Signs of Life

So it's been a long, long time since I've posted on here. Facebook, with its demands for brevity, have made it possible for me to maintain moderately sunny updates. Even when anger and despair started slipping around the cracks, I could reign it in with wittiness. Or so I like to think.

Writing a blog post, on the other hand, allows for much more introspection and honesty. And frankly, the fruits of those qualities were not things I've felt like sharing for the past two and a half months. Sometimes, the last thing you want to do is pull back your robe, and allow people to poke around in your wounds just to satisfy their curiosity.

But, spring is my favorite season, and Easter my favorite holiday, and I'm feeling a bit like my old self again. Enough to come post over here.

So far, Connecticut has been horrible. Absolutely horrible. Don't get me wrong- the house is amazing, and the geography is gorgeous. I can't wait until the newest baby comes and the whole family is able to take advantage of all the trails, parks, and lakes in the area.

And it is that newest baby- and the ones already here- that have brought into sharp focus the tremendous hostility to life that seems to be the common theme with the people we've run into up here.

Back in Memphis, I existed in this amazing, and highly unique social bubble. For whatever reason, the family was led into contact with people who embraced life, who participated fully with it, and who understood in a firsthand way the blessings that came with having children. Back in Memphis, when I ran into people who didn't have large families, the reaction was seldom one of scorn, but rather one of wistfulness, wishing that they had had more themselves.
Back in Memphis, the large, sprawling, sometimes beautiful mess of a large family was taken in typical Southern low key fashion.

Up here, however, my family has been subjected to outright stares, muttered comments intended to carry ("Good lord" and "Oh my God, how many are there?" being the most common), and complete strangers, stopping us in the middle of our daily lives to demand to know the ages of the children, how I "do it", and then to inform me that they disapprove of my family size. All of this, of course, expressed in front of my children. I can't count how many adults the kids have seen looking at them with intense expressions of disgust. As if their very existence is something offensive.

It's not your typical thoughtless, "Hey, don't you know what causes that?" Or "Don't you have a TV?" It's not even your slightly more antagonistic, "So are you done yet?" or "Is he going to get fixed after this one?" It's something much more hostile, much more aggressive.

At an Easter egg hunt the other day, I met a new neighbor. We both had sons who refused to wear any other footwear apart from cowboy boots. For a few moments, we happily found refuge in each other, since 5 year old boys who will not wear anything other than cowboy boots are sometimes a challenge. But then, as all the kids came up to me one at a time, you could see her body language changing.
"How many do you have?" the lady said, scanning the herd of kids, trying to do the mental math and add up which ones had come up to me during our conversation.
"Four," I said, "and this one's due in three weeks." She stared at me for a split second.
"You're insane," she said flatly. I waited a moment, to see if her words were going to be paired with a smile, or another comment, or anything to help us move past this social roadblock. Nothing came.
What do you do at that point? When a complete stranger announces that you are crazy, then expects you to continue on as if you're in total agreement with the assessment? There was no follow up for me to put the comment into context. No moral framework for her judgement, no "overpopulation" theories, nothing to help me understand. No place for us to go from there.

At Lowe's we pass a car that has a bumper sticker that reads, "Cats, NOT Kids". The ceiling in one of the examination rooms at my OB/GYN has another bumper sticker affixed to it which proclaims that "Condoms are easier to change than diapers". I wonder where the sister sticker is, which says "Broken diapers don't result in unplanned pregnancies".

The kids and I went to Whole Foods a few days ago. They were super excited, since a trip to Whole Foods always ends with them picking something out from the bakery. And so, shopping over, we left, all of them anticipating eating the little pastries safely stored in a plastic box cradled in Joaquin's hands.
We passed an old man as we left. He was walking in, reusable bags tucked under his arm, hearing aid in one ear, stooped over posture telling of back trouble.
He stopped us as we passed by loudly counting the kids, pointing at each one as he did so. This happens a lot. So much so that Jude can now count to four with no troubles.
Then the man gets to my obvious "it's a baby, she's not just in need of some exercise" bump.
"Five?!" He says in a harsh voice. I smile at him.
"Yes sir," I say.
At this point, he literally throws his hands up to the skies and makes a retching noise. A retching noise. Then he stomps off. And my children, bless them, don't even react. Either their focus is so firmly on the pastries that they didn't notice, or they are already so used to adults reacting with physical disgust at their existence that it makes me want to sink down to the ground right there and start crying.

