The Sunday of Four Popes

(That's what the Italian press were calling it, anyway)

We're well into our fifth day in Italy (and our nightly bottle of chianti) and I cannot even fathom the amount of things we've done and seen in such a short span of days. I can hardly feel my toes (or see them, thanks pasta) but we've accomplished more than I'd dreamed possible with three bambini in tow.

Before I go any further I have to thank you for your prayers - they were felt! And they have been so effective. The flights over here were absolutely flawless: kind seat-mates, sleeping children, and earlier-than-stated arrivals. And then the big day itself... Pure grace, plenty of Divine Mercy, and a couple of legit guardian angels waiting for us in the Square. After being ushered in through a side gate (along with a stray bishop and a handful of religious) we came down a ramp and entered a cordoned-off area that seemed very like a VIP entrance to St. Peter's Square. The only person who even looked twice at our press passes and three children in tow was a solitary Swiss Guard, but a Vatican police officer convinced him that we weren't worth bothering with.

Once in, we made our way to the obelisk in the center of the piazza, choosing a vantage point just slightly behind and to the left (facing the basilica) and settled in to wait. We arrived around 7:30 am, and the Mass didn't begin until close to 10.

The weather began to turn liquid about 15 minutes into the Divine Mercy chaplet, and we were waved over to a pair of women waving French flags and perched on folding stools. They gestured to a soft pile of sleeping bags and jackets around their feet, indicating that we should lay the kids down there. And then one of them opened her umbrella and insisted on holding over me and Evie, closing it intermittently between showers. She eventually insisted that I take her seat, as well, and thus was I found breastfeeding by a reporter for La Repubblica, Italy's largest newspaper.

Oh yeah, but first this happened:

I don't know, I guess it was a slow news day. Or we were the only family crazy enough to enter the square toting three stroller-sized pilgrims. I'm fairly confidant that might have been it...

We were treated to a lovely and poetically-timed break in the clouds when John Paul II and John XXIII were declared "Santo" and we were delighted almost to tears when Pope Emeritus Benedict appeared with the rest of the cardinali.

Oh, and we got pretty close to this guy, too:

It was a pretty amazing day. There were some rough spots, to be sure, like when Joey broke the reverent silence during the Consecration with a very audible scream of "pee is in my shoe!" as a visible dark stain spread down the leg of his jeans. But other than that, it was a peak lifetime experience for sure.

Even with the screaming children, the aching backs, and the seeming inability to concentrate on almost any of the Mass or really even reflect on the enormity of the moment, and our being there for it. Lucky for us we have a lifetime to unpack it, and a few more days in Italy to drink away the memory of John Paul putting his mouth on the cobblestones of a piazza only partially and recently vacated by of hundreds of thousands of fragrant pilgrims because he just couldn't take another minute of it. And so he licked the ground. And scratched between the cobblestones with his fingernails, looking for God only knows what.

Rome, you never fail to disappoint. And St. John Paul II, my love for you grows and grows. Thank you for this trip, and thank you for loving our family so well.

(This book is so good. A must read for the JPII generation, and all others, for that matter.)

Viva il Papa

We made it, we're here!

Actually we got in Thursday morning, Rome time, and it has been an incredible trip so far, and by incredible I mean that John Paul bit his father in public, and nobody freaked out on the flights.

The Borgo neighborhood where we're staying, just blocks from St. Peter's, is filling up with pilgrims from all over the world - mostly Polish, but from everywhere, really. Last night at dinner with our Archbishop, a priest at a neighboring table took a phone call and then burst into happy tears upon hanging up. He eventually came over to our table bearing a faded image of a young man in vestments being anointed by the Pope.

It was himself, he explained, being ordained a priest by (soon to be) Pope St. John the 23rd, and that phone call he just received was the Vatican inviting him to concelebrate the mass of Canonization on Sunday morning.

That's just the kind of stuff that happens in Rome, and on pilgrimage. So we're cautiously optimistic about tomorrow morning. We're not camping out tonight; we're sleeping snugly in our beds with plans to leave our apartment by 7 am and flash our press passes to as many guards as it takes to get into the Square - or at least onto Via della Concilliazione. Our fingers are crossed and our hearts are full as we prepare to enter into the great feast of Divine Mercy and to give thanks for the Giver of Divine Mercy for His faithful servant, John Paul II.

Sts. John Paul II and John XXIII, pray for us!

(Oh, and Pope Emeritus Benedict is going to be concelebrating! - 4 popes in one day, how craaaaaazy is that?!)

Pilgrim Up

We're leaving tomorrow morning at 7 am, so naturally, I'm not quite done packing. Nor are my dishes done, but eh, what are frantic 11pm housecleaning sessions for?

