting) came today. I liked the cover redesign thingy they're doing for their 100th anniversary.

Here's a cover from 1956:

Here's how a photographer reproduced it:

Naturally I was just interested in the chick. Her body type seems to have gotten more realistic over the years, but she's not quite as buttoned as she used to be. :D

Most Christianest headcovering ever

There was also a pair of R2D2 socks in the hand-me-down bag that brought me this treasure.

Ten years

One of the hardest Sulvanisms for me to shake was the idea of spacing. It did not occur to me that I would be lighting each new pregnancy off the smolderings of the last. I was looking forward to the breaks that only seemed reasonable and necessary; I, like everyone else, had always lived break to break. Some months of not serving as host for another human life would keep me going. No weird clothes. No icky and embarrassing demands on my body for a while. Time for the baby to get bigger so it wouldn't be so rough adding another.

It didn't work out that way. Sometime in the last few days I lived the unknowable moment past which I have been pregnant, nursing, or both for ten years with no breaks in service. The part of me that finds this shocking has gotten smaller over those years, but she's still in here somewhere. While the lot of normally functioning woman is no longer unthinkable to me, it remains incredible and menacing and gargantuan. It is a tidal wave and I am a bicycle on the beach. To think of it makes me want to fall down on the floor and just lie there.

I'm good at faking my way through local life like a normal person; to do otherwise would make everyone miserable. But I always secretly feel like an alien around women with kids the age of my older kids, because I do not know any who are living the lot of normally functioning women like I am. They have moved on to basketball practice and bike rides. There are no maternity clothes boxed up in their closets, there is no nursing paraphernalia in their top drawers. Precedent indicates that the baby and preschool moms, my closer allies for now, will soon leave me to join the basketballers and bikers. But I'll probably still be here; pregnant, nursing, both.

I didn't get the memo. I'm the supermom nobody wants to be.

Fallen

Disclaimer 1: I don't want to come off all First Girl Ever To Learn [Greek] here, so let me say upfront that the basic fact I present below came to my attention via the very much English Concordia Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which I was reading for a thoroughly  non-erudite reason with which I will not bore you.


Disclaimer 2: I hesitate to address this as one who has graciously been spared the heartbreak of losing a baby without having seen his face. But experience is neither equalizer nor guarantor of consensus, and every woman who has carried a child or hoped to knows the dread of this shadow.





I ponder endlessly the sadness of my friends who have endured a miscarriage, particularly the sentiment expressed by my dear Reb. Mary:  "'Miscarry. Mis-carry. Like, “Whoops! I dropped the baby! Next time I’m carrying a baby I really should try to be more careful!'" Ah, friend. :'(

Ecclesiastes 6, Job 3, and Psalm 58 speak of a miscarried or stillborn child, but not in the way we speak of him. For where we call him "miscarried," which so many mothers I know cannot but understand to place the blame particularly with themselves, the Hebrews use the simple word nephel, "fallen."

No special term for it, and no fault beyond that which we all bear. Fallen like every last one of us.

It's OK to make arbitrary rules

Actually, they’re not even arbitrary, if they serve to defend your sanity. What makes them seem arbitrary is how different they are for each mother, each household. And what’s important is not to let misplaced guilt (fed by your children) con you into breaking them (and perhaps breaking you in the process).

Here’s what I’m talking about: I once heard a mom say that she absolutely will not, never, no never, not under any circumstances, allow Play-Doh in her house. All Play-Dohing must take place outside (this in a climate that renders outdoor Play-Dohing impossible for about half the year).

This might have surprised or perhaps even appalled me back before I had kids, or back when I had just one or two. But I found myself nodding in respect as she mentioned her household nonnegotiable. For you see, while Play-Doh is legal in our house, glitter is not. Glitter glue, glitter paint—yes, yes, fine. Bring them on. We love them. Loose glitter—never, no never, not under any circumstances.

Let it be anathema!

When I first instituted the no-glitter rule, I had these ridiculous feelings of guilt. Maybe my children would be forever warped because I didn’t let them do projects with glitter! Maybe glitter crafts serve a deep psychological need, and my stubborn refusal to allow glitter-play will top the long list of mother-failings they someday discuss with their shrink! I almost caved a few times, but I’ve stood firm for a couple years now, and I am so glad. And so much saner for it.

There’s only so much (and for most of us, it’s really not much) in life that a mother can truly control. Craft materials are one of them. So if you find yourself gnashing your teeth for weeks over the insidious trail of glitter spread throughout the entire house by just one little project—do something about it. And harbor no regrets.  

