"Oldies but Goodies" Part 1

One thing I can do on this blog right now is represent some fun "Oldies" that pop up in places like Timehop. The Never Give Up BLOG--after all--goes back five years. One thing that strikes me in reading old entries is how much the kids have grown.

Josefina may still be pretty small physically but she has grown so much as a person. Here is a blog entry from four years ago, when she was age five.

Not that she doesn't still do things like this, but it's ...different now. Just read it and you'll see:

Merry Christmas Day!

Happy 13th Birthday Teresa!

The amazing Teresa Janaro turned 13 years old yesterday. Happy Birthday, Teresa. We love you so much!

Green Belt, Shotokan Karate

Always ready to be funny.

Loves her little sister so much.

Teresa Gives Me a Haircut

Teresa was messing with my hair and got it all sticking up in the back (see The Haircut, top left). I was grumbling about how I really needed a haircut.

But the girls thought it looked funny so I let them take a picture of me as the bald-topped, hairy-headed wild man. Then Teresa offered to cut it, and I couldn't refuse. After all, if she can groom horses she can buzz off a clump of old and tired gray strands from my head.

And so she did. I played shocked, but actually I was glad to have it all off.

Thank you, Teresa. You're such an awesome kid!

She doesn't like to be told this, but as you can see she's very pretty.

Home But Not Bored

We had a Monopoly marathon going on all day long.

This is what happens on wet summer days. Agnese is the only one not playing here, but she's in the room in a chair near me, reading.

It's great to see all of them together. This is precious time. God grant that they always stay connected, somehow, even if their paths take them far away. 

And that they always love one another.

Do I even need to tell you who the big winner was?

John Paul Officially Grows Up

This is a year of milestones for John Paul Janaro. In fact, it's been a week of milestones!

This past Friday he graduated from Chelsea Academy. At the beginning of this week he turned eighteen years old. According to American law, he is now an adult.

I think I am beginning to believe that kids really do grow up.

I've done enough "baby retrospectives" on John Paul. But on the occasion of his high school graduation, I could not help remembering the first "graduation ceremony" in his life. It was just a family affair, with Eileen and me and the kids and Uncle Walter and "Papa and Grandma." This is a blog. I have to do a flashback of some kind.
 
So, first of all, here is a nice picture of John Paul receiving his Salutatorian award from the headmaster of Chelsea in 2015:



And here are some pictures from his kindergarten graduation in the summer of 2003. The "Saint Benedict Academy" was a fancy name for the Janaro family homeschool. With his mother as teacher, of course, you can be assured that his kindergarten education marked a worthy accomplishment:

John Paul demonstrates reading proficiency in this presentation to the family assembly.

John Paul presents his "kindergarten project," a graphic that has something to do with trucks and bridges, I think...

John Paul is awarded his kindergarten diploma in 2003, with all the rights and privileges pertaining to it! 

Okay I'm sure Papa and Grandma remember this little boy very well. So do we! He's gotten bigger, but he's brought all that was best in that boy with him.

When I began this blog, John Paul was still thirteen. In the past four and a half years he has grown into a young man in so many ways. As parents we can only be amazed and "proud" (in the most positive sense of the term).

John Paul receives his diploma.

John Paul is still young, of course. But he has made his first achievements in the "adult world." A high school graduation is significant enough, but Chelsea Academy is a special challenge. The range of the Chelsea educational experience reminds me of a gymnasium or a liceo classico in Europe combined with the athletics and extracurricular activities of an American prep school.

But there is nothing snobbish about Chelsea. Rather, my kids are being challenged to work hard, play hard, and embrace responsibility in a spirit of friendship. It strikes me as the healthy and constructive path to open up and engage the energy of adolescence. We are so grateful to this beautiful school, to this great gift of God in the life of our family.

John Paul more than rose to the challenge. He graduated with a nearly perfect GPA, lettered in basketball, tennis, math club, drama, and finished second in his class.

John Paul gives Salutatorian address.

It was an amazing thing for me, thirty years after giving the Valedictorian address at my own college graduation, to sit in the second row and listen to my son give a beautiful and articulate Salutatorian speech at his own high school commencement.

The greatest blessing, however, has been to watch John Paul mature in his own faith, his own awareness of the concreteness of his personal relationship to Christ.

He has learned from family life and at school, but in a irreplaceable way he and his classmates have learned something from the presence of Jesus with them, from their own experience of being-together for a reason that encompasses and gives value to everything.

