Reflections on "Theology of Home" (#1)

Not too long ago, I spent the day taking care of my middle son's three little ones (G-Man-5, Princesa-3, and Rosita-almost 2), while my daughter-in-law Preciosa showed some houses to a prospective real estate client.  I don't ever expect any sort of official "thank you" for helping out in this way, because the very reason my husband and I moved down to VA just over two and 1/2 years ago was so that we could see our four oldest married sons and their families--who by some miracle had all migrated to and settled in the same area of the country!--on a regular basis and offer support and help when needed.  But Preciosa gave me the most thoughtful gift after my day with her darling offspring: a copy of Theology of Home, a beautiful book with the subtitle "Finding the Eternal in the Everyday."

To say that I love this book is putting it mildly.  I started to read it a few days ago and decided that I'd like to devote a series of blog posts to it (thus the addition of the "#1" in the title of this post!).  This eye-pleasing hardcover coffee table book deals with a subject that is near and dear to my heart: HOMEMAKING, in the truest sense of the word.  Being a homemaker is a vocation I take very seriously; after marriage and motherhood, I feel it is the most important work I do in my life here on earth.  As the "heart of the home" (a title that I believe belongs to all mothers, everywhere, whether they work inside or outside the home), I long to create a sanctuary for my family.  Because as authors Carrie Gress, Noelle Mering, and Megan Schrieber say in the introduction to Theology of Home, "Home is that place where we are meant to be safe, nurtured, known for who we are, and able to live and love freely."

"Ironically," the authors also say, "despite the innate human desire that there is for home, the notion that someone would actually want to make a home, providing a place of safety, love, order, education, and hospitality, has fallen out of favor.  Could there be, in the minds of millions of women today, anything worse than being a 'homemaker'?  The pendulum, however, seems to be swinging back toward home even if the homemaker title is still unpopular."

Personally, I don't care if the term is unpopular.  I am actually proud to call myself a wife, a mother, and a homemaker.  (Homemaker is a title that much more accurately describes the role of a woman who works primarily inside the home than the term "housewife," which really must be unpopular these days!)

My husband and I will celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary this December.  We are more financially capable of home improvements now than we were in the early years of our marriage. To say that we didn't always have the means to have the newest and the best of everything, when it came to the homes we lived in and the kind of furnishings and finishes found within them, is an understatement.  Back when our boys were little, our priorities were keeping them healthy and well-fed and paying their Catholic school tuitions; home improvements were usually put on the back burner until we could afford them.  So my home might not have always been ready for its HGTV close-up; but even during those times when we were on a shoestring budget, I always tried to make it as warm and cozy and comfortable as it could possibly be. I also wanted it to be pretty--a kind of foretaste of Heaven, a dwelling place that might ultimately help to steer the beloved members of my family to the Father's House, their eternal home.

Luckily, my husband learned over the years to be an outstanding handyman, tackling every sort of building, plumbing, and electrical project imaginable, and I have always been game for wall painting, picture hanging, and furniture refinishing.  We did our best to make every home we lived in feel uniquely "ours," even if it was just a rental.  We started out in a small apartment in Corpus Christi, TX; next, we moved into Navy base housing in Beeville, TX, and at the end of our time there, we became parents when we welcomed our first son; from there, we moved to Jacksonville, FL, where we bought our first home, a ranch-style house, and welcomed three more little boys; after my husband switched careers from Naval to commercial airline pilot, we lived for less than two years in a 1,100 sq ft house in the Chicago suburbs; next we moved to a rental home in Dover, NH; and after just a year there, we bought our "forever" home in that same town, a big Colonial on a quiet, wooded cul-de-sac street, where we lived for 26 years, welcomed a fifth baby boy, and raised our family.  In every one of those settings, I was a SAHM and homemaker, working tirelessly to make my family feel safe, comfortable, and happy within the walls of our home.

Eventually, when our boys grew up, moved out, and moved away, the NH house didn't make as much sense anymore.  We were constantly on the road, traveling to visit them and their growing families.  So we made the somewhat painful decision to sell that house (the one into which we'd poured so much sweat equity over the years, the one we thought we'd never leave), and we moved south to be near all of them.  I wasn't sure if our new, smaller house--located on a postage stamp-sized lot, in a cookie-cutter VA neighborhood--would ever truly feel like home.  But not quite three years in, I can happily say that this new house is indeed our HOME now.  A house is not a home if your people are never in it--and ours sure spend a lot of time in this one!

