Author: simchajfisher

Dear Simcha, Vol. 1

Happy Thanksgiving!  I know that many of you are very busy and/or really depressed today.  Some of you are alone, and many, many more of you desperately wish that you were.  So, rather than tax you with a challenging or insightful essay, I thought I’d take this opportunity to clean up my inbox and answer a few of the questions that people have asked me recently.

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Dear Simcha,

By this time of day, I’m supposed to be basting the turkey for the fifth or sixth time so it will be golden and delicious in time for our Thanksgiving feast.  But I haven’t even defrosted it yet, because I spent all of yesterday watching Benny Hill and drinking the rum I bought to make rum raisin bread pudding.  (I also ate all the raisins, which is a separate problem.)  So now I have eleven guests coming in a matter of hours, and all I have to offer them is 22 pounds of solid turkey ice.  I can’t even get the bag off.  I think I may still actually be drunk.  I’m so ashamed.  What can I do?

Signed, Filled With Regret

Dear Filled With Regret,

Lucky for you, I’m an avid historian, so I can save your sorry hide with my expertise!  It’s a little known fact that turkeys aren’t even an authentic Thanksgiving main course, so it’s actually quite acceptable to serve something else.  Forget that boring old bird.  Instead, call yourself a purist and dish up what the original Pilgrims probably had for their main course:  a couple of juicy wild eagles.  If no eagles are available, swan is an acceptable substitute.  Just don’t forget the traditional eel-and-poopberry compote for a side dish.  And they drank hot tar from wooden cups.  Hope this helps, and bon appétit!  Or should I say (since French had not yet been invented in Pilgrim times), Huzzah!

***

Dear Simcha,

I’m eleven months old.  My mother is fairly useful, and I’ve gotten accustomed to her smell.  She can even be kind of funny sometimes, like with that noise she makes when I grab her lips and twist them around. But she has one really bad habit, and I don’t know if I can tolerate it anymore.

Sometimes, when I’m awake, she puts me down.  On the floor.  For minutes at a time.  She does this even though she knows perfectly well that the floor is a completely inappropriate and demeaning location for someone of my social standing (I basically run the household).  Also, it’s harder to bite her nose when she’s not holding me.  I’m at my wit’s end.  What do you suggest?

P.S.   Also, she sometimes tries to put socks on me.  Socks, in November!  How am I supposed to deal with this level of idiocy?

Signed, Benedicta

Dear Benedicta,

The main thing you need to keep in mind is that your mother really loves you and is trying her best, but that, because of the demands of her current schedule, she has the physical prowess and mental acuity of a damp Kleenex.  She knows, deep in her heart, that putting you down is the wrong thing to do, but she feels that she can’t help herself.

What she needs is someone to help snap her out of her pathetic, self-pitying state.  Have you tried screaming?  If that doesn’t work, have you tried screaming more?  I really think you should try screaming, followed by some more screaming.  Good luck!

P.S.  Don’t forget that thing you do, where you put your little head down and then look up with your big, brown eyes.  Once she reassembles herself from the puddle she instantly becomes when she meets your gaze, she will want to pick you up, because you are a cutie wootie wootie, oh yes you are, and Mama loves you very much, oh yes she does.

***

Dear Simcha,

We’re having relatives over for Thanksgiving.  We are polar opposites on just about every issue, and every other year, the feast quickly devolved into a screaming match, and everyone went home furious.  Grandmama has convinced us to patch things up and get together again this year.  We’ve already agreed not to talk about politics, but there are so many other divisive topics of conversation.  How can I be sure that we will have a peaceful and pleasant day?

Signed,
William Makepeace Crackery

Dear Bill,

Don’t underestimate the healing properties of just the right menu.  Here are a few recipes that might just do the trick, and will give you the happy, quiet holiday your battered soul needs.

***

Hey –

Leaving the office in a few minutes.  Will meet you at Mom’s.  Thanks for making all eleven kinds of pie.  It’s so much easier to choose which one I want when I can actually see them, you know?  Oh, some guy was selling puppies out of his trunk, so I picked up a few.  You’re so good with words — you can name the one with bowel problems.  See you soon!

love, D

Dear D,

>>The following address has permanent fatal errors:  simchafisher@gmail.com
(reason: 540 OY-001 (FEH0-GRR4-FU23)
In order to avoid being placed on a permanent block list, please reconfigure your message so that it includes no puppies, and more gin.

[This post originally ran at the National Catholic Register in 2012.]

This post is not about Bill Cosby.

If you want to talk about Bill Cosby (or Bill Clinton, or Woody Allen, or Roman Polanski) please find a conversation somewhere else. This post is about what you are supposed to do if you’ve been raped. What’s the next step?

