Great and Holy Friday...

Yes, I know it's Saturday. I decided, quite prudently, to quit burning the midnight oil and SLEEP last night - because tonight, we don't sleep!
I had Husband take pictures of our Epitaphios (The Big Carved Wooden Thing Pictured Above) because it just looked so nice. It's the sepulcher which holds an icon of Christ in the tomb, and we carry it outside around the church carrying candles. I wish very much that I could have gotten a picture of Kittyboy riding on his daddy's shoulders in the procession. He was very much into it. He also provided us, as expected, with what has come to be referred to as a "monk-boy moment". Thursday night, he saw Father hanging Christ on the cross, and correctly identified that as "Jhe jhe" (Jesus). He was there for the Friday morning service of the Hours, with "Jhe jhe" still on the cross. He was home napping, however, for the service during which we bring Christ DOWN from the cross, and when the icon of Christ in the tomb is laid in the sepulcher. When we came in Great Friday evening, he saw the decorated Epitaphios, the bare cross, pointed at the Epitaphios, and signed Jesus. How did he know? It's just what he does. Cross is empty! Tomb is pretty! Where else would Jesus be? Duh, Mommy!
He is currently in bed screaming and kicking the walls, because every night this week he has been in bed at 9 at the earliest, and now he thinks that's his new bedtime. Tonight, we need him asleep before 8 (we were shooting for 7, originally) because we'll be waking him at 11 to go back to church!
An early Christos Anesti - Christ is risen!

Matins of the Crucifixion

I read, with some incredulity, a comment on my last post, which said, "Oh, but [Matins of the Crucifixion] is so beautiful!" Beauty does not come to mind when I think of this service. What does come to mind is a wish to be elsewhere - understanding that the betrayal, trial, and Crucifixion were necessary for salvation, I would rather get on to Great Friday. Great Friday is sad but beautiful, as funerals can be sad but beautiful. And joyous, because we know the end of the story already - as we leave, we're already saying to each other, Kalo Pascha (Happy Easter), and Kali Anastasi (Happy Resurrection). Holy Thursday, by contrast, is a tale of torture and murder. Not beauty.

I think perhaps my faith has matured in the last year, and that perhaps it takes maturity to appreciate beauty where there is none evident. To my surprise, this year was not so painful as I remembered. This year, the hymns recounting the betrayal, the scourging, the mocking, the crown of thorns and the cross, seemed as if they were balanced somehow by the often repeated and many variations on "But Lord, show us also Your Resurrection!" Almost every hymn seems to end with some variation on that. "Glory to Your forbearance, O Lord!" There is a light behind the clouds, so to speak, that I don't think I ever noticed before, or at least not to the extent I did this year. Maybe I'm more of an optimist this year. Or maybe, I saw it because I was looking for it, because someone told me "Oh, but it's so beautiful!"


Kittyboy knew exactly who this was, too. I know he signed it, but I think he also SAID "Jhe-jhe!" which would be a first. I know I heard a nice loud "AH-MEEN!" right after Father, towards the end. Kittyboy was just good as gold, considering he was up two hours past his bed time. The service was almost three hours long. Husband, down in the pew with him, kept him occupied with lighting the candles after each Gospel reading. Kittyboy loves candles, and at two years old, he lights his own every time we come to church, and sticks it in the sand all by himself. So Husband let him be acolyte-in-training tonight, since Father had no acolytes. Kittyboy lighting candles served two purposes - it gave him something to do, and it gave Husband a bribe - "Do you want to light the candle when Father's done? Then you need to be good so we can stay in church!" Just as I always ask him, "Do you want communion? ("uh huh") Then you need to be quiet and stand nicely!" Church is a really easy place to use such bribes. There's always something he wants badly enough to polish his halo for.

My favorite exclamation of the night, after AH-MEEN and Jhe-jhe was "WOW!" First as Father came out with the large wooden crucifix on his shoulder, and then repeated throughout the procession. WOW! indeed.

Well, I thoroughly abused muscles and joints today by first digging holes for several shrubs and a new lily bed, and second by standing for three hours. I'm going to bed. On to Great Friday - when we move in to church for the day!

Holy Wednesday Evening

I should begin by explaining that tonight, Holy Wednesday, we had the Holy Thursday Matins. All of Holy Week, services are performed "in anticipation" - Palm Sunday evening, we do the Matins of Holy Monday morning, and so on and so forth throughout the week. So tonight, Holy Wednesday night, we did the matins of Holy Thursday morning.

