Category: From the Vault

The Mom Weekly Volume 65: November 5, 2024

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the website here.

Notes: 

Later this week marks the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. An article I had run across earlier this year prompted me to look up what I had written, however small, about the Berlin Wall.

Please, if you do nothing else, read the account below in “interesting/notable” of the speechwriter who wrote the line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” It’s incredibly moving. 

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

Naming a blog (From the Vault, 2006)

I’m not sure if I am the only one who took a month or more before starting a blog because of ….naming issues. I went through a lot of choices, nearly chose one, and then this popped into my head and I said, “Finally, a name!” Now if the blog can only live up to it…

I chose my blog name from the title of the Rich Mullins song, “Let Mercy Lead“.

(2024 note: Here is a live version of Let Mercy Lead uploaded last year about Aiden Strasser, the baby in the original song, donating part of his liver to his sister).

Here is the chorus.

Let mercy lead

Let love be the strength in your legs

And in every footprint that you leave

There’ll be a drop of grace

If we can reach

Beyond the wisdom of this age

Into the foolishness of God

That foolishness will save

Those who believe

Although their foolish hearts may break

They will find peace

And I’ll meet you in that place

Where mercy leads

The first runner-up was “(What’s so Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”, from the title of the Elvis Costello song. There is another song that has run through my head for many years. 

One of my fun dreams is to open a restaurant or coffee bar, and one of the specific details about my place is to paint this song title along the walls. 

I was really into Elvis Costello my junior year abroad in England. I remember watching a documentary on British TV about youth in Berlin (this was 5 or 6 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall), and the documentary captured the sense of living in a war zone, a sense of hopelessness most felt about their future. 

The presenter said, you know, for us, (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” is just a pop song, (with the Elvis Costello tune playing in the background) but for them (Berlin youth), it is really an anthem. They don’t sing it in an ironic way, he said.

I remember thinking, I don’t either! I was and am very earnest about what I thought was the meaning of the song. What I really know now is I am earnest about the title of the song.

In any case, now as a bit more of a grown-up, I had nearly decided upon this title for my blog, when I happened upon Elvis Costello tonight on “Austin City Limits.” A sign, I thought!

It was great to hear a lot of the old songs I loved, and still love. He has such a way with words. So I searched the internet for the lyrics to the song, (and nearly chose another of my favorites, “Everyday I Write the Book,” one of my all-time favorite Costello songs). But as I read the lyrics, I realized that it really isn’t a very hopeful song. I laugh as I write this because one wouldn’t ever put “Elvis Costello” in the “hope-filled artist” category.

So even though I still enjoy those Elvis Costello songs, and a lot of other music, the entire song”(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” (as opposed to the title) no longer dovetails so nicely with my view of the universe, and “Let Mercy Lead” does. I guess I’ve started this blog to help explain why.

Interesting/Notable:

How Top Advisers Opposed Reagan’s Challenge to Gorbachev—But Lost

This is a FASCINATING, FASCINATING read. I got emotional just reading it, and remembering so vividly being a 20something watching the live coverage of the Wall coming down and people throughout Berlin celebrating their freedoms.

Here’s another related article with a great quote from William F. Buckley. I’ll share the quote here:

“But they have been the aggressors,” Buckley went on, referring to the Soviets. “It is written into their charter that they are the aggressors. To say that we and the Soviet Union are to be compared is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes the old lady into the way of an oncoming bus, and the man who pushes the old lady out of the way of an oncoming bus, are both people who push old ladies around.”

An Action Item: Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

This line from Psalm 122 keeps coming up to me when I think about the conflict in our world and all of the discord. Obviously, pray for the peace of Jerusalem means exactly that (as I wrote about last year) https://themomweekly.com/pray-for-the-peace-of-jerusalem/: praying for peace in the Holy Land. But it also means praying for peace in our homes, our country, our world.

So take a moment to pray Psalm 122. Here’s the image I made of it last year, for you to refer to.

What are you doing this weekend?

So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:

*faith—when are you going to Mass?

*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?

*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?

*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).

The Mom Weekly Volume 63: October 22, 2024

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the website here.

Notes:

Since it is close to my birthday, and I am beyond the age my Mom was when she made her “60-year-old” comment to me referenced below, I thought I would share this reflection from nearly 20 years ago me. I have had a lot to say!