Reading comments by self-identified Catholic conservatives in the last few days, this is what I have learned . . .

Read the rest at the Register.

Go forth and get Me butter, says the Lord.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. She wanted—no, needed—everything to be perfect. She planned and prepped for days, chopping vegetables, rolling dough, scrubbing baseboards, and counting silverware. On the day of the feast, she was up with the sun, full of determination and manic good cheer.

As the day wore on, the good cheer waned and the manic levels rose. Pots boiled over and were turned down; ovens smoked and windows were opened. The clock ticked, and little by little, the meal started to come together. The guests would be there in a matter of hours. Could she pull off the perfect day? She really thought she could.

Then, suddenly: calamity. She ran out of butter! Real butter, creamy and fat, the fuel that makes the Thanksgiving engine run. She had to have some. She shrieked for her husband and sent him out to the store, with instructions to come back as quickly as he could with at least two pounds of butter.

Off he went. And he didn’t come back, and he didn’t come back. She grew more and more frantic and considered her options. She could cook without butter. No, impossible. She could just explain things to the guests. Unthinkable. She could burn the house down and move to Guadalajara. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Just as she began to search for her passport, her husband’s car screeched into the driveway. He was home, home with the butter! Hallelujah, the day was saved!

With trembling fingers, she snatched open the bag . . . and then fell back, the words of thanks dying in her throat. She croaked. She gabbled. She gaped.

There on the table was a three-pound tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!

“Boy, the stores were crowded!” her husband said. ”I guess everyone was shopping for Thanksgiving. But I knew you would like this, because you just wanted two pounds of butter, and this is three!”

What the young woman replied, I cannot record here. But she did point out to her husband, possibly dozens of times, that, “It says right on the package that IT’S NOT BUTTER.”

Well, Thanksgiving happened anyway. The food was hot and bountiful, the guests were jovial, and if anyone noticed that the butter was not butter, no one mentioned it. It was a good Thanksgiving.

You may think I’m going to wrap this story up with a moral about how we ought to be thankful for the best efforts of our loved ones, and that what really matters in the end is family, peace, joy, harmony, and good intentions.

But, no. What I’m thinking is, “Seriously, it said, ‘IT’S NOT BUTTER’ right on the package. Right on there! And he brought it home anyway!”

Know who that reminds me of? Me. Not on Thanksgiving, but every week, every day. Every time I go to Mass, the last thing I hear is, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” God is telling us, “Look, you have one job. One job. Go and serve me.”

And I say, “Amen, Boss!” and off I go.

And then what do I do? I come back with a giant tub of “I Can’t Believe I’m Not Serving God!” And I jog back into his temple, all hopeful and proud with my ridiculous little package clutched under my arm, and I say, “See? Look what I found for you! Good, huh? Just what you asked for, right?”

It’s not what he asked for. It’s a substitute. It says right on the package that it’s not what he wants. And God opens the package, and he says…

“Close enough. Come on in, thou good enough, faithful enough servant. Come on in to the feast I have prepared for you. Sit down with your family in the home of your Father, and let us have a meal together.”

And that, my friends, is why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Not because we have it all together, not because things turned out perfectly, not because we never disappoint each other, or because we always please God. We celebrate Thanksgiving because God loves us even when we fail—especially when we fail.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love is everlasting.

***

[This article originally ran in Catholic Digest in 2013.]

Knock-knock. Who’s there? Bad Mama.

PIC Jesus knocking at door

Sound at the door: Shuffling, muffled sobbing, incompetent doorknob rattling; cries of, “Mama, Ma-maaaaaa.”

Bad Mama: Buuuuut it’s supposed to be my turn to sleep in.

Good Mama: But you’re her mother, her only mother, and they grow up so fast!

Bad Mama: I don’t think it’s going to kill her to go sit on the couch for a few minutes.

Good Mama: But remember the Gospel reading! Whatever you do for the least of my little ones  . . . so, wouldn’t you get up if it was Jesus knocking at the door? Wouldn’t you let Him in?

Jesus: Yeah, come on, sheesh.

Bad Mama: Well, Jesus, maybe You should learn how to work the damn doorknob already.

 

Yeah, yeah, I got up.

Update from Nicole G.

A few weeks ago, I posted about a GoFundMe appeal for Nicole G. I took that post down a few days later. Here is an update from Nicole, which explains why I took it down, and updates us on her family’s situation. 

