Family Branch

My mother has come over to Scotland on holiday, bringing a tin of homemade cookies, vegetable shortening, Tim Horton's coffee and my best red suit, which I fit into once again. Today she has a refresher driving lesson, so as to get the hang of driving on the left side of the road. This is a brilliant idea.

Yesterday we dressed in our best Ladies Who Lunch outfits and went to the Caledonian Hotel (officially now the Waldorf Astoria, as it is called by nobody in Edinburgh) for afternoon tea. My mother loves hotel teas. But it's not the tea or the food as much as the ambiance, really, that is so romantic to my mum. And "Peacock Alley" is certainly an impressively grand space. (I suppose it could be described as romantic, only this time I was there with my mother, and the one time B.A. and I sat there we were with Polish Pretend Son, and PPS looked like he was about to stab the tardy waiter with his pen knife, which is romantic only in songs.)

Tea, you should be warned, is 25 squid per person. But you do get some very yummy things: sandwiches with the crusts cut off, two kinds of scones with clotted cream and two kinds of jam, slices of chocolate jelly roll, several petites fours, and an extra plate of cookies and lemon loaf, plus multiple cups of your chosen tea. My mother and I munched our way through the plates of goodies discussing family news.

I had the vaguest sense of being a British colonist somewhere in Africa in the 1950s, hearing about home. Canada seemed very far away, and yet the snazzy afternoon tea ritual is as familiar to Canadian hotels as it is to Scottish ones. The King Edward in Toronto, for example, has an absolutely splendid tea and an equally grand hall to consume it in. And I asked eager questions of sisters, brothers, nephews and niece.

Peacock Alley was mostly populated by women, mostly slender, with excellent hair and expensive business suits. A few women had a man (and at one table a child) with them, but more often than not the tables were woman-only spaces. Afternoon Tea is a more feminine meal in Edinburgh than it is in Toronto--which I first discovered when Benedict Ambrose baulked at attending my own tea parties at home. I offer the idea of Afternoon Tea to single female readers as an excellent social activity for women, single and otherwise.

On Sunday night, B.A. and I went to the birthday dinner of a dear friend, and as usual we were the only married couple there. There were eight lifelong Singles and us--ten childless people. It was all great fun, with piano duets and singing in the sitting-room afterwards. And naturally I would have rather have been home with children because, whatever anyone says, the crown and fulfillment of married life is children.

I know that there are women with children who, being very bored and lonely, would have swapped places for me for an evening to go to a party with a lot of Single people and listen to piano duets. However, I also know that they would hasten home to their children feeling terribly glad that they had them.

Fortunately for me, one of my brothers and one of my sisters HAVE had children, so I don't have a totally "child-free" existence. I have three childish personalities to ponder, especially in the run-up to their birthdays and Christmas. And I look forward to the day when they are ready to be dumped on their Edinburgh uncle and aunt for a month in the summers while their parents see what a holiday from parenting is like.

When in Poland this year I talked about being married-but-childless, a lady asked "What about adoption?" "What about adoption" is a very painful question to the childless, particularly now that adoption is so expensive and wound with red tape. It is also wrought with bad feeling as Catholic parents lose battles to place their children with other Catholics, or even with a traditional married couple. Personally, I would have taken the Slovak Roma children in a heartbeat--although in the next heartbeat I would have remembered that I should have asked B.A. first.

I mentioned to highly politically-active friends that I would quite happily take in Christian Syrian refugee children, just as the British took in refugee children during and after the First and Second World Wars, and that I was rather surprised nobody has asked me to do this. This led my neighbour to decry the racism of the UK government and the fact that only 24 Syrian refugees have been allowed in--something like that. This confused me as Syrians are white and Christians are, er, Christians, so I don't know what racism has to do with it--other than that "race" is a highly social construct and changes from society to society.

And so this post, which begins with a delicious and expensive afternoon tea at a prestigious Edinburgh hotel. ends with the reminder that hundreds of thousands of fellow Christians are suffering horrible privations, massacres and homelessness. And I with my cash-poor but certainly circumstance-rich lifestyle am vaguely wondering why nobody has asked me to help take care of them. Oh, sure, I do get emails from a Catholic relief agency asking for money, but I don't have money: I have time, a love of hospitality and a desire to help fellow Christians. During the Second World War, I wouldn't have had to go looking for children to help; they would have been billeted on us already. What has changed?

Families Are Who They Are...

...and not necessarily who you want them to be.

Once upon a time, we got our ideas about reality from sermons, books and our elders, be those elders our mothers, our teachers or our superiors at work. Now most people get their ideas about reality from the television and the internet. Imagine if everyone in the West spent as much time in prayer and serious reading as we do watching television. That would be something.

That said, I got my ideas about family from books, and the principal book about a family that set my expectations of reality was Louisa Mae Alcott's Little Women. And in Little Women, the father is so WISE and the mother is so KIND and, even though the family is so POOR, Meg has to work as an upper servant (i.e. governess) and Jo as a professional companion to awful old Aunt March, they have a housekeeper. Jo and Amy have their clashes, but they are resolved and even when Amy gets what Jo ought to have had (in more instances than one!), instead of resenting this her whole life long, Jo is very understanding.

Little Women is a romance about the Alcott Family's life, so the reality will shock the stuffing out of anyone who thinks Little Women is real. First of all, the Marches/Alcotts were Unitarians and didn't believe in the divinity of Our Lord. Second, no Fritz came along to shame Louisa Mae/Jo out of writing penny dreadfuls, for she continued churning them out. Third, Bronson Alcott, who in Little Women seemed to be a sort of Methodist minister, started a commune so dire, Marmee dearest threatened to take the girls and go.

A re-write of Little Women to reflect their actual reality would be AWESOME! And there would even be a Polish angle because Louisa claims Laurie was based on a Pole named "Ladislav." (Has anyone done this yet?) All this said, I still think Louisa Mae Alcott is a great model for the contented Single Life, as long as you don't get entirely wrapped up in your father and die within two days of him.

My point is that if you get your idea of Ideal Family Life from television or 19th century children's fiction or Ralph Lauren adverts, you are naturally going to be disappointed with your own family. Time after time you return to the nest to discover that, although a bit of distance has done you good, they have not changed very much. You like what you liked before, and you are exasperated by whatever exasperated you before, and it may take you awhile to adjust to the family rhythms, if you can. Personally, I love going home to Mum and Dad. Although I am startled by the noise (human and television) at first, I enjoy the routines, the orderliness and the laundry system. Visits to my married brother are similarly noisy (human and toy) but fun and bracing. Oh, now I'm getting homesick. Wah.

I am fortunate in that I know exactly what my family is like, and I know that as families go mine is amazingly blessed, and I have no irrational expectations of perfection. Although we have our challenges, we are not dysfunctional, and I would LOVE to go home for Canadian Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, if it weren't so darned expensive. (I try to tempt my family over here, but they also find it darned expensive.)

