Gentle Woman, peaceful dove, teach us wisdom, teach us love... and please, help us with the dysfunction.

Jerry and Brayden have a bedtime ritual that includes the Hail Mary.  A few weeks ago Saxton decided she wanted to join in, and now on the nights Brayden is here both Sage and her climb onto his bed and they all say prayers.  Last night it was just the girls and I and they wanted to sing the Hail Mary, and some how I started singing an old song we sang at my high school, Bishop Dwenger.  The girls just smiled and asked how I knew the song.  I told them I learned it long ago (that's a bit depressing) in high school.  I didn't remember the whole song, but enough to make them happy.  It struck a cord in me.  It made me think of my dad.

For those of you who don't know me to well, I come from a dysfunctional house.  I love that word, dysfunction.  It almost always follows with ohhhh, like it is just understood what the word means.  It isn't understood.  If it were understood then I would not be where I am.  I would not be in counseling.  I would not be leaving random messages on my dad's answering machine at work that he doesn't respond to.

My biological dad is an alcoholic.  (I say biological, because I also refer to my stepdad Dave as Dad.  He deserves it.)  Anyway, alcoholism sucks.  It really does.  It sucks the life right out of the person it is inflicting and everyone they know.  I remember going to alanon with my mom and the leader of the group would call alcoholism a disease.  This upset me because at the time my Aunt was fighting breast cancer.  That is a disease.

But I accept now that there is something wrong with him.  Two years ago this coming August he pretty much disowned all of us, my siblings and my mom.  While I was going though my own private hell of my separation, he decided to send a book out to my siblings, mom and I listing the things that were wrong with us and what mistakes we had made.  My ex got the book in the mail and repeated it to me verbatum.  That was an unforgettably heartbreaking night.

Where does Mother Mary come into this.  My dad introduced me to Mary.  Not the man who sent that book, or disowned us, but my dad.  He told me as a little girl that Mary listens to us in a special way.  He took me to the grotto that is on the lake at the University of Notre Dame years and years ago, I was probably six or seven and told me how people claimed she visited there once.  I found the idea of that to be awesome.  I started praying to Mary right then and there.

As a new mother my dad told me that Mary is the special person to pray to in respects to all things "motherly" or for anything to do with "motherhood."  I took him up on that and said thousands of Hail Marys when I was pregnant, in labor and over the years when I needed for someone to talk to about my children.  Even when I am upset, sometimes I will start praying outloud. 

I remember once when I was part of MOPS the church where we met had their pastor speak.  He discounted Mary in a round-a-bout way, said that Catholics placed to much of an emphasis on her.  I was sittting at the back of the church, I stood up and said I disagree.  I told him that Mary watched over my baby when she was in the NICU, the same baby who was now healthy and sleeping peacefully in my arms.  He apologized. 

My family is dysfunctional.  Isn't yours.  My father speaks to non of us, but his lessons are still heard.  This is not the last time I will discuss him.  The topic is often too painful to speak about, but maybe it will help to write about it.  My sisters and I talk about it sometimes, almost in a whisper as if we aren't supposed to be, that he doesn't deserve the breaths it takes.  But he does.  He is our dad.  He gave us eachother and gave me the ability to pray, and believe that at least one person is listening.