It’s been awhile. Took 7 months to find time to write again…but
MJ’s Nutcracker debut precluded us from hosting our annual Peiffer Christmas party this year. We missed kicking off the holidays with you all; little Eric Boaz is still recovering from the trauma. Frosting seems to have resolved his sadness:
Our whole clan is home for Christmas this week meaning slower meals, longer walks, and generally taking a break from what Kramer calls
Once the chaos subsides each evening as the littles fall sound asleep, we’re enjoying evenings of Golden Bachelor and Slow Horses as a break from Cocomelon and Tom & Jerry.
Since everyone’s been home I’ve become a veritable Instacart employee, hauling cotton candy grapes, Phish food, and bananas to our pantry on a seemingly daily basis.
Given all the errands and activity, I asked EB to re-stock our in car snack bag yesterday in efforts to recruit help. On the way back from the pediatrician, Marnie reaches in said bag and pulls out a large sack of microwavable long grain white rice. Perhaps I should have been more specific about what I meant by “snacks”.
A couple of pieces ICYMI – Bill McGurn writes in WSJ about fertility rates and religiosity:
“At a recent conference in Rome, Mr. Musk brought up one of his hobby horses: the challenge to global prosperity posed by declining fertility rates. That’s the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime. At 1.24 Italy’s is among the lowest in Europe and well below the 2.1 rate a country needs to maintain its population.
His answer? “Make more Italians.”
Enter Catherine Pakaluk. She agrees with Mr. Musk about birthrates. But she notes that countries have learned that while it’s possible to drive birthrates down, it’s much more difficult to drive them back up once the decline has started.
You might expect as much from a professor who earned her doctorate at Harvard and now teaches at the Catholic University of America. But this isn’t your grandfather’s econ professor. Mrs. Pakaluk met her husband, Michael, at Harvard, where he was a widowed father with young children.
They fell in love and married in 1999—making her an instant mother of six at age 23. The experience can’t have been too bad. The Pakaluks went on to have eight more children.
What I’m interested in,” Mrs. Pakaluk says, “is challenging a rigid narrative about female success patterned on a male timeline. I’m interested in raising awareness about the very real possibility of prioritizing children in a modern economy.”
In other good reads, just finished Curtis Chang’s The Anxiety Opportunity about worry. My sister Esther turned me onto Curtis’ podcast a few months ago and though I’ve never considered myself an anxious person, I now have children : ) Curtis notes that when the angels proclaim in the Bible “Do not be afraid” they are really addressing the anxiety within every human heart.
One helpful tip Curtis provides is his direct approach to naming a thought / anxiety and subsequently handing it over to God. For example, “here comes that I’m failing as a parent” thought looping in my head – God, please take that one.
Chang also mentions a phenomenon that I’d never heard of before – post traumatic growth. Which pretty much sums up the Judeo-Christian view on suffering. That anxiety truