Well, Look Who's Back

Having ripped open my scars for all the blog to see, I washed the dishes, tidied and hoovered a bedroom, did two loads of laundry and went by train the the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood.  I was feeling pretty bad, but The Artist's Way is strict about taking yourself on on artist's dates, which so far I had neglected to do. And I thought going out would make me feel better anyway.

The train ride and the first floor of the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood were pretty ho-hum. The gift shop--at the very front--was uninspiring and the display about child miners was exceedingly depressing, and the disused Punch and Judy (and the Baby) looked a little creepy. The second floor, with its toy theatres and 19th century moving pictures and what have you, was not really my cup of tea either. But then I turned around and beheld some very intriguing dollhouses. And all of a sudden, I realized that there was a small ginger-haired child beside me.

"Hey ho, Outer Adult," said the moppet. "Now we're getting somewhere. Cars, schmars. Pre-war dollhouses are AWESOME. Wouldn't it be cool if we had a dollhouse that looked like the Historical House? That would be soooo AWESOME!"

"Where the Sam Hill have you been?" I said,  outraged. "What about The Bodis Ripper? I promised Bettina it would be finished, and you took off to who knows where for who knows how long."

"Where's my It-bag, girlfriend?" said the Inner Child. "I told you this would happen if you went back to SCHOOL, and you have been going to SCHOOL for over two years. TWO YEARS of sz, cz, dzi, ay-aw, and no time for me. Fuddle that shaving cream. Ooooh! The lady who used to own that house has left the doll's biography."

"Lemme see," I said. "Woot! Three husbands!"

"Frankly, Outer Adult," said the Inner Child. "This place sucks. Pardon my French. Except, of course, for the dollhouses and the tea sets, which are the only things that remind me of you when you were my age and normal. The dolls are okay. In fact, I recommend that dolls although NOT the voodoo ones which are super creepy. I mean the wax and bisque ones. And the gollies are a hoot."

So off we went to the Annex of the Dolls, and I have to admit it was pretty creepy: all those eyes staring glassily at us and the gollies grinning merrily at the thought of their politically incorrect existence, and then  the "Dolls of the World" section with shrunken apple heads and black magic.

"Let's blow this popsicle stand," said the Inner Child. "You're a book person. Take me down to the Poetry Library and read me some Robert Louis Stevenson."

But the Poetry Library was closed.

"Huh! Shut on Mondays," said the Inner Child, rattling the door. "Well, let's go to Blackwell's then. They have a cool children's section. Let's look at the children's section."

So we went to the children's section, and after admiring the Usbourne slot-it-together skeleton, the Inner Child proposed looking at notebooks. We thought the Moleskine ones were as boring as usual, so I brought the Inner Child upstairs to see my current favourite.

"OMG!" shrieked the Inner Child. "It's, like, SOLID GOLD!"

"Well, not really. It just looks like---."

"It shuts with CLASPS! Real life CLASPS!"

"Yes," I admitted.

We practiced opening and shutting the book for a bit.

"The pages are lined though," I observed. "You know I never buy lined journals."

"I don't mind the lines," said the Inner Child in a sort of awed voice. "I like lines."   

I looked at the book again.

"If we were to write stories in it every day until it is full...." I said slowly.

"OH THANK YOU OUTER ADULT THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Can I have some peacock-feather coloured pens, too?"

"Yes. This is my artist date, and I guess you are the artist I am treating."

"WOO-HOO!" said the Inner Child and did a little dance. And here she is to pass on a message. I will just scrunch over in my chair.

I AM THE INNER CHILD AND I ROOL! ROFL ROFL LOL!

When God Sends None

When I was a university freshman, I ran with a tough Catholic crowd, and one guy loved to carry out orthodoxy tests. The one I remember best is the openness-to-life one.

"How many children do you want?" he would ask some unsuspecting pal.

"I don't know. Two?"

"Heretic!"

"How many children do you want?" he asked another unsuspecting pal.

"Lots! Six--maybe eight?"

"Heretic!"