They have had a taste of the Mystery drawn close to their own lives and hopes. They have encountered Jesus in a new and compelling fashion. Especially in their senior year, they struggled with problems and challenges that enabled them to see the presence of Jesus building them up together, and including the larger circle of former classmates who had left for other schools but who continued to grow together as friends.

John Paul says that he has made friends for life. Indeed, he has made friends for eternity.

Some of the Class of 2015, after commencement. Visit Chelsea's website HERE.

This most important of all lessons has just begun for my son. But with it he is deepening his own identity as a person. He is growing up and maturing in his own freedom, and I don't really feel like we're "losing a child" but rather gaining a deeper bond with a person who will continue to be "with us," wherever his journey may take him.

This Crazy Family Life

Like most bloggers, I post the "good pictures" of the Janaros and their doings. But I presume that nobody thinks we have an "idyllic Catholic family life."

Oh my, no. No, no, no. It's quite crazy, really.

I have frequently mentioned on the blog that ours is a home with a disabled father and a mother who has to work. We really do have a happy home, though. Not perfect at all, but happy. Fragile, but happy. Happy, but crazy too.

Other than school, daily schedules can be quite chaotic and subject to change at a moment's notice. The kids and their mother come and go on all sorts of errands, engagements, and adventures. Eileen has school-related meetings, Teresa has karate, John Paul has basketball or tennis, Agnese and Lucia have choir or sports, and everyone has homework and studies and tests to prepare for. The girls are in high demand as virtuoso babysitters. Everyone also has friends. And Eileen somehow finds a way to shuttle one and all back and forth to their activities.

But who is the most wiped-out, exhausted person in the house every day? Me.

Last year our second car, a 1994 Toyota Camry, finally pooped out (in the sense that it needs more repairs than we can afford -- the engine is still just fine -- ANYBODY WANNA BUY A CAR FOR PARTS?). We have been a one vehicle family since the past summer. One vehicle, seven people.

Granted, the "one vehicle" is a Legend. The inimitable 1993 Toyota Previa minivan. We've had it for twelve years, and though it has become a bit of a sardine can, it still gets us around.

Eileen almost always drives. I only drive short distances on familiar roads. I take prescription medications that are a great help to me, but it is good to heed their labels and "use care" even beyond what is necessary. Above all, driving is too stressful, too exhausting, too much of a strain on my condition.

This means that Eileen bears much of the burden of running the Janaro shuttle bus. She is an excellent and willing driver, ready to take on additional tasks even beyond the needs of our family. I thank Jesus for her energy and her enormous love. I am in awe of her vigor, and sometimes I wonder what would become of us if it failed her. She doesn't want me to worry about this.

But I do.

Meals are often "grab-and-go," and that's not ideal. But we do have dinners all together sometimes during the week, at the dinner table. It's hard during the school year, but dinner together is an especially good time, because we really do have fun together.

We are squeezed into a very small house and basically stuck with its mortgage. So we bump into each other a lot, squeeze past each other, and try to remember Pope Francis's "three words" (see picture): Permesso ("excuse me" or "may I?"), Scusi (sorry about that), and Grazie (thank you). We joke sometimes that an Italian heritage family also needs a forth word: Basta! (Enough! Stop! C'mon, quit making a fuss!).

We shout at kids (sorry, Dr. Montessori), and kids shout at each other, but we can laugh and forgive. We are funny, peculiar, smart, disorganized, cheerful and joyful. We are blessed by one another. Our happiness as a family is as secure as one can hope for in this life.

Still, the kids are young and none of us knows what may come in time. We are on a road together. I beg Jesus every day to keep our family united with Him and with one another. And Mary and Joseph and St. Michael and our guardian angels and St. John Paul II....

Every Sunday the family goes to Mass together. The Mass and the Eucharist are the rock of our life together. On Sundays we are gathered into the heart of Jesus and sent forth again, with Him, on the journey of our time with all our needs and hopes and our growing.

The Rosary is a crucial component of our family life. It is our goal to pray it together every day, but it doesn't always happen as a family event, and when it does we don't always have full participation.

As our children grow into young men and women, we want to educate their freedom rather than require them to conform in a way that might engender resentment against the Rosary now or later, when they are adults. A positive witness from us, we believe, will bear greater fruit, as we entrust everything to Mary's loving heart.

