To the Heights: When Ordinary People Become Saints!

It's been weeks since I sat down at my laptop to write. As usual, I've been wondering whether I'm "done." I'm becoming like a broken record, repeating that sentiment here at the blog.  If you've stopped by much over the years, you've probably heard me say that more than once, and it's probably getting tiresome.  Yet I can't help but ponder the usefulness of keeping at it; blogging really is a thing of the past, mostly, and not that many people seem to be writing blogs or reading them anymore.  But this little site of mine has been part of my life for so long now, I feel like I'd be losing an old friend if I let it go to seed completely.  I don't even worry about how many people actually read it.  For goodness sake, when I started blogging more than 14 years ago (with the help of my daughter-in-law, Regina), I didn't even know how to check if anyone had read any of the posts. I didn't care about that one bit.  I certainly never planned to become an Internet "influencer"  (what a hilarious idea!).  When I opened up my dashboard to start today, I was shocked to see that my last post on August 28 had gotten more than 1,400 hits, which is about 1,200 more than a post normally gets.  I can't imagine why that happened...

Anyway--

I have been suffering from my typical recent aridity when it comes to writing anything to post here at the blog.   But it's not because there is nothing important to write about, nothing that I want to say.  The opposite it more like it.  There's just SO MUCH that I want to write about, SO MUCH that needs to be said (and is being said much better than I ever could by other communicators all over the Internet) that I am a bit overwhelmed.  Where to even begin?

There aren't enough words to describe the elation of the September 7 canonization of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, two holy young men who are the most excellent role models for modern youth (and for souls of any age, for that matter), followed so quickly afterward on September 10 by the horror of the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk, a young man who was a strong and effective voice speaking out for the need to save the Christian identity of our country, and who was turning the hearts and minds of so many young people. It's been an emotional roller coaster, hasn't it?

Charlie Kirk was by all accounts a happy warrior, an exceedingly good, kind, generous, and humble man, a friend to all, a devoted husband and father of two young children; and if you ever watched one of his trademark debates with folks who disagreed with him, and saw how he could win every argument without anger--indeed, with a smile on his face--you know that he was an extraordinary person.  When asked once what he hoped to be remembered for, he didn't cite his successful political career as the creator of Turning Point USA, or the fact that he hobnobbed regularly with presidents and other famous movers and shakers; he said that he hoped to be remembered for his faith.  He was an evangelical Christian, married to a Catholic, and in recent months had spoken out about the need to honor and venerate Mary.  I get the feeling that he was going through a spiritual conversion (his good friend, podcaster Candace Owens, said as much on her show in a tribute to him after his death); I think perhaps that Charlie was on his way to converting to Catholicism?...Maybe not, but seeing him talk so reverently about our Blessed Mother was so touching that it moved my husband to tears when we watched it. I can't help but believe that if Charlie had been asked if he was willing to sacrifice his own life to uphold the teachings of Christ, he would have said, "Yes, absolutely."  I feel as if Our Lord welcomed him home with those words we all hope to hear: "Well done, good and faithful servant."  I don't mean to canonize Kirk. But in so many ways, his death feels to me almost like a martyrdom.  May he rest in peace.

About those canonized saints, though...oh my, it's just so exciting.  I don't know enough about Carlo Acutis yet, but as a mother of five sons who grew up loving video games in the 90's, I feel like he is the most perfect saint for young people to emulate.  We need more saints like this: "regular" guys who lead lives of extreme holiness, while living in the modern world and enjoying many of the things our own children enjoy.  It gives one hope that he or she needn't be a priest or a nun, living a life of extreme poverty and prayer in a monastery or convent. One can became a saint, even while living an "ordinary" life. What a great message for all of us!

The other young man who was canonized along with Carlo Acutis is someone whom I DID know a whole lot about before he was canonized: Pier Giorgio Frassati, whom Pope Saint John Paul II called "A Man of the Beatitudes."  The cause for his sainthood was opened in 1932; he was declared venerable in 1987 and then beatified by JPII in 1990.  

Sometime in the early 2000's, I ran across a chapter about him in a book about modern would-be saints called Faces of Holiness, and something about his story really spoke to me.  I immediately went online and ordered a book titled My Brother Pier Giorgio, His Last Days, written by his sister Lucianna, which recounts the last week of his life.  I read and re-read that inspiring book, before ordering others about him.

Books about Pier Giorgio have rested among my other books about the lives
of saints for years now.  I'm so happy that his sainthood is official!

I so loved his story that when I started writing my first novel Finding Grace in 2007, I knew right away that I wanted him to play a part in the story of a young girl who is inspired to become a saint and looks to heavenly intercessors to help her along the way.  But the novel was going to begin in the early 1970's and end in 1980, and Pier Giorgio was not even named Blessed until 1990.  He was not a saint that anyone would have heard much about back in the 70's.  In order to fit him in, I created a friend for Grace who was from an Italian-American family, with an elderly grandmother who'd known him back in the Old Country before emigrating to America.  She had lived in Turin, and her brothers had gone to school with him at the Polytechnic Institute there.  After Pier Giorgio's untimely death in 1925 at the age of 24, people there became aware of his extraordinary holiness and his heroic charitable work among the poor, and they felt that they'd had a saint living among them.  (Only 7 years after he died, the cause for his canonization was opened; it didn't take long!)  Thus was I able to fit this future saint into the book--and indeed, Grace Kelly half falls in love with him, as she gazes at a now-famous picture of him (which the Italian grandmother happens to have and passes on to Grace, conveniently enough!).

