On frogs and other matters
Mr. Tldz and I woke up yesterday morning inexplicably exhausted. We don’t know why. We hadn’t gone to bed late. But anyway, we were thrown off our normal schedule and didn’t get to Mass. So we had a more leisurely breakfast than normal, and then swung into high gear getting the house cleaned up for the open house before we left for our “exile.”
First, we delivered a meal to a couple from church who just had a baby girl a couple of weeks ago. They happened to be one of the presenting couples on our Engaged Encounter weekend. Then we went and visited J^3, an older couple from our church. He, Dr. J., was a longtime biology professor at UK-Lexington, an anomaly in that environment as a staunch pro-lifer. They moved here a few years ago because one of their daughters lives here, and her oldest of 3 children has pretty significant special needs; so they moved down in retirement in order to be able to help. Mrs. J. has been involved with the pro-life committee a little bit, but Dr. J. is in rather poor health, and I think it has declined rather precipitously since they’ve moved here. He’s now confined to a wheel chair, so they don’t get out very much, and hadn’t really been here long enough before his health took a turn to establish a big social network. (Unfortunately, our parish is not very good at welcoming in these sorts of situations.) So they feel some sense of isolation. Finally, in February, we managed to take a meal over to share with them. And it has worked out nicely, because we’ve been able to go over there both times we’ve had Sunday afternoon open houses. Those are scheduled from 2-4 — prime Agent Murphy nap time. Fortunately, J^3 have a nursery set up for their grandkids. (One of the three here in town is just a few months older than Agent Murphy.) So Agent Murphy has a place to nap during the open house and we have a chance to visit.
They are neat folks who’ve lived an interesting life. They are devout Catholics and have experienced a number of parishes, including helping to grow a Newman Center. Dr. J., because of his field of study and experiences trying to convey information about human life to students over a long number of years, has noteworthy insights into the pro-life movement. He survived great evil and tragedy (as in concentration camp) as a child and came to the U.S. at the age of 11 or 12 to be raised by, I believe, a great-uncle. I guess one sentence from yesterday’s conversation sums up: “When we were returning from Switzerland in the ’70s with a suitcase full of cloned frogs…” My response to that: “Now not many people can say that!” We enjoy their company, and I believe they enjoy ours. We’ll need to make a point, sometime in the next few weeks, of going over to visit “just because” at a time when Agent Murphy can be up and about and get to know them better.
Unfortunately, we had no activity at the open house. Will have to discuss ideas with our realtor this week, because we’ve had absolutely no activity since the last open house 2 weeks ago. But we had a lovely afternoon. We stayed with J^3 longer than we planned, so we didn’t keep to our cooking schedule and ended up going to JR’s for barbecue last night. Another lovely touch to the day. But Mommy forgot to bring Agent Murphy’s sippy cup, and I’m not sure how to go about teaching him how to drink from a straw. We tried last night, but he ended up having to wait until we got home to drink his milk.