Growing Pains
When the school year had begun, we found our profession of parenthood to be quite time consuming. Granted the Swiss overload of work was no longer there. Washing-rinsing-drying clothes had become automatic. The floors were covered with permanent shine tiles. The sink counter was cleaned by merely passing a moist cloth over it. Groceries were a once a week matter. On the other hand, I was no longer around on weekday mornings and afternoons, as my working quarters were now at college. I gave a helping hand whenever I could. I dried the dishes. I got Michel up in the morning and to bed at night. I helped Christine and Michel at meals. I did the odd chore around the house. But I was no longer always on hand.
The main difference was Johanne. When we arrived in our new home, Johanne was still having five meals a day, which meant Danielle would have a rather short night's sleep interrupted by Johanne's mid-night meal. And the day would be shortened by the need of a mid-day nap for mother. Since I was now responsible for Michel, I could not really share the responsibility for Johanne's meals with her mother, even if she was given the bottle rather than the breast. By the beginning of August, Johanne, now two months old, got down to four meals a day and finally allowed herself and her mother a full night's sleep. She nursed at six in the morning, at eleven, then at about three in the afternoon, ending her day with the eight o'clock feeding. Amidst this, mother still took an afternoon nap, to recuperate from the previous months. This left little time for fooling around. By late September, Johanne got onto the three meals a day routine. Routine, so to speak, since she still had her private menu and many a smelly follow-up. During that time, Christine trotted about and chatted a lot, but also required much help. As her abilities grew she easily took for granted that what she could do she may do. Which meant constant attention, ordering, restraining, complimenting and punishing. She was the oldest and later her example would be crucial to the training of Michel and Johanne. Michel was still in his touch-all period, which consisted in trying to grasp everything he was not allowed to touch. Before leaving Switzerland, he had gone about unpacking the boxes his mother had packed. Now, he tried to empty the shelves we had filled.
The children were "time consuming". Now, "time consuming" is an expression of measurement that gives no notion of the action that is measured. Everyone consumes 24 hours of time per day, whatever he does or doesn't do. Thus it is neither a quality or a fault for anything to be said "time consuming". All depends on what one is doing. We cared for spouse, for children and for home. We cared: we took care of and we were attached to. Our work came from the heart and not from constraint. It deterred us from other tasks and activities, but never from better ones. It was sometimes tedious, regularly tiring, but never meaningless. It was constant but never servile.
There were great joys to be reaped, though none was a payment for the work. Christine, for example, had become a brilliant conversationalist. As the year passed, she became competent in catechetics. One day, she asked her mother: "Make up your mind. Is there one God or three gods, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?"
"There is only one God," Danielle answered. "Yet he is three persons, each being fully the same one God. This is a mystery taught to us by Jesus. He is God. He should know what he is and what he is talking about. And he has proven his love for us by dying on the cross. He has won our trust in what he tells us. But we cannot understand what we trust is true. Because we are not gods."
A few weeks later, as Christine spoke of "Jesus who is God", Danielle quickly added: "Remember there is only one God: Jesus himself, but so is the Father and the Holy Spirit."
"Of course," said Christine with a shrug.
This would prove to be amusing when, a few years later, I talked with a priest on the subject of grade one catechetics: "Your book of catechetics speaks a lot of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," I told him, " but nowhere does it say that each is the same one God."
"Oh," he condescended to explain, "that is because young children are not yet able to understand Trinity."
"Does this mean that you understand the mystery of Trinity?", I asked.
"Er, well...", was his only answer.
I added that Christine knew Trinity to be a revealed fact since the age of three, though she could never be expected to understand the fact, anymore than any of us.
