yep! Monday. Here’s a huge secret. I LOVE  Mondays…I think they are the greatest day in the world. New. Bright. Shiny. With all kinds of possibilities. The Monday morning of my memory. It would be a cool California morning; dew on the lawn, a nip in the air. Crisp blue sky. No clouds.  Me wearing polished Buster Brown oxfords, white socks, a baby blue uniform with white collars and cuffs and two pleats down the front on either side of the zipper, a matching belt with a silver buckle.  Glossy brushed hair. A barrette holding back my recalcitrant bangs. Coming off a weekend of laughing and talking and playing and visiting. Monday. A whole new start. Never mind what the week would bring. Monday was the beginning. Time to anticipate. To relish the start. To find joy in the possibilities.

Monday’s at Villa Cabrini Academy, gone now, but vivid in my memory. We’d line up, by class, in rows of two, by height, smallest in the front, tallest in the back. I was always near or at the front. Then the martial music of John Phillips Sousa, the March King, would begin. Piped into the quadrangle over the loud speaker. We’d begin marching in place, then the two in the front would peel off, reversing, and we’d come back down in fours, then back up again, coming down in two, marching in place, then class, by class, by class, we’d move to our rooms. This was California, after all, the classrooms opened into the quadrangle, the Angeles bell tower half way between fourth grade with Mother Rosario and eighth grade with Mother Bartholomew. The school administration door just under the bell tower, the dark black of the screens as imposing as the small metal netting of the confessional,  the dark pink brown bricks cool to the touch, double wooden doors at the library. Windows in the upper portion of the classroom doors, hazy, opaque. The nuns in their black on black habits, the sliver cross large in the front.

There are those who would disparage the fervor of those nuns today. There are those who would find them passé. But they had ready laughs, pockets of candy, and the sense to know when to discipline and when to love. They gave me a life of possibilities, and gazillion Mondays…

yes, what else would you talk about on Friday the 13th? Superstition, as a kid, was always more about the excitement of or the potential, like watching a scary movie. But as an adult I find superstition much harder to understand. Paraskevidekatriaphobia: [good word, no?] the fear of Friday the 13th. Wow! How fun. It’s got it’s own word. And it’s stupid. Fun, if you think it’s a lark and use the day to have harmless fun. But stupid if it rules your life and makes you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily.

To me, superstition has more to do with how much control you have in your own life. How much you think you can manage.If you think you have little control, if you are having problems managing, then yeah! it’s someone else’s fault, be it from a curse, or you stepped on a crack or you forgot to wear you lucky underwear. Superstition. A widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event. So. It’s not you fault. It’s out of your control. Pooh!

So where did this come from? According to Wikipedia, Friday has been considered an unlucky day since the 14th Century. LOL, in modern times I would have put the unlucky much earlier in the week.  But of course, we have Black Friday from the stock market crash and Black Friday for the violence and mayhem at the malls. So. Okay, we’ve woven that into our consciousness.  The next is that thirteen is an unholy number. See. I would have thought nine, or even eleven. But again, we parse a lot of our history into  twelve. Twelve months of the year. Twelve apostles. Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve gods of Olympus. So that next number, Thirteen, has to portend bad things. Okay. I get that.

Friday the 13th can happen up to three times in a single year; either in February, March and November in an ordinary year, or January, April and July in leap years.  So this year, April. Then July. Okey, dokey. Two of these this year. But truthfully, knock on wood :-)….

I’m a wonk, of sorts. No, I don’t spend time reading policy statements, so not a policy wonk. I think policies should be clear, limiting and individual. No policy should be longer than a sentence or two. The consequence of breaking the policy should be clear and concise, and the effect immediate.

I’m not a science wonk, because I’ve never spent much time with the x’s and the y’s of the math and the terminology that makes up science today is almost incomprehensible to me.

I’m not a political wonk, not tracking polls and delegate counts, almost numb to negative as well as positive ads. Although, here, I must add that I think all of these words, policy, science and politics, are neutral, neither good nor evil, they just are.  

I’m just a wonk, i.e., a studious or hardworking person. When we use wonk in terms of policy, science, politics,  we fail to mention those of us with an interest in life and all it holds can be wonks too. I like to know. Just know. Stuff.  I’ve always liked to know. And not to know a certain thing or fact. I remember my dad asking why I majored in history in college. I told him it was because then I could, with great legitimacy study just anything. Everything.  

I love the trivia of a historical moment, or a scientific breakthrough, or a policy footnote, and a biographical  notation. And I think, in all the written and verbal noise we are surrounded with today, we’ve forgotten what it means to know. Because we don’t just give facts anymore, we insert adverbs and adjectives that add portent and weight to one side or the other. Since when did knowledge have a side? Since when did knowing something denote superiority over another? Isn’t that the definition of a bully? Isn’t it just enough to continue to grow, to explore, to understand? I am thrilled by each new tidbit of knowing, excited to fill brain cells with information, information maybe never shared, but added, studied, turned over and studied again. So. Just call me a little wonky. 

The most potent of religious icons is the cross with the figure of Jesus, nailed and hanging, suspended ever in our psyche as the one who saved us from damnation. And for that, yes, I am eternally grateful.  Because of that most potent of religious icons, Easter is the most holy of feast days in the Catholic liturgy. And if the cross is the symbol of our salvation, Easter is a sign we can overcome sin.

Unlike other feast days and holidays, Easter acknowledges the world in which we live, how it moves through our universe and our relationship to the sun, although you could just as easily say the Son!  In order to determine Easter Sunday, you need to know when the earth turns so that our star, the sun,  moves across the vernal equinox heading for summer solstice, when we leave the bareness of winter and move into the spring of renewal. Using the Paschal Full Moon, which actually comes from our Hebrew roots, or Passover, and the 14th day of the lunar month, rather than a real astronomical event, Easter, in the western churches, arrives anytime between March 22 and April 25.

On the religious side the symbols and signs are quite clear and straightforward. You sin, you can be redeemed .  Outside religious events, there are what I think of as mascots. A baby boy for New Year’s Day,  Cupid for Valentines, Leprechauns for St. Paddy’s Day, Santa Claus for Christmas. And they all relate to the day. But.

The Easter Bunny has always been a particular  problem for me, mainly because he delivers eggs. As a kid, I never really thought that bunnies and chicks went together. I mean, chickens roam around, pecking at the ground, peeping and squawking inside an enclosure that even earned the name chicken wire. Whereas bunnies, or rabbits [and there’s a dilemma, are they the same or are they different? OMG, then there are hares!] sit in cages or behind rock walls or underground hidden by shrubbery, drop little black pellets and really don’t say much. So how did they come together?  I get that bunnies are the quintessential sign of fertility. Spring=renewal and what better way to convey that than fertility, ergo, bunnies. Eggs hold life. So.

Even though these are pagan symbols, the bunny and the egg, they bring together the most holy of beliefs that this season, Easter, on the first Sunday after the 14th day of the lunar month when the sun crosses the equinox on it’s way to the equator, is a celebration of renewal and life. Hallelujah!