Prayers at the Grotto

There is a place that touches my soul--and has touched the souls of countless others--every time I gaze upon it: this special place is the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes at the University of Notre Dame, a faithful replica of the one in France that marks the location of Mary's 19th-century apparitions to St. Bernadette.  I've blogged about this beautiful stone cave carved into a little hillside behind the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's glorious campus before; but it's a subject that bears repeating--especially on a Sunday, when one's mind is focused on prayer.

My husband, two of my sons, and I, praying at the Grotto a few weekends ago.

Some people think Notre Dame is all about the football, but there is so much more to that place than football or any other sport.  To me--and to so many others, I know--Notre Dame is about the Grotto and all that the Grotto stands for.  It's about celebrating our Catholic Faith on a daily basis, out loud and with joy; and it's about realizing our frailties, but feeling confident that we can ask Our Blessed Mother--Our Lady, for whom the university was named--to help us out as we struggle along in our quest to be joined one day with Her Beloved Son.

Don't get me wrong, the football is great.  Especially this year--so far anyway!  (Did you catch the 41-3 win over Miami last night?  How about those Irish, huh?)  And there are so many other wonderful traditions that make Notre Dame a unique and special institution.  But the Grotto...the Grotto is in a league of its own.

Mounted at the Grotto is a copy of a letter that Dr. Thomas A. Dooley, Class of '48, wrote in Dec., 1960 to then Notre Dame President Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C.  Tom Dooley was a well-known and acclaimed humanitarian who brought relief to Southeast Asia during the 1950's; he was, in fact, the very man who inspired Pres. John F. Kennedy to establish the Peace Corps.  Six weeks before his death, as he lay suffering in a Chinese hospital, Dooley wrote this very moving letter to Fr. Hesburgh about the Grotto.  Here are some excerpts:

Nothing earthly or human can touch me...Because I can pray...How do people on earth endure anything if they cannot have God?

I realize that the external symbols that surround one when he prays are not important...

But just now...and just so many times, how I long for the Grotto.  Away from the Grotto, Dooley just prays.  But at the Grotto, especially now when there must be snow everywhere and the lake is ice glass and that triangular fountain on the left is frozen solid and all the priests are bundled in their too-large, too-long old black coats and the students wear snow boots...if I could go to the Grotto now, then I think I could sing inside.  I could be full of faith and poetry and loveliness and know more beauty, tenderness, and compassion.  This is soggy sentimentalism, I know, (old prayers from a hospital bed are just as pleasing to God as more youthful prayers from a Grotto on the lid of night).

But like telling a mother in labor, "It's okay, millions have endured the labor pains and survived happy...you will, too."  It's consoling...but doesn't lessen the pain.  Accordingly, knowing prayers from here are just as good as from the Grotto doesn't lessen my gnawing, yearning passion to be there.

So Father Hesburgh, Notre Dame is...always in my heart.  That Grotto is the rock to which my life is anchored.  Do the students ever appreciate what they have, while they have it?  I know I never did.

[I just want to offer] my thanks to my beloved Notre Dame.  Though I lack a certain buoyancy in my bones just now, I lack none in my spirit.  I must return to the states very soon, and I hope to sneak into that Grotto...before the snow has melted.

It is well-nigh impossible to visit Notre Dame's Grotto and read Tom Dooley's letter without tears springing to your eyes, a lump forming in your throat.  I think he expressed perfectly what so many others have felt when they've lit candles there or knelt to pray a Rosary.

And lucky me--at this time next weekend, I'll be out at Notre Dame again, to watch another football game with my husband and drive our youngest son back home with us for his week-long fall break.  And while I'm there, I'll get another chance to pray at the Grotto about which Tom Dooley wrote so movingly and eloquently.

No More Faux-ny Baloney

I'm so excited!  Today my husband and I went to Home Depot to talk to the kitchen designer and ordered new kitchen countertops, which will be installed in the very near future.  Our entire kitchen could probably use an update, as it hasn't been changed at all--aside from getting new appliances to replace the ones that stopped working--since we moved into our house in December of 1990.  It was a new house in the sense that it had never been lived in before and wasn't even entirely finished off on the inside; but it had been sitting empty for almost three years, and then the builder went bankrupt and it went into foreclosure.  So we got a great deal on it, and we got to choose a few interior design elements--like the kitchen flooring, some light fixtures, and the upstairs carpets; but the kitchen cabinets and countertops were already in, and we didn't have the funds to both purchase the house and do a big kitchen makeover.

