An Rud A Lionas An Tsuil Lionann Se An Croi

I had been thinking of rainbows a lot. It was June and companies and merchandisers were taking full advantage of Pride Month by slapping rainbows on everything. On candy, on t-shirts, on make-up, on mail trucks. These Roy G. Biv images were fresh in mind as I took a shower. I thought of the rainbows that frequently appear in our backyard after storms, of the term rainbow baby , of Noah's Ark, of the movie Thumbelina .  " After the rain goes /  There are rainbows /  I'll find my rainbow soon" Was it true that there were always rainbows after horrible storms? The realist-side of me balked at this idea. As I toweled my swollen belly off I mused that while there is always hope, there's not always a happy ending in the Hollywood-sense. Ladybugs and cardinals and orbs of light aren't going to suddenly start appearing everywhere to soothe your broken heart. Tragedies befall people all the time. It's sad, it sucks, but that's the fallen world we live in. Givin...

  Statue by Bruce Wolfe I was at the doctor's the other day with my daughter for her check-up. The scene that seemed so bizarre a few months ago is familiar now - the spaced chairs, the social distancing markers on the floor, the usual pile of old magazines gone. My baby smiles at the masked faces that talk to her, their eyes shining with delight even if we can't see their mouths. This is normal for her, sadly. It's all she's ever known. It's busy at the office so we end up waiting a little longer than usual. There's a large circular window that overlooks the street below, so I bring her to it and sway back and forth as we look at the passing cars and trucks and the enormous windmills of the college campus across the road.  An old woman, small and thin but not frail, dressed nicely in white pants and a shirt with purple flowers and purple sneakers to match, sits nearby. Another woman, taller and more filled out, maybe in her late 50s or early 60s, sits with her ...

 I was sitting in the movie theater with my dad, waiting for Jurassic Park III to start. On the screen a bank robbery scene played out; men in suits with their Nokias stuff money into bags and flee to the roof where a getaway helicopter awaits them. They seem to be in the clear, cackling merrily, when they suddenly get pulled backwards by some invisible force. The camera pulls back to reveal the helicopter trapped on a spiderweb spun between the Twin Towers, its rotor twitching like the wings of a stuck housefly. Spider-Man . My dad, almost forty-one, was visibly excited. Spider-Man was his favorite superhero, I remember him telling me. He loved the comics as a boy. The web-slinging hero, he told me, was just a kid. He didn't have the money that Bruce Wayne had; he made his own tech. He wasn't an adult with the confidence of Superman. Just a kind of nerdy kid from New York, an orphan, with a good brain, a good heart, & powers inherited from the bite of right-place-right-ti...

There's a beautiful picture I've seen posted on social media several times over the last few days. In between the screenshots from the video of George Floyd's horrific death and the photos of rioters interrupting otherwise peaceful protests is this snapshot of a toddler George, fast asleep, and snuggled up against his mother.  It's an image I'm very much familiar with, especially these days as I spend most of my time feeding my one-month-old. So often she falls asleep while eating and I get the joy of gazing down on her peaceful face, perhaps with a big smile similar to Larcenia Floyd's. It's also an image that I see time again in the myriad of depictions of the Virgin Mary and Christ child. In my home, in my church, in my son's school, I see it everywhere. Statues, paintings, refrigerator magnets, artwork from my nieces and nephews. Sometimes Mary is smiling, a small, gentle smile; other times she is gazing wistfully at her son, who is often sleeping...

My husband & a couple others dug the hole. Not the standard six feet. Only three or so. Wide & long enough for the small coffin, with plenty of room to spare.  Before our priest came I stood & looked down at the grave, at the stone we had placed at its head. It sits under a tree that was sent to us from Oklahoma by the father of a dear friend of ours. He passed away only a few months after we received the tree. We weren't sure how it would fare in our climate, but it's so far survived two New England winters. It seemed like an appropriate spot for our little one, the child that will never grow under the tree that grows against the odds. As I stared into the hole I felt suddenly self-conscious. Silly, even. All of this for a child who was only the size of a raspberry. But it didn't matter, not to me, how big or little she had been. Or if she had even been a she. I had carried her for more than 12 weeks; the first eight weeks alive, the next several for as ...

It has been a trying winter. Sickness after sickness has plagued our household - stomach bugs, colds, everlasting coughs, pneumonia. With all of this has come sleepless nights, & with that has come two tired parents. It's not a great combination: overtired parents & sick kids. Or, really, overtired parents & kids, period. Suffice it to say, we're running low on patience these days.  Yesterday we managed to make it to Mass only ten minutes late, which means we didn't miss any of the readings (#winning). While we were settling in at the very back of the church with our coughing, sniffling brood we tried our best to be as non-disruptive as possible. In hindsight we did pretty well, considering how miserable everyone was, & got through the first two readings without incident. As we stood up to hear the Gospel, my oldest accidentally knocked over one of the missalettes, sending it down to the floor with an audible thud. My husband shot him a look & op...