Here is an excerpt about him from a post I wrote back in 2014. (In that post, I talk about some other saints first; but this is the section that deals with Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati.)

One day about 12 or 13 years ago, I was flipping through Ann Ball's Faces of Holiness, Modern Saints in Photos and Words (one of the many Catholic works that crowd our shelves), stopping to read the sections that interested me.  This book is filled with short chapters that tell about the lives of different Saints, Blesseds, and Venerables--as well as some people who lived lives of extreme holiness, but whose causes for canonization have not yet begun.  I love to read about modern individuals--average Joes, lay people, married women--who have found the path to sainthood.  It gives me such hope.

It was by reading Faces of Holiness that I first became acquainted with Gianna Molla, who at the time was a Blessed but is now a canonized Saint.  Her story definitely resonated with me.  But I think the whole reason I was drawn to that particular book in the first place was so that I would find Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, whose name was completely foreign to me at the time.  I read pages 213-219 (a short synopsis of his heroic life and untimely death), and I was blown away by this handsome young man from Turin, Italy, who died in 1925 but whose body remains incorrupt.  He was for all intents and purposes a "normal" guy: good-looking, fun-loving, athletic; a practical joker who was always surrounded by friends; a student who struggled academically and was a bit of a disappointment to his parents.  He was extremely devout, however, a trait not shared by the rest of his family members, and he was especially devoted to Our Blessed Mother.  He also had a secret life: born into wealth, he gave almost all he had away to the poor (and his family did not even know the extent of his charity until after his death--when it was revealed that unbeknownst to them, there'd been a saint living among them).  I'm not even sure why the combination of photos and words in that book hit me the way they did, but I felt as if I knew him, as strange as that sounds--and I wanted to know more.

Before long I had ordered and read My Brother Pier Giorgio, His Last Days, a memoir written by his sister Luciana that chronicles his last week on earth--his "passion" and tragic death at 24.  It remains one of the most re-read tomes in my personal library, and if you're interested in reading a review I wrote for this wonderful book, click here.  After that, I got my hands on Luciana's other book, a biography titled A Man of the Beatitudes (which I had my youngest son read in 8th grade when we were homeschooling him; because--like JP II, who named him the Patron of World Youth Day in 2000--I can't think of a better role model for a young man to emulate).  It, too, is well-worth the time.  If you haven't heard of this extraordinary young man, or if you haven't read much about him, I highly recommend these two books.  His life story is utterly fascinating and inspiring, and if you do get to know Pier Giorgio better, I believe there's a very good chance that he will become a special friend of yours among the saints.

I admire this young man so much that I had to include him in my novel Finding Grace.  My shy little heroine, Grace Kelly, who is determined to achieve the goal of sainthood while living in the world, is "introduced" to Pier Giorgio (I won't tell you how--you'll have to read the book to find out!), and she becomes enchanted with him to the point of having a bit of a crush, even though he's been long dead.  I had to figure out a way to work some Italian immigrant characters into the novel so that there could be a personal connection between them and this saintly Italian boy, because the story is set in the 1970's and my research efforts failed to turn up the titles of any books that Grace could have read at that time to learn about him.  It took some finagling to figure out a way to have her "meet" him, but it was worth it to me.  I was determined that Pier Giorgio Frassati would be one the many saints whose life is an inspiration to Grace as she struggles to find and stay on the path to sainthood.

I can imagine that I, too, might have felt like Grace about him--if at 15 I hadn't yet met the true man of my dreams: the boy who would become my husband, the boy who made crushes on other males forever a thing of the past for me (and the boy who was my main inspiration for the character of Grace's love interest, Tom Buckley).  And I think if more young girls would ignore the Justin Beebers of the world and swoon instead over men like Pier Giorgio Frassati--men of exemplary character, moral fortitude, and deep faith--there would be a lot fewer heartaches.

I have yet to receive any special sign from this special friend of mine, and yet I feel a deep bond.  I urge you to learn more about this holy young man who will one day be numbered among the saints.  (This link is a good start, if you'd like to read about him.)

This photo of Pier Giorgio scaling a high mountain is representative of his earthly life, which was a constant striving to reach the goal, the summit: eternal life in Heaven.  The caption he wrote on it is quite apropos--"Verso l'alto" (Toward the top).  With the help of saints like him and so many others, may we also reach the summit.

Carlo Acutis' life ended at 15; Pier Giorgio Frassati's at 24; Charlie Kirk's at 31.  Their lives are a testament to how much good such ordinary--and yet extraordinary--people can do in this world, even if their time here is very short. 

God bless you, dear readers!  And don't ever lose hope, no matter how grim things seem.  Verso l'alto!  

Saints Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!

To Blog, or Not to Blog (Oh, and Happy New Year!)

It's been more than two months since I was last here at my little site--which used to be a place I frequented quite often, believe it or not.  Back in the day, when I opened up shop in 2011, I was here almost every morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and raring to type up my little stories and random musings.  Even though almost no one was reading those posts, writing them made me so happy.

And the funny thing is that if anything, I have more to write about now than ever.  My family has grown by leaps and bounds and all of my people's lives are so very interesting, so very blog post-worthy.  But I am having the most severe case of blogger's block that I've ever experienced.  And I'm seriously considering just quitting altogether.  I've said that before at different times over the years, but this time I might actually be serious.

