If you've put your hand to the plough, don't look back

LUKY
We make choices, aware of the limitation they impose upon us, and in later years chafe at these self-imposed restrictions.
To my mind, this is a luxury one shouldn't indulge in.
Once we have put our hand to the plough, we don't look back.
     Don't like our spouse?
How is it possible to grow tired of the person we loved most in all the world in the days when we were footloose and fancy-free?
As for leaving the spouse, let's not forget the holy vow sworn at the altar.
     Don't like our in-laws?
We married our spouse in the full knowledge that (s)he came fully equipped with the accessories of parents and siblings.
If we can't love them, at least we can go through the motions of affability for goodness' (and our spouse's) sake.

Don't like our job?
When we first landed it, it seemed to be the best move we ever made.
If we place ourselves back in time, we'll soon recall the attractions and benefits the vacancy seemed to offer when we applied for it.
     Don't like paying the money our children cost or the cheek they give us?
They didn't ask to be born
Having been instrumental in giving them life, we cannot renege on them.
Even if they (as one consequence of not heeding our advice) end up with brain damage, alcoholism, a motorbike injury, Aids or syphilis, they remain our offspring who should always be able to count on us for our support and our prayers.

Don't like our car and can't afford another?
Let's be grateful we have a car.
Many people all over the world have to foot it until death.
They'd give their eyeteeth to have any kind of vehicle at all to take them from A to B.
     Don't like ourselves?
We all know that feeling.
We can forgive others most of their faults, especially when we love them, but we re-live our own mistakes 
ad nauseam.
Why not be as tolerant with ourselves as we are with others?

Sometimes, looking back, one thinks if one could live one's life over again one might have made different choices.
However, we should not forget that the changes in taste we experience as the years go by are the result of an evolutionary process in our minds and circumstances.
     At fifty we are no longer the people we were at thirty or forty.
Life teaches us many lessons to which we adapt in preference to facing the morbid alternative.
     If God had put an old head on our shoulders when we were young, however, would we have dared to tackle a career, marry and bear children?
The wild oats many of us regrettably sowed put us on the way to discovering, albeit in the hard way, that the only way is the right way.
     Every single ideal one strives for imposes its own set of obligations, heartaches and disappointments.
Fortunately there is a great deal of laughter tied up with the sorrow.
     In old age when the leaves start falling off (relatives, hair, teeth, hearing, sight, mobility) it will be good to recall that we were sufficiently courageous to put our hand to the plough the Creator designed especially for us.

It will be even better if on that day we were able to recall with perfect truth that, having once done so, we never looked back.

HOW TO STOP OVERDOING THINGS

LUKY
SADLY contemplating the collapse of my most recent Lenten resolution, I have come to the conclusion that it is far easier to make efforts to improve one's artistic, scholastic, material or athletic prowess than to make them in order to become better schooled in a spiritual way.

  On the way to my husband's work there was a golf course.
  Often on a rainy day my husband would laugh when I spotted a golfer gamely handling his clubs or taking his endless walks in the pouring rain.

   "Look at him", I would say. "Have you ever seen such dedication in your life?
  There he is, poor man, dripping from head to foot, but does he run for shelter?
Not he!
  If he were to make such sacrifices for God, his soul would shoot up to heaven like an arrow at the moment of death."

I felt the same way when I used to be a paying guest at the meetings of a group of obese ladies who were trying to reduce.
  Some of them really did succeed in becoming "a slimmer, more youthful you".
  Regrettably, their number did not include yours truly.

   I might have lost weight too, but my trouble was that I never really entered into the spirit of the thing.
  As I watched with scepticism the tremulous delight displayed by swiftly-shrinking star pupils while merit badges were being pinned on to their voluminous frocks, I'd be thinking:
   "Why are we spending money to learn not to eat too much?
Why don't we rather stop overeating just because it's wrong?"

A lesson which every model, actor, student and athlete knows is that the only way to learn not to continue overdoing things which impede his progress in his field is by doing without them for a while.
  Many centuries ago, the saints taught their followers the same thing.
  This is why in Ireland during the months from April until September thousands of people make a pilgrimage to the island of Lough Derg.

When their boat arrives at the island, the pilgrims prepare to remain barefoot and fast for three days.
  They recite the Stations walking along ruinous circuits on the island.

In front of the basilica, many crosses are erected.
  Each pilgrim recites the Creed with arms extended in front of a cross.
  Confessions are heard throughout the day.

The menu consists of black tea and hot water flavoured with salt and pepper.
  To those who feel faint from hunger, dry bread is served.

During the first night no one sleeps. A vigil is held throughout the night in the Basilica.
  The Bible is read and prayers are recited.
Early in the morning, the visiting priests begin celebraing their Masses for the day.
  On the second night, the pilgrims get eight hours' sleep.

