Thoughts on Marriage (a lighthearted post)

A few of our confirmation kids' responses to "What do you want in a spouse?"

"Wants to have kids."

"Will be faithful."

"Appreciates humor."

"You better be funny." (Yes, this kid wrote in imperatives.)

"Shorter than me." (I believe this one was written by a guy. I hope.)

"Smells good."

"Catholic" (Surprisingly, we only got two of these in the stack of 100 cards we got back.)

"Attractive."

"Attracted." (??)

"Someone who can listen to my problems."

"Don't even think about cheating on me." (Imperative boy again. Ha!)

"Loving."

"Understanding and patient."

"Honest."

"Is intelligent."

"Flexible with her time."

"You better be able to cook."

"Understand sports." (HA!)

"Accent, preferably Spanish."

"Not a vegetarian/vegan."

"Need to have soul." (the girls didn't understand this one)

"Strong." (a trait more than one girl wanted in her spouse, but all of the guys thought was unreasonable)

"VERY attractive."

"Determined and ambitious."

"Dark hair."

"Great set of hair."

"Someone who shuts the bathroom door." (I think this one is my favorite...)

"Appreciates Jesus."

"Able to clean."

"Not obese."

"Silly."

"Nice eyes."

"Caring or sweet (does, like, cute little things)" (Awwww, how cute)

"Optimistic."

We had the guys mark the girl's cards as either reasonable or unreasonable, and had the girls do the same to the guys cards. It was a great way to facilitate discussion and start some thought on the subject.

It also made class very lighthearted and fun. :)

#crackingmyselfup

Blog Your Heart | February

[I copied and pasted the rules from Stephanie's blog
Here are the rules, in case you are new:
1. blog whatever is authentic. whatever is truly on your mind and in your heart.
2. it can be serious, silly, short, long. note:no one said it has to be serious. but it should be authentic.
3. no judging allowed no snarky comments, no making fun, no passive agressive digs. nothing here is whining. it's me honestly sharing my feelings. if you feel that it's whining, then you don't have to read. :)
Now you know. :)]

1. I was just thinking yesterday that it's been months since the last one of these. I thought I might adventure into it on my own... but I found I was too scared. I gather a lot of strength from the people around me and sometimes have a hard time doing things without their (direct or indirect) approval. Something I need to work on for Lent (convenient that it starts in five days). When Stephanie posted hers this morning, I felt like it was my permission to share what is on my heart and mind. Silly? Probably. True? Definitely.

2. The last one kinda leads into this one - I have a lot to work on for Lent. We were talking about it last night at Bible study and one of my friends playfully quipped, "Oh, Bridget, I'll make you a list of what you need to work on letting go. And you won't have time for Bible study." hehe. So true. I need to 1) set aside chunks of time in my day to pray, 2) learn to trust (I've gotten better with the trusting God part, but still have miles to go with the trusting people part), 3) learning to live&act without other people's approval. I could go on, but I don't want to bore you :)

3. I want another dog. There's a big, black, super sweet greyhound that I want to adopt. I want to name him Maximus to go with our Augusta. How cute would that be?

4. Scrapbooking is expensive. Gee willikers. I only shop sale/clearance items, but still. I need to scrap more slowly so I go through my stuff less quickly.

5. I love teaching. I have recently discovered this by teaching confirmation classes at our parish. I love preparing for the classes, presenting&discussing the material with the kids... I just love it. I don't have terribly good classroom control, though. Thank goodness my sister co-teaches with me because she doesn't put up with any nonsense.

6. I was going to do a 10K walk with my sis and my good friend, but I can barely walk a mile without collapsing, so no such luck for me. I'm bummed. I'll go cheer them on and meet them from brunch after, though. :)

7. I have a way overdeveloped sense of paranoia. I was in the midst of explaining this to a couple of friends last night (my fear of getting kidnapped/raped/killed is kinda excessive) and they were trying to calm me down when I got a phone call from my mother letting me know that they had found a car that was associated with the rogue former-LAPD-officer at the sheriff's station in town so they were all out looking for him. Helicopters, squad cars, etc. Freaked me out to a point of near hysteria. I am kinda ridiculous.

8. I am a much happier person since the last time I did one of these. All of the medication they put me on has made me a totally different person. Well, not different from how I was before junior year at TAC, but different from the totally panicked, overwrought, nervous person I was just a few months ago.

I hope you all have a blessed weekend!

An Open Letter to Single & Catholic Men

Dear Men,

Valentine's Day is a week from tomorrow. If you're a Catholic, you could start a novena today and have it end on that day. Maybe your dream girl, who is beautiful, super devout, and a fabulous cook will magically appear, in answer to your prayers, on the 14th.

My advice? Get up off your knees, get your nose out of the "How to Find the Perfect Wife" book, and ASK A GIRL OUT FOR COFFEE.

Because in the real world, people don't materialize out of thin air. Even less likely is that a PERFECT WOMAN will materialize out of thin air. Or show up anywhere.