My husband thinks I should keep at it; he knows how much fun it is for me to have a writing project in the works, and keeping up with a blog is an ongoing writing project (that is, if you ever actually sit down at the computer and DO it!).  So I guess he might have a point.  And maybe it's not time to throw in the towel. Not just yet, anyway.

So much has happened since I last checked in, which was just after Halloween.  A trip to South Bend for a Notre Dame football game with a couple of our boys.  Multiple Pearl birthdays in October, November, and December.  Thanksgiving.  Christmas (which included having our youngest son, his very pregnant wife, and their adorable almost two-year-old little girl staying at our house.  They were with us for two whole weeks before going back to their home outside of Nashville.  Oh how I miss her--I mean them!).

Having four of our five boys and their families (15 grandchildren included!) over for a family party on the 27th was the highlight of our Christmas.  We were only missing our oldest and his gang.

I also spent the last few months before Christmas working on a special picture book project for my grandchildren, which I might share here eventually.  Oh yes, and then there's the whole learning how to make sourdough bread saga!  Let's just say that I'm a great maker and keeper of starter (I've named mine "Bubbs," although when I read somewhere that people name their starters,  I swore up and down that I wouldn't do such a nerdy thing), but I've had varying degrees of success with the actual bread itself. Especially when, like the farm wife I pretend to be, I try to use home-milled flour instead of the good old reliable store-bought all-purpose fluffy white stuff (remember this post?). Yikes, there's so much to write about, and I don't know if I should try to re-cap the past few months or just push ahead into 2025.

While I decide, know that all of our Christmas decorations are still up, because son #1 and his family (including seven of our grandchildren!) are coming next week to spend about a week with us, and since they weren't with us for the holidays I want it to feel Christmas-y around here.  (Also, the Christmas season doesn't technically end until Feb. 2, when we celebrate the Presentation of Our Lord on Candlemas Day. So we've decided that they don't come down until then!)

Happy New Year, dear readers (you know who you are: baby sister, my better half, a few D-I-L's, and about three other people!  Ha ha!).  I'll just be sitting here sipping my coffee by the tree when I've got nothing more important to do.

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog!

Well hey there, readers...all two or three of you who even bother to stop by here anymore!  How was your summer?

Are you surprised to see me here?  I know I am.  This is by far the longest I've been away from this blog since I opened up shop in 2011.  I believe it's been almost three months since I last posted anything.  Yikes, that beats my last AWOL stretch by about two months or so.

I've seriously been considering just closing my doors for good (but enough with the shop references already--sheesh!  Can you tell that I'm about as rusty as they come?!).  Just living life keeps me so busy these days that writing about it seems like a waste of time.

But then I stumble upon an old post in my archives, and I remember why I started this thing in the first place.  So many of my most precious memories--of my marriage, my motherhood, and now my grandmotherhood (if that's a word?  Spell check has underlined it in red for me, so perhaps not!)--are stored here on this site.  Like this oldie-but-goodie, for instance, about when my oldest son (now 40) was a new driver and started giving his younger brothers rides to school.  I read that sweet post again a few weeks ago, when my sister-in-law was talking about how her 16-year-old son was going to get his driver's license soon.  It brought back so many poignant memories!  And that post led me to this other post as well, one that tells about a treasured moment in time from my youngest son's wedding that I am so grateful to have captured.

(If you took the time to click those links and read the old posts, welcome back!)

Anyway, I'm happy for all the years I've spent adding to my online family scrapbook.  I am.  So maybe I should keep at it.  Maybe I'd miss it if I gave it up.  We shall see!

Today, I'm just feeling overwhelmed by how much has happened in the last three months that would be fun to blog about.  I don't know what to write about first. So I guess I'll just go ahead and jump in and see how it goes.

We just got back to VA a week ago, after spending most of July and August in upstate NY, staying at my husband's old childhood home by the lake while managing our Oyster Haven rental house just down the road.  Life was good up there, visiting with my 88-year-old mom and other relatives from both of our families and spending as much time as possible out on our pontoon boat.  But it's just so good to be home!

I don't know where to start, so I guess I'll just post a few pictures from our Pearl family vacation week at Oyster Haven in July (we had a professional photo shoot!  More about that later!); and then a few pictures from this past Sunday, when we had two of our boys and their families over to our house ("where we belong," as one of our precocious little granddaughters here in VA has told us) for a post-Mass brunch.  

How it was going in July (up at Oyster Haven):

Aren't those pictures fun? The photographer got many more clearer, more normal shots (some of which I will be sharing here soon, I hope!).  But these give you an idea of the awesome chaos of our week, with all 34 of us sharing a house that we advertise as "sleeps 13" on VRBO!  Like the photos illustrate, our time together passed in a blur, but it was just wonderful.

How it was going this past Sunday (back home in VA):

We're so happy that Papa and Grammy's basement playroom is open for business once again.  Things were hopping down there on Sunday afternoon, as you can see.  And we're also happy that sometimes, we can give our tired kids a chance to catch a cat-nap while we enjoy spending time with their energetic little ones!

Until next time (which will be much sooner than three months from now--at least that's the plan)...

Like Leila, Like Laura (Maybe?)

