Well,  I quickly ran out of things to write about our family.  I have not even looked at this blog in two years - almost exactly 2 years.  I read my optimistic, positively-focused note on seeing the beauty in the chaos, and I liked what I had written.  What I wrote about Uncle Jim was a good capture of what he was like. 

However, this last year or two has been a struggle to stay positive.  It seems there is so much negativity around me, and that my particular life is resistant to change.  Autism, stubbornness, crotchety old age, perfectionism and disorganization seem determined to drag me down. 

In fact I have been sliding down the last two years- not for a lack of love for my beautiful children but b/c we are trying SO hard to IMPROVE things, to meet goals spiritually and functionally in how our family lives,  and we seem never to meet the standards of those who live here.

It's been a discouraging year or two.  I wonder why so negative, why such a sense of failure, why feel so inferior to others who seem to be able to do this....if I look at the positive, others think I am not working on the things that need to improve.  Some think everything is substandard: how we eat, how much we eat, when we eat, how we raise our kids, how we spend our time, if we have friends, if we go out, we spend too much time playing with the kids, we don't spend enough time with the kids forming them, they're too loud, they fight, they interrupt, they're too quiet so they can't be heard (they mumble), we don't sleep enough, they're bored, they need something to do, they need to leave each other alone, we sleep too much, they watch too much TV, they should go outside, it's too hot outside, it's cold in here, you need a nap, your nap was too long, what's for dinner/lunch/breakfast/it's not healthy enough/they need their vitamins, we all need a psychologist, or an exorcist or a counselor or whatever the latest unhappy fact is that some folks are locked in to. 

Then there was the suggestion that I go away for treatment for depression for two weeks, when I was not depressed at all! Another stunner that made me feel utterly misunderstood. Maybe I just need some encouragement?  I asked my dearest friend if she thought I was depressed, and she chortled 'absolutely not'.  It was a confusing time....

Then there was the major rant where the shortcomings from one person's perspective, of our family are solely and totally my fault:  the kids aren't obedient, disciplined, respectful enough b/c of me, "we" don't deserve to live in such a messy house, my weaknesses pull the whole family down...all me.  So much, delivered to me after a nice dinner out (a rarity b/c I am not good enough at managing the home to warrant being asked out, so I have been told) that, lying there listening in the dark to the weight of the world being dropped on my shoulders, I fell asleep from the sheer surreal weight of the accusations, wondering if I would be alone when the new day dawned.

I had the fortitude and calmness, somehow, to point out that more than one person is responsible for raising the children, and that any time someone wanted to help clean up the place they were welcome to do so.  A little respectful pushback surprisingly seemed to produce a little more respect and even a kind of apology.  What cannot be forgotten is that apparently that was the true impression of me: an utter failure, an albatross around the neck of the family. 

Hard to break out of this.  It's like the scene in Gulliver's Travels where the little people tie him down with hundreds of threads.  It has made me sad.

Is it wrong to feel good about one's self? Is it wrong to be happy when things are not perfect? 

I seek God's help in prayer.  I pray for us all.  I consecrate myself and my family and my work to God through Mary.  I pray for joy and peace and an attitude that focuses on the happy things.  After all, we have far more 'right' than 'wrong' with us.  We are not starving, unloved, uneducated, ugly, sick, overweight, unevangelized, friendless, homeless, poor, unemployed or victimized.  We can help others and be generous to those in need.  We can encourage those in tougher times than we are in, and share our faith to give glory and praise to the God who made us and loves us.

Sometimes it's lonely.  Sometimes it feels like the little people have me tied down and I can't lift a finger, but the ties are a thousand criticisms, complaints, bickerings, whinings, ungrateful actions, unappreciation, and then my own weaknesses.  A sigh here, a sublte whimper there, a look or a raised eyebrow of dissatisfaction.

I don't feel like I have the strength to reverse this avalanche and this obsession for all things negative.  In fact, when I address it there is such a backlash that I am defensive, critical, imagine negativity when there is none (oh how many times I have wanted to write down all the things said to me and read them back at the end of the day), unspiritual, demonized, unmanageable, thin-skinned and more.  It's ALL MY FAULT.  Everything. And then storms out of the room and it's two days of the silent, moody treatment, like a giant stinking cloud in the house. Never an apology, because, of course, it's all my fault!

How does one love through this?  How does one set healthy boundaries?  How does one deal with stinking silent treatments day in and day out if I make the slightest mention that I do not want to hear about the details of the child who was abused and murdered who just happens to be the same age as my daughter?  Or have the sexy, disgraceful commercial that I was ignoring, loudly pointed out to me in the presence of males.  Or hear about the latest drowning in a swimming pool (we have one).  Or hear how other people talk too much, are controlling and dominating, and how there is literally not one person who is good enough to be a friend in any environment b/c they are too unspiritual, too liberal, talk too much, whatever.  And also that 'we never do anything together' - and that is because I need to get away from the relentless negativity!

