Cottage Blessings

What the Scrabble Board sees

(Photo and caption credit, Marie.)

House Tours

Every January, I begin the year in a frenzy of decluttering. In the past week or so alone, I have already torn apart the mudroom and pantry and several closets and have my eye on the basement and garage. The way our house usually goes is that the main floor looks pretty good, but the basement and some individual bedrooms leave much to be desired. Anytime someone compliments my house, I always laugh and say, “Thanks, but don’t look up or down.”

Seventeen years ago, when we were selling our first house, a starter colonial with a fireplace, a glass porch, and a dining room papered in blue lilacs, I managed to get every inch of it looking good. This was no small feat with five very young children, but we were having an open house, and the public needed to see perfection. After cleaning and purging and cleaning some more, I remember looking around at my beautiful, clean house and wondering, “Why are we selling this place? I love it!”

It turns out that our family had not really outgrown the house, but our possessions and junk definitely had. With a little paring down inspired by those impending house tours, it suddenly seemed perfect for us again.

Which brings me to an idea, an idea that has been met with several responses from my teens, none of them good: “You’re not serious, right?”; “Wait, please tell me you would never really do that.”; “That sounds really embarrassing.”

My idea is to set a date, maybe two or three months down the road, and host a “House Tour Party.” We could invite a couple of friends for coffee and cake and then give the kind of tour you would usually only give if you were selling the house. I’m contemplating a full no-holds-barred tour that includes closets, the basement, the boiler room, and the attic with nothing off limits and no stone unturned. Who knows, we might even start a trend and a string of house tour parties will follow. They will be all the rage!

At the moment, this is in the back of my mind in the swirl of ideas that resides there, but I am thinking about clean closets and neatly-made beds and toys laid out in labeled bins and smiling the smile that means, “Mom is not kidding.”

As a new semester starts

“There is no pleasure in life like the joy of achievement.” —LM Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill

Backyard rink season opens!

The beginning and the beginning

Every year for the past five years or so, we have spent New Year's Eve at my home parish in Queens, New York. It is the only place I know of that has Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction at midnight to close the old year and ring in the new. Every year, at the stroke of midnight, the pastor (an excellent, hardworking priest who really got us through the pandemic) blesses the people with the monstrance containing the body of Our Lord.

Here we are on New Year's Eve 2019 into 2020:

Here we are on New Year's Eve 2020 into 2021. Same bell tower (different vantage point), same coat (on me), same boots (on me), but there is something wonderfully different. Seven of our nine children are with us instead of only three. The one good thing about 2020 was unexpected family togetherness. With so many of their usual New Year's plans canceled, we had a lot more of our children available to begin the year the best way possible--in church on our knees before our Blessed Lord.

2021 is going to be a great year for the Gunthers!

A chaplet

The other day I was praying before Mass and thinking about all the things that are weighing on me. I had my rosary beads in my hand started praying a little chaplet made up on the spot. On the Our Father beads “Jesus, my Lord, my God, my all,” three times, and on the Hail Mary beads, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Somewhere in this house, I have a prayer card that once belonged to my grandfather and was passed along to my father. It is yellowed with age and shows a line drawing of Our Lord with the crown of thorns and the words “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner.” These words from the blind Bartimaeus brought forth a miracle from Our Lord. While all around him told him to keep quiet, Bartimaeus just kept shouting all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” “Son of David, have pity on me!”

Our Lord asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”

”Lord, I want to see.”

”Go your way, your faith has saved you.” 

I think the next time I pray this chaplet, which hopefully will be today by the Blessed Sacrament before Mass, I will add a final prayer at the end. Three times:

”Lord, I want to see!”

”Lord, I want to see!”

”Lord, I want to see!”

 

Today was a good day

Today was a good day. I slipped downstairs first thing and made two huge pots of chicken soup, enough for dinner tonight and a couple of lunches besides. Marie told me my chicken soup is her favorite food without even a close rival. I baked a loaf of crusty, brown rye bread dusted with caraway seeds. Rye bread is one of those things that makes me feel successful when I make it. If there is one thing I mastered during the past year, it is bread baking. I don’t want to say “the art of bread baking,” because there isn’t much art to it. Just good, wholesome, simple loaves of warm, crusty goodness.

 

Today was a good day. I brought the younger children to a requiem Mass for the three-year anniversary of a girl gone too soon. My younger boy served on the altar, and I prayed for everyone I knew. Honestly, if you are reading this, I may well have been praying for you specifically. Names and faces kept flooding to my mind, and as they did, I would say, “Please dear Lord, help [names], their family and all their troubles.” Everyone has troubles. We must always remember this. Everyone has troubles.

 

Today was a good day. My husband lighted the fire, and we sat by its light, listening to it crackle. We laughed and talked and broke up squabbles. We said all the same old things to the children: “If you two can’t get along, why don’t you stop sitting practically on top of each other?”; “If you were truly hungry, you would eat a banana”; “Why don’t you go play outside before it gets dark?” The same old comfortable things we have been saying for decades and that I no doubt will babble in my sleep as I doze off in the nursing home. 

 

Today was a good day. I kept up my new year’s resolutions: Mass and rosary and novena and a passage from the Bible every day. I am on day nine and praying to succeed again on day ten. I started another resolution: Bring back Cottage Blessings. Today is day one, and I am praying to be back again for day two. Let’s hope the next post after this one isn’t dated 2024. And if it is, ah well.

 

Today was a good day. Whatever else happens, whatever is troubling or worrying or disappointing me, I am truly grateful for all that is good. I am not the woman I was when I started this blog, but I do love that girl so much and hope to find the little well inside of me where bubbles her good cheer.

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!