So I was ready when he got me in his sights.

"Seraphic, how many children do you want?"

"As many as God sends," I said breezily.

He was very disappointed.

"Aw. You got it right."

And I thought about this last night, after a long, tiring Mothering Sunday trip to see my mother-in-law, who mentioned, just in general, that her boyfriend was becoming a grandfather, and at once I thought that because of me she would never be a grandmother. I squashed the thought immediately.  When I told her last year about The Horrible Clueless NHS Phone Call, she was clearly sorry for me, not at all for herself. She is a very kindly woman, and I really wish that she could have grandchildren, but she had only the one child, and there it is.

As many as God sends.

I came home to comments--one anonymous, one by a father of many--giving me a hard time because of a comment I made in connection with women who assume Catholic men will reject them because they are too old to give birth to big families. As their comments were made on Saturday, it is just bad luck that I happened to read them on Mother's Day.

Nevertheless, I am restricting anonymous comments again because I am not putting myself out there so that people can make uncharitable assumptions about my intentions and voice them without so much as a pseudonym.  Nor am I particularly interested in married men  parading their happiness at having got the exact number of children they wanted in a blog read primarily by Single, childless women. In the Catholic world, married men with children are not exactly marginalized.  Nor are they particularly clever about the feelings of childless women.

To return to the subject of orthodoxy and hopes for children, it is a curious feature of Catholic marriage that nobody can put aside his or her spouse just because they are infertile. You would think a God who loves children so much would indeed have made that the great exception to the no-divorce-and-remarriage rule. After all, the primary reason for marriage IS children. But He didn't make that exception.

When I was going through The Worst Day of My Married Life, it did cross my mind to tell B.A. he should ditch me and find someone younger, but fortunately I didn't do such a self-pitying and insulting thing. It would have hurt B.A. very much, and although I am not an angel, I do not spit on God's most generous gifts. Meanwhile I knew perfectly well that we were sacramentally married, so there was no going back for any reason, including infertility.

"As many as God sends"--even when God sends none.

I know very well that many of my Single readers dread being childless even more than they dread never finding the love of a husband. Well, I will not lie. At times it feels absolutely horrible. I came from a big family, I assumed, as a teenager, that I would have a big family myself one day, and big families feel "normal" to me. It never occurred to me that God wouldn't send me any children at all if I married, but here we are.

There are two comforts in this--and by the way, we are all clear that when I talk about hopes for marriage and children I am talking to childless, Single women, yes? Childless, Single women who are devout Catholics and therefore would never dream of going down the pub and getting themselves knocked up by a stranger, yes? And don't look so shocked, for such an tactic was suggested to me by a divorced mother of two. It would no doubt blow happy married fathers' minds what is proposed to Single, childless women by their well-meaning friends.

The two comforts are as follow:

1. Because I grew up in a "large" family, I still have that large family, and although the older members die, younger ones are born. I have myself expanded that family by adding B.A., and thus although I will probably never give B.A. children, I have given him a new mother, father, brothers, sisters, nephews and a niece.

2. Benedict Ambrose did not marry me as the future mother of his children but as me, myself, 38 years old--slightly older than himself, in fact. This was not because he was a bad Catholic, closed off from life, but because he wanted to marry me, and my ability to have children was not something he thought about much at all. He was also in his late thirties, and had dated older women before. Clearly dating-so-as-to-get-kids had never been his priority.

And I am writing out such personal, so deeply felt thoughts not because I am some kind of exhibitionist or emo-blogger, but to illustrate to frightened single, childless women over 25 that they do not have cause to fear permanent rejection by Catholic men because they are growing older.

Yes, they will meet deeply insensitive men who will reject them because they, the men, have fantasies assumptions about their own untried potency and assume that they will be able to beget and financially support any number of children as long as they have access to young-enough ovaries. But not all men are like that. Indeed, I would say precious few, and those few are not worth knowing anyway. They would fail my friend's little orthodoxy test. If we want to get right down to it, the super-correct, absolutely obedient and faith-filled answer to "How many children do you want?" is "As many as God sends, even if He sends none."

