Author: AKMA

7 March, and then 16 March, would have been my sister’s 66th and my mother’s 90th birthdays, respectively; and then 1 April was the day Holly died last year; and since then, there’s been ‘Siblings Day’ (when did someone think that one up?), and soon enough 24 June will come, the day Mom died eight years ago.

From around the time of their birthdays, I thought I should say something about them. It’s difficult, because each relationship had its own pattern of distance with fewer bonds of familial intimacy than I’d wish, than I hope they’d wish too. What words can express that honest, practical remoteness to the relationships in my family without making us sound like a horrible novel about a chilly suburban household with people acting out in various dramatic, clinical ways? We were together, no doubt, though my mother and father were drifting; we had a certain closeness, but much of the time it was more similar to a positive teacher-student relationship (to parents) or congenial but not favourite classmates.

My mother had troubles with the men in her life, and I imagine that a son with autistic tendencies (before we knew how to gather those into an explicable, clinical characterisation) must have been among the worst possible matches for her. Though we rarely clashed, there just wasn’t much mother-son affection between us. She and her then-husband knew of my old-times hacking skills and offered me a job working at their computer graphics start-up in the eighties, but we still didn’t see much of one another (feel free to point the finger at me — I didn’t go out of my way to spend time with them). When eventually I realised that as a grown-up it was my job to reach out to her, to extend myself to keep in touch, she saved the weekly notes I sent her, but I had to take Aunt Harriet’s word that she was reading and appreciating them. She was much closer to Margaret than to me; she would talk to Margaret about me in the third person, with me right there in the room. And I know, I’m sure, I didn’t live up to what she might have wanted from a son. My vocation as an academic probably pinched, since she had felt let down by her father and my father, both academics before me.

After my mother and father divorced, Holly — who had been more close to Mom in school days — gravitated to my father, and they developed a very strong connection.I had left for my undergraduate years by then, and my letters home (of which I apparently wrote many more than I would have guessed) gradually tapered off. She went off for her degree, then from a start in retail fashion in Pittsburgh during high school went to work at Vogue, Ralph Lauren, and ultimately Bloomingdale’s, where she headed men’s and children’s fashions. After Bloomingdale’s, she started a cashmere goods retail store in Greenwich, Connecticut. You can see how this plays out for me: I had no fashion sense at all, and if I have developed any since then it has been on the basis of avoiding taking fashion risks. For a very long time, if I had any clothes or accessories that looked especially snappy or sharp, they were gifts from her. Still, we were chalk and cheese, and I think she had some hard feelings comparing our lives.

This afternoon I saw a post on BlueSky showing the route of Paul Revere’s ride, with notations for the locations on his path where today he might obtain a refreshing cup of coffee and a donut from Dunkin’. I looked more closely and saw the locations of the Dunkin’ and the Trader Joe’s that I remembered from going to be with Mom during the last days of her life. And it cut through to my heart.

Got up, ran my two miles despite feeling as though I had less than zero energy — which recalled to my attention something John Darnielle had said on BlueSky the other day — since I realised, as I plodded along, that yesterday was a strict fast day. It actually makes physiological sense that I would not have much rapid-burn energy available. Duh!

Then had a hot breakfast, showered and dressed, to church for Morning Prayer on Holy Saturday, to the grocer’s for ingredients for Margaret’s Easter Lamb Cake, and home to blog and settle some planning for tonight, and finish and burnish tomorrow’s sermon.

Friday is usually a fast day; though many no longer remember, ‘meatless Friday’ or ‘Fish on Friday’ was once a near-universal observance among Roman Catholics and catholic-leaning high-church Anglicans. Good Friday, though, is a stricter fast, and can last through to the celebration of the Eucharist at the Easter Vigil. (St Helen’s doesn’t have a eucharistic Easter Vigil, so I’ll figure something else out.) Anyway, reflecting on my appetite brought to mind the impracticality of observing a severe fast on the busiest days of the liturgical calendar. But I digress….
Adequate two miles this morning (knees weren’t limber till well into the run), coffee, shower, dress, Morning Prayer, home to work on (a) Easter sermon (b) Stations of the Cross (c) where to locate the Stations indoors in case it rains tonight.

Shortly, I’m off to the church early to confirm or tweak the planned indoor path, make the arrangements for the Good Friday service, check the anticipated numbers for the Way of the Cross, lead Good Friday, go home to print materials for Stations, then back to church in time for the Way of the Cross at 8:00. Then home.

Yesterday I had an adequate run in blustery winds, hot breakfast, Morning Prayer, and spent a lot of the day working on the Stations of the Cross for Friday evening (and, of course, dealing with email).

This morning, a good run, will shower and dress and wander in for Morning Prayer, thence to Oxford for the Chrism Mass, back to Abingdon to open the Vestry for a silver-polisher, eventually home to grab a quick dinner before going to St Michael’s for the Maundy Thursday Mass.

Rainy morning, so I didn’t run; instead I gave myself a bit of a lie-in. Cup of coffee and fruit, dealt with a swarm of emails, showered and dressed, Morning Prayer, back home for coffee and toast, then a day of correspondence, editing, waiting for incoming mail, and planning Friday’s Stations of the Cross. My day off.

