I am not a crafty mom, but I sometimes let fantasy and ambition get the best of me. Two days before the start of Lent this year, my oldest daughter reminded me of a family activity we had done together many Lents ago. It was a craft I had read about in one of those … Read more
Rumors are flying. Is she or isn’t she? Will she or won’t she? The subject is celebrity mom Katie Holmes, naturally, and the second child she is rumored to be currently gestating or planning to conceive with her husband, Tom Cruise. Let the talking and stalking begin! I don’t usually pay much attention to tabloid … Read more
Driving rain and wind pummeled the house all night, rattling the cistern boxes, bellowing down the chimneys, and pouring sheets of water against the windows. Although the wind died down the next morning, rain peppered steadily for three more days. With this sudden dumping of water on already saturated ground and into already full streams, … Read more
Many years ago, my mother compared her life as a mother of nine children to a Merry-Go-Round. She said it felt like she stepped on each morning and spun around and around until the end of the day when she stepped off, slept a little, and got right back on the neext day. Back then, … Read more
In a recent article at Salon, writer Katy Read admitted something that raised some maternal eyebrows: She regrets having left a respectable job and steady paycheck to be an at-home mom to her two sons for ten years. It’s not the quality time with her children she regrets, but the financial toll she’s now paying … Read more
The last thing I wanted to do on a Saturday morning was discuss my husband’s death with 20 women. Not that he had died; neither had theirs. But, encouraged by him, I signed up for a workshop on what to do if suddenly widowed. Leading this sobering examination was a woman whose fate had been … Read more
My husband and I were recently inspired to pack ourselves, our eight kids, and 13,000 Capri Sun juice boxes into our twelve-passenger van and drive more than 1,500 miles to spend Christmas in south Florida. It was epic — if by epic you mean a wildly memorable trip that was “so perfectly worth doing” but also … Read more
One of the first Christmas gifts I received this year was a speeding ticket. For years, I have made a hobby of collecting verbal warnings for driving too fast. I know I drive too fast. I am working on it. And I am getting pretty good at smiling, apologizing, and offering sympathetic and yet entirely … Read more
“Your son,” a woman once told me after Mass, “is a bully.” “Really?” I asked, surprised by this characterization of my normally well-behaved (at least in church) sons. “Which one?” She told me that she had observed my three oldest boys, all altar servers, putting on their cassocks in the sacristy before Mass. The youngest … Read more
I am writing this in the Autumn, as the days grow shorter and the night temperatures inch toward the freezing point. When I drive my son around our neighborhood early on Sunday mornings, helping him deliver newspapers before the 7:00 o’clock deadline, we make our way in the dark until the very end, when the … Read more
Are children like litter? Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University professor, thinks so. In a recent video clip from the Joy Behar Show, the esteemed professor compared having many children to “littering” and explained that “we’ve got too many people on this planet to begin with.” Other members of the panel agreed that refraining from having … Read more
Who is to blame for the suicides of teenage boys “struggling with sexual identity” that have been so highly publicized in the last two months? If we are to believe many media sources, primary blame rests on bullying peers. But I wonder: Is the homosexual community — and the Catholic Church — ignoring the darker, … Read more
I was a teenager when he died. We went to visit him one last time when I was about 14 years old. Nobody said it was “one last time” — not to me, anyway. They said we would be taking some short trips to Canada — just a few of us kids at a time … Read more
My wife Alice and I were married on an August morning in 1964 in a Presbyterian church just south of Richmond, Virginia. As our wedding reception drew to a close in the midday summer heat and we prepared to drive off to begin our married life in Austin, Texas, Alice’s mother took me aside and … Read more
A quick look around the Catholic mom-o-sphere might leave you with the impression that most Catholic moms — especially those with large families — are a bunch of Frugal Frannies. And that might be so. Depending where you click, you can find articles about sewing your own clothes, baking your own bread, and making your … Read more
“Look at me!” I announced to my bleary-eyed husband when he emerged from the bedroom one morning soon after our second child was born. Carefully, I shifted tiny Eamon in the crook of one arm as I scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and poured juice with my free hand. “I can nurse the baby and cook … Read more
When I accepted a job as an activity director in a nursing home, I had grand ideas of what I would accomplish with the residents there. Fresh out of college, sporting my shiny new bachelor’s degree in sociology, I felt ready to change the world. Real nursing homes, I quickly found out though, are nothing … Read more
“You’ll be the prince, and I’ll be the princess, It’s a love story Baby, just say yes.” — Taylor Swift, “Love Story” Doesn’t everyone love a good love story? Maybe not. At the feminist blog Feministing, commenter Chloe recently confessed that she enjoys listening to Taylor Swift’s music now and then, even if it’s what … Read more
All ten of us were in the van when it happened. Though we were only running some errands and stopping at the library, I had ignored the eye-rolling of my older kids and insisted on the entire family’s going out together. One consequence of our growing-up family, I have found, is that we more and … Read more
Exactly a year ago today, our oldest son, Luke, and his wife, Tasha, presented to the world the inimitable Lucy Beatrice Shea. (In fairness, Luke couldn’t have done it without Tasha. And, in hasty self-defense, I add that Tasha is a really good sport who enjoys a good laugh about labor and won’t, I am … Read more