Second Edition

Bats


Fear of Bats?

Image by IceNineJon via Flickr

Devils Den is actually known for its bats. I didn’t know that even though I did consider it very probable that we would come across bats in the cave we planned to explore while we were there. I decided however not to tell Rob that I am afraid of bats ahead of time. I didn’t want him to think I was going to be a “girl” about similar adventures in the future, and I just thought I could conqueror my fear by not looking up. You don’t look up. You don’t see bats. You are not afraid.

The cave itself has history for Rob. He has been to the park in the past, most recently on his memorial trip for his late wife, Shelley, last November. It was during this trip that he broke his flashlight while back in the cave and, because there is no light source anyway but at the mouth of the cave, he had to feel his way out. It was a profound experience for him.

He “borrowed” the white disposable coveralls we wore from a work site so that we could attempt to go back further in the cave than most of the general population of campers at the park go. To do this you have to climb and crawl and it is damp and muddy. The coveralls were to protect our clothing. Rob may be all guy but he is a Virgo and they just can’t get past their “be overly prepared” natures. Case in point, we did not carry flashlights. He had dropped and broken his in November because it is difficult to carry a light and manage other tasks. So, he found small lamps that we could strap to our heads. They proved to be quite efficient light sources, and Rob loved his so much that by the time we had hiked back down to the road after our caving adventure, he had a small list of activities for which this wonderful new gadget might prove useful.

The cave was somewhat narrow, and it wasn’t long before the coveralls had earned more than their share of “useful” points. When we reached the spot where most people turn back, Rob asked me if I wanted to try and go in further. Surprising even myself, I was game. I didn’t have to be. He would have been fine had I chickened out but I wanted to go on. For him a little, but mostly for myself. I am not claustrophobic at all and since I hadn’t looked up even once, the whole fear of bats had not been an issue, but I am afraid of the dark. I always have been and since by husband’s death last year, it has been worse than it was even when I was a small child. Rob had asked me if I would be okay if we turned out our lamps at some point and I had said yes, but the truth was that I would have been only if he was standing right next to me with both arms wrapped tightly around me. The only time my house is completely dark at night is when there is company staying over after all.

So, up we went. Crawling and contorting and twisting and climbing up and down until we reached a very tight space with very little head room. So little that keeping my eyes off the ceiling was becoming a difficult thing to do as it was practically in my face. That is when I heard Rob tell me to stop. Why? I wondered. Well, I was about to scrap a few bats right off the ceiling with my cap.

I decided I wanted to turn around. I am sure the tone of my voice said everything that I hadn’t earlier. It took a few minutes of carefully directing me to get us turned around and on our way out. It was now that Rob felt the sudden urge to look up himself, and he was amazed enough at the number of bats he saw to comment on them near constantly until we emerged from the cave’s entrance.

I don’t think that he was disappointed in me. He teased me quite a bit, but that is par for the course when he catches me out about something. Anyway, it is not the kind of teasing that I remember from my childhood. It is playful and I can tell he is quite amused by what he refers to as my being “cute”.

I don’t think caving is going to be high on our list of things to do in the wild.

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Growing Up Catholic


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So, even though I spent fifteen minutes on the phone tonight reassuring my mom that vegetarianism and Easter dinner is not a recipe for disaster, it only just occurred to me that it is Holy Week. I hated Holy Week when I was growing up. It meant going to church on a day that wasn’t Sunday, like protestants do, and masses that were longer than 30 minutes, a practically unheard of thing when I was a child.

 

It started with reading the Passion ensemble style on Palm Sunday. The longest freaking mass of the year, and you spent at least half of it on your feet. No slouching. No leaning. Back straight. Missile open. Attention paid. Not that I was ever paying attention. My favorite place to hide when I was a child was deep inside my head where I had many stories to occupy me when the world around me was too intense, or in the case of mass or school, too pointless.

 

 

In school that week we had prayer services and did the stations of the cross everyday. As often as I have done them, the stations, I still don’t know them by heart. Not like a Hail Mary or the responses during the consecration which come back unbidden and  virtually word for word no matter how many years it has been.