What I am doing right now is camping out on my couch writing out the prayer requests we've received. I bought this adorable turquoise moleskin notebook with 100 pages and thought, meh, overkill…but it's more than half full already, and I'm not even done unloading my inbox. I am honored and deeply humbled that so many people have entrusted us with their prayer intentions. I felt really strongly that we needed to physically carry them with us, hence the notebook. Now I just hope I don't run out of pages.

We just found out an hour ago that we have press passes - journalist credentials, in other words - for the canonization ceremony. Which means access to the press entrance into the Square. Which means WE'RE GETTING IN!!! But if you could throw up a tiny, selfish prayer that the guards, um, turn the other cheek when they see us toting our equipment and three miniature assistants with us? I'm not sure it's totally normal (or even remotely permissible) for the press to bring their bambini along. So yeah.

I've got to go scoop this baby off the floor now but please, please know we are praying for you!

I don't know what kind of interet we'll have at our apartment, but if I can snag some wifi, you know exactly what I'll do with it.

Oh, and pray for a 12 hour nap for everyone in our family under the age of 4 tomorrow. Pretty please?

John Paul II, pray for us!

p.s. The JPII Love Story Linkup is live until next Sunday. Add your stories!

Have Kids, Will Travel

I did not set out to a be a mother who specialized in travel with small ones, particularly travel of the international sort. I don't really like flying, and I probably did it half a dozen times by the end of college. Fast forward to my present motherly self and I've probably logged 50 or more flights, many of them with children, in as many years as I've been mothering them, which isn't all that many. I'll tell you right now, it doesn't get any more pleasant the more you do it, but it does become more tolerable and certainly more predictable, as in, "I predict that one will freak out at 30,000 feet approximately 90 minutes into our 4 hour trip." And then bing bing bing, you're right! And your prize is a 400 calorie deficit and sweat-soaked underwear after wrestling a bear cub on a sugar high in a confined 12x12 inch space.

But it's not all bad. There are some practical tips a mama can employ to make sure the skies are, if not friendly, than at least not prone to profanity laced rants from fellow passengers aimed in the general direction of your offspring. Promise. Sorta.

The first and foremost rule of flying with children is thus: be prepared, be prepared, be prepared. You will lose a paci in the toilet of the airport restroom. Better have another (of darling's preferred brand, or else) ready and waiting in your purse. Cringing at the thought of paying $14 for a chemical-laced cheeseburger at Chili's, Too in terminal C? Load that diaper bag down with string cheeses, rice crackers, goldfish, fruit leathers, and any other low-sugar, moderate-carb portable snacks you can think of. Kids and babies aren't subject to the same idiotic stringent TSA regulations pertaining to food and drink, so pack it in!

Nursing and bottle feeding mamas, you're in luck! You can bring bottles of breastmilk, preprepared formula and formula powder through security with no difficulty. You will be asked to open the liquids and allow a TSA agent to dangle a test strip over the substance to screen for, well, I'm not sure what, but it's perfectly reasonable to bring an entire day's worth of liquid sustenance for your little one though the metal detectors. Which reminds me…

Wear your baby and/or carry your toddlers. If you have more toddlers than arms, form a human chain and (politely) defer the nekid screeners in favor of the more reasonable metal detector/wand waving/crotch grabbing pat down option. Sure, it's a little sketchy to have someone outside your marriage groping you in public, but not as sketchy as putting little baby brains through the big 'ol imaging scanners. At least in my opinion. (Note: if you're baby-wearing you'll be asked to approach the chemical testing agent at the end of the conveyor belt with open palms so they can swab you for bomb-building chemicals. Because baby wearing.)

Does your child have a lovey? Do you fear losing it more than you fear losing an appendage? Good. Bring the lovey, because it will ensure the best possible conditions for sleep during flight, and for all that is good and holy, keep your eye on the bunny. Maybe even tie the bunny to your child's backpack so that he can wear his baby, too. Maybe tie a double knot.

Have each child pick out a treasure trove of $5 worth of crap from the Dollar Tree or Target's dollar spot to fill his special airplane bag with. We use a single toddler-sized backpack which both kids share, but those ubiquitous drawstring bags that seem to multiply like rabbits in the front closet are good options, too. Forbid the child to touch the contents of the bag until takeoff, and talk up the bag like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus reproduced and the bag is filled with the result of that joyful union. Also, more goldfish crackers.

We have a "one toy in, one toy out" rule on the bag, so there is always lots of trading out and opening and re-opening and guess what, you're already halfway across the Atlantic Ocean!

