A Trip to the City

We had visitors (my mother-in-law and aunt-in-law) during Thanksgiving week and decided, in the midst of the debate about whether or not to try to attend the Macy's parade on Thanksgiving, that it might be better to go into Manhattan on Wednesday and see what there was to see. Restaurant reservations were accordingly made for an early lunch at said aunt's favorite restaurant (over a month in advance, I might add). So I got off work at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning and began the rounds to pick everyone up. I picked up my husband at home - check. I picked up our stroller from the patio - check. I picked up my mother-in-law and my children from the hotel - check. Coats to combat the cold, windy day - not checked.

Then we headed to the Crestwood train station, naively thinking that there would be some solution for parking a car there the whole day while a person traipsed into the city. Should I have known better? Probably. I'm know I've heard people talk about going to certain stations to park all day, but the information didn't stick with me until I experienced myself that nowhere at or even on a side street near the train station is there a spot where a person can pay to park for more than four hours at a time. No problem - surely there's a paid garage, right? Let's ask the GPS unit to find us a parking garage. We did, and it led us to a very nice house (which was definitely not a parking garage) right near seminary. So we went with plan D, which was to park at the seminary and walk back to the train station. This caused us to arrive at the station after all the closer-together morning trains had already departed, so we had to wait 45 minutes for the next train. Still, once it came, we got on and rode into Grand Central Terminal with no problem.

Thank God that, once we arrived at Grand Central, my mother-in-law had the brilliant idea to feed the children something before we launched out to find the restaurant, which, according to my printed schedule, should only take us about 15-20 minutes to get to. Our first mistake after that was to not ask anyone which way to go while we were still inside the Terminal. If we had, they likely would have directed us to (a) BUY A METRO CARD DAY PASS, which gets you access to buses and subways for the entire day and is the only way you can pay to ride these and (b) not go outside and wander around like idiots for an hour when we could take a shuttle and a subway and be there in a few minutes.

As it was, we exited Grand Central on the wrong side of the building, had to march around it in the freezing wind with no coats on, wait for our bus, which we then could not ride because we did not have MetroCards, wait in the freezing wind some more for my husband to go buy said cards, get on the bus and ride for 15 minutes in what turned out to be the wrong direction, get off (because it was at the end of the line), and wait for the exact same bus and driver to pick us up and take us the other direction. We got off the bus and started trying to figure out how to make our next connection. We must have had dazed, lost looks on our faces, because a kind New Yorker asked if we needed help and then helped us figure out that our connection was to a subway train and how to get into the station. We rode that subway to the closest spot we could find to our destination, and then had to run (you guessed it, in the freezing wind again) a few blocks to try to make it to the restaurant before they closed between lunch and supper. All told it had taken us from 9 a.m., when I picked up the hotel-dwellers until after 1:30 p.m. to get to the restaurant, which is less than a 30-minute drive from where we started.

You might think that by then we would have been humble enough to just ask how to get where we were going next, but I really did try to be self-sufficient one more time, as I spent about 5 minute studying the subway map in my travel guide before giving up and asking the coat-check attendant how to get to Times Square. It's a good thing that I did, because I was totally off.

After that, it was smooth sailing (because we asked people how to get where we wanted to go!) The only other hitch is that we almost missed our train home (and would have had to wait another half hour) because we assumed that we had to conver the off-peak tickets we bought earlier to peak tickets before we could get on the train. As it turns out, you can pay the ticket-taker on the train for this difference in fares (which we would have known if we had asked someone!)

So, if you're planning a trip to Manhattan, especially if you plan to use public transportation (which you should probably do, since parking is atrocious - been there, done that) these are the lessons you should take away from our experience: 1. Buy a Metro Card for each person over age 5 that you're traveling with. It's your key to an amazing world of "free" transportation; 2. Bring a coat, even if you think you won't need one; and, most importantly, 3. If you don't know where you're going or how to get there, or even if you think you do (because you have a map, guidebook, or pre-printed directions from the MTA website) - JUST ASK!

Belated Thanksgiving Post

I suppose that one way in which I can be sure to pick "just the right words" is to use someone else's. So I give you here the Thanksgiving homily of Father Alexander Schmemann, delivered just before his death in 1983. This is read as the homily in the Thanksgiving Liturgy each year at St. Vladimir's (and in other parishes as well, I hear):

Everyone capable of thanksgiving is capable of salvation and eternal joy.

Thank You, O Lord, for having accepted this Eucharist, which we offered to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and which filled our hearts with the joy, peace and righteousness of the Holy Spirit.

