Reconciliation

14 Saturday Dec 2019

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It had been three months. Every week there are two chances, Thursday and Saturday. All I have to do is wait on line for a while, then when it’s my turn to go in and sit down. Or kneel at the Vatican II mandated partition. And on 12 December, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I didn’t put it off any longer.

I sit, facing Father. I told him if he is acting in persona Christi, that he is acting for Jesus. And if I had something to tell Jesus, I would not kneel behind a partition, but look right at Jesus as I shared the things I wanted no one to know.

So I confess. What I confess is less important than that I do. “You’re as sick as your secrets.” , is the 12 Step Recovery aphorism. What keeps me away is my commitment to looking good, no matter how uneasy with myself I can be. That’s called Pride, worse than Lust or Avarice or Acedia (that is the particular type of sloth called spiritual laziness).

I open my heart. Tell Father (Father, young enough to be my son). My sins are a reprise of that last confession’s sins. He gives me as a penance to ask the Blessed Mother to be my spiritual mother when I pray the last Glorious Mystery, Mary’s Coronation. And I do.

Sceptics will scratch their heads in wonderment. Cynics will be relentless in their scorn for my naïveté. But I don’t care.

I’m there in that room, with that priest, with Jesus, metaphysically present, because my experience with evil on this side of eternity compels me to trust God in all His Triune Majesty. And Love.

People talk about Cafeteria Catholics, those who pick and choose rites, doctrines, dogmas that make them comfortable; Christmas Midnight Mass, Ashes on Ash Wednesday, (If you are a celebrity or a politician, get your picture taken with that black smudge on your forehead.) Palms on Palm Sunday, and Easter, when happy Church returns.

But there are what I call Cookbook Catholics, who follow a recipe for Salvation, that they trust will keep them from damnation, formulaic believers, whom I cannot fault. Then there are those who have peered into the abyss where Evil awaits at the bottom. I have seen the addicts, the tortured, the brutalized, the raped. I ask God to fill my heart with His redeeming Love, so I can spread that Love in my little way.

The Sun Is Shining Somewhere

12 Thursday Dec 2019

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I awoke after about four hours sleep around 4:00 AM. I thought I would fall back asleep, but no.

I thought I would see if #98 would be passing through Ashland any time soon, but no. The Silver Meteor (NB#98) is running late. Going downstairs, I grind some coffee beans, brew a pot.

Turning on Willow, I see where New Zealand and Australia are playing a test match in Perth. It is day time in Perth, late afternoon, and hot 40°C (104°F), while it is still dark in Richmond and -5°C (23°F). Dusk was approaching in Perth as dawn was breaking here. The little glimpse of Summer with a tenacious New Zealand squad facing the prolific Aussie batsmen of Warner, Smith and Labuschagne did wonders for my spirits. Play was called after 90 overs with Australia 248/4. Labushagne over 100 and not out.

Now, I am sleepy again. Back to bed.

And Now, This…

11 Wednesday Dec 2019

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I was up at 2:30 AM, stayed awake til 5:30. I wanted to see J off to work around 4:20. Then I went back to bed. I slept til around 9:30. I went to AA, and shared a traumatic moment from my childhood, that I rarely talk about. I must have been 8. It was summer, August. Mother was in a particularly angry(?) or emotionally distraught mood. I was not good at psychological assessment at that age. She was upset, and was about ready to drink a bottle of Dickinson’s Witch Hazel until I knocked it out of her hand. It was a glass bottle and it shattered. Nothing was ever said about this ever again. I thought she was going to kill herself. I knew that was a bad idea.

Now I know that this was an event of childhood trauma for me. And since, sixty-one years later, it still haunts me, this might be PTSD.

Having shared that, I went about my day. I did some shopping, found a nice beef eye round. I felt like taking a nap, but changed my mind and went swimming at the Y, first time this month. I did 1750 meters. And shaved afterwards. I used all the grooming products that make me feel masculine. As we say, if you want to gain self-esteem do estimable things. I slew one dragon from my past, bought a nice roast, and went swimming.

Now we are waiting to go get $1 tacos. I am working my way up out of the pit I fell in.

Train Horns

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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I sit, dealing with my arthritic hip, drinking my coffee and writing this post.

A train horn sounds, then a fast moving freight passes before the Virtual Railfan LLC camera in Ashland. There are lots of empty freight cars, which might explain its speed. Lots of freight cars.