When Christine went through her touch-all period, she did it correctly. She had timing, as her temperament would have her. She sensed when too much was simply too much and, though she got some of the unpleasant attention she sought, she managed to defy us without too much hurt. Michel had, evidently, bad timing. He needed time to sort out his inner feelings before acting and before reacting. Thus he acted too late and reacted too late. His actions easily provoked anger and his reactions intensified it. Michel was true to his ol' dad. It reminded me of the time, during my school days, when the maths teacher was writing on the board, with his back to the class. Everyone was shooting around bits of chewed paper. I had a crumpled candy box. I felt like shooting it, but did not at first dare. Finally, I dared. I acted too late. The teacher had finished writing. He turned around and observed my missile racing through the air. Luckily, he blew his top against the whole class and not against me alone. That was pure Michelstuff. Rather, Michel was Georgestuff.
Johanne was growing up as a sweet, delicate and perfect child. She got along well with food and sleep; later she would learn to crawl, walk and dress at an earlier age than her sister and brother. We had thought Michel would boss Johanne around just as Christine had bossed him. Instead, the Christine-Michel rivalry was kept up and Johanne was ignored by the combatants. Johanne soon learned to profit by this, and shied away from confrontations. Whenever Michel and Christine fought for one parent's attention, Johanne would slip towards the other parent. When Christine and Michel fought for one toy, Johanne would pick up another. Later we found that this quality also had its drawback: Johanne would have difficulty in imposing herself, her views, her tastes whenever this would mean open conflict. Then sweet Johanne could easily become a silent and sorrowful Johanne. A new challenge for parental pedagogy: a challenge mixed of sweetness and sorrow.
If nearly all we could do was care for spouse, children and home, we wished for no more.
* * *
House-bound, we did little socialising. Occasionally, we invited for lunch a married couple or a bachelor from among the college's teaching and administrative staff. But we did not relate profoundly with them and had little time for regular social mixing. Indeed, we preferred to renew our ties with rooted friendships.
Unhappily for us, Carlos no longer came back to Laval University for a yearly winter term. Laval had learned this through Carlos usual method of communication. He did not write. A year ago, he had not showed up. That had been his way of resigning, caught up as he was with his new tasks in Argentina and, probably, with the demands of his growing family, with five children. This year there would be six. Next year it would be seven. This put an end to our hopes of seeing Carlos in a near future and on a regular basis.
But the musketeers were still studying in Quebec City. Maurice had ended his Masters in Philosophy, but decided to take one year in pedagogy. Most important change in his life: in August of this summer, he had married a young nurse from back home in Manitoba. Anita was a woman with the appearance and charm of a refined socialite; a woman of fine taste, dress and pose. And within her there was spirit, energy and sensibility. All this was good for Maurice. Less so for us. Maurice studied, Anita worked and they lived a married life. So Maurice had little time to drive away to far off La Pocati re on a bachelor's whim. When I took the day off to visit friends in Québec, Maurice was no longer one of the boys. He was a married man, tied to wife.
We saw far more of Gerry, who was now in the last year of his Masters in Philosophy. He would soon fall in love with a multilingual genius of Greek and British (English) origin, speaking both those languages and French. Though raised in diplomatic circles, she was more of the carefree happy-go-lucky type, compared to Maurice's Anita. In other words, she was made to order for Gerry. Penny (Penelope) bravely endured the usual brainwaves about her name: "A penny for your thoughts", "Gerry shall never be penny-less", "A Penny saved is a Penny earned", etc. As they were not yet married, their inloveness was a benefit for us. They sought to go out together. This occasionally allowed for a trip to La Pocati re, at our house, where Gerry bravely bore the brunt of our children's enthusiasm and Penny got along very well with Danielle. — We saw less of Mouse and Ernest.
Our return to Quebec allowed us to put in practice one of our pet projects: that the godparents chosen for our children might become our extended family. They would take the place of the aunts and uncles the children did not have.
Carlos and Maria-Martha were too far away in Argentina to help us much in this way. Michel's godparents, living some fifteen hundred miles away in Manitoba, also weren't available for any kind of permanent contact. But then there was Ronald MacDonald and his wife Jeannine who lived in Québec City. Our friendship was true, they owned a car and they were still childless — though eager to be parents. For the time being, they were free to cherish their sweet Johanne and regularly travelled the eighty miles to visit us. They came at Christmas time, at Johanne's birthday, at Ronald's birthday and in between.