"Today Judas abandons all pretense of love for the poor. Not caring for them, he assumes the very shape of greed. Instead of selling the sinful woman's myrrh, He sells the anointed one of God and steals the proceeds. He runs to the lawless Jews and asks: What will you give me if I betray him to you? Cursed be the traitor's love of silver! He lowers the price and bargains like a trader. He sells Jesus like a runaway slave, not asking much. For thieves never regard the value of precious things; Now the disciple casts holy things to the dogs. Maddened with avarice, he howls against the master. Let us flee from his example and cry: Long-suffering Lord, Glory to you!" hymn from Holy Thursday Matins, http://www.liturgies.net/Lent/triodion/hwk_thu.htm

Until this year, Holy Wednesday night has been the Unction Service, but this year, the Archbishop sent out a notice saying that we really did need to start doing Unction earlier in the day (and only once - apparently some parishes did it twice, morning and evening), and we needed to do Holy Thursday Matins. This was the first I knew of there BEING a Holy Thursday Matins. It's not in the Holy Week service book. I would love to have it explained to me how anyone ever approved a book of Holy Week services which completely eliminated one from the roster. Having just returned from the first Holy Thursday Matins I have ever attended in seventeen years of being Orthodox, I feel many things - sadness, awe, inspiration - and a growing annoyance. Seventeen years I have been deprived of this service! Then this year, Father got three (3) copies of the Holy Thursday Matins, one for himself and two for Susan and I, to read and chant. Considering that we all three were working from texts with which we were unfamiliar (and that Susan and I had never seen before), the various editing errors, the occasional line completely omitted from the English side of the book, and directions that were confusing and wrong... the service was actually NOT a complete train wreck. Which I feared it would be, when the first thing I saw upon opening the book was a line completely missing from one of the first prayers. That doesn't usually bode well for the next two hours, you know?
Susan and I were alternating every few verses, and the one above was the last in one of my sections, and I was thankful it was the last. It's usually not until Holy Thursday night that we have at least one female reader in tears, but that hymn was my limit. I had never read the betrayal of Judas discussed in such calculating, monetary terms. It's hard to think about, let alone read aloud.
On to Holy Thursday and the matins of Great Friday - I don't know ANYONE who says, "Gee, isn't Holy Thursday night such FUN?" It's the Matins of the Crucifixion. It's twelve Gospel readings (betrayal, trial, and crucifixion in all four Gospels). It's relentless. It's disturbing. It's very upsetting. It's the reason I've never felt the need to see The Passion - we read the script every Holy Thursday.

How Old is Too Old; Or, the Magic of Sprouting Seeds

Once at my parents' house, Kittyboy had "trained" his Papou to say "Open - shut - open - shut - open - shut" as he gleefully flipped the trashcan, you guessed it, open and shut. Papou, my Daddy, said it's a trait of all small children to be endlessly amused by the simplest of activities, and that G. K. Chesterton had written something about how only children and God say "Do it again!" I found the quote:

"A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

I thought of this as I was climbing onto Kittyboy's toy box for a better view of my pepper sprouts under the grow light:
There is something magical about watching seeds in dirt turn into sprouts. They change by the day and grow bigger and bigger and bigger. And this absolutely fascinates me. I learned the basics of germination in grade school; every one does, with a seed and a styrofoam cup. But I don't think I will ever tire of watching it. Regardless of how many bell pepper plants I want or need or even have space for, I feel this yearning to push more and more seeds into little peat pots and whisper to God, "Do it again!"
Everyone should garden. It keeps you young.

5th Week of Akathist

Sigh... the Akathist services have come and gone once more.
My mind was all over the place during the service, I once forgot what page I was on and Father had to PROMPT me. Yeah, I haven't slept as much as I should have this week. So I was embarrassed even before I got to "Awed By The Beauty" and Father ONCE AGAIN assumed I knew it in Greek. Nope, still English only!!! I mean, I can follow and sing along with him as he sings the Greek, but there are still juuust enough syllables of which I'm unsure, that I'm not doing it in Greek. His estimation of my linguistic skills is flattering, but still. One of these years I will take a book home and learn the whole thing in Greek and astound him. It's cool, though, that he's decided my English rendition after the Greek is a tradition now.
I was thinking, during the two long prayers in front of the icons, of when I was in the hospital after Kittyboy's birth and I had this long rambling monologue of both prayers running through my head. I don't remember specifics other than instead of "raise us up at the hour of prayer" it was always "raise us up at the hour of pumping"... because I was trying to start milk and so I was pumping for half an hour every three hours round the clock. Or at least, I did that for the first 24 hours, and then the next 24-36 I did little but sleep - and wake, and look at the clock, and sleep again. Did I eat meals that second day? I do not remember. Maybe after the whole HELLP/c-section thing I shouldn't have been dragging myself out of bed every three hours. Probably so. But yeah, "the hour of pumping" is enshrined forever in my memory. Ay.
And at the petition "for those who serve and minister unto us", who should come to mind but Dr. Lehman, Dr. Hendricks, the staff at their respective clinics, and the staff at St. John's Hospital. It amazes me, with all you hear of specialists being hard to see, hard to get a hold of, and rushed when you finally do see them, that Dr. L is none of those things. When the rash and arthritis were still bad, he gave us his cell number in case something went south. He's just great. And man, when we took Kittyboy back the second time with all the spots cleared up, that boy was a celebrity. The receptionists, the nurses, everyone wanted to see how much better he looked. They remembered him! Admittedly, that rash was hard to forget, but that was still really cool.
And Dr. H - it still floors me every time I leave a message for a nurse and within an hour, usually MUCH less, I have an answer. The first doctor Kittyboy had, we liked him okay, but he was honestly absolutely clueless about all things Kittyboy. "You're doing what? I don't think I've ever heard of that. Okay, that's fine..." He signed orders the therapists requested, and stayed out of the mix, which at the time we appreciated (could have been worse, he could have fought them on everything). But we hated, hated the clinic. It might be a WEEK before you got a call back. I once had a voicemail from them "returning a call" and I couldn't remember what I'd called them about, it had been that long. If you did get a call back, because you didn't always. They also had to be reminded about calling in prescriptions, took over a month to get our insurance in the system, and sent us to a specialist two hours away without mailing the CT scans the expert was supposed to review. A world of difference with Dr. H and all the staff there - not just that they're competent and professional, but that they really are CARING, and friendly, and helpful.
And St. John's has taken very, very good care of our little guy twice now. What can I say, God has blessed us with MANY who serve and minister unto us. May He keep and preserve them all to continue doing the good that they do.