My husband is busy working on a project that will really make this new house work even better for our ever-growing brood of grandchildren (15 and counting!!), who come to visit here often.  He is currently finishing off the basement, so that we will have a huge, kid-safe play area (as well as another guest bedroom and bath).

I help him any way I can, but let's be honest--he does most of the work!  However, I am always busy myself at the task of homemaking, looking for ways to make this VA house of ours attractive, welcoming, and grandchild-friendly.

I love this G.K. Chesterton quote in Theology of Home: "There are two ways of getting home.  One of them is to stay there.  The other is to walk around the whole world till we come back to the same place."  Which one are you?  The homebody who never wants to leave, like me?  Or the world traveler who loves change and adventure, but breathes a sigh of relief when you finally return and walk through the door of your own house?

Discuss amongst yourselves!  I'll just be in my living room, staring at those canvas images of my grandchildren there on the wall...sighing with contentment because I'm home sweet home.

Sewing, and Thinking of My Mother-in-Law

I meant to write a blog post about my mother-in-law on Nov. 1, her birthday, but family events down here in VA kept me busy and the date got away from me.  We had a tornado watch on Halloween, so trick-or-treating was postponed until the next day.  And after all the excitement was over, I was too tired to blog...but here I am, a day late and a dollar short, as I usually am these days.

Mom would have been 87 this year.  I can't believe she's been gone 10 years already!  I still miss her and I always will.  I don't think it was an accident that she was born on All Saints Day: never was there a woman more devoted to Our Lord and Our Blessed Mother; never was there a woman who said more Rosaries and novenas for her loved ones.  (She was a daily communicant whenever she was in a season of her life where this was possible, and never was there a woman who would be more thrilled by the fact that her birthday is a holy day of obligation, a day on which all of the children she raised in the Faith would be sure to get to Mass!)

I met this amazing woman--daughter of an Irish immigrant father who died when she was 10, sister to one older brother, and mother to eight children (four boys, four girls)--when I was 15 and started to date her oldest son.  From that very first meeting, I just adored her.  She had that gift of making you feel loved and important, without making too much of a fuss doing it.  She was the best mother-in-law a girl could ever ask for--my role model now that my boys are married; she never judged or interfered, just accepted and supported.

Mom had the soprano voice of an angel--she could seriously have been a professional singer, but she shared her gifts in the church choir instead.  She was a breathtaking beauty, but the least vain person I ever knew.  She was a lover of all things beautiful for the home: china, crystal, Hummels and other figurines, Nativity scenes and Christmas decorations in general, and last but certainly not least, FABRIC.  Mom considered all of these things true works of art and could hardly resist them (particularly if she found them in the aisle marked "clearance sale").  Her attic was filled to the rafters with boxes and bins of every kind of fabric you could imagine, along with laces, ribbons, and all sorts of other sewing notions.  It was like JoAnn Fabrics up there, truly.

In 1997, my in-laws' house caught fire (caused by outdated, faulty electrical wiring) while they were away visiting some of their children.  Fortunately, their home was not completely lost.  But due to the smoke and water damage, the interior had to be mostly gutted and rebuilt.  After the fire, the attic had to be cleared out and the fabric collection assessed, and some of it was too damaged so it was thrown out.  But a remarkably large amount of mom's precious materials (which I'm sure she had many plans for using in the future) were saved and put back up in the attic.

So these days, whenever I need some material for a sewing project, I "go shopping" up there first.  That's where I found the piles of exquisite white linen-and-lace pillow shams that I used to make my grandkids' christening gowns.  And at the end of the summer (which we'd spent living in my husband's childhood home in Upstate NY, while taking care of our nearby Oyster Haven VRBO house), I took a trip to the attic and brought home some plaids for myself and my daughter-in-law Regina, who wanted to make a Christmas stocking for her little boy.  She had already made them for her four daughters, using plaid material from Mom's attic; but she'd run out and asked if I could look for more.

My grandson, Topper, recently turned one.  His mom, my daughter-in-law Ginger, is a huge fan of vintage-style clothes for her three little boys, and I knew she'd appreciate a new Jon Jon romper as a birthday gift for him.  Well, it just so happened that I had some perfect pieces of material from Mom's attic to make some garments for the upcoming holidays: a hunter green velveteen that I'd found a few years ago, and those lovely plaids I'd unearthed this past summer.  So I decided to make two rompers!