On the third day, still barefoot and fasting, they prepare to leave the island, having - in most cases - promised themselves a return visit.
   The boats bringing the new pilgrims take those who have completed their visit back to the mainland.

With true Irish humour the Christian Brother who told us about Lough Derg concluded his story as follows:
   "The incoming pilgrims are silent", he said. "Those that are leaving are singing hymns. . .and you don't have to ask why!"

The Image and Likeness of God

LUKY:
WHEN my eldest child was working during the holidays, I asked her to remember me to one of her colleagues whom I'd known for many years.
     "Let me see, now", the woman said. "I can't remember. . .yes, now I recall, that was the woman who had a baby not so long ago, and was so distressed about it she almost wept."
     "That's not my mother", my daughter said sturdily, but she was much shaken.
It took two months before she told me about it and I couldn't believe my ears.
     "Wept?" I said. "For joy, perhaps, but for no other reason.
I was so excited when I found out about your sister that the sun shone more brightly, the flowers had prettier colours, and the birds sang a completely new tune.
     "As for your father, he was so thrilled that despite my swearing him to secrecy, he was telling people about the baby from the word go."

Reassured
My daughter felt relieved.
"I knew you'd never have said anything against having any one of us", she assured me.
"It shook me rigid that anyone could even remotely think you had rejected one of us, even only verbally."
A few months before I knew we would ever have our last little daughter, someone asked if I'd be upset to be pregnant again.
Though I didn't think it a likely contigency, I'm eternally grateful that my answer was: "I wouldn't like to say; you never know what can happen."
     I'll always say that. I never cared how many children I would have; each one is as precious as the first, a completely unique human being, made in the Image and Likeness of God.

When I told my mother about the baby, she told me a story about a friend of hers whose husband was a qualified lawyer by the time his mother had her youngest child.
They were a very large family, fifteen, I think.
     When the baby was born, the parents sent cards out to their relatives and friends, a common custom in Holland. On the card the parents listed the names of all their children, in addition to that of the new baby.
     Then a single line was printed below: "Which of these children will offer the greatest homage to God?"

An honour
     I come from an environment where the large family was not derided as it so often is now.
In our family it was an honour to bear many children.
I have at least sixty-one first cousins alive in different parts of the globe, and those whom I've met again were people you'd be proud to know, for all that some of them had to wear their bigger brothers' and sister' hand-me-downs as they grew up.

My youngest, our laatlammetjie,* is the joy of all our lives.
We may get annoyed with one another and disagree about every topic under the sun, but one thing we all agreed about: "There's no baby more adorable than ours."
One day a girl and I were talking when an untidy-looking woman passed by.
"Look at her," the girl said.
"Slovely, untidy, stupid-looking; I bet she's the type that has at least six children."
I didn't like to remind her that I'm in the same boat myself, but I marvelled at the contempt for mothers of large families she so frankly expressed.
Knowing how much effort, money and sacrifice a large family entails, I always respect such mothers, even though they may be untidy at times.

Surprise, surprise
There comes a time in all parents' lives when they feel past the age of bringing up children.
"Nice", they decide, "all the children are at school. We only do the laundry once a week instead of every day. The house is tidy. We live like civilised human beings. It's good to know there'll never be another little hurricane to disrupt our well organised existence."

And yet it is at this stage, very often, that the mother becomes pregnant again, making a mockery of all her careful planning.
So many of my friends had babies in their late thirties and early forties.
     And what was their answer if you asked about the youngest?
It seldom varied, and ran along these lines: "Oh, I'm so grateful for that little after-thought of ours. 
She helps to keep us young."

*Laatlammetjie - Afrikaans for 'Ewe lamb'

Don't be upset by the person in the mirror

 LUKY
DID YOU ever listen to Earl Nightingale in the early morning Springbok Radio show?
We did, and it always amazes me that this man could think up something new in the line of encouragement and inspiration each day.
One morning I missed him, though my husband, driving home from night shift on the mine, picked him up on his car radio.
"You'd have been very cross with Earl Nightingale this morning, Ma" he told me, struggling to hide a smile.
"How come?"
"Well", my husband said - subconsciously straightening himself - "he was saying how men of forty-five are lithe and trim, youthful-looking and at the peak of their professional careers, while their wives are overweight, dowdy and. . ." - his voice died uncertainly away.

"You know how it is", I said, shrugging, "Some people are utterly obsessed with weight and the body beautiful.
I saw a photo of Bette Davis last week and she looks like my teenage daughter, and so does Marlene Dietrich, although she was already a granny when I was in primary school.
You can't compete with them."