But that's me. Some of you come from dysfunctional families, and go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, hoping it will be better this year, and it never is. And my question for reflection is "Why go then?"

I have in my mind's eye a teary-eyed 50-something woman who keeps hoping year after year that her maternal and filial love and cooking will bring the whole family around the table where they will be delightful and humorous without being drunken or quarrelsome, even though drunken and quarrelsome is generally what they are. Time after time, she summons the same chemical mixture to her dining-room or kitchen and then weeps when, yet again, the house blows up. Her magic talisman, her Single daughter, did not work after all to avert the catastrophe, and she feels betrayed. So naturally she takes it out on her Single daughter, because if you can't take out your disappointment on your own daughter, whom CAN you take it out on?

If this sounds like your own mother, you may want to have a blunt conversation with her over the phone before you go home. Once you are grown up (particularly if you are no longer a financial dependent), you are in a position of strength vis-a-vis your elders' dysfunctions. You can say things like, "About Thanksgiving. I'm tired of the drunken free-for-all that happens after the pie, and this year, just so you know, I am leaving the minute the men start on the whisky. I've suffered through seeing my relations at their worst for twenty years, and I won't do it again. I'll go straight to the kitchen to wash the dishes, and then I'm going out."

Another option is to not go home at all, which will torpedo in advance your mother's or grandmother's fantasy that this year will be different, and she will have the Perfect Family Dinner. This may seem like an extreme measure, but I assure you it is physically possible. What you say is, "In light of the fact that two years ago A, B and C happened, and one year ago, X, Y, and Z happened, I will not be attending Thanksgiving Dinner this year." Then you don't.

In this scenario A,B,C, X,Y and Z are examples of real abuse, be it verbal, emotional, psychological or physical, either to you or to someone you love. You don't deserve abuse, and you don't deserve to see someone you love abused. If there is any likelihood that this is what you will suffer if you go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, then please don't go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. You may have friends in your own town who would love to have you for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, especially if they are Single or childless, and apparently many people find great contentment in serving Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner to the homeless. You might even book a room in the guest house of a monastery for the weekend, and enjoy the peace and the food for the soul.

Update: What I said in 2010.

American Singles' Thanksgiving Survival Game

Let us turn our eyes to our American sisters, for [NEXT] Thursday is their Thanksgiving Day, and many of them will find themselves deep in the bosom of their extended family being asked if they have found a "special fella" yet.

From my uncle's death until my nephew Pirate was a few months old, my family was entirely blue- and green-eyed, and we used to play this terrible game called "Everyone Stare at the Brown-Eyed Person." Perhaps in some subconscious attempt to add genetic variety to our family, my brothers and I dated people with dominant genes and actually brought them home for supper. (My sisters were understandably cagey about exposing their dates to our family.) The effect of having five pairs of blue eyes and two pairs of green boring into them must have been pretty awful for our dominant-gened guests. Deary me. You could have made it into a story about the Nazi occupation of France for children.

Gestapo: Tell us the location of the Resistance, or ve vill stare at you.

Brown-eyed Frenchman: Non! I weel nevair tell you. Nevair.

Gestapo: Ve vill see about that! Gentlemen, prepare to stare!

Frenchman: Non! Non! Not that blindeenng blue Teutoneek glare! Aaaah!

Single people attest that the same thing happens to them on such jolly family occasions as American Thanksgiving. Wonderful Aunt Tilly, who has been smiling sympathetically at her niece ever since she arrived, finally leans across the sweet potatoes with marshmallow dish and says, just as there is a lull in the conversation:

"So, dear. Find anyone SPECIAL yet?"

And then everyone at the table, including her 20 year old married cousin and cousin-in-law, stares at the poor Single until someone kind clears their throat and says, "Time enough for that!"

Then Aunt Tilly says "Yes, indeed," and the most dysfunctional person present says, "Don't leave it too long, though! After all, tick tick tick!"

Oh the horror! And this is a NICE family, where everyone gets along and nobody gets off their heads drunk and has fistfights on the front lawn. (I shall discuss the dilemma of dysfunction tomorrow.)

To help American Singles get through Thanksgiving, I long ago devised a wonderful GAME. It's an easy game. In short, American readers count how many times their relations allude to their Single status and then report their tally here on Black Friday. Obviously this game depends on the honour system. To make it extra fun this year, you have to pledge to join the American Singles' Thanksgiving Survival Game on the poll in the margin. And on Black Friday*, I want a full report in the combox. The game begins as soon as you wake up on Thanksgiving morning and ends when you retire to your bedroom that night.

Incidentally, in the little anecdote above, the Single gets TWO points: one for Aunt Tilly, and one for Mr Tick Tick Tick.

This is our traditional game. Those who want to add a new game, might be interested in the Orthogals' Single Bingo board. Simply print out the bingo board and hide it under the bathroom sink, and whenever a relation says one of the clichés give yourself a point for the bingo AND for the Singles' Thanksgiving Survival game. When you get a chance, mark the bingo board. If you can figure out how to do it, photograph your Singles' bingo board and send it to me by email on Black Friday. Then I will announce who has won Singles' Bingo.

The beauty of the games, of course, is that they turn your relatives' conversational crimes into delicious and delightful points. In past years, sisters have actually competed with each other for the most points, although naturally this competition is entirely passive, like playing the lottery. I bet one could get the edge over another by wearing grey or 1980s-style glasses or anything that might goad Aunt Tilly into saying "You'll never get a fella if you dress like that." However, I am ruling that if this is done deliberately, it is cheating.

*Black Friday, the day after the third Thursday in November (i.e. American Thanksgiving) is the day Americans begin their Christmas shopping in earnest, and so the businesses "in the red" finally turn a profit and are, therefore, "in the black." I encourage readers to post their results first thing in the morning of Black Friday, because I'm on Greenwich Mean Time and will be dead asleep before y'all come home with your loot.

Book News: Great new reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, for which I thank the reviewers from my heart. Don't forget that although women buy most of the novels, men like thrillers, so my novel makes a good present for men and women alike! I hasten to say that Ceremony of Innocence is not for children, as it has grown-up themes, scary scenes and enough irony to build a battleship.

But to paraphrase Saint Francis of Assisi, let there be a 21st Century Catholic Literary Renaissance, and let it begin with ME. ;-)

First Book Update: Oh, and of course Seraphic Singles/The Closet's All Mine/Anielskie Single makes a great gift from one Single woman to another!

Auntie Seraphic & the Concerned Married Sister

As far as I can recall, this is the first letter in six years about someone else being Single!

Dear Seraphic:  

I have a good topic for you to cover if you are so inclined.  How does one strike the balance between letting God be in control of one's life, but not being passive?  I ask this specifically in relation to discerning a call to marriage.