I like to put "made by" tags in the garments I sew for the grandkids, in case they get handed down to a new generation someday.  Topper's two older brothers call me "Ree Ree" instead of Grammy, so that's what I put on the tags for these two Jon Jons.

I could hardly wait to see how these rompers would look on my adorable grandson, who has the most heart-melting smile and edible chunky thighs.

All I can say is that I think my dear mother-in-law would approve of how her stash of fabric is being put to use.  Yes, I think she would very much approve indeed!  And I hope these pictures of her great-grandson wearing rompers made out of some of the pieces she lovingly chose from the clearance racks at JoAnn's are making her smile.

Miss you, Mom!  And when I grow up, I want to be just like you...because I believe you were born on All Saints Day for a reason.

Hola, Hermanita!

I just got back home yesterday, after spending five days staying at the house of son #4 and his wife, Braveheart.  I went over there because they were due to welcome baby #4 any minute and needed Grammy on deck, ready to watch their 2-year-old triplets (identical twin boys Pumpkin and Peanut, and their sister, Paquita) when it was time to go to the hospital.

The first time around, Braveheart had had a C-section at 32 weeks.  She was told that therefore, even though this was her second pregnancy, her body might behave as if it was her first labor and  delivery--so it might be tough and take a while.  But of course we were all hoping that this would not be so.

Braveheart started having contractions on Friday, and who knew how quickly things would progress?  (Not as quickly as she and my son would have liked, as it turned out; not by a long shot!)  Just in case she was going to have a quick labor and delivery, I decided to pack an overnight bag and drive over that day to stay with them--even though we only live 35 minutes away and I probably could have made it in time if I'd been called last minute.  I figured that I could give my daughter-in-law a bit of a break and help out with the three munchkins until the baby came. (My husband was out of town but would join me when he could.)

I flew solo most of the time; but Papa came on Sunday in time for dinner,
 and he was able to be there for part of the day Monday, before leaving again
for work on Tuesday morning.

Braveheart labored all through the night Friday and into Saturday, but still wasn't sure if it was time or not.  By late Saturday afternoon, the contractions were getting extremely painful (and although they were not coming regularly, when they did come, they lasted an agonizing three minutes each!).  The kids decided to head to the hospital, hoping that it was go time.  After more than four hours of observation, however, they were sent back home.  Braveheart was only one centimeter dilated and they said she really wasn't in active labor yet.

Then just a few hours later, at about 11:00 at night, my son woke me up to tell me that he was putting the triplets' baby monitor in the guestroom (soon to be nursery) where I was sleeping, and that they were heading back to the hospital.  My poor daughter-in-law was just in so much unrelenting pain.

This time, thankfully, she was admitted, and before long she was progressing nicely.  She had her water broken and received an epidural, and she was finally able to get some relief from the pain.  But her labor was long and difficult.  Her contractions were irregular and lasted much longer than normal.  At one point, it looked like she might have to have another C-section, and our son posted a prayer request on our family text stream.  The prayers worked: shortly afterward, she was fully dilated and ready to push.  Unfortunately,  though, she had to push for an exhausting three and a half hours.  Finally, just before midnight on Sunday October 27, she delivered a beautiful, healthy baby girl with a head of thick black hair.  At 8 lbs. 11.05 oz. and 22.05 in., she weighed more than twice as much as her largest triplet sibling at birth!

On Tuesday, this sweet baby girl (who shall heretofore be known here at the blog as Hermanita--which in Spanish means "little sister") came home.  Her brothers were largely unimpressed and uninterested in her, although they came over to check her out and smiled at her.

Her big sister, on the other hand, had a totally different reaction.

At first, Paquita was confused and jealous and couldn't stop crying.  But those emotions soon evaporated and were replaced by a wave of fierce maternal love and protectiveness.  (Who says girls and boys aren't wired differently?  That little girl, hardly more than a baby herself, had an instinctive desire to nurture that baby!)  She wanted to hold HER baby constantly, to kiss her and hug her.  She kept putting her chubby little finger to her mouth and saying "Shhh" to the rest of us as she held her baby sister.