And, of course, Josefina is always a "wild card" who can sometimes get us all laughing during the Rosary without even trying. And some really great family discussions have come about in the time we spend procrastinating before saying the Rosary.

Our house is crazy and messy and cluttered. Eileen works so hard to keep everything going, teaching, taking care of me, mothering, running the home, and filling in all the gaps left open by my own incapacity. Thank God she has such amazing resourcefulness, but the strain is hard for her and I am broken again and again by the limits that keep me from contributing more in the way of nuts and bolts and the elbow grease that one usually expects from the biggest person in house. Not to mention financial stability.

We manage, but it's humbling every day. How does a man bear being put on the shelf, living every day in front of the fear that he is useless? He fears that he is useless in the lives of his wife and children, in building up his home. It is an awful solitude.

Yet in the midst of this solitude, new possibilities open up.

I know I wouldn't be much of a homemaker even if I were healthy, since I have zero domestic skills ... in fact, I have negative domestic skills (ask anyone in the house and they'll tell you): too often practical tasks that I try to handle end up on the edge of catastrophe. As it is, I have no little struggle keeping myself together through the day.

But I am, in an odd way, the anchor of the home. I am the one who is here, almost all the time. When I go out, it's usually with the rest of the family. I go in with Eileen and the kids to the Montessori school during the week.

I do my writing and my study in my corner of the living room, and our living room has become a place where we all like to hang out.

I take walks around the neighborhood, or in the area of the school. If anyone is home, they know I'm here. In a very elemental sense, I "hold down the fort." (I usually let the answering machine take calls when I'm alone, because they are almost never for me, and the machine takes better messages than I do... really.)

I can talk and I can listen, and I take an interest in everybody and lend an ear. This creates the unusual situation of a very "accessible Husband/Dad." Not being able to do much has its advantages. If someone needs to talk, I have all the time in the world to listen. A child may only want to talk once a year, but for that one time it's worth putting in the effort of being here.

Meanwhile, I share time with Eileen and the kids. Even if we are just sitting in the living room reading. Of course, an atmosphere of conversation tends to arise around me. The house is full of talk, serious or silly or both. Other times it's full of music.

I listen especially to Eileen as she shares with me the accomplishments and the problems of her work. She loves her task as an educator and a pioneer in the enterprise of the John XXIII Montessori Children's Center.

All of the children have received their elementary formation there, and Teresa and Josefina are still attending. I try to participate by being on the staff (I have this large title that I can't even remember right now). What matters is that I share her passion for this work and her investment of herself in it, that I love it with her and support her efforts.

I try to affirm and remind her of her value, which is something I can see more than anyone else.

I'm often absent minded, or wasting time on the Internet, or obsessing over photographs. I get absorbed in drawing out my own projects or procrastinating. I can so easily withdraw into my own brooding self and mourn my own frustrations. But I must dedicate myself again and again to remembering that she has to come first. One of the things that has saved my sanity is that -- at the very least -- she needs me to NOT GO CRAZY.

And through it all, we still love to be together. Thank God.

I know that I am not useless. But my peculiar place in our odd family is so hard to grasp. Perhaps there is a gift in this fact: I have to learn my task as it unfolds according to my possibilities and the variations of my health. And I am no less lazy than any other human being, but I struggle against it; I keep returning to the moment, and to the challenge of giving whatever I have to offer.

Then I repent of my sins, again and again, and I give the whole mess to Jesus and beg Him to keep me going. I beg Him to put it together even in the moments that I don't understand. I pray.

I write my blog when I can. And I know there are people who are struggling to find peace and need a lifeline. I'm begging for peace, for a lifeline, every day. Begging Jesus.

There is only one Absolutely Reliable Person, and that's Jesus. Wherever we are, we have to talk to Him every day, really, like it's a matter of life and death (because it is). That's the core of living faith: relationship with Jesus. Trusting, because He doesn't do things the way we expect Him to, but He does bring everything to the good.

As for the Janaro family, we live by prayer and work and suffering, by trying to love one another, by permesso, scusi, and grazie.

Especially GRAZIE, "Thank You," because we have so much to be grateful for, to God and to one another.

Throwback: First Faces in the "Book"

Josefina's First Holy Communion

Josefina after the Mass, with her Daddy.

This is 8 years earlier, before she had another setback
in the NICU. She was there the first 7 months of her
life. Many prayers brought her from then to today!

