What I would have shared on Facebook, if I wasn’t unplugged for Easter

Here’s what I didn’t share while I was cleaning, cooking, running errands, reading the Passion to the kids, cooking, praying, cooking, and generally not writing this Triduum weekend:

1. Thursday after school, Nicholas held up his blue bear, the one he’s been sleeping with for weeks now, and christened her–yes, her, despite being a baby blue bear–“Lissa Glissa.” “Where’d you hear that name?” I asked, figuring it came from a girl at school.

“I made it up,” he said.

Considering my idea of a creative name for a bear is “Tony Bear” because it comes from St. Anthony hospital, I stand in awe of my third born’s naming skills. He’s officially naming all my fiction characters from here on out. 🙂

2. I thought surely by now Michael had discovered every possible way to wreak mayhem on the church sound system. But I was wrong. Holy Thursday night, we were “not choir,” as we say in our house–just an ordinary pew-sitting family sitting behind the choir. As we headed back to our seats after Communion, Michael caught sight of the organ: all fired up, lots of stops lit, and–gasp!–unoccupied! He made a bee line for it. Unfortunately for him, Mommy was on task. “Oh, no you don’t!” I said, catching the eyes of several people who sit behind us when we “are choir,” quite a few of whom were chuckling. They all know how close a call that was.

3. After Good Friday service, in which we “were choir,” a parishioner caught my arm. “Your daughter brought tears to my eyes,” she said. “After the service was over, she went back up to the cross and kissed the foot of it.”

4. Alex and Cousin E. disappeared into the playroom at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm and came out with a drawing of a treehouse they want to build there. It’s just a platform going all the way around the trunk, but, “Uh, guys,” I said, “I can’t build that.”

Alex looked crushed. Grandpa said, “Let me see that.” He pursed his lips, thought a bit, and then said, “Alex, tell your mom she’s selling you short. I think we can build this.”

And there was great rejoicing.

5. Auntie A. did Julianna’s nails:

Julianna kept changing her mind about what color she wanted. She ended up with this:

 6. Easter morning, Alex shot out of bed at 6:15 a.m., anxious to see what pile of sugared bliss had been delivered by the Easter bunny overnight. But he had to wait until everyone else was ready. Unfortunately the occupants of the front bedroom are not as steeped in the traditions as he is. Alex was forced to wait while everyone else poked around getting toileted, teeth brushed and dressed for church. “Poor Alex,” I said. “It’s rough being the fastest one to get ready when nobody else really ‘gets’ what’s waiting downstairs.”

“Especially when Julianna’s in there showing her NAILS to Michael!” said Alex with a wry smile.

I looked into the bathroom and sure enough, there was Julianna naming the colors on every finger and toe to Michael as he pretended to brush his teeth.

Incidentally, Julianna later asked me if she could bring her nails to church with her. 🙂

7. We “were choir” on Sunday, and I sang the psalm–a Gospel setting of Ps. 118. Lots of energy. When I came down out of the sanctuary I heard my daughter, who was sitting with my cousin’s family, shout, “Yay! Great job, Mommy!” And when she saw me coming she threw her arms out wide, her little feet wiggling: “Mommy, I wah HUG!”

It killed me to content myself with blowing her a kiss as I went by.

8. Easter Sunday morning is a crazy Mass day at our parish, with simultaneous Masses going on across the hall from each other every hour and a half. We “were choir” and were trying to keep Mass as close to an hour as we could with the extra rites & sacraments. The pastor finished the sprinkling rite after verse 2 of a 3-verse song we had practiced with 3 separate soloists, so Christian and I attempted to communicate via sign language and facial expressions to decide if we were going to finish the song or cheat the final soloist of his verse. I issued two contradictory sets of instructions to the choir based on what I thought my husband was telling me–but apparently I was wrong, because he plunged into the third verse without the soloist, who had to scramble to catch up. My choir members were laughing at us.

From this snafu I can only draw one conclusion: we need a date night. We haven’t been out together since Valentine’s weekend, and clearly we have lost our marital ESP.