Hope

Sometimes, hope can be inspired by the most mundane things, especially in this crazy, mixed-up world in which we're currently living.  Sometimes, hope looks like a family of nine filling up an entire pew at a weekday Mass: a mother on one end and a father on the other, with their seven beautiful children--five older daughters and two young sons--between them. 

That hope-filled sight is what my husband and I saw a few rows ahead of us when we attended Mass  on Friday morning--on March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph.  As if that family wasn't sweet enough already, they were joined by a grandmother a few minutes after they'd gotten seated.

But it was more than merely seeing three generations of a large, lovely Catholic family sitting together at Mass that comforted our wounded hearts and refreshed our weary souls.  It was that this particular family, which we'd never seen before that day, was there at church unmasked, every single one of them, their faces--made in the image and likeness of God--visible to all and shining with the light of faith.  In a sea of masked faces, this family stood out.  In a good way.  Such a good way. It made my husband and me wonder: is it possible that we can hope for an end to all of this, sooner rather than later?

Sunday Mass attendance is way down at our parish, even though the Covid lockdown of churches in our state ended a while back.  There are no longer pews roped-off, but the church is always far from crowded and people are careful to space themselves out from others.  There is a sign on the door saying that masks are required, so most if not all people wear them.  My husband retired early from his career as a commercial airline pilot in September of 2020, and since then we've been going to daily Mass together whenever we can.  (If ever there was a time that our country and our world needed extra prayers and sacrifices, we thought, this is surely it.) There is a core group of about 30 "regulars" who usually attend daily Mass, but even when the group is that small and that spaced-out, pretty much everyone wears a mask.

Both my husband and I tested positive for Covid in early December of 2020, and we spent about 10 days battling what felt like the flu.  We both ran slight fevers, were tired, had body aches and headaches, and had mild coughs.  Neither of us lost our sense of taste or smell, but we both felt our sense of taste was "off."  (For me, it was like being in the first trimester of pregnancy, when your stomach is queasy and nothing tastes good. I couldn't even stand the taste of my beloved coffee and was drinking cinnamon tea instead--so you know I was sick!)

Once we'd recovered from Covid and knew that we couldn't contract or spread the virus, we thought maybe it was okay to forget about masking up for Mass.  But our parish priest made a comment about obedience and pride during a homily, and we asked ourselves if maybe that message applied to us.  So on went the masks again.  We suspect that Father believes the pandemic is over and is anxious for people to get back to living normally and attending Mass regularly, but he wants to be obedient to the instructions of his Bishop.  So in a way, we feel that wearing our masks in church makes his job easier, and we look at it as a sacrifice we can offer up; but in another way, it seems so very wrong on so many levels, and we think it's doing so much harm--to individuals and to society as a whole. 

So you can imagine how thrilled we were to see this unmasked family.  (I want to be them when I grow up!) They did not seem disobedient or prideful; on the contrary, by their humble demeanor they exuded an aura of piety and grace.  And courage.

In this day and age, oddly enough, walking around without a mask on is courageous.  You can get yourself into a whole lot of hot water with some folks if you do. But how crazy is it that even if people have gotten the vaccine, or better yet, if they've developed the antibodies from having fought off the virus, they are still required to wear masks and keep "socially distant" (ugh, what an awful term!) until...well, until when? When will we decide that this virus with an extremely low mortality rate has run its course and herd immunity has been achieved?  When will we decide that we can live again--fully live, without our humanity covered up by pieces of cloth that many scientific studies have shown don't really work against viruses but instead merely give the pretense of protection? When will we stop being afraid of other people?!

"We have spent a year being so afraid of dying that we've been afraid of living."

I saw that quote somewhere, so I can't take credit for it. However,  I agree with it wholeheartedly.  In the words of George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, "I want to live again!  Please God, let me live again!"  Our family has been unusual in that since the end of the initial "15 days to flatten the curve" lockdown, we have not let Covid keep us apart.  We have not stopped seeing each other. We get together to celebrate birthdays and holidays. Our grandchildren come over to our house routinely to play in our basement.  We shop, we go out to eat, we go to the gym.  In our own little world, we have been living as normal a life as possible.  But when the greater world outside your door has gone mad, it can't help but affect you.  

