i believe in everything, nothing is sacred; i believe in nothing, everything is sacred

Forgive me. I meant to write about Advent tonight while my stew simmered away. But like the Magi showing up unexpectedly at Bethlehem, my dear old college roommate found her way to my doorstep. She arrived just in time to help me wash the mushrooms and share the wine. So allow me to cheat this post with a story I wrote a while ago to explain our relationship.

It was early on in our freshman year that Jen's family had come to visit and dropped off two huge pallets of FlavorSplash water along with a ton of other "care package" items. Jen and I were random assignment roommates - friendly but not friends. Yet.

I decided the water was taking up too much room on the floor. Being a Social Thought and Political Economy student, (mainly enrolled in creative writing courses) I had some free time. I began to tie string around the bottles and hang them from anywhere I could get them to stay. The top of the windows, the posts of our bunk beds, attached to wire hangers and suspended from the ceiling...

Jen looked up from her Organic Chemistry book to ask for an explanation.
"It's like we have water-trees," I said, brushing my electric pink hair out of my face. "We can just reach up and pluck them down."

She was silent. Then, to my surprise my sensible, pre-med roommate put down the heavy text and began helping me string the bottles up.

Once we got all the bottles hung we went back to our homework. Jen began inventing a vaccine to prevent HIV transmission, while I wrote a poem about a bird I saw once.

It was not long before a bottle fell, BONK, narrowly missing Jen's head.

"Misch," Jen took her glasses off, "this is not going to work."

I had a different reaction to the crash. "Jen, this is great! It's like the Clock People in this book I'm reading."
"MichELLE. What on earth are you talking about?"

I was talking about a fictional pile of trash in a fictional underground tunnel. The Clock People in Tom Robbin's novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues tend to this giant trash pile that functions as their clock. When something falls off the trash pile, that's the clock striking. There is no set interval to the striking of this clock. It can go days without a sound, or toll several times in one hour. The noise reminds them that the time is NOW. There is no past or future. 1 o'clock; 2 o'clock ... means nothing. Just NOW.

I explained this to Jen. She looked like she was sorry she asked. She went back to her work.

BONKCRASH. A bottle fell onto the dresser between our work areas, upsetting some spare change.

"The time is NOW!" I yelled gleefully. Jen began to laugh. "The time IS now," she answered.

We picked up the water that had fallen and re attached it to the walls. As we were doing so Jen's boyfriend knocked on the door.

"What are you two doing?"
Jen smiled widely, "fixing our water-clock!" Mike looked extremely unhappy.
But I was very happy. And guess which one of us she spends her time with now?

I don't want any of it to go to waste

7am: "Those are mine!" The security guard is staring suspiciously at the bags of men's clothes
at the door. "Well, not mine," I qualify. "But I left them there when I went to park my car." The guard laughs and we grab up all the bags of shirts and shoes and rush them inside.

11am: "Thank you. Thank you, all of you, for working today," It's the program wide Director of Nursing, and he's standing beside the BMH director, and she is holding a bag of chocolates out to us, over and over again. Barry hugs all of us before he leaves. Sarah snaps a photo of the turkey family made out of rubber gloves and tells us again how thankful she is for us.

12:30pm: "You're going to town on those peas, huh?" The man laughs. I am sitting in the activity room with a plate of food on my lap. I am surrounded by patients and we are watching House. I realize with somewhat of a start how natural these traditions have begun to feel. One of my patients approaches me shyly and asks if she can wrap up her leftovers. "I don't want any of it to go to waste," she explains.

4:30pm: "Michelle's here! Michelle's here!" I feel as though I've entered a dream. My Aunt and Uncle's new house is three years old, but that's how long it's been since I've spent a Thanksgiving with my family. Light bounces off colored glass, and I don't know where to look first. My family, larger somehow than I expected turns toward me, smiling. I feel dirty and tired looking in my scrubs. I feel like I don't belong here, and although my day was easy, tears threaten my cheeks. Then somehow my mother's arms are around me and Ralph is taking my coat and Rosina is pouring a glass of wine and Auntie Mame is asking questions and I am not crying at all.
"Do you want one?" asks my small cousin chewing on a caramel. He is looking at his little brother. Sam nods.
"You can't have one," Nicholas says, without a hint of malice. He looks at me apologetically, "they're too chewy. - But you can have something else, Sam."
And when my tiny cousin, now old enough to speak but still a stranger to me, looks at me as if to ask if this is all ok, I nod. And he smiles shyly and nods back.

Don't tell the mermaids where I'm going...

Yesterday's post was a bit heavy, even for me. Let's all enjoy my day off together by watching this.




Fun fact: The last two years of college I lived in a three family house. I used to drum this on the wall of my bathroom and my friend in the adjacent apartment would drum it back on his bathroom wall. Adorable.
And... great video.

Father Richard Cleary 1932-2009

This is Fr. Cleary dancing to "Baby Got Back," at the Newman Semi Formal my freshman year of college. He was not an ordinary priest. Then again... what Jesuit is?