The background on this is that I am the oldest of sisters.  I am in my mid-40s now and married, but I married in my late 30s.  My youngest sister is now in her early 40s and not married yet.  She is the source of my concern.  I know it is awful of me to be a meddlesome older sister!  I am  not a  nag, though.  I am quiet in my observations and concerns.  I try to spend as much time with my sister as I can, and to shower her with love and support.  Meanwhile  I do worry a little.  And I know my mom worries a lot.

My sister has never really dated, but she expresses a very strong desire to be married and an equally strong conviction that she will be married one day.  Meanwhile -- good for her -- she is not dying of loneliness.  She has a lot of friends, and is very involved in her church and the community.  She does not always open up to me, but my mother says that a priest told her that she would be married one day and that that is what forms her very strong conviction that God has spoken to her and that she is not to worry about it at all.  I get the sense that this priest's words were a sign to my sister, perhaps even a mystical sign.

I am -- I confess -- skeptical of mystical signs!  On the other hand, I believe that God does wonderful things for his children, and sometimes goes above and beyond in meeting our needs.  Maybe my sister needed that mystical sign, and the good Lord gave it to her.  I am open to that possibility, though not completely convinced.  To me it seems like she used that sign to shut herself off from the normal process of being young and open.  It almost seems like she is scared of dating and of men, that she is very unsure of herself.  But she is very convinced that she is right!  I find myself scratching my head.  I just don't know.  Maybe she is right!

Anyway, I am just curious as to whether you have any thoughts on this.  Whatever you say, it will not change my approach to my sister.  Nor will I present it to her with an I-am-right-you-are-wrong approach.  Since she has never asked for advice, and isn't particularly open to advice either, I have never given it.  I wish she did ask for advice!  I just love her and try to be there for her.  I would love for her to meet a nice man.  It's hard to imagine who that would be.  He would have to be pretty incredible.

Whereas my sister is very passive (I use the word "passive" for lack of a better word, and I know that it expresses my admitted bias), I was very active in my pursuit of marriage.  When I hit 30 I had the realization that marriage was not going to fall into my lap.  I did as much as I could to meet people.  I dated quite a bit.  I made some mistakes along the way.  But I also learned a lot about myself in the process and I grew spiritually.  

When internet dating became available, I used it with great success.  I met a wonderful Catholic man, a good man, and we married and are quite happy,  blessed with children.  I know the internet dating thing is a whole other topic! But it is just funny to me that my sister and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum, or at least that is the way that I see it.  My other sisters were somewhere in the middle.  Marriage did just sort of fall in their laps.

This is a topic that is on my mind.  It is not a personal problem per se, and whatever you say it will not change the way that I approach my sister.  It is just something that I sometimes puzzle over, and am curious your thoughts.  If in the process of a reply you are able to help a young single woman form her thoughts on how to approach men and the possibility or romance, all the better!

Thanks, Seraphic.

With Gratitude,

Concerned Married Sister

Dear Concerned Married Sister,

I am an oldest sister too, so I know about worrying about younger brothers and sisters. I used to worry a lot about my oldest brother, for he seemed genuinely lonely, but then God sent him  a wonderful wife and later two lovely children. 

The rest of the gang is still unmarried, but I don't worry about them. I married late, so they might marry late. And, meanwhile, the girls seem well-contented to me. They generally having busy, productive, forward-looking lives.  I haven't the foggiest clue if my sisters are out there trying to meet men, but I could not care less, for they already have a family: our family.  

Your sister, like me, is in her early 40s, so chances are that it's already game over for her ever giving birth. However, if she does marry, she might marry a widower or annullé with kids, which would be very nice, or she might adopt or foster, if she likes. But that doesn't interest me. What interests me is you.

Why are you so invested in your sister meeting a nice man? She's already happy, and she has an enviable tranquility about the future, possibly because she believes in this priest's prediction. Her passivity, as you call it, will not prevent God's will, but may even be helping bring it about. As you say, marriage just fell into the laps of your other sisters. Maybe God wants her to marry the UPS man who brings her a package when she is 53. Or maybe He wants her to be a model of tranquility for other Single women for decades and then enter joyfully into a mystical marriage with Him. Why do you doubt in His plan for your sister?

Happy married people often have a hard time getting our minds around the idea that Single people--like priests--can be happy just trusting in God. And super-active, go-go-go people can also have a hard time realizing that it is God, not their efforts, who calls the shots. 

When it come to earning money or improving oneself, of course "God helps those who helps themselves"--keeping in mind that God makes the first move: we are not Pelagians. But when it comes to husband-and-children, that's God's territory. There are men and women who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and years on dating websites without getting married, and then are men and women who barely lift a finger, and there the perfect person for them is. 

My advice is to be grateful for what (and who!) God had given you, to accept that His plans for your sister are obviously quite different from His plans for you, and to be grateful for, and even awed by, your sister's trust in Him.

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

People. There is no excuse for married Catholics tying themselves into knots because other Catholics are living chaste lives of celibacy. From Pentecost until the Reformation, a chaste life of celibacy was considered the superior form of Christian life, and this insight pre-dated men's and women's religious orders.

As much as an individual married person hated the Single Life, this does not mean the Single Life is worthy of such fear and contempt. No word of a lie, many Single people are content to wait or follow St. Paul's advice to remain as they are.  And many priests get annoyed by heartfelt married-people sighs of "Oh, Father, what a shame you can't get married! Do you think this new pope will allow it?" 

Meanwhile, there is no formula for getting married. Yes, a Single woman can enrich her life by figuring out how to win friends and influence people, by becoming the sort of woman that marriage-minded men love to be around, by overcoming any anti-social personality traits, by participating in enjoyable activities with like-minded people, by making lots of new friends. But none of these things will guarantee that she will fall in love with a man who falls in love with her and proposes marriage. There are no guarantees about the life-altering decisions of other people. 

When Mom Nags

One of the absolute worst things about the Single life is having one's own mother nagging one about being Single. It is a betrayal on a massive scale because Mom/Mum is usually the person you instinctively go to when you are feeling down and out or sick. This sometimes has absolutely nothing to do with the woman herself, but some infant instinct in our brain that still occasionally wails "Maaaamaaaaa!"

So it is awful when you are having a good day, or a lousy day, and you are enjoying your proximity to your mother, your first home, and suddenly she starts in on you about being Single. It's bad enough if you intend to be Single and are purposefully Single; when you don't want to be Single, it's a knife to the heart.

For the record, my mother did not nag me about being Single after I got divorced, even when I got my annulment and was theologically Single again with papers to prove it. She did second-guess my decisions to end dating relationships, however. Not being a mother, I am not sure why mothers do this. Maybe it's caused by an overflow of worry or resentment for having been in the orbit of yet another younger-generation drama.