Ronald hadn't changed a bit. He told us of the time he decided to visit some Robert MacDonald, a cousin of his, who had recently married and moved to Québec City. The telephone book listed the addresses and numbers of three Robert MacDonald. The first phone call being fruitless, Ronald decided to drive over to the second address. A young blonde woman answered at the door. Recalling Robert's wife to be a brunette, Ronald absent-mindedly challenged the lady of the house: "You are not Robert's wife!"
"I am so," answered the lady, insulted.
Ronald suddenly realised that the blonde could evidently be a Robert MacDonald's wife without being the wife of the one he was looking for. He lamely begged pardon and skipped away with his wife. He met success at the third try. The lady was a recently married brunette and cheerfully greeted Ronald and Jeannine. Unfortunately, Robert was out for the moment, but they could come into the living room. As they talked amiably, Robert's wife suddenly referred to uncle so-and-so, Robert's uncle. This rang a bell. A bell that didn't ring. Ronald jerked himself up, pulled his wife towards the door, said they must be going, etc. — Of course, the fourth Robert MacDonald had not yet had his name and address listed in the phone book.
Ronald was teaching for his fifth straight year and getting tired of the monotony of repeating the same thing each year. So, on April 1, insisting this was no April fool's prank, he told each of his students to buy a fish bowl and a few fish. Their last assignment of the year would be observing real live nature as part of their course of Philosophy of Nature. Though some of Ronald's colleagues laughed at his teaching experiment, it proved such a success that these colleagues did the same the following year. But, by that time, Ronald would have dropped the idea. Indeed, he was tiring of philosophy itself and thinking of possibly doing something else.
Ronald and Jeannine invited me for the night when I visited Quebec City. I saw other friends during the day, and then went to the cinema with Ronald and Jeannine. We had great fun. When they retired to their bedroom, I bunked on the living-room sofa.
Jeannine was a true woman — most affectionate to her dear Johanne, whom she cuddled affectionately. But Jeannine also had a profound spiritual life which allowed Danielle and her to partake in an intimate sisterhood of souls, in a way Ronald and I never did.
* * *
So we began growing inward. We grew into a private yet intense world. We had little time for the world without and were filling in our own with our family and friends.
The needs of the children weighed against our going out much, as bedtime was determined by a six thirty time rising each morning. Movies had always been low on Danielle's priority list, but now going out together to the cinema became an impossible venture in La Pocati re. And so we got our first television set and brought the movies home. Danielle's parents bought a colour television and gave us their elderly black and white one. I had always been a television fan before meeting Danielle. But these last years, I felt no need for the idiot box. Our lives were full enough. An occasional movie with a friend had sufficed for me. We were now both ready for the innovation and greeted it happily. In fact, there was little time to overindulge in it, as the care of spouse, children and home nearly monopolised the days' activities and Danielle was still fond of short evening walks during which I gladly kept her company. Later on, as she got used to going to bed earlier, I got used to watching TV further in the night, but never as late as the midnight movies.
We rarely noticed the outside world. I was the only married person within the Department of Philosophy. Two of my colleagues were younger than I and still brazen bachelors. Two others were Roman Catholic priests and accordingly expected to be celibate for life. Another teacher was the life of the party at parties I never could go to. This last one, specialising in the Sciences of Religion, I knew only to be without woman or women. Our private commitments and our public philosophical dissensions, in addition to my permanent dislike for groupings of strangers, left little place for common interests.
There were married couples of our age. But I had few occasions to meet them. And somehow their commitment seemed different from the kind we had. I do not mean to say that they were less committed to their spouses, but they certainly had different committments to their children. In one case, we got the distinct impression that an only child had been more a matter of accident than of will. What most startled me was the remark by a fellow my age who had just become father for the third time like me: "Three is enough for us," he told me. "That is all we can take."