During this past year, Jojo was well prepared by John XXIII Montessori Center's Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program. Here is a picture of her working on the Last Supper and using the materials to see its relationship to the Mass of the present time.

Materials used in the Last Supper work.

She's perhaps the smallest in size of today's CGS first communion kids. Afterwards, we celebrated by having a lovely family dinner out.

Speaking of food, mine included this salmon and asparagus salad, and a beer that deserved (and got) a picture all it's own.

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UPDATE: from May 10... Josefina wore her First Communion dress again on Sunday, so we were able to take a few more pictures. Let me post a couple of them here also.

Now we got Jojo with Daddy and Mommy both. And below, we have Jojo in the bright sunlight, next to the wall of the old church. She's less than twice as tall as the bushes! :-)

Happy Easter 2015

Happy Easter from the Janaros. Here's our Easter Sunday picture for 2015:


Yes indeed, the kids have grown a lot. Only five years ago, they all fit into a large box:


Of course, if we go back to the year 2001, it's obvious that we've come a long way. Back then, Teresa and Josefina weren't even around. It was three little tykes:

We wait in hope for the resurrection, when the good seeds of our days and years -- sown in the depths of earth -- will blossom and bear fruit in a perfection beyond anything we can imagine. And all our sorrows and tears, having poured out like rain watering the ground, will be wiped away. We will find beneath them our true faces, faces of joy.

Meanwhile, we've got plenty to do in the business of raising kids. Even little kids:

Jojo still enjoys hunting for Easter eggs!

Happy Birthday Eileen Janaro!

My dear wife, we grow older, but indeed we are full of years, somehow, even with all the care and toil and pain. We move forward together, and hope grows stronger. We do not know what lies ahead, and we do not doubt that new sorrows will come along with new and deeper joys, but we are learning about how God's persistence and the patience of His goodness turn even our weaknesses into the strong soil of fresh and surprising growth.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Janaro. I love you with all my heart!

***************

We all had fun celebrating Eileen's birthday on March 5, which felt even more like a little holiday in the midst of Lent thanks to the strongest snowstorm of the season. It gave us at least eight inches of snow and kept us, once again, all together and snug in the house with something to celebrate. Snow fell throughout the day.

Here's the house and surroundings getting pelted with snow.

Pine hangs with snowy fruit. The road is around here... somewhere!

Among many things, there was plenty of home cooking. The highlight of the day was the birthday cake that Agnese baked. It was a pound cake with honey liquor and a pineapple sauce. Oh gosh, it was so delicious!

Teresa brings in the glowing cake.

That is a slice with pineapple sauce, and it tasted even better than it looks.

Thank you, Lord, for all Your blessings. Grant that Eileen and I will have many more happy years. And bless all her many labors that make our home everything that it is.

Thank you Jesus, for everything.

Josefina Talks About "Older People"

Josefina: "So it's mostly older people who live in this house."

Me: (Surprised by this unprovoked declaration) "Huh? What do you mean?"

Her: "Oh you know, John Paul, Agnese, Lucia...."

Me: "Haha, okay, I see what you mean. Older people, yes indeed, this house is full of really old people.... But what about Teresa?"

Her: "Well, sometimes she's older."

Me: "And of course your mommy and daddy don't even enter into consideration for this category. Mommy and Daddy are like beyond the horizon of any kind of oldness that you can possibly conceive!"

Her: Looks at me like 'I-don't-understand-what-you're-talking-about-but-I-know-you're-being-silly.'

     ...I thought about this for a moment and then I continued...

Me: "But wait, what about Daddy? Daddy is a grownup but he acts like a kid sometimes, right?"

Her: "Yes. You're the only grownup I've ever seen who acts like a kid!"

Me: "Well, I'm sure other little girls think their daddies act like kids sometimes, too."

I hope they do!

Our Mardi Gras Queen

We just got done with Christmas, and now it's Carnevale!

The "House Chef" gave her expertise to the Mardi Gras dessert, a "choco-flan" cake (Mommy helped "a little," I'm told). It was delish.

Sant'Agnese, My Old Friend: I Am So Grateful to You.

I have loved Saint Agnes since I was in graduate school. I used to pray at her altar in the crypt of the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.

I really brought my searching heart there, to her, in those youthful days.

Also, I often went to Mass at St. Agnes parish in Arlington, Virginia. The parish has a shrine to her centered on the beautiful sculpture pictured on the left.