I have known that things have become difficult and I have been working so hard to overcome it...talked with competent folks about it, read about it, prayed on it, confessed my weaknesses, tried hard and then harder still. The abiding sense of failure is a burden.  I will say that it is less than it used to be b/c I have intensely made a plan and carried it out to help myself become more organized and to bring the house to a point of more order in spite of the autism, the anxiety in the kids, the passive-aggressive suggestions to have others do such-and-such, the criticisms of my spouse... 

It's a dilemma. Help me to love, oh Lord.  Help me to have a sense of peace and contentment, to be focused on the positive and to have a grateful, cheerful heart.  Help me to see myself in a balanced way, as you would want me to see myself.

I played the piano the other day.  It was nice to feel the music move me like it used to, to hear my daughter say 'play more, mom, you're sooo good at this'.  I arranged some flowers for a friend's party and I enjoyed making 13 beautiful, unique arrangements, and seeing that I have some creativity left in me.  I have made some really creative, unique meals lately that I thought were beautiful to look at and delicious.  I made them for me, and nobody had to eat them but me.  I've written some things on politics, the dignity of life, on humorous topics, read a great book about a topic that was intelligent, passionate and just and had nothing at all to do with my life (the Narrative by Frederick Douglass".  I've received praise at work and praise from people outside my family that I have an insightful perspective on the social and religious and political issues that are afoot.

Yet, the negativity persists here.  Dear Lord, please help me to find a mentor who will understand me and advise me how to see myself in a balanced, humble way.  To grow yet be content.  To diligently work at my faults and at my children's faults yet be joyful about all that is going well. To address the festering negativity that is among us in a loving way, as you want us to.

Tomorrow morning: two soccer games early!  What fun - but already, 'he should stay home' b/c he's not feeling well.  It's too early.  "Ugggh, oh no" "do they have to play?" "It's going to be cold (it was 87 today) in the morning", what/when will you feed them? etc. etc. etc. 

Lord help me to love as you want me to, to see as you want me to.  Help my family to see the positive attributes I have and to love one another.  We have so many blessings.  Help me to carry them - the autism, the child with anxiety, the resentful traveling husband, the little one with the temper, the elderly person with the negative attitude, the job with all my patients - help me to carry them with love.  Sometimes it just seems too heavy.

September 7, 2012

Farewell Uncle Jim, a Lovable SOB

Joe's Uncle Jim (aka James T. Molloy) died this past Tuesday, July 19, 2011.  He was a lovable SOB, a walking Irish stereotype who wove tales of his political and personal history for everyone he met.  His mind was constructed of a web of connections between people that he had stored away like a squirrel hiding nuts for future retrieval.  He recalled one story and several key facts about each person he seemingly had ever met. 

When he met someone, he quickly assessed where they were from and how they might be connected to someone he knew or someone who was involved in some key interest in your life.  It was a cross between quick interview and paternal interest in what kind of person they were.  Quintessentially Irish.   It was usually a quick process until he settled on a story that he could tell that helped him assimilate them into a place in his mind between similar profiles.

It was hard not to like Uncle Jim. I enjoyed him immensely. The fact that he used the words "SOB" and G.D." in every other sentence was unnoticeable after a while.  They were almost compliments, the way he used them.  Now that I think about it, SOB was not a compliment, but 'lovable SOB' was.  He spoke in either a booming voice, or a muttered voice from the side of his mouth as he leaned in and told you a tidbit about the person that was not fit for public consumption.

Uncle Jim reminded me a bit of Columbo because he wore a rather wrinkled tan trenchcoat - the plain, beltless style.  He walked with slightly scrunched shoulders, his head down a bit so that he seemed to peer up at you with those eyes- eyes that were summing you up as his mind quickly retrieving the key facts and connections related to you that he stored away.  He drove a station wagon to work and greeted everyone jovially.  He and Aunt Roseanne did not live a lavish life.  Instead they lived in a townhouse outside the DC Beltway in Laurel, MD.

Jim and Roseanne were opposites.  He was a booming extrovert who enjoyed crowds and social events.  She was an introverted, nervous lady, prone to worry about her health and many other things.  She did not need or want the limelight. She unfailingly supported him and did the behind-the-scenes work of a Congressional wife.  Her sweet voice and thoughtful ways softened the brash booming ways of Uncle Jim.  She was constantly hustling around preparing for some event of his with her nervous giggle and "oooooh Jimmy, I don't know about that!"  Together they were so generous, they'd give you the food off their plates, literally.  Their house was packed with photos and memorabilia of his career. 

His career. That's a book that needs to be written by someone.