Thank You, O Lord, for having revealed Yourself unto us and given us the foretaste of Your Kingdom.

Thank You, O Lord, for having united us to one another in serving You and Your Holy Church.

Thank You, O Lord, for having helped us to overcome all difficulties, tensions, passions, temptations and restored peace, mutual love and joy in sharing the communion of the Holy Spirit.

Thank You, O Lord, for the sufferings You bestowed upon us, for they are purifying us from selfishness and reminding us of the “one thing needed”: Your eternal Kingdom.

Thank You, O Lord, for having given us this country where we are free to Worship You.

Thank You, O Lord, for this school, where the name of God is proclaimed.

Thank You, O Lord, for our families: husbands, wives and, especially, children who teach us how to celebrate Your holy Name in joy, movement and holy noise.

Thank You, O Lord, for everyone and everything.

Great are You, O Lord, and marvelous are Your deeds, and no word is sufficient to celebrate Your miracles.

Lord, it is good to be here! Amen.

These were the words of a dying man. O Lord, teach us all to be so thankful for whatever You bring to us.

(If you would like to read excellent commentary on this topic, I refer you to Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog, Glory to God for All Things, in his Thanksgiving Post for this year.)

Thanks Be to God

I just paid our bills this morning, and while bill-paying isn't usually something we think of as a cause for thanksgiving, I was so thankful to be able to pay our bills. I am first thankful to God (glory to Him for all things), but I wanted to extend that thank you to those of you who have supported us this month and at previous times as well.

In a way, it is a kind of blessing to not know from month to month who God is going to move to help us so that we can do things like buy groceries or pay our car note. God would still be wonderful if He did not do it. Our friends would still be dear to us if they did not give. Our family would still be cherished even if they did not help at all. We can only look a few days or weeks into the future knowing how things will go, financially and otherwise. After that, it's a fog - unpredictable, hiding what we cannot see, leading us in directions we cannot now imagine. It's the way I often idealize and say that life should be, but unless I'm forced into it, as I am now, I rarely choose to not know what my next step should be.

On a different note, would you please pray for our friend, Tami? She is expecting their fourth child and has strep throat. Her husband is a student here as well, and they are dealing with the double dilemma of her sickness and not wanting any of their children, who all stay at home with Tami, to get sick. Lord have mercy.

Kids in the Church

A couple of Mondays ago, all married students with children were required to attend a meeting on campus safety issues that the seminary both wants to hold and is required by their insurance company to hold. The main safety/security issues were addressed by Father Chad Hatfield. In addition to that, we were treated to the opportunity to hear Dr. Al Rossi speak a little bit about child development and discipline and Fr. Steven Belonick speak on children in church.

I was really nervous about having someone address us on the latter topic, because I have had my fair share of people telling me how I ought to be dealing with my kids in church; I figured that if it was going to be that kind of talk, at least I would not be the lone victim of such an attack, being in the good company of all the other students with children of their own. Father Steven must have anticipated that we would all be holding our collective breath, waiting to hear what complaints he would have for how we deal with our kids in church, because the first thing he said was that he wasn't going to be getting on to us and he knows how sensitive people can be about that topic. I was relieved to hear this, but then I wondered, what in the world is he going to talk about, if not that?

The answer is something that has really changed my life, in the least cliched and most practical sense of the phrase. Father Steven talked about how our primary responsibility, with regards to handling our children in church, is not keeping them quiet. (WHAT?) It is involving them in the services and teaching them, and this means that you must sacrifice your own desire to quietly, prayerfully participate in the services in the way that a childless adult can do for several years of your child's life.

He went on to give some other practical tips and items, but that first point of his is what I keep coming back to. Our parish priest back home in Texas always told us that having kids means that you don't get to attend to the services and pray as you might like to, but if he went on to say that what you should be doing while you're paying attention to your children is constantly working with them and engaging them in the services, I missed it. What Father Steven said was a news flash to me!

Let me tell you that, after having tried it for a week and a half, it is a lot more work to involve my children in the services than it was to just keep them quiet. My two-year-old, K., is more receptive to my attentions in that regard, so when I just have her (because my husband has H., the four-year-old), I hold her and whisper things to her like "Who's coming out of the doors now? (the deacon) "What does he have?" (a censer) "What's coming out of the censer?" (smoke) "What should we do?" (move up, then cross ourselves and bow when he passes by), and so on. H., being older and having become accustomed to being pretty well left alone during church services as long as she was quiet and not bothering anyone, seems to resent my new insistence that she pay attention and answer questions about what is going on. Most of her answers are, "I don't know." I think she'll come around, though. The hardest is when I have both of them in service because my husband is singing in the choir. I feel like the proverbial one-legged-man as I run back and forth between children, making sure that each is doing what she should be for the level she is at (standing at appropriate times, saying/singing the words to prayers she knows, watching what is going on, as well as generally being quiet and not bothering other people). I'm worn out after just a 45-minute vespers service!

