monthly musings vol. 19
the birthday edition: archangels, recognizing the melody, and the threads of Fate
Hi, I’m Katie, a writer and podcaster and I believe that literature, art, beauty, theology, and wonder are worth our time and attention. Every month I do some ‘musings’ on various topics on my mind… like whether or not it is good to exist or the gift of mornings or conversion anniversaries. I also share some links to thought-provoking writing going on around the web. This edition is free for you to read, but took time and research to write - consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work I do.
I’m sitting here in a room dominated by reverse nesting. There’s piles of laundry, paperwork to be organized, drawers ajar, and quite a few checklists. I say reverse nesting because I’m not really nesting - I’m ‘flying the coop.’ In just a few days I’m heading to Ireland on pilgrimage with
and some other lovely folks to explore the saint scattered hills and distilleries and libraries of this ancient, wild place.Ireland is one of my heart homes, right alongside the Scottish Highlands and the City of Dreaming Spires. Ever since I was a child Ireland was the place where magic still lived, where faeries howled at night and St. Patrick debated Oisin and the selkies sang deep in the waters. It’s been a decade now since my husband and I left for Ireland on a post-college graduation ramble, getting lost and found on the Ulster Way. A decade since - a decade since my mother died, a decade since I graduated from college, a decade since I felt so young and so unprepared and so excited. Who knew what would come next?
Now the roots are sinking, winding their way into specific patches of Earth, nestled closely among my own family - family we’ve created, two little girls, a home, a warm place with tea and books and coffee on a rainy day.
The air is shifting though. I feel change afoot, another page turning. Like Mary Poppins, I look up and see the weather vane spinning - Until the wind changes.
The wind is changing.
You’ll read this on my birthday - September 30th - the feast of St. Jerome, the sharp-tongued patron saint of librarians and bookish souls. But I’m writing this on the Feast of the Archangels, formerly the Feast of St. Michael (poor St. Raphael and St. Gabriel now have to share in the New Calendar). Michealmas, a term my Oxford friends will recognize - the beginning of the autumn academic term. Everyone knows I love new school year energy. I feel the heightened anticipation of shifting, opening possibility. And on this feast of angels I think of St. Raphael (my personal favorite)1 and the prayer Flannery O’Connor prayed everyday —
"O Raphael, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us: Raphael, Angel of happy meeting, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for.”
Sometimes I think of the possibilities that now seem inevitabilities. The little doors and windows of fate that had to open or shut at just the right moment for the rest of my life to spin out the way it has - the Three Sisters of Greek Mythology winding the web of my days. The class that had to be full so I could end up in my second choice freshman seminar, sitting next to my future husband. The disease that didn’t stay in remission and would ultimately take my mother’s life. The day I wandered into the Baltimore Basilica on an aimless walk. The day I ran into my best friend on the slide when I was four years old. When I chose my specific graduate program over the other technically more prestigious programs up north.
What if I had gotten the first choice for my seminar, or my mother’s cancer hadn’t returned, or I hadn’t taken that route by the Basilica through Mt. Vernon on a sunny fall afternoon? What if my friend had chosen the swings instead of the slide, what if I had gone for the theology degree I had originally intended? Some were choices I held in my hands, many others the drifts and turns of fate, and they all could have altered a thousand and one moments. I wouldn’t be me, and my children wouldn’t be them (or possibly even exist at all). Perhaps my close friends wouldn’t be who I know them to be. We ebb and flow against each other whether we like it or not. Our lives make inevitable, unalterable marks on the world, and the people, around us.
Toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us.
There are two brilliant Doctor Who episodes that illustrate this point well. In one, Father’s Day, Rose Tyler travels back in time to do what many of us would do: save someone we love from dying. But when she saves her father she rips open a crack in the Universe, chaos and confusion enter, swallowing others whole. There was an inevitability to that car hitting him and she had extended a thread meant to be cut. The episode deals with death and fate and love in such poignant ways. The other episode is called Turn Left, when Donna Noble’s seemingly inconsequential decision to turn right or turn left at a stop sign ends up altering the course of history, and ultimately changing the fate of the world. The Butterfly Effect and all that.
It’s enough to get you lost in a loop. What if, what if? So I feel a little on shaky ground, held here by so many moments and chances and choices that seemed beyond my control at the time. Perhaps they were. And perhaps they always would be and also never would be.
