Five Minutes Peace

When my kids were small, they had a book called Five Minutes Peace by Jill Murphy. Poor Mrs. Large asks her kids for 5 minutes peace after breakfast. She heads for the bath, visions of bubbles dancing in her head. Any mother knows what comes next: the kids, of course. In the end, the kids end up in the tub and Mrs. Large gets her peace - all 3 minutes and 45 seconds of it back in the kitchen. "Five minutes peace" is now the code in our house for "Mom needs privacy, please don't...(fill in the blank: stand outside the bathroom door and converse, ask me to sign your math test while I'm up to my elbows in cat litter, you get the idea!)"

Don Riley, OSA, currently the provincial of the Augustinian province of St. Thomas of Villanova gave a wonderful homily for Mother's Day, which drew on the Gospel for the day (John 14:23-29) where Christ promises to leave peace as his gift to the world. He stopped preaching 5 minutes sooner than usual, then suggested we give the mothers in the assembly "Five Minutes Peace", a gift he thought they rarely enjoyed. He asked the lector to time it, and we sat down - in peace. My first thought was that kids would get restless, adults would whisper, little ones would cry - what is he thinking? But it worked. Not only did silence take hold, but peace did as well. It was a risk, but one worth taking. I wonder how often we fail to take a risk for peace, since it seems that whatever we might try would be so little in the face of so much conflict and could not possibly have an effect should it succeed?

Do you say toe-mah-toe? Friday Five from RevGalBlogPals

There is no via media at my house! The Friday Five....

1. Mac? (woo-hoo!) or PC? (boo!)
Why yes, the Friday Five author reserves the right to editorialize!

Macs rule here, and rumor has it use less energy. Let's hear it for green machines.

2. Pizza: Chicago style luscious hearty goodness, or New York floppy and flaccid?

You can never be too thin if you're my pizza crust.

3. Brownies/fudge containing nuts:
a) Good. I like the variation in texture.
b) An abomination unto the Lord. The nuts take up valuable chocolate space.
[or a response of your choosing]

No nuts! Not only do they take up space that could be devoted to chocolate, but I'm allergic.
Really, allergic.

4. Do you hang your toilet paper so that the "tail" hangs flush with the wall, or over the top of the roll like normal people do?

I'm so happy that anyone puts a new roll on that I don't care which way it goes!

5. Toothpaste: Do you squeeze the tube wantonly in the middle, or squeeze from the bottom and flatten as you go just like the tube instructs?

As Math Man is wont to say, I'm wanton with the toothpaste tube. I've been tempted for years to run an experiment and see if in fact his method gets more toothpaste out of the tube. I think the answer is not! (I think the advice came from a time when metal tubes were used, and squeezing from the middle could lead to failure of the tube!)

The Sounds of Silence - or Not?

I drove up this morning to see my spiritual director and to spend a day in silence at the Jesuit retreat center an hour's drive north of here. I try to do this once a month. Usually I come up the night before, have dinner and spend some time meditating. The joy of not having to decide what dinner will be, or cook it, or clean it up, is alone worth the trip, but what I really come for is the silence. There can be 80 people in the house for a retreat, and rarely do you hear a word spoken. After about 18 hours of soaking silence, I'm ready to talk to my director, drive home and face the chaos, knowing that I've replenished the reservoir of stillness in my soul.

Today that silence is elusive. I've been chasing it since midmorning from chapel to garden to cloister, and have finally run it to ground in the far corner of the library at 8 pm. Small chapel: After a heinous drive through the morning traffic (it took me 30 minutes to go less than 2 miles at one point) I thought I'd found the still point, until two women walked in the door, plopped down beside me and began to chat. Four people in the chapel, forty seats and they have to sit next to me? and talk? I had the same sense of indignation that you get when you see someone toss a bag of trash out the car window. Their words were littered across my interior landscape of stillness. Main chapel: someone is practicing the organ, lovely, but not silent! Cloister: phones ringing (!). Gardens: lawnmower. My room: someone holding a cell conversation on the terrace. I have fled to the library. The silence is so thick you can float on it. The only noise is the gentle tapping of the shade on the window and the clicking of the keys on my laptop. I should have checked the card catalog first to find where the silence was filed. I may stay here all night!

To coin a phrase

I've coined a new word: aparent v. to temporarily detach from parental duties, to vanish from the house to take a walk, to be unavailable to referee. The other evening I sought to aparent while my two guys watched TV before bed. Math Man was on his way home from an evening event, and I wanted to get in my 30 minutes of walking before it got too late. "OK for me to take a walk?" I queried the bodies sprawled on the living room floor. I took the grunts as assent and grabbed my iPod to circle the block (four circles is 2 miles, clearly I'm not in this for the scenery). First circle, no Math Man but house is still standing. I'm relieved. Second circle, still no van in the driveway, no flames. Still relieved, but guilt is tapping at my door. Third time is the charm, Math Man's home and I can truly be aparental. Whew! The final lap winds to a close and as I open the door I hear Crash sobbing. I hadn't bargained on a commericial break wrestling match gone bad. "Can't you guys manage for 20 minutes on your own?" wonders Mom. Barnacle Boy looked me right in the eye and said "Apparently, not!" Aparent - not.

Momocaine

"Crash was right, you do lose all your teeth in 5th grade..." moaned my youngest. He's trying to figure out what he can eat comfortably with two loose molars (one on either side, of course) and two missing ones. Not much, alas. One is, as my mother would have said, hanging by a thread. "Can you pull it out, Mom?" "Won't that hurt a lot?" inquires a younger neighbor. "Not when my mom does it!" my loyal child informs him. "Does she use Novacaine?" Crash Kid sails through the kitchen and tosses off, "No, she uses Momocaine!"

It seems to be generally effective.