I have been so inspired lately, reading Leila Lawler's "Like Mother, Like Daughter" blog (which is often graced with lovely, well-written posts by her grown daughters as well).  How I missed her all these years that I've been immersed in the blogging world is beyond me.  She is just awesome (as are her girls), and I pretty much agree with her mindset on every aspect of the vitally important triple vocation we share: wife/mother/homemaker.  I mean, I feel like we could be best friends if we ever met (although I'm so shy and terrible at making new friends that she might be less enthusiastic about the whole thing than I.  But I think we could be Internet friends, at least...).

Like "Auntie Leila," I  have striven to live by the "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without" philosophy, which she often espouses on her blog, throughout my marriage. I've tried to be as thrifty and frugal as possible--to make our home as comfy, warm, and beautiful as I could, even during those early years when I had to do it on a shoestring budget. And then by the time I could have spent more, I was hesitant to do so--because the habit of trying to make what I had work for us, and if not, to find something old and used and in need of a bit of TLC to make it "perfect," was deeply ingrained in me after years of creative housekeeping. 

I am quite lucky, I realize, to enjoy the type of hobbies that go hand-in-hand with my three-pronged vocation: cooking, baking, home decorating, furniture refinishing, painting, drawing, sewing, crafting, reading, and writing, to name a few! I even like to clean.  (Should I be embarrassed to admit that?  My husband calls me the "mad vacker," because I love to vacuum way more than I should.) 

Also, Leila Lawler is the only blogger (other than myself!) whom I've ever seen touting the benefits of wearing an apron to do housework; my boys like to tease me about my apron-wearing.  It's true that I am rarely seen without one during waking hours if I'm in my own house.  By I don't sleep in one, as one of my funny sons has accused.  (I blogged about aprons once upon a time; if you're interested in visiting my archives you can read that post here.)

I have a proverbial wardrobe of aprons, actually.  Holiday-themed ones even.

My Mrs. Clause apron.  (And a darling chocolatey-faced elf!)

Anyway, Leila Lawler is a seamstress.  (See, there's another thing we have in common.  She even said in one post that in spite of being at it for 40 years, she tends to make lots of mistakes and relies heavily on a seam-ripper.  Me, too!  I'm beginning to think we might be twins who were separated at birth!)  After reading some of her old sewing posts, I felt motivated to organize my sewing room for the first time in ages.  In one of the big plastic bins that held some of my fabric stash, I found some fun treasures that I'd almost forgotten about, including a few unfinished projects that I decided I'll have to get to ASAP.  (I'm not getting any younger, you know.  I'll be 66 in July.  If I don't finish them now, then when?!)

I found a patchwork quilt that I began to put together in the late 1970's, while I was still in college (it was for my "hope chest," kind of), and then continued to work on after my husband and I got married in 1980 and started having our sons.  It was made with soft, almost threadbare squares of fabric, taken from old clothing and scraps from craft projects I'd worked on. (BTW, what was I thinking making the squares so small?!  Each is only 5"!)  I'd added some appliquéd hearts, with the names and birthdays of the first two boys on them; the next two sons each have a heart appliqué with their names and birthdates penciled in, but I never got around to embroidering them; and the fifth son never even got a heart on there before I abandoned this quilting project (probably because I was too busy raising said boys, four little guys who were born within a span of four years and three months).  Son #4, the last one represented on this quilt, is 36 now, so it's been more than three decades since I did any work on it!

Finally finishing that decades-old quilt is on my to-do list now.

I also found the top of a baby quilt that was made by my best college friend in 1983, as a gift for our firstborn son.  This quilt originally had batting inside and the layers were hand-tied together with yarn at some of the corners where the rectangular pieces on the front met.  After washing it a number of times, the batting got all lumpy, and I took it apart, planning to put new batting in it and then put it back together, possibly doing some machine quilting, too, so it would hold up better.  But alas, I never got around to it.  My friend had made it before she knew whether we were having a girl or a boy, and it had an awful lot of pink in it.  When we kept having boys, I put it away to save in case we ended up with a daughter, but we never did.  Our oldest son has six girls now, and one boy, and the youngest, a girl, is still a baby.  So I think I'm going to fix it up and pass it on to him for his little one.

How fun!  I had almost forgotten that baby quilt existed!

Another treasure I found was a zip-lock bag with some pre-cut 8" quilt squares in it.

What is special about these squares is that most of them (all but the dark blue, which I must have gotten as a filler) are Laura Ashely fabrics, taken from sheets, pillowcases, and curtains that we used to have in our bedroom. Way back in the early years of our marriage, my mother-in-law (a T J Maxx clearance shopping pro who had no equal!) gifted us a king-sized Laura Ashley puff/bedspread (in the dusty blue with little cream-colored flowers on it).  We had a double bed at the time, but she said we would probably go bigger eventually, and she wanted it to fit.  We had that puff on our double bed for about ten years, before we finally got a king-sized bed in 1993.  By that time, my M-I-L had gifted us sheets (in the coordiating cream with little dusty blue flowers), curtains, pillow shams, and throw pillows in that same pattern.  Then eventually, she got us a new king-sized quilt, in the floral pattern that had some pink in it but was in the same color palette and still went with the curtains from the other pattern we'd had for so long, and a king-sized sheet set (top right fabric square in the picture) to go with it.  

We slept on Laura Ashley bedding for so many years that when we finally made the switch to something different, I wanted to have a little memento of it.  So I'd cut out those squares, intending to make a little throw quilt.  But like so many other projects I'd started over the years, I never got around to sewing those squares together.