No one who met Uncle Jim would guess that he knew the secrets of the most powerful people in the country. Or that he had the choicest of office spaces in the Capitol Building for 20 years. The windows of his office overlooked the Capitol steps with a direct view across the National Mall to the Washington Monument. In the backroom of his office, many a deal was brokered that helped accomplish the will of the leader-du-jour in the Democrat party for two decades. 

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/videoLibrary/blog/?p=949

He was the Doorkeeper of the United States House of Representatives for 20 years. That was him in the first moments of the clip, introducing President Reagan to a joint session of Congress.

It was always interesting to hear his take on presidents on down to the doorman at the local Hill watering hole.  He never revealed controversial information about his friends and colleagues except that sometimes his face would sour when speaking of a particularly awful SOB, and you knew there was something bad.

His Everyman style surely disarmed the powerful and the scurrilous (and the powerful but scurrilous) and enabled them to confide in him.  I can't imagine the kind of stories and books he could write about the things he observed over the decades.  No doubt many an indiscretion was cleaned up with his help.  And thus goes the patronage system of our political system. 

Uncle Jim oversaw the Congressional Page program.  A bunch of connected teenagers bursting with hormones and a sense of entitlement and privilege coming to the Seat of Power in DC to live and work under the supervision of the page proctors.  Good kids overall but still kids. Their escapades must not reach the papers and reflect upon their Congressman or Representative. 

In a way, he parented them all as a tolerant father who loved to help his children get ahead. Whether President Clinton or the page from California, he had a role in managing the messes that came from human nature being indulged at the wrong moments.  As I look back now, I realize that I was blessed to know him as someone he trusted to a good extent.  I will flatter myself to think that he saw me as a good person who he could let his guard down with a bit.  I never asked him about his views on politics until last year when we visited him because I knew we differed in our politics, world view and the way we each understood how to apply our Catholic values to our jobs.  I loved chatting with him and maybe he respected that I didn't get into controversy over the years I knew him.  Who knows?  I felt that he liked me, and I liked him.  Watching the video interview he had about his job that I linked below, I saw how guarded he was and how tense.  It was odd to see him speak without cussing, without jokes and without telling stories!  He looked nervous to me, and I realized what a different person I had been able to get to know a little bit.

The thing he was most proud of, I think the role that he most identified himself with was South Buffalo Fireman.  He seemed to love the blue-collar approach to life.  His mannerisms, his walk and his common sense way of thinking most resembled a blue-collar fellow.  I recall riding on a Buffalo fireboat for some event that included family and others that he knew.  He behaved exactly the same way with the fireman that he did with Congressmen and as Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives.  But I think he felt more in his element in surroundings without pretense like that.

I think his greatest gift was that he understood human nature.  He probably gained that from growing up in South Buffalo where politics was 'the family business' as he put it.  He saw how Politics enmeshed every kind of culture from a hardware store to the fire department to local politics to negotiations on federal budgets.  In some way, he enmeshed his undertanding of human nature with his instinctual grasp of Politics, and a career was born.

His career of managing human nature in his extended family of employees and especially Anyone From Buffalo or Upstate New York: flaws and gifts, each person was promoted, sheltered, protected, disciplined, rewarded, berated, even used to serve the larger scheme of things.  The Democrat party was like that to him, I think. I don't think he liked some of the positions the party took over the years.  And others he rationalized away from his Catholic upbringing so that the mental gymnastics it would take me to believe that "Nancy Pelosi is a grandmother - she's really Pro-Life" were absolutely effortless to him.  I could not really detect if he knew that was a far fetched or not.  Something about the way he said it, looking away, told me that he knew that was a stretch at best.  Maybe that's what I want to believe.  I'll never know.  In the end, he was committed to all those people, loyal to them like family.

I can't agree with the direction the Democrat party took over the last twenty years.  I think it has done immense damage to the foundational moral and family values that enabled our country to mushroom into unmatched economic fertility and the freedom to live one's values according to those values. 

However, there was no way to resist the charms of Uncle Jim.  He was a lovable SOB.  A magnanimous patron of the family and thousands of others from the local fireman to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President Clinton himself.  He did understand human nature and was able to network people together like nobody else. 

Rest in peace, Uncle Jim.  You are in my prayers and also fondly in my memory.  May the Lord have mercy on you and may the angels lead you into paradise.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/houses_last_doorkeeper_dies-207465-1.html?pos=hme

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/former-house-of-representatives-doorkeeper-molloy-dies-at-75/2011/07/20/gIQAsUwTQI_story.html

Two Sides of My Brain and Simcha Fisher

I wrote this in the comments section on Simcha Fisher's "I Have to Sit Down" blog....and realized that what I wrote really sums up many days and the typical pattern of my life right now.  The paradox of the two sides of my brain.  So here are the comments I posted, and the link to both stories in case anyone wants to read an Actual Writer's writing instead of my comments on an A.W.'s writing!

