Cottage Blessings

Then and now

Next weekend, I will celebrate two of life's greatest joys.  My eighth baby--the child of my forties--will turn one, and my first baby--the child of my twenties--will turn sweet sixteen.  

This time last year, Agnes was praying our new baby would share a birthday with her.  Jude was a bit late for that, but he was born on the fifteen-year anniversary of the day we brought her home from the hospital, so that certainly counts for something.

Years ago, I was the twenty-six year old mother of an only child.  As pleasant as those days were, and as much as I sometimes long to return to them (perhaps to relive just one blessed afternoon), I would not trade them for the here and now.  

Time, it has taken me years, but I finally figured out that you are not the enemy, but a friend--a friend who is not "then" or "someday," but always "now."  And "now" is God's greatest gift to us.

[Agnes as Celia in the wedding scene from "As You Like It."] 

Pilgrimage 2009-10

 

Just before we left for San Francisco in 2007, we sent our statue of Our Lady of Fatima out on a "pilgrimage" to the homes of our local friends here on Long Island.  It did my heart good to know that the statue wasn't collecting dust in our empty living room, but was instead the center of a thousand rosaries said by so many of the families here.

After leaving our house this past November to make way for our big renovation, we decided to send our statue on tour again, looking forward to the day we will return it to our own (improved) house in time for the May Crowning.  As usual, there are no coincidences, and the day before I asked the local moms if they would like to host the statue in their homes, my friend Patrice came across several "devotional prayer books to accompany pilgrim image statues" while decluttering her house.  She kindly offered to lend them to me as part of this pretty "Pilgrim Image Bag."

My daughter Marie found a lovely, barely used floral tote in my mother's house and decorated it with a cardboard angel:

 

Inside, we enclosed a bottle of holy water, miraculous medal, devotional booklets and a newly-purchased journal that just happened to match the pink and green bag perfectly (again, no coincidences):

The plan is for all the families who host the pilgrim image to add stories, prayer requests, children's drawings, and holy pictures to the journal.  (Imagine what a keepsake it will be in a few short months!)  To give the mothers an idea of what how the journal might look, I filled in the first few pages (with a bit of artistic help from the children).  Here are a few sample pages:

 

 

Back in 2007, I had hoped Our Lady's "pilgrimage" would become an annual tradition, perhaps beginning every year on the Feast of the Visitation in May or the Feast of the Birth of Mary in September or the feast of Mary, Mother of God in January, but, needless to say, the idea slipped my mind until a month or so ago.  Alas, I need life-altering events to get anything done!

[This post dedicated with love and appreciation to everyone who commented on or offered a prayer after reading the "hello" post this week.]

The first meeting of the IHM group's Pre-Law Society

Once a month, our homeschooling group meets for Mass at a local parish, followed by refreshments. The adjacent school building has a wide marble staircase with about five steps to a landing and another five steps leading down to the main floor.  After a healthy serving of oreos and apple juice, some of the boys (including my eight-year-old) started jumping down the stairs.  You would have smiled to see the exhilaration in their faces as they leaped from the top to the first landing and from that landing down to the ground, before running back up again.  Needless to say, I was on hand to spoil the fun and said, "Boys, I know this is a lot of fun, but somebody could easily get hurt.  Please do not jump down the stairs."  The excitement in their faces fled, but they are respectful boys and halted the game immediately.

A few minutes later, I was talking to one of my daughters, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw rapid motion in the direction of the stairs.  Turning to see what was going on, I found all the boys.  Sliding down the banisters!

A long overdue photo

 Here is our sweetie!

An age old conflict

Five-year-old Maureen approached me to say, "Isn't it sad that cats eat birds?"  I mumbled some sort of absent-minded assent.  

It was only then that I noticed she was wearing an oversized pair of cat ears.  

And holding a toy bird.

Hello

It has been a very long time since I have posted much here at Cottage Blessings.  My writing has been sparse at best for at least two years now.  Yet tonight, for some reason, I am really feeling nostalgic for this blog as it once was--all the crafts and feast day celebrations and babies on the way.  It has turned into a happy scrapbook of days long past, but never to be forgotten.

I do not think I ever actually posted here that my mother passed away in May.  So many of you had been praying for her after her stroke, and it doesn't really seem right that you never heard a word about it.  The long post swimming in my head telling the news just never seemed ready to be written, and now I do not think it ever will.

Life has been a bit unsettled here in other ways too.  Back in November, our whole family moved out of our home temporarily to make way for a renovation project (adding bedrooms, of course) and into my mother's house.  It has been bittersweet living among so many memories, and almost every day brings some new discovery--the handwritten family tree showing my O'Brien ancestors, the checks my mother wrote to pay the doctor and anesthesiologist back when I was born, a brilliant speech on education my father gave decades ago, the sixty year old bottle of Lourdes holy water that has never run dry . . . .  So many things to make me feel grateful for a happy childhood and two wonderful parents.

Baby Jude  is almost a year old now.  Poor little lad--I have hardly written a word about him here.  He is a beautiful beam of light in our lives, but he came along during a time when Mommy was "pondering all these things in her heart" rather than keeping records.  It is funny to remember that his sister Eileen turned one while we were living far from home, and he will turn one away from home as well, though most definitely not in so exotic a place.

Anyway friends--whoever is still reading this blog--this post is just a "hello" long overdue.  It would do my heart a lot of good to get back into blogging, so please pray for that intention.  Words and time and ideas keep eluding me somehow, but I know that in God all things are possible.

The three documents that made America

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the USA, and the Bill of Rights on audiocassette

A perfect resource for studying US History, particularly for many ages.

Haunting

Bryn Terfel and Simon Keenlyside sing the most beautiful rendition of Ave Verum Corpus imaginable.

Another grammar lesson

Maureen (age 5): There's you were--I was looking all over for you.

Marie (age 10): There's you were? That's terrible grammar.

Maureen: Oh, fine. There's you was.