It passes. Auto traffic resumes. I sit here, contemplating my tiredness. i have yet to hear back from either mental health practice I emailed last night about working with me around my issues. I am about to tell tbem to sod off.

To say why we love people who abuse us is a mystery. A mother, an ex-wife, the who of it doesn’t seem to matter in the jungle of the brain.

The tired is working its way back into my body.

J wore a very flattering pair of dress trousers today. It was easy to tell how the physical work at Target has toned her lower body. I must tell her that.

Later.

10 XII. 2019

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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It was around 515 when I woke up. I lay in bed, thinking I should try and sleep a little longer, Then I said “What the Hell, I’ll just get up.” So I got up. In examining the World of AMTRAK, I discovered that there is a service disruption with #98 Northbound Siver Meteor. According to the app, she arrived in Petersburg @ 422 AM, departed Petersburg @ 422 AM.Her arrival in Richmond has been continually postponed for about 2 h ours now. I love a good mystery (sarcasm). She’s like Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer, condemned to wander the Earth.

I should go back to bed.

Today’s Early Morning Ramble

09 Monday Dec 2019

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I have been up for awhile. I found some cartoons to watch on YouTube. I looked online for therapists. I don’t know who to trust. I have unresolved grief issues around the death of ex-wife #2, (absence of) sex issues with current wife, issues around sexual abuse when I was a teenager, and basic despair. I would have to talk with…..children, or at least so it seems to me.

Grief sucks. Repressed grief sucks even worse. The therapists all suggests that talking to them will make things better. That means I have to trust them. I don’t know if I will.

Christmas Knitting Porn

08 Sunday Dec 2019

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These Christmas stockings were knitted by my paternal grandmother’s sister, my Great Aunt Margie. I believe she lived in Cadillac,Michigan, Grandma’s hometown. This dear lady, whom I never knew, knitted stockings for us children,my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins. She passed away in 1954 so my younger brother, and 3 of my cousins had stockings knitted by Daddy’s sister, Aunt Midge. My sister has the stockings of my parents and my late brother, in addition to her own. I am loaning mine out to her since we won’t hang stockings this year. (We won’t go there for right now.)

Awake, Grief Present

07 Saturday Dec 2019

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4:00 AM. I am awake. Nothing new about that. I am watching a video of a narrow gauge train in Wales. Quaint and quite lovely. The Brits earn tbeir “Q” alliteration without much effort on tbeir part.

There is sadness within me. I feel tbe loss of my brother and ex-wife most actuely around this time of year when they both died, one year apart. I am not over her death. We were alcoholic, abusive to each othet, and had different views on many things. Yet I loved her. This is what comes into my head right now.

Maybe her dislike of me at the end mirrored my own sense of low self-worth. I dunno. She was there to validate my self-hatred.

Nobody ever said I was emotionally healthy.

Bedtime, After I Digress

07 Saturday Dec 2019

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She won’t mind if I go upstairs, take my melatonin, brush my teeth, and go to bed. But her show is on, or one of them anyway.

I will suggest we watch a sitcom DVD, maybe I Love Lucy, as a break from Seinfeld. Even I tire of them. Lucy has more physical comedy, which is hard to follow when I am not actually watching, but the music can’t be beat. Sometimes I long for the Fifties, which is to say I long for my childhood, with my brothers and my sister, my parents and the cast of grandparents, aunts and uncles, who made guest appearances in the family drama.

When I consider the post WW Two morphed into Cold War world we lived in, we knew that tension was part of things, The peripheral conflicts made themselves known, like the time Hungarian refugees moved into an apartment next to us after the Hungarian Revolt.

We were living in an apartment while Dad had a house built for us. It must have been 1959. The refugees moved into the adjacent apartment. There was a son, they called “Shiny”, his real name was Alexander. There was a mother and Shiny’s two sisters. The father had tuberculosis and was away getting treatment. He was a hairdresser.

We made friends with the kids. The mother smoked. Mother made friends with her. We liked them. Eventually we moved and they moved. They were Catholic, my first exposure to Catholics. Catholics were different.

But the Fifties, despite the refugees and the Civil Rights movement that gripped The South, was about progress and new stuff. GE’s motto was Progress is our most important Product* When I watch Lucy, it brings back the wonderful progressive world of jet aircraft, Sputnik, interstate highways, color TV, polio vaccines.

I guess I could say more. All I really want to do though is go to bed.

*{I could do a whole rant on GE, from Mr Magoo to tbeir spokesman, a former movie actor named Ronald Reagan).}