"I just read your post on ‘seven things’ and the trouble you had making bubbles and running out of water in the heat of summer….and then read "Mary in a Helicopter" - the article about the images of Mary, especially images that are not of Mary but are symbolically of Mary such as the photo of the Japanese woman bathing her deformed daughter as seen at this link: http://masters-of-photography.com/S/smith/smith_minamata_full.html

http://simchafisher.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/seven-hot-takes/#comment-7351  And I thought “can this be the same person? No way.  And lo and behold it’s you both times. 

Crazy…but I can relate to the remnants of artistic appreciaton and ascending to tender moments of faith and Holy Spirit inspired beauty…they still occasionally catch me by surprise and punctuate the ant infestations, wet bathing suits that are left on the stairs/bed/rug/floor/bathroom/bed, and multiple moments when I actually say things I never, ever imagined that I would in BH, (“before motherhood”).  Things such as ‘whose poop is this?’ as I examine it and try to figure out which child it might belong to. I actually did that earlier tonight and it never occurred to me that I was doing something completely gross.  It was all about JUSTICE and attempting to get my children to actually flush their actual excrement.  Themselves. Without threats of losing whatever I could think of quickly that they might value if I refused to grant to them.

Anyway, these two articles were comforting to me - to see that you have this paradox in your life as well.  You actually go a little lower in the disheveled household department (okay, sometimes I am lower) and higher in the exquisiteness of spiritual insights and bursts of intellectual functioning that are reminiscent of When I Was Smart (also before motherhood) (and mostly in college).

So thanks for speaking and writing out of both sides of your brain - the sane and the insane sides.  I can totally relate. Another glimmer of hope rises from the laundry pile of my brain."


Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mary-in-her-helicopter/#ixzz1StR92j5p

Compiled Over a Five Year Period

Things We Never Thought Would Come Out of Our Mouths When We Thought About Becoming Parents*

Part I

 by the Happy Yet Often Bewildered Parents of Three Fantastic Children

* but which actually did.

One day while talking to my older sister Nancy (the mother of four terrific boys) on the phone, she excused herself for a moment, turned to her youngest son and said "Do NOT stand on the dog!".  That absurdly funny moment launched this list which has since resided on the side of our fridge for convenient updating. I will post more installments in the future.  We have plenty more where these came from. (p.s. the dog was fine.)

Please wait until you are off the toilet to play the harmonica

Please don’t use your toes to pick up your toast

Girls, stop arguing about whether Brendan’s freckles can be your pets!

Don’t drink out of the ketchup bottle

Do not draw pictures on the church windows with your spit

THERE IS NO SCREAMING DURING THE ROSARY!

I know your bologna is on your head.  The question is, why?

Don’t give ANYONE a haircut.

Please stop ramming me with the grocery cart.

Stop smearing yogurt on your arms.

What a nice big poop!

Don’t dip your sister’s underwear in the dog’s water.

Don’t put your paci in the dog’s mouth.

We do NOT drink from the dog’s bowl.

Close your mouth – no talking AT ALL!  Yes, hiccups are okay.

Whatever it is you are doing, stop it!      

I am not a sniff machine. 

My Vantage Point

Well to launch this new blog I should say that all the pithy little insights and overly-descriptive phrases of  The Tonucci Family Adventure are from my perspective:  Mom/Wife/Person Strapped In for the Ride.  I'm the Wife of Sixteen Years (almost), Mom for eleven and Life Adventurer for Forty-Six. 

First I was just little old me,
fresh from college armed with an English degree...
then me, the aspiring writer....
then me, the aspiring editor...
then me, a really lousy (but sincere) salesperson....
then me, the nursing student...
the nurse....
the wife....
the mom...
and now I seem to be back to the writer role. 

Really there are just so many things I think are noteworthy, downright laugh-out-loud ridiculously funny, beautifully poignant or just lovely that I like to put into words. 

Words. 

Love 'em. 

I can edit out all my stupidity (ok maybe not all of it), grammatical miskakes and politically incorrect oopses.  And describe what I really see as important in my life, which are moments of beauty in the midst of a lot of downright chaos.  Freeze frames of loveliness and outright perfection, often sandwiched between, well, sandwiches, smelly dogs, piles of laundry and an overly-packed schedule.  I think it's a gift our family has, to see those freezeframes, stop and look at each other over the yogurt smeared faces of our children and 'get it' - life happening under our noses.  For me, the best way to remember them is to write about them. 

In our family, we're all strapped in for the ride, and loving the life we lead - in fact, the life to which we are called, the life in which we are blessed and honored to share with each other.

Today is 9/11/10 -  a day that reminds us to love while we can and remember what is important.  A good day to launch a blog, I guess.  As good as any!

"Live a life worthy of the calling you have received."  Ephesians 4