Alligator Girl and the Princess

There are a lot of things in their daughters' growing years that fathers need to be a part of. And, if you're like me, you shake off all middle-aged desires to sit and watch baseball on television and you take them out to see the world around them because you know that America will always have baseball, but you won't always have little girls who look up to you and want you around (I teach middle school. I know what's coming—and it's not warm and fuzzy).

Both of my girls are still young, ages seven and four, so we are still at the beginning of that long string of days that, eventually, leads to me walking them down the aisle to give each over to her future husband. I'm glad we've got awhile and that there are lots of weekends between now and then.

While it seems an enormous task to raise two confident, capable and faithful Catholic women--women who would tell the Pope to leave Avignon and get back to Rome where he belongs like St. Catherine of Siena but also follow the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux—when viewed as a whole, the good news is that much of what's required day-to-day just involves being there.

I was there this past weekend for this:

Now, this is not my four-year-old holding the smaller of two alligators let loose in the swimming pool at her five-year-old friend's birthday party. Neither is this her grabbing hold of the tail of the larger of the two alligators:

(This same tail-grabbing child, by the way, would go on to spend most of the party snuggling and kissing this gator as if it were a medium-sized dog. I have pictures of that, too, but don't post identifiable images of children on the open internet).

In fact, having relegated my daughter to the wading end of the pool because of her not yet being able to swim proficiently, I was quite pleased that she wisely got out of the pool when one of the alligators was brought to her end of it. It's what sensible people do when they see a crocodilian of any size coming their way—they actively avoid it. 

She avoided it, that is, until I started taking pictures. Then she wanted to get into my pictures and figured that touching the alligator was the only way to do it and she even held it briefly.

She's braver than her dad and I don't think this is the kind of confident and capable that I was thinking about earlier in this post. Yes, if you can't tell from the picture, the snouts of these reptiles were taped shut and the handler was close by. But, this was the kind of experience that starts a dad to reaching for his pocket knife and calculating how many stomps of his foot it would take to kill a smallish alligator if need be—all the while revulsing at the sheer scaly, sliminess of it (when you're a dad, you are chief killer of pests and dangerous animals, and handler of dead varmints. You just have to swallow hard and do it).

Of course, there were other animals that inspire primordial fear at the party, as well, chief among them the big banana python. In case you're wondering what the snuggle factor on that is, check out this picture. Fortunately, I didn't take a picture of that and my daughter stayed pretty close to the back of the gathering with me during its appearance.

Contrast this with my weekend with my seven-year-old whom I took to her first father-daughter dance. We had signed up for this when it was originally scheduled to be a Valentine's Dance but got postponed because of a low response to an Easter season event. In the end, the dance drew six daughters and dads and, while you might think that a low number, was about perfect in that each girl got lots of individual attention from the hostess.

After all had been introduced and each girl received some sparkles for her hair and face, there was some age-appropriate crafting of bracelets and necklaces; a lesson in swing dancing; a rose presentation ceremony; an opportunity for dads to write letters to their daughters and girls to make cards for their dads; a manifesto for dads to read on how important dads are to their daughters development; cupcakes and lemonade; and a fashion show/review in which the girls played dress-up and came out and performed for their dads.

My older daughter has developed two laudable skills: how to strike a pose for the camera and how to perform in public. She no sooner saw the microphone than she was singing a song of her own creation about how great fathers are. She met with a very receptive audience. She then became the MC of the show and started showcasing the talents of the other girls.

Then the hostess brought out the boa constrictors...no, not this time. This was classic father/daughter time. But, I don't doubt my seven-year-old princess would grab an alligator by the tail if, for whatever reason in the modern world, she needed to. Or, for that matter, tell the Pope to go back to Rome.

The Catholics Next Door

I don't have what it takes to be a full-time book reviewer. While I read quite quickly, I still can't finish a book in one sitting. In fact, I can't usually finish one in two or three sittings. Give me a book to read and, even if it is one in which the writing entices me from one chapter to the next, I'm going to sleep several times before I finish it. You might say that, having been raised on TV, I break my reading into "episodes."

People who review books for a living also have to read whatever is handed to them and I can't do that either. If a book doesn't hook me in the first chapter it's likely a goner, although I will sometimes bear with an author for a few chapters just so I can feel that I gave the book its due.

So it is that I now write only my third book review on Dulcius Ex Asperis, a blog that now presses boldly on into the first few days of its fifth month. That's about one book review every six weeks. Come to think of it, that's really quite a bit for me. It's not that I don't read a lot. It's that I'm more likely to read a newspaper or magazine (online or off) than a book, because there is less of an emotional investment or time commitment

But, when I read a really good book, I want to tell people about it. The first book I reviewed "Breakfast with the Pope" by Susan Vigilante caught my attention early on in the life of this blog because of the personal intensity and masterful writing of the author. Then Lino Rulli's "Sinner" made me laugh out loud before calming down and then laughing out loud again—repeatedly. I still highly recommend both.

