My Mild Dystopia (Isolation: Weeks 6 and 7)

May 5, 2020 / Julie / Leave a comment

In thinking over the past two weeks, all these images flash to my mind – moments that resemble something normal, but aren’t quite. They’re off. They’re distorted. They’re like glancing at some mildly dystopian version of my life.

I dress up my daughter to be flower girl in a friend’s wedding, but instead of strapping her into the car for the ride to the church, I take pictures of her in our backyard. I post them on social media, congratulating the bride in my caption.

I change my daughter back out of the dress before she can get it dirty. She wears it for maybe thirty minutes.

I drive my son to the doctor’s office for his fourth case of Strep in two months. We arrive, I pull into a special parking space, and I call the office. A few minutes later a masked, protective-gown-wearing doctor comes out to us. He opens the back door of my car, tests my son for Strep, and walks back into the building.

This is our second pandemic visit for Strep. The first time, a week into our isolation, that doctor looked scared. This time, six weeks into our isolation, this doctor seems lonely. He comes out to report the test results and stands there for a while, talking. He acts like he doesn’t want us to leave.

I go to the grocery store for the first time in five weeks. I’m worried about how different it will be inside, so I sit in the car for a while. I finally work up the courage to go in by repeatedly saying “You can do this!” out loud, to myself, alone in my car. I don’t even feel ridiculous.

Our dryer breaks and I’m not even that annoyed about it. My kids are pretty much just wearing pajamas all day anyway. It’s not the worst timing to only be able to wash as many loads as you can dry on a couple of wobbly racks.

I come across an old photo in a Facebook memory of my son asleep in a grocery cart. The kid is cute, but what I can’t take my eyes off of is the huge package of paper towels behind him. They seem decadent. It feels like a great privilege to be able to buy a honking package of paper towels without thinking anything of it.

A few days later, my husband walks in from the store with an identical package. He says he can’t believe he got so lucky.

My parents stop by to drop off some things for us. They are careful; we are careful. We give air hugs and blow kisses. We remind the kids (over and over) to give Grandma and Grandpa plenty of space. They handle it well, except for the moment when the six-year-old accidentally touches Grandpa’s shirt. The adults tense up and the boy melts down. We’ve told the kids not to touch Grandma and Grandpa so as to protect them, in case we have the coronavirus. He wants to protect Grandpa. He’s distraught to think of his mistake.