When I naively spoke to another young father of three of our hopes to have another child, he made the same comment, though he professed admiration for our courage and persistence.
Danielle and I could not understand these reactions. We had just moved into our first house. My job was financially rewarding and seemed secure for as far ahead as we could see. Healthwise, all was fine. This was also the case for these other couples. We obviously — "obviously" to us — wished for another child, and many more. How could it be that parents as young as us could feel so old as to give up on life?
Till now, everyone had appeared to greet our children with the joy that is expected to surround a birth. At each birth, we had received selfless,joyful help from others. Did not everyone understand love to be life?
That Christmas, our first at La Pocati re, the teachers' union — also the teachers' social club — organised a party to which Danielle and I felt obligated to attend. We had kept our Swiss habit of leaving the children alone asleep when we went out for a walk or an errand. But we dared not, anymore, leave them alone a whole evening. The American thing was creeping in again. Local girl guides had organised a baby-sitting service. Sombre-haired and happy Nicole came over that evening. She and became our sitter till she left La Pocati re for university.
A party organiser showed some slides accompanied with humorous comments about various members of the teaching and administrative staff of the college. It was witty and in good taste. I was shown as a man pushing a baby carriage. Which made us all laugh. Yet what was so funny there? After all, humour is a matter of absurdities. Was there something absurd in our life drive?
Be it whatever, that Christmas, Danielle and I privately toasted life, a life that would be shown to the world exactly nine months later, on September 25.
* * *
In a way, college was part of our private life. Our philosophy, as a living answer to the forceful questions of life, was the same which we tried to enact among ourselves, which I tried to understand in my mind and which I formulated with limited success in class. But there was more to college than teaching, as I soon found out. More than social gatherings also. During my first month there, I learned that our contract with the Québec government was up for renegotiation. It dawned on me that we would be caught up in a strike. The director of our college was reassuring. According to him, negotiations were coming along fine. And after all were we not a happy working family in our own college?
Yet during my years at Laval University, I had confronted the dominant socialist and Marxist mood in the students' organisations. We had now all graduated and our teaching staff was largely made up of this generation. Had not the simplistic tantrum-like approach to politics I had met at university followed us into our unionised activity?
Union literature insisted upon the union's responsibility to "invite its members to think about the possible solutions to our problems that could be found in a regime of popular democracy and to encourage them to take part in concrete struggles whose ultimate goal is to replace the present bourgeois-run regime by a classless regime". As I understood it, our union would have us sacrifice our social, economic, political and professional well-being to help incompetent and wrathful ideologues take the place of our relatively competent administrators. There is no doubt that the vast majority of the teachers were teachers first and foremost and, whatever the quality or nature of their political ideas, they would not become political agitators. My fears were based upon the avowed goal of the union leadership. Our director's confidence rested upon the dedication of our teaching staff towards its work.
After Christmas, we were both proven right. In union meetings, the teachers did not seek a social and political revolution. They spoke of good education and its needs, and of social justice. But they did vote overwhelmingly for strike action.
Why? Because our society was capitalistic? Not at all. Because we had suffered from "injustices"? Not at all. As far as I could understand, we went on strike for fear of coming "injustices". — Government and unions had followed the usual course of masking their expectations with exorbitant demands in order to be able to fall back on more acceptable terms. That was enough for the union leadership to work demagogy upon us. And times were ripe for the membership to toy around with this demagogy. The "victim" proved willing.
Would we accept, as responsible teachers, the worsened working conditions the government proposed? Evidently not. But as most everyone voted down these proposals, these became the living proof that our government was out to get us. It was useless to try to impress upon our comrades that the government itself did not expect us to accept these proposals. The government's position had to be taken at face value. On the other hand, inflating our own demands beyond any common sense was only considered being practical. We shouldn't let the government know that we could work for less than we might finally be able to get out of it. So, good and evil were confronted.
What next? If we did not vote in favour of a strike mandate, we would be proving our lack of determination and our acceptance of the proposals we had just voted down. And, after all, we were soothingly told, a strike mandate is not a strike. It is a merely a threat with which to force the government to negotiate.