We were joking that Paquita might love the baby almost too much, if that's possible.  She's rather possessive and it's very hard to get Hermanita out of her arms--she puts up quite a fuss when that happens.  So Mom and Dad are going to have some challenges as their little family transitions from three to four children and everyone gets used to their new routines and their new normal.

I took some selfies with my precious new granddaughter soon after she came home.

When I saw the above photo it reminded me a little bit of a snapshot my husband took of me and our firstborn son shortly after we got home from the hospital, way back in October 1983.   The way I was positioned and holding the newborn infants in these pictures taken 36 years apart looked so similar, not to mention the expression of pure happiness on my face (and tiredness, too: in the old one, caused by childbirth...in the new one, by childcare!).

Did you notice the small, extremely old-fashioned TV photo-bombing us in this picture?

I still wear ginormous glasses (wait long enough and everything comes back in style!).  I still wear my hair long (but it's thinner and grayer these days).   When it comes to my fashion sense, very little has changed.  But oh, in almost every other way my life is so different now!  That inexperienced young mom was on cloud nine after the birth of her first baby boy.  But she could never have imagined how much richer and fuller (how could that be possible?!) her life would be one day: how four more sons would follow this one; how all five of them would get married and bring her daughters; and how, just when she started to mourn the loss of her babies, she would get so many new ones to love.

I'm telling you: one day you're a 25-year-old first-time mother...and before you know it, you're a 61-year-old grandmother of 15.

And this grandmother is still recovering from five days of wrangling three very busy, very chunky toddlers. I've been catching up on my sleep and I believe a nap is on my to-do list today.  After all, grandchild #16 is due any time now, and I'm going to be on call to watch her three older siblings when her parents leave for the hospital, at least until their other grandmother arrives to take over...so I better be rested up!

Last Dance

I'm finally getting around to blogging about the recent wedding of our youngest son.  (I've gotten two posts up so far, here and here.)  I still need to write a post about the amazing reception they had, which was totally orchestrated by the bride's hard-working and talented mother (who should probably start a wedding planning business, because she's got a real knack for it!).  But before I do, I wanted to talk about a traditional event during the festivities that has always held a special place in my heart: the mother-son dance.

On Sept. 7, I had my last dance as the mother of the groom, a part I first played in 2009 when my oldest son got married.  I got to do it again in 2013, and then TWICE in 2014.  (We had three boys get married in an 11-month span, between Dec. of 2013 and Nov. of 2014!  Can you say "whirlwind"?)

Sometimes I feel a little guilty that I have been able to enjoy this ineffably sweet wedding tradition five times, while my husband has never had the similar experience of dancing with a beloved daughter as father of the bride.  We are the parents of all boys, however, so that just wasn't in the cards for him.

For his mother-son dance, our firstborn picked a sweet country tune by Garth Brooks called "Your Song."  Some of the lines in it are incredibly poignant, and so perfect for the occasion.  Here are a few of the best ones:

And if ever there was somebody

Who made me believe in me

It was you, it was you...

It was your song that made me sing

It was your voice that gave me wings...

And anytime I doubt myself I think of you...

When the next three boys got married, they all chose the same Back Street Boys song that they knew their mom just loved, "The Perfect Fan."  (They could remember me sitting in the living room listening to my favorite CD and putting that song on repeat--over, and over, and OVER...)  If you aren't familiar with the lyrics of this winner, here is a sampling:

You showed me

When I was young just how to grow

You showed me

Everything that I should know

You showed me

Just how to walk without your hand

'Cause mom you always were 

The perfect fan

God has been so good

Blessing me with a family

Who did all they could...

I want to thank you for all you've done

In hopes I can give back to you

Be the perfect son

[Sniff!]

Well, not to be outdone by his older brothers, our baby surprised me with a beautiful song I'd never heard before.  Like our oldest son (his best man), he chose one by country superstar Garth Brooks, and he didn't share it with me beforehand.  To be honest, I was so emotional during our dance that I didn't fully hear and appreciate the words of the song.

Afterward, on our way back home, I texted my boy to ask the name of the song we'd dance to and I found it on You Tube.  I'll tell you, the tears flowed in that car as I listened to the lyrics.  If ever there was an award for best mother-son dance song, this one called "Mom" would be right up there in the running.  If you'd like to listen to it, here it is.

Do you need to get a tissue?  I'll wait...