When I get depressed, I remind myself that all the people I love most and I are living here now, in this time in history, for a reason.  God put us here at this strange time, so this is where we're meant to be.  In my lifetime, I have never known real suffering; but throughout history, so many have had to endure unimaginable horrors--wars, famines, plagues, and worse.  We will get through this; and perhaps with the help of the heavy crosses we will be asked to bear, we will even become saints in the process.

But it will take a lot of daily Masses.  And Rosaries. And novenas.  It will take faith in God's will for our lives and faith in His boundless love and mercy.  It will take courage.  And it will take a lot of hope.

Realtor Listing Images v. Real Living: the Dining Room

With so many people spending so much more time at home, due to the countless closures and restrictions that have occurred in the wake of the Covid-19 virus, there has never been a time when the "Theology of Home" mindset--the idea of making your home a true Domestic Church, an oasis of peace and tranquility for you and your loved ones--has been more essential (IMHO). No matter what storms are brewing outside your doors, inside your house, you can create a comforting and beautiful atmosphere that is like a foretaste of what awaits us after we leave this imperfect world and go to our eternal home to be with our Lord.

I have always been such an inveterate homebody that the quarantine life (not that we have been living that life as strictly as some) comes somewhat naturally to me!  I've always been happiest at home, with my family gathered about me. If I had to pick one place to spend my time during this earthly life, that would be it. Home. Not Paris.  Not Rome (that's right, not even my beloved Rome!).  Just HOME.

I have always been a nester, too, never happier than when feathering my own little corner of the world.  And we didn't always have the most impressive of nests, either: during our married life we've lived in two different tiny apartments in TX, a modest base housing duplex in TX, a 3-bedroom ranch house in FL purchased with a VA loan, a 1,000-sq. ft. rented ranch house in IL, another slightly bigger rented Cape Cod house in NH; and then finally, we bought what we figured would be our "forever home" in NH, a 4-bedroom Colonial that sat on a bucolic wooded lot more than an acre in size, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac street.  With five Catholic school tuitions to pay and five large and growing boys to feed, we didn’t always have a big home improvement budget, so we put a lot of DIY sweat equity into that house (a foreclosure bargain for us, because it was not quite finished off when the builder went bankrupt and it sat unoccupied for two years) over the course of the 26 years we lived there.  And it became  perfect for us, a home we thought we wouldn't ever want to leave: not only was it a spacious, solidly-built, lovely house in an idyllic setting, but it was our home base, our true north—most importantly because it was filled with memories of raising our boys. We moved in when the oldest of our five sons was half-way through first grade, and it was the only home our youngest ever knew.  We imagined how well it would fit all the grandkids we would someday have when they came to visit us there.

But the funny thing is, before we owned that beloved Colonial, every other place we ever lived was every bit as much "home" to me, an oasis of peace and a source of joy.  Home really isn't a place; it's a feeling.  And I got that desired feeling of utter contentment and “belonging” every time I walked into the door of any apartment or house where my people lived, no matter how humble it might be. 

When all of our boys grew up, graduated from college, and started establishing themselves far from NH, we spent most of our time on the road visiting them, and every time we pulled into our driveway we would ask ourselves, "Why do we even have this house?"  We were never there anymore!

When it became clear that three of our five boys were going to stay settled not far from each other in VA, we decided to make the move to live closer to them and our growing brood of grandchildren.  So in late 2016/ early 2017, we started looking at listings that would put us as equidistant to all of our VA peeps as possible.  And one listing kept drawing my eye back, not matter how many I looked at--even though it was just one of those quickly-built, pre-fab houses in one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods where every other house looks practically identical to the one two doors down.  It wasn’t a one-of-a-kind treasure, by any means; but this sweet house just looked RIGHT for us.  When we finally took a trip down to walk through it in person, we only looked at this house and one other, and that's all it took: my mind was made up (and my husband was happy with it as long as I was; he's pretty awesome that way).