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I asked Simcha to remove her blog article about our family because it was very searchable via Google. I wasn’t worried about my estranged husband finding it. My 12 year old daughter, for some unexplainable reason, googled my name. She found Simcha’s article and the Go Fund Me page and found out the real reason her dad left our home. Up until then, only my oldest daughter who is almost 17, was the only one of my 6 kids who knew. She actually had an inkling about what was going on before I did, probably because I was in denial. My 12 year old was distraught and has spoken about it with her counselor twice since finding out and is coping better. She still has a lot of feelings to work through and is very angry with her dad. I want their relationship to be repaired, as I feel it’s important for my kids to have their dad in their lives, even with the issues he is dealing with. He definitely needs prayer also, that he gets his life together and gets right with God.

Surgery update. I had my first surgery on November 13th. The surgeon removed my right ovary & fallopian tube along with the 3 cysts. He got the pathology report back and it showed pre-cancerous cells in my ovary. He sent the tissue off to a pathologist who specializes in gynecological issues for a second opinion. If that dr shows the same results, I will have to have a complete hysterectomy and bladder repair. I am coming to terms with the fact that my fertility has come to an end, even though with no husband it was kind of a moot issue, but the finality of it all is saddening. IF the second opinion comes back saying there are no pre-cancerous cells, I will still have to have an ultrasound of the left ovary once every 6 months to watch it for any changes.

Next week, I am having a GI procedure with a specialist who does a procedure called a balloon enteroscopy. No one in our area does this, so I have to drive 250 miles to the nearest big city with a GI doctor who does this. It is a 2 hour procedure in which I will be under general anesthesia. Prayers are appreciated. My hope is that he can cauterize the source of bleeding that we *know* is present and most likely is the cause of the anemia I’ve had for 5 years, for which I had iron transfusions last spring. He also is going to investigate what the “abnormality” in the length of 15 cm in my small bowel is. My hope is that it is something that can be diagnosed and treated with medication (such as Chron’s, even though who hopes for Chron’s?) as opposed to something more invasive needing to be done. If he finds that the section needs to be removed (which was the recommendation of the GI doctor I see here) then I will undergo surgery in December to remove that 15cm + a little extra and then resection the small bowel. This will require a 7 to 10 day hospital stay. I’m most concerned about the logistics and finding someone to watch my children overnight (they will be in school during the day).

Update on legal issues: Thanks to your generosity, I was able to retain a very good attorney. I have given her so much paperwork I’ve gone through 3 ink cartridges already, with more to print off this weekend, lol. Our plan (and she is ok with this) is to wait until I know the results of my GI procedure to file the paperwork with the courts for a temporary order of support. My estranged husband has started giving me $400 per week, which is well under what the state will have him pay, but at least it is something and pays the bills, but with nothing left over. My FEAR is that once he is served with papers and the temporary support order, he will stop paying any money at all. Oregon doesn’t give non-custodial parents a choice in how they pay, they automatically garnish wages, but the system is slow and could take one month to 6 weeks before they garnish his wages. If he stops paying anything, because he is angry, I will have a month to 6 weeks of no income at all, even to pay bills.
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I have also applied to the local community college and am going to start this spring (if all goes well with my medical issues) with ONE class, just to get my feet wet. I’ve never been to college, so I’m a little nervous on how it’s all going to go. Then next fall I will be starting an associates degree program so that I can get a well paying job when I am finished. The class I am starting with this spring is a pre-req to that program. I am busy filling out financial aid applications and scholarship applications, but none of those will go toward this spring class, they will all be for the 2015-2016 school year.

I decided to have my friend remove the Go Fund Me page for the same reason I asked Simcha to remove the blog posts about our family, even though we didn’t reach our goal. If you’d still like to help, any amount is appreciated. I also understand that a lot of people can’t help, but the most important type of help we need is prayer, and everyone can do that. If you’d like to help financially, you can do so through PayPal. My paypal address is nicolegrimesavon@gmail.com. You can also e-mail me if you’d like me to answer any questions or just to offer support. We don’t live near family and at times I feel so alone. Small words of encouragement help to lift my spirits.

Thank you all for the help you’ve given us and for all the prayers that have been said. God bless you all.

Nicole G.

They keep telling me to look at the fruits of the Legion of Christ.

Well, the harvest keeps rolling in. Here’s the latest installment:

An Irish-born Chilean priest convicted of sexually abusing a minor while chaplain at a school in Santiago was sentenced to four years of probation Tuesday.

A court in the Chilean capital also banned the Rev. John O’Reilly from any job near children and ordered that his genetic data be added to a registry for abusers.

O’Reilly, who has denied any wrongdoing, was not present during the sentencing. Prosecutors had asked for a 10-year prison sentence.

The court found O’Reilly guilty last month, saying he abused a young girl while he was the spiritual guide at the Cumbres school in the affluent neighborhood of Las Condes.

