In my life I've never met anyone quite as adept at managing chaos as the woman in the center of this picture. To be a mother of seven you must be spectacular at juggling all the hot potatoes that are being flung at you. If you can figure out how to feed your passel of kids with the incoming missiles, much the better.
Our mom was proud of her brood, and at times infuriated by us. She was as skilled as a cowboy in wrangling, herding, and when she deemed necessary, hog tying us. Not bad for an East Coast Irish Catholic girl. She was also a matriarch, who reigned with absolute authority, delegating responsibility that went wisely unquestioned, and had a network of spies from whom she garnered intel on all our shady shenanigans. Spiritually she was both a deacon at the church and the high priestess of family traditions, promoting the rituals that brought and kept us together.
She, with her gaggle of moms-of-large-families, coordinated school drops-offs and pickups, extracurricular activities, and a myriad of sports. We were read to young and put in charge of our educational outcome with the knowledge that doing less than what we were capable of would have consequences. So, homework wasn’t monitored because the results were clear, and we had a strong preference to avoid the alternative.
We arrived at church scrubbed, fed, and nearly behaved. Our sister Joan entered church with her delicate, adolescent nails filed to points and the devil on her shoulder. For which our mother treated her to icy stares of warning. Or, when the devil wore down Joan’s restraint, a steely grip grabbing her tiny pincers away from the tender flesh of a sibling. Joan was visibly disappointed if she couldn’t create a disturbance by causing one of us to yelp in pain in the middle of mass. Our mother, a feisty child herself, had a certain kinship to Joan’s proclivity to cause havoc. As a recipient of Joan’s malicious premeditations, I was in favor of adding a dungeon cell in the damp basement that had a satisfyingly Medieval smell for that purpose. There were at least three perfect spots. But those were thoughts for which I’d have to do confessional penance. So, disappointingly, never became a reality.
Our younger brother, John Paul, clearly named with Papal clairvoyance, crawled with toddler vigor under the pews. Popping up like a prairie dog as he visited a series of indulgent congregants to end gazing up with a beaming smile and emphatic, “HI!” to the ancient, dour-faced priest as he droned through the sermon at his lectern. That kid, while a terror at home, was given special dispensation in the house of God. Pretty sure it was all about the name, even if the new Pope was five years away from being seated in the Vatican.
All this to say, that the woman in the center of this picture had her hands FULL. Just knowing the general whereabouts of that many children is enough to make a person crazy. Which is probably why I stopped at one. None of this even takes into account the jobs she held, the never ending volunteer work she did, or the various "groups" of female friends and endless family members, near and far, with whom she stayed in constant contact.
When I think about all we do in today's day and age to keep up, just getting by on any given day is a lot to juggle. I get distracted easily. My focus can be diverted by the wisp of a stray thought or something that catches my peripheral vision. I often get to the end of the day wondering what, if anything, I've accomplished with seemingly no excuse for being exhausted. I am in reflective awe of my mother, who favored creating lists she could check off to keep the madness at bay. If you are trying to keep All the Bits and Pieces together in the hopes of Finding Balance because you’re faced with Another Day of More Sh*t to Shovel, feel free to Pick a Lane in order to track your thoughts and prioritize the chaos. I offer these journals in homage to my mother.
All the Bits and Pieces - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099TNJYFR
Finding Balance - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BYN9N1
Another Day of More Sh*t to Shovel - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0992J9B8S
Pick a Lane -https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0991DVP6N
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