Our cozy cottage is not as large or well-built as our old house.  The yard is the size of a postage stamp.  But I have grown to love this house so much--and when I think of home, I no longer pine for that Colonial in NH. I think of this darling white-picket-fence house in a quaint little VA town, which became ours in the spring of 2017 and which has become my home in every way that's important.  (And now all four married sons live in the area, and all 16-going-on-17 grandkids!  And this is the house they think of as "Papa and Grammy's house," so how can I not love it?)

If you've come here often over the years, you might know that I am a big fan of having a dining room for special holiday meals, even if it isn't used all the time.  Our dining room in NH was almost ridiculously oversized, and it was one of my favorite things about that house.  If this VA house hadn't had one, I don't think we would have bought it; there is a roomy breakfast nook area off the kitchen, but fortunately, there is also my must-have formal dining room.  In the listing, this room was set up in a very minimalist way (probably staged for selling).  With so little furniture to distract the eye, the beauty of that gray-painted tray ceiling really stood out.

I have a lot of dining room furniture--I mean, really...A LOT.  But I hoped I'd be able to squeeze it into this room.  One glass-fronted china cabinet was repurposed to showcase my porcelain doll collection and has a spot in our new master bedroom.  But I was able to fit the rest of my pieces--including the antique oak dining table and chairs, with a matching sideboard, that my mom passed on to me when she and my dad downsized many years ago.  There isn't as much room to walk around the table as there was in NH, but we have made it work for us here!

I guess my decorating style would not be considered minimalist [insert laughing face emoji here!].

In our old dining room the antique oak sideboard served as a bar.  One thing I really appreciate about this new house is the little bar area (kind of a mini butler's pantry) between the kitchen and dining room, right around the corner from the sideboard.  (The kitchen in this new house, in fact, is wonderful; it's bigger and has lots more storage and work space than our old kitchen had--but that's a topic for another installment of Realtor Listing Images v. Real Living.)

Over the years, I've often wondered what kind of blog I have.  I'm not an Internet "influencer" when it comes to any of the usual topics--Faith, fashion, home decor, parenting...I just write about this and that, when the spirit moves me.  For some reason, all this Covid stuff is making me focus even more than usual on my home, and I want to write about how blessed I feel to have one that I love so much.  But as I said, that's been pretty much the case no matter where we've lived.  As long as I have my familiar things about me, and my husband by my side, I could live just about anywhere.

That's all for now.  But I do have the real estate listing pictures from the other rooms in our VA house, and maybe I'll be back to show you how different (and more cluttered!)  this place looks, now that it's set up for real living and not for show!    

Beginning a Whole New Chapter

Life is like this amazing, never-before-read novel, with so many unexpected plot twists.  And just when you get immersed in one particular chapter of it (I'm a wife!  I'm pregnant! I'm a mommy! My firstborn can walk! Welcome to the world, son #5!  I can't believe I have a teenager!  My youngest is a college graduate!  My boys are all married men!  I'm a grandmother!  I have 16--count them, 16!--grandchildren!), that one ends and a whole new one begins.

Here's the latest plot twist in the story of my beautiful and extraordinarily blessed life: my husband has retired from his long-held job as a commercial airline pilot.  His official retirement date was September 1.

Due to the decrease in air travel caused by the pandemic, his airline was forced to make drastic changes.  The company went from being on the cusp of hiring thousands of new pilots just before the Covid-19 crisis hit to having to let thousands of their currently employed pilots go--forget about hiring any new ones.

In order to give some of the less senior pilots a chance to avoid furlough, an early retirement option was offered.  At 62, my husband is three years shy of mandatory retirement age, but he decided to take the early out.  It's like a dream come true for him, really, being able to retire ahead of schedule and spend more time with our ever-expanding family.  And with me, of course!  (This surprising turn of events, this unplanned early retirement, would have to be filed under the title "unexpected pluses of the Covid-19 pandemic.")

In typical Pearl family fashion, my husband's retirement party last weekend was a simple one held here at our house, with our four oldest boys, who live near us in VA, and their wives and children.