One thing that this experience, along with singing in the women's choir, has revealed to me is that I am pretty clueless about the order of services. Maybe I've spent too much time being distracted by keeping my babies and children quiet to follow the services! I've been attending Orthodox services for 8 1/2 years now, so you'd think I would have picked up a little better on the various parts, but somehow, I haven't. I'm going to have to work on that. I think my friend in Texas was on to something when she was talking about making a book for her kids with photos of the major parts of the Divine Liturgy. I could use a book like that for myself (I mean, to show to my kids, of course :) ).

Doing Well & Doing Good

Having just returned from my first confession since we came to New York, I've had opportunity in the past 24 hours for some reflection on our time here.

One thing we're enjoying in New York that we never could in Texas (for more than a day or so each year, anyway) is the changing of the leaves into their fall colors. Last Sunday we took a walk down the Bronx River Parkway Bike Path and really enjoyed the fall scenery. The girls collected acorns that were so thick in places that the grass appeared to be paved from a distance, and we got a look at some Canadian geese resting on their trip to sunnier climes.

The weather here has been in the low 40s, barely changing from midnight to noon for the past several days, just in time for me to start working openings at Starbucks. This means that it's not only pitch black when I get up at 3:30 a.m. to get ready for work, but it's soooo cold! I'm so thankful for the change in schedule, other than that, though, because it means that I get my work hours out of the way before the girls really get going for the day, and then I get to be with them all day and evening. Some mornings my husband wakes them and gets them ready for Matins at 7:30, while others he lets them sleep in if he can (if he's not required to sing then).

My poor K. is sick again, this time with a stomach bug AND a respiratory affliction, and one of them is giving her a slight fever. She's behaving beautifully in spite of being sick, except at meal times, when she proceeds to smear whatever tasty dish I've prepared all over her hands or the table. She just won't eat much of anything except at breakfast. We're trying to keep her hydrated and hope that this too shall pass quickly. She certainly hasn't let it stop her potty-training efforts. After we first arrived in New York, I had put her back into diapers because she was having more accidents than not, and the amount of laundry and the cost to do it was overwhelming me. This past week, I decided to tackle the potty training full-force once again, and I think she must have been more ready than the first time, because she's doing great.

One thing I've been so excited about is that I finally found a nearby grocery store that sells more than just food (it has a pharmacy, etc.), and at decent prices. It's about a mile and a half from seminary, but I never would have found it unless someone had told me it was there, because it isn't visible from the road. It's in a shopping center behind another shopping center. Who knew? I went there today, having forgotten what I've been warned about trying to grocery shop on a Saturday, and drove around for about 10 minutes trying to find any parking spot at all. Yonkers' shopping centers look on Saturdays like anyplace else's look like on the day after Thanksgiving. It's crazy.

H. has had a development in her sense of humor just in the past week. She's started laughing at things just because they strike her as funny (not because they're silly or someone's tickling her, etc.). For example, tonight, K. was playing with some foam Disney princess accessories, and thought she had grabbed one with two birds from the Cinderella movie. She was singing to it, "You can't fly anymore," when H. noticed that the piece she had was not the two birds, but was instead Lumiere, the candelabra, from Beauty and the Beast. This struck H. as so funny that she laughed that great little kid laugh, the best kind of laugh in the world. It's impossible not to laugh myself when she does that!

K. has taken to requesting a censer of her own while we're in church, lately. We have taken various attachments off of our diaper bag to make her a pretend censer that she can swing around. This is not so amazing, because kids usually imitate what they see others doing, and the deacon walks past us swinging a censer twice during each daily vespers service. However, what is a little bit more impressive to me is that the girls trade the censer back and forth, and when they do, the one who takes it will kiss the other's hand. This is also something the priest and deacon do at church, but it's not close to where we stand and is a much subtler action. It makes me wonder what other little things they notice that I think they don't.

I'd like to include more here about a recent talk we attended by Fr. Steven Belonick about kids in church, but I think it will have to wait until next time. I've been awake 19 hours and it's time to go to bed.

Change is in the Wind

So it's now been three weeks of "business as usual" for my being back at work at Starbucks and having an extra child during the day, and for two of those weeks I've been homeschooling the two older ones. We're really enjoying the school part of things, although the four-year-olds are really struggling to be kind and gentle to one another. I guess that's part of school, too! Here's a picture of the two of them playing dress-up to go along with our lesson on "Things People Do" (aka jobs in the community).