I love birthdays so much! 

And, of course, remember how much I love you,

Mom

The 80-Year-Old 43 Year Old (From the Vault, 2007)

Several weeks ago, I was at a gathering of moms. I made a comment about “being older” in some context which escapes me now. We all laughed about whatever the comment was, but then one friend said, laughingly, something along the lines of, “When you make a comment like that, I always think about it like you think you are some 80-year-old lady.”

It was a funny aside, but it gave me pause. I have noticed myself that I tend to make these “I am getting older” comments and I my younger friends are a little perplexed, or they think I am giving up. I’ve been reflecting on this lately and wondering why I do this.

When my mother was 60 years old, I was 25. I remember her saying, “I’m old,” and it seemed to me at the time as a kind of giving up or a hopeless statement.

And I said, “Mom, you are NOT old. You are 60—that’s middle-aged!” She replied, “60 is not middle-aged. Nancy, how many 120-year-olds do you know?” That set me back a little, but I still argued with her and talked about how active she was, how much she did, how much of her life was left to live well. She agreed with all of that, but persisted in saying that it was “real” that she was old.

Now I think I understand a little of what she meant by the statement. It’s just an acceptance of a reality; a meditation in a way about the end of human life. What one does with this reality is the important thing.

I am officially middle-aged now. I don’t really see it as a crisis or a tragedy—oh, no, no more miniskirts! (never me anyway), but as a reality that can be frustrating, funny, and frightening, all at the same moment. 

Having a preschooler when one is over 40 and very (though happily) gray-haired in a small community where more people have grandchildren than children at this age sometimes makes me feel a bit odd. Sir and I laugh about it, but we tire of having to say, “No, they are my children, not my grandchildren.”

It is kind of funny to admit my wounded pride there. Do I really look or act that old, I think? I don’t feel that I do; I stay active and love having little kids; I know I am a much better parent at this age than I would have been as a younger me (though children earlier would have been good for me in so many ways!)

There is a sense in which these comments of mine, even internal comments, are my mid-life crisis—really coming to terms with and meditating on what it means to grow older, and yes, to die. I am so much more aware of it than I was in my 20s and 30s. The physical signs are only a little bit of what I’m feeling. While it is true that I don’t bounce back from injuries or late nights or overeating as I did in my “younger days,” I would say I am in better shape now than many times during my life, and I am much more careful about taking care of myself.

But at the same time, I feel a growing sense of urgency to accomplish goals before… I don’t know; it’s not exactly getting old, or dying…. Even though I know that decline is decades in the future, decades is not so long anymore.

It is so easy to keep putting things off and putting things off until it really is too late. Time is just moving too quickly for me these days.

Also, I am much more sensitive in a number of ways to mortality, and old age, and weakness. It is not just my own, far away as that may be (or as close as it may be; the fragility of life is painfully close sometimes). Emotionally, I am much more aware. Funerals affect me much more deeply than in the past; I feel more a sense of being closer to the person dying than I ever have in the past. I feel this partially because my mother is somewhere along the path to death. The idea of losing my mom, either of my parents, is just overwhelming at times. I know intellectually this is the normal scope of things, but it still feels scary.

Ralph McInerny, one of my heroes and author of the excellent memoir I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You, talks about it as “standing on the precipice separating time and eternity” when the people he most admires begin to die.

He says it much more eloquently, but I would describe it is as a fundamental vulnerability—there is no more layer of protection between me and the wide world. That sounds strange; I have been independent of my parents for many years in so many ways, and I act very grown-up, but actually being that grown-up person…wow.

And yet I can remind myself that we are all surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses” in the communion of saints. There is a layer there; we are all connected. Perhaps this is God’s way of helping me understand some of these theological concepts in a real way.

So I tend to comment on my age a bit lately, and I will continue to comment on my age. For me, it is not an excuse, or a complaint, or a giving up. It is a continuing meditation about what it means to grow older, to have life and have it abundantly, at the same time to always keep in mind the last things.

It is not because I feel like an 80-year-old, I promise you, even if I do complain about the aches and pains and grandmother comments. I am just standing on the precipice of time and eternity, trying to embrace the view.