There were a lot of little people there to celebrate their Papa's retirement.  And there might have also been a tear-inducing video slide show set to music, put together by our second son and his wife, filled with so many beautiful images of a full and happy life that has been incredibly rich in blessings. [Sniff]

I am proud of the long and successful career my guy had with this major airline, where he was hired in early 1988 after serving eight years in the US Navy as a fighter pilot.  He spent his first few months as an engineer on the 727 before moving on to spend about a year-and-a-half as a copilot on the DC-9.  In late 1989, he began flying the 767, and he spent the bulk of his 32-year career on this aircraft.  He started flying the 767-ER internationally in 1996 and became a captain in 2006--an upgrade which he put off as long as possible during our boys' school years, because his seniority as a first officer allowed him more flexibility with his schedule (meaning more time for coaching his boys in football and lacrosse and more quality family time in general).  He thought he might finish out his career on the 767-ER, but in 2016 he transitioned and became a captain on the A330, which he continued flying internationally until his recent retirement.

With a husband flying internationally for 24 straight years, you might think that I saw much of the world right along with him.  Many pilots' wives tag along on their husbands' trips--especially the ones to popular European destinations--if there are seats available on the plane.  But I was not your typical airline pilot's wife.  Not by a long shot!

I didn't particularly care about traveling abroad (even though my husband got to visit pretty much every major city in Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East that a tourist would want to see), and I had a pretty intense fear of flying.  In fact, when he first got hired by the airline in 1988, I told him that I hoped he didn't think I was going to become a jet-setter, because I wanted to keep my feet securely planted on terra firma, and I wasn't going to leave my babies (we had four boys at the time) to go off galivanting around the globe.  He knew this about me from the get-go, and it never bothered him that I didn't want to travel.  In fact, after he'd been working for the airline for a while he admitted that it was a bit of a relief that I wasn't always saying "take me somewhere!" every time he got back home from a trip, tired and looking forward to a homecooked meal and sleeping in his own bed.  The last place he wanted to be when he wasn't working was in an airport, trying to get stand-by seats on a flight.  In fact, all the traveling he did over the years made him more of a homebody than ever.

We did take a few special family trips by plane: to Bermuda, to visit my husband's brother's family; to Disney World--our one and only trip to the Magic Kingdom; to South Bend, so that our three oldest could attend a lacrosse camp at Notre Dame.  My husband took one or two of his sons at a time out to Notre Dame for football weekends, while I held down the fort with the others.  And when our boys were out at Notre Dame during their college years, they were able to fly back and forth between New Hampshire and Indiana as non-revenue stand-bys, and that was a financial blessing indeed during their college years.  But generally, we didn't do a whole lot of travel by air, opting instead for road trips to visit relatives.  However, I used to tell my husband all the time that although I couldn't fly off with him AWAY from my babies, I felt sure that if they grew up and flew far away from our nest, I would be able to overcome my fears and fly TO them.  I pretty much promised him that it would be so.

Do you think I was able to keep that promise?  Did I conquer my fear of flying?

Yes, I did.  (Mostly!)

And remember what I said about chapters, about how they end and brand new ones begin?  In December of 2011, with our youngest son settled as a freshman undergrad at Notre Dame and our four older boys already college graduates and out on their own in the working world (the oldest married with twin daughters), I finally got on a plane that my husband was "driving" and accompanied him on a working trip to Nice (which included a little side trip to Monaco!). He'd been flying international trips for 15 years before I ever got around to tagging along on one; but the time was finally right.

You know what?  I'm going to end here and pick back up next time with a brief re-cap of our Nice trip (about which I wrote a number of posts a LONG time ago, in my earliest blogging days--here, here, and here, for instance..and maybe now there's no need for a re-cap?).  And then after that, perhaps I'll reminisce about some other wonderful trips that I finally got around to taking with my husband--proudly sitting in my passenger seat, thinking, "That's right, everyone!  My husband is flying this plane!"

That chapter of his life is finished now; after spending his entire adult working life--40 years!--with a cockpit for an office, it is unlikely that my favorite pilot will ever fly a plane again.  That's bittersweet...but mostly sweet.

I was almost going to use this post to announce my own retirement, from this blog...but perhaps I'll stick around for a little bit after all.  I might have another chapter or two to write before I'm done.  Au revoir, mes amis!