To be totally honest (and much to my shame), when I first saw these professional pictures of this latest--and last--mother-son dance, all I could do was pick apart my appearance.  "When did I get so old-looking?" "I hate my profile!" "Why didn't I get contacts, do something fancier with my scraggly hair?"  "Yikes, now I know where the phrase 'ugly cry' comes from!" (Why do we women do this?)

But then I stopped obsessing about my own appearance and focused on my boy's face, and in all of the pictures, his love is absolutely shining.  He really is that devoted and sweet; and in his eyes, flawed though I am, I can do no wrong. In his eyes, I am that "loving angel, tender, tough, and strong" that God chose to be his mom. What a wonderful son he has always been, and my heart bursts looking at his expressions in all of these photos.

"God has been so good," as my Backstreet Boys so eloquently put it, "blessing me with a family who did all they could."  And then some.  I do not deserve it; but I'll take it.

And the memory of that last dance will stay with me forever.

Finally, a Post about the Wedding!

I can't believe that more than a month has passed since the wedding of our youngest son on Sept. 7.  Back in the early days here at String of Pearls, I would have had a post up about it within a day or two--heck, maybe within an hour or two!--of returning home from the wedding weekend.  But my blogging muscles have atrophied a bit since 2011; and I'm not as young as I once was, either, you know; and I can probably come up with a bunch of other great excuses for neglecting the upkeep of my little corner of the Internet...but the best (and truest) reason for it is simply that I seem to be so busy just living life these days that I have trouble making the time to stop and write about it.

But writers gotta write (and I'm a writer, sort of).  So I'm going to write about the wedding.  Finally!

There is just nothing in the world like a Catholic wedding involving two extremely Faith-filled young people who promise to love, honor, and cherish each other all the days of their life, let me just begin by saying that.  It is a powerful and very moving thing to witness, that's all there is to it.  (Having a purse with tissues in it handy, close by in the pew, is a must for mothers of the groom, I've learned--at least for this mother of the groom.)  This nuptial Mass, during which our youngest son and the sweet girl he met on Catholic Match in 2016 (while he was stationed over in Germany) exchanged their vows in front of several hundred family members and friends, was exceptionally holy and beautiful.  Sacramental grace abounded.

For the wedding Mass, the bride wore a gorgeous lace gown that had been worn by both her mother and grandmother before her, and then she changed out of that fragile family heirloom into a more modern strapless gown for the reception afterward.  I love it when family wedding dresses are part of the tradition.  (All four of my Pearls sisters-in-law wore their mother's dress for their weddings.)  Our new daughter-in-law Babisiu could not have looked more regal and lovely.

The large wedding party included all four of the groom's brothers (but only three of them were able to be there, and if you read yesterday's post you know the reason for that), and all four of the bride's brothers as well.

The bride's sister was the maid of honor and our oldest son was the best man--which was especially poignant, because he was also his baby brother's godfather over 26 years ago, even though he was not even 10 years old yet at the time.

Our five oldest granddaughters were flower girls, along with one of the bride's young cousins (wearing lace-trimmed dresses I'd made); and G-Man, our oldest grandson, was the ring bearer.  I loved the inclusion of so many little people in the wedding party; I told my new daughter-in-law that it reminded me of a royal wedding!

You know what?  I think now I'm just going to share a blog post written by someone else, one that appeared on the website of the wedding photographer.  Not only does it tell the charming story of how my son and his bride met online, but it includes many of the wonderful pictures taken on their wedding day by some exceptionally talented people at Meridian Photography. Most of the pictures are breathtakingly beautiful; and some, on the other hand, are downright hilarious.  (The couple's nod to the iconic painting by Grant Wood called "American Gothic" is especially fun.)   Just click here to see the post.  

I can hardly believe that all five of our sons are now married (where did the years go?!), and all to young women who share their Faith and are determined to raise their children in the Catholic Church.  This was the one thing we wanted for them more than anything else, if they were called to the vocation of marriage; indeed, we spent many years praying for our sons' future wives.  And boy oh boy, were our prayers answered.  We have been inordinately blessed.   God is so good!

As if the day wasn't glorious enough already, next up was a fabulous party under a tent that was set up at the bride's family's ancestral farm, where her great-grandmother had celebrated her wedding decades earlier.  This bucolic rural location was filled with so much sentimental history for Babisiu and her family, and it also made an absolutely stunning backdrop for the festivities.