I am trying to put myself in a mother's shoes, and see Singleness from a nagging mother's perspective. I never had any children, but I have twenty-something friends whose mothers are near my age, so I can imagine having a twenty-two year old daughter, at oldest. And frankly I would not give a darn if my twenty-two year old daughter were Single. In fact, I would rather that she were Single--especially Single and not dating---and concentrating on her university courses, her apprenticeship program or her fledgling business.

I would be much more annoyed if she were wasting her time chasing boys, or dating some happy-go-lucky simpleton, or (worse) a snarling control-freak, and that is where the temptation to meddle would probably get the better of me. I would write long blog posts for her, pretending that they were not for her, should she actually bother to read them. ("No, darling, what are you talking about? I was writing generally.")

But I like to think that once my darling daughter was established in her career, trade or business, that I would leave her alone, and hold my counsel, unless she came timidly to me for advice, and then I would let her have it, both barrels.

Sitting here in my imaginary mother-chair, I am open to the idea that mothers sometimes know what they are talking about. I know this is a radical idea, so I will quickly state that mothers very often haven't the foggiest clue.

If your mother married at twenty and had six children and her world is mostly church, the family business, the supermarket, the library and the mall, she very likely does not have a grasp of what it is like to be a Single woman your age. She thinks she does because she watches TV, but she doesn't because TV is not real life. Cute physicists with great jobs but lots of time just to hang out do not live across the hall from you. Nor is there a man at work who looks just like Angel, that is, David Boreanaz.

I think about what Single Life means for you every day, and yet I do not quite know what it is to be a Single woman your age. You are the experts on that.

However, mothers do know a lot, so it is absolutely worthwhile to listen to what your mother says as impartially as possibly and sort out the sense from the nonsense. For instance, it is nonsense to think that men would fall at your feet if only you cut your bangs (fringe). However, if your mother says you have pretty eyes, than it is indeed possibly that you do have pretty eyes and should show them off.

Meanwhile, since it is one of her principal jobs, your mother is aware of how your moods, behaviours, relationships and choices affect the rest of the people in the household. That can always be a big ol' shock to a young woman: the fact that her personal life, which she thought so private, actually has an impact on those with whom she lives. I can see how a daughter's ignorance of, or indifference to, this would drive a mother crazy.

It can be hard to grasp this, but mothers are just other women. They happen to be the women who affect you more than any other women in the world, but it is helpful to remember that they are really just women with lives of their own. They form their own impressions of the world, and they repeat them if they think this won't get them into trouble. Sometimes these impressions have great merit, and sometimes they don't.  Some mothers have great advice, and some mothers do not. Some mothers feel confident about their place in the world, and some tyrannize over their kids because this is the only way they feel any power.

Anyway, sound off in the combox. What advice has your mother given you that was really great? And what advice has she given you that was utterly lousy? Feel free to be anonymous today.

Sweet Potato Fries & Merci Beaucoup!

Despite my gloomy preparations, B.A. and I survived our Atlantic crossing. My parents met us at the airport with news that the biggest snowstorm in five years would be arriving at 4 PM. Well, it is 2:50 PM, and here is the snow.

Happily, the prediction did not dissuade them from taking us to lunch at one of my favourite local delis, a deli I have been thinking about since the last time I saw an American diner on telly. After pondering matzoh ball soup, kreplach and latkes, I ordered a corned-beef on rye, coleslaw and sweet potato fries. Ahhhh! Home in the neighbourhood! L'Chaim!

"I've only seen corned beef in tins from Argentina," said Scottish B.A. and, later, "This is nothing like corned beef in tins from Argentina."

"Just wait until Montreal," I said. "I will take you to the Schwartz Charcuterie Hebraique where you will have Montreal smoked meat, fries and black cherry cola."

My parents don't live in Scotland, so they may have been taken aback when before lunch I danced in the kitchen shouting, "Jewish food! Jewish food! Yay!"

For two whole weeks I don't even have to look at Scottish food. Whoo-hoo!

The one thing that makes me sad is that it is Tłusty Czwartek, and there is no Polish bakery around in which to queue for pącki (rosehip jam doughnuts). For that I'd have to go a long way downtown--a bus, a subway train, and then another bus, and no, thank you. Especially not now that the snowstorm is here. But a happy Tłusty Czwartek to all my Polish readers!

And now I must send out more thanks and promises of prayers to my latest benefactresses and they are FV, AM, MM, JK, MH and MD.  The short-term damage wrought by the reluctance of a debtor to pay me has been almost eradicated. So I am very relieved, and I sincerely hope that none of you threw more in the pot than you could afford. 8-O

Update: Here is my latest, and probably my most depressing, CR column. I wrote it after writing about sexually bullying on this blog and reading your remarks.

American Thanksgiving Singles Survival Game

It has crept up on me and surprised me at the last minute! Oh my little American Singles, it is the dreaded day of turkey doom, that day upon which you will be asked by random relations you see but once or twice a year the perfidious question: So, dear, do you have a boyfriend yet?

The rules of this game are very simple. You have to pay attention to all references to your long-term single state so that you can report them here. Obviously you are on your honour here, so no padding. Just counting.

And then reporting! Because the best part of the American Thanksgiving Singles Survival Game is telling us all in delicious detail what your Aunt said and then what your Uncle said, and then what your smart-aleck cousin said after that.

In past years readers have reported their own variations on this game, including in-house competitions between sisters.

The beauty of this game is that (like grace) it heals and elevates the stupid So, dear, do you have a boyfriend yet? questions and Don't worry, you'll be next remarks into POINTS! Feel free to bring a piece of paper and pencil to the table. Actually, put a pencil and paper in your pocket right now because sometimes relatives can't walk in the door without immediately saying "So, dear, do you have a boyfriend yet?"

SCENE: A charming family home in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, nestled between cornfields. Ceramic dwarves stand frozen on the lawn in mid-gambol.

The doorbell rings.

Mom: Dear, can you answer that?

You: Okay, Mom.

You open the door and behold on the doorstep Uncle Billy and Aunt Jean from Chicago.

You: Hi, Uncle Billy! Hi, Aunt Jean! Come on in.

Uncle Billy and Aunt Jean come on in.

Uncle Billy: How's my girl? (He seizes you in bear hug.)

You: Great! Ouch!

Aunt Jean: Now, Bill. Leave the girl alone. Let's look at you. My, my. How time does fly. (Her voice sinks.) We must have a proper chat in the kitchen. I want to talk to you.

Uncle Billy (loudly): Uh, oh. Girl stuff. No men allowed!

Aunt Jean: Now, Bill. Don't you start. (Her voice sinks again.) Honey, I read this column in Better Homes and Gardens about Single girls and it made me think of you. Hold on a minute, I'll get it from my purse.

You: I'll be back in a sec.

You rush to your room, seize a pencil and a piece of paper and write a big, thick /.


Mom (yelling up the stairs): Honey?! Why aren't you helping your uncle and aunt with their coats?

You: Coming!

Mom: I don't know what's gotten into that girl.