Two adequate miles this morning, coffee and fruit, showered and dressed and did a couple of tasks from my list, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast, Teams meeting, worked at a task but then was distracted by trying to improve the flow on a pen with shims (I think the problem is with the feed tube, not the nib itself), now off for my Easter haircut.

(That’s ‘Minus First’, since Easter Week is Noughth Week.)

Two satisfactory miles this morning, then coffee and fruit, showered and dressed, another cup and toast, then off to church early to prepare for Palm Sunday.

Part of this morning’s activity — and alot of yesterday’s activity — involved putting together scripts for the reading of St Luke’s Passion today. Until this year, St Helen’s used to have the Liturgy of the Palms, and the Procession, but no Passion on Palm Sunday. There’s a logic to that — the reading of the Passion belongs especially to Good Friday, doesn’t it? And the Entry into Jerusalem cries out for a liturgical observance of its own (Palm Sunday, right), right? But Common Worship decrees the Liturgy of the Passion for the main part of the Palm Sunday service, so Passion it was — we’re hewing close to CW during the interregnum rather than foreclose anything the new Team Rector might have in mind.

So, since we were reading the Passion, I planned a dramatised reading of Luke’s Gospel, with Pilate and Peter and servants and soldiers and priests and crowds. I had half expected the music director to print the text for the choir, but yesterday morning he reminded me gently that he’d asked me to. So late afternoon I strolled to the parish office, began printing, and quickly discovered that the parish printer had run out of tuner.

All right, says I, I’ll go on and print them at home. So I strolled back and began printing to the Brother laser printer at home… but part way through that, our printer ran out of toner. I looked in desperation over to our inkjet, which doesn’t duplex printing, so I had to flip pages over and print on both sides. This wasted a certain amount of [ink and] paper, because there are pitfalls to trying to duplex print an eleven-page document by hand. In the case, I got enough printed, and some stalwarts had printed their own copies at home, and I collated and stapled this morning between shower and church.

I gave the choir the ‘crowds’ part, because having the whole congregation cry out ‘Crucify!’ always feels unsuccessful to me. Most Christian congregations can’t get it to sound as though they’re actually baying for Jesus to be crucified. When I first proposed this, my colleague Jen said, ‘Well, then, I nominate you to read the part of Jesus’ which was clever of her because if she’d given me a moment, I’d have said she should read Jesus’s part. She narrated (as Luke), the wardens were Pilate and Peter respectively, and various members of the congregation and choir read the other parts. I stumbled a couple of times on Jesus’s words (in Luke — just different enough from Matthew and Mark to trip me up now and then), but everybody else knocked it for six. Profound thanks to all our readers this morning for a job exceedingly well done.

And now I’m exhausted, except there’s the Boat Race to watch. [Later:] Well, that was dispiriting. Well played, Cambridge, but remember that whatever can’t go on forever, eventually comes to an end. Here’s hoping the end is 2026.

A good, full night’s sleep last night, but I mostly walked my miles this morning because every element of my person, body and spirit, felt sluggish. I was going to try to title this post some sort of pun on ‘Loiusville Slugger’ but I just didn’t care to cast about for an apposite, punchy joke. I’m metabolising the caffeine in my first cup of coffee before I start my Saturday fry-up. We’ll see whether the first cup of coffee suffices to set me in motion….

SNPTD. This morning’s miles were adequate, nothing to shout to the Web about. Coffee and fruit, shower and dress, Morning Prayer, home to bid Margaret and the ladies au revoir as they made a trip to the vet (all is or will be well, and they met a lovely vet who likes the ladies very much), coffee and toast, a spate of emails, lunch, and a walk into church to check for phone messages.

We’re reading the Passion in parts for Palm Sunday, so I’ve been wrangling who’ll do what via a series of emails.

Two mornings, two adequate runs. Hot breakfast yesterday, fruit and coffee today. Showered, dressed, Morning Prayer. Yesterday hurried home to spend time with the ladies before Staff Meeting and Preachers’ Group and a [Home] Communion by Extension; today I indulged in public-facing office hours at R&R, catching up on odds and ends. Margaret will arrive home in a while, then I have a Sodality Day meeting and, this evening, we receive feedback from the Diocese about our work preparatory to announcing and advertising the vacancy for a Team Rector.

Two satisfactory miles this morning, coffee and fruit, shower etc, Morning Prayer, return to socialise with the ladies for an hour or so, then off to a Deanery Communion and lunch with colleagues, after which I came home for the afternoon and worked on emails and other odds and ends.

After yesterday’s moaning, this morning’s run felt pretty good. My only issue arose from my the arch of my right foot, which registered a protest after I wore dress shoes without arch support yesterday morning. Good pace, good limberness, good breathing. Cup of coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, coffee, toast, then helping Margaret prepare for her annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Theology. Then I leaned into preparing for an interview with a student from SOAS, then the interview itself. It was, I think, a good interview, and the student (one Balthazar Greer) asked pertinent questions and seemed pleased with the noutcome. I didn’t catch myself saying anything too foolish, so that’s good. Now on to squaring out the Palm Sunday service book.