best medicine

With temperatures now in the 50s and 60s as opposed to those hovering around zero last week, the blanket of snow that tucked us in at home for a good ten days or so (with a few exceptions) is melting rapidly.  In spite of all my yammering about cabin fever and cracking of potty jokes, I must admit the time spent at home was -- for the most part -- peaceful, pleasant, and suffused with grace.

Still, humbling as it is to admit, I am prone to gloominess at the prospect of being unable to get out and about at my whim.  When I sense this mood coming on, I try to put it in perspective by thinking of the untold numbers of people who simply do not have the same freedom due to infirmity or even political circumstance.   Such realizations help snap me out of my pity party.  

We are humbly blessed to have been able to retreat from the world and ride out the impassable conditions without much recourse.  My beloved was able to work from home (albeit with one or more bambini pressing noses up to the glass in his home office door wanting to make appointments with him), and we pretty much stuck to the routine (ever-evolving as it may be).  I was truly grateful not to have to answer to the alarm clock after the usual multiple rousings each night to tend to one or more bambini.  And my laundry-folding table stayed refreshingly visible throughout the week, as I was able to process the loads of clean laundry in smaller batches rather than chipping away at the usual mountainous pile. 

On Friday the elder lad returned to school, and we went to school Mass.   It was our first real outing in a week.  Our Kindergartner sat with us this time rather than with his class as he usually does because we were celebrating Catholic Schools Week -- observed a week behind schedule because of the snow days the previous week -- and there had been a special invitation issued to families for this particular Mass (not that they aren't always welcome at school Mass, because they are).  After receiving Communion, I watched the elder lad walking ahead of me spontaneously grasp his little brother's hand as they navigated through the lines of people back to our pew.  I thought I just might dissolve in a puddle of Mama mush at the sight of it.

The white out of the past two weeks is now a colorful memory.  We were all definitely ready for a change of scenery.  Emerging from our cave to go to Mass was more than that, though.  As it had been for us the first week of the snowstorm when we'd gotten out to go to Sunday Mass at our home parish, school Mass on Friday was the best medicine ever prescribed.