Aunt Jean: Well, apparently Single girls get a little funny during the holidays. It's the pressure of family expectations. I read about it in Better Home and Gardens.

You write another thick /, making your tally //. You feel a thrill of early victory. It's only three in the afternoon: depending on what's happening on the East Coast and Florida, you could be in the lead!

Uncle Bill: Don't be silly, Jean. There's nothing about that girl a good boyfriend wouldn't solve.

///

You: I'm coming! Sorry, Aunt Jean.

Aunt Jean: That's okay, dear. I'm all right and tight.

Uncle Bill: She's all right but not yet tight! Where's the punch? It's party time!

Aunt Jean: Oh, Bill. (She turns to you.) Now dear. Into the kitchen with you.

Uncle Bill: Uh oh. Here comes the grilling. Give only your name, rank and serial number!

Aunt Jean: Oh, Bill. Really, that man. You just wait till you're married, hon, and then you'll understand what we all have to put up with.

////

****

Let the games begin!

The Cemetery in Kraków

Next year I will write about this for my paper, but I have been writing to a Polish friend about it, so B.A.'s and my visit to a cemetery in Kraków on All Saints Day is very much on my mind.

There is still huge cultural pressure on young people in Poland to get married or embrace religious life, which is great when it comes to making adults behave like adults when otherwise they'd be tempted to become perpetual teenagers, but awful when it comes to women who don't have boyfriends or a religious vocation. The beauty and usefulness of unmarried, unconsecrated aunts must be stressed and celebrated. Maybe there should be a worldwide League of Extraordinary Single Aunts.

And I have a good reason to stress the family ties of Aunts, especially in Poland, because one of the sorrows of Singles is the idea that they don't have families when OF COURSE they have families. We're all born into families, and Poland has the family-friendliest culture I've ever seen. It even beats Italy because although Italians love children, too many (most?) married Italians have spent the past 40 years short-sightedly contracepting Italy towards extinction.

Nothing proved to me the importance of family in Poland more than All Saints's Day. All Saint's Day is a public holiday there, and Poles spend the day and night visiting and tidying the graves of their deceased relations. When B.A. and I were waiting very early in the morning for a tram, I noticed that the one that terminated at a cemetery was absolutely crammed with riders. And even on our less-crowded tram, there were many people with big bundles of flowers and pine branches in dirty plastic bags.

We went to Mass, in part because All Saint's Day is a Holy Day of Obligation in both Poland and Scotland, and after lunch, and fruitless attempts to see art or shop (the galleries and most shops were understandably closed), and a cancelled engagement, we decided to go to a cemetery ourselves.

I was in a tired and frustrated mood from linguistic difficulties, organizational shortcomings, and insomnia, but as we walked to the cemetery, joining the steady stream of people with flowers, branches and dirty plastic bags, and passing the opposite stream of people who now had just the bags, my heart began to lift. We were obviously witnessing something very new to us and very important to Polish culture. Tourists love to be "in the know", and it seemed that we were "in the know."

When we got to the cemetery, we crowded in as others crowded out, and there was still enough light in the early-darkening November sky to read the map. There were two long lists of the names of famous Krakowians buried there. I didn't see the Wojyła family mentioned, but I recognized the names Jan Matejko (the painter), Helena Modrzejewska (the singer) and--especially--Roman Ingarden, Saint Edith Stein's friend and colleague. So having located "our" grave, B.A. and I walked along the avenues to find it.

The tombstones were all raised; they were all big enough to sit on, and there were no flat markers on grass such as we see most of the time in Canada and the USA. They were more like real homes on real avenues; it was a city of the dead. There were trees and tombs as far as the eye could see in all direction, and each and every tomb had coloured, candlelit glass lamps on it. No tomb had been left neglected. There were several lamps on and around the Ingarden tomb; I wondered if family, colleagues or fans had left them there.

There were people everywhere, quiet but chatty and cheerful. Of course I could not understand most of what they said, but I could hear grandsons asking grandmothers how far away their grave was, and grandmothers assuring them not much further. A woman asked me in Polish, and then in a mix of English and Polish, where the Wojtyła grave was, and when I confessed to not knowing, she consulted an older woman who gave complicated directions with much dramatic pointing. In a distant corner, a middle-aged father and college-age son worked silent on and around a flat, raised tombstone, taking lamps and branches from bags.

From a small but ornate chapel, prayers and hymns were so amplified that we could hear them from at least a short distance away. And behind the chapel was a memorial to the victims of communism, in the form of a cross being grasped by many disembodied hands. There was a big crowd of people standing silently before this memorial, and in front of them hundreds of coloured, candlelit, glass lamps. No doubt some of the people were praying for family members who died in the horrors of the Stalinist period and after, but I suspect they were including all the victims in their prayers.

It was not just about family, this quiet cemetery festival. It was about neighbours and nation, too, and the Catholic awareness that our dead--the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant--are still part of our Church, still part of our families, and should not be left forgotten and neglected by us. For the first time in my life, I was well and truly ashamed of the Canadian/American Hallowe'en, with its pagan enjoyment of ghouls and prurient attitude towards our locked and silent graveyards. As a child in a Catholic school, I was directed to make spooky graveyard scenes with tombstones, ghosts, bats and skeletons, spindly trees, comic epitaphs. It was fun, but it had nothing to do with Catholicism because it had nothing to do with love.

The cemetery in Kraków was full of love. Not romantic, sexual love, although perhaps that was there, too, flickering in the hearts of widows and widowers and surviving sweethearts as they prayed for their lost beloveds. Just love: love for family, love for neighbours, love for the dead, love for the saints and parents of saints. Love for God. Love.

Being an Aunt is Cool

No time to blog this morning, for I am in Montreal with my niece, her brother and their nanny, the incomparable Alisha.

The advantages of aunthood are many. First, you have children in your life whom you love and who are supposed to love you, and are happy to do so, at least when they are small. Second, childcare is definitely a part-time thing. You might have (or look like you have) tons of laudable patience, but it stems from the fact that talking a toddler down from a temper tantrum is a rare treat for a usually absentee aunt, not business as usual.

When Pirate was born, I told a colleague that that was pressure off me to have kids. He looked consoling, assuming my parents were pressuring me to get married and have kids. But they certainly weren't. It was my own internal clock that was the nag. It said, "Have kids. Have kids. Have kids. Your family isn't getting any younger, you know."

But then Pirate was born, assuring the future of The Family, and now there are Peanut and Popcorn, too. And I see in all this the advantage of not thinking of yourself primarily (or exclusively) as an INDIVIDUAL but as part of something bigger than yourself, which in my case has always been The Family and also, of course, The Church.

Although I am a huge fan of romantic love, I think one of the things about marriage is that it is about bringing very cool people into your original family and then co-operating with them to bring more people into it. It's not all about you and what you want, but what (and who) will help The Family thrive.

