The Mom Weekly Volume 138: March 31, 2026
You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.
Notes:
Here is the third and final installment of the notes of my 2016 talk. I’ve enjoyed getting to revisit it.
I also wanted to share randomly that Dad & I watched on YouTube a modern production of “The Importance of Being Earnest.” We didn’t love everything about the production, but the play itself is very sparkling and has a lot of funny lines. “No cucumbers at the market today … not even for ready money.”
You really have to read or watch it. The 2002 movie with Colin Firth is available to stream for free on Pluto TV . And the play itself (subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People” is on Project Gutenberg.
Here’s a great quote from Lady Bracknell, one of the formidable characters. It is timely for us! 🙂
“To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.”
Remember how much I love you,
Mom
Eleazar’s Commonplace Book, or Shine Like Lights, Part 3 (From the Vault, 2016)
[Much of the remainder of this is quotes from “Eleazar’s Commonplace Book” of quotes to inspire reflection.]
MAKE SPACE FOR PRAYER
I’m going to quote for you from the not-very-well-known Mistmantle series. The author, MI McAllister, writes on her website, “I think, if you like Narnia, you’ll like Mistmantle.” Truer words never spoken. At first I wrote in a review that it was a noble and worthy successor to Redwall, but I think it is far better.
Mistmantle is similar and different from Narnia in a lot of ways—there are talking animals, but no people. But it’s suffused with Christian spirituality and nobility that just makes you feel better for having read it.
From book 2, Urchin and the Heartstone:
Alone all day, Juniper would remember the animals and places he loved, and hold them in his own heart before the great Heart that made them. He was learning to find quietness inside himself. He was learning to pray.
QUESTION: As moms, we can spend a lot of time alone, even among small children. How have you made time for learning to pray?
PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR PERSONALITY
The next book I’m going to share is one of my (and my family’s) all-time favorites, and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading aloud to my kids when they were little. Most of us have read it multiple times, and the audiobook is unparalleled. It’s free on Kindle since it’s in the public domain, so I encourage you to download and read.
Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
The answer to that question is that she didn’t do it because Cousin Ann was Cousin Ann. And there’s more in that than you think! In fact, there is a mystery in it that nobody has ever solved, not even the greatest scientists and philosophers, although, like all scientists and philosophers, they think they have gone a long way toward explaining something they don’t understand by calling it a long name. The long name is “personality,” and what it means nobody knows, but it is perhaps the very most important thing in the world for all that. And yet we know only one or two things about it. We know that anybody’s personality is made up of the sum total of all the actions and thoughts and desires of his life. And we know that though there aren’t any words or any figures in any language to set down that sum total accurately, still it is one of the first things that everybody knows about anybody else. And that is really all we know!
So I can’t tell you why Elizabeth Ann did not go back and cry and sob and say she couldn’t and she wouldn’t and she couldn’t, as she would certainly have done at Aunt Harriet’s. You remember that I could not even tell you why it was that, as the little fatherless and motherless girl lay in bed looking at Aunt Abigail’s old face, she should feel so comforted and protected that she must needs break out crying. No, all I can say is that it was because Aunt Abigail was Aunt Abigail. But perhaps it may occur to you that it’s rather a good idea to keep a sharp eye on your “personality,” whatever that is! It might be very handy, you know, to have a personality like Cousin Ann’s which sent Elizabeth Ann’s feet down the path; or perhaps you would prefer one like Aunt Abigail’s. Well, take your choice.
QUESTION: What DO you want your personality to be? How are you working on that?
MUSTER YOUR WITS
Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace
Depression settled down upon her, and although she tried to brush it away it thickened like a fog. “Why, the kids will be home for Thanksgiving! That will be here in no time. I mustn’t get this way,” she thought. But she felt lonely and deserted and futile. “A mood like this has to be fought. It’s like an enemy with a gun,” she told herself. But she couldn’t seem to find a gun with which to fight.