This week I worked over 30 hours at Starbucks, not because I requested it, but because I had to. Now, at the end of the week, I feel exhausted, robbed of all energy, creative or otherwise.

I also feel constantly torn about working because it makes it so that I miss so many church services (either because I'm working during them or so tired from working the night before that, say, a 7 a.m. Divine Liturgy just doesn't seem possible) I also miss out on events and activities on campus, most of which are scheduled during my work hours, since my work hours are scheduled around my husband's class schedule. It isn't clear to me based on these reasons that I definitely should not work. I know that monastics sometimes are assigned tasks that mean that they often miss church services. They keep their cell rule of prayer and do their assignment, whether that's tending sheep and goats or attending services. It's about what that particular person is supposed to do to be obedient to God.

Things are not going smoothly with the child-swap arrangement either, so I think that change is in the wind with that. More to come, I'm sure. I would love to be able to stay home with the kids and be more of a support to my husband by freeing him up to concentrate on his studies, but we need to make up that little bit of income somehow. If the family I'm currently providing childcare for decides to keep their son with us and pays me for it, I could cut back my hours. If another family we've talked with chooses me as the childcare provider for their daughter, then I could see my way clear to stop working off campus. Nevertheless, not my will... Please pray for us to all be guided in the right path for us (and if you want to donate some money to help us along, or send some diapers or non-perishable foods, that would be great, too!)

In addition, in the past week we've had both kids get sick, and now I seem to have some variation on the same sickness (or a different one, who knows?); my youngest daughter's glasses snap in two (currently being held together with foam and tape); and someone hit our van while it was parked in the metered parking at the Scarsdale train station where I work. I happened to go out to the van during my meal break around 5:00 p.m. and noticed the damage. Otherwise I would not have gone out there until after 9:00, when it would have been too dark to see it. So I lost about 20 minutes of work/pay to wait for a police officer to come and file an accident report in case we decide to involve the insurance company.

It's been strange this weekend to see the locals acting so festive over a holiday that doesn't register on my radar: Yom Kippur. It starts tonight at sundown, but I'm not sure that there are so many Jews in Westchester County that the holiday itself is a cause for frivolity. It's probably more that everyone has off work on Monday on account of the holiday, including the public school students. I worked a 7 1/2 hour shift at Starbucks on Saturday, and there were very few moments during that time where there was no line. It was truly remarkable, especially when you consider that most of the store's business revolves around commuters who take the train, so Saturdays are usually pretty dead.

The girls got winter boots in the mail from their Gammie (my mother-in-law) this week. They were very excited and have been reluctant to take them off even to sleep since then. Leaves have been falling off the trees since we got here in August (I think they must always be doing that here), but with the cooler weather, I saw my first yellowing trees yesterday. Also, I'm not sure if this has to do with the weather, but I've had a couple of up-close encounters with wildlife that were less than welcome, particularly the raccoon that was inside a trash can that I opened up to throw a bag of trash in. I think we scared each other equally!

On Monday, I got to go to my first women's choir rehearsal. We sang one particularly beautiful arrangement that was written for women's voices. Otherwise, it appears I'm singing tenor. Whether that's because of this chest congestion or because my voice has gotten that low, only time will tell. After that, we had the Spouses' Program class offered by St. Vlad's for the spouses of students. This week we were treated to hear a guest speaker, Sister Veronica, who is a native of California but a nun in Greece. She talked to us mostly about prayer and had some really encouraging things to say.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

I've had plenty of opportunities to be reminded myself that I'm not from around here (getting lost frequently, as previously mentioned; having to ask customers to repeat themselves because I don't understand their accent or they are talking too quickly; not being able to find core menu items like Ro-Tel and chili beans at the grocery store; etc.), but I think I just had my first moment where someone else realized that I was not from around here on Monday.

K. and I took a trip to the bi-level Wal-Mart in White Plains. We parked in the parking garage, got a cart, and approached the elevators to go into Wal-Mart. An elevator came and we headed towards it along with a middle-aged man who was using a cane to help him walk. The person who had called the elevator got in and let the doors close without waiting for either of the other parties trying to make it to the door to get on. As the doors closed, I said to K., "I can't believe she didn't wait for us!" The gentleman with the cane apparently thought I was addressing him and said, "You really expected her to?" with an air of incredulity, looking at me is if I were crazy. I said, "Well, I'm from the south. We're polite like that."