Which is in a different time zone…

So, melatonin! We adults use this to regulate our sleep cycles almost as soon as we land, popping a pill before bedtime and not taking much of a nap to ensure that the first night of sleep in a new time zone actually occurs at night.

Don't forget to pray for your travel and during your travel, either. Sometimes simply taking my rosary out of my purse and pulling it into my lap is enough to distract a fussy 2-year-old who is over his treat bag, over the laptop, and over this never-ending period of restrained travel.

A few more parenting life hacks:

• Bring all your children for an ear exam the week before you fly, symptomatic or not. Better safe and on antibiotics than sorry and screaming at altitude.
• Put your 'potty trained' preschooler in a pull up. Just do it.
• Bring a spare onesie, tshirt/shorts combo for each small passenger in your carryon
• Take your stroller all the way to the gate and make sure the airline 'gate checks' it if you'll need it during a connection, during which time you will pile it with children and carryon baggage and race across an unfamiliar airpot in record time.
• Bring enough snacks. Or a fistful of twenties.
• Carryon your laptop charger if you have a connection. Trust me.
• Download some actual movies to your physical hard drive. Netflix don't stream in the stratosphere.
• Run races up and down the terminal and in the gate area. Choose to board first if you have carryon that needs to be stowed and you're worried about space. Board last if you have nothing but a baby on your hands and you have assigned seating.
• Let the flight attendant/random old lady/friendly business traveler hold your baby while you pee if you're flying alone. There's nowhere for them to run if kidnapping is your fear, and they are secretly dying to hold that little cutie. 

Finally, relax. Yes, it's stressful to travel with kids, but it's stressful to travel period! And nobody on your flight booked a spa treatment when they shelled out for their ticket, either. Everyone on board is entitled to a safe, somewhat sanitary and (probably not) timely transport to their final destination. Nothing more. If your kids freaks the freak out as soon as the captain turns on the fasten seatbelt light, well, better luck next time…but don't let the anxiety of the opinions of your seat mates distract you from your real task at hand: disarming that inconsolable baby. Remember, if it's not your kid screaming and clawing the setback table this time, then it'll be someone else's. Purgatory.

And enjoy that glass of wine with with your tasteless, sodium rich dinner. You'll need it, comrade.

That Time JPII Saved Me From Myself

Let's rewind about a decade or so. It's the spring semester of my 'first' senior year (I'll explain later) in college, and I'm living the dream. Sort of. I'm 22 years old, living in a crappy 2-storey victorian house off Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado with 2 roommates (one of whom is a guy) and a collection of pets and beer bottles. Both my roommates are ROTC cadets and all three of us work part time at restaurants and bars. We party often, and we party hard. Like black out every single weekend night, hard.

Looking back, it still boggles my mind that I somehow skated through most of my undergraduate life without suffering any real violence (I did get tear gassed after a football game descended into rioting once) and without having been sexually assaulted. Truly. I was in such a dark place in my faith and in my life, and I made so.many.bad.decisions. There is no reason I should have been spared the fate which so many of my girlfriends suffered. Date rape. Abortions. Physically abusive relationships. It was a mess of a town, and we were living in the thick of it, happily drinking ourselves into a kind of perpetual numbness that made that sort of life tolerable.

A few weeks before the new semester had started, my little sister was home for a visit from the uptight, conservative Catholic college where she was a freshman, and she thought it proper to have a little "come to Jesus" conversation with me at our parent's house after Christmas. She challenged me to stop drinking for a month, betting that I wouldn't be able to quit the party train, and basically broke down in tears telling me she didn't know me any more, didn't recognize the sister she had always looked up to, and knew I could be doing something so much greater with my life.

I.was.pissed.

Here was this 18-year old freshman who had chosen to attend a private school and who had very little experience with working or with the real world telling me that my life choices were disappointing to her…what did she know? She knew nothing about reality, nothing about the world outside her fairytale campus where she was protected from all the things I saw on a daily basis, and she certainly didn't understand anything about my life. So basically I was really receptive.

She did know me well, though, and was right to irritate my competitive response by throwing down a gauntlet. "I bet you can't…"

Oh hell yes, I could. And I would, just to prove her wrong.

So the spring semester began. And I took a 30-day hiatus from partying. And … it was eye opening. After the first week the novelty of what I was attempting began to wear off, and my roommates started begging me to come out with them again. They reluctantly headed out to the bars when Friday rolled around, convinced that I would join them the following night. Or the night after that.

But I didn't.

2 weeks went by and my phone stopped ringing. I mean really stopped ringing. Nobody called. One friend met me at a coffee shop for what I thought was going to be a nice catch up (and a reprieve from my temporarily leperous social status) and instead proceeded to "dump" me. "I have to focus on school, my internship, work, and my social life right now. I don't have time for lunch dates or other bullshit; if you won't come out with us, we're done."

