Monthly Archives: March 2007

03.04.07
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Easter Bunny – the Legend

First off, let me preface this post with the following:

I don’t care what traditions your family has for various holidays. I mean, I care in that I believe they are important to you, and I may think them interesting, but I don’t feel like imposing my family traditions on your family, and really would resent you doing that to me. Do not take anything in this post to imply that what my family does is what your family should be doing.

When my husband and I were children, we thought that a large, furry animal with long ears filled our Easter baskets with chocolate and marshmallow chicks. Somehow we managed to discover “the truth” and neither of us was psychologically damaged in the process. However, I could not keep a straight face and tell my own little kids this same tale. I was not personally attached to the Easter Bunny, and, in fact, I, as an adult, am a bit frightened at the thought of a large rabbit hopping around…have you seen The Curse of the Were-Rabbit? Scary stuff.

Side notes: the Tooth Fairy does happen to stop by here every so often and generally leaves a whole QUARTER (perhaps we have the cheapest Tooth Fairy in the whole world?). And Saint Nicholas (aka Santa Claus) visits us, not once, but TWICE a year (December 6th AND December 25th). I don’t see that either of these visitors has anything to do with each other (one being wholly secular and the other being a saint), and I don’t think either has any bearing on the Easter Bunny legend.

I do think that the whole Easter Bunny thing is quite a stretch. I’ve read the stories, folks, and I still don’t see what the little rabbit has to do with the Resurrection. I just don’t get it, and I don’t want to get it. I’m truly happy in my ignorance. Blissful, even.

I have never mentioned the Easter Bunny to my kids. I’ve never told them he/she/it was coming. We don’t go to the mall where he/she/it sits and has children tell him/her/it I don’t know what…whether they prefer the yellow chicks or the pink bunnies? Nonetheless, my cloistered, sheltered, unsocialized, homeschooled children know all about the Easter Bunny.

Tonight at dinner, they were talking about this creature. I ignored them, as I do whenever they discuss kid stuff. At one point, Billy asked me if I had ever seen the Easter Bunny, and I said that I had not. Katie tried to ask me another question, but I told her I knew nothing about the Easter Bunny. Finally, though, Fritz said that he knew who the Easter Bunny was – mom and dad.

“Aren’t you guys the ones who hide the eggs?” he demanded.

“Of course we are,” I replied. “I never told you that the Easter Bunny did.”

“And aren’t you the ones who put candy in our baskets?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then you’re the Easter Bunny!”

“I am definitely not the Easter Bunny.”

And that was that. There were no shocked faces, no tears, and no more questions. They returned to their discussion about what the Easter Bunny looks like and how he/she/it occupies his/her/its time. Katie continues to hop around pretending to be a large furry animal and wondering how to make rabbit noises. And I continue to marvel at where these kids have gotten such a wealth of knowledge.

And I think I hear the death knoll for both the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. I don’t care too much about the tooth thief. But that other guy…he’s a big deal. I think next autumn, Fritz and I will need to have a private chat about public speculations.

03.04.07
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New Neighbors

I planned to head to my friend Stacy’s house as we were out in the warm, sunny weather yesterday. Then I saw a family with four kids (four kids, my goodness, what a huge family) ringing her doorbell. I thought perhaps I should not go over there, because I really don’t like to intrude, but then decided to just keep moving toward the playground if my presence there was awkward.

They were all hanging out on front lawn talking. Stacy introduced me to the new neighbors who had moved into “Crystal’s” house. That’s the thing about a military housing community – you always live in a house identified by the previous occupants. And then Stacy, herself a homeschooler, identified them as homeschoolers too.

We’re taking over the world.

Now, I wrote before about how people sniff each other in a manner similar to dogs. Once again, it happened. Interestingly enough, it was the husband who asked me what curriculum I used.

“Mother of Divine Grace,” I replied. Even if you’ve never heard of it, it screams CATHOLIC, does it not? Naturally, I asked him what they used.

“Sonlight.” Yes, Protestant: Son + Light, get it? And they seemed like such nice people…

I’m just kidding! When we moved in to this neighborhood it was only 1/3 full. I did ask God to give me lots of Catholic homeschooling neighbors. So far, I’ve met one. My second choice, I told God, was lots of Catholic neighbors. I do have some of them, and two families have children too young for grade school. I guess God understood my third choice to be lots of homeschoolers. And that we have in abundance.