Because (NEWS FLASH HERE!): people ARE NOT PERFECT.

I know, I know. I could write a letter to women which says more or less the same thing. There is an infuriating tendency in the Catholic world for women to "wait for their Joseph." Guess what, ladies? St. Joseph was a one-of-a-kind guy who was chosen to be the foster father of God. Stop looking for yours. But this letter isn't for the women. This one is for you, men.

This is a bit of a hot-button issue for me. Maybe you'll chalk it up to the fact that I'm single and bitter against the world of men who aren't interested in me. That's your prerogative. The real motivation for this letter is that I am concerned for 1) the happiness of you, men, 2) the happiness of my girlfriends, and 3) the propagation of the species.

This is how I see it: there are so many 25-30 year old Catholic men around here who say they are interested in getting married and raising a family. They are surrounded by beautiful, kind, sweet, talented, Catholic young women who are eager to find and marry a man and raise a family with him.

But if you look around, NO ONE IS DATING ANYONE.

WHAT??? Me no understand these things. 

So guys, if you REALLY want to get married and have kids, ask some girls out. Throw caution to the wind and risk getting hurt or rejected. Girls can be mean, yes. But how will you ever find the nice one without sifting through some mean ones? Have a little courage and pluck. You're supposed to be men.

BUT, if you don't want to get married and have kids (at least not right now) STOP SAYING THAT YOU DO. Stop lying to the women in your life.

You.Have.To.Make.Up.Your.Mind. No flip-flopping, wish-washy, maybe yes, maybe no sort of thing.

Also important: stop looking for your version of the Blessed Mother. As unreasonable as it is for women to be looking for their St. Joseph, it is absolutely stupid (sorry, calling it as I see it) to wait around for a woman without sin. I mean, really. C'mon, dudes.

I know the whole perfect-love, theology-of-the-body, completely-selfless love is kinda intimidating. But NO ONE EXPECTS THAT ON A FIRST DATE. What a girl expects on a first date is to enjoy a cup of coffee or lunch, with you picking up the tab.

Let yourself be human. And if you try to be an upstanding, kind, manly, not-creepy person, God will take care of the whole grace-which-elevates-you-above-human-nature part. That's His job, remember? Not yours.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Love you all,
Bridget

The Flu

How is it that every time I get sick, I get unbelievably, horribly sick? Oh, I know. It's because I'm stubborn.

This may not make sense to some of you, but it works like this.

I get sick. I feel horrible for a couple of days, but around day three or four, I start feeling better. I promptly get up and do everything like normal. By about dinner time, I crash, sicker than ever. I resolve to not do that the next day.

But I do this over and over again. I feel pretty good in the morning, run around like a crazy person (my usual m.o.) and then feel like I'm going to die.

It's like an internal tug-o-war. The smarter side of me sees the stupidity of expending my energy when I am not yet fully recovered. The other, less smart, really stubborn side of me, ignores the smarter side of me and expends energy willy-nilly.

Thus it is that I have had the flu for a week now. Yuck.

Dear Grandma

(the Eulogy I gave at Grandma's funeral on Saturday)

Dear Grandma,

Out of the many people who came here today, only five of us can claim you as our grandmother. This is particularly striking because I realized something recently: you were a very different grandmother than you were wife, mother, cousin, or aunt. Not that you were bad at any of those things. On the contrary, you were always careful to do whatever it was you were doing with a degree of precision that baffles me to this day. You'll be happy to know, though, that some of that precision hasn't been lost on me. I found myself lining up the eggs in the grout this morning, carefully positioning them so that all of the pointy sides faced the same way. Your spirit still pervades your home, I guess.

Although, if the stories are true, I think you may have surprised yourself in the grandparent role. When my mother found out she was pregnant with my older sister, enthusiasm was not the sentiment you expressed. Rumor has it that you were rather incredulous that my mother had the audacity to want to get pregnant. In the nine months that followed, you showed very little excitement at the prospect of being a grandmother.

Once my sister showed up, however, different emotions got the better of you. Upon seeing Andrea, you told Mum, "I have such a special feeling in my heart." Your soft side, which you kept under such tight wraps, finally had an unconditional victory. One would never have guessed your initial resistance to the idea of grandchildren by the consistent way in which you spoiled us.

If I were to recount every way in which you spoiled us, I would be here all day. I know that's cliche, but it's true: there were so many little ways in which you made our lives absolutely fantastic. And even though I can't really speak for Clara and Benjamin, since they belong to almost another generation of grandchildren, I'd like to recount just a few of the things that will always stick with me and my siblings as being "Grandma-isms."

Number 1: You gave us the run of your house

To children whose first home was barely bigger than 1000 square feet and whose backyard was a prosaic, flat, moderately sized square of grass, the house that Grandpa built was a castle. And we were allowed to go wherever we wanted. We ran up and down those stairs to the garage, rolled down the hill in the backyard, played with the intercom, went through your closets, tried on your jewelry, and ate all of your food. We never.... well, almost never... got in trouble. For someone so famously organized and structured in your daily routines, you sure let us run wild.