Later, Emily learns to “muster her wits” and she starts a reading group, and goes out to dances, and back to her high school.
She discovers this quote in Shakespeare
“Muster your wits: stand in your own defense.” She had no idea in what sense he had used it, but it seemed to be a message aimed directly at her. Muster your wits: stand in your own defense,” she kept repeating to herself on the long walk home. After dinner she sat down in her rocker, looked out at the snow and proceeded to muster her wits. “I’m going to fill my winter and I’m going to fill it with something worth while,” she resolved.
QUESTION: How Can you Muster Your Wits? What are your Resources for Doing that?
—friends,faith, outside help, social church
EMBRACE YOUR GOOFY HOBBIES
This quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters illustrates how important it is for us to have things that we like “just because” and to rejoice in them:
The deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which the Enemy has furnished him. To get him away from those is therefore always a point gained; even in things indifferent it is always desirable to substitute the standards of the World, or convention, or fashion, for a human’s own real likings and dislikings. I myself would carry this very far. I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even if it is something quite trivial such as a fondness for county cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa. Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust. The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the ‘best’ people, the ‘right’ food, the ‘important’ books. I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions.
QUESTION: What is Your Tripe & Onions?
BE A POLLYANNA
Eleanor Porter’s Pollyanna is actually a classic many people misunderstand. Being a “Pollyanna” today has the connotation of being willfully unaware of what is true, and only thinking “positive thoughts.” (Good vibes only).
Instead, the novel really shows how Pollyanna fully understanding her tough situation as an orphan, etc., still uses the example and teaching of her (now dead) father to find good in everything she can, while still acknowledging reality. At one part, the town minister, who has been fire-and-brimstone until Pollyanna encounters him, finds this quote and decides to change his tune (and the whole town benefits):
What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened…. Instead of always harping on a man’s faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win out!… The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town…. People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes—his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!… When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it.
QUESTION: How can you be a Pollyanna? How can you encourage?
AIR YOUR ROOMS
Rumor Godden
In This house of Brede
The Story of Holly & Ivy
writing is really lush India
autobiography
There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual . Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.
How can you air out those four rooms each day, or even each week? What can you do to be well-rounded?
RESOLUTION:
Now is time for you to make a resolution about doing things and making time for things that energize you.
———
Here is one tiny example: When I climb into bed at night, and after I say night prayer (if we haven’t done it as a family), I open up the NY Times Crossword app. The MINI.
I don’t think to myself, well, I guess I have to do the Mini. I think, “Ah, I’ve been so busy and done so much today, I can finally fall asleep, but first, I get to take a minute or two to do the MINI, and if I’m still awake enough, I might try the big crossword.” I can’t tell you how restorative it is, in a tiny way.
(2026 notes: my current evening routine includes much more than Mini. This was before Wordle, Connections, the LinkedIn games, and all the other fun games many of us now play).
What are other pursuits like that for me?
- Daily Mass when I can get there. When kids were babies, I could go every day. When they got bigger, it went down to once a week together. Whatever works.
2. Running: I am a slow runner but I LOVE long distance running. I also enjoy races, not because I’m fast or trying to win anything. I really enjoy the medals you get for finishing a race.
(2026 note: no longer running, but hiking!)
3. Reading: In case you couldn’t tell I LOVE reading and will many ways to get more reading time. When I had nurslings, I read with a book and a tiny flashlight. I don’t think there were Kindles (at least I didn’t have one) when my youngest was still nursing, but man, the Jane Austen I could get through if I had had.
Interesting/Notable:
“I Am Surprised at the Conduct of the Young Women” — Letters of Note
This is from a Substack that reproduces interesting letters from history. This particular letter is adorable!
This happens yearly at the beginning of May in Wisconsin, and I think it could definitely be an interesting religious pilgrimage! Looks very cool, and going from a St. Joseph Shrine to the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion (the only approved Marian shrine in the US).
