Catherine Nicolette
Many are the joyful times I have spent in India. I love putting on my salwaar kameez with its cool and comfortable cotton, and enjoying walks in the beautiful countryside. Squirrels with two stripes down their back and Disney-like long lashes peek out at visitors from the trees. Purple lotuses drift timelessly among the green water leaves and the soft sacred water of India, reflecting the clouds back to the serene sky. Clouds of colourful parrots fly by in flocks, and peacocks trail long feathers with shining hues. Local markets sell wondrous fabrics glowing with golden thread, hand sewn embroidery and glorious patterns. Women drift by like flowers in the fields, each one a Maharani in sari or salwaar kameez and dupatta. Beautiful hairstyles are embroidered with living jasmine flowers, sold by the jasmine sellers sitting contentedly at gates and sewing the hair ornaments under colourful umbrellas.
Cows wander quietly through the streets, and every now and then an elephant makes its way down the thoroughfare, slowing as the traffic lights turn to red, and speeding up again as they turn to green. India is a place of magic and beauty, and the scents of turmuric, ginger, garlic and spices drift through the air as the street vendors sell wonderful masala dhosa and local food. India has a rhythm all its own, and the beauty of the landscape is a jewel of paradise on earth.
My time in India changed my set of values. There is great reverence for animals, and I saw some lovely sights. One of them was two dogs, both brothers, who used to sleep at night in each others' arms. As one of my friends who was offering me hospitality told me, the two could not settle until they both went to sleep at the same time together. Their mother was brought once a week to visit them, and also to her other sons and daughters doing watchdog duty at other local families' houses. The dogs were exceptionally sweet tempered and happy.
One day we were travelling through the town when I noticed that the horns - which in India are tooted almost non-stop in the streets - fell silent. All the cars slowed down to a crawl, and my friend who was driving our jeep started slowly following the other cars which were all veering carefully first to the left, before coming back again to the right. "What's happening?" I asked, concerned. "Shhhh," my friend whispered, "Look to my right". I looked over to where my friend had indicated, to see a mother dog lying with her puppies in the road next to the traffic island.
We quietly drove on for a while, then cars speeded up again, people bustled on tooting the horns, and scooters roared by, each with at least two occupants balanced securely on the seats. "What was that about?" I asked my friend. He explained that the mother had been crossing the road when she was overtaken by the pangs of birth, and delivered her puppies in the road where she was now nurturing them. The local people were waiting for her puppies to be weaned by the mother and able to get around independently. No one wanted to upset the mother during her time of feeding her babies, hence the quietness. Also everyone had passed the word along to be very careful to drive around the mother and babies.
I was extremely thoughtful on the plane back to Ireland. Was this not what I had been taught? To love and care for each living creature as God did? I went out that day in the jeep on a visit - I came back a changed person with a new reverence for all creation. My friend and his local community's understanding for the dog in the road had touched me...
*Photo taken by Catherine Nicolette
Luky;
"Does so-and-so have a daughter called Barbara, about seven or eight years old?" my husband asked me.
The man he was speaking of was a fellow worker of his, whose wife and I were friendly.
"Could be", I replied. "Why do you ask?"
"I found a purse containing money", my husband said.
"Look what I also found in the side pocket."
He took out a grubby little note.
It read: "I love you Daddy, very very much. Barbara van der Walt. "
We smiled. Mow many of those sweet little notes did we receive from our own children when they were in the grades.
We still got notes from Joseph, an entire page filled with the word "Joseph" which is the only word he was able to write.
One day I had raised my voice at him. Deeply hurt, he slunk away and started writing in his bedroom.
Half an hour later he came back with a sheet filled with Josephs.
"I can't read it", I complained.
"I'll read it to you", he said, and taking it back, he read out slowly:
"Dear Mom, I hate you. Love, Joseph."
But when I apologised and made friends, he tore it into little pieces and admitted:
"I know I'm a wrong one. But I'll forgive you".
Which is what he says when he means: "Please forgive me."