Comments OFF.

Mary Wagner jest dzielną niewiastą

Niestety: nie każdy katolik w Kanadzie kibicuje Mary Wagner. Ostatnio kanadyjski dziennikarz skrytykował ją, i nawet zasugerował, że Mary działa by zdobyć poklask, sławę, by odczuć zadowolenie z siebie. Napisałam zatem odpowiedź do Catholic Register w Toronto po angielsku. Oto moje tłumaczenie:

Dwudziestego siódmego grudnia 1989 r. zostałam aresztowana przed kliniką aborcyjną w Toronto. Policjanci rzucili mnie na maskę samochodu i zamknęli w celi na posterunku na kilka godzin. Były tam ze mną około 74 osoby. CBC (główny kanadyjski publiczny nadawca radiowo-telewizyjny) podał, że 80.

To było 25 lat temu, więc prawdopodobnie nasi czytelnicy [w Toronto] nie pamiętają, że w latach 80. katolicy i ewangelicy organizowali demonstracje przeciwko aborcji przed szpitalami i klinikami aborcji w Toronto prawie w każdym tygodniu. W 1989 r. stworzono tylko jedną z tzw. „czasowych stref bez protestu”, a była ona umiejscowiona koło firmy aborcyjnej Henry Morgentalera na Harbord Street. Tam moja koleżanka, Adele, została kilkukrotnie aresztowana, gdy modliła się cicho na zewnątrz albo prosiła kobiety idące do kliniki by przemyślały swoją decyzję. Spędzała w więzieniu całe miesiące. Myślę, że miała wtedy osiemnaście lat.

Byłam członkiem przynajmniej czterech podobnych klubów studenckich pro-life: „Abbey Alive”, który wspierał dom dla kobiet w ciąży, organizując kiermasze dobroczynne; „Metropolitan Toronto Students for Life”, który organizował demonstracje i rozdawał ulotki informacyjne; „Ontario Students for Life”, który organizował konferencje; oraz TRUTH (Prawda), „Teens Rescuing Unborn Tiny Humans” („Nastolatki ratujące malutkich nienarodzonych”). TRUTH składał się z uczniów, którzy wchodzili do klinik i zakuwali się w łańcuchy w środku oraz innych, którzy stali na zewnątrz i śpiewali podczas gdy policja ciągnęła ich przyjaciół po schodach.

Może to was [w Toronto] szokuje, i jeśli tak, nie jestem zaskoczona. Jestem osobą urodzoną i wychowaną w Toronto i ideały mojego miasta ciągle brzmią w moich uszach: „Pilnuj swoich spraw!”, „Nie podnoś głosu!”, „Nie przeszkadzaj nieznajomym!”, „Jeśli nie możesz powiedzieć niczego miłego, nie mów nic!”. W Rzymie nieznajomi wesoło tłoczą się w autobusie albo w metrze. W Toronto, zadziwiająco udaje nam się utrzymywać przynajmniej centymetrowy dystans nawet w godzinie szczytu. Uwielbiamy prywatność. I dlatego w Toronto nawet trzymanie transparentu z napisem „Aborcja zatrzymuje bijące serce” jest policzkiem dla tysięcy ludzi. Myślą, że to naruszenie ich prywatności. 

 

Dla tych, którzy występują przeciwko tym regułom, konsekwencje są bolesne. Przekonałam się o tym kiedy byłam nastolatką, stojącą na wietrze, mrozie, czy w palącym słońcu z transparentem dotyczącym prawa do życia. Nie było trudno zostać aresztowaną. Było to bardzo proste i napisałam o tym szczegółowo niedługo potem:

„Byłam przy samych łańcuchach i przyglądałam się jak dzieci, kapłani oraz starsze kobiety byli niesieni jak worki ziemniaków, a aktywiści aborcyjni szydzili: „Patrzcie na tych męczenników!” i śpiewali obsceniczne piosenki. Dałam mój śpiewnik jednemu z mężczyzn... „Tutaj zaczynam moje życie przestępcy,” zażartowałam i podeszłam, by usiąść przed schodami. Spotkałam tam Ojca Toma —podaliśmy sobie ręce — i starszą panią, która została pobita przez działaczy proaborcyjnych. Policja wyciągnęła mężczyznę z oddali. „Kto następny?” wesoło zapytał jeden z policjantów. „Mam nadzieję, że to nie będzie za bardzo bolało,” pomyślałam sobie. „To chyba ja,” powiedziałam i skrzyżowałam ręce na piersiach. Policjanci podnieśli mnie i zanieśli do samochodu.

Jako nastolatka byłam w siódmym niebie. Moje myśli obracały się wokół św. Pawła i radości z aresztowania z powodu mojej wiary. Wiedzieliśmy, że klinika nie mogła zabijać dzieciątek tego poranka: a może zwłoka skłoniła ich matki do zmiany zdania i ocaliła je od śmierci? Samochód policyjny i cela byli pełne nadziei, radości i niesamowitej miłości. 

 

Nigdy nie spotkałam Mary Wagner, kobiety która 23 grudnia 2014 r. została aresztowana pod zarzutem „utrudniania działalności gospodarczej” (to znaczy: weszła do kliniki aborcyjnej i poprosiła czekające kobiety, by nie pozwoliły biznesmence zabić ich dzieci). Ale sądzę, że Mary jest bardzo dzielną kobietą: nie dlatego że została aresztowana, nie dlatego że przebywa w więzieniu, nie dlatego że jest — dzięki Internetowi - pierwszym kanadyjskim działaczem pro-life słynnym w Polsce. Raczej dlatego, że wstawia się za nieznajomymi w ciąży.

Mogłam trzymać transparent i znosić obelgi, mogłam nawet siedzieć w miejscu, w którym policja zakazała siedzieć i trafić do celi, ale nigdy nie miałam ani odwagi, ani tak wielkiej, pełnej poświęcenia miłości, by zbliżyć się do kobiety idącej do kliniki aborcyjnej i powiedzieć: „Proszę, niech Pani zastanowi się jeszcze raz! Można znaleźć pomoc dla kobiet, które decydują się donosić ciążę.” To było za trudne. Słowa grzęzły w gardle. 

 

Złamanie nakazu „Pilnowania swoich spraw” może być trudniejsze niż naruszanie kodeksu karnego. Właśnie dlatego, że działała wbrew temu nakazowi — a do tego ma odwagę i miłość potrzebne do osobistej rozmowy z nieznajomymi w ciąży — wierzę, że Mary Wagner zasługuje na uznanie, które takim jak ona przyznaje się bardzo rzadko. 

ENGLISH HERE. 

British Mother's Day

Bitter, very bitter.

Blah.

Now that I live in the UK,  Childless I have to live through not one but two Mother's Days. BLAAAAAAH!

Fortunately, the British one is on Laetare Sunday, and in Traddery, nothing gets in the way of Laetare Sunday.

Big sigh.

I don't know if priests in the UK have invented "Make all the nulliparous women sit while the mothers stand to be applauded after Mass" yet.  For the sake of my nulliparous sisters in the UK, I hope not. As for me, I will be at the impassible Extraordinary Form--whoo hoo!

UPDATE: Flowers! I want flowers! And breakfast in bed! And and and and and another glass of wine!

Real Relationships vs Fantasy Claims

Fantasy Me in my Eighties except for the sex stuff (and murder).

The other day I had coffee with the pretty young bride of a handsome older man, and we touched upon the subject of older women who resent it when younger women date men the older women's own age.

This is a huge theme in Single women's worries, especially once the Single women are in their thirties. Ironically, another big theme in Single women's worries, especially when they are in their twenties, is the undesirability of the vast majority of older men who hit on them.

So let's talk about both themes.