The book that I have just finished caught me in the first chapter and enticed me through several chapters although, at the time, I couldn't have told you why. Because, while I wanted to read the book, I felt somewhat repelled by it.

The book, "The Catholics Next Door: Adventures in Imperfect Living," is the inaugural publishing effort of Greg and Jennifer Willits who host a three-hour radio show, "The Catholics Next Door", from Noon to 3:00 p.m. (US Central Time) on Sirius XM's The Catholic Channel.

Now, like many people, I'm at work during that time of the day. I sometimes catch fifteen or twenty minutes of the program when I run out for drive-through during my thirty-minute lunch. However, I listened to the Willits somewhat more in the years before their current show when they did a podcast called "The Rosary Army" on the SQPN podcasting network.

It was from that podcast that I found that they are two very faithful, married Catholics trying to lead a prayerful and holy life as they meet all of the challenges that go along with being the parents of a growing family (five children, to date). They are both talented hosts who produce an engaging show and their book is very much like their shows have been—energetic but thoughtful, entertaining yet unapologetically Catholic. The Willits have a story to tell and a message to impart and they take turns telling it until, by the end of the book, you know them and their struggles very well.

They pull no punches, nor do they present themselves as anything but the homeschooling, Natural Family Planning-practicing, Rosary-making and praying, fly-by-faith couple that they are. But, neither do they ever say that it's easy, quite the opposite. And that's probably why I seemed somewhat spiritually repelled by this book in the beginning—it just cuts too close to home.

In "Breakfast with the Pope" I journeyed into the life of Vigilante, a woman who was married and desperately wanted to have children but couldn't. She lived a very interesting life, though, getting to meet Pope John Paul II in person on more than one occasion, but felt empty all the same. I could be somewhat envious of her while at the same time feeling the pain of her lack of personal fulfillment. On the other hand, "Sinner" gave me a chance to relive, humorously, many of the moments of my own life as a single Catholic.

"The Catholics Next Door: Adventures in Imperfect Living," however, offered me no such vicarious escape into the lives of others. Instead, it took me into my own life. Well, it took me into the lives of people with whom I have much in common but who are living the Faith much better than I am. And, the last place I would consciously go to in literary escape is my own life lived better by someone else.

Now, don't get me wrong. You will not once in this book find Greg and Jennifer holding themselves or their family up as the example of the perfect domestic church. They talk freely about how it really wasn't their intention to be much more than nominal Christians early on in their marriage and how coming to God was, for both of them, a slow turning. They tell of their struggles with practicing the faith in relation to the Sacraments as individuals, practicing NFP as a couple, homeschooling their children—one autistic and one with Asperger's—during critical stages of development, and running a successful ministry that they never quite tell us how they find the time for (they may not be sure themselves).

I've witnessed, at times, women becoming resentful of that one mother who seems to have it all together, the one most likely to have the big red "S" on her blue SuperMom uniform and who, they think, makes them look like lesser moms. I have frequently wondered why women would compare themselves to each other that way. I got a taste of that feeling, though, when I read this book and started thinking things like "And I think I have no time!" and "Wow, they do so much!" and "They just left it to God!"

Of course, they had no such intention in writing the book and as I came to the last few chapters, I realized why I had been so drawn to it. Greg and Jennifer are about four years younger than I am but they have been married fifteen years, about five years longer than I have. And, they have a lot to teach those of us who either haven't been married as long or who have yet to marry. God didn't draw me to this book for vicarious entertainment, no matter how holy. God drew me to this book as a challenge to live a better Catholic life—and maybe also to be a little less of a complainer when life throws me the rather mild challenges, by comparison, that it has.

This book is aimed at a general audience and I recommend it as good reading for everyone. But, the people who really need to read it are young married couples and those who are contemplating marriage in Engaged Encounter or other marriage prep programs. At just 160 pages, "The Catholics Next Door: Adventures in Imperfect Living" offers a very readable guide for the the first fifteen years of marriage. Engaged couples or young marrieds will find good role models in Greg and Jennifer Willits who will show them not perfection, but that imperfect people can have marriages that are made holy by God's grace.

As I look back on this book and on "Sinner" and "Breakfast with the Pope," I can't help but think they form, if not a trilogy, a set. All three answer the question "What happened to the John Paul II Generation (the generation of young Catholics who came of age during the long reign of JPII) after the great pope died?"  They kept the Faith. And, in one way or another, they spread it around the world. "The Catholics Next Door: Adventures in Imperfect Living" is a worthy addition to that evangelization.