This all sounded so reasonable. Behind the closed doors of our meeting-hall, given the selected facts, deprived of any moderating viewpoint from the "bosses" who were anyhow presumed to be out to get us, it appeared silly not to vote for a strike mandate. What use was there to argue that we were all rather well off when this well-being was sensed to be under attack. We were morally justified in resisting this aggression. And deep down, there was a feeling that we might even pull off some of our inflated demands. Then, could it be argued that we owed to our students the fulfilment of our obligations towards them, when it was proven that the government proposals would make studying conditions worse for these students? Finally, how could it be suggested that the government was a social partner rather than a foe when his offers were those of a foe?
Our meetings were fully democratic. No one was bullied. Every opinion could be freely expressed. But it was impossible to overcome the way the questions had been put. Once set on this course, the strictest logic of the mind and the heart overran all objections. There were the bad guys. We were the good guys. And we went on strike.
We went on a nationwide strike — provincewide in fact, but the Québécois have a sense of their "nationhood". Two hundred and ten thousand government employees in schools, hospitals and other agencies went on the picket lines for two weeks. We were numerous enough to treat people as things, as presumed physical forces whose clash would bring about progress as cracked eggs make an omelette and two stones banged together make a fire.
Danielle and I were disgusted. We felt surrounded by a thick wall of indestructible hatred. We wondered whether we — and a few other teachers — were the only sane people in a world gone mad, or whether we were the mad people. Is not madness a minority affair?
Each weekday morning I went to our union meeting, sensing evermore the uselessness of any appeal to what I termed common sense and responsibility. The drift of the discussions would have us believe we lived under violent political oppression and economic exploitation; yet this could have been contradicted by everyone's private experience, if only everyone chose to look at facts rather than imaginings. I felt submerged in a sea of social paranoia, and was regarded with commiseration by many colleagues who considered me an idealistic dim-wit.
At noon, I would invite one or another moderate colleague for lunch, and we wrestled with the dark present and the darker future. My feelings of depression seeped into the home. One week of this was enough. The universe was caving in and we were going broke, so I decided it was time for Danielle and me to go for broke.
Nicole bravely accepted the challenge to baby-sit three children — a three year old, a two year old and a nine month old — for a full two days. Danielle and I fled away to Québec City in isolation. Though Danielle's parents and many of our friends were about, we checked into a hotel. This was the first time since we became parents that we were alone together as young lovers and not simply as parents taking an evening off (or expecting the imminent birth of Michel or resting to save Johanne's life).
Inevitably that first evening began dismally. Each expected the other to act spontaneously his own way. And we hurt each other. I sat in front of the television set to watch the Russian version of War and Peace frustrating Danielle who wanted a heart to heart talk; she frustrated me by straying away from my chosen relaxation. Out of our mutual uneasiness came a mutual awareness of the other's feelings. Then each tried to do what the other wanted. Which ended up in reconciliation, in peace and harmony of minds within the soul of our union. We rekindled our inloveness with which we should warm our home anew.
Next day was all honeymoon. We strolled about in a vast shopping centre (so as not to trudge in the February snows). We walked hand in hand, inattentive to the streams of shoppers around us. We lunched at the same restaurant where we had eaten those memorable strawberry shortcakes on Danielle's prom night. Time passed unnoticed till the "time": the time to come back home with refreshed spirits. Yet before leaving Québec, we phoned Maurice to brag to someone about our rejuvenated joy. As the bus took us back towards La Pocati re, the weariness of the strike had vanished. Come what might, we felt free and happy.