(I recognize, of course, that some of you simply don't have sustainable biological families, and for sanity's sake have created the next best thing.)

Just enough time to pick a new swashbuckling protector for the day, and then I must wash and dress. My nephew has eyed my nightdress with disapproval and informed me that I need clothes.

Bad at Relationships?

I had a letter the other day from a reader who claimed she was bad at relationships. The rest of her email suggested she had many healthy relationships. But of course what she meant was "man & woman & sexual spark" relationships.

A lot of my readers do that--you talk about being bad "at relationships" when in fact you have many healthy relationships: with parents, siblings, work colleagues, students, professors, priests, the waitress who serves you coffee every day, female friends and even male friends. I think, therefore, that you are psyching yourselves out when you claim that you are bad at "relationships."

One of the enduring problems of our age is that we privilege "man & woman & sexual spark" relationships above absolutely every other relationship. But I think they should just take their place humbly among our well-established relationships with family members and our old friends.

A husband, interestingly enough, is a family member; it is another problem of our age that we do not recognize this and that "man & woman & sexual spark" is no longer (in English-speaking communities) put in the appropriate context of expanding a family. When I met my husband, I soon realized how much my family would like him and enjoy having him as a family member. And I was quite right.

"Okay then," I hear various voices pipe up, "we're good at most relationships. We're just bad at dating relationships."

But again I don't buy it. What does it mean to be good at a dating relationship? Ideally a dating relationship is a man and a woman who like each other, and get a bit wobbly and excited by just seeing the other, getting together to share interests, like a film or the museum or a marathon or a hockey game, and also meals and conversations. And out of these experiences, they singly and then together decide if they should make some kind of formal commitment or cease to go about so much together.

Very often they decide that they shouldn't commit and they shouldn't go about so much together. One or the other just isn't feeling it. And that is not being bad at dating relationships. No-one is to blame if you or the guy just doesn't feel a lasting attachment. Yes, it's disappointing, but it's also disappointing when your ticket doesn't win the lottery. You can't hurry love, as the song says. You just have to wait.

Meanwhile, another problem is not you but the current culture of dating relationships. To make a grand generalization, many men are rather messed up right now, and therefore are not so much on the hunt for wives, per se, but for girlfriends/bedmates. The courtship process for getting a girlfriend is not the same thing as the process for getting a wife, and so it is very difficult for the Catholic woman who does not want to have sex before marriage to navigate male attention. Fortunately, around the age of thirty men (particularly men from traditional cultures or who have returned to the practice of their faith) are often tired of messing around and just want to find a nice girl with whom to settle down.

And the only way I can think of to put up with this state of affairs is to keep the bonds strong with the real relationships in your life--with God, family, friends, colleagues, the waitress in the coffee shop, et alia--so that you have a lot of emotional support while you carry on with your life, all the while with a beautiful little hope (and it is beautiful, if kept small and in proportion) for the right man to come along one day.

Meanwhile, the one thing I can see many women being bad at is being rooted in reality when it comes to "man + woman + spark" relationships. We meet a handsome guy who seems nice and our minds race to months or even years ahead. We think "handsome=good" and "friendly=into me". And then when we are confronted with reality, we too often sweep it under the carpet because facing it would be too painful. ("No, no, no. Anyone that handsome must be a good guy.") We mentally write out a little history of how the future will go and we write a character description for a man we barely know, and then we defend our little mental compositions from the reality of NOW and the reality of HIM, the real guy, a man invented by God, not Jane Austen, and conditioned by his masculinity and his experiences in life, experiences you know almost nothing about yet. And this is simply crazy behaviour. It's like deliberately setting out on a journey with the wrong map.

It would, then, behoove everyone to approach "man + woman + spark" relationships in the same spirit adult women make new adult women friends: with friendliness, with caution, with much thought, with slowly growing emotional intimacy, and in appropriate proportion to relationships with family and old friends.

Pirate Goes to London

In one last burst of activity, Pirate, Pirate's mother and Pirate's aunt rushed out of the house with all the luggage. Pirate's uncle was already in town, seeing about a last-minute present.

On the bus, I asked Pirate what his favourite part of Scotland was, and it is no longer Deep Sea World but Edinburgh Castle. Amusingly we saw his uncle on the street from the bus window, and there was much waving and gesturing of success and approval.

In the train station, I led Pirate and his mother the wrong way and then the right way, and there was Uncle, to whom Pirate ran with arms outstretched. Then we all got on the train and chatted until a train conductor began to speak over the intercom and B.A. and I disembarked.

B.A. was adamant that we go to the end of the platform, into the sun, to wave good-bye. Apparently this has something to do with The Railway Children. And no sooner had we got there but the train came roaring past, and there was a gap-toothed smiling face at a window, and Pirate was waving with all his might and main.

And that was them. Off they went to their weekend in London before Monday's Toronto flight. B.A. and I walked back down the platform and nipped into M&S to buy a few groceries and then took a smaller, slower train ourselves. We alighted early and took a path through some fields and some woods and returned to the Historical House. I put on some soup for lunch, and B.A. began to vacuum.

The house was unsually quiet. We had our soup and toast in the dining room.

"It was good that we got back into the habit of eating in the dining room," said B.A.

"Yes," I said.

"This afternoon I'l just read quietly in the sitting room," said B.A. "What a luxury!"

"Indeed," I said.

The sun is shining today. It shone through the round window in the dining room. We sipped our soup in the companionable quiet. I looked out the window and thought about our nephew, and how much we love him even though he drives everyone crazy quite a lot of the time.

"Guess what?" said B.A.

"Chicken butt," I said.

"Yep."

Pirate and the Old Joke

Scene: Thursday, car park in North Berwick, Scotland. The McAmbrose and Single families are in a rental car. Auntie Seraphic and Pirate are in the back seat, and Uncle Ben and Pirate's Mum are in the front.

Pirate: Guess what?

Uncle: What?

Pirate: Chicken butt.

Auntie (genuinely): Ha ha ha ha ha!

Pirate: Ha ha ha ha ha! Guess who?

Uncle: Who?

Pirate: Chicken butt. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Auntie: Okay, cut that out. I only laughed because I hadn't heard it in twenty years.

Scene: Friday, highway in Perthshire, Scotland. Pirate's Mum is again in the driver's seat, and Uncle Ben is beside her. Auntie S and Pirate are once again in the back.

Pirate: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Auntie: Chicken butt. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Pirate: Ha ha ha ha ha!

Pirate's Mother (to Uncle B.A.) I'm really sorry. Now Seraphic has been influenced by Pirate and you have to live with the results.

Auntie: Chicken butt! Ha ha ha ha ha!

More Pirate

This is the first time a child has waited for Christmas in the Historical House for decades--perhaps a century. Our attic flat used to be nurseries and servants' quarters, so it is easy to imagine children at the table in what is now our dining room, although it is hard to imagine Pirate in the role of some Georgian or Victorian darling in a sailor suit.