Funny how things happen in sequence.
An hour later I met a woman with a little boy of two or three.
He had a cast in one eye and she was trying to coax him into wearing his glasses, one lens of which was shrouded in plaster.
"He is so self-conscious about wearing his glasses", she said nervously, trying to smile.
"He thinks they make him look ugly."
And so this little chap of two or three already felt that he was looking ugly and trying not to.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for the child, because I have spent many years of my life worrying about weight and other beauty problems.
That little kid of two or three had more time on his hands than I did, but if he'd got any sense he would have put those glasses on his nose right away and forgotten about them.

There are very few beautiful women who would not lose some of their appeal if someone turned a garden hose on them.
Each of us has got something wrong with his looks.
Some people have bandy legs, and I often think that's why slacks made such a big hit with the female population.
Other people have cauliflower ears or square hands, buck teeth or blonde eyelashes.
I have heard girls crying about the shape of their noses and the colour of their eyes and hair.

And in the midst of that I always remember my mother's voice raised in warning:
"How can you be so ungrateful, moaning about your appearance when God gave you such good health?"
At the time we just sighed:
"Oh Mommy! You don't understand!"
Just as my daughter used to say to me: "Oh Mommy! I couldn't even begin to explain to you how I feel."

But I do know, and she didn't have to explain at all.
However, though I think it's important for everyone to be scrupulously clean and to try to make the best of personal looks, I'd advise anyone who has beauty or weight problems to stop worrying overmuch and to concentrate on his or her personality instead.
Because though I've seen that looks can attract friends, I've always found it was personality that keeps them.

Catherine Nicolette
I rather think it was myself who used to sigh from the depths of my teenage South African soul that Mom didn't understand how I felt.
Really, teenage years were not easy at all.
But the funniest thing I remember from that time is when I, in all seriousness, asked Mom;
"What is the difference between mere prettiness and true beauty?"
And Mom, without raising her eyes from her newspaper and cup of coffee, replied without missing a beat;
"Estee Lauder."

The Wonderful Earl Nightingale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5CrZ7lIO58

Don't you 'Luky' me, kids!



LUKY
I HATE young children to address me by my first name.
It seems to be a habit among the people I know to call everyone John and Mary, no matter what the age difference.
It certainly isn't a Dutch custom, or wasn't when I grew up.
I consider myself old enough for youngsters to have some respect for me.
For instance, a visitor came the other day with a little girl who at length asked a second cup of tea.
"Mommy, may I have another cup of tea?"
"I don't know, dear - ask Luky."
"Luky, can I please have another cup of tea?"
Why Mommy but not Mrs Whittle? I can't see it.

A Little Respect
I even called my own husband Mr Whittle for nearly two years before I started calling him by his name.
My own children aren't overly respectful to their elders.
If they can get away with calling an older person by his name, they'll do so, especially my youngest, because her own brothers and sisters are so much older than she that she doesn't have that natural feeling of awe most of us grew up with.
But when I'm present they don't get away with it.
A little respect for one's elders has never harmed anyone.

Even if my husband never minded being called Sean, or more popularly Paddy, his children were far more respectful of him than they are of me.
He was rather short, though this never worried him unduly, as he confided to me once.
"In my heart I feel ten feet tall", and his personality more than made up for his lack of height.

When I brought my eldest son home from the hospital as a babv, and we were admiring him, his father said: "He's going to be a very tall boy."
Then he laughed.
"Just imagine, Ma, when he's fifteen and I'm laying down the law to him, I'll be shaking my finger up at him.
Then he'll look down sheepishly and answer: "Sorry, Dad."

Funny
To me it is a pantomime to see how differently the children treated him from the way they treat me.
I'm good old ma, the one you can take for a ride, mostly.
He was pa, the unpredictable keg of dynamite who on his own admission "doesn't give tuppence" whether the neighbours heard him yell when the children drove him too far.

One day something happened between my son and myself which I described to his father that evening.
His father called him in.

Prophecy fulfilled
"What would you do", his father asked, "if your mother died and someone were to tear up her photograph?"
"I'd fix him", my son said, glaring balefully at the very idea.
"Well, that's the way I feel now since your mother told me. . ." and my husband continued, confronting him with his misdeed.

Suddenly his prediction of 19 years before came true.
His son, fully a head taller than himself, sheepishly muttered: "Sorry, Dad."
Never one to push his advantage, his father moved off majestically.

Retort
But you can't keep a good man down.
No sooner had he closed the door than my eldest son turned on me.
"You traitor," he hissed, shaking his index finger under my nose, "you went and betrayed me to Dad after the way I trusted you.
Just for that I'll let them tear up your photograph."

He strode huffily from the room, careful to take a different direction from the one his father had chosen, as I collapsed on to the nearest chair, helpless with laughter.

No wonder they don't respect me.

Children's charm goes straight to the heart

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"

Every generation has its singularities

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 minimum 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 again 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.