 

Thursday night, we went to mass to watch Father wash feet and to read yet another version of the Passion. There are four gospels you know.

 

Friday. Stations of the Cross. This time in a packed church in the middle of the day. The consecrated host was taken from the altar and the tabernacle draped to indicate Jesus’ death. Fun times.

 

Saturday night. Mass again and since there couldn’t be a consecration, no resurrection yet, you would think it wouldn’t take as long. You’d be wrong.

 

Sunday morning mass, the day of the Resurrection of God’s only son made flesh, was actually the shortest mass of the week. It was like a reward for having made it through Holy Week boot camp. The gospel was about Mary Magdalene finding the tomb empty and running to fetch the apostles. It was always interesting to me that Jesus appeared to Mary first. Didn’t that make her important? The answer to that is no. Mary was a woman. My Irish Catholic view of the world told me that women ruled it, but in the Catholic church, we ran and fetched. God only loved us second best and even that was predicated on our shunning birth control in favor of Kennedyesque broods or taking the veil.

 

Easter was crammed full of rituals I detested. Lent with its fasting and meaningless deprivation. Confession. The sisters made us go once a week during Lent. We were children. At some point over the course of forty days, we had to start making up sins. And of course, there were the endless hours of rosary my dad would insist we recite every night after the dishes were done. Praying as a family was something the church encouraged although I didn’t notice it making my family a happier group of people.

 

The last Easter Sunday mass I attended was with Will the spring before we got married. We had to sit in the overflow because everyone who was ever even nominally Catholic goes to mass on Easter Sunday. I remember he thought we spent an awful lot of time on our feet and knees, and why were there seats if we weren’t going to use them? Sometimes I wonder if I am making a mistake by not raising my daughter in the faith. It certainly shaped who I am in some ways.

Maybe that is why.

Writing


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My four year old loves to write. She will sit with a notebook and pen quietly scratching away in a language that is half letters/half symbols, and I wonder if she is mimicking me through example or DNA. When I was her age my stories were more of the performance art variety, told to invisible audiences via dolls or dance. Although I loved books, it hadn’t occurred to me that my stories could be written down for others to read.

 

I know I have written about this before, but my first written story was about pirates. Sister Rita, a tiny prune-faced thing who was barely taller than the shortest fourth grader and painted her meticulously filed nails bright colors that I am sure the Pope would have disapproved of, took the red pen that all teachers must have been issued with their licenses back then and buried my artistic endeavor under editing marks she never taught us the meaning of. If I had not been born a writer that might have been the end of my authoring days but for the fact that Sister aside, people liked to read what I wrote.

 

I began to write obsessively in the fifth grade.  Writing filled up the days while I was waiting for the other kids to “get it” so we could move on and was a way for me to look productive while I hid from the subjects that bored or perplexed me.

 

By high school, when the education process had progressed from the merely tedious to a test of my endurance, the idea that I could build a life and even make a living from writing was starting to take hold and was probably one of the bigger reasons I ended up in college. I thought, incorrectly as it turned out, that I could learn how to be a writer there.

 

University is a piss poor place to learn about writing much less become an author. Long story short, I became an English teacher instead. An English teacher who knew less than zero about grammar and couldn’t spell.

 

It was teaching grammar to thirteen year olds (who had no idea I was a mere chapter ahead of them every day) that taught me to love the language as much as I loved to see myself think on paper. But I still wasn’t a writer.

 

Ironically, it was graduate school that made me  focus on my writing  again. By treating it as a craft, I had many opportunities to test my abilities in an impartial setting . That and watching someone I loved beyond logic die right in front of me for months and years finally tipped the scales. I guess that is why the Palahnuik quote jumped off the page at me. I became a teacher only partly because I loved it. The other reason had to do with losing my confidence in myself and my gift and succumbing to the idea that one’s life work is about security not passion.

 

I began to blog about six months or so after my husband, Will, died. It was much the same as the writing that I had done as a teenager. Just thinking on “paper” but now I was very conscious of the process and the  idea of writing as a life began to flicker.

 

It was Rob who fanned the flames again and continues to do so. I think he will understand the quote, and the photo as well.

 

I envy those who can do what they love from the beginning.