Well, guess what I did today?

It's not very big, just a lap quilt.  It just needs a back (I'm not sure I'm even going to do a layer of batting inside).  I'll probably keep it draped over the back of the upholstered arm chair in our room, as a reminder of those early days of our marriage.  And of my beloved mother-in-law as well.

I found some other goodies that had belonged to her--beautiful linen-and-lace napkins, pillowcases, pillow shams, etc. (some bought new on clearance, some vintage, some with lovely embroidery on them, many stained from decades stored in the attic after the house fire at my husband’s childhood home).  And I have projects planned for them as well.  So stay tuned for more sewing talk in the coming weeks, dear readers.

Or not!  I realize that this post might have been boring to many of you. (But perhaps it wouldn't be to Auntie Leila?)

Letting Go (and Dinner for Two)

It's been two months since I posted anything here.  2011 me doesn't even recognize 2024 me!  When this blog was in its infancy, I used to get up pretty much every morning raring to sit down at my laptop and write.  

In March of 2011, when I first decided to dip my toes into the unfamiliar waters of the blogosphere, my life was about to change drastically: my youngest son was getting ready to graduate from high school that June and head off to college after the summer; and my oldest son was three months away from becoming a first-time father to twin girls, making me a first-time Grammy.  I was not technically an empty-nester yet, but I was getting close.  And suddenly, I had more free time than I'd ever had before--so for several years, I blogged almost daily.  But then as, one by one, new daughters were added to our family, and traveling to visit our ever-expanding brood took up so much of our energy, my blog output started to decrease quite a bit.  I loved writing about my family and my life, but I became too busy living it to blog about it as often as I used to do.

In 2017, my husband and I moved away from our "forever home" in New Hampshire, where we had raised our boys, to Virginia, where three of them had settled with their growing families.  So much has changed in the intervening years.  Today, I have five married sons and 22 grandchildren.  Two of our boys live too far away, one in Wisconsin and one in Tennessee; but we feel pretty blessed to have three of them living less than an hour's drive from us.  Life is gloriously busy down here.  We live in a smaller house, with a smaller yard, but I have grown to love our new VA home every bit as much as the NH one we tearfully left behind seven years ago.

As difficult as it was at the time, that move was good for me.  I'd already started having to learn to accept change, to practice detachment, because by then all five of our boys were grown and gone and living their adult lives.  Even our baby was an Army officer stationed in Germany when we made our big move south.  For a person who gets very attached to the things--and the people--she loves, leaving that well-loved house, with all its happy memories, was one of the toughest things I've ever done.  But ultimately, it made my life better!  The blessings we have reaped by living close to so many of our kids and grandkids are countless.  Our 2017 move was one of the best decisions we ever made. 

Just yesterday, I was reading a January 2024 blog post by Elizabeth Foss, and as usual, her writing spoke to me.  Loudly.  She included a quote by Corrie ten Boom (a WWII concentration camp survivor, who'd risked her own life to hide Jews), and when I read it, I knew that God meant for me to see it. "Hold loosely to the things of this life so that if God requires them of you, it will be easy to let them go." And when ten Boom said, "things," she wasn't only talking about material things; she elaborated, "Even your dear family.  Why?  Because the Father may wish to take one of them back to himself, and when he does, it will hurt you if he must pry your fingers loose."

Whoah.  Did I ever need to read those words, to be reminded of the fleeting nature of this life on earth and the need to let go of things, and even of people when the time comes.  It's so easy to say, "Of course!  Yes!  I'm a devout Catholic and I know that this life is short and filled with suffering, and it's the next one, the eternal one with God in Heaven, that matters."  And yet, things here matter to the human heart.  And people; oh, how they matter!  It seems that mothers' hearts break on a daily basis.  Just having a child grow up, leave home, and start his adult life somewhere far from you can do it--even though that's the goal: giving your children wings and then watching them fly away.

I loved it when all of our boys were little, living under our roof.  I loved it when they were gathered around our table for every meal.  I think I'm in need of a short trip down Memory Lane, so bear with me while I share some pictures of those good old days.  (And also, if you're a young mom, remind yourself how lucky you are to have the awesome digital photography of the 21st century always at your fingertips, instead of the grainy, poorly lighted snapshots moms my age have of our kids--ones we had to wait a couple of weeks to see, not even knowing how they'd turned out!)

Those boys: they are my life!  Hang on a minute...I need a tissue.

Okay, I'm back.  

Listen, the last thing I want to do is sound all maudlin and "woe is me."  I'm just feeling nostalgic is all.   And the years seem to be going by too quickly for me these days, the changes coming at me rapid-fire.   At 65, I know that the road of life behind me is much longer than the one ahead, and it makes me think about all the things I love in this world.  

But I would be lying if I said that feeding a passel of little boys was always a complete joy.  We had two in particular who were mighty picky eaters.  When they used to ask, "What's for dinner?", I would put them off with, "I don't know..." or "I don't want to talk about it right now..."  If we ever got through a healthy home-cooked dinner with clean plates and no complaining, I used to feel like I was on a high.  They all loved my baking, so dessert was usually successful; but the main dish was hit-or-miss with some of them.  I wasn't the greatest cook, to be honest (it's hard to get excited to cook when you're not sure people will eat what you make).  I could whip up basic "comfort foods," like beef stew, lasagna, shepherd's pie.  But I wasn't very adventurous with my cooking.