Interesting/Notable: 

This TMW is scheduled to go out on the feast day of St. John Paul the Great. I will definitely eat some sweets in celebration of this feast, since he had a big sweet tooth.

This is my absolutely favorite video related to JPII:

Travel can slow the aging process, study finds (gift link)

An action item: Consider going to confession

As you know, one of my favorite things to do around my birthday is to go to confession. I’m just going to reprint what I wrote last year on my birthday TMW. (and, by the way, I was able to get to confession last week when I was in Cleveland for JASNA!): 

Are you getting some sunshine every day? I really hope so. I’ve been trying to make an effort to do so, especially early in the day. 

Because it’s my birthday, most of you will remember what I always ask: go to confession.

My friend Susan used to joke with me about it, because admittedly it is a little odd tradition. She would say, “Hey, great, we’re going to confession for your birthday!” But I really love confession, especially after confession! (Kind of like a good workout).

If you can’t get to confession, try to find a time in the next few weeks to do so. What you can do today—since all of you live within walking distance of a Catholic Church — is go make a visit to Jesus and say hi! He loves you way more than I do.

What are you doing this weekend?

So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:

*faith—when are you going to Mass?

*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?

*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?

*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).

The Mom Weekly Volume 61: October 8, 2024

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the website here.

Notes

I found this golden “from the vault” awhile back, and when I was queuing up the birthday one from last week, I found it again, and it actually made me tear up more than a little bit. I had not remembered this at all (unlike the French-fry stealing anecdote, which is family lore). But what a terrific, and completely ON BRAND exchange between myself and one of my children.

We can consider it an extra birthday treat for the birthday girl, and her Mommy.

I also had no memory of reading the book I reference here, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys . I’ve requested it again from the library, and I will let you know if it holds up.

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

From the Department of… (October 2007)

. . . giving your children space and safety to express their emotions.

I don’t think I have a problem with this, which is a relief because I sometimes feel such a failure in so many areas of the relationship/parenting thing. This happened several weeks ago but I have not had the chance to write it down.

I have been reading Raising Cain, and am particularly struck by the notion of letting boys (and girls!) have an internal life, and helping them to recognize and identify their own feelings.

For the last several weeks, Homegirl has been very, very interested in (that would be obsessed) with rhyming words. She blurted out as she was climbing into bed last night, “cold, fold, mold,” to which I replied, “sold, bold, old.” (Note to self—take the opportunity to teach writing poetry and writing rhyming couplets).

The wrinkle here is she believes words only rhyme when they are spelled the same at the end. For instance, rhyme and time would not rhyme, in her theory. She’ll get into big arguments with Mom about this, and I confess I have not handled them all with the grace and patience needed.

When it started, I was trying in my-not-most -patient way, to explain to her SYNONYMS — that words can be spelled differently and sound exactly alike, (sale, sail, wail, whale), thus proving that rhyming words need not be spelled alike.

That day, I happened to be writing our weekly schedule of events on the dry erase board in the kitchen. As I finished, I wrote down some of these words on the board so she could see, in FACT, that these words SOUND alike, but are not SPELLED alike. This was the tenor of my voice, too (i.e., ALL CAPS RAISED VOICE).

I think I wrote down a few words, and also of words that rhyme but are not spelled similarly. (doll, wall). In her tenacious way, she was having none of it and I left the area to put some things in the dishwasher and just get some space because it was so exasperating.

She wrote carefully on the dry erase board, “Mom, I hate you sometimes.” I saw it and left it there, not commenting. What was there to say? We talked about other things; I think I helped her get a snack. After awhile, she erased the message and kissed me, saying, “I love you, Mom,” and skipped off to the next thing. I love you, too, dear one, more than you can know.

Interesting/Notable

This book changed my love life–Ali Abdaal

I really enjoyed watching this video! It’s all about having realistic ideas in relationships, and thoughts on the beginning stages of dating. I have not read the book he references, and it is not available from the library. I noticed he did this video back in 2021, and he was married earlier this year. Coincidence? 🙂

Masters of Love (The Atlantic)

This is a 10-year-old article that popped up on my Atlantic app. It holds up! Read it to understand the action item below.