Play-Doh. Glitter. Innocuous enough in themselves, but enough to drive otherwise reasonable (if I may be so bold) mothers to the brink. I’m sure I’ve got other “arbitrary” rules, but I’ve gotten so much better about not feeling guilty about them that I can’t even think of any offhand. I’d love to hear, though, whether anyone else has found peace of mind by banishing from their children’s lives certain substances or activities that are generally considered to be the stuff of which happy childhoods are made. :D

Pipe dream

Forgive my organist obsession. Does any organist want to move here?

I have an idea. All the chicks who want to be pastors should become organists.

--It's harder. Seminary can be bluffed through to a large extent. Pastoral ministry including but not limited to the conduction of the Divine Service can be and is bluffed through all the time. An hour's worth of music at the ability level demanded by Lutheran liturgy and hymnody absolutely cannot be bluffed through. Instant respect!

--It's cheaper. I don't know how much organ lessons cost but I can't imagine coming out of them with an amount of debt comparable to four years at the seminary.

--It's more appreciated. Pastors can always find an elder to mumble through Matins and no one really cares. They're actually glad for the shorter service. But everyone notices and hates it when there's no accompaniment, even people who don't like singing*.

--It's an opportunity for leadership (ie inspiration, encouragement, and influence). Lots of pastors don't like choosing hymns every week and will let the organist take over the job. "The Church Sustainable" section of the hymnal will finally start getting used like it should.

--It's easier. No dealing with annoying people and their annoying problems all the time like pastors have to. Also no meetings except maybe with the pastor, which will be a great chance to throw zingers at him about how lousy his lousy non-women-ordaining denomination is.

And if it doesn't work out at church they can always play at ball games, since no one will let them pitch.

See?

*Of which there are many. Eliminating all the music is one of my big plans to make church more seeker friendly. Much shorter services, no awkward expectations of non-singers or people who don't like Ben Folds concerts, and no more getting stuck listening to a bunch of freaking soloists or church bands who think they're super awesome and that there's nothing we'd rather be doing than listening to them howl all morning.

Having it all

There is a way to have it all, even for "you can't have it all"ers. That way is to marry late. I can name without much thought a number of smart girls who, not having been given a husband early, found ways to keep themselves busy and solvent and in the process made good names for themselves in their lines of work. Many of them are able to keep up that work after marriage since they established themselves in it beforehand. I wonder if they know how many of us are sitting in our houses feeling really jealous.

If they did, I think a lot of them would come and give us a hard kick.  Many of them sat in their houses at the end of countless workdays knowing every bit of that jealousy. Although I didn't have to live with it long, spouse anxiety is not a good feeling. Everybody wants that question answered. I'm not even going to talk about loneliness; the mention suffices. Though I may envy the lady who now has the husband and kids AND the name recognition and credentials and therefore public respect and earning potential I never will, I would not sacrifice one hour with the husband God gave me for any of that. It is better for me to tend his hearth than to be known and successful in the market. Our length of days together has also meant a family so big we can barely fit ourselves and our picnic into the car.

I like the idea of having it all. But I like my husband, like, so much more (and picnics too). So let's not be jealous, because they're really nice girls and they've earned what they have now. That's how their lives went and this is how my life went and haven't we all wasted enough of our lives wanting things that aren't ours? How much worse is it to mope about something we don't have that we know we don't really want?

". . . and last of all, behold! the mustard pot, which he had been sitting on without knowing it . . . ."

Laetare. Mom's orders.

I, for all practical purposes, do not have a mother church. The church where I grew up is no longer a place where I can go on Easter to sing "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" with each verse rising a half-step to a thundering, golden finale of impossible height. It breaks my heart, for there is a sense in which there is no church like one's home church. I want that glorious Easter back. It's not just that I personally can't get there. It doesn't exist.

That's not good, but it has helped me understand the obvious fact that part of growing up is being able to leave Mom. I have to be able to love someone else's pie if I'm ever going to be happy eating pie again. Is my stubborn insistence that only my mom can make a good pie worth never enjoying ANY pie? Of course I will always love my own dear Mom's own dear pie, but she would be the first to tell me I was an idiot to mope every time someone else's dear mom put a piece of pie in front of me. The truth is, lots of moms are really good at making pie. Mom would also be completely disgusted with me if I didn't know it was beyond rude to mope if someone is kind enough to make a pie and give me a piece, even if it's not the world's best pie.

So as I approach another Laetare feeling a bit orphanish, I am glad that the place that was my mother church was not really my mother. I haven't even had my real mother's pie yet. One parish is not the Church. One building is not Jerusalem. One hymn is not the Song. One pastor is not the Shepherd. Each little Easter, wherever I happen to be for it, brings me closer in every way to the big one. God grant me the grace to receive what I am given, however modest, with thanks and rejoicing.