Christina, Downloaded

My church asked me to do the Mother's Day homily today at two of the Masses. Here it is:

She would have turned 99 this week. Though she didn’t make it near the century mark, she lived longer than she ever expected. In her waning years, she’d wonder aloud what on earth she’d done that even the Devil wouldn’t take her.

We would joke back that she couldn’t live past December 31, 1999. You see, her tombstone was already made and planted firmly in the ground. It had been there for decades, since her husband passed away. She shared the stone with him and decided way back then to have her name etched as well: Marie Hess Conway, 1909 to 19 blank-blank.

She defied even her own grave, living well past the turn of the new century to the age of 93.

One of things I remember about my grandmother was her rosary: beads black as the darkest bit of sky in the dead of night, the texture of suede, oiled with time and countless prayers. It was made from the roses of my grandfather’s funeral, and she prayed on it every day, often twice.

Another memory I have of my grandmother is the way she would prepare an orange. She would serve it while we watched the morning cartoons. The orange would be halved down the center, each slice reamed free, dusted entirely with powdered sugar, and topped with a maraschino cherry.

After breakfast on those visits to Grandma’s house, she would take us past her towering apple tree and tree house to the garden. We would pick a basket full of ripe tomatoes to bring to her pastor at church.

After we visited him in the rectory, we would stop inside the church to make sure the flowers on the altar were arranged just so. She would also take the opportunity to scout-out the organist to introduce us to her.

Then she would take us around town, showing us off to her friends at the Ben Franklin store, the post office, the Business and Professional Women’s office where she volunteered, and to as many neighbors as she could wave down as we cruised the streets.

When evening came and her work was nearly through, we would sit on the couch to read books. She always fell asleep reading to us, and we’d show her no mercy. “Grandma! Wake up! You’re not done yet!” She’d shake off the sleep, plow through and finish the book. And when we begged for more, she’d pick up another and another and another.

This is how I remember my grandmother -- praying, serving her family, remaining faithful to her husband even in his death, serving the church and the community, and through these actions, serving God.

But this theme of self-sacrifice and working to honor God isn’t unique to my grandmother. My guess is every single mother and grandmother here today can say so for herself as well. I see it daily through her daughter-in-law, my mother. On good days, I see it in myself.

My grand entrance to motherhood four years ago involved check boxes, financial documentation, attorneys, fingerprinting, in-home visits with social workers -- all laid over a foundation of missed conceptions, hormone intervention, failed pregnancy tests and lots of questioning “why?”

There were two check boxes from the adoption that stand out in my memory: the one for race and the one for special needs.

What race would we accept into our home? Would we be willing to parent a child with special needs?

We were told there are so few families willing to adopt a child who is African American, that if we were open to having a transracial family, as they call it, the likelihood of our child being African American was 100 percent.

We searched ourselves and prayed for the answer -- not because either of us had personal prejudices -- my husband’s adopted brother is half African American and I myself come from a biracial Asian and Caucasian household. The thing is, given our backgrounds, we were too familiar with the prejudices our family could face, those spoken and those silent and withheld.

Would we be able to confront a world that viewed us as outsiders? And if we thought we could, is it something we’d choose?

Our final decision on race was that we would accept any healthy infant placed in our home, regardless of their ethnicity. But after searching deep within ourselves, we checked “no” to the box labeled special needs.

In this way, we felt buttressed, kind of like the apostles at Pentecost. We had locked ourselves in the Upper Room -- understanding we were taking a risk, preparing for an uphill battle, yet feeling safe from something that we thought was beyond our ability to handle.

Just as no lock on a door could keep tongues of fire from entering the house at Pentecost if God wanted it so, the check box on a form, we would find, would not protect us from raising a child with special needs -- if God wanted it so.

Evan was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder and ADHD at two years old by multiple practioners. When he was three, after nearly slicing off his finger tip and, in a separate incident days later, bumping his head so hard on a concrete stoop that his forehead swelled three times its size and took days to recover, we made the decision along with our team of social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and his pediatrician to medicate him.

I don’t know how many of you parents out there have had to decide between two equally lousy situations for your kids, but figuring out whether it’s better to allow your child to continue getting severely hurt and feeling scared of the world around him or determining whether to provide psychotropic medications administered off-label due to lack of testing in children so young was one bind I’d rather not had faced.

When the Holy Spirit blows through that Pentecostal door, it’s full force.

We’re in a much better place since those tough days, I’m glad to say. Evan’s medication works and we’re comfortable with it; his daily three hour therapy program does wonders; our weekly family meeting with a therapist helps; tireless research into alternative therapies continues to uncover new ways for treatment. In fact, over the past year we’ve been able to peel back these special needs so far that we are now regularly witnessing Evan’s extraordinary cognitive ability and raw physical gifts.

But Evan isn’t our only son. Through the grace of God, I was blessed, unexpectedly, with a pregnancy in 2005. In November of that year, we welcomed baby Tyler to the world.

Tyler has my husband Jonathan’s fierce independence, and my dad’s ability to let things roll off when need be. Blue-eyed, fair complected and with hair so blond you can see right through the shaft, he and his older brother are physical opposites. I call them Yin and Yang.

Tyler has a relationship with his grandparents that most people don’t get to have. He spends so much time with my mother -- so I can take Evan out to burn up energy -- that in many ways, she is a second mother to Tyler, truly a grand mother.

She puts him down for naps; bathes him; feeds him; plays with him; reads to him; sings with him; loves him; boosts his confidence and self-esteem; shows him her rosary and her altar table at home; and she teaches him about Baby Jesus.

All of which, by the way, she did for Evan when he was Tyler’s age. Only back then, my excuse for needing her help was my exhaustion from pregnancy.

Her generosity knows no limits. To this day, and practically every day since December first, my mother has repeatedly sung, listened and danced to Tyler’s favorite tune, Jingle Bells. Personally I liken it to a slow torture. But she does so gladly and with such enthusiasm. After all, it’s for her grandson.

She is equally passionate about chocolate muffins these days. Not because she likes them one way or another, but because Evan never gets enough. And no matter how much Evan’s mother tries to put the kabosh on so much sugar and junk food, his grandmother will always find a way to make sure the young lad gets what he wants. She takes such pleasure of his pleasure. And really, who can blame her?

Though I am an adult, and not asking her to play the Jingle Bells CD again or wondering where she put the chocolate muffins, believe me, I have my fair share of requests. I can always rely on my mother for help -- in a pinch, in an emergency, or just because. There is never a time she would ever turn me down for anything, regardless of what her needs may be. And for that, I am ever thankful and grateful.

I’m sure I will never even begin to know all the sacrifices my mother has made for me, for my children and for my family. But God knows, and for that, she is blessed.

Motherhood has taught me that God doesn’t grant answers, only questions. I’ve learned that the journey to an answer matters just as much, if not more, than the question itself.

Motherhood has taught me that life is a living prayer, a prayer in communion with my mother, my grandmothers, all their mothers and grandmothers before them, and with every mother -- alive or in spirit, Virgin or otherwise.
To all of them, to each one of you and yours: Happy Mother’s Day!