UPDATE: Lorri, of The Mac and Cheese Chronicles, confesses to being a Catholic who uses Sonlight, and she claims she’s not the only one. I’m pretty sure this new family is a more traditional Sonlight user, though. They didn’t know the secret Catholic homeschooler hand signal.

03.03.07
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The challenge

For the last week, Pete has decided that 530 am is a good time to get up. And he doesn’t wake up with a happy, take-on-the-world attitude. No, he wants the lights kept low, mommy to snuggle with him until he falls back asleep, and mommy to keep holding him while he finishes the rest of his night’s slumber.

Bill usually leaves for work at 530 am, so I’m generally already awake at this hour. Prior to Lent, 530 to 600 am had been email and computer time in a comparatively silent house. All “me” time. On Ash Wednesday, I turned that time over to spiritual reading. All “God” time.

Now it’s all “Pete” time. And I’m a bit unhappy about it. I want that “God” time back, because that “God” time was really, after all, “me” time. Quiet, uninterrupted time when I am relaxed and not in danger of falling asleep is very rare for me. At the end of the day, I will fall asleep or lose my concentration very readily. My mind is still going 100 mph, and I can think of a thousand tasks that should be done before I retire for the evening. In the middle of the day, there is constant background noise, interruptions from the doorbell or the phone, and the incessant demands of little children plus the fact that I have a job to do: school, housework, meal prep, laundry. It is only in the early morning before children awake, but after I’ve begun sipping coffee, that I feel my brain functions like an intelligent adult’s brain.

But isn’t Lent about surrender, after all? It’s not about “me” time, no matter how much I disguise it as “God” time. “God” time is all the time. “God” time is attending lovingly to my duties as a mother of needy, little children with a happy heart. This does not mean that I should neglect formal prayers, excuse myself from reading anything deeper than the church bulletin, or pretending that this daily drudgery is enough sacrifice and penance for me.

I really loathe the notion that a Catholic housewife need only to attend to her family’s needs with a cheery disposition offering this labor to God with mini-aspirations throughout the day and she can be assured of her own and her family’s salvation. Perhaps that is enough for some: don’t we all know those unblemished souls who think that some back talking their parents while they were a teen qualifies as a rebellious and sinful youth? Most of us though, I’ll wager, have a bit more atoning to do. And some of us have a LOT more atoning to do.

And so the challenge is not in finding quiet “me/God” time but rather in doing my best to focus in the midst of chaos. It is forcing myself to put off the load of laundry until later (I can sort, rotate and fold with half a brain in the evening hours) and sitting down right now when there is a relative lull. It is saying the rosary, perhaps for the second time that morning, while holding the drowsy child because there is no rule that says two rosaries in one day are a waste of time. It is including my children as much as possible in spiritual exercises with a “can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude (my kids love the Stations of the Cross).

AND it is attending to my duties with joy. Life, even my life, is not at all about me. It’s not about what I get out of it. It’s not about what kind of a person I make myself into. It’s about responding promptly, dutifully, and happily to the challenges God sets before me, including an early rising toddler.

03.02.07
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Waiting for warm weather

After weeks of sub-freezing temperatures, we’ve begun to have periods of mild weather. We may have two or three days in a row or temperatures in the 50s, and if the sun also suns, it is quite wonderful. I like all the seasons, but especially, I like the turn of the seasons and enjoy the mild days of spring and autumn the best. If the dreariness of winter and the languidness of summer were but 4 or 5 weeks long, I would be most happy.

Last week, on a particularly bright day with the temperature around 56 or 57 degrees, my kids, “hot” in even their light fleece pullovers or sweatshirts, asked me if we could get out the kiddie pool later. Uh, letmethinkaboutthatforasecond, no. It’s not that warm, I told them. My sister, down in Alabama, is freezing with temps in the fifties.

