Autumn in New England

Ok, so the winters suck, but weekends like this one remind me why it's nice to live here. Sometimes.

Little lessons

1. If you are making a standing rib roast for your Christmas dinner, get a good meat thermometer – one that you can leave in the oven with a monitor outside. This was the first year in the past 3 since we’ve hosted Christmas dinner that the roast wasn’t overdone.

2. When you use the fancy meat thermometer in your roast for Christmas dinner, make sure you don’t put the tip next to a bone. This will cause the temperature to register incorrectly (it will appear to be taking FOREVER to cook, when in fact it’s dangerously close to becoming too well done).

3. If you volunteer to host the breakfast for celebrating the birthdays in December, and 9 people are going to be eating said breakfast, you need more than a dozen eggs. The eggs needed to be rationed. There was more than enough sausage however, and the cinnamon crunch bagels from Panera were a big hit.

4. Do not believe your brother when he says he only spent x per person on gifts. He’s a liar. And while in theory I agree it’s kind of ridiculous for adults to give each other gifts (when you can go out and buy whatever you want yourself), it’s nice to get presents.

5. Snow is pretty the first time it snows before the holidays. After that, it’s a pain. Even if it’s only a few inches, shoveling every day gets old. Remind me again why I live in the only part of Connecticut that got any frozen precipitation this past week?

6. It’s nice to shut the Blackberry off and not look at it (except for use as a timepiece) every once in a while.

7. That my 6 year old daughter knew about “ripping” and “burning” cds through the computer to get onto the mp3 player. She knows more than I do!!

For my brother, and all the Red Sox fans out there

Our Father, who art at Fenway...
Baseball be thy game.
They Kingdom come,
Playoffs need to be won,
On Earth, then on to the Cask 'n' Flagon.

Give us this day, a perfect Papi,
And forgive us our losses,
As we forgive those,
Like Bill Buckner.

And lead us not, into desperation,
But deliver us from any losses.

For thine is the Power,
And the Glory,
To beat the Indians,
Forever and ever....the Yankees suck

A-men




Hail Mary
Full of fenway franks,
Red Sox be with thee.
Blessed art thou among baseball fans
and please bless the arm of thy man Beckett
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us Sox fans now,
and especially after the fourth inning.
Amen.

Amazing Grace

My mom absolutely hated the hymn “Amazing Grace”. For whatever reason, she just hated hearing it in church, and especially if more than one verse was sung. She said it was “Protestant” – whatever that meant in her mind. So we used to jokingly threaten we’d have it played at her funeral. She would tell us if we did that, she would come back and haunt us the rest of our lives.

A little background first – my dad comes from a Protestant family. They’re Congregational (you know, the pretty white churches usually on the town greens in most New England towns). When he and my mom got married, he converted for her (to become Catholic). I don’t think that went over well with his family (not that I ever noticed anything, just from my parents saying something when we were older).

And, the few times I’ve been in the Congregational church that most of that side of the family attends, it’s not hugely different than the Catholic mass. Sure, there’s none of the aerobics that goes on at Mass (stand, sit, kneel, stand, kneel, sit…) and they take Communion once a month (versus every Sunday if you’re a Catholic in good standing – unlike myself who is convinced that I will go up in flames since I haven’t been to confession since 1990). So, different, but not much.

When she died three years ago (March 25), my dad had to choose the readings and songs for her funeral mass (because it was so unexpected nothing (and I mean nothing) had been planned. I’m trying to get my dad to start thinking about what he would want, but that’s a whole different post). My mom’s boss had a daughter who was an opera singer and offered to sing at the mass, so the songs that my dad choose were beautiful (I shouldn’t make it sound like he made all the decisions – my brothers and I did get some input).

I lobbied hard for Amazing Grace. Why? Because it was such an emotional time I honestly wanted to see if she’d really carry through on her threat to come back and haunt us. Because to this day I am still having a hard time with how unexpected it was, and how much it hurt. And because part of me wants to have some proof there is a heaven, and God. You would think after 16 years of Catholic school (grammar, high and college) I’d be confident in that there is heaven and God, and everything else in the Baltimore Catechism. I’m not. I wish I could be. I envy my dad – he sincerely believes that my mom is in heaven and he’ll be with her someday.

I ended up getting the Ave Maria instead. At communion, I think. My memories of that whole week are pretty hazy.