The Incredible Yard Sale

Hello dear readers,

If you want a peek into the sort of stuff I have in my 1910 house, go to this link on eBay:

http://k2b-bulk.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ListingConsole&currentPage=LCActive

Our eBay ID is : belladventures

I’ve been a seller on eBay since 1999! 

 

 

My Mother’s Day entry

People who know me and know my story, people who were my friends from a long time ago will know that I went through a lot of loss when I was twenty-five. I was held up by my family and safety net of friends and I somehow bumbled and muddled my wounded self along the timeline until my next chapter opened up.

Somewhere I got rerouted,and twirled like a top into a new life. I had not done anything remarkable, except be alive and hopeful and all the other things that are in my personality. But really, if I were the person on the bus talking to a friend about the poor thing I was, the listener would have shaken her head and said, “I really hope things turn out right for that girl.”

I was a mess. A tragic person. A poor sweet thing. But…..I had a core of resilience and a bit of faith to lean on.

So I leaned and  cried and laughed and listened and cooked a lot and danced a lot and went with friends, and was the third wheel and was the one who couldn’t be left alone at home, and all that. I couldn’t think, couldn’t plan beyond payday, couldn’t have an ambition. I was lost and grieving but holding it together. Time passed and my friends graduated and moved into their new lives. I learned how to be alone.

In 1984 I decided to move to Boston.  Partly for romantic reasons, partly because I had already lived in New York and Philadelphia, so a new East Coast city would be a change.  Things fell into place, I got the right job to alleviate the worry of my parents, and headed into the unknown with trash bags in a U-Haul and $300.00. Around the corner was an unexpected wedding and a baby.

Becoming a mother was my personal Annunciation. God spoke to me through circumstance.

Things fell into place.All the  trouble, sadness and loss receded, and I had this time of abundance. I had a miraculous time of peace and plenty and security in the upstairs apartment of a lovely home off of Brattle Street.  Our landlady was heaven-sent. She would invite me for tea every week with her two Irish housekeepers, and we would share a little time with a cup of tea and some sweet piece of bread and jam.

For a few months I looked out the window at the maple trees and slept. I listened to the birds and looked at the green out the windows. For the first time in my American life I didn’t have to work. What a happy relief that was. What a vacation. I loved it!

And when my husband came home from work he would cook me beautifully thought up creative meals and we would take walks while we could – through the splendor that is autumn in Cambridge.

Then winter came and the time to give birth lingered on the threshold of spring. Then we were that young couple in a frenzied hurry going to Brigham and Women’s.

There was a moment, when my little daughter was laid on my chest, that I looked up and saw my husband’s face, glasses fogged and weeping with joy.

But the thing I remember looking back are those moments of rare transcendence, of inner vision that I experienced during the quiet first years of parenthood.

Once, I was  walking the baby down the street and I passed an old Anglican convent. I’m not sure that it still is there. But I stood there in the afternoon light looking at the plaque of Mary and the Baby and was filled with exaltation. Thank you was not enough.

Then there was the time that the two little kids were watching Winnie the Pooh on television and at the end there was a shot of Christopher Robin sitting under a tree at sundown. That moment filled me with joy – huge buckets of joy were zinging around the room and filling the entire space.

Another time Mercy, talking and running bounced on the bed next to her brother JM and shouted, “I want us to have a whole pile of babies!!” And we started laughing, just us – in the bedroom with our small children.

We had a lot of children. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had them in an era when people didn’t have big families anymore, so the world was retrofitted for small families. Tables for four, cars for five, family passes for four, kids eat free for two under twelve.

There were hard times…flu epidemics that hit at once, lean times,  more impossible losses, but the thread that hummed the background music was always the children and all the love.

So I started with one life, and ended up in an entirely different life. A little bit of faith and a little bit of hope can be life changing.  Happy Mother’s Day. I wish everyone all the chocolate, Kindles, and flowers they want.

On Mother’s Day, I will be sitting next to my husband at the university watching our fourth child graduate.

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone, for we all came from mothers. And Happy Mother’s Day to my mother, who survived World War II as a child and who is one of my closest friends in my life. God Bless us all and the fathers who made us mothers too. And all the mothers who nurtured us along the way, the teachers, the friends, the nice librarians, sisters, cousins, all the helping hands that we grab on to during life. Mother’s Day is the celebration of the feminine ability to nurture and protect. We all need our mamas – however they appear.