The next day my husband went to his colleague and returned his purse. He hadn't even missed it.
"There are two notes in it, a ten rand and a two rand", Sean said.
"That's right", his colleague agreed. "And did you spot the little love letter?"
"I did, and you can thank Barbara for getting your purse back by giving her the two rand note."
The man, his hand on his heart, promised to do so.
The following Sunday at Mass I spotted a dear little girl and I was sure she must be Barbara. She was.
"My husband wants to meet you", I said. "He's the one who found your daddy's purse with your beautiful letter inside."
Yes, her father had told her all about it.
"And this is Uncle Sean Whittle who wanted to see what the writer of that lovely letter looks like."
Sean smiled and melted, the way he always did when he saw little children.
"Did your father give you the two rand note, Barbara?" he asked.
"Not yet," she replied. Oh, the loyalty of a child.
"He'll be giving it to you tomorrow", Sean promised. With another smile she left us. We went to our car, discussing the love of a small child for its parents and how adorable all children are, even if they don't happen to belong to you.
"By the way, how do you know Barbara will be getting her two rands tomorrow?" I asked.
"Because I'll be seeing her dad tomorrow", my husband promised grimly.
Catherine Nicolette;
I smiled when I read my mom's post. It reminded me of an incident a long time ago.
I was learning to walk properly again after the car accident years ago which had left me with severe pain. I tended to shuffle somewhat, and every step was like wading through broken shards of glass.
The specialist had assured me that if I walked a lot each day, it would benefit me.
So I used to pray the rosary fifteen decades each day, while shuffling up and down the road outside as advised by the specialist.
Joseph used to accompany me whenever he could, and slowed his steps to my slow gait.
We had many conversations during the months my walking gradually improved.
Joseph spoke to me about his writing.
"You know, Nog, I have all the words in my head, but when I try to put them on paper, they only come out as 'Joseph'."
"Really Joe?" I asked, as he put his hand under my elbow to steady me as I tried to turn to go down the road again.
"Yes," he said, "Sometimes I wish I was as clever as you. You can read and write anything.
I sometimes think that you could just go into the library, pick up any book, and learn to do something new."
Joe looked at me with keen anguish in his eyes.
As I saw the emotional suffering in the beautiful depths of his kindly brown eyes, the pain in my own heart for him surpassed the pain I was suffering in my limbs. What could I say to comfort him?
So I asked him, "Joe, when you are writing Joseph, what are you writing about?"
Joseph looked at me, surprise in his eyes.
"Oh, " he said, "I write; Dad, I love you. Mom, I love you. Nog, I love you.
God, thank you for all the blessings I have, my mom and dad, my home, and my dog Norman."
And Jo continued to name all our brothers and sisters; he wrote that he loved them so much and how he admired his two brothers, considering them strong and his very good friends.
He mentioned by name many people, and what he admired in them, the blessings he prayed for them, and how much he loved them.
When Joe finished, I just looked at him in silence, the rosary beads still within my fingers.
Many, many times I have thought about what Joe told me.
I was saying many prayers through the rosary trying to learn the love and patience I needed to accept the car accident and how my life had changed, and the pain I was learning to live with. And I struggled.
And here was Joe, with a brain injury, who just was the living embodiment of love that he had poured out through his letters for years, and we had at the time not the code to understand the written words of this great and gentle heart.
And now, when I want to get upset with someone else, I often find myself thinking, what would Joe find to love in this person. Let me show caring and love as he would. Let me try to be non-judgemental as he is.
So Joe's writing changed my perspective on what is really important in this world... and to understand in a deeper way Christ's words,
"Love one another as I have loved you." (The New Testament, Gospel of John, Chapter 13, verse 34).
*Photograph of a wild poppy in glorious Ireland. Please feel free to use copyright free for any worthy purpose
Luky;
You cannot create experience, you must undergo it, said the French writer Albert Camus in his Notebooks, published in 1962. In these eight simple words he revealed an extremely unpalatable and disturbing truth.