A few minutes later, we say our goodbyes and watch them pull out of our driveway. I hate that I can’t hug my parents. I hate that my son was upset by something so simple as touching his grandpa’s shirt.

~~~

I’m finding my emotional capacity to be very thin these days. It takes so little to throw me off. A week ago, I was concerned that a dear friend might have Covid19 and a cloud came over me. Everything was grayer, darker, more scary and worrisome. News reports took on more weight; social media interactions became more strained.

But then she tested negative for the virus and the world brightened.

Other, smaller anxieties weigh on me too, almost unacknowledged. Then they’re relieved and suddenly I realize they’ve colored my whole day.

In the past two weeks I’ve had a few really hard days and a couple of good ones. Last Thursday was a good day. It was cool, dark, and rainy, which I sometimes find to be the weather that heals me best. I like the quiet and calm.

Schoolwork went well that day. Two children had Google class meetings, three napped, and three built forts in the family room. Dinner was warm and fattening and satisfying. I served it to the kids picnic-style, in front of a movie. I made a blackberry tart for dessert.

In the Kindergarten Google meeting, one boy showed off his new kitten. One girl hugged her stuffed horse. Another announced that, “My tadpoles are growing lots of legs!” A week earlier, my Kindergartener had attended his Google meeting as Batman.

Outside these walls, the world sure seems scary. Not just because of the coronavirus: because of the economy and the unrest its decline seems to be generating. Because of division, deepening every day. Because of others’ fears, driving them to blame and cast aspersions and seek solace in storylines that confirm their beliefs. Because of my own fears, my own tendency to blame and cast aspersions (in my mind, if not out loud), my own drive to seek solace in my preferred storylines.

Inside these walls, life can be overwhelming. It can be loud and busy and messy and just too much for me some days. But it is also so, so good. These kids are creative and resilient and all-around amazing. I am enjoying having them all around, all the time, more than I could have predicted. I am learning to better love my home. I am paying attention to how my husband loves us – working his day job, doing the shopping, building the kids a playset.

As much as I mourn what’s been visited on this world of ours, I am so grateful for the small, plain gifts this time of isolation has given us. They are consolations for my mild dystopia.

That is an “air hug.” Social-distancing norms were respected.

The Novel Normal (Isolation: Week 5)

April 22, 2020April 22, 2020 / Julie / Leave a comment

On Sunday I drove for the first time in nearly four weeks. It felt strange. My body was unused to moving along the earth at high speed, cradled in a chair of fake leather, carried in a machine of metal. Every hill and curve seemed exaggerated. I struggled to stay in my lane.

The experience made me think about how we’ve grown used to something so unnatural – our bodies transported, quickly, across surfaces that would take ages to cover on foot. A hundred miles by car, a thousand miles by plane. We travel farther from our homes to get to Ikea than many throughout human history ever traveled in their lifetime.

I was driving to our parish to drop off a casserole I’d made for Our Daily Bread. (Parishes in the Archdiocese of Baltimore take turns contributing casseroles to the program. Ours does so once a month.) I was glad for the excuse to be out of the house, out on those hills and curves. My brain hardly knew where to settle – even the familiar seemed novel.

I was glad for the excuse to be on the church grounds again. There was all that red brick. There were the flowers and the trees in bloom. There was where we should have walked from Mass to the kids’ faith formation classes. There was where my son should have posed for First Communion pictures and there was where my daughter should have pranced about in her flower girl dress.

There was the building that held the tabernacle that held Him.

On my way home, I stopped in the middle of the road (no other cars to be seen – I promise) to take pictures of a landscape I can’t see from my house. Fields, barns, cattle, a lovely little family graveyard surrounded by a stone wall.

Normal and novel, all of it.

I came home to a family ready to sit down with me to watch online Mass. This time we watched Bishop Barron’s. A previous time, my four-year-old asked if “that pink thing” was part of Bishop Barron’s head.

All seven of us snuggled on the sofa. Two were very wiggly, passed from mother to father to brother and back again. Normal Mass behavior, a novel way to be experiencing it.

I’ve been trying to think of how to characterize last week, Week Five of our coronavirus isolation. I called the first week a week for shock and the second a week for mourning. I didn’t call weeks three or four anything; they were too scattered. I was too scattered. But in considering week five, I think I’ve got to call it the week for beginning to feel normal.

Not that we went back to feeling the normal we felt before this all began. No, I think last week was when we began to forget that old normal and reside in the new one.

Last week, Week Five, I worked on the house and the meals and I helped the kids with their schooling. One day I’d do well with the former, another I’d do well with the latter. (Not both on the same day. Never both on the same day.) By the end of the week we’d achieved all the essentials, and that was good enough.

Last week the preschooler stopped asking when she could go back to school. The older kids stopped expecting the freedom to play all day. I stopped expecting my beloved afternoon quiet time. We all seemed to have grown used to this novel, unnatural normal.

Except for in those moments. There are still those moments that seem to hold especially still, that last a little longer, that are so very novel they ring louder and clearer than anything else.

I experienced one of them while watching my children participate in their classes’ Google meetings last week. They’re really pretty sweet to witness, until they’re heartbreaking. Kindergarteners are tiny and adorable and attend while holding stuffed animals. You could die from the cuteness. Second-graders are so happy to see each other! They show off their pets. They radiate joy.

But the fourth-graders. Fourth-graders are old enough to have a decent grasp on what’s going on. They ask questions about the crisis. They want to know if they’ll go back to school this year, whether they’ll have to go to summer school, and how they’ll get back the stuff they left in their desks and lockers. One wants to know what it feels like to have the coronavirus.

I hear that question and the moment holds really, really still.

Another moment comes when I read on Monday (bleeding into Week Six here) about Governor Hogan’s acquisition of 5,000 coronavirus test kits from South Korea. I’m stunned. I read that the kits have the capacity to run half a million coronavirus tests – “roughly equal to the total amount of testing that has been completed by four of the top five states in America combined” – and I cry. The moment seems to take every feeling that has deadened over the course of this crisis and whisper life back into them.

I have been convinced that our kids will not go back to school this year, that we won’t see family or friends through the summer and maybe into the fall, and that the beginning of the next school year could be altered too. If that proves not to be the case, I am going to be a blubbering, grateful mess. Even now, at just the hope of it, I cry a messy thank you to the Hogans.

It is strange to be sitting in my room crying with joy and hope at the prospect of returning to our normal lives – our real normal, the one we’ve left behind.

I soak in that still, loud, clear, life-giving moment before getting up and walking downstairs, back into the novel normal.

(Note: if you like this post or anything else I write, please consider sharing it. That’s the only way others will ever find it. Thank you!)

Past Everybody Else’s Bedtime (Isolation: Weeks 3 and 4)

April 14, 2020April 13, 2020 / Julie / 2 Comments

I don’t know what to tell you about the past two weeks – weeks Three and Four of our coronavirus isolation.

I was going to tell you about my Lenten sacrifice, the one where I gave up wasting time and indulging in escapism. How I gave up escapism just before the world turned upside down and the schools closed and grocery shelves emptied and suddenly all I wanted to do was escape.

How I felt like God had rounded up all my weaknesses and insecurities and thrust them in my face.

I could tell you about my quickly-trashed “homeschooling” schedule and the fifteen million computer programs my kids are supposed to use to do their schoolwork. How I’ve only very slowly progressed from a “This is never going to work” mindset to a “If we work really hard, maybe we can do the bare minimum” mindset.

And how I truly mean the “we” in that sentence, because for Kindergarteners, second-graders, and fourth-graders, remote learning requires great, big, heaping helpings of parental involvement. Which is hard to fit in when you’re cooking three meals a day and running the dishwasher twice a day and changing five diapers a day and trying to keep laundry moving so you don’t drown in it.

And how I don’t know how teleworking parents are managing it. Except I imagine that most of them have fewer than five kids, and maybe it’s easier to telework and oversee remote learning when you’re not doing it with five kids.

And how, when I stop to think about that, I experience a brief, wistful daydream of an easier, more peaceful, one- or two-child quarantine. For about five seconds, at which point I remember that I have never been more thankful for our large family than I am now, during this pandemic.

You should see these kids, rolling around the house and yard like a pack of laughing, half-drunk rugby players. They are enjoying each other so much. They are loving each other so much, growing in kindness and consideration for each other even as they howl about somebody knocking over somebody else’s Legos.

I feel like I’m getting a glimpse at how much they’ll enjoy each other as goofball teenagers (and hopefully adults?) and I am so very grateful for it.

I could tell you about the playset Brennan is building for the kids or the bunkbed he just finished or how he keeps having to detach and reattach the sink in the powder room because plumbing is horrible. (This weekend I literally heard him say, “Die, sink!” to the thing. That’s how bad this has gotten.)

I could tell you about our low-key but lovely commemorations of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, the latter of which happened to be my birthday. (Good Friday during a pandemic! Probably the least cheerful day for a birthday, but blessedly quiet and pleasant nonetheless.)