Relatives had accused the priest of molesting two pre-teen girls between 2010 and 2012. The court absolved him in one case.

O’Reilly arrived in Chile in the mid-1980s and was granted Chilean citizenship in 2008.He is a member of the Legion of Christ, the once-respected conservative order that fell into scandal after it was revealed that its founder had fathered a child and had sexually abused seminarians.

Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it down, salt the earth, give the victims of LC and RC support, and beg their forgiveness . And remember that the victims include not only the thousands who were sexually, emotionally, and spiritually abused, but also the good men and women who had the bad fortune to get their religious formation from Maciel’s fundamentally perverse and corrupt design. They are victims too, and should be given a way to escape the nightmare world that Maciel built when he designed the Legion specifically to facilitate predators like himself.

There is nothing that LC and RC did or can do that cannot be done by some other order. Shut. It. Down.

 

What’s wrong with message art?

PIC 3d crucifixion tattoo

If you’re a Christian artist, and you want to use your skill to make the world better, I’m begging you: never lead with the message. Instead, listen with your inner ear until something hits that special note. You don’t even have to know why it resounds for you; just listen, and tell other people what you heard. Hone your skills, stay close to God in your personal life, always be looking and listening for new things . . .  and above all, take off that delivery man’s uniform. That’s not your gig.

Read the rest at the Register.

Advent is coming. Keep it simple! UPDATED

I know, I know, you’re focused on Thanksgiving right now.  Just bookmark this for next week.

Advent is coming!  I always feel a little silly saying that, because the word “advent” actually means “coming.”  But that’s how life is when you’re In Charge of Stuff:  you even have to plan about planning ahead.  So, if you haven’t looked it up yet, the first Sunday in Advent is Nov. 30, which is . . . soon.

We do try to put off celebrating Christmas until it’s actually almost Christmas.  I claim this is because it would be a violation of the integrity of the spirit of penance and preparation to behave as if Christmas has already arrived; but actually my main reason is that my fine young sons see decorations as a challenge.  A punching challenge.  When some new vision swims before their eyes, whether it’s a pillow or a brother or gorgeous centerpiece bedecked with fragile berries, gilded bells and trembling, cinnamon-scented miniature pine cones, they say to themselves, “Gotta punch that.”

So I put off Christmas as long as possible for Christmas’ own good.  I don’t want Christmas to get punched.

Advent, however, can take a little smacking around.  One of the great things about any kind of Advent preparation is that, by definition, you have to keep it simple and spare.  A lush, lavish, complicated Advent makes about as much sense as a simple, understated fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

So as Advent approaches, I always remind myself that, while there are lots of wonderful ideas out there for how to observe the season, it’s not only impossible to do it all, it would be contrary to the spirit of the season to go overboard!  I plan small, and we can always add things later on years when we’re feeling ambitious and energetic.  We aim for simple, inexpensive, and edifying.

We do two things without fail every Advent.  The first is to make and light an Advent wreath, which we attempt to light every night while singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (adding two verses each week); but some years, it’s mostly a Sunday thing.  I just bought a cheapo twisted twig wreath at the dollar store, then use about forty yards of thread strapping evergreen branches down thoroughly.  If I can’t find purple and pink candles, I just use white, and tie on bows made of ribbon or cloth in the right colors.  Oh, and after a lifetime of trying to attach candle holders to a wreath, I just gave up, and now use (again, cheapo dollar store) glass candle holders, which I set inside the wreath.  I put the whole thing on a pizza pan, so I can easily move it off the table and store it in a safe, unpunchable place when it’s not in direct use.  Some years we have little golden balls and berries and doves, but other years, it’s just the greenery.  Here are prayers for each Sunday.  Print it out now, along with a few copies of “O Come Emmanuel,” and tape it to your pizza pan or something.

If this sounds unpleasantly practical and workaday to you, remember:  Advent is dark.  Lights out.  Once you have candlelight and acapella singing, it’s just as magical and luminous and mysterious as whatever the Vatican is doing on that same day.

(The child pictured above is utterly failing to think, “Tippy candle?  No pinecones?  This Advent is not impressive at all!”)

The second thing we do for Advent is we all go to confession once or twice before Christmas.

That’s it.  That’s the bare minimum, and some years, it’s also the maximum we can manage. There are plenty of wonderful Advent ideas.  But please remember, KEEP IT SIMPLE.  Don’t go overboard.  Pick one or two, and don’t make it elaborate.  And make sure you get to confession!

