The picture shows the wind really blowing, bending those palms and creating waves that could be the beginning of a hurricane! We have be been blessed so far this year with no hurricanes and little news about possible forthcoming hurricanes. We have had what we call normal summer weather, high temperature and thunderstorms almost daily. It doesn’t mean we won’t have a fall hurricane season but we can still hope it doesn’t materialize.
I feel I am improving in my health. I am still housebound. I go out only when June needs a ride somewhere and to church. Naturally too, I don’t believe the healing is coming fast enough so I have to watch my tendencies to overdue it. It is frustrating when you feel so much like yourself when sitting down for a while that when you try to walk a little more then usual without the walker, back comes the breathing problems. Being 80 years old I guess I shouldn’t complain when I see many younger men having more than just breathing problems. So we continue to be grateful for what we have and of course hope it gets better.
My son-in- law Tom Baker put some old audiotapes my brother Dick made of interviews with my mother and others. Dick speaks in some of his interviews of writing a book about how people could learn from mother’s actions how a good Catholic mother should handle parenting problems. But he apparently gave that up when Mother died in 1952 and decided to write a book on the “story of her life” and titled it “The More The Merrier”. Most of the interviews were between 1948, the year of Mom’s heart attack and hospitalization, and her death in 1952. At only one point in the some 73 tapes (of about 5-8 minutes each) did he mention a date and that was in 1951. It is my intention to talk about some of the material in these and future jottings. One thing I did learn is that I was mistaken in my previous jottings indicating that mother just wanted to be a teacher, and that is why she kept us busy in the summer time. The facts are she was a teacher. She taught for five years. She only stopped when she married Dad. She did as I noted win a right to attend the academically famous Girl’s High by passing a test. But after high school she went to Normal (Teaching) School two years and then taught first graders for five years. She had 50 to 60 first graders in the classes but she also had the help of another teacher. They split the day. One teaching the other going up and down the aisle to see how well the children were getting it. All the tapes were not of Dick interviewing. Two sets of them were talks given by Marge and Dan Walsh to groups in their parish on sex-education for children. On one tape Dick does give a date and it is December 6,1951. The tapes talk a great deal about how she cared for the children, starting with them as babies and then on. There is not as much about her life except one tape with Madeline, Dad’s sister, whom we called Madge. On that one they talk about friends of Mom’s and how Dad’s and Mom’s family met.
Frank McCourt has died. He is the author made famous by “Angela Ashes” The story of his early life in poverty in Limerick, Ireland. I still remember his story about his first communion. His mother and grandmother took him. His Grandmother was to host his special First Communion breakfast. They got to the church just in time for him to receive. He then goes to his grandmother’s for the big breakfast. He over eats and gets sick and runs out into the backyard and vomits. His grandmother is raging that God is now in garbage in her back yard! His grandmother takes him back to church and gets a priest to hear his confession. The priest tells him wash the host away with a little water. Grandma makes him go back and ask the priest if it should be holy water? He goes back and the priest is of course is surprised but tells him to use ordinary water and don’t bother him again. Grandma calls the priest a “bloody ignorant bogtrotter” McCourt also talked about the problem he had in receiving the communion wafer. I remember my own lessons in receiving first Holy Communion in a Catholic Church, which used the wafer. It was repeated to us many times not to let the host rest too long on your tongue but immediately swallow it. Of course McCourt doesn’t do that and it sticks for a while to the top of his mouth and then he finally gets it down. His grandmother taking him to confession also reminded me of our Dad taking my sister Anne and I to confession after we had been caught shoplifting in the local 5 & 10. In fact, Anne mentions the event to Dick when she is interviewed on the tapes mentioned above.
I mentioned in the beginning of these thoughts about living with my ailments I have since there are so many younger than I suffering a great deal more than I. After saying that I came across an article in the magazine “Christianity Today” that verified that. It is a testimony by a Harvard Law Professor, William J. Stuntz. He tells of having a back injury that required “two operations, dozens of injections, physical therapy, psychotherapy, and thousands of pills, my back and right leg hurt every waking moment, and most of those moments, they hurt a lot.” He then endures the break up of his marriage and then in 2008 the doctors found a “large tumor in my colon; a month later, films turned up tumors in both my lungs”. He then has two cancer surgeries and six months of intensive chemotherapy. “Cancer will very probably kill me with the next two years. I’m 50 years old” (Emphasis added) He goes on to testify that he still has great Faith in the Lord. He states: “God’s Son did something similar by taking physical pain on his divine yet still human person. He did not render pain itself beautiful. But his suffering made the enterprise of living with pain and illness larger and better that it had been before ”. After reading this testimony I can hardly complain about a breathing problem. How he, the author, continues to teach is in itself a miracle of great determination!
I came across an old quote by John Mortimer. He is an English Barrister, playwright, novelist, and creator of “Rumpole of Old Bailey”. He wrote a biography entitled “Murders and Other Friends”. He mentions in there about his planning at one time to write a column and was considering using the title “Jottings of an Old Barrister”, or something like that. But then he came across a statement in another book about the author writing a column called ‘Jottings’. He reads that the column is filled with “random and frequently pretentious thoughts.” So he doesn’t use that title. It made me wonder if my jottings are filled with frequently random and pretentious thoughts? I don’t think so since most of the time I am reporting what others wrote, or I did, or family or friends did. It caused me though to go back and look to see when I started using that title. A review of the years 1992 to 1994 indicates the title was used once in ’92. Some of the others I used that year were “Memories”, “Paul’s Ponderings”, and “Paul’s Perambulations”(!) In 1993 I used it only once. One issue entitled “August Amblings” was eleven (11) pages! In 1994 I used the title Jottings in all but one month. The month of November I called it FOB (Father of the Bride), since my daughter Mary was married on the 12th day of that month. It was also the year I reduced the writings to four pages. I still recall my sister Therese, a Holy Child nun, commenting: “What do you do with all the paper?” I am sure she got plenty of suggestions.
August 15th will be the day to celebrate our marriage of 28yrs! I thank the Lord for such a loving and caring spouse who has taken care me ‘in sickness and in health’ all these years! In addition to that she brought me back to Faith for which I am eternally grateful.
We wish Mary Mac (June’s sister), my daughter Mary, and sons Paul and Dan, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Till next time Pax Tecum!