I was shocked. And most of all, really confused. This was my best friend. And we were done, because I was done partying.

As the one-month mark approached, I found myself staring down the barrel of Lent, a season which I still knew existed, but whose passage I had certainly neglected to mark for several years. (An aside: I never physically left the Catholic Church during my troubled college years, though I ache at the thought of how many times I unworthily received the Eucharist. I somehow couldn't quit the Sunday Mass habit, hangover or not. Thanks, Mom.)

So Lent. Feeling pretty convicted that I was on the right track from a personal growth perspective, I decided to continue my little social experiment as a form of fasting. I gave up alcohol for Lent, and I let the party-less weekends keep piling up. Bored and lonely in the evenings, I found myself on a website I'd heard my mom talk about and ordered a couple of cassette tapes (I am seriously aging myself here, but they were like $1.00 and the CDs were $3.00) and then forgot all about it. Imagine my surprise when a manila envelope from Catholicity.com arrived on my doorstep a week later. Feeling like I was smuggling drugs, I hustled it up to my room where I locked myself in with my roommates' ghetto blaster and put in the first tape I laid my hands on: "Scott Hahn: A Protestant Minister Converts."

I must have listened to that tape 3 times that first night. I just kept hitting 'rewind' and starting it over. My roommates eventually stumbled home from the bar with a group of revelers and people were pounding down my door at 1 am, screaming for me to come out and take shots with them, and I'm lying in my bed pretending to be asleep, tears streaming down my face, listing to this Scott Hahn guy talk about becoming Catholic. And it was just too much.

Holy Week came and went that year and I'm sure I went to Easter Mass, but I don't really remember. I was coming to the end of my little experiment and still debating whether I wanted to reenter 'normal' college life or not. The past 12 weeks had certainly been more peaceful, but I was still in a lot of pain that I was no longer medicating with alcohol, and I was really lonely.

Suddenly the media started cranking out tons of stories about the Pope. John Paul II had been sick for most of my teenage years and young adulthood; I hardly remembered a time when he had been healthy. Fascinated, I watched the coverage coming out of Rome in between classes and before work. I found myself wondering about him and his suffering and racing home to check the news. On the day he died, the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, I sat rooted to my couch, tears streaming down my face and in shock. He was really gone, and the pain I felt was so inappropriately disproportionate for the relationship I had with him (I mean he was some random church leader half a world away) but so raw. I literally felt like I'd lost my own father. Blinded by tears, I left the house and started walking towards downtown. I didn't know where I was going, but it was mid afternoon and I'd been glued to the television for hours. I found myself walking towards the Catholic church north of downtown, maybe a 15 block distance from our house.

When I reached the church I hesitated outside the front door, wondering what I was doing there. I'd never been to church outside of Sunday Mass, at least not for many years, and I wondered if they even kept churches unlocked during the week. I tried the handle and it yielded.

As I made my way into the darkened sanctuary I noticed only 2 other people on the premises: an older woman wearing a headscarf, sitting near the front with her head bowed, and a guy holding camera equipment, lurking off to the side. I made my way down the center aisle and noticed an easel surrounded by candles in front of the altar. As I got closer I could see that it was an image of John Paul II, and I burst into tears. Without even realizing what I was doing, I covered the remaining distance to the altar and found myself on my knees in front of his picture, crying embarrassing, public tears. The camera guy must have smelled them, because suddenly he was right there at my side, clicking away as I knelt there before the altar, sobbing and embarrassed and so overwhelmed by a grief I couldn't understand.

When my torrent of tears had slowed to a sniffle, he gently asked whether he might ask me a few questions, holding out press credentials and identifying himself as a reporter for the local paper. Sniffling, I nodded and stammered out an explanation of JPII being like my father, my grandfather, the only pope I'd ever known…and then gave him my name and occupation. The next day my mom called crying and telling me I was in the Denver Post, and I still have a yellowing copy of the piece filed away somewhere.

After that day I knew with certainty that I couldn't go back to my old life.

Without telling any of my friends or co-workers, I applied for a transfer to Franciscan University of Steubenville, the school I'd mocked my sister for attending months earlier. 2 weeks later I was holding a  letter of acceptance in my shaking hands. The rest of the school year and that summer in between were  hard. I felt like I was living in two worlds, and I was seriously doubting my hasty, sober decision. Nevertheless, when summer came to an end, I packed up my white Kia Sephia and headed east, to a decrepit little town on the banks of the Ohio River, reeking of industrial waste and blue collar pride. And life has never been the same.

JPII, I credit you.

See you next week in Rome.