An Action Item: Look for (and respond to!) “Bids” for Attention from Loved Ones

If you read The Atlantic article above, you’ll see that the Gottmans promote the idea of responding to “bids for attention.” Here’s a quote from the article

“Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: He’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.
The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

“People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t—those who turned away—would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.”

So, your action item is to respond—positively, naturally!—to bids for attention from loved ones in your life. For instance, your Mom might text you, and you could text her back! LOL.

What are you doing this weekend?

So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:

*faith—when are you going to Mass?

*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?

*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?

*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).

The Mom Weekly Volume 60: October 1, 2024

Birthday From the Vault: Happy Golden Birthday, Homegirl! (October 2006)

Notes:

I cannot believe how much this “from the vault” post describes our very own Homegirl today, and how true to her personality and character it still is, as a young adult.

I honestly feel like I could have written all of the below for this birthday. A love of puzzles? Check. A love of reading? Check. Good at boundaries? Check, check, check.

In case you have forgotten, “God grant her many years” is a saying that Eastern Catholics will say on someone’s birthday.

Remember, on your birthday, and every day, how much I love you,

Mom

Happy Golden Birthday Homegirl! (From the Vault, October 2006)

You are turning six years old today on October 6. Another family we know celebrates golden birthdays, when you turn the age of your date, so we are adopting this tradition. It is an extra special birthday, and I am all for that as I love birthdays (and I’m just sorry that I missed my golden birthday 19 years ago….)

You are sweet and dear and I love you. You enjoy doing puzzles (thus this photo).

You love being read to (we are currently listening to Dr. Doolittle on audiobook, and nighttime reading are the Kit books). Now that you are learning to read, you love reading everything when we are out and about. This can be a bit maddening as Mommy is trying to rush through a store and you are sounding out, “press button to open.”

One of your great qualities is that you are not at all a pushover. Mommy likes to be the “french fry stealer” because she hardly ever orders them for herself, but loves just a few when we get fast food. One day Mom took a few from yours. You looked at me with big eyes and shook your head and said, “No more” And I didn’t take any more! 

I hope you always keep this quality. Boundaries are really important, and if you can learn them with french fry-stealing moms now, you’ll be great when it comes to pushy friends or pushy bosses.

God grant her many years, God grant her many years, God grant her many blessed years.

Interesting/Notable:

A Good Use Case for AI—Other Feminisms

I find Leah Libresco such a thoughtful writer. And so to see her making the “case” for AI, let’s just say I was intrigued. Worth the read!

Leah mentioned this article about a woman creating an app just for her nuclear family, and I thought it was very interesting. Not necessarily repeatable?

An Action Item: Bake Something Fun

To me, a birthday is a great reason to bake a cake, or frosted brownies, or some other treat. Consider doing that, or at least getting a fun treat at a local bakery!

What are you doing this weekend?

So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:

*faith—when are you going to Mass?

*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?

*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?

*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).

The Mom Weekly Volume 53: August 13, 2024

Note:

I love “From the Vault” so much. I wonder if you kids remember any of these happenings. I don’t think I would if I hadn’t written them down at the time!

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

From the Vault: The Epic of Gilgamesh (May 2007)

A month or so ago, we had a taste of The Epic of Gilgamesh in our history book, The Story of the World, by Susan Wise Bauer. This is an excellent series and I’m so glad we can use it as the “spine” of our study of history.

The accompanying activity guide has not just lots of fun hands-on activities and worksheets, many of which we do in our once-a-month co-op, but also lists for each chapter of well-selected extra literature selections.

Many are picture books, but they are so well-done all ages would enjoy them. I usually send a huge email about once a month to Glenda, our terrific interlibrary loan lady, an email filled with these books for about 3-4 chapters at at time, and we have a great time going through them when they come in from the library. Usually Homegirl runs off with six or seven of them, and I will read one or two to the others. Then we have lots of interesting reads for the upcoming days.

One particularly compelling trilogy of books we are reading (from interlibrary loan, though I might decide to invest in them) is by Ludmila Zeman. The first is Gilgamesh the King, the second; The Revenge of Ishtar, and the third The Last Quest of Gilgamesh.

Her illustrations are compelling; fierce and beautiful at the same time. She also wrote the words and her way with words is wonderful.

The Epic of Gilgamesh dates from about 2700 B.C., thousands of years before Christ. It tells the story of the Gilgamesh, a wicked but powerful king who learns about friendship and self-giving love by meeting his match in the equally strong but kind Enkidu. The themes of love, death, immortality and other “kid-friendly” themes (ha!) are part of all these books, and the children and I just loved them, and loved discussing them.

Now, I am the kind of reader who reads straight. I tend not to ask kids questions while I read. I will pause at certain times, explain occasionally, but really want to read the story itself. I always answer questions, but I tend to be pretty no-nonsense in my reading style. Sir could not be more different–I will suggest a short, short book to read to children late at night when I just want a quick read and off to sleep, and he will draw it out for hours (ok., I’m exaggerating). But I do kind of admire how much he can draw out of the simplest text.

This trilogy made it very easy for me to pause and discuss. The illustrations are so detailed we had to stop for awhile at each page. Every page brought up “big questions”. The last page in The Revenge of Ishtar reads,

“As Enkidu and Shamat flew into the night,

King Gilgamesh went out alone onto the river.

‘Death is the worst monster in the world,’

he thought. It has taken Enkidu from me.

Someday it will take me from my people.

I must find a way to destroy it.

I must seek out the secret of immortality.’

‘That will be my last quest.’ “

On this page, little 3-year-old Max began spontaneously a discussion about how Jesus killed death (his major theme at the moment), and the girls had to point out that Gilgamesh lived (or was written, as I told them, because it is a story and not history) thousands of years before Jesus. So we talked about how all people throughout time have talked about and wondered about all these things–life, death, love, and what to think about them. We talked about how grateful we are to have the fullness of faith and truth Jesus brings us, but people have always sought answers to these questions and sought the good and the meaning of everything. I wish I could have had a tape recorder going because I was floored by how insightful these three children, all under 10, could discuss these “big things.”

I don’t think it was necessarily how smart they are (though of course they are all above average :-)), but just a good book inspiring great discussion.

I feel so grateful to be learning alongside my children with so many great resources. Thank you, Ludmila Zeman!

Interesting/Notable: 

Look at all those people taking care of themselves:

Wow, this episode about a bishop taking a leave of absence for his mental health is so moving. .. all about relationality.

I made a costly decluttering mistake—The Minimal Mom (Youtube)

The tl:dr: Don’t be too annoyed when you get rid of something and you wish you had kept it. You can’t have both a peaceful, moderately uncluttered house, and also keep absolutely everthing. Not deciding to get rid of things is deciding, and can lead to problems!

The Well-Off People Who Can’t Spend Money–The Atlantic (gift link)

An action item: Check your Roth IRA

We haven’t had a Roth IRA item in awhile. So let’s take a moment to do two things related to Roths. As written previously , it’s easy to open and maintain a Roth IRA. The only requirements for contributing to a Roth IRA are: one: having a Roth IRA account two: earned income and three: not too much earned income (as the ability to contribute to a Roth phases out at higher income levels. There are even ways to get around that, but let’s stick with the simple for now).

Read this article to get the basics.

Two Roth-related things to do:

One: check that you are funding your Roth this year.

How much have you contributed this year so far? If you have an auto-deposit set up for this, would you like to bump it up by some amount ($10, $100, etc.) monthly before the end of the year? Recall that the 2024 limits for Roth contributions is $7,000 for people under 50 ($8,000 for those 50 and up).

Two: Make sure you are investing the funds in your Roth IRA.

It might be in cash or a cash equivilant. Don’t worry, we’ve all done this. That’s better than not having a Roth, but the beauty of Roth earnings is they are never taxed. So the sooner you can get it into a low-cost index fund or ETF, the better.

Some ideas for low-cost ETFs/index funds that passively index the entire stock market—these all have basically the same returns:

VTI: Vanguard Total Stock Market 

SCHB: Schwab’s version total stock market ETF

FSKAX: Fidelity’s Total Stock Market Fund

If you need any help with any of this, or have any Roth-related questions, just let me know. I love answering these kinds of questions!

What are you doing this weekend?

So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:

*faith—when are you going to Mass?

*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?

*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?

*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).