Looking for Beauty in a Broken World

I was going to say "an ugly world," because that's how I often feel these days after watching a horrifying news story featuring the violent rioting in the streets of our cities or one of those ever-changing reports about the Covid-19 pandemic (which apparently has no end in sight, or maybe it does, or who knows?). But if I let myself go down the rabbit hole of worry, anxiety, and sadness that opens up before me, I'm afraid I'll fall into a dark pit of despair and get truly depressed deep down in my soul.  And I know that no matter what, Our Lady promised at Fatima that in the end, Her Immaculate Heart would triumph.  And She keeps Her promises.  So there's hope, always.

The world is damaged, but still beautiful; broken but still fixable.  And I want it fixed, ASAP, for the 28 (and counting!) people who mean the most to me: my children and grandchildren.

Not to put a morbid spin on things, but relatively speaking, I will probably not be long for this earth.  The average life expectancy for a woman in the US today is 81.1 years (I just looked it up), and I'm about to celebrate my 62nd birthday; so if I get another 20 years in this life, I will have done better than average.  My husband and I have talked about this frequently as of late--but when we do, it's not to fill ourselves with an ever-present fear of dying, but rather to remind ourselves that we should live every single minute of every single day to the fullest.  And most importantly, we remind ourselves that we should strive, to the best of our frail human abilities, to keep our immortal souls in a state of grace.

So it's not for myself that I worry about the chaotic state of the world, or even for my husband; I desperately want it to heal for all of my beloved offspring and their beloved offspring.

I also want it to heal before religious freedom is eradicated in this country.  With so much hate-fueled violence exploding all over the place in recent weeks, I expect that the mob might come next for the Catholic Church and Her faithful, who have already been weakened by months of being denied Mass and the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist.  But Christ warned us that they would hate us because they hated Him first, so this is something we need to prepare to face.

But I refuse to despair completely!  I am putting my trust in Our Lady's promise.  And I look at the faces of the people I love and believe that God will make something good come out of all this bad we're experiencing these days.  He loves us and wants the best for us, and as long as we stay faithful there is no force that can destroy us!

Look for beauty wherever you can find it.  I find it in images like these--all photos texted to me recently by my by daughters-in-law Ginger and Preciosa.

Son #2 with his #3 son.

Son #3's most recent family photo.

Son #2's firstborn, giving Ree Ree a moment of extreme 

deja vu--because his dad and his uncles were as crazy

about dinosaurs back in the day as he is!

I can almost feel my pulse rate slowing down when I walk away from all the negative stories on social media and look at these pictures.  They make me believe that all will be well.  We just need to pray lots of Rosaries!

From Our House to Yours (From a Safe Social Distance, of Course!)

I feel a coughing fit coming on, but rest assured it isn't being caused by the coronavirus; I'm just choking on the dust here at the old blog, which has been sitting on the shelf, utterly neglected, since March 7.  When I first decided to dip my toes into the then-overcrowded pool of daily bloggers back in March of 2011, I woke up itching to write every morning and could not have conceived of a time when I could go over a month without posting. But nine years later...well, things have changed.

Now there's an understatement for you!

So. Much. Has. Changed.

My last post on March 7 was about something so frivolous, in light of current events: it was about setting my table with my beloved blue-and-white transferware dishes.  (And about how much I love setting said table for big, extended family dinners--remember those?)  At the time, I was meal planning for a Pearl family St. Patrick's Day party at Papa and Grammy's house, with our four grown sons who live nearby and their growing broods.  But then we were told to begin the process of social distancing and were advised to gather in groups of no more than 10.

So a get-together that was going to include 10 adults and 16 young children did not happen; and our St. Patty's extravaganza ended up looking like this (as in corned beef and cabbage for two).

Luckily, that Irishman up there is my favorite human; so if I have to be quarantined inside my home with anyone, at least it's with him.  (He is an essential worker; but since he flies exclusively internationally, all of his flights have been cancelled for over a month now and he's been hanging out with yours truly.)   Things could most definitely be worse.