Eventide

Tonight we took a walk down Maple Street after dinner. The sky was clear, the first stars out, and the sky was that deep purple blue made famous by Maxfield Parrish. We walked past all the homes, lit from within, past gas lamps and flowers that have been a part of our walk all these years.

Last week we were at our son’s confirmation at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Fall River. The bombing at the Boston Marathon shattered a Monday. When the final firefight and capture occurred on Friday night, our hometown and our children’s university, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, were both in the mayhem.

The university with all its memories of graduations and accomplishments, all the friends who have come to our home, all the wonderful stuff of life is now forever associated with Suspect #2.

Talking to people in our world we find strings to the slain policeman, my friend whose husband works at MIT knew him. The Suspect played soccer with kids who have come to our home. He played soccer with the check out guy at our supermarket. Another friend’s son knew him.

Everyone we know has a story that connects them to the tragedy. Our neighbor left the finish line twelve minutes before the first bomb went off. Another friend taught at the school where little Martin went.

For me, Boston is the place where my best new life began. I had my first baby at Brigham and Women’s, we lived in a sweet Cambridge apartment, and I lived an enchanted existence where books and learning and ideas were the stuff of everyday life.

I fell in love with New England long ago, through the books of Louisa May Alcott and the architecture of the city I loved most of all, Baguio in the Philippines. The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, particularly the essay on Self-Reliance were favorites of my father.

So today, after sleeping until noon, I wondered what the surprise of the day would be. We did all sorts of Sunday afternoon things, we took the dog for a walk, went to buy something to repair the screen door, all ordinary things that seemed precious because of their ordinariness.

At mass tonight, the priest spoke beautifully. The Prayers of the Faithful covered our community and particularly the university. I suddenly felt that everything is suddenly local. We are now in a world where we are all connected. A bad thing that happens, happens to all of us. We cannot afford cruelty.

Then I thought about how brave the people of Boston were this week. They were the embodiment of all that is good in New England -they are sensible, practical, and generous. I felt very grateful to call this region my home, the land of my children’s ancestors, a good place to be from. Then I thought how vulnerable we are.

After communion the teenage choir with their guitars, bass and drums surprised me. They sang “Abide With Me”  so beautifully. A girl’s voice, so pure and sweet carried the tune. I went on YouTube and grabbed a link to the song so you can see the lyrics.

Requiem

Today the world changed again and this beautiful city will never be the same. Yesterday I searched  for an image of Our Lady of Sorrows. It was one of those chases in the internet where the image kept coming into my mind. I kept scrolling through them and then abandoned the search.

This is the image I was looking for. It is at the Boston Public Library upstairs in the gallery.  Today, the Madonna of Sorrows is Our Lady of Boston.

It will be a while before things feel normal again. God bless everyone who was hurt today. God bless all of us in this broken world.

 

Really, a lovely day.

Stained glass windows and the

faith of my Filipino grandparents crossing the miles,

saved by Our Lady on a remote mountain passage

with the appearance of fireflies that lit their way on

a desperate rainy night back during World War 2.

Their lives were saved and the family went on.

So my mother met my father and he converted thanks to

an American Jesuit from China, and they had us,

I moved away and met my husband who

was an agnostic but was seeking truth.

All so long, long ago.

Six children, five confirmed now

the Holy Spirit moves across oceans and time

and in that cathedral in Fall River

filled with the families and friends of confirmands.

My son, almost 18, a fireman, a tall girl in a short skirt, a short girl in a long skirt,

young men,  all heights, everyone in their Sunday best.

A family of gypsies with earrings and beads in their hair,

a tall blonde family, a family speaking Portuguese, a family speaking Spanish,

and a priest whose face was half covered with a purple birthmark.

He proclaimed the gospel, and his voice was so beautiful it filled the

cathedral, and I wondered how he managed the hard years.

The bishop leaned on a shepherd’s hook and preached saying

Faith changes everything

and he announced each name

Francis of Assisi he said

and I felt that joy zing around

the cathedral

and the stained glass windows poured gold,

onto us and the song leader

sang like a nightingale and we sang a song I last sang

in the shadow of an old volcano in the Philippines,

back when mass was in Latin.

the bank of candles looked like fireflies

At the moment of confirmation my daughter

in Nashville at a song contest said, “I’m going on now.”

And my daughter in Berlin said, “I love you all.”

and so there we were, all together

bound by gossamer lights, candlelight, sunlight, and

the lights from their words coming from far away.

And then the mass went on.