If you want a hands-on project for your kids but aren’t feeling very crafty, here is a free printable chain from  Life Made Lovely.  Print it out, cut the days into separate strips, and staple or tape them into a long chain.  You can hang the chain on your Christmas tree if you have one already, or anywhere in the house (hang it high, to avoid punching).  Starting on Nov. 29 (which is Saturday, the vigil of the first Sunday in Advent), you cut off one link each day and read what’s inside. This particular one just has a short description and a Bible verse to look up and read, and is designed for little kids; but if you Google “advent chain 2014,” you will find other styles, some more elaborate that others.

UPDATE: Rebecca Salazar hunted down a link that I thought was lost, so now you can also print and use the Advent chain links that my sister Abby Tardiff made up. These have complete short verses, plus pictures to color, on them. Link here.

If you like, you can color or attach the  paper strips to construction paper strips before you make them into a chain:  purple for the first, third and fourth weeks, and pink for the third week. I like the idea of a chain, because you can see it getting smaller and smaller as Christmas approaches.  You can explain to kids that it reminds us of the chains of sin, which get weaker and weaker until our Savior arrives — and then the chain is gone.

If you do an advent chain that has pictures on it, you could also use the cut strips as ornaments for a Jesse Tree, adding one ornament each day of Advent.  Or, if you’re feeling brave and have kids who are old enough, you could just dump all your craft materials which you have carefully kept organized and . . . sorted . . .

Tohu wa-bohu.

Tohu wa-bohu.

on the table, assign different symbols to each kid, and go hide for a couple of hours and see what happens, repeating the phrase “it’s only once a year” to yourself, and with the firm understanding that glitter on the floor doesn’t count as a mess unless it actually impedes your walking.  We do this some years for our “day after Thanksgiving” tradition.  Lacking space for a free-standing Jesse Tree, I just clip a branch from a bare tree and bolt it to the wall.  It looks good and weird, like a Catholic home should.

Another very easy Advent tradition that we manage to keep as a family most years is to “fast” from dessert except on Sundays. I take what money I would have spent, and buy extra food for the church’s food pantry.

What are your Advent plans?  On the years when you really followed the spirit of the season, what was it like?

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[This post originally ran on the National Catholic Register in 2011.]

When I saw this kid with PSW, I felt sorry for her and her family. What she did next blew my mind.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed? Ever faced a task and thought, “I simply can’t”? Ever told yourself, “Why even bother trying”? These phrases are not even in the vocabulary of young Benedicta Fisher. Though born with normal use of her arms and legs, she showed signs of Pervasive Systemic Weirdness from an early age, and her condition has only progressed as she grows. But her PSW isn’t slowing her down. Just witness this gutsy kid painting a picture of “Dog Going to Church in  Batman’s Airplane with His Muvver.”

Inspiring.

Inspiring.

Remember, her arms work fine. And yet she is using her teeth like a champion. And what have you accomplished with your teeth today, huh, huh? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Boy, you  kind of suck, compared to her. Still not blubbering like a fool? Then check out the way she responds to her own mother, who questioned why she was painting with her mouth. Is this kid going to buckle under the normative familial pressure ? No, she is not.

Inspiring.

Inspiring.

Yes, it is inspiring.  Also, her name is Elsa. Not Benny. Elsa.

Bite this, CNN.

don lemon

So I very, very reluctantly watched the clip of someone apparently named “Don Lemon” interviewing the woman who says that Bill Cosby raped her when she was 19.

Gawker transcribes the really hair-raising part of the interview, as follows:

Lemon: Can I ask you this? And please, I don’t mean to be crude, OK?

Tarshis: Yeah.

Lemon: You said this last night, that he — you lied to him and said, “I have an infection, and if you rape me, or if you do — if you have intercourse with me, then you will probably get it and give it to your wife.”

Tarshis: Right.

Lemon: You said he made you perform oral sex.

Tarshis: Right.

Lemon: You — you know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to do it.

Tarshis: I was kind of stoned at the time, and quite honestly, that didn’t even enter my mind. Now I wish it would have.

Lemon: Right. Meaning the using of the teeth, right?

Tarshis: Yes…I didn’t even think of it.

Lemon: Biting.

Tarshis: Ouch.

Lemon: Yes. I had to ask.

I know I’m supposed to be horrified at the idea that everyone is still, still focusing on telling women that they should have done a better job of defending themselves.

I’m supposed to be horrified that that message far outpaces the messages that men should not rape, must not rape, must not joke about rape, must not fantasize about rape.

I’m supposed to be horrified that that message far outpaces the tremendously useful message that men who hear another man talking about rape, joking about rape, or doing something that seems even a little rapey should beat the shit out of that other man.

But the thing that got me was . . . this is CNN? We’re now talking about biting penises on CNN?