Take, for example, a necessarily informal dinner party the other night. Around the table were two young Polish students, Uncle B.A., Auntie Seraphic, Pirate's Mum and, at the foot, Pirate eagerly spooning up his soup. It was Polish chicken soup and thus unfamiliar to Pirate, but to my relief he slurped it down. And such was his contentment with life in general that he began to sing a little ditty that I can only assume he learned in the playground of his Catholic school:

"Ladies on top," he caroled. "Ladies on top, ladies on top."

Spoons halted in the air as five pairs of adult eyes swiveled to the brown-eyed, gap-toothed songster.

"Ladies on top of what?" asked Pirate's mother. "That's just silly. What does that even mean?"

Puzzled, Pirate thought about his song and then his face cleared.

"Ladies on top of the roof!" he sang. "Ladies on top of the roof!"

Then, you may be heartened to hear, he burst into "All the Single Ladies." That one he learned from the Chipmunks.


Update: Memory compels me to admit that one ditty that did the rounds when I was in my own Catholic school playground was "[Angel in the] Centerfold."

Advent of Pirate, Age 7

If you have read my book, you know all about Pirate. Pirate and his mother have arrived in Scotland for their Christmas holidays. I fixed up the guest room for them; they are now both asleep on the sitting-room couch.

But when they first arrived they were all about cookies and conversation.

Pirate: I want a new cousin.

Auntie S: You can talk to your Auntie [mother-of-2] about that.

Pirate: I want a new SCOTTISH cousin!

Auntie S: Um, er, um, er, um. Sometimes people don't get to decide about that. It is God who decides.

Pirate's Mummy: I know a lady who is 43 and has a really cute 3 month old baby.

Auntie S: That's nice. That's a nice story. I like stories like that.

Pirate's Mummy: In Bulgaria there is no age limit on adopting children.

Auntie S: Goodness!

Other People's Children

I had quite a nice day with other people's children! First I went to visit a pal with a one year old and a one week old! The one year old stroked his baby sister's head very gently; he was adorable. And the little baby was as sweet as only a one week old can be!

And then I had an email from a university-age friend, whose parents are farther away from her than I am, and I answered with zeal.

Finally my university-age Polish teacher arrived, and I heard about his housing woes and the genitive case.

It was all very satisfactory. I don't think children, teenagers and university students understand what a lift they give older people (including 40 year olds) just by being there, but they certainly do.

Games in Preparation for Thanksgiving

Okay, tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, so it is time to batter down the hatches and talk frankly about emotional survival plans on behalf of the American readership. (Strangely, some British people have adopted American Thanksgiving themselves which, as a Canadian, I find very strange, yet another example of the bizarre British fascination with the USA. You should see BBC4 this week--absolutely mental.)

The essence of being rooted in reality is looking unpleasant facts in the eye and standing up to them instead of cowering behind a wall of dreamy-dreaminess. Therefore, if Great-Aunt Tilly has asked you every Thanksgiving for the past ten years if you are a Lesbian, don't think she won't ask you again this year. Turn it into a game. Make a bet with your friends when she will ask. In fact, run a pool. Your friends all give you a quarter, and whoever guesses right gets the pot. If she DOESN'T ask, the pot goes to the poor box in thanksgiving. I guarantee that, this way, when Great-Aunt Tilly asks the dreaded question, you will not want to die but to cheer and write down the time she asked.

Great-Aunt Tilly: Tell me, dear, are you a Lesbian?

You: Yay! OMG! What time is it?

The game can apply to any prediction based on past family Thanksgivings. Another game would be to agree beforehand with Single friends to write down the hour and minute you are first asked about your Single status. ("Any boyfriend yet, dear? Well, never mind.") Then when you can meet up, you all produce your pieces of paper.

And then there's simply collecting points for every time your Single state gets mentioned. I suggested this last year, and much hilarity ensued.

Obviously you need a quirky sense of humour for these games, although come to think of it, if you read this blog, you probably do have a quirky sense of humour. And the games also assume your families are functional enough that Thanksgiving Dinner does not mean a slide into dysfunction and depression. If Thanksgiving Dinner has for the past ten years meant a slide into dysfunction and depression, I heartily urge you not to go. And if you do go anyway, I urge you to have some lovely treat waiting for you as soon as you can escape. Do not exchange this lovely treat for the questionable joys of feeling like a martyr.

I also urge you not to compare yourself to your little sister, who has brought her boyfriend this year, or to your cousin, who married a millionaire, or to anybody else. I usually found it salutary, when envying a pal her girlfriend status or diamond ring, to ask myself if I would want her man. The answer has always been NO, although I did have to admit that one pal (one pal in 35 years of having pals) did have a very fetching fiance. Now he is her very fetching husband, and I really should stop mentioning how fetching he is. Fortunately, my own husband is pretty fetching in his own right, B.A.

Sorry to mention B.A. at a time like this, but if married women write about the beauties of other men, we sort of have to mention our own beautiful husbands in the next breath. And I suppose that this is a good opportunity to remind the majority of my Single readers who will actually marry (according to American statistics) that I didn't meet B.A. until I was 37. This may not cheer you if you are 27 or 47, but the point is that just because you haven't found Mr Right by this Thanksgiving doesn't mean you won't ever find him. Maybe you won't, but maybe you will. The ways of God--and of Mr Right, if he exists--are very mysterious.

By the way, if any of my readers thinks the way to cope with the holiday is to curl up with a bottle of vodka, I am here to scold you and tell you that it isn't. If it even crosses your mind, I will be very mad, and if I ever find out, I will block you. So don't. Choose friends and fun instead. If you can't be with your own friends or make your own fun, then pop down to the nearest shelter and spend Thanksgiving serving the homeless.

American Thanksgiving is Coming

Hello, my little chickadees. Today I was very busy writing about Scottish history for pay, so I did not have time for a post. However, it did occur to me that American Thanksgiving is either tonight or next week and that means the beginning of the holiday season.

We all know that the holiday season can be really tough on Singles.

So I won't say anything more on the subject, but will just open the combox for you to emote in.

Thanksgiving (or, outside U.S., holiday season). You. Family. Go for it.

Brothers

I have two brothers, and I love them to pieces. One is now a married man with two kids, and one, seven years younger, is single. When I was single, and feeling very cranky about men in general, I would make myself think about my brothers and how fantastic they are. This invariably cheered me up and made me think more positively about the other half of the human race.

My brothers--I think I can safely describe them together--are upstanding and hard-working. I fear they are too hard-working, just like our dad. They are both musically talented and great fun to be around. They each have a zillion friends, but they each make time to get home to Mum and Dad. They are both intensely intelligent. They still go to Mass.