I could tell you about our unexpectedly sweet Easter, and how much more relaxing a holiday can be when you’re not allowed to go anywhere.

I could tell you how we seem to not be the sort who can pull off liturgically-themed crafts or foods or activities, but we do ask a lot of questions and talk a lot of things through, and I’m beginning to see the fruits of that in my kids’ religious devotions. And how amazingly hopeful that makes me feel.

I could tell you about the things that are not making me hopeful right now, all coronavirus related. The continued inadequacy of testing, the upswing in grocery workers falling ill with the virus, the dearth of solid plans for reopening the economy. (Plans, not dates. There seem to be plenty of dates, but few plans for making them workable.)

I could tell you about any number of these things.

I could write for hours and not be done telling you all I have to say. But these days, from the moment I wake until the moment everyone else falls asleep, my time seems to belong to someone other than me.

So here I sit, in the still, sweet, quiet of Past Everybody Else’s Bedtime, and I try to just say something.

Happy Easter, friends. He is risen! He has defeated death, and we have hope.

Isolation: Week Two

April 1, 2020 / Julie / 1 Comment

You know it, I know it: I was never going to last long at daily blogging. But maybe I can do weekly entries about our lives during this time of coronavirus isolation? It’s clear now, anyway, that we should be measuring this pandemic in weeks, even months – not days.

That first week, the one I already blogged about, felt like a week for shock. Shock at what we were beginning, shock at how swiftly our lives had changed, a million little shocks to the system as we tried to adjust to our new reality.

Last week, Week Two, was for me a week of mourning. It was slow, low, gloomy, and gray.

I mourned over the deaths I was hearing about in the news, the job losses, the families separated by illness and worry. I mourned over the smaller things that feel huge to those experiencing them: high school seniors unable to experience the proms and games and graduations they’d been working toward, college seniors unsure whether they’ll ever see their classmates again, new parents unable to share their tiny babies with the grandparents and aunts and friends who love them.

I couldn’t focus much on home or schooling or writing. I seemed to trip over myself and everyone around me. I wanted to be alone and I wanted to scoop up my children to hold them close. All at once.

Wednesday and Thursday evenings, I took my boys for walks. The older two went with me one night, the youngest the other.

The first evening was gloomy and misty. We snuck out while Brennan made dinner and gave the three littles a bath. (Winner = Julie.) It was the first time the boys had been away from our property in twelve days. Walking along a hilly path, the nine-year-old spun in a circle and said, “I feel so free!”

We walked past each of the boys’ schools and the eight-year-old got to peek into his classroom window. He felt strange, looking into it after so long. I felt strange, watching my son look into the window of a classroom he’s not allowed to enter.

Thursday evening was a little brighter, lit up gold in the sunset. My littlest guy smiled broadly, looking around him in excitement. I peeked into windows as we walked neighborhood streets, wondering what those homes are like right now, with their inhabitants stuck inside just as we are.

Everything was so quiet in town: the schools, the sports fields, the walking paths, the streets. We hardly saw any cars on our walks, let alone pedestrians. It was hard to process just how empty and strange things felt.

By the end of the week, it was clear that our two-week period of no school would be extended significantly. We learned that the kids would be home at least another four weeks. We understood that they might not go back at all.

Over the weekend my husband finished a project he’s been working on for some time: building the two big boys a bunkbed. He got it all set up for them – a big, solid, hulking thing made possible by months of hard work. Hours upon hours of thinking and planning, sawing and sanding, priming and painting. The boys were thrilled, climbing up and down the ladder, arranging their favorite stuffed animals just the way they liked.

It felt like something of an antidote to the week. Here, before us, was the fruit of all that hard work, all that time, all that mess. We’d come to the other side of a project that had monopolized our garage and our foyer and Daddy’s attention.

It’s nice to see a result when you’re sunk in the drudgery of process. It’s nice to be reminded that things pass, that stages can be finite. And it’s nice to see something built up at home when you know you’re not going anywhere else for a good, long while.

(To report on the little things too: We kept up with our bare-minimum homework routine and missed several days of online daily Mass. Things will have to pick up next week when remote learning begins!)

Isolation: Days 6-9

March 24, 2020March 25, 2020 / Julie / 1 Comment

Apparently there’s a limit to how many nights in a row I can stay up late writing blog posts, even with the opportunity to sleep in every day. (That limit seems to have been five.) But now I’ve had a few decent nights of sleep and I’m back for more.