Agnes the Roman maiden became a very special friend to me. Here was this young girl whose heart was made heroic by the grace of Jesus. I was inspired by her.

"Saint Agnes raised her hands and prayed: 'Holy Father, hear me. I am coming to you whom I have loved, whom I have sought and always desired'" (antiphon for evening prayer, feast of St. Agnes).

Her total love for God still flows over the world seventeen hundred years after her death, drawing many people after on the path of consecrated life, and reaching out to countless others who have sought her help. She points us all in the direction of that unique relationship that God wills to have with each one of us.

When I lived in Rome, I found her presence to be almost palpable. She loves Rome and ordinary Romans very much, and they still love her too.

On this day 21 years ago (hard to believe it's been that long), I went to the feast day celebration at her Basilica on the Via Nomentana, and they opened the catacomb for people to freely visit the tomb. There, I felt moved to ask her to find me a wife, and I promised that if she did (and if the wife agreed) we would name our first daughter after her.

This was not in any way an attempt to "bribe" a saint, or a superstitious effort to conjure up her heavenly assistance. It was an exuberant gesture of the heart, born of the conviction that Agnes of Rome really, personally cared about me. She participated in Jesus's love for me -- the love that engenders a human reality that is destined to last forever: the communion of saints.

And St. Agnes did guide me and help me.

Two and a half years later, Eileen and I returned to Rome on our honeymoon and renewed the promise at her tomb. It was Eileen actually who advocated that we give our daughter the beautiful Italian form of the name, Agnese (pronounced On YAY zay).

Obviously, our first child was a boy, but needless to say John Paul's name was also inspired by the experience of Rome. Then, on December 21, 1998, a little girl was born, and a promise was fulfilled.

St. Agnes has been a special patroness of our family through the years. She continues to look after us, especially her "spiritual daughter," my own "little girl" who is now a young lady, my eldest daughter whom I've loved since before she was conceived. Hard to believe there was a time.

It's all so mysterious.

Agnese Janaro, age 16, from this past Christmas.

A Janaro Christmas: Pictures and Reflections

Early Christmas morning. The Janaros went to midnight Mass, and the family picture (below) was taken at 2:00 AM!

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas season! Here are a few pictures. You all understand, of course, that the adolescents in this house are rather particular about appearing in photographs. I've been sneaky a few times but I won't press my luck here. That means that the people you'll be seeing (for the most part) are the usual camera hams in the family.

The stockings were hung on the sofa with care. But the sofa blocked the way from the chimney to the living room. Sorry, Santa!

"No problemo" for Santa. (n.b. even Josefina knows that St. Nicholas doesn't come down the chimney, but we have fun pretending!)

In fact, it turns out that "Santa Claus" is a Washington Nationals fan!

Children and young folks and old folks too made short work of the present opening, once we finally got up!

Teresa got this... umm... twenty-first century skateboard thingy. Whatever it is, she loves it!

Here are a couple of monkeys!

Oh, John Paul is in this picture. But if he sees it, I expect he won't care that much.

And food-glorious-food we had in abundance. Pepper slices filled with goat cheese and tomatoes and scallions. Yum, yum!

The main dish was a pork roast that totally rocked! The gravy was made with apples and onions.

And it was this wonderful lady who made it all happen, again! I love you, Eileen Janaro!

 The true Gift of Christmas is the source of our hope and joy. Jesus holds us together and enables us to help one another.

In my Christmas dinner toast I said, "Jesus, thanks for coming!"

Truly, Jesus, You are everything to us. Thank You, above all, for the hope of eternal life, which enables us to see Your gift in everything, and which is teaching us to hunger and thirst for Your beauty in all the joys and sorrows of this life, confident in the hope that You work all things for the good.

Pictures on a blog might lead one to believe that "everything is awesome," that a family is chipper all the time and has no problems. But anyone who reads this blog knows that our family and our friends are on a journey, full of work and stumbling, full of failure and suffering, but also full of Someone who has come and who wants to be with us always.

There is joy, unconquerable joy, that consists in Him, in His presence which draws us to stay with Him, to adhere to Him, to believe in Him, trust in Him, love Him.

God is with us. God has come to be with us because He loves us. And to reveal that He IS Love. At the center of life, sustaining everything in being, is the One who is Love. The promise that stirs within our hearts is true: Gift, Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Love are the meaning of everything.

And this meaning has come because He wants to be with us. The meaning of everything has a name: Jesus.

Never give up.

And Merry Christmas!