Our kitchen cabinets are dated; I think at one time that sleek, modern, Scandinavian look was in style, but I know it's not anymore (except in doctors' exam rooms and such).  And even when we were house-hunting and first saw this home of ours, we didn't love them.  But the house itself--the size, the number of bedrooms, the layout, the beautiful wooded lot on which it was located--was so perfect in so many ways (it was our dream house, really) that we decided we could live with the kitchen, no problem.  And we have, for 22 years.  Happily.

The only thing I've done to the kitchen is give the original laminate countertops a faux finish. They were a solid mocha color, and about five or six years ago they were really starting to show a lot of wear and tear.  So I sponge-painted over the mocha with dark brown, cream, and black paint to create the look of granite, then added some polyurethane as a sealer.  I was happy with the finished product for a long time.  I mean, look at them.  They look okay, right?  From a distance?

I thought they did.  But recently, I decided that the time has come to get some new-and-improved countertops.  The real deal.  No more faux-ny baloney stuff.  So I'm getting new laminate counters that look like granite.  (I know you're probably puzzled, and wondering why I don't just get me some real granite countertops--but it doesn't seem wise to spend that much money unless everything else it getting updated, too.)

Here's a little sample piece of the new faux granite laminate I chose, sitting atop the old faux granite counter that I painted:

You're probably thinking that the new faux granite looks almost exactly like the old faux granite, and wondering why I'm bothering to make this change at all.  But trust me, it's going to be a big improvement.  I'll post the after picture to prove it!

I love trompe l'oiel and faux finishes.  I've blogged in previous posts about this weird fascination I have with all sorts of faux-ny home decor treatments.  There was that post about faux stained glass windows.  And one about faux bricks.  Others, too, involving pigs and various other animals.  I could do a whole "Faux Finishes Week," which would be every bit as exciting as Discovery Channel's "Shark Week," don't you think?  Hey, I might just do that!  (Or will I?  With me, nothing is as it seems, is it?)  

Sleeping In

I woke up a little while ago and looked at the clock, and I was shocked (and a bit appalled) to see that it was already 8:53.  Can you believe I slept in 'til almost 9:00?  I feel like a real lazybones.  A slacker.

Usually, my internal body clock wakes me up by 7:00 or before; and usually, I set my alarm as a back-up.  But last night I was too tired to remember to tell Siri (my little personal assistant) to give me an early wake-up call, which is too bad because I have lots of items on my "to do" list for today and I didn't want to sleep the morning away.

Oh well, these weary bones of mine must have needed the extra rest.

Maybe my body is screaming for extra sleep to make up for all those years that my boys--who were always the earliest of birds--were up and at 'em by 5:30.  Reveille was at oh-dark-thirty at the Pearl house; you could set your watch by it.  We could have kept those rascals up 'til midnight and they still would have been raring to go by 5:30.  When our third son was born, our oldest son was 2 and 1/2 and our second was 15 months.  Believe me, there wasn't a whole lot of sleeping in going on.

Okay, tell me this photo didn't just make you smile!  Son #2 cracks me up here.  Today, he's a grown-up high school math teacher/football and lacrosse coach.  And he always wears pants when he knows he's getting his picture taken.  Son #1 is showing an early talent for holding babies, which is coming in handy these days in his role as father to twin girls with another baby on the way.  And he, too, is never photographed pants-less.  Son #3, the tiny newborn who's at the mercy of his two older brothers here, now towers over them both.  And he would no longer be caught dead in a nightgown.

When I look at old photos of my three oldest boys, who were born so close together that I was basically wearing maternity clothes for four years straight, I sometimes wonder how I did it...then I think of my sister-in-law who has triplets and my daughter-in-law who has twins, and I realize that relatively speaking, my life was a cakewalk.  And I loved those days.  I miss those days!

I mean, look at the two big brothers showering their baby brother with love in this snapshot.  How sweet...Yikes--they look like they're going to squish him.  Why am I just sitting there?  (Am I asleep?)

You may have noticed that my boys were really not all that into wearing pants.  (But we lived in Florida back then, and it was always so HOT!  That's our excuse, and we're sticking to it!)

