memories

Blessings Abound in Family Life

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Last weekend I shared a photo of our driveway, packed to the curb with vehicles, with a caption suggesting that older parents would understand what a blessing it was. A full driveway means a full house, and the hassle of juggling vehicles is more than made up for by the joy of hearing the voices and laughter of our adult children and their friends mingled with Lily’s—our youngest and the only one still home on a regular basis.

Emma surprised us by coming home from the University of Mary on Monday night, ahead of a Holy Week snowstorm in North Dakota. Gabe joined us for supper and Mass on Holy Thursday and stayed until Tuesday, and Trevor plus two out-of-state classmates from Saint John Vianney College Seminary arrived Easter Sunday morning and headed back to Saint Paul with Gabe in time for Bishop Izen’s ordination.

I love our old traditions and the kids’ insistence that we abide by them: going to the Triduum liturgies; flat bread, grape juice, and the Last Supper account after Holy Thursday Mass; silence (or close to it) from noon to 3:00 PM on Good Friday and The Passion of the Christ in the evening; baskets and coloring Easter eggs on Holy Saturday, before the Vigil; and the mysterious Bunny hiding eggs and baskets in the wee hours before Sunday morning.

And I love the new things that arise from older offspring who are doing their own things now: Gabe wearing sandals like a true Franciscan on Good Friday and leading a group to pray at Planned Parenthood; Trevor and his classmates vesting for two Easter Sunday Masses after a full Triduum at the seminary; and sharing Easter greetings with Brendan, Becky, and our grandsons in Rome via video call.

It was a beautiful, blessed Easter.

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Mr. Fix-It?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Back in the summer of 2019, my 1966 Ford F-100, Rosa, died along the side of the road between Elk River and home. She was my daily driver to Saint Andrew and back, and it was a sad day when the tow truck operator rolled her off the flat bed to her shady spot beside the garage.

The neighbor boy, watching the action over the fence with the acute interest of a future heavy equipment operator, said: “Best. TV show. Ever.” He didn’t sense my loss.

As of this weekend, Rosa rides again. Yesterday, she joined the parade of tarp-lined pickups and minivans loaded with leaf bags headed to the compost site to remove the leavings of autumn. She stalled once and sputtered twice at stop signs and traffic lights; she also seeped oil from nearly every seal and gasket for the first couple trips, until they swelled and began to hold again.

I told Jodi during our morning prayers yesterday that I knew we had a busy day planned, but I wanted to do at least one thing that I just flat-out enjoyed.

I’m an emotional guy. The first load of leaves choked me up a bit. I had a big, goofy smile all the way home. Rosa’s back!*

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Rising to the Occasion

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This post ran in the Ascension Sunday edition of the St. Michael Catholic Church bulletin, the weekend of May 28-29. Another note: My mother and my sister are both practicing Catholics these days…my bride sets a good example!

On this Ascension Sunday, I want to share with you a different sort of rising. Many of you know I didn’t grow up in the Catholic Church. I didn’t grow up in any church to speak of, aside from a brief period in the mid-1980s when my mother brought to St. Joseph the Worker in Beal City, Michigan, to be instructed in the catechism and receive our first Holy Communion from kindly old Father Hart.

Mom grew up in a Polish Catholic farm family. Dad was her next-door neighbor, of no particular faith; his grandmother shared Bible stories and values with him, but though he saw the sense in it, he has never claimed to be a believer. When I met my bride, I guess I was just Catholic enough—that brief period as a kid, plus a few dozen Catholic Masses and weddings, made enough of an impression that I could hold my own alongside her on Sunday mornings. And I was thoroughly smitten, so Jesus had His opening. He took full advantage.

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Gofer-Vision, or the Search for the Quintessential Tool

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Yesterday I was completing a couple home projects in our basement and reminiscing with our teenage son, Trevor, as I worked. In the course of the conversation, a shared memory surfaced: Once when I was working on a different project (the kids’ treehouse, I think), I sent Trevor to the garage to get the orange carpenter’s square.

“Big, flat piece of steel, like two rulers at a right angle to each other. It should be hanging on the peg board over the work bench. Bright orange—can’t miss it.”

He was gone a long time.

* * * * *

When I was old enough to read the fractions etched into the sides of sockets and wrenches, I became my Dad’s “gofer” (as in, “Go fer this; go get that.”)—and I had an uncanny ability to look squarely at the tool my father asked for and not see it. I could not see something for several minutes straight; we never tested the upper limits of this knack of mine, primarily because the sought item would snap into focus the moment Dad disentangled himself from the drivetrain of the pickup, rolled out from beneath it on the creeper, stood, sauntered over to the bench, and pointed at it, right where he said it would be.

“Oh,” I would say sheepishly, handing it to him. “I didn’t see that there.”

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Book Break: Hope Is the Last to Die

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

In 2016, I was blessed to travel with my son Gabe and STMA Catholic Youth Ministry to World Youth Day in Kraków, Poland. Southern Poland is a wonderful place for a Catholic pilgrimage; so many ancient and modern saints lived and died in so small a region that every day it seemed we visited another sacred site in another blessed city. The big three, of course, were 20th century saints: St. John Paul II, St. Faustina Kowalska, and St. Maximilian Kolbe.

In the case of St. Maximilian Kolbe, we were blessed to visit his religious community at Niepokalanów as well as the concentration camp where he gave his life at Oswiecim (Auschwitz). I say blessed truly, but not in the typical sense of the word. On a sunny summer day, Auschwitz is still and green and peaceful as an cemetery, but still more somber and hushed; the fences, ruins, and the dreadful sign above the gate, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Will Free You), bear silent witness to the cruelty of which humanity is capable.

As we left the camp, we passed a small booth selling items commemorating the place—most prominently, a book entitled Hope Is the Last to Die by Halina Birenbaum. Born Halina Grynsztajn to a Jewish family in Warsaw, she survived the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi occupation, followed by four prison camps in succession:  Majdanek and Auschwitz in Poland, and Ravensbrück, and Neustadt-Glewe in Germany.

I bought the book, as the most appropriate way to recall the place and what happened there. I finally found the courage to read it this Lent.

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