"I'm BAAACK!"

And THIS would be how Kittyboy looks with no spots whatsoever, astride his valiant steed in Dr. L's office! "Ha HA, with my noble donkey I shall conquer the world once more!"
No spots. No remaining arthritis (after two days of having to carry him, very carefully, anywhere he wished to go, and not touch or move his legs for fear of hurting him). No fever. No more Tylenol or Motrin unless his joints are aching (they're still healing, after all). Just Allegra and followup visits.
And Dr. L has managed to explain, to the one who got a C in Baby Bio her freshman year of college, what the heck serum-like sickness is. There's something that the immune system recognizes as a foreign substance - a virus, a medication, some random THING. The immune system gets way over-enthused in its attack of said substance and lots and LOTS of antibodies attach to whatever it is. So many antibodies bind to the substance that the body has a really hard time then dealing with it and flushing it out, which causes a lot of problems - hives, fever, swollen and aching joints, known as reactive arthritis. That's basically what happened. Will it happen again? No way to know. We're avoiding "cillin" antibiotics like the plague, because there's no way to know if the amoxicillin was the triggering substance or not.
But the important thing is... heeee's BAAACK!

The Last Word on Hives... maybe

They're not gone by any means, but they've gone from only his trunk (when they first started) to all over, and now they've left his trunk and are just on limbs and face. They also no longer look as if he's been beaten or burned, but more as if he has an exotic medical problem or some very extensive birthmarks. Now that having someone reaching for the DCFS hotline is much less likely, I felt comfortable taking him to the grocery store. I should have taken along a sociology student to note the reactions.
When you do an entire, extensive shopping trip with a toddler, and not one person smiles at him, waves at him, makes faces, etc., there is a reason. Uniformly, from all adults, the reaction was to glance - and look away. You don't want to be caught staring, that would be rude - you don't want to ask, that would be rude - so the least rude option is to not look. We adults are quite sophisticated in our handling of obvious deformities, handicaps, and things that make people look different. The BEST, most honest and candid reaction was from a little girl who walked past us - whose eyes widened to their outermost, jaw dropped, and head swiveled to follow us. Her older sister turned her around. I just thought it was funny. YES, HE LOOKS WEIRD. WE KNOW THIS. IT'S FINE. It's perfectly natural to stare.
So we have been to Dr. Lehman's office for followup, and the overall conclusion is something called serum sickness. It was ruled out by the original blood testing, but the symptoms fit it better than anything else. Serum sickness can be caused by a virus, a medicine (though it may never again happen when taking that same medicine) or just some random protein that sets off a reaction. It answers the extensiveness of the hives, the "reactive arthritis" (his joints were swollen and painful, still are to some extent), and the fever he had yesterday afternoon. The blood test says no, the symptoms say yes, either way it's still a "treat the symptoms, wait it out" thing. And now we can definitely see progress, with the trunk entirely clear and no new ones on the trunk. The limbs are still popping up new ones. I would say we may be clear by sometime next week if it progresses at the same rate, sooner if the ADULT dose of Allegra he's getting speeds things along. He's getting the regular adult dosage of Allegra, split into two doses twelve hours apart. This morning, one eye was swollen completely shut - by the time he laid down for a morning nap, he could see through it a little. And he was stomping around happily on his trampoline, wonderful news since yesterday he cried in pain any time I stood him on his feet. His ankles had been so puffed they were purple. This morning they are still purple, but more normally shaped, and obviously more comfortable.
I believe we will play outside after lunch! For the first time in five days!