When the little guy in these pictures was a year old, we found out that another little boy was on the way.  So there were many, many years of early wake-ups, believe me.  And then #5 joined the family fraternity five years after #4.  It wasn't until they were all teenagers that my five boys began to appreciate sleep.

Okay, I better end here because I feel like I'm beginning to ramble.  I woke up late, so that made me decide I would blog about sleeping in...which made me think back on those days when I never could have slept in, even if I'd wanted to...which made me miss having little boys in the house...which made me break out an old photo album and get all nostalgic...which made me put you through my little trip down memory lane.  This is what the blogging process is like for me.  Sorry about that.

And I hope you've gotten more accomplished before 9:00 a.m. today than I did!  (With four sons in the Army, I should be ashamed of myself!)

The Father of Twins

My oldest son is the father of 16-month-old identical twin girls.

If you're saying, "Yeah, you've mentioned that about a thousand times already on this blog!  I mean, really?  You're talking about your granddaughters yet AGAIN?", then you must be a regular reader of "String of Pearls" (and I'd like to take a moment to say thank you very much for following along).

Well, my oldest son, the father of the twins (have I mentioned yet how adorable they are?), is also about to become the father of a third child.  Well, "about to" is a bit of an exaggeration--the baby is due in early March.  But that wee bairn will be here before we know it.  We'll turn our heads for a split second and he'll* be a walking, talking little cutie pie, someone we love so much we can't remember what life was like before his* arrival.

We fifty-something folks now realize that what our parents used to say to us when we were young whippersnappers who thought we were never going to grow old is absolutely true: the older you get, the faster time flies.

Case in point: here's a picture of the twins' dad, when he was about 7 months old.  I turned my head for a split second, and he went from this...

...to a husband and father with a third baby on the way.  How in the Sam Hill did that ever happen?  Did the kid have a time machine or something?  (By the way, if you know where in the world the phrase "in the Sam Hill" came from, please let me know!  I have no idea why that one popped into my head.)

Yesterday, I blogged about how I'm seeing things all the time these days that inspire me to get out my paints and brushes and go to town.  This picture of my firstborn is one of those inspiring images.  Oh my, that little button nose, those cheeks...that fuzzy blond hair that defied gravity...those chubby little arms and legs...I remember those!  [Sigh.]

Here I go again, getting all nostalgic about little people with round bellies wearing white t-shirts and diapers--people who used to fill my world but have gone and grown up on me.  Thank goodness for grandchildren!

*Just so you know, I am not making a prediction that baby #3 will be a boy.  I was going to write "he/she"--but then decided to use the masculine default pronoun "he," which in the olden days (before political correctness dictated otherwise) was understood by a reader to mean "he or she."  (Ditto for "his.")   I'm just letting you know that I'm OLD SCHOOL!

Inspired to Paint...or to THINK about Painting!

Lately, I've been very inspired to paint.  I haven't done any painting, per se; but I've been THINKING a lot about painting.

I keep seeing things that make me say, "I've got to paint that!"  Some recent photos of my 16-month-old twin granddaughters at the apple orchard were absolutely meant to be captured on canvas.  I've got to get myself motivated, get out to Michael's and purchase some much-needed new brushes and other supplies, and get to it.

But here's the problem: there is so much beauty everywhere, and so much of what I see inspires me, that in the end, I just get overwhelmed and decide to paint...nothing.

Recently, we were at the University of Notre Dame and visited the breathtakingly beautiful Basilica of the Sacred Heart that is located on campus.  Here is the painted ceiling of the Mary Chapel in the back.

Isn't it incredible?  I love it so much--I could look at it forever--and I want to re-create it on my dining room ceiling!  I mean, I've never done decorative painting on a ceiling before, but I paint on the walls all the time...However (and this is a big however), I do not have the Michelangelo-like talent of whatever artist created this amazing work in the basilica.  I can paint things like pigs, squirrels, birds, starfish, faux bricks--and when I say I can paint them, that doesn't mean that I can paint them WELL.  Here's a sample of some of the wall painting I've done in my house.  This is the upstairs bathroom (or, when my boys were growing up here, the "boys' bathroom"), which I decided to give a beach theme.

I don't think the artist who painted those dolphins and that seagull on these bathroom walls has the talent to paint ornate Biblical scenes like the ones on the ceiling of the Mary Chapel--unfortunately.  But boy, would she ever love to try!

