Luky;
A MAN I worked with has a little son, the cutest little character you ever saw.
Once I read a book about a bachelor who, when describing the disinterested regard of happily married women towards unmarried men, called it "the glazed indifference of the newly wed."
Having all those children myself, I suppose I regard other people's children also with a certain glazed indifference.
But my colleague's son is something else entirely.
Nobody could feel indifferent to him.
It is not only his appearance which brings us all to our knees.
He is short for his age - almost three - and he is intelligent enough for a four year old.
He wears little white-rimmed glasses, framing behind spectacles the most innocent eyes you ever saw.
But it's his remarkable self-possession that we all admire most.
Confidence
My office is at the entrance to the building.
The glass door has a low handle, and many's the time I've been typing when I've heard the front door open.
Looking up from my typing, I'd spot him hurtling across my office to his father's door.
There the handle is high.
He does not talk, he does not greet anyone, and he does not ask anyone to open the door.
He simply beats a tattoo on his father's door (which his father does not hear on account of the air conditioning), then stands confidently, waiting for someone to open for him.
And someone always does.
His eyes brimming with laughter, lips twitching as he tried to keep his poise, the little guy practically forces you into acquiring some of your own.
Loving leap
His father, normally a shy man, smiles and holds out his arms and the little chap leaps on to his lap and peers through his glasses at the piles of papers scattered on his dad's desk, the perfect little accountant.
We have given up trying to have a conversation with him.
He is so patently an adult in his own mind that one would feel foolish to talk down to him.
I left him alone, hoping he would eventually strike up a conversation from his end.
And last week he did.
Wearing a pair of green trousers, he paused midway through my office and without preamble informed me: "Vandag is ek pragtig aangetrek." *
Then with his usual sang-froid he betook himself to his father's office, this time having the door opened to him by the sales manager.
Flu
His father was absent once with the flu.
Three days later he returned, pale and with his throat still hoarse, obviously far from well.
"I suppose your little man nursed you with unflagging care?" I asked, laughing.
He rolled his eyes heavenward.
"I love him, he's the light of my life," he croaked, "but heavens! He's industrious.
In and out of my bedroom with his toys and his tools.
Hops on the bed next to me, pulling the blankets straight and pulling up my pillows, then out again."
"I know," I nodded, "and as solemn as a little dominee throughout."
Special appeal
What joys children do bring us.
My husband put it in a nutshell.
"Often when we used to have a tiff, you and I, I didn't feel like coming home to you.
I'd think of the baby - and there always was one there - I'd melt at the thought, hop into the car and go straight home.
"If women only knew the power they have over their husbands when they give them children, they'd have more of them."
Large family
But then my husband thought nothing of having a large family.
Where he came from everyone did.
"My mother was ashamed of her life on Sundays, going to Mass with only seven children, what with Mrs Flaherty from over the road sweeping in with her ten, and Mrs Murphy's fourteen."
Perhaps we'll never see such big families again.
The smaller, more manageable family has become acceptable.
But to my mind, be they one or ten in your brood, children's charm go straight to the heart.
*'Today I'm beautifully dressed"
Luky;
ONE evening I was invited to a function and my husband Sean, having a night off, came with me.
We sat beside some unmarried girls I worked with.
Suddenly one of them dug her elbow into me and said:
"Luky, do you see that man?
He's the most good-looking guy I've ever seen."
I looked across, saw a tall fellow with a face only a mother could love, and marvelled at the change in what was called good-looking then and what was considered handsome when I was young.
A handsome man
If you'd asked me whom I considered handsome when I was a teenager, I'd have told you Archbishop Hurley, Gregory Peck, Rock Hudson and Stewart Granger in that order.
My colleagues' paragon of male beauty, in my eyes, fell far short of the standards set by those men in those days.
The girl who was talking to me wasn't a teenager.
She was an university graduate whose first language was not English.
She'd been battling to speak to Sean.
I said: "You'd have to speak English to that man, if he took you out."
I was rewarded by a beatific smile: "For him I'd speak ... er ... how do you say ... oh yes, Oxford English!"
Another colleague joined us.
She had been filling up her plate at the supper table, making sure everything she took contained the minimujm of kilojoules.
She took a look at the young man with his perm and rugged face, and agreed: "Oh yes, he's beautiful."
As he passed me on his way to the bar, I wondered what had gone wrong with me.
Why has my taste never developed?
I hate perms on girls, never mind men.
Long locks
I felt like a fish out of water with the rising generation - even with my own children.
When my son arrived home one holiday,his glossy locks reaching way below his shoulders, the only thing that stopped me from doing a Delilah act and snipping his locks whilst he slept was the thought that he would never visit me agian if I did.
I'm happy to say that his hair is shorter now, but the next holidays when he came home he was wearing a necklace.
I could have forgiven him that if he'd let me put a miraculous medal on it, but not a chance.
I suppose every generation has its singularities, but deep in our hearts most of us love God and try to live good and productive lives.
We should give the young credit for their sincerity, just as we wanted others to do to us when we were young.
Luky;
HOPING for a giggle, I asked the woman at the SPCA whether it's permissible for a Catholic cat to be spayed.
My joke fell flat.
Remember the Mrs Jones I told you about - the one who was going to call her son Referendum?
Well, I failed to add that she later became a Catholic, and joined her husband and children who already were Catholics.
I never saw such a joy in anyone, unless it was in Jenna, our housekeeper, who was married and received into the Church one Christmas.
Both Mrs Jones and Jenna had this in common: for at least two weeks both walked around in a haze of sheer joy, looking beautiful and smiling all the while.
Fruitful
Mrs Jones' ready wit did not suffer for long, I'm happy to say.
Visiting her sister to bring her a basket of lemons, she flinched when she was told off.