By the end of last week I was feeling pretty burnt out. There had been too much stress, too much noise, too much uncertainty, too little time to myself, and way, way too little laundry accomplished. So I asked Brennan (who’s normally tied up on the weekends with home improvement projects) if he’d mind the kids on Saturday so I could get caught up on things upstairs.

God bless the man, he took charge of the kids all weekend, which gave me the opportunity to bring our second floor from “unmitigated disaster” status all the way up to “needs attention.”

Let me tell you, it feels pretty darned great to be able to stand comfortably in front of my dresser, open its drawers without anything getting in the way, and pull out neatly folded clothing. I can even see the top of the thing! Amazing.

I got through several loads of laundry, that overgrown dresser, and a couple of beds that sorely needed changing. Brennan cooked a bunch of delicious meals, winning him heaps of praise from overexcited children (“I don’t like this food Daddy, I LOVE IT.”) They liked his cooking so much, they drew a picture of a trophy, cut it out, and taped it to the wall. (Have these children ever awarded their mother a trophy for her cooking? No, they have not.)

As far as I’m concerned, Daddy’s just won himself the honor of cooking dinner every night.

Sunday morning the seven of us cuddled up on the sofa to watch our pastor’s Mass on Facebook Live. It was a little hard to hear, but pretty wonderful to see that familiar place and a few familiar faces. I was kind of emotional about it.

That evening I needed a break from home, so I took a solitary walk through town. It was cool and empty and sad. Shops were closed, restaurants were either closed or converted to carryout, and I saw a grand total of two individuals outside their vehicles. We stayed away from each other.

Before long I ended up at my aunt’s house, where she and my cousin and I caught up a bit, standing at safe distances in the front yard.

I am a social person. As much as I love a little alone time, I get great joy from interacting with people, even the strangers I encounter out-and-about in the world.

I just love people.

And my kids love people. When my oldest was a toddler I used to race to the front door as soon as I realized we were about to get a delivery. I’d try to open the door before the deliveryman could ring the bell, because if my boy heard it ring, he’d race to the window and beg the man to stay.

But now it all feels different. Yesterday another deliveryman brought us a package and I tensed up when my three youngest kids ran outside to greet him. “Stay away!” I wanted to scream to them.

What a time we’re living in, when we grow unused to seeing any faces but those under our own roof. What a time, when we miss seeing people in stores and on sidewalks, when the friendly deliveryman makes us nervous.

This new lifestyle has required quite a mental shift to adapt to. I think it will be similarly difficult when we emerge.

(Regarding schoolwork, so far we’ve just been sort of limping along – the boys have done the bare minimum of the homework they’ve been assigned. But today we finally got a computer up and running for them and I finally finished moving some things around to create a dedicated area for schoolwork. So tomorrow! Tomorrow we’ll be more ambitious, right?)

Isolation – Day 2

March 17, 2020 / Julie / Leave a comment

Today was stressful. Because of the mundane things – the spilled glass of water, the recipe not looked at closely enough, the orthodontic device that decided to detach on the very day the orthodontist’s office closed for two weeks.

But today was also stressful because the enormity of our situation finally caught up with me.

This morning my cousin came to babysit so I could run to the grocery store. I felt guilty bringing someone into our home – I’m trying to take this isolation thing to heart – but I figured it was probably better for humanity to have one adult come into my home than to bring five touchy-feely children into a public space.

Last night when my husband tried the grocery store after work, the milk was pretty much gone.

I’ve never had to worry about not being able to find milk before. But now I did, and I was anxious. Getting up, getting ready, getting on the road – the only thing I could think about was getting that milk. Then there was an almost total lack of traffic – 8 AM Sunday traffic at 9 AM on a Tuesday – and my anxiety mounted.

Later, (back home with my milk, thank goodness) the enormity of what we are facing began to unravel within me. I felt unmoored.

Homework packets be damned. I wasn’t going to worry about that today, on top of everything else. Instead I rushed the girls to naps and the boys outside. I needed to be alone. I needed to restore a little order to my surroundings. I needed to feel like I was in control of something.

Ultimately, I gave up on my complicated, Irish-themed dinner plans and just set the box of Hungry Jack on the counter. Green pancakes it would be.

Then in the early evening, thank goodness, I did the best thing I could in the moment: I went outside. I let two eager little girls lead me out the door and show me the wonder of grass and rocks, of flowers growing where they were never planted. We explored, we marveled, we breathed the fresh, clean air.