I have been thinking these things because birthdays and Time and all that, and also because my older daughter loves to pretend to be ‘Katie Dreyer.’ That’s my maiden name. It’s a name that hasn’t been mine in nearly eight years and it feels a little like an old, familiar sweater that you have nonetheless grown out of. We helped to move my Dad (across the lane! hi neighbor!) this summer and as we went through boxes from my old room I got to see glimpses of that former me. The stuffed animals and the journals and the collection of Breyer horses, the drawings and the schoolwork and the photo albums that made up the life of a young girl once upon a time. Who was she? Is she still here?
Sometimes I recognize her, but often she seems abstract and distant from who I am now. Milan Kundera once wrote how everyone’s life has an underlying melody. You can change the individual notes, maybe even attempt a key change, but the melody remains the same. C.S. Lewis wrote similarly when he wrote of those things you love that pierce your heart with the Longing he would call Joy. For him he found the same painful delight in the stories of the Norse Gods as he ultimately found in the salvific Story of Christianity. In other words, he recognized the melody.
So I think of the me that was new at school and carried around a 900 page book so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone on the bus. I still have that in me, when I feel scared. (And I do still always have a book in my bag). But I also think of the upside of that self, the self that wasn’t sacred, but simply so lost in King Arthur and Morganne le Faye and Guinevere and Lancelot that the foibles and downswings of teenage life could only skim the surface. The books and stories kept me rooted in something deeper and more real than the cliques in a lunchroom.
And this Spring when I found myself pouring through Icelandic sagas and thinking on northern, icy places, I felt the rumbling inside me of that magic and that childhood self that has kept me safe and dreaming and in awe of the adventure of my life. I know this Song, I thought.
So here I am, 33 years old, and stumbling back - but also forwards - into a melody both known and forgotten, remembered and discovered. This morning when folding laundry, a joyful Irish tune called The Queen’s Polka came up on the playlist and my girls immediately stepped into a jig, completely naturally. As I danced my way through folding clothes with two little girls at my feet, I thought how this same delight, this same joy in the fiddle and the hum of story and song that enchanted me as a child, was also right here, extraordinarily present and consistent in my life today.
So! To end on a cliche, some things change, some things stay the same. I am truly grateful for another year. My wish on my birthday last year was for ‘a steady posture of the heart’ which I actually think I am moving toward. This was a year of incredible flux, swells of change, heaves of anxiety, and now it seems… a safe landing. For the moment. I take nothing for granted and only try the old breathing in and out, listening (as Sylvia Plath put it) “to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
and what a thing it is To Be. I am, I am, I am. Deo gratias!
And now… Onto the links! (you thought there couldn’t possibly be more right!? Rambling has also remained consistent…)
A much needed piece from
: “On ritual”“I’ve long felt that modern motherhood in particular is devoid of proper ritual, especially the entrance into it. We have rituals, alright: experiences that are culturally a rite of passage for mothers. But they’re not proper. They’re not in accordance with the power, the substance, the massive responsibility of motherhood.”
-
“Only a machine can totally eliminate dead time, and as much as politicians, bosses, and technocrats may try to kid themselves (and their workforce), we are, and always will be, humans. Not machines. Dead time is part of our humanity.”
“It's Easy to Be Smug When Things Are Going Well” by
(officially one my favorite Substack writers, you need to follow her!)The ode to Anne we all need: “Hope is a girl called carrots” by
“The lost art of waiting” from
"Parents should ignore their children more often” from The New York Times
“The modern style of parenting is not just exhausting for adults; it is also based on assumptions about what children need to thrive that are not supported by evidence from our evolutionary past. For most of human history, people had lots of kids, and children hung out in intergenerational social groups in which they were not heavily supervised. Your average benign-neglect day care is probably closer to the historical experience of child care than that of a kid who spends the day alone with a doting parent.”
(would love thoughts on this one!)
I sent this episode to a bunch of Mom friends because it’s just so darn encouraging and validating. Skip to around minute 53. Mom Fatigue / The Jen Fulwiler Show
On a Jen Fulwiler note, if you’re Catholic (and even if you’re not) and need a laugh, here you go. The Pastor Cody line really gets me.
I love the Icelandic sagas, use Icelandic lava salt as a staple in my cooking, I now have an Icelandic horse and I’ve still never been to Iceland!!! I don’t knit but after reading this I want to. Looking for a New Way to See Iceland? Bring Your Knitting Needles.