That's one nice part about being an old lady like me: you miss your kids being gathered around your table (picky eaters notwithstanding); but if you made the right choice in a husband, and he's your favorite person to hang out with, dinner for two can really be a joy.  And it's fun to try new delicious dishes together.

This past week, my husband and I had two meals in a row that I thought were so yummy, simple but elegant--and I would never have made them to serve our boys when they were little.  We ate these meals on trays in the family room while we watched Matt Walsh's show together, pushing pause every now and then to chat.  I thought my plate looked so appetizing both nights that I snapped pictures.  And now I'm going to share them--lucky you!

On Monday, we had baked potatoes and roasted prosciutto-wrapped asparagus (with parmesan cheese and bits of French fried onions on top).  It was so good!

On Tuesday, we had filet mignon, cooked by my husband on the grill and topped with sautéed mushrooms, and green salads (his was a bit more elaborate than mine).  I also had some plain yogurt with fruit and granola, in lieu of dessert. Because it's Lent.  (I know some of you probably think I cheated because that sounds like a dessert; but in my book, if it doesn't include chocolate or caramel or icing, and it isn't a cookie or a brownie or a cake, it is most definitely not a dessert.)

There is so much to let go of as you get older.  But there is also much to look forward to.  Every night that my husband and I are at home eating our dinner together, it feels like a date.  That's not too bad a way to live, is it?  Sure, sometimes we miss those bygone years when we always had our boys with us, when we saw them every single day; but they are all thriving at the moment, praise God.  And we are so, SO happy to have each other.

Full disclosure: I took those Corrie ten Boom quotes to heart, and I want to live my life holding onto things loosely; but when it comes to my husband, my grip is probably a bit too tight.  I'll be working on that, but I can't promise I'll get good at it!  In the meantime, I hope there are lots of dinner dates in our future.

A Beautiful Mother's Day and a Beautiful Life!

I am late with my Mother's Day post, but that's about par for the course for me these days!

We had such a special celebration last Sunday, because our oldest grandson, G-Man (who is the oldest of son #3's five offspring), made his First Holy Communion that day.  What could be better than spending Mother's Day seeing one of your precious children's children receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time ever?  It was beautiful.

This grandson of ours will always occupy a special place in my heart because of the four-and-a-half months we lived with him and his parents when he was a baby.  We were still living in NH at the time, and my husband was still working as an airline pilot.  So he commuted to work while I played the part of full-time nanny, so that our son and his wife didn't have to put the little guy into day care.  Our daughter-in-law had completed her three-month maternity leave from her job at UVA, and there was about a four-month stretch until the end of the school year.  She had decided that when that semester ended, she was going to quit her job and stay at home with the little guy.  We filled in that gap and it was a very special time for us--and of course, G-Man was often the star of my blog posts in those days, as you can see here.  

Oh my, reading over that old post has made me misty-eyed.  And also amazed at how surprising life can be, and how beautiful.  Two years after that post was written, we had moved away from NH and become Virginians--which we never would have imagined doing at that point.  (Best move ever: with three sons living close-by, we are no longer constantly in travel mode.)  G-Man has a little brother now who's just a bit older than he was in those old photos.  And he's often riding on my left hip and staring at my face, just like his big brother was in those photos from 2015.  Oh my goodness, it's like deja vu (all over again. Ha ha!).

After Mass, we went over to G-Man's house for a brunch with lots of beloved people: G-Man, his parents, his four siblings, and his maternal grandmother; son #4, his wife, and their four kids; and one of our boys' cousins (named after yours truly!), who lives in the area and has two delightful daughters.

We got a picture of G-Man with his grandfather (my guy, whom he calls Papa), his godfather (his uncle, our son #4), and his father.  All of his earthly fathers looking out for him, body and soul.

So that was Mother's Day, one for the ages.  

If you come here often you know that ever since we moved down to VA, the boys who live nearby come over to have a special Mother's Day dinner with my husband and me, without spouses or kids--so that we can relive the old days when they were just mama's boys.  (The gift of time spent together, which is my #1 love language.)  It's usually not on actual Mother's Day, because we want them to spend that with their deserving wives.  I've written about this tradition before.  Here's last year's post, which included a big surprise for me. 

Oh no, not again.  An old blog post, making me misty-eyed! 

Anyway, I usually only get three or four of my five boys at once, but I'll take whatever I can get!  I am so grateful for this tradition.  I didn't think it was going to happen this year, because everyone is so very busy with their kids' school and after-school activities, work, and other commitments.  I had said that we should skip it this year, and that our wonderful celebration for G-Man's First Communion was enough of a Mother's Day treat for me.  

But those boys...the Tuesday after Mother's Day, our VA sons (all three of whom live between 40 and 50 minutes from our front door) came anyway.  And we had steaks and baked potatoes, with cheesecake for dessert.  And we talked about the two brothers who were missing, so that it was almost as if they were there, too.  And we laughed. And it was wonderful.

I have the best sons.  Just sayin'.

I tell you what, I'll always be glad that I have this blog. It's keeping memories alive for me.  As the years pass, things tend to get blurry.  But all I have to do to remember exactly what I was doing and thinking and feeling during some moment in my life is to click on an old post buried in my archives, and I'm transported back in time.  It's a gift, this blogging thing.  I don't do it as much as I used to, but I don't think I can ever give it up completely.  I'll be 65 this summer; my memories are only going to get fuzzier with age.  I'm going to need to read the story of my life, and luckily, I'll know where to find it.