Many years before, "Father Knows Best" and his wife had gone on that kind of a holiday. Yet they had cut their vacation short and returned the same night because of their yearning for the children who also yearned to have their parents back. That was not our experience. Instead, we fully trusted Nicole to be up to her task, dropped all concern for the children's well-being, and had a terrific time. And coming back home, we were full of delirious anticipation at the pleasure of loving Christine, Michel and Johanne for evermore. We had not realised there would be need to adapt. After all, for those two days, we had freed our minds of the hundreds of daily needs in goods, services and attention a family of five persons daily require. We had lost the ability to hold three simultaneous conversations while doing one chore and remembering two more to be done. But that is what vacations are made of. They are not training periods for work. They are distractions made to rest the body and the mind in order for them to start anew what had become a drudgery. Vacations are a kind of sleep. It is only normal that the waking up to a new day can be slow.
When the joys of reunion and the irritations of adaptation were over, Danielle and I decided that such honeymoons were a must for the betterment of spousal and family relationships. We took the resolution to make it a regular feature in our life.
The government finally broke the stalemate by voting a law which forced its workers back to work and gave them benefits to sugar that bitter pill. Thus the strikers felt they were proven right on both counts: the government was oppressive and the strike brought benefits.
* * *
During the winter, snow had piled high in the front yard in such a way that the children felt they were upon an island in the yard and had no desire of going out into the street. They were allowed both the front and back yards as a playground. However, with spring thaw, the ground became level with the street and it was time to fence the children in the back yard. Each day, now, Christine and Michel would beg me, the weaker parent, to allow them out of the back yard. Sometimes I said yes, sometimes I said no. But whenever they had to stay in the back yard, they stayed near the fence like walled-in martyrs, which broke my heart.
So Danielle figured it was time to give me a lesson in child rearing.
"You know," she told me, "its all your fault if they are unhappy."
"How's that?" said I, incredulous and a bit angry. "You are the one who keeps these children locked up in the backyard all the time. I am the one who occasionally lets them out and makes them happy."
Danielle gently and patiently explained to me: "The children must know the limits of their own world in order to be happy in it. They have to be secure within their own borders. That is why they first begin by testing the borders. Though they get a certain pleasure in seeing them change, they cannot live that way permanently. It would be like making them homeless on the grounds that they can enjoy a day's outing. And then they become insecure. Only when their borders become clear and firm, can they start thinking of having fun within."
It made sense. So I decided to play along and systematically refused to allow the children to play outside out of the backyard. The first few days, there was a tempest a-blowing. Suddenly, one morning, the seas were calm and the sky was blue. Christine and Michel were having fun together in the middle of the back yard, and this lasted all summer long. They were truly happier that way.
* * *
The school year ended in a rush because of the time lost in striking. But then it was over.
We had made it. We had adapted to our new surroundings. The house was in order. The columns of tabulated students' results freed me from the the anxieties accumulated from teaching immeasurable insights to invisible minds.
As spring turned to summer, houses sprang up on our street, with new neighbours in them. We began hoping that in not too many years our road would be paved and we could put our boots away sooner.
We had left Manitoba three years before. Now Johanne was no longer a baby and baby still had two months and a half to go till birth. It was time for the whole family to fly off to Winnipeg (St. Boniface) and visit grandfather and grandmother Allaire. They were proud of so many grandchildren and delighted to play with them. They respected the rules of discipline by which the children were made so gentle, cheerful and obedient.
We visited Michel's godparents and recalled the Fribourg days when they had visited us.
My father lent us his car, so new that we still had to drive it slowly in order to break it in. With it we visited Marie-Jeanne on the farm — her farm. She had married a farmer. Being a farmer's daughter, she was happy in her environment. Being a generous person, she had all it took to make her husband a happy man. Which, in turn, was the measure of her own happiness.
Visiting all my uncles, aunts and cousins gave us a refresher course in spontaneous hospitality. With awe we took in the immensity of the open sky, the flat country from horizon to horizon upon which the sun barely sets. One evening, total darkness occurred only at eleven o'clock. We laughed at the invisibility of the Aulneau street hill. We were reconciled with the Québec "mountains" and stopped calling them hills.
We came back East to a less interesting vacation. I had agreed to teach a summer course. Tough break. But it reassured me that, if I was not necessarily popular, at least my Philosophy of Man had matured into an acceptable course.