Today the boys wrote in their journals again, but did pretty much nothing else of conventional value. And I am completely fine with that. Today was a day for mourning. Tomorrow is a new day. Maybe it will be for getting a grip on this new way of living.

P.S. For the record, I’ve got to share that the kids had Lucky Charms cereal for breakfast this morning as a special St. Patrick’s Day treat. They were super, amusingly excited to try it. It was a joy to watch.

Isolation – Day 1

March 16, 2020 / Julie / Leave a comment

This afternoon I handed each of my boys a journal and told them that they’re entering a remarkable time – a time that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. I told them how unusual it was for a story like this to be lived by so many people all over the world. Millions upon millions of children home from school, millions upon millions of people confined to their homes, millions upon millions of people worried about the same thing.

I told my boys that when they’re adults they’ll want to look back on what their child-selves thought of this time, and so I directed each to write one journal entry per day. I told the fourth grader to write a page, the second grader to write at least a paragraph, and the Kindergartener to write a sentence. I suggested they might want to sketch some pictures too.

I told them they could write about anything they wanted – what they do here at home while we’re isolated, what they think about what’s going on in the world, what they fear, what questions they have. The boys were excited at the prospect; each set straight to work.

I picked up an old, mostly unused journal of mine and thought of doing the same. But I write better on a keyboard. And anyway, if I’m going to spend time writing up my own thoughts on this remarkable time we’re in, perhaps I ought to share them on the blog. So here we are.

I plan to share a bit here each evening, telling about my day and my own thoughts, fears, and questions. I want to have this record to look back on when (God-willing) these weeks are a distant, dull memory. And who knows – maybe you’d like to have a peek at them too.

For that record, I must note that today, our kids’ first day off from school (and therefore my Day 1), we did decently well. I baked banana bread and pear bread, fed the kids, did two loads of dishes and two loads of laundry, read stories to little ones, guided the five-year-old through some homework, put two children down for naps (one of them multiple times), talked to my grandparents on the phone, made a grocery list, and prepped food for tomorrow.

The kids watched a movie, played with Legos and Lincoln Logs and puzzles, drew, read, did schoolwork, and wrote in their journals. They enjoyed a lunchtime Doodle date with Mo Willems. They played outside for hours. (And they fought too – I won’t deny it.)

They did not play on their tablets, because they lost that privilege the day before by waking their sister from her nap. (A certain Mama might have told one of her boys that she would lose her mind if the girls didn’t nap in these weeks while the boys are home from school. A new rule was instituted: If one wakes a napping child, no one gets his tablet for two days.)

But we (the boys and I) also watched daily Mass together, and that was wonderful. Our archbishop has canceled all public Masses in our Archdiocese, so yesterday (a Sunday) felt strange, and strangely empty. While watching a livestreamed Mass said by our archbishop, however, it occurred to me that if we can’t attend Mass once a week in the flesh, maybe we could attend every day online. And maybe it might be fun to check out different online Masses, celebrated by different priests in different places. Today we watched a Mass said by Cardinal Dolan at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. We’ll see where tomorrow takes us!

Okay, that’s more than enough for tonight. Tomorrow, when I don’t have to intro this whole thing, I hope to get to some deeper thoughts on what we’re all facing.

Good night!

A Few Days in August

November 19, 2019November 18, 2019 / Julie / 3 Comments

I am not pregnant, but for a few days in August, I thought I probably was. We were away on vacation for the first time in five years – for the first time in three of our children’s lives.

We’d had a rough beginning to the trip: my husband had come down with pneumonia and my son with bronchitis. (“Can’t we weave wiffout Daddy?” the little stinker had asked an hour before his own symptoms arose.) So I’d done all the packing and loading and driving and unloading and unpacking by myself.

It was a lot.

But there we were, two parents and five kids finally lodged in our rented condo in the Blue Ridge Mountains and I was feeling grateful.

Grateful – and nervous that I might be pregnant.

Two days into the trip, I stole away from my crew for a little time to myself. I pulled out my laptop and sat on the rooftop balcony and wrote up my feelings. I hadn’t thought of publishing them, but re-reading them now, I recognize that they sum up much of my thinking lately.

I get asked all the time whether we’re “done.” (Having babies, that is.) I wonder whether the questioners think about the emotional conflict their curiosity can trigger.

For the first time, we’re about to celebrate a toddler’s second birthday without having another babe in arms or in utero. And for the first time, we’re aiming to be “done.” The idea of another pregnancy is overwhelming, even scary (mostly for medical reasons). Yet the idea of another baby, should one ever come our way, is wonderful.