Parents all over the world strive night and day to inculcate their hard-won wisdom into the unreceptive heads of their babies, toddlers and teenagers. Mostly their labours are in vain. Few people want to learn from the experience of others. Humanity is an inquisitive breed, always trying to get to the nub of the problems that abound, not by sidestepping these but by steeping themselves in them. We seem to have a need to learn from experience.
A British writer, Aldous Huxley, went one step further than Camus. "Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you," he wrote. The courts abound with offenders whose records show that they have been arrested for the same crimes over and over again. However, the average person is very often frightened off crime forever, once he or she has had a skirmish with authority.
Daniel Boorstin, an American, wrote of this in the New York Post in the seventies. "The messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life." True enough, our mistakes often land us in a muddle. When an experience has cost one dear, however, it is often the resultant mess which convinces one not to repeat the error.
It could save children so much later anguish if only they followed their parents' sage advice when they were young but, as John Steinbeck says: "I know that no one really wants the benefit of anyone's experience which is probably why it is so freely offered."
What is the dearest lesson experienced by me and the one among all which I perennially find hardest to learn? To sit tight and watch the young people in my life make one mistake after another without yielding to the temptation of putting them back on the right path with a few well-chosen words.
Maybe I never will learn to keep quiet and let my children make their own mistakes without trying to interfere. Or will I learn to do so when it is too late and they themselves have all turned old and grey?
It's not impossible, for, as Judith Stern puts it: "Experience is a comb life gives you after you lose your hair."
*Photograph taken by Catherine Nicolette. Aren't the mother and foal beautiful?
Luky;
If you were to ask me what motherhood has really taught me, I could only say: an overwhelming wonderment at the versatility of our Creator. When He created humanity, He didn't do a rush job. Just as every snowflake has its unique shape, so did He fashion our fingerprints with an incredibly finetipped pencil.
Now and then God gives a lucky mom two or even more babies at once. Sometimes the babies are identical, but still your really clever teacher or mother will never ever be fooled into believing Jane when she impersonates Joan. Isn't it amazing how you can have ten children, all from the same mother and father, all attending the same schools, sharing the same home background, eating the same kind of food, wearing the same kind of clothes, practising the same religion, yet each one a unique individual, full of his own character and personality?
They are so different
They may speak with the same accent or wear similar clothes, yet deep down they are so different.
Isn't is amazing, moreover, how a man can fall very deeply in love with his wife, yet entertain no more than a peaceful platonic affection for her identical twin sister?
Many mothers may have made the same mistake I did, trying to push all their children into the same mould.
If so, they will have found out that each child needs his or her own mould. Discipline and rules cannot be changed from one child to another, but treatment can never be uniform. For example, when you tell one child to go to the shop for you, he'll fly. Ask another and you get a thousand words. Ask a third and he'll do it, and sulk.
Now if you should use your sergeant-major's voice for the first child, chances are he'd bleed inside for a day. Use is on the second, and he'll condense his thousand words to a single "Yes, Ma."
Try it on the third, and he'll smile and make a joke.
Infinitely perplexing
It's infinitely perplexing, this business of parenthood; but it's fun too. What I've learned from my children I apply to adults. When I meet someone whose exterior does not particularly impress me, I think to myself: You were nine months in the making after which your mother thought you important enough to carry you around all day, change your nappies and stay up nights to see that you survived. You may not look any great shakes to me, but to your mother you are tops, so I must respect you too.
A good rule
Every person is an individual with his or her own heart and vulnerability. No matter how self-contained he or she may look, inside they may be nursing deep grief. Each person is worthy of our consideration and respect. I think it would be a good rule to treat each person we meet as though he or she were the chairperson of the company we work for. Courtesy and respect should shine from us.
Rich or poor, handsome or plain, healthy or disabled, everyone has been created by the same heavenly Father whose only Son died on the cross to set us free from our sins. Surely, then, everyone deserves our courtesy and respect?
