How Can I Help the Team? This summer, I coached my oldest son’s baseball team. These seven- and eight-year-old boys were very much still learning the game; so in addition to teaching them basic skills of hitting, catching, and throwing, one of my main tasks was teaching them mental focus. That is, I couldn’t have…
In a few days our homeschool year will begin, and I am ready for the return to this daily routine. As absurd as this sounds, we have enjoyed enough lazy days, popsicles, and water play. My husband, a police detective, wasn’t able to take any vacation over July or August and he doesn’t get any…
While you lay sleeping, I sat in the hallway and folded the laundry. I pulled warm clothing from the pile and as I folded it, I delighted in small t-shirts emblazoned with cartoon characters. I marvelled over toddler sundresses, I grinned at tiny pairs of socks. I folded your dad’s white t-shirts and noticed the…
“Water is going to be the death of me,” I said to my husband. “What do you mean? Like a water sport accident?” “No, not like that. I mean pouring glasses of water and I am certain that if I clean up one more spilled glass of water then I will surely die.” The minute,…
I looked down at her sleeping. She had just finished nursing and was still holding onto me with her little hands and her mouth. Her silky, dark blonde curls were resplendent in the mid-afternoon, early August light. The warm pink of her cheeks was soft against the crisp, white sheets of our bed. This was…
Two weeks ago, I went into our closet to pull out the pieces of my husband’s police uniform in order to make sure that everything was ironed and ready and that all of the components were there so that he could work his paid duty that evening. If you aren’t familiar with what paid duties…
“David II Teniers chose to illustrate this story from the Golden Legend: in the sky in the middle of the composition is the crow holding the meagre meal for the two monks in his beak. The water skin and bowl at the two men’s feet in the bottom left-hand corner symbolise the fast they have…
I know a lot of Catholic dads, and I’m pretty sure the Father’s Day card makers don’t know the same dads I do. The problem is not just the clichés (neckties), and it’s not just the cheesiness (“For The Man I Love” in a font with lots of curlicues). They miss so much about these…
I didn’t have cable television until I was in the second grade. I remember it clearly. It was February, 1984. I walked down the hill from the school I attended just two blocks away in Stafford Springs, Connecticut. As I arrived at home, my mother greeted me outside and told me about our new acquisition. I…
“Amen, Amen, I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in labour, hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth…
Yesterday afternoon, I had to run some errands with the family. For me, that means packing six of the seven children (all those not currently away at college) into our ginormous van and hitting the road. Lots of buckling seatbelts, complaining about headaches, and various and sundry forms of bickering later, we were on our way.…