So, what happened?  (I realize, dear readers, that you know very well what happened; I'm just asking that rhetorical question so I can get the answer written down for my future self with my future old age memory loss, and for posterity.)  In a nutshell: a virus was globally unleashed, the world reacted with unprecedented fear, and one by one, the freedoms granted to Americans in the United States Constitution began to disappear with breakneck speed.  Worst of all: no gathering in churches.  No Mass.  No Eucharist. Lent 2020: it was the Lentiest Lent we ever Lented.  (I can't take credit for that line; I saw it somewhere in my online travels--over on Instagram, I think.)

I am not going to tell you my innermost thoughts on all of this, because that's one surefire way to draw the ire of some.  Lines have been drawn, people are taking sides, neighbors have turned against one another.  I won't get into it except to say that I do believe with all my heart that God can make good come out of bad, and I am holding on to the hope that before too long, life will look normal again.  Maybe God knew we were getting too complacent...I doubt that I will ever take the Mass or the Eucharist for granted again, once this is all over, I can tell you that.

I have not been able to make myself blog about this terrifying and soul-aching era of the coronavirus pandemic, though; at a time when so many people are writing very deep and moving pieces about how this difficult situation has strengthened them in their Faith and reminded them to lean on God and trust in His endless love and mercy, I find I have the most monumental writer's block.  I think this is the reason I've stayed away from my blog throughout this crisis.  I can't really write about it.  I can't.  I've put together a few brief Instagram posts, but just haven't had the heart to go into it too much.  My mind and heart are so full right now, I would find it overwhelming to try to figure out how to put my thoughts into words.

But pictures--they're worth a thousand words.  (Or so I've heard.)  So I thought I'd do a little Lent 2020 photo dump.  Because someday, this crazy season filled with so many crosses that we could have never imagined we'd have to carry will be a faded memory that seems like a bad dream (I hope so anyway!), and I want to remember that it really happened.

So without further ado--

Who will ever be able to forget the great toilet paper shortage of 2020?

(Really?  Toilet paper?  When intestinal distress is not even a symptom of the virus?)

Or how about Mass at home, live-streamed on the television?

We "attended" the 10:00 a.m. Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the University of Notre Dame campus every Sunday, after our local parish church had to close its doors by order of the governor of VA.  We set up our mantle like an altar, dressed in our Sunday best, and tried to make it as holy an experience as possible.  But it made me tear up each and every week.

And aside from the churches, who could forget all the other closings...

so many closings!

Schools closed for the remainder of the year!  No going to the movies, to sporting events, to restaurants!  In some states, even, no visiting from house to house, even amongst family members... [Insert a shocked face emoji, here, followed by a crying face emoji.]

At least we can still shop for groceries and other essentials.  Masks are encouraged when you're out and about--but of course, like toilet paper, they are a precious and hard-to-find commodity.  To help out until more can be manufactured and distributed, seamstresses are encouraged to make them at home (but good luck finding elastic anywhere!  In a pinch, hairbands will do the trick!).

So here's another Lent 2020/coronavirus memory of mine...

making masks (to donate to local EMT's and nurses, as well as family members who need them for work).

I suppose it's fortunate that we live in the Internet age during this strange era where we are all staying inside our own homes and not able to get together with our loved ones.   I don't think any of us will ever forget

the Zoom happy hours with family!

If you don't laugh, you'll certainly cry...so in times of crisis, sometimes you just have to try to see the humor in things.  One thing there hasn't been a shortage of during this strange time (thank you, Iinternet!) is

funny memes! :)

(That should say masks, not mask; yes, I am the typo police--even when it

comes to humorous Internet memes.)

You know, on that positive note, I think I'll end this post.  But I'll be back soon--maybe even tomorrow--to show you how my husband and I managed to make our Easter special, in spite of having to watch the Mass on TV and being denied the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  And I'll also be back to show you what I've been doing lately to help chase away the blues when the weight of the world's problems becomes too oppressive to bear.

Aside from praying, that is!  Because my hubby and I have a busier prayer life than ever these days--the list of prayers we say after our daily Rosary is ever-growing. We have so many perpetual novenas going, among them this one to of all people, St. Corona.

St. Corona--Patron saint of plagues and pandemics.  (!!)

God bless you all with health and peace, until next time (which will hopefully be a lot sooner than a month from now!).