Old-fashioned

I’ve always been old-fashioned.

I have a natural dislike — distaste, even — for gadgets, although because I have young children, I have many gadgets. But I am not one to “sync” them all together. I am more prone to find displeasure in the idea of gadgets being able to be more than one thing: a music player, a phone, a camera, a calendar, an alarm, a way of writing love letters. It seems wrong, my heart says. I find more comfort in having one thing just be one thing. I deplore it when students whip out their cell phones to write down their assignments. How even more alarming when they take pictures of my notes and ask me to pose beside my blackboard! Even here I am most old-fashioned, preferring blackboard and chalk to PowerPoint presentations.

Waiting in line at the grocery, dentist, doctor or NSO, there is always a book in my bag. This explains why my bag is always a bit larger than usual. Because of course, if I need to write, which is always, I need a pen and paper. And I cannot write on these small, fashionable notebooks, either. The children laugh at their old-fashioned mother. Sometimes, and only sometimes, if I am caught unprepared and by some chance I am forced to wait in line and I have no book, I pass the time — suddenly I am afraid to admit this — praying.

Clears the throat. Yes, praying. And what could be more old-fashioned than that?

Perhaps it is habit. Growing up, our lives were punctuated with prayer. In those olden days, we’d travel to Zambales at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m., my father synching our travel so that we’d arrive at our sunny seaside retreat just as the sun rose. My feelings were complex, even then. A part of me was angered at the inconvenience of the time of departure. It would be hard to sleep because of excitement and by the time one had fallen asleep, it would be time to wake up, resulting in the most terrible grogginess. But there was that joy too when we just decided to not sleep and wait for 3 a.m. to unfurl and climb into our car in that strange mix of sleepiness and wakefulness, almost dreamlike state, and simply wake up by the sea.

All our trips began with the Rosary, my mother’s incantation like a balm. We’d end with, “Please grant us a safe and happy trip.” In those years when the roads to the north were being done, we’d have to pray the Rosary more than once, my fingers counting the 10 beads automatically, in and out of responses, the lips automatically mouthing the words with no real effort. It amazes me to realize now that we had no expectations of being entertained while traveling. No iPods, no games one could play on a lap, no DVD player at the back of chairs, not even a cassette player. My mother humming some Brahms or Beethoven, or all six of us singing songs from The Sound of Music or South Pacific, screaming with all our hearts: “Love is a grand and a beautiful thing!”

We entertained ourselves the old fashioned way — and if singing and counting cows/ducks/sheep/trees/birds/yellow cars wouldn’t work, there was always teasing each other. Somehow all those hours would flit away and I suspect that the sunrise that would greet us at the end of this travel was the most entertaining thing of all. It was the summit of all our endeavors.

On more regular trips as children, on the way home, we’d recite the Rosary, too. As I got older, the ritual became more difficult, too. At some point, one child had to lead the Rosary. Being the youngest and the last to remain in the nest, that would always be me. Thus I find myself praying the Rosary at such times then — while in line, while in the car, when I see the sun, when I need to mull something over, when there are no other words to say.

I wonder if praying is still fashionable these days; or even if it is wise to talk about prayer? I guess we presume prayer to be so private and so secret that it does not come up in our conversations. In conversations, we are not apt to ask, “How is your prayer life? Your spirituality?” We don’t talk about prayer just as we don’t talk about sex. And because I like to jump to conclusions, perhaps that is why we cannot think of sex as something spiritual. But that’s for another column.

One of the earliest things I taught the children was how to pray and will say I have not been as consistent with that in contrast to my almost maniacal training of them as readers. I’m the type to scold them for not reading but for not praying? There is no possible punishment. After all, the punishment itself is terrible: the lack of an interior life, of an acknowledgment of a greater force out there.

It’s hard to talk about prayer with them too, as they have learned to be critical of the Church. They are aware of the complex world around them — a victory for their soul and our parenting but their youth hinders them from being able to live with gray matter. They have gay people in their lives and cannot comprehend how they are forbidden from the fruits of happiness, primarily romantic love. They cannot fathom incongruities in their most stark manifestations and they are tired of my explanations of mystery.

So I have come to explain prayer as many other things, aided by description and illustration, rather than dogma. Poetry and the gardens that surround our home seem to be more fitting metaphors for god (yes, small “g”). I talk about that isolation of core that one can find in the middle of one’s body, right near the lump in your throat or sometimes in the pit of your tummy. It’s a place you can’t locate but know for sure exists. I talk about the navel and how it looks like the Milky Way — how it is origin and connection — its gift about being both connected and disconnected. It’s that part of you that sometimes wants to cry when you are moved by something so private it cannot be shared. It is the solitary part of you that needs “something more” and somehow never gets filled. That place is sacred place — and you must visit that special place and have special rituals that affirm that space.

The children nod, half enthralled, half convinced that they are right and I am crazy. On days they catch me looking far away and they ask where I am; I say, “I am praying.” In my daughter’s room, a poster she made herself is taped to her mirror: “Don’t forget to pray tonight.” I am glad that she is interested in this old, old practice.

Every year, I am blessed enough to teach young men who are in the process of becoming priests. In the years since teaching them has been part of my load, the number of young men joining the priesthood has dwindled, too. Last year, I had four of these young men. This year, I only have three. In the beginning of every semester, I tease them about how unfashionable their life choice is.” Priesthood? A life of prayer? “The horrors,” I say. “There’s no future in that. It’s so old-fashioned!”

Ed, one of my new students, cocks his head to the right and says: “Praying is like talking to an old friend. What’s old-fashioned about that?”