1. When Men Your Age Date Younger Women

Naturally none of you ever watched Sex & the City, so you won't be familiar with the embarrassing showdown (Season 6, Part 2, "Splat!") between Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Enid (Candice Bergen), her editor at Vogue, over Carrie's then-new boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov). Enid, looking particularly stringy, can't take her eyes off craggy Aleksandr, and eventually goes into a meltdown, telling Carrie that there are not so many great men her age available, and younger Carrie shouldn't be dating them.

I very much enjoyed that episode, for it showcases how the deep unhappiness of worldly women can influence other women into making bad decisions. Between lonely, 50-something Enid's manic hissing and jaded Lexi Featherston falling out the window, it's no wonder that Carrie decides to uproot her whole New York life and settle for Paris with Petrovsky.

Meanwhile, Enid puts into words the resentment of older women for the younger women older men are attracted to and shows how crazy-making it can be.

The truth is no woman in the world has a claim on any group of men just because she thinks she, because of her age or nationality or religion, is "right for them."  Every Single man is free to follow the inclinations of his heart towards any Single woman over 18, as long as she is totally free to reject his courtship. And, indeed, any Single woman over 18 should be free to accept or reject a Single man's courtship. Once you're an adult, you're an adult in a world of adults, and quite a number of those adults are over 30.

Some men over 30 do indeed court women under 30, but doing so is not any kind of proof that the man is shallow. Indeed, some women over 30 accept the courtship of men under 30, and it is not any kind of proof that the woman is exploitative. Every person is a concrete reality, and every relationship between a man and a woman is also a concrete reality. A man over 30 may first be attracted to a 20-something because she is very pretty, but after they begin to communicate, they have a relationship.

This could be a we-must-have-coffee-someday acquaintanceship, or a mostly platonic friendship,or a  light flirtation, or the beginning of a grand romance that will end with death. Whatever it is, it is real and it is theirs.

Their relationship--whatever it is--is real, whereas the idea of an onlooker that the man somehow belongs to other women, e.g. women her age, is a fantasy.

It occurred to me that it is all very easy for me to be objective about 40-something men courting 20-somethings when I am married. However, I have found life to be much less painful when I accepted certain facts of life, like men are going to fall in love with the women they fall in love with, and not with whomever I think they should fall in love with, e.g. my wonderful self. 

2. When Older Men Hit On  Younger You.

If you are over 18, welcome to adult life! Personally, I do not actually consider anyone an adult unless she has finished trade school or an undergrad degree and has got a job or place in a graduate department. However, an older man can't tell just by looking who is the adult-at-18 hairdresser and who is the extended adolescent who-doesn't-know-what-to-do-with-her-life-yet. However, if he talks to her and has the ability to notice that she is looking at him like a deer caught in the headlights, then he should know that she is not emotionally an adult yet and he should BACK OFF.

Sadly, not all men are that good at noticing, which is why all adolescents in the adult world should be trained to say, "No, thanks. You realize I'm only a teenager/college student, right?"

"Oh, but you seem so mature for your years" is a line.

"You're so different from other girls your age. You're deeper, more thoughtful" is another one.

"You're so [fill in the blank] compared to other girls," is the template. I know we all want to feel special compared to all the other women in the world, but so does every two-bit seducer out there.

So yes, there are older men who are real jerks and go around trying to seduce naive young things but fortunately, a lot of them are wrinkled and crusty-looking and the young girls they admire think "Ew."  But instead of feeling like you have been personally insulted, you should brush them off like flies.

However, not all older men are this way, thank heavens.  Most Single men over 30 I have met have been decent, interesting, and like most human beings, vulnerable. If you scratch them, they bleed. They have their good points--they have had time to accomplish something--and they have their bad--boyish skin turning into orange peel. However, although the orange peel always seems to matter when you aren't attracted to a man, it never does when you fall in love with him.

My opinion is that 20-something girls should not turn the inclination of Single men in their 40s and 50s to hit on them into a Big Drama, unless the man is someone in a position of trust, e.g. their professor. They don't know that they're totally unattractive to you; they're not mind-readers and, in fact, one girl's poison is another girl's vintage wine. If I were Single, I wouldn't say no to coffee with sixty-something Mikhail Baryshnikov, not because I think sixty-something men are super-attractive, but because M.B. has accomplished so much and would be so interesting to listen to.