Yes, warm weather will definitely be most welcome to our bundled bodies. And some green on the trees and ground will be a delight to our eyes (although I fear there is no hope for the mud that is now the backyard). It will be nice to open the windows, and wonderful to not spend more time dressing and undressing little ones than they are able to spend outdoors playing.

But I have some very practical reasons for needed the weather to turn soon. While sorting laundry, I espied another pair of Fritz’s pants with the knee completely shredded. I think he is now down to three pairs of pants, including his dress khakis for church which are about a half inch too short now. Jenny, I swear, grew three inches in February, and all her pants are pushing the boundaries of acceptable length (acceptable in a fashion sense, of course, but that really does matter, at least to me). And both Katie and Billy, for whom I struggled to find pants that would stay up around their skinny little waists back in September, can barely get those same pants buttoned (Katie’s pants are the adjustable waist kind, too).

I’ve written before about the pain that accompanies the “changing of the clothes” for five kids every season. I’ve managed to get it down to twice a year, because I happen to have an extra dresser that can store the heavier layers in the summer once spring’s final chill has passed and can hold the really bulky layers needed for winter while they are still enjoying the last warm days of fall. But that semi-annual headache is rapidly approaching. I’ve actually scheduled it for Holy Week, because we are heading to Florida for Easter – they have to have summer clothes. Perhaps, because it is the last hurrah of Lent, I will have the fortitude to slog through that dreaded task with good cheer and a happy heart.

I just hope the kids can make it the next month with what they’ve got. We’ll be quite the ragtag bunch by the end of the month.

And new this time: my friend Rachel has given me a definite works-for-her-answer as to how many outfit a kid needs. Rachel has six kids seven and under. She does laundry every day. She limits the kids to FOUR outfits each (obviously more for non-potty trained little ones). She never has difficulty finding soccer uniforms and socks on game day – with small laundry piles generated daily, she is always on top of it all. There is something to be said for this. And so, I will do my best to severely limit the number of t-shirts, shorts and sundresses that fill my washer. I’ll let you know how it goes.

03.02.07
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New Month’s Resolution for March

How about those New Year’s Resolutions? Has everyone forgotten them already? Yeah, me too.

That’s why I like New Month’s Resolutions. One baby step for just one month.

This month, I intend to memorize the Ave Maria and the Pater Noster. I’ll let my aunt teach me (it’s her voice on the audio at this link). If the German Shepherd says to do it, well then, I better get crackin‘.

What’s your resolution for this month? Comments allowed this time – I love to hear what people will try to do. It gives me ideas!

03.01.07
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HPV revisted

Milehimama has a post on the HPV vaccine. I am not linking to her, because she is aware of and is avoiding attention given to bloggers who write about this controversial vaccine. She’s right to do so. My post from early last month gets lots of attention via Google searches, and I know that Catholic Mom, who has written more than once about the vaccine, has noticed the traffic too. I’ve already had one troll, but of course now that comments are off, there have been no others.

I find it interesting to note that Merck actually has hound dogs out searching for true public opinion on the matter. Have they realized that twisted questions posed by automatons to the small percentage of Americans who don’t screen their incoming calls with CallerID do not generate accurate poll results (the media and Zogby don’t seem to understand this)? I also find it interesting that pediatricians and family practitioners seem horribly unaware of the average (educated) mother’s concern over all vaccines. {I use “educated” as a qualifier only because I know there are plenty of moms for whom the thought of questioning a doctor would never occur, or who do not run in circles where one vigilante mom feels the need to educate all the other moms at the playgroup, or who themselves do not scour every vaccine’s side-effects listing praying that these terrible things don’t happen to their kid. Educated means “educated about vaccines” not “having a PhD.”} Although it is possible to find pediatricians who favor delaying or avoiding vaccines or who do not immediately pooh-pooh parental concerns about any potential link between the MMR vaccine and autism in boys, most are pro-vaccine having studied or lived through life without them.

Merck seems to be nicely drawing the battle lines, and those of us opposing a mandate are labeled as right-wing fanatics who want to condemn young women to death by cancer as punishment for their past sins. When you’re a Catholic homeschooler, you get labeled as a religious wacko and no amount of reason will convince an irreligious wacko that you could possibly have legitimate non-religious arguments against something.