"Thanks for the lemons, but what's this I hear about your becoming a Catholic?
For shame, a staunch non-denominational like yourself!
Mommy and Daddy must be turning in their graves."
The sermon went on for another few minutes.
Then Mrs Jones got annoyed and looked at her watch.
"How time does run on", she said.
"I must be going now.
Can I have my basket, please - and are you sure you want these Catholic lemons?"
The Catholic cat I mentioned was a lovely white stray who was lost in the local convent grounds.
She went along to the pupils and their parents, rubbing her head against their legs.
"Mommy, please," my daughters pleaded when I came to fetch them, "can't we take the kitty home?
She doesn't belong here. We asked the man who's been working here since the school started, and he's sure she's a stray."
Time to claim
I'm not mad about cats.
"Let's take her to the SPCA instead", I suggested.
"Maybe there's a child crying her eyes out for her pet."
At the SPCA a woman took charge of the cat and promised to give her all the injections.
"Then, if nobody claims her, I'll contact you in three weeks' time."
Three weeks seemed a long time for the child to claim her pet, so I drove off confidently.
"People don't come back for cats - only dogs", the SPCA woman said three weeks later when she contacted me.
"Your cat has had all the injections, and you can come for her next Monday.
That will be eleven rand and fifty cents, please."
In for a penny, in for a pound.
"Why can't I fetch her today?"
"We're having her spayed first."
It was then that I made my corny crack.
Surprise!
It was quite a reception party which accompanied my husband to the SPCA the next Monday, while I stayed home and sulked.
We had so many birds in the garden, and I knew what would happen to them once we left a cat on the premises.
When the car stopped, the children came hurtling in to my room.
"Guess what happened, Mommy?
We couldn't get the cat today.
This morning she had four lovely kitties.
She'll have to feed them for six weeks, and then we can go back and fetch her."
My husband explained;
"How do you like that, Ma?
The doctor was going to spay the cat, but when he examined her he found she was going to have kittens, so that was the end of that.
"The SPCA woman said she was obviously abandoned because her owners knew she was expecting, but she has already found homes for three of the kittens."
My Catholic cat had had the last meow.
Luky;
THERE was a song we used to sing in church when my eldest daughter played the organ.
Our best singer would sing each verse, and we'd all join in the refrain:
"I believe in miracles; I've seen a soul set free /
Miraculous the change in one redeemed through Calvary /
I've seen the lily push its way up through the stubborn sod /
I believe in miracles, for I believe in God."
Do you believe in miracles? I do. Plenty have happened to me in my life.
I was there
The big ones I don't talk about much, because people always get an odd little smile on their faces when I do, as if to say "poor fanatic - and you can see she actually believes it."
Well, I do, because I was there when they happened.
And it's those who believe in miracles to whom they do happen.
If you truly believe that a piece of bread and a drop of wine undergo transubstantiation when the words of consecration are spoken by an ordained priest, then the little mriacles that have happened to me are puddysticks by comparison.
But, being human, I love my little miracles and get much comfort from remembering them.
Dusty volume of old Dutch series
At one time I was praying in a certain way, and got the feeling that I was unworthy to pray that way because of my sinfulness.
That very day I opened a dusty volume of an old Dutch series of books about our Lord's revelations to Saint Gertrude.
Sweet memory
My eye fell on a paragraph which quoted our Lord as saying to the saint: "why do you feel reluctant and unworthy to pray to me (in the way I was praying)?
Do you not know that the fragrance of the perfume is not impaired by the simplicity of the container?"
That day sweetness filled my heart and mind, and the memory of it still fills me with joy.
In a smaller way, something strange happened to me while my children were still growing up.
I was having a fight with one of my kids (that's not strange; it's normal.)
The child had mowed the lawn and tidied the garden, and was demanding payment.
I felt as though I had failed in bringing up my children.
I said: "How can you demand payment from your parents for lending a hand?
If you need money, tell me how much and I'll make a plan.
But surely you don't expect payment for helping your hard-working parents?"
Got soft
Well, my child gave as good as he got.
Gone are the old days when they would have run a mile before they dared to answer me back - I've become soft in my old age.
Just then a song started playing on Springbok Radio.
Rooted in my tracks, I listened; then I hauled the child in to listen too.
You may have heard the song.
It's about a a boy who brought his mother an invoice, detailing various chores he had performed for her and stating what each cost.
The mother produced a pen and wrote out an invoice of her own.
"To nine months carrying you in my womb - no charge;
to bringing you into the world in sorrow and pain - no charge;
to the tears I shed for you - no charge."
Nothing owing
By now I was shedding some tears of my own and ducked into the sitting room, but I could hear the end of the song.
The boy wrote at the bottom of his invoice: "Paid in full."
My heart was full, because I felt that again our Lord had performed a little miracle.
The child was very quiet too, looking rather taken aback.
I'm no diplomat. I like pressing home my advantage, so I wiped my tears and blew my nose and said:
"I was trying to tell you something in the corridor there, but I hadn't the eloquence.
So our Lord allowed a small miracle to happen by inspiring the disc jockey to play that very song to show you how He would feel about your demanding payment."
"As a rule, Jesus doesn't go in for performing miracles; He has nothing to prove.
So if you're wise, you'll remember this one for the rest of your life."
The child still regarded me mutinously, so I added:
"That piece of advice comes to you at no charge."
Revelations of St Gertrude
http://www.catholictradition.org/Gertrude/revelations.htm
Song; 'I believe in miracles'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMEJXFCGRHI
Lyrics to 'I believe in miracles'
http://www.hymnlyrics.org/requests/i_believe_in_miracles.php
Song 'No Charge'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiaY2GQuuzA
With thanks to Youtube