Number 2: We were always eating.

Many people know this fact about you. You loved to feed people. But your grandids never stopped eating from the minute we arrived at your home to the minute we left. Most of the time, we were still eating some snack you had packed us on the car ride home. Cans of apple juice and those crunchy, skinny breadstick things, which you kept in the weird shaped corner cabinet by the sink, will always hold a special place in my heart.

Number 3: The Roast Beef Argument

This was a tradition that you and Grandpa kept up every time we ate roast beef. Grandpa would want to take it off the grill, but you would tell him to leave it on to cook more. You would go back and forth and back and forth. Scott and I would imitate the two of you later - Scott taking Grandpa's role and I would take yours - and we would laugh at the consistency of the exchange between the two of you. This roast beef argument was an iconic staple of our childhood. No visit was complete without it.

Number 4: Birthdays

You never forgot a birthday or a holiday. For many years, the three of us each had three birthdays. You got each of us a present for every one of our birthdays so that none of us would feel excluded. While that tradition eventually died out, another one continued through your last cards: writing our age in the birthday card. You didn't just note the numerical value, however. You put it in quotation marks. I have no idea why and as a student of philosophy, it's my job to ask why and to find logical, reasonable answers. But I give up. That's one question I hope to have the answer to someday, but in the meantime, Mum has promised that when her own children get married and have children of their own, she will continue the quotation mark around the age tradition. So I hope you have a good reason. I'll be asking you about it later.

Number 5: You never let us wallow in self-pity

This one seems a particularly fitting lesson for today. At various points in our lives, things that we viewed as tragic or horrible happened to us. And while you were more empathetic toward us than you were toward you own children, you still never let us get carried away. For example, when I smashed my front tooth out on your front walkway on Mothers' Day when I was four or five years old, you scooped me up, brought me inside, wrapped me up in a sleeping bag, let me cry for a few minutes, but then brought out your hand-held mirror and let me examine the newly-exposed gum. You didn't make a big deal out of it. You didn't tell me that you knew how much it must hurt or that you were sorry that it had happened to me. You just dealt with it in a very matter-of-face sort of way. Like you dealt with everything. Then you asked if I was hungry.

As any good Italian, I could go on talking. But as any granddaughter of yours should be aware, the people in this congregation are hungry. And hungry people must be fed. And I would hate to disappoint you now. 

I love you, Grandma. So, so, so much. I hope you and Grandpa behave up there.

And Grandma... don't give Jesus too hard of a time about how He runs things. He is God, after all. And although He's no Marilyn Argenti, He usually does know best. 

A Funeral as a Musical

My dear grandmother passed away on Saturday.

Everyone has their own way of grieving. For one member of my family, that's giving a funeral that resembles a theatrical production.

For me, it's finding the funny side of other people's grieving processes.

My grandmother asked for a memorial Mass instead of a funeral. She was very stressed and overwrought by my grandfather's funeral a few years ago and she didn't want to make us go through all of that again. Apparently, some of my family doesn't know the difference between a memorial Mass and a funeral, because there doesn't seem to be any difference in the production process. There will be a rosary & viewing the night before, the casket will be in the church for the Mass, and the burial will be a couple of days later.

Yesterday, after discussing some logistics with the extended family, I started giving a narrative of the Memorial Mass for my mother, as if it were actually a theatrical production. The similarities are striking. For those not familiar with Catholic Masses, I've put the corresponding parts of the Mass in parenthesis.

1. Overture to set the tone for the upcoming play. (Prelude music)
2. The main chorus stands to sing a rousing opening number. (Entrance hymn)
3. A soliloquy, inspired by God, written by one of His humble servants, and recited by one of the principal characters of the story. (1st reading)
4. A duet, sung by two of the principal characters, inspired by God, written by an ancient musician, and interpreted by a musician from the 1970s (psalm)
5. Another soliloquy of a similar nature to the first, but less old. Recited by a different principlal character. (2nd reading)
6. All stand as the main chorus sings the alleluia.
7. A message from our sponsor, Jesus. (the Gospel)
8. Another soliloquy, based on a true story, written by a principal character. The purpose of this is three-fold: catharsis, remembrance, and to aid us in our own lives. Sometimes, but not always, tied to the message from our sponsor. (the homily)
9. Mother-daughter duet, symbolizing the relationship that was severed by death. After the cathartic soliloquy, this will likely produce tears in the main chorus. (offeratory hymn)
10.  The main action of the play (the Consecration)
11. The diva-past-her-prime will stand and sing as other principal characters are occupied by the main action of the play (Communion hymns)
12. A series of musical and poetic numbers that pay tribute to the deceased.
13. The main chorus stands again to sing a final rousing number that gives hope to all present. (Recessional hymn)