Yesterday I found out that Fr. Cleary passed away. Ever since then I have felt anxious and heavy hearted.

The more I read about his life outside of the few years I got to know him, most notably the time he spent as University Chaplain at Boston College the more astounded I am, and the more awed by how many lives just like mine he touched.

My five years at UMass were formative in many ways, and I often overlook religion because I was a Catholic before I showed up and I was a Catholic when I left, but what took place in between can only be described as turbulent growth.

Father Cleary was the leader of many programs for students at Newman. Notably, he the championed the 48HOURS retreat, and ran the Know Your Faith program, designed to encourage young Catholics to ask why, and seek answers. Fr. Cleary was also the person responsible for bringing taize prayer to the Newman Center, a now weekly tradition for the community. My first year at Newman I took on co-directing The Passion Play for the Palm Sunday masses., with my roommate Jen. Fr. Cleary oversaw the production and was the one who gave us the confidence (and the go-ahead) to break from tradition, write a brand new script and even add music to the program.
Well, of course, music. Father Cleary could sing, and loved to sing. He often sang during his sermons, encouraging the entire congregation to sing along, a cappella. His favorite song to sing was "Lights of the City." And when he sang, his voice was so full of joy that you couldn't help but join in.

But perhaps my most important memories of Fr. Cleary are more private. We used to have long talks, sometimes within the structure of the sacrament of reconciliation, but often times not. A close friend of mine from college summed it up when I told him about Fr. Cleary's passing. "I did not meet him" he said, "but I do remember you being upset and going there, and talking to him and coming back a lot better."

I was always better after talking to Father Cleary. Sometimes he told me things that were hard to hear. Sometimes, I admit, I didn't take all of his advice. But he was always right on. I remember wondering, while we were on retreat one night, a retreat which included many silent components, if my loud personality was a test from God. If I was meant to overcome my tendencies to become a smaller, more humble lady. And Father Cleary told me no. That I was not meant to be anyone but myself.
His mentoring helped make me who I am. I hope I was able to express how grateful I was, but of course I wish now I could have said or done more to make it clear.

Father Cleary was an amazing energy force within the student faith community at UMass Amherst, and also at Boston College. Everyone who met him couldn't help but walk away feeling happier, and more at peace.

I lost touch with Father Cleary when he left the Newman Center, which I regret deeply. I do not know how much he suffered in the end but I do know that he is in a better place now. And I am comforted by the knowledge that his memory lives on in the hearts of all who knew him. Any time we reach out to spread the joy God's love, and the knowledge of God's acceptance and saving Grace we are continuing Fr. Cleary's work. And that, plus a little more singing, is exactly what he would want.


Brady Fallon Funeral Home and Cremation Service - Obituary

Kaminga's Baby

One of my earliest memories of Kaminga isn't even my own memory. It's her, as a child of seven or eight wearing a green tee shirt singing Castle on a Cloud in a St. Theresa's Variety Show. I am almost certain it's actually a memory of a video recording since I was in the same variety show and was probably back stage at the time. The next thing I knew we were twelve years old. We caused the most trouble in Ms. st Charles' English class, redeeming ourselves with a proclivity for memorizing Shakespeare and recreating medieval castles from found materials.


Today I got an IM from her as I checked my email before work. It said simply: "Water broke!"

It all will fall, fall right into place.

Yesterday at work I mixed some powdered metamucil for a patient. She refused it. But when I went to throw it away all the powder had sunk to the bottom and solidified.

I had an instant flashback to a magic trick my Dad bought at a magic shop in Florida. He used to collect magic tricks, and I eagerly would accompany him to buy the latest and greatest pocket illusions. He had purchased this one on the sly as a surprise, but just couldn't wait until we got back to the hotel to show us, so he opened it up right in the restaurant. As I slid my color changing scarves through my hands over and over, practicing how to conceal the slipknot in my small palm, he poured some water into a coffee mug. Then he turned it upside down. And nothing came out. The water had disappeared. I was enthralled. The secret, of course, was that a "magic powder," had been added to the mug. The powder was really some type of super absorbent polymer which created a gel that would stay in the mug*.
My dad would share his secrets with me because I was, obviously, another magician. And Mom and Brian are family. So he showed us the gel in the mug. It was gross and ten year old me was delighted, though not for the first time, by how science could be used for entertainment**. But then we had a problem. What to do with the gel? After looking around theatrically a few times Dad shook the mug hard, into a potted plant by our table. Instead of breaking apart and blending in nicely, like he'd hoped, the gel stayed in the shape of the mug and just sat there on the soil in plain view. My mother feigned embarrassment but she laughed until she cried. My brother and I dared each other to pick it up. My Dad commanded sternly that none of us look at it lest we draw attention to it, but he was the worst of all. When our waitress came by he casually remarked how much he "loved the plants here." I do not remember the rest of the evening, but I remember that we didn't stop laughing until long after we left the restaurant that night. For the next few months one of us would occasionally bring up the gel, wondering who found it, what they thought of it, and we'd lose it all over again.
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*this is apparently also how disposable diapers work.
** i fell in love with science because of my Dad.