debboamerik

Today was my uncle's funeral. I attended noon Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral, where John F. Kennedy's funeral Mass was held. In the meantime, in Los Angeles, my family was holding their funeral service.

( This is the eulogy my father gave )

Fr. J's reply to my inquiry about the nature of forgiveness and the situation with my parents was, boiled down to basics:

1) Make sure you pray every morning and evening - it doesn't matter which prayer;

2) Reading the psalms can be helpful;

3) We should talk about this face-to-face on Sunday;

4) Your mind is a bad neighborhood which you should stay out of (OK, he actually said not to dwell on this too much and to do relaxing, distracting things - basically papertigers's advice).

I am confirmed in thinking that, quite apart from having a wife who is very smart and lots of fun, he is probably a very sound priest.

I am feeling stressed to the breaking point. We dressed the tree today (artificial tree, but a very nice one - this is its fourth year and it shows no sign of letting up any time soon). It snowed. We spent most of the day with friends. We watched White Christmas, which I had never seen before (though I had seen Holiday Inn).

I have mostly found relief today via snuggling. I've been taking a lot of baths lately. Hey, at least I'll be clean. A lot of things seem to be falling in pieces at my feet. I'm scared to death, but I know that I will find something new when the debris is cleared away. Getting to it is scary and painful and fills me with self-doubt, though.

We had a lovely though exhausting Yule and Christmas. For Yule, we took my parents to Baltimore and gave them the treat of their life - broiled crabcakes, purchased in Lexington Market. They loved it, and loved wandering the city. papertigers is a great guide to Baltimore, having grown up there, and it's really such a friendly and unpretentious city in general that it's hard not to like it. On the 23rd, they treated us to the Zoo Lights display at the National Zoo. It was incredibly fun to run around the zoo in the dark, looking at the lights and the animals. Many of the animals were more active than I've seen them during the day. It was particularly wonderful to watch the sloth climbing around, and have a zookeeper explain the sloth's physical structure and habits. We went to dinner afterwards, which was nice.

On Christmas Eve, we sat around listening to music and playing cribbage and Apples To Apples. Santa Claus was treated to a snack of fudge and really great bourbon, and the reindeer enjoyed water and really great apples (the patent for the apples is owned by a nearby small family farm). After opening our gifts, we went to church, where (luckily for us - we were about 15 minutes late!) the Metropolitan was present. This lengthens the service by a good bit (after all, we have to call him Despota several times, or he's not officially there) and meant we got there in plenty of time for the Epistle reading. We then hung out with fellow-parishoners for a bit, perused the parish bookstore, and went home to read, play games, pet the cats, and prepare dinner.

Today was my mother's 50th birthday. To celebrate, papertigers and I took both my parents to Old Town Alexandria. She loves old architecture. We perused bookstores, coffee shops, and Turkish and Ethiopian specialty shops. We would up at the Gadsby's Tavern Museum, and lunched in the current tavern. It was cold and rainy, so we took my parents to see the Potomac and then to National Airport to catch their airplane to Punta del Diablo, Uruguay.

It's funny how tiring it can be to have one's parents constantly about. I'm very tired. We had a good time, but I'm glad they aren't always here. I am frightened by my similarities to my parents. I also hate how they treat me like a 3-year-old sometimes, instead of someone who just turned 30. Witness my mother's way of thanking all the people at church for being so good to me, as though I needed a great deal of looking after. *sigh* I guess one pays a price for the stability that comes with having a family. ;-)