~~~

8.20.19

I sit here on this balcony, listening to the cars whoosh past and the oak branches rustle in the breeze. (The maple stands mostly still. Why does one tree rustle while its neighbor does not?) I sit on a simple old patio rocker, roofing beneath my feet in this forgotten space. Who will notice this balcony, the owners must wonder, when the view is from the other? But this one is partly shaded at 11am; the other bakes. I lean back in the chair and look up at the swirling clouds, water vapor shifting around, trading places in 3D. A passenger jet soars past. We aren’t that remote.

I sit here, not knowing whether I might be pregnant, but suspecting I am. I am grateful that it’s too soon to take the test. Next week, if contradictory proof doesn’t appear on its own, I will have to get up the nerve to know the truth.

I have been fearful. I have been anxious about the physical repercussions of another pregnancy. I have been feeling greedy about my time. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel: three children in all-day school within days, five children within a few years.

But just now I read a line from Anthony Doerr. “They are miracles,” Doerr writes of his twin boys. “Born from cells much smaller than the period at the end of this sentence – much smaller than that period – the boys are suddenly big and loud and soak the fronts of their shirts with drool.”

I read that line and I look down at my abdomen and I think with wonder on those cells (now perhaps bigger than a period?) that may lie hidden there. I think with wonder on the child who may soon be staining shirts with drool. So many people would think on the logistics we’ve had to go through this week: packing, fevers, bottles, stroller and child wrangling, and think that another child would never be worth it. I know exactly how hard it would be; part of me resists mightily against it. But the rest of me knows that each of my children have been the most incredible gifts life could possibly offer. And that this one, if he’s there, would be too.

* The line is from Doerr’s beautiful 2007 memoir, Four Seasons in Rome. I highly recommend it.

About Me

November 15, 2019November 14, 2019 / Julie / 2 Comments

Lately I’ve been having another go at reviving this blog. I’ve been writing again, which feels good and true and useful, no matter what comes of it. A couple of posts are done and ready to be published next week; others are in the works.

But this one here — this is one I wrestled with for some time. My old “About” section was super outdated. It hadn’t been fundamentally reworked since I started the blog six years ago. I needed something that expressed who I am now and why I’m writing.