I have no “Catholic” reasons to avoid this vaccine for my daughter. It was not immorally manufactured, unlike the MMR vaccine (also by Merck) which was made using tissue from aborted fetuses. Although it is transmitted via sexual contact, sex (hold on, everyone, big shocker here) is not necessarily sinful. There are plenty of folks in this world who routinely have licit intercourse, and in fact, Catholicism delightfully encourages it! My daughters could remain virgins, grow up, get married to wonderful men who might happen to have had less than pure pasts and unknowingly might have contract HPV and innocently might pass it on to them. There was no sin committed here, assuming that the son-in-law was unaware of the HPV and that it was contracted prior to the marriage. And if he contracted it after the marriage, the sin is his, not my daughter’s.

I do not (yet) argue that this vaccine be banned. Although I am skeptical of its efficacy and its safety and am happy to have years before I would even be able to give it to my daughters, I do not feel the need to prevent other mothers from vaccinating their daughters. I have no desire for any woman to suffer; I do not feel that misery here on earth is God’s righteous punishment (see Book of Job); I do not necessarily think that girls with this vaccine will feel even more liberated to fall into bed with any guy at any whim (no, our society does more than enough to encourage that by disassociating sex from marriage and telling virgins that they are “abnormal”). As time goes on, I will perhaps become convinced that this vaccine is too risky, health-wise, to girls and women, but for now I fully support parents’ informed decisions to vaccinate their daughters.

However, I do feel it is immoral for governments to override parental rights without due process. This is not Catholic morality, this is the same generic Christian morality upon which our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and founding principles rest. Now I realize that it is in vogue to separate God completely from the realm of government. Giving credit where it is due, the following concept was articulated to me by my father-in-law years ago: if we do not set above the government some Higher Power, then our highest authority is our government. This is a thought that terrifies every American. Even the atheists shudder at the thought that our imperfect system is IT for determining right and wrong. This is why those who want to throw out God would substitute some international authority over our national government, as if that that would be better. Government is, at its roots, human, and humans are, at their roots, flawed. Putting all of one’s faith in a flawed system is a very bad thing (see histories of communism and national socialism for more on this topic). It is much better to set above us a Supreme Authority, even a generic one, as long as IT is Perfect.

Our founding principles demand a government of, by and for the people. They hold that government is accountable to the people and should serve the people and not itself. By assuming responsibility for issues that are not of public concern, the government removes personal autonomy and dictates policies that may not be in the best interest of the people. There are bad parents, and there are laws to force bad parents to make good decisions, and there is a minimally effective system to remove children from the care of routinely bad parents. But it is one thing to make it illegal to drive with a child on your lap (clearly dangerous, life-threatening behavior), and another to mandate a vaccine that may or may not be effective for a disease that is not transmitted via casual contact, and even quite another to mandate a vaccine that is not yet proven effective and safe.

In the case of Rick Perry’s decision to unilaterally mandate the vaccine for all school girls, we do not have a decision made even remotely “by” the people (he acted alone), and it is dubious that it is “for” the people since it is of questionable good and since he has received political funding from Merck (see quote in my previous post, the link has since expired). One can not serve both the people and the pocketbook.

In the case of state legislatures debating a mandate, at least there is a nominal idea that a decision would be “by” the people, since the legislature is an elected body (not just one elected official like a governor). But there continues to be doubt about politician’s motives when Merck donates money to them, and, despite Merck’s PR campaign to the contrary, this is not a public health issue. One can not get HPV by sitting in a classroom full of infected teens. Governments must tread lightly when it comes to laws that usurp power from the people. Even if this vaccine were completely safe and 100% effective (it is not), without a clear risk to public health, government does not have the moral authority to decide for all parents that their children must be vaccinated.

In conclusion, I really must quote Merck’s prescribing information for Gardasil (thanks to Milehimama for the link):

Only a doctor or healthcare professional can decide if GARDASIL is right for you or your daughter.

Yes, Merck, that’s right. Not Rick Perry. Not the state legislature. Not you. Let me talk my MY doctor about MY daughter.

For more on the HPV controversy, the questionable efficacy and safety, and financial shenanigans between Merck and politicians, visit the Overturn RP65 blog.