So there's more to come.  Stay tuned!

A Tiny Saint for the Pearl Family

I was scrolling my Instagram feed this morning and saw via a post from one of the Catholic accounts I follow that today, Oct. 15, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day.  This hits really close to home in our family right now, sadly, because in late August our second oldest son and his wife lost the baby she was carrying.  They had gotten past the first trimester mark, and therefore were assuming that all would be okay and looked forward to the February birth of a new sibling for their three young sons.  But tragically, at 16 weeks (which is considered "late" for miscarriage), they found out at a routine OB appointment that the baby no longer had a heartbeat.

This little angel, the youngest of our 17 grandchildren (counting the two currently in utero who--God willing--will be joining us in October and November) was brought forth into the world on the Feast of St. Monica.  The kids decided that if genetic testing determined the baby was a girl, they would name her Monica; and if the baby was a boy, they thought they might name him Augustine, after St. Monica's sainted son.

Our daughter-in-law Ginger's father found a wonderful organization called A Mom's Peace, described as "a lay apostolate for mothers of miscarried and stillborn souls."  This group gifted the grieving parents a miniature handcrafted wooden casket for their baby's tiny body, as well as wee hand-knitted and hand-sewn garments and a blanket to bury him or her in.  Knowing that our daughter-in-law has a nephew battling leukemia, they chose purple--which is often used to symbolize this fight--as the accent color for these precious items.

The little knitted hearts were given out to family members as keepsakes, so they would each have some yarn

from the little blanket that had been made for the baby.

There was a prayer service and burial in a small church graveyard where other tiny preborn and stillborn souls are buried.  One day, there will also be a small headstone for the final resting place of the precious little one we now know was a girl and who has been given the name Monica Mary.

Life is indeed a series of ups and downs, of ecstatic highs and unbearable lows, and never was this more apparent than during this difficult time in our kids' lives.  The burial for this tiny Pearl saint was on Tuesday, Sept. 3, and my husband and I flew back from South Bend, IN (where we had stopped on our way out to MI for our youngest son's wedding on Sept. 7) to attend the burial service.  The next day, we flew back out to South Bend to get our car and drove from there on to MI.  By Friday, we were hosting a rehearsal dinner.  And on Saturday, our fifth-born son was married to a beautiful Catholic girl in a beautiful Catholic church.  That was a week of so many conflicting emotions.

Due to how recent the miscarriage was, and to some health complications Ginger suffered afterward (just days before the wedding), our second-oldest son and his family were not able to make the trip to MI--which everyone completely understood, of course.  We missed them, but obviously there was no other choice they could make.

The wedding day was so joyful (and I do plan to blog about it very soon).  Somehow, I was able to compartmentalize my feelings--something I am rarely able to do--and focus solely on the beaming bride and groom and the celebration of their sacramental union for the duration of the weekend.  But when we got into the car to drive back home to VA after the wedding festivities, the weight of my emotions got the best of me and there were many tears.  Some of them were those happy mama tears, thinking about the sweet lyrics of the song my baby chose for the mother-son dance, and what a good boy he is, and how happy I am that he found his better half; but many of them were sad tears, knowing that another son and his wife were hurting and there was little I could do to help ease their pain.

Never having gone through the experience myself, I asked a friend (who'd also lost a baby to late miscarriage, 30 years ago) what we could do for them. She said the ministry work that A Mother's Peace did to honor the baby's short life was going to help so much, and the fact that sweet little Monica Mary was given a holy and dignified burial would give her parents much comfort in the years ahead.  They will always miss her, she said.  Out of the blue, they will be hit with feelings of crippling sadness.  But time, she assured me, will be a great healer.

I talk to Monica Mary now, especially when I'm worried about her parents.  I believe that in her our family has a powerful intercessor in Heaven.  Genetic testing revealed that the baby was a girl, but it did not reveal any identifiable reason for her untimely death; I can only surmise that God needed and wanted her with Him now, rather than later.  She was just too good to stay here with us in the valley of tears.

Dear St. Monica Mary, pray for us!

I must make an addendum to this post:

We actually have 19 grandchildren, including those in utero.  Our oldest son and his wife lost two babies to miscarriage some years back, both very early in the first trimester.  They do not know the sex of these babies, but have given them the names Philomena and Augustine.  So we actually have three little Pearl saints and one day hope to meet them all!