So here you have it: some words about me and the blog. It will reside in my new “About” section, but I thought it might also serve as a wave and a hello to old friends, to let you know I’m still here.

~~~

Hello, my name is Julie, and I am a wonderer. I’m one of those distracted types – the kind who become absorbed in questions of God, justice, and baked goods while I’m supposed to be doing the dishes.

I am a stay-at-home mother to five young children: three school-aged boys and two preschool-aged girls. They and my husband and I live in a charming, 150-year-old Victorian in Maryland, which holds infinite possibilities for imaginative play and home repairs.

I wrestle every day of my life with how to fulfill my obligations to my family and our home while also doing something constructive with all that wondering.

I started blogging in 2013, back when I was lonely and craving the sort of community I saw among Catholic bloggers online. I wanted to claim my part of it.

I wanted, too, to share the cute kid stories and the homemaking struggles. I wanted to process the ways in which my life had changed since becoming a mother.

In my single twenties I’d earned a degree in political science, done a stint in the federal government, lived on my own in Washington and Annapolis, traveled much of the United States and Europe, and worked as a lobbyist for the Catholic bishops of Maryland.

In my thirties I got married, quit my job, had five babies in seven years, changed an ungodly number of diapers, and pretty much figured out the baby/toddler/preschooler phase of parenting. (Still working on the school-age phase; trying not to think about the teenage phase.)

This year I entered my forties, and I now find myself trying to chart a course that melds the mind/heart work of my twenties with the hand/heart work of my thirties.

Which brings me back to the blog.

When I started These Walls I wanted to do more than the cute kid story thing. I wanted to use my blog to encourage civility in political discussions. That had been my schtick: I’d prided myself on engaging on contentious issues in a respectful, open-minded manner, and I didn’t see why others couldn’t just up and do the same.

I thought we could communicate ourselves out of this mess. That, if only we calmed down and looked around and sought to understand, we could fix the things that were wrong with our society.

Six years later – six years of wrestling with the issues of the day, of struggling to come to terms with shifts in society and politics, of experiencing the changing nature of friendship and community online, of slugging through difficulties with my writing, family life, and health – I now see that that thinking was very small.

You and I and the folks we encounter online can’t just band together to fix society. No strategy, no movement, no social media campaign can right our wrongs and heal our divides. No amount of communication will fix this.

But I can work on fixing myself.

It’s not just our society that’s broken: I am broken. Sin and pain and perspective and the weight of untold generations of history bear down on me. I have much to work on.

I’ll bet you do too. I’ll bet you have something to fix.

These days I’m as absorbed in the ideas and problems of the world as ever. I’m still chewing on politics and current events while I dig my hands into sinks full of dirty dishes. But I am also turning inward. I am examining my thoughts, my gut reactions, my motivations and desires, and I am trying to order them toward goodness. I am working to point myself toward the good, the beautiful, and the true.

It’s a different kind of small thinking.

Few people will ever impact society in a broad way, but every one of us can work to make our own minds, our own souls, our own families, our own relationships with people and communities more healthy and whole.

Follow along with me here at These Walls to peek in on someone trying to do that work – someone wrestling with herself, thinking things through, seeking to understand, and wanting to improve.

And if you’ve been struggling with the urge to fix as I have – well then maybe you can undertake this wrestling, thinking, seeking, wanting-to-improve work too.

On Turning 40

May 3, 2019 / Julie / 6 Comments

Last month I turned 40. I can’t really say that I ever thought on that age with dread, but it does seem strange to have reached it. Can I be at that point already? Did my thirties fly by so quickly? Am I really twice the age I was when I walked that college campus, just beginning to get to know adulthood?

I wonder if the age of my children makes the whole thing seem more incongruous to me. I didn’t meet my husband until my late twenties and we didn’t marry until our early thirties, so I reached 40 with an oldest child of eight years and a youngest of one. When my mother turned 40, her children were 17 and 15.

Yes, 40 feels strange. But it’s not unwelcome. It’s even kind of exciting.

Lately I’ve been thinking on the arc of my life and looking back to how I felt on the cusp of my twenties and thirties.

At twenty, I didn’t have any idea what lay ahead. Where would I live? What would I do for work? Would I marry? Travel? Have children? Twenty was thrilling and terrifying.

(College photo shamelessly stolen from a friend. I’m in the white.)

My twenties, thankfully, ended up being quite good. I did interesting, fulfilling work. I traveled to seven countries and twenty states. I lived in fun, walkable, urban areas with coffee shops and ethnic restaurants a-plenty. But the decade was also hard. Oh, was I lonely. I spent those supposedly “best time of your life” twenties pining for a husband and children. I couldn’t enjoy where I was because I was worried I’d be stuck there forever.

Then lo and behold, at thirty I married the husband. Which was also thrilling and terrifying. What would marriage be like? Would we be happy? Could we have children? Where would we settle?

That decade, too, turned out to be good. I welcomed healthy, happy children. We bought a big, beautiful Victorian. I stayed home and kept house and cooked from scratch. But my thirties were also hard. Wonderful and beautiful and hard. Three months into them I married and two months after that I became pregnant with our first child. Thus began a decade of morning sickness and sleepless nights, of frayed nerves and aching joints. A decade of change and acclimation and learning to put others’ needs before my own. Indeed, a decade of learning that my life is bigger than me.

And oh, was I down. I spent my “don’t blink or you’ll miss it” thirties pining for freedom, for quiet, for physical autonomy. I couldn’t enjoy where I was because I was worried I’d be stuck there forever.

It’s only in the past year, as I’ve nudged up against 40, that my vision has cleared and my attitude has brightened. A whole series of small realizations have unburdened me of baggage I didn’t even know I was carrying. And I’m finally feeling the gratitude that my mind has acknowledged all along.

I am so privileged. I was born into a wonderful family and I am raising a (new) wonderful family with a wonderful man. I have had a string of beautiful, life-giving experiences and I have had opportunities and successes that I did not deserve.

And yet for years, I’ve focused more on what I did not have than what I did.

I know how obnoxious that sounds. I apologize for being that person. I am sorry for my gloom, for my pining, for wasting chances to be, and to do, good.

At this point all I can do is thank the good Lord that something has shifted within me, and move forward.

Forty is not thrilling and terrifying. It’s a sort of hopeful-joyful excitement. At forty, I know what my adult life looks like. I know that it’s centered on a family of five noisy, inquisitive, passionate kids and a blessedly patient husband. I know that it involves an exhausting, never-ending amount of work, but that it also comes with the most precious of rewards.

I know that my quiet moments are becoming less rare and more fruitful, and I’m hopeful that in my forties I can forge the divide that defined my previous two decades. In one I focused on career and longed for family, in the other I focused on family and longed for career. This decade will undoubtedly bring its own challenges. (You never know what life has in store for you!) But I am hopeful that this will be a decade without pining — one in which gratitude is keenly felt, and one in which I can be both wife and mother and… something else. What else exactly? I don’t know. But I’m excited to figure it out.

These Walls

Sharing stories from within the walls of my home; encouraging discourse on the wider world outside them.

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