Deep thoughts about blogging.  Yikes, that's enough of that for today. 

A belated Happy Mother's Day, dear readers.  God bless you!

Resurrecting the Blog: From Iowa, with Love

Well,  just when I'd begun to think that it seriously might be time to close up shop here (I mean, it's been over TWO MONTHS since I posted anything new!), something rather extraordinary happened that made me wonder if perhaps I should stick around and keep on blogging.  For a little while longer, anyway.  (More about that in a minute.)

This past Saturday, two days after Thanksgiving, my husband and I started a two-day trek out to visit our oldest son and his family in Iowa.  We had just seen the families of our three VA boys (sons # 2, 3, and 4) over Thanksgiving, and we will be seeing them again for Christmas, along with our youngest son and his pregnant wife who will be coming from Nashville.  But we knew that we were not going to be able to spend any of the holidays with our firstborn's gang; so we decided to squeeze in a trip to Iowa before the Christmas season starts getting too busy.

We drove about 10 hours on Saturday and stopped in South Bend, IN, where we stayed with one of my husband's younger sisters and her husband and caught the Notre Dame-USC game (on TV).  We were joined by another younger brother of my husband's, along with a few nieces and nephews who go to school out there.

My sweet sister-in-law is the hostess with the mostest and I just love her.

On Sunday we went to an early Mass at the crypt at Sacred Heart Basilica on the Notre Dame campus, visited for a few more hours with our Pearl relatives, and then set out to finish up the last five hours of our road trip.  Our son had told us that his family was planning to go to a barn dance that day, where lots of Catholic families from his area in Iowa and even some from farther away (from Illinois and Wisconsin) were gathering at the farm of a large homeschooling Catholic family.  The location for this barn dance was actually between South Bend and our son's house, maybe an hour from where he lives--we would have had to pass it anyway on our way to our final destination.  So we decided to plan to meet them at the barn dance; we told him and his wife not to tell the kids we were coming, so it could be a surprise.  We thought it would be so much fun to show up and when they saw us say, "Oh wow!  We just wanted to come to this barn dance; we didn't know you were going to be here, too!"

It really was a hoot to walk up the hill that led to the barn and see our granddaughter (one of the 11-year-old twins) look in our direction, then look at her father as if to say, "What is going on?!"--and then look at us again and realize that her mind wasn't playing tricks on her, it really was us!  We hadn't seen this sweet family since they came to visit in VA in September, and it was a joyful reunion, to put it mildly.

An awesome sign on the fence outside the barn.

This barn dance was something else, I'll tell you.  There must have been a couple hundred people there--lots of big families with kids of all ages, from teens down to newborns.  Sweet, modestly dressed, well-behaved children all.  It was a joy to watch them on the dance floor--big ones holding the hands of little ones, without any thought about looking "cool."  There was an impressive pot luck meal and a man who was directing the dancers, showing them all the steps, acting as DJ for the music. Our granddaughters were particularly excited to do the Virginia Reel, which they'd learned at the last barn dance they'd attended at this place.  (Apparently these amazing hosts have them four times a year!)

My husband left the barn to go into the house just before we were about to leave (I was still in the barn, talking to my grandkids while they gathered up their coats and got ready to go), and he saw the wife/mother of the family who owned the farm, so he stopped to thank her.  She was talking to another woman, so he introduced himself to her.  This woman told my husband that she recognized his wife.  He thought she must be talking about our daughter-in-law, because how in the world would she know me?  But then she said, "You have lots of sons, don't you?"  He told her that we did, but again, he was baffled.  How did she know this about him, and how did she know me?  Then she told him that she recognized me from the picture on my blog.  Apparently, this woman used to read it and recognized me, and she remembered that we had a number of sons.

My husband brought this nice woman from Illinois into the barn to meet me, and she actually gave me a hug as if we were old friends.  We talked for a bit (not about the blog, but about how wonderful it was that these Catholic homeschooling families are creating this beautiful parallel community of like-minded people, even traveling long distances to get together, and things along that line).  After a few minutes she hugged me again before she left.  

Wait, I did ask her one blog-related question.  I asked how in the world she ever found this little site of mine.  She couldn't remember how she'd stumbled upon it, and it had been a number of years since she'd read it.  But it touched me beyond belief that she'd once been a reader, and that she'd come to know my boys a little (they are so worth knowing, according to their not-at-all biased mommy!).  Meeting this very kind woman, a mom much younger than I, reminded me again that aside from being an online scrapbook of family memories for me, this blog might have something to offer readers I will most likely never meet.  I felt extraordinarily blessed to have met this one. 

Anyway--

I think maybe I'm back.  I'm a bit overwhelmed by how much I should have written about the past couple of months but didn't.  There are SO MANY birthdays in the Pearl family in October and November, and I never blogged once during those months.  Perhaps I'll do a little family news recap before all else is eclipsed by Christmas goings-on.

If you're here, you're probably related to me by blood or marriage, and you know I love you!  If you're not related to me and you read this blog anyway, God bless you and thanks so much for stopping by.