Only
could make a panned cook review (get my cooking pun?) so readable and good!Just every single line in this brilliant essay by
: How Supplements, Chiropractor Appointments and Boundaries Will Fix Your Life
That’s all I’ve got folks. And because it’s my birthday I’m offering 10% off if you sign up for a paid subscription for a year (and paid subscribers you’ll be getting a jam-packed October with two author profiles and two character essays to make up for this month!).
I also temporarily unlocked for all this recent paid-subscriber only essay on Friends and why you love it -
“Friends aired in 1994, smack-dab in the middle of the turbulent 90s. Like most 90s kids I have pretty idealized memories of my analog childhood, jamming to Smash Mouth, eating Gushers, watching Scooby Doo, emulating some early Avril Lavigne fashion a la Sk8ter boy. But in truth the 90s was a time of rapid change — divorce was at a highpoint, there was a stark rise in only-children, and people started to move far away from their families. The bond of blood and place that held communities together for centuries began to crumble. This was modernity - we had CD players, TiVO, Nintendo! We had apartments in New York City and waved a half hearted goodbye to families of origin, ready to make our mark in this big, wild ‘material girl world.’
But human nature is deceptively and stubbornly consistent. At our core, we’re social animals, primed to create family-based groups and tribes where we find meaning, purpose, protection, and support. The 1990s 20-something may have been released from the nagging relatives and gossip at the local watering hole, but they still sought that same sense of familiarity, place, and relationship in their new (mostly urban) locales.”
But really, the biggest birthday gift you could give me is saying a prayer for the pilgrims joining us in Ireland. I am nervous and excited and still won’t believe it’s happening until I get on the plane. I am so grateful to
for jumping on board to do this with me. She has been an amazingly supportive and helpful co-leader already and also had to learn the hard way that I am addicted to making Google Docs. She had to say to me at one point, ‘Katie, it’s a Saturday, go relax!’ I think those workaholic genes do make their appearance sometimes. So thanks to Christy for keeping me calm and sane (even as she was in the midst of LITERALLY PACKING HER ENTIRE HOUSE). Amazing.And if you would, please also offer prayers of gratitude and strength for my husband and my mother-in-law who are making this once-in-a-lifetime type trip possible for me in a busy season of small children! Seriously, THANK YOU to my brilliant, loving, supportive family. None of this is feasible without you.
Wishing you joy, peace, and the changing leaves of October to come…
Slainte! I will toast to you all with a Guinness later this week!
x Katie
Listen to Born of Wonder the podcast
Email me anytime: marquettekatie@gmail.com
Listen to the Born of Wonder episode: St.Raphael and the Archangels
Happy birthday, Katie!! I had never heard that idea of an "underlying melody" to life before, but it really resonates with me, especially as I've been feeling a bit blown off course recently. Searching for the notes that I know sounds like a beautiful and accessible way of discerning where to go next. Thanks so much for framing this in such a lovely, thoughtful way!
That bit about ignoring your children more rings true. Although I will say, I notice more of the "doting parent" vibe from people who only have one, maybe two children. We had three within three years and I feel like they get a TON of benign neglect out of sheer necessity. So a lot of it comes down to how many children one has and how they approach parenting. I know some people from church who have one or two young kids and do all sorts of lessons and stuff and I feel like a neglectful parent in comparison. lol But again, a lot of this comes down to capacity based on ages and numbers of children (and what you think they even need).
I will always be team Benign Neglect--in proper ways--for at-home parents! The alternative seems exhausting, and it surely doesn't describe all at-home parents. (I think my mother-in-law thought that's what my life was like with our three boys, as she did not stay home really at all.... but has been in for a shock whenever they visit. A lot of it is taking care of basic needs, outdoor free play alone or with friends, reading, or helping with household chores. That's it. There's already so much testosterone energy, I'm not making it harder than it needs to be, and they get to learn I am a person too. haha)
Another point about daycare that Mary Harrington has made (I think it's behind a paywall now!) is that there is a huge element of safety-ism out of bureacratic necesssity. Workers are over-cautious about letting kids do much risky play because, well, they'd have to fill out all the forms and do all the communicating about it, and don't want to look bad. Meanwhile, a parent with a child at home is able to allow much more risky play and give much more space for physical bumps and bruises, because well, you're the parent and aren't responsible for someone else's kid. You are the first line of accountability and comfort. Harrington equates this safety-ism of institutional care with the rise of some level of risk-aversion in adults and young people who spent most of their formative years under the eye of people whose priority for them was absolute safety. I think about that a lot as my boys get to do all sorts of stupid experiments and physical stuff outside that they would *never* be able to elsewhere. But it's good for them.