*Photograph taken by Catherine Nicolette in beautiful Ireland. Please feel free to use copyright free for any worthy purpose
Luky;
There are two women in my life whom I remember with love and gratitude, though they barely know me. The year before I first expected my second daughter I had a miscarriage, then no sooner did my second daughter announce her impending arrival than the entire list of symptoms I had experienced with the miscarriage began to recur. This time I was more clever. I telephoned the doctor and went to bed. He told my family to put bricks under the foot of the bed and ordered me to stay there until forty-eight hours after the last cramp.
In bed for a full five weeks
I stayed in bed for a full five weeks, and each time the symptoms recurred I'd repair to bed again. I felt so terrible that when I got up to peel the potatoes for dinner, I'd crawl back into bed, out for the count until suppertime. I read so many books that for the first and only time in my life I grew tired of reading. One day, a month before my daughter was born, I dragged myself to a cafe and asked for a cold drink, feeling that I'd faint if I didn't get one on the double. The shop woman took one look at me, sat me down, opened a cold drink, produced a glass and a straw and let me have it there.
I remember cold drinks cost seventeen cents at the time. When I went to pay, the woman gave me a radiant smile and said: "That one was on the house!" She has forgotten about the incident, I'm sure, but I haven't. Eleven years later it had a beautiful sequel. I went to Mass one evening when who should be called up to be received into the Church but that woman. I had prayed for her often since the day she gave me the drink, and I felt sure that it was her charity to me that day and other incidents like it which only God may know about which eventually led her to the beauty of the worship in the Church.
The local library
The second woman did not believe in God at all, having come from an intellectual family where philosophers had replaced him. Her little gesture towards me occurred the following year. My husband Sean had suffered a coronary thrombosis, and I immediately got a job after some eleven years of blissful unemployment. I worked at the local library and our children were small, ranging in ages from eleven years down to ten months, all five of them.
One of my sons used to scream and throw himself on the ground each time I went out to work. Sean was getting weaker by the day and had to be taken to the bathroom in a wheelchair. I used to stand there, stamping those books and wondering if he'd be alive when I'd get home. Each time I looked into the mirror I saw a new wrinkle.
Golden glow
Then that woman who did not believe in God came into the library. She only knew me through a mutual friend, but she took one look at me and said: "From now on I want you to bring all those children to me every day. I'll look after them for you. You cannot run a home and young family and a job at the same time."
I didn't take her up on the offer but her words and the look of concern in her eye cast a golden glow over my afternoon.
A kind word more than bread
She came to the funeral of a friend and sat behind me in Church. How I prayed for her. People have done me bigger favours than those two women did, but these two were there when I had been brought low and when I needed a kind word more than bread. Thanks to them I discovered why Christ said that a glass of water given in His Name was worth much.
Catherine Nicolette
I was the eleven year old at that time. I remember the time as a confusing and difficult one. Mom went out to work, and we children at home felt rudderless. The children started to look to me as I was the eldest, and I hid all the fears and tears which seemed to continually quiver behind my eyes. While Mom was at work, I remember helping to feed Dad who lay helpless and weak in his bed. Then I would feed the baby in her cot. After that I would make sure my siblings got the care they needed, and try to clean the house as best I could.
One day I went in to the room to see the sweetest sight; my dear Dad, so ill, was lying sleeping with his face turned towards the baby's cot. My little sister was sleeping with her face turned towards him. Her tiny fingers were entwined in Dad's large hand which was gaunt after his weight loss and suffering. They both slept deeply and trustfully. I smiled at them and went back to trying to set the house to rights as best my little eleven year hands could before Mom came home.
My dear sister and Dad always had a special bond and understanding of each other. I could well understand it. When Dad so nearly died that time, she would cry until I would lay her in her cot so she could hold the hand of our hero. I often believe that our family's love helped Dad to heal, and Mom to manage the herculean labour of keeping home and hearthfire burning until Dad finally recovered.
Many a parent is an unsung hero...
*Photograph taken by Catherine Nicolette. Please feel free to use copyright free
for any worthy purpose