What is it exactly they're so angry with? When I had one or two children, I never had such encounters. Is there, perhaps, something dangerous and awful about my other kids that I don't see? After having a girl and a boy, are any other kids I may have simply redundant? I've had enough people tell me that once they got their child of the "missing" gender, they were done. Is there something to that? That gender trumps the individuality of each person? Are Gabriel and Jude pointless because I already had Joaquin?

So this is where I am when Easter comes to find me. I am at a place where I am more angry with myself for being so affected by the reactions of strangers than I am with the strangers. After all, Ken and I did not plan our family for the approval of others. We have planned our family in such a way because we believe God when He tells us that children are a blessing. Because we know that nothing strips us of our selfishness and self-centeredness like being a parent. Because we know that our fifth child is just as meaningful and wondrous as our first- a life is not more or less important because of birth order.
But all these are just words. They're just slogans I say to try and rally morale, and they're hollow and bitter as I repeat them while getting ready for Mass on Easter Sunday. Particularly because Jude is a raging beast that morning. He is having allergic reactions to something around here, and his eyes and nose are leaking some fluid usually only seen in horror movies.

We get to Mass, and I try very hard not to assume that we're the largest family in the parish. Maybe some of the families have taken the smart road and split up for Mass- mom takes some to the early one, dad takes the rest to the later one. Certainly this is what we should have done, I think to myself as Jude begins screaming to be let "DOWN!" before the opening prayer is even said.
Since it's Easter, the church is fuller than usual, and so the pew we thought we had to ourselves is soon shared with an older couple to our left, and then an older couple to our right. This makes the seven hundred bathroom trips we have to take with Gabriel even more disruptive.
Somehow, despite all this, I am able to hear part of Father's homily. He's talking about the far-reaching ramifications of Easter. He says, "When I die, and stand before God, He's not going to haul out some giant book and go over every single mistake I ever made. What He will do is look at me, and say, "Michael, what did you do for Me? What did you do to manifest My love to the world?'"
And this is the part where I start to cry a little. This is the part where I realize that when it's my turn to stand in front of God, and He asks me that question, I can say to Him, "I was open to the lives you wanted to bring into the world through me. I rose above my self-centered nature just enough to let You bring the blessings of these children into my life. I was sometimes scared and sometimes angry and always at a loss about how I was going to mother these children, but I had hope that it would be Your grace, and not my shortcomings, that would triumph."

I managed to get myself under control in time for Communion. Jude is still screaming, Ken and I have been awesome tag team partners in the liturgical rodeo. As I'm walking up to receive Our Lord, Joaquin's hand in my left, Gabriel's hand in my right, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and see a silver-haired lady smiling at me.
"I had five children," she whispers to me. "I know where you are right now. Five children, and I never regretted it."
I look at her, crying again, and tell her "Thank you" from the bottom of my heart. "I'm always so grateful to have mothers of large families telling me that they made it through." She smiles again, and pats my on the shoulder. I am still crying a little bit as I receive the Host, and I think that if we routinely saw Grace working in our souls, we would probably die of joy.

I don't return to the pew, but instead take Joaquin and Jude into the "quiet room" for the remainder of Mass. They are, in fact, quiet, in this room as they happily play with the toys there. As I go to sit down, another woman, one who had either been in the pew with us, or directly behind, walks up to me.
"I had six," she says, smiling at the boys. "Six in eight years. Your children are all beautiful, and they were so well behaved." I stare at her for a moment, and can only point an accusing finger at Jude. She smiles again. "He was fine. Poor little thing has allergies, what can you do?" She, too, pats me on the shoulder, and walks off, leaving me a sobbing mess again.

Mass ends, and Ken, Lotus, and Gabriel come into the room. As the four kids pick up the toys, Ken tells me that another woman who had been sitting by us pulled him aside, and gave him a similar pep talk. Mother of five, our children were beautiful, we were doing a great job. He told her that Jude had picked that precise Mass to display the worst behavior we'd ever seen. She shook her head, and repeated, "They're all beautiful."

As we're leaving Mass, I remember something I'd read a few days before, which referred to Christ's cross as the "throne" from which He would rule the world. I hated those words then, particularly in light of the fact that we're all given crosses to carry, and those who refuse to carry them are not worthy to be called a disciple. Who wants their cross to be their throne? Good grief, ask me to carry it, I guess, but don't ask me to turn it into something glorious
But on Easter, as I look at my big, beautiful family and realize once again that it sets me apart, and that the angry, hostile reactions from others is the cross I'm being asked to bear, I understand what a throne does- it allows you to sit up a bit higher, so as to give you a farther-reaching perspective than you would have had otherwise. And that perspective, coupled with God's inexhaustible Grace, is designed to help you find your way Home.