The course was barely over when we had unexpected visitors. The girl I had met on first day of classes back in Fribourg, was globe-trotting with her husband. They dropped off at our place for two weeks. From this home-base, they made forays West to Québec and Montréal and East to Gaspé. The husband also went on fishing trips with a neighbour. And we recalled memories together. While they were in our house, we insisted that they use our own bedroom, while Danielle and I could sleep on the living-room sofa. But that meant we went to bed late at the same time as our visitors and rose early at the same time as the children. And Danielle was now in her eighth month of pregnancy. Baby was growing in size, weight, vigour and feeding off Danielle's declining energy. The sofa was less comfortable than our own bed, which was to be expected, but it gave Danielle a back ache. Used to much sleep, more so in the last lap of a pregnancy, she had less than usual. As she was the barometer of the house's temper, we gradually became out of sorts. When our friends went back to Switzerland, there was little more than a week of vacations left. And that week was to be full.
At the beginning of summer, Danielle and I agreed that I should end my vacations with a week of Saint Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. These consist of a seven day retreat made in silence during which a director helps one to exercise our spiritual life by disciplining imagination, mind and heart, bringing them into contact with the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ as reported by the Gospels. These exercises are of the spirit as others can be physical and others intellectual. Danielle had made these exercises in her late teens and estimated she had greatly benefited from them. Because of this I had already urged the musketeers to try them, and all had done so with great satisfaction. When I then told Gerry it would be my turn, he was aghast: "Georges Allaire," he bellowed, "you mean to say you were sending everyone there without ever having gone yourself!?"
"Well, I knew they were good," I answered. "And you did like them. And Danielle told me they were good."
However good they might be, did I dare leave Danielle alone with the children after a tiring summer? Would I also lose my last chance for a time to rest before taking on another year of teaching? Danielle was always one for heroics and insisted I must go. Could I do otherwise as she was the more exhausted one? Perhaps God deserved an occasional priority. And so, reluctantly, I went.
To this day, I remember these Spiritual Exercises as the time of my life when I was truly allowed to touch God. Rather God touched me as he is the master of personal initiatives. At no other time have I felt his presence surround me so forcibly, so delicately, and so intimately.
Whereas I was used to seeing Our Lord's Passion as his suffering to save us, I now realized that his worst sufferings were not those that men, sinners — I — inflicted upon him but the ones men, sinners — me — inflicted upon ourselves in wounding Love. It may be because I was now a father, but I suddenly realized that a father suffers over his son's wrongdoings far more because of the unhappiness the beloved son is doing to himself, than of anything that can be done to the father.
This is Love.
I had been used to partake in Christ's sufferings on the cross, and for the first time I realized that Christ suffered so that I should not suffer. He did not want to install a reign of suffering but one of rebirth. Granted, with Christ, I could then pick up my cross and suffer in order to win others' over to love. I could assist Christ in saving others. But I could not consider Christ as the tyrant. He is the Saviour.
Then I beheld that our life is to be filled with the Lover, the Infinite Lover who is God in whom we live totally inasmuch as we totally plunge into Him. Inasmuch as we cling to ourselves, we diminish, dry up and die.
I saw these truths, I felt them. As I returned to Danielle, full of divine experience and thus of total love for her, I was confident for then and ever after that whatever should befall us was good, as long as we lived within the heart of Jesus Christ.
The days following my Spiritual Exercises, I was devoid of any anxiety as never before in my life and contrary to my temperament. I must have felt something of what the Apostles felt when they witnessed Jesus' transfiguration. I would certainly have struck camp within such a Joy. My mother-in-law said I was transformed. I took this as a compliment. But there may also have been some awe in it.
My brightened spirits certainly helped Danielle regain her own and made a success of our vacations as nothing else could have. God might finally be telling the truth when he promises to give us back a hundred times what we give him. We were now ready for the new school year, and for the arrival of our children's newest brother or sister. As we had two girls and one boy, another boy would make the match, but a baby was all we asked for.