Ultimate Observation

My dear friend Lily was much amused, and I think comforted, by my observation that I became reconciled to men-in-general thinking 20-something women are better looking than women my age when I realized how much better looking 20-something men are than men-in-general my age.

Not all women think this way, of course, and I have a friend who would never as much as look at a bloke under 40. She thinks 20-somethings are babies, and although she is too nice to say so, she obviously thinks I am a little weird. 

However, never having been one of the beauties of the age, I--a niche interest--learned early to stop caring about how I look to men-in-general and to think more about how men look to me. Heh heh heh. Take it away, Frank:

UPDATE: As you can see from the combox, I got some flak about my combox opinion that most men, even Catholic men, do not deliberately set out to have big families, and they have big families because they 1) do not use artificial birth control 2) do not use NFP correctly 3) NFP doesn't always work. I did not say NO men.

I stand by that. I think a quick gander at the deplorable birth rate for Catholics (and other Christians and post-Christians) in the Western world backs up my opinion. And I think many Catholics who have big families (and who had big families in the past) have those big families because they are faithful to Catholic doctrine. So this is not a slam on big families, let alone Catholics. I myself am the Catholic eldest of Catholic five, and I wrote a week's worth of posts in support of big families after the Holy Father himself made his unfortunate "like rabbits" remark.

The point of this post and my subsequent reply to a reader asking about the Passed Over As Too Old To Have a Big Family was to give hope to Single women, not to slam happy fathers of big families. Although I am delighted that there are happy fathers of big families--like my own father, for example--the primary purpose of my blogging is not to make the paterfamilias feel affirmed but to give comfort to single women.

Polski Piątek*

In an alternate universe, my History teacher called me to his desk after class and told me to enroll in Slavic Studies at university. 

"But I want to become an archaeologist," I said. "I want to study pre-Roman Britain!"

Mr Stewart took off his steel-rimmed glasses and rubbed his wrinkled forehead.

"You have one science OAC, you hate math and you spend all your time indoors," he said. "Don't you realize that archaeology is mostly chemistry, math and digging in the dirt? It's 1989! The Berlin Wall has fallen! Europe is much more exciting now than pre-Roman Britain ever was. Besides, you're a writer. You should be a journalist, and a journalist needs something to write about. Eastern Europe is where it's at. Learn Serbo-Croatian. Learn Polish. Learn Russian!"

"But I want to be a professor," I faltered, as my alternate universe suddenly made no sense.

"Nonsense," shouted Alternative Universe's Mr Stewart. "You're a devout Catholic---and a lady, in the old fashioned sense of the word. Academia will eat you alive!  You'd do better in a war zone. And meanwhile, you're not an academic, you're a writer. You want to write the Great Canadian Novel, don't you?"

"Well, yes..."

"And who do you want to write like?"

Stumped, I grasped at the first name that came to mind.

"Um, Hemingway?"

"Then like Hemingway you must go to the scene of the action! Go East, young woman, go East! Where are you applying? U of T? Good. Bring me the catalogue, and we will look at the courses."

"Okay," I said, saying good-bye in my heart to Ancient Gaelic.

 "And don't you slack off, like you do in your language courses, settling for Bs when you should be studying your butt off for As. Show us Proddies your work ethic is just as good as ours."

And thus, in this alternate universe, goaded by the shouts of Mr Stewart, I signed up for what was then called Serbo-Croatian, Russian (great was my mother's joy) and Slovene, dropping Slovene when advised that Polish would be much more practical. 

I graduated from the Alternate Universe's University of Toronto with an Honours B.A. in Slavic Languages (having spent a delightful year abroad at the Alternative Universe Jagellonian in Kraków) and was immediately recruited as a translator by the Alternate Universe's UNPROFOR.  Flown into Zagreb, where I had a (mostly) chaste flirtation with the A.U. Ryszard Kapuściński, I was badly wounded by sniper fire in....