This post has gone on long enough, so I'll end here.  But in the next few days, I'm going to have to do a photo dump to show you our oldest son's amazing little farm (it's more of a homestead, I guess, but WOW).  I'll leave you with just one picture, until next time.

The State of the Blog

It has been almost a full month since my last post! And so much has happened that I could have written about! We had a big family wedding here in NY just before the Fourth of July, then the Baptism of our youngest grandchild the day after the wedding, then a week-long vacation with four of our boys and their wives and 13 of our grandchildren at our Oyster Haven VRBO lake house; and since then, daily visiting with relatives from both my husband's family and mine...

There has been so much to write about, but so little motivation to write!

This might be part of the problem.

Yes indeed, that might be it for sure.

Anyway, this is just a quick post to say that eleven-plus years ago, I hit the "publish" button on my first post for String of Pearls (which is what I called this blog before I tweaked the name with a tip o' the hat to the Irish a few years back)...and somehow, I'm still here.  I'm still blogging.  

And as if the fact that I'm in my 60's doesn't tell you that I'm a dinosaur, saying that I'm a blogger in 2022 shouts it loud and clear.

So many of the blogs that I followed back in the day are no longer being updated.  Haven’t been in quite some time, actually.  When I joined the fray, there were Catholic bloggers who'd already been at it a long time. Little did I know that the Old Guard bloggers whose names were so well-known that all you needed to say was "Grace" or "Dwija" or "Britt" and everyone knew exactly whom you were talking about were about to abandon long form blogging for the brighter, shinier world of Instagram.  I had jumped on a speeding train that was about slow down and pretty much head to the station for the last time, and I didn't even know it.  Eventually, I followed the crowd and started posting more on Instagram than I did here at the blog...but I was ON FIRE for blogging as a newbie in 2011.

When I started this site, my youngest son was about to graduate from high school and head off to Notre Dame, and my oldest son was about to become a new father to identical twin girls.  I was about to become an empty-nester and a first-time Grammy, all at once. And suddenly, I had this great platform for archiving family memories and keeping an online journal, not to mention a thoroughly delightful way to exercise my writing muscles on a regular basis, all wrapped up into one glorious package.  Plus, there was an unexpected blessing: blogging was a way to connect and make "friends" with fellow writers and other like-minded fellow Catholic moms.

I loved blogging.

I blogged nearly every day the first few years.  In 2011, I wrote 286 blog posts (and I started in March, so I missed the first few months!).  In 2012, I wrote 331 posts; in 2013, 275.  Those were the halcyon days of blogging for me.  Jump ahead to 2017, and I only posted 49 times that whole year.  If you add up 2018, 2019, and 2020, there were 142 posts in all; my goodness, in one of my prior "unproductive" years, 2016, there were more than that (180).  I'm making a short story very long here; suffice it to say that I'm blogging way, way less these days.  It's already July and so far my output for 2022 is 23 posts, counting this one.  2011 me would not recognize 2022 me.  I did spend six of these past years immersed in the Insta-world; but I can’t blame my meager blogging output on Instagram anymore, because I deleted my account in 2021.

But I’m not quite finished, I guess.  This blog is not dead yet.

Jenny Uebbing, one of my earliest blogging heroes, said in her most recent post at Mama Needs Coffee, "blogging is dead!"  But she also said, "I can resurrect this dead horse any old time it works for me and then beat it back into submission with my silence and nobody will care."  Hey, that’s how I feel about my dying horse, too. (But Jenny, I for one do care about yours!  And once a month is just not often enough for me to hear what you have to say!)

She only blogs sporadically now; but in another recent Mama Needs Coffee post, Uebbing says, "My heart always thrills at the sight of an old fashioned long form blog post popping up from one of my dusty, trusty favorite blogs who've somehow managed to survive instagram tiktok and substack."  (I had to look up substack, because like I told you above, I am a bit of a dinosaur; but YES!  Yes to all this!) 

So many of the bloggers I "met" early on have a big presence on Instagram these days, but not so much in the blogosphere; however, several of them are still at it, and my heart thrills at the site of their latest old fashioned long form blog posts.  Kendra Tierney doesn't post as often as she used to at Catholic All Year, but she's still blogging.  Colleen at Martin Family Moments, Madeline at A Dash of Snark, and Beth at A Mom's Life are still updating regularly, and they are my core blogger "friend" group that I visit with these days.  Ernie at  No Small Feat is another regular blogger who's been at it a while but whose site I found just recently.

I now have more than 1,500 posts in my archives, and over 650,000 page views—it would be sorta cool to get to a million.  (She throws her head back and cackles!  As if!)  But it looks like that would take another ten years at least, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be at this that long!

I currently have an IT problem that I can't quite figure out: I can't comment on either my blog or any other blogs using my laptop or iPhone, but I can do so on my Kindle.  (??)  It's as if the blogger dashboard doesn't have me signed in to my account...and yet I can still do my blog posts.  I don't get it.  I hesitate to try to "fix" the problem, because I'm afraid I'll end up locked out of my blog altogether.  So if you've been kind enough to leave me a comment in recent months and I haven't acknowledged it, sorry about that!  It's just a lot harder for me to comment than it used to be. But I love hearing from you!

P.S. This is now my only social media outlet!  I'm totally off Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.  I've never been on TikTok.  And Substack...yikes, what next?  I can't keep up!  So I shall only blog!  (Posts are coming soon about all the wonderful July goings-on in the Pearl clan, so stay tuned.)