Mother's day (transferred)

I woke to a sky imperceptibly lighter than it had been on my midnight excursion to the chapel, and to bells calling the community to Vigils. In the darkness, I dressed and made my ablutions — remembering both Jane Hirshfield's poem which opens with that morning exercise in a Zen monastery, and a friend's recollection of his monastic stretch where the Buddhist abbot remarked to him, "You could at least wash your face!" before the early morning service. I wended my way to the chapel, collecting Psalter and Ordo as I went, the holy water in the marble basin at the door providing a second, bracing Asperges.

I sat in the dimness, marking my psalter. The Camaldolese Office of Vigils is longer than the Office of Reading in the Roman breviary where I make my home, and finding my way for this first Hour of the day was proving challenging (mostly because it arrived at 5:15 am, I suspect). I thought I had the basics down, but couldn't figure out why the Ordo kept directing me to antiphons for a regular day in Eastertide. It was Thursday, Ascension Thursday, or so I thought.

Actually, not. Right around dawn it dawned on me that the celebration of the Ascension in this very rural diocese has been transferred to Sunday.

Yesterday night, after a glorious day of sailing (in my opinion, there is no better way to spend a Pentecost afternoon than thrown onto the mercy of wind and water and light), after my spouse had headed to bed to read, and while both sons were out with friends, I filled the claw foot tub and soaked the bruises and sore muscles away.

Long before I expected him home, the front door creaked open and I heard The Boy's footsteps. "Mom?" "I'm just getting out of the tub!" I wrap up in my robe and pad into the hallway. There is The Boy, "I brought you a s'more." Oh, my. I had teased him that if I were providing marshmallows for the teen-age late night fire fest at the end of the block, the least they could do is bring me a toasted marshmallow. I laughed and told him that I thought we were doing Mother's Day in reverse. Instead of breakfast in bed to start the day, I was getting a s'more in my PJs at the end of the day.

All in all, a lovely way to celebrate Mother's Day, even if transferred two Sundays forward!

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An account of last year's celebration with my merry men. Photos are of the dawn (taken just after Vigils, outside the chapel here) and a s'more (from the Wikimedia collection)