***

Sadly, in the real universe Mr Stewart said no such thing, and I went to university without the slightest interest in the world as it actually was. I assumed that I would do all my course work with the greatest of ease, and that I would be married soon after that anyway, LOL.  

But now it is 2015, and I have taken up Slavic Languages rather late in life although I did have a crack at Croatian in the late 1990s for work reasons. About three and a half years ago, I decided to learn Polish. When I was told by a lovely Polish girl who was fluent in English that I shouldn't bother as it would be too hard, I decided that I would become fluent in Polish.  

It's a good thing I didn't make some crazy vow like "I will not bathe until I am fluent in Polish!"  The most I vowed was "I will not quit for five years."  And that's good because three and a half years later, my greatest achievement in Polish has been to whine at my Polish Pretend Son for fifteen minutes about how very badly I speak Polish. 

Kind Polish friends will point out that I have also written a handful of letters, several mini-essays and a short story in Polish, as well as translating one of my own English-language columns and an English-language speech about Saint Edith Stein. However, these kind Polish friends did the corrections, so they know perfectly well how many mistakes I make and how I can't write anything without 

1. my latest English-Polish dictionary, always bigger than the last,
2. 301 Polish Verbs by Klara Janecki,
3. Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar by Oscar E. Swan and
4. one of them.

Meanwhile, I am positively terrified of speaking Polish to actual Poles, with the exception of my Polish night class teacher and, after strong drink, Polish Pretend Son. 

But here is something I have learned about listening to Polish.  While writing a letter to Polish Pretend Son yesterday, and looking up almost everything, I realized that the phrases I did not have to look up were phrases I had heard over and over again, either from my Pimsleur CD or from my Polish in Four Weeks Intermediate CD. Wyobrażasz sobie? 

Really, what works best for me is daily repetition of whole phrases and sentences. 

And that is enough for the blog's first Polski Piątek. I leave you with the song we translated in last week's night school class. It is called 'Dla Ciebie' (For You), and although it starts out all happy and romantic, within a minute and a half he has her locked in a cage . Which reminds me of that time Ryszard and I were in Dubrownik and....

*Polish Friday

Pluscarden Holy Week Retreat

Isn't it pretty?

This in from a reader in Aberdeen who wants to promote the Pluscarden Abbey retreat:

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1 - 6 APRIL 2015

The Abbot and monks of Pluscarden Abbey invite young people (aged 18-30) to celebrate the Liturgy with them from Wednesday of Holy Week until Easter.

Our guests will stay in the abbey guest houses. Those taking part will be able to gain deeper insight into the Christian life, monastic life and the Abbey.

There is no charge for staying; but if anyone wishes to make a donation, this will be gratefully received. 

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Click on the link to sign up. I have friends who have made retreats at the Abbey and like it very much.

Nota Bene: These will be Novus Ordo liturgies.

 If you are looking for a Triduum in Scotland according to the Ordo of 1962, then come to St. Andrew's R.C. Church in Edinburgh. Maundy Thursday Mass will be at 5 PM, the Good Friday service at 3 PM, and the Easter Vigil at 5 PM this year.  Easter Sunday Mass (Mass 3) will be at 11:30 AM.

Yes, the rumour was unfounded, and we do have our usual church after all. All we had to do was schedule our Easter Vigil earlier than usual.

ALSO this post jogged my memory of the one monastic foundation in Scotland likely to celebrate Triduum according to the TLM.  Unless you live in Norway, Pluscarden is a lot easier to reach!

Routes to Papa Stronsay where B.A. will go if I die.

HOWEVER, since I am on the topic of monasteries,  I have to put in a word for my own favourite foundation for women, which is the Sisters of Saint Cecilia at Ryde, Isle of Wight. Although they don't usually have the EF, they "have retained the use of Gregorian chant and the Latin language." At least two women of my EF community go there on retreat, and I am friendly with the nuns there. They are a vibrant an impressive community possessing that most wonderful and rare of treasures--young nuns.