When reading my mom’s blog a couple of days ago, I saw a meditation she had written in her blog about 10 years ago, and I remember us discussing it the next day when I visited her. This Gospel brought that memory back for me, so I thought I would share it. Again, I apologize to my mom for editing her post for simple grammatical errors, but the “meat” of the meditation is still there.
A little bit of explanation for any readers who don’t pray the Rosary or know how it is prayed properly: The prayer is divided into 20 “Mysteries”, or episodes in the life of Jesus and His mother that we meditate upon while saying 10 Hail Marys. Sometimes the meditations are simple, while other times they can be quite deep and personal reflections on our own lives, as Mom did here.
‘I was in my room saying my Rosary and came to the Nativity Mystery [The 3rd Joyful Mystery]. Then I got to thinking, “Here the God of Gods & Lord of Lords was born in a cave because there was no room for Mary and Joseph at the Inn!” And then I was thinking how I never really had a "grand" house, but I never had to live in a cave; yet my Lord came to earth as an infant in a cave, or barn where animals were kept! When I had my first "knowledge" of a house, it was in Wawawai, Washington and I must have been two or three. This house, even though it was a farmhouse, had ten rooms. It was a two-story building and to me, it seemed to be spread out. On the ground floor were two bedrooms, a large living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. The bathroom was outside in a small building with a crescent moon on the door. The top story had three big bedrooms which were off a hall and then over the dining room and kitchen was quite a large room that was used for storage of things like our winter supply of flour, sugar, dried beans, rice, and more. There was no plumbing or electricity, and the stoves for cooking and heating were wood burning. An aunt and uncle lived there, too. They had one boy at the time and my father and uncle had purchased the house together. My uncle passed away and somehow or another Dad lost his "half" of the house. I then remember living in Everett, Washington in a two-story but smaller house. My mother's father and mother lived with us [she could have just written, “My maternal grandparents”, but that’s my mom!], and a cousin of mine who was older and working at the time shared one bedroom with a co-worker and they paid rent for the room. We had a couch that folded down and made a bed in the dining for some of us. Of course there we did have electricity and indoor plumbing. One night a young 17-year-old boy in our area was setting fires and everyone was evacuated at that time for several hours. Now whether that was the reason or not, we moved out into the country again to Beverly Park, Washington. Again, we were pretty well crowded in a small house, and again my grandparents were us. By this time there were five children in the family, and my brother Gerald was born there. We heard from my aunt in Wawawai that Dad could have the big house again, as she was deeply in debt and could not pay the bank payments on the house. We returned; and this was really at the start of the Depression. Mom and Dad had one more child while living there, and then the bank took over the house. Another aunt of mine had a small house adjoining this property, and so she let us move into that. It had one bedroom, a living room, and of course the usual outdoor toilet. My father built a large room at the back of the house and most of us children slept there, the boys on one side of the room with a curtain down the middle; and since there was three of us girls and four boys, the boys got the bigger half. I was in the eighth grade while we still lived there and Barbara, the last of the girls, was born while we lived there. I went away to Spokane and boarded my first year of high school and then my aunt had to get someone in her house to pay rent or lose it. So by this time my maternal grandmother had died, and my grandfather was living in the family "homestead" with my Aunt Josie. They told us to come to Couer d' Alene, Idaho and move in with them. This was O.K. with me because there was a Catholic high school there and a Catholic grammar school, which delighted Mother and Dad. This house was another small place; two bedrooms, living room, dining room and a kitchen. So Dad built a bedroom on the front porch for he and Mother and walled it off from the dining room. Then he built a murphy bed in the living room for us older two girls. My Aunt Jo took one of the children with her in her bed and my grandfather had one of the boys with him in his bed. Now this still left a few children with no beds, so with a small bed in their (porch) room they took the youngest, and then in the back yard we had a big woodshed where Dad finished off a nice room for the bigger boys. They had a kerosene heater for heat, and he put a window in the room for light that could also be opened for air in the summer. They had electricity out there. And actually, if I remember right, it looked quite comfy! We lived there until after Genevieve and I graduated from high school and Mother had two more boys. Then Dad got a job in California. It was there that we lived in the tent houses and then a rough lumber house from which I was married. Some of these places were palaces compared to some of the places I lived after I was married! Even so, all of these places were roofs over our heads, and we were warm and well-fed; AND NOT A STABLE WITH THE WARM BREATH OF ANIMALS FOR HEAT!’
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