(If I ever actually decide to paint angels and saints on my dining room ceiling, I will most definitely have to blog about that!)

Feeling Happy--and Tiny!-- at One of My Favorite Places in the World

My children make me feel tiny.  I have five grown sons, and they are broad-shouldered and range in height from 6 feet to 6'3".  They are a bunch of behemoths next to their mommy.

Here is a shot of me with sons #3 and #5.  I don't usually think of myself as a small person, but these two make me feel downright petite.  I look at this picture and wonder how I ever could have given birth to them, as well as three other similar-sized humans.  Of course, even though these guys were rather enormous babies (9 lbs. 13 oz. and 10 lbs. 2 oz., respectively), they were a good bit smaller than they are now when they made their grand entrances into the world.

I almost can't stand it...they are so cute.  I know I'm not supposed to say that about my own kids, but I can't help it.  If they were here, I would have to kiss them.

I love this photo, which was taken when we were out at Our Lady's university recently for the Michigan game, because it's of two of my favorite people in the world--two of my beloved boys--at one of my favorite places in the world--the grotto at Notre Dame that is a faithful replica of the one at Lourdes.  I am sort of stealing that line from son #3, the one on the left; I took a picture of him with his adorable girlfriend in front of the Administration Building with the Golden Dome on top, and he wrote a caption under it on his Facebook page that read, "At my favorite place with my favorite person."  (Isn't that sweet?  And his favorite person is the one who snapped this picture of me flanked by these two handsome young men of mine.)

Just looking at this picture gives me a severe case of missing-my-boys-itis.  I miss my big, strapping lads, those gentle giants who tower over me and treat me like a queen (just as my husband promised me they would when they were rambunctious little boys who acted like a litter of energetic puppy dogs).  I'm so glad I got to see these two sons a little over a week ago in South Bend, but ever since we returned from that trip, I've been having a sort of post-get-together letdown.  My hubby flew to Dublin yesterday, and I would have gladly tagged along with him (despite my well-documented fear of flying) rather than stay here all by my lonesome in my big empty house, but there weren't any available seats on the plane.

Oh well, I may never get to Ireland; but I know I'll get back to Notre Dame, the home of the Fighting Irish.  In fact, my husband and I are headed out there the weekend after next for another game!  And son #5 will be there, dwarfing his little mom like he always does.

St. Therese of Lisieux's Feast Day

Today is the feast day of a dear little saint--and a Doctor of the Church--named St. Therese of Lisieux, also known as St. Therese of the Child Jesus.  She is called "The Little Flower," too, because she promised to continue doing good for souls after her death by sending down a shower of roses from Heaven.  Today would be a good day to ask St. Therese to pick you a rose from the Heavenly Garden, if you could use one--I think she would be only too happy to oblige.

Here is a painting of St. Therese of Lisieux, an iconic image which is well-known to many.

I have read that those who saw St. Therese in the flesh found that the painted images of her, which are stylized and beautified, don't really do justice to the saintliness and humility of her expression, the holiness that poured forth from her brown eyes.  I don't know if you've ever seen an actual photograph of her, so I thought I'd post one here.

St. Therese was not meant to spend much time in this world and died at the age of 24 in the Carmelite convent.  But in her short life, she made a profound mark.  Through her writings she taught the "Little Way of Spiritual Childhood," by which she meant that even in our littleness, we can all hope to become saints.

I am privileged to own a true relic of St. Therese of Lisieux, which I wrote about in a previous post.  There was no official document that went along with it, but I felt fairly certain it was the real thing.  When we were out at Notre Dame recently for a football game, we visited the relic room in the back of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, which houses a large number of holy relics--including a splinter from the True Cross and remains taken from the 12 Apostles, Pope St. Pius X, and all the saints in the Church calendar, including St. Therese of Lisieux.  And my little relic (right down to the velvet-lined little glass-fronted metal reliquary, and inside, the tiny strip of paper with her name typed on it) looked exactly like the ones in the basilica's glass cases.

How humbling that is, knowing that I have an authentic relic of this holy saint in my possession!  For the rest of my days, I will ask the Little Flower to remember me to our Lord, to ask Him to send me the graces necessary to prepare my soul for the next world, and to have mercy on my soul when it leaves this one.  St. Therese of Lisieux, pray for me!