When we were little, we all played together, and my brothers (and sisters, too, but I'm thinking about brothers today) added so much to my childhood. The older brother was a bit of a child prodigy on the piano, and so I often woke to the sound of beautiful music: childhood was full of live music. The younger brother was great fun and his sly sense of humour, which included building complicated traps for the baby of the family, provided material for enduring family jokes.

In adult life, my brother still add so much to the family. Both of them kept up their music, and so when I am in Canada, I might find myself in a romantically seedy nightclub listening to the younger brother's rock band or in a concert hall listening to the older brother's quintet. The older brother got married to a woman whom the family all, without exception, hesitation or reservation, adore and has had two bee-oo-tee-ful children (so far)! The younger brother lives close to my parents and has helped them out a lot with physical tasks, like taking care of our late grandma's house. He also got me out of a financial mess, for which I will be forever grateful, and I'm putting a cheque in the mail today! 8-0 (No, really. The Polish money came in.)

My brothers, I think, helped to make me the married woman I am today. Soon after I met Benedict Ambrose in person, I thought "This man is so much like my brothers." And I also thought, "This man would get along so well with my family. I can so see him around the table at Christmas!" And this proved to be true. Last Christmas, when my parents, one brother and one sister came to the Historical House for their first Scottish Christmas ever, was one of the happiest of my life.

When my brothers come to visit, they move seamlessly into our social set. They are both former choirboys, and they can both sightread, so they are immediately pressed into Trid Mass choir service and/or singing after boozy Trid suppers. The elder brother, incidentally, drove B.A. and I to our honeymoon, and brother and B.A. sang Gilbert and Sullivan tunes together as we whizzed down the highway.

Because it is Remembrance Day, I will also mention that the elder brother put in ten active years in the militia and the younger brother gave army cadets a go. Their willingness to serve others has extended to the civil sphere, you see. I suppose I am also reactionary enough to be proud of my brothers to have been brave and adventurous enough to have gotten involved with the military, which in Canada is not an everyday sort of institution.

So there you go. I am lucky to have been given two wonderful brothers, and I am also lucky enough to fallen for a guy like my brothers, instead of my usual type. (Actually, I think B.A. is half like my brothers and half like my usual type!)

Today's topic being brothers, please feel free to write about your wonderful brothers (real or "adopted") in the combox. I realize this is a topic I have brought up before, but it can't hurt anyone to enthuse yet again about the great men in her life!

The Joy of Auntie

One thing I still have in common with most never-married Catholic women is that I don't have any children of my own yet. However, this is not to say that I don't have children in my life right now. To date I have two nephews, whom I call Pirate and Peanut, and one niece, whom I will call Popcorn.

When my oldest sister gave birth to Pirate, I was 34 or so, and I picked up the little purple creature and thought something like, "This then, at last, is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone," not because I was delusional, but because I love my family and it was so great to know that it had continued into another generation. It also removed the self-imposed pressure on me to have children one day, for it was clear that others in the family could have the children. As for being Auntie, I turned into Auntie the split-second I knew that my oldest sister was pregnant. One moment I was Daughter/Sister/Student/Teacher, and the next moment I was Auntie, too.

Eventually my oldest brother got married, and about a year later my sister-in-law gave birth to Peanut. I took a trip to see him mere days after he was born, and he was a small, purple version of my oldest brother. My Auntiedom seemed assured, and when I married B.A., B.A. discovered that he wasn't just gaining a wife but a big extended Canadian family, complete with two nephews. And then, of course, Popcorn turned up, and since I was in the house when her existence was discovered, I knew about her ridiculously early on, and then she was born, the first girl to be born in the family for over twenty-something years. I rewrote my will.

Living in Scotland as I usually do, I don't see my nephews and niece as often as I'd like. It is a great treat to see them over Skype, and an even greater one to visit them in person. Sometimes I bring presents; my late uncle (who lived abroad) brought or sent me presents. When they are older, I will write them letters. My oldest brother and I treasure our uncle's letters. Uncles and aunts count for a lot.

As I have no doubt said too often, I would like to have a baby, but meanwhile I have three concrete, real, growing, little children in my life. I got to visit two of them this weekend, and although they still wake up in the middle of the night and yell, it was a delight to see them. At 2 and a half Peanut can express himself in English, French and sign language, and at 9 months Popcorn gets about by rolling. I'm serious. Not being able to crawl yet, she rolls towards her object. She is short and round, rather like a ball.

As bilingual or multilingual babies in French Canada usually do, Peanut knows instinctively whom to speak to in English and whom to speak to in French. The funny thing is that he often accompanies his words with sign language, which as far as I know only my brother, who is a sign-language-for-babies fanatic, employs.

"Wahah" said Peanut on Saturday morning.

"I'm sorry, Peanut," I said. "What was that?"

"Crackah" said Peanut, signing "cracker" by tapping on his elbow. "Crackah."

Later he spied a tractor.

"Tractor," he cried, and made the sign for "cracker" again.

Apparently his sign language gets confused by sound-alikes. Well, he's only two.

My father, the grandfather, was very pleased by Peanut's linguistic abilities, linguistics being his field, and was sure Peanut's fluency in English grew between Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon. If true, this is not surprising because Peanut spent hours on end chatting with a grandpa, grandma, auntie and uncle who never dumb down conversation with small children. But, rather amusingly, Peanut's store of English revealed an amusing, rather matriarchal, lack.

"He knows how to say Auntie," revealed his father. "But he doesn't know how to say Uncle yet."

"What does he call [our youngest brother] then?" I asked.

"Um," said Peanuts' father. "'Man Auntie'."

Update: Since I'm writing about Auntiedom again, I'd like to repeat something I read in Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography. Some scientists believe that human women live so long after menopause because we are/were essential for the survival for human babies and children, quite apart from our reproductive capacities.

Young women often died in childbed or of birth-related ailments; it thus fell upon the tougher women who had survived, or never undergone, childbirth to care for the babies and children. The evolutionary purpose of Woman then, is not just to reproduce, but to care for infants until they can survive on their own, to be emergency backup in case of maternal death. Therefore, if you miss out on biological motherhood, you are still on track with the plans of evolution every time you tend a baby or child, his/her mother doing something else (e.g. tending another baby).

Of course, as Christians and other people of good will, we know our role and destiny are much wider than our biological/evolutionary "purpose", but it always gives me a lift to ponder that Biology needs Aunties.

La Tante Est Dans La Maison

Cherubs, I`m in French Canada visiting my youngest nephew and niece, so no post from me today! Have a lovely weekend.

Meanwhile, if you`re wondering what Auntie Seraphic would write like if she were not a nice Catholic lady, check out this article in the Huffington Post. Be warned for language and general hard-talking broadery.

Thanks to Steve who sent it in. Steve sent in some Guy`s Eye View suggestions, which I will post in due time.

Update: Okay, Science Girl read the HuffPo piece more carefully than I did, so--yeah--definitely some serious differences between McMillan`s philosophy and mine. However, still an interesting read, if brutal.