Well, it's Lent in the Cur Family household...

We've given up coffee and the like, Eli and Rhiannon have given up crappy cartoons, and Calvin's given up cigarettes and whiskey.

So, Lent puts me in a sentimental mood. Aside from the more traditional reasons, it's the lead-up to Calvin being born. I thank God it was Lent when Calvin was born, and then Holy Week right after. It made it somehow more do-able, being surrounded by those days. For a while I resented Easter for leaving me behind. I felt like it should just stay Good Friday for the rest of the year.

When I took Gosia to the hospital, the only two things I grabbed for myself on the way out were my cell phone and my rosary beads. I don't know how many decades I must have said milling around, waiting for the fifteen minute surgery that turned into a three hour surgery to be over.

the whole pregnancy I'd just had this feeling that something was coming, something was going to happen. They took Calvin out of the Surgery room first, in a life support incubator, surrounded by doctors and nurses who were using a hand pump over his mouth to manually breathe for him until they could get him upstairs to the ICU... he was so pink, he seemed alive... at least they were honest with me, though. They did tell me how bad it was.

And then waiting, and waiting. I think I just prayed the Joyful Mysteries over and over again, the Birth of Christ, over and over again.

And when i finally got to see him I was surprised there was a baby under all the wires an tubes, and his life signs were all over the place. He was constantly having seizures, nothing was stable. I remember staring at the monitor, trying to will it to be stable. Just three breaths that look like one another... and he was so pale, by then, too...

And then Gosia was out of surgery, and after running around the hospital filling out forms and paperwork, I could finally see her, and I didn't know what to tell he so I told her everything, and then we could just try and deal with it somehow. But there was this gigantic hole.

We had him baptized in the ICU as soon as we could. Our priest, Father Joseph, came to do it. One of the nurses and myself helped, and I cried through the whole thing. He received Baptism first then Anointing of the Sick second. Gosia couldn't even be there, she hadn't been able to see him yet.

Days later, the first time Gosia saw Calvin, the first time he heard her voice, he jumped. He started breathing so deeply that it set off an alarm on his machines...

But that's what Lent is for me, and I was stuck in Lent for weeks after Easter... I'd say the rosary every day when driving to the hospital, back from the hospital, and it was always the Sorrowful Mysteries. For weeks, I prayed them over and over, not out of self pity-- it just held me in there. I was able to function because of that... because of those Mysteries. It kept me balanced, in perspective. It kept me from getting swept away into fear and wailing or the like.

Then finally, after a few weeks, I was able to let go. I was forced, or moved, or forced myself to let go and say the Glorious Mysteries... and nothing changed, but there was a cycle again. Birth, Death, and Resurrection.

And Calvin did come home, and now he's going to be two soon... But Lent is this big river of memories for me. Very vivid memories. Memories I still feel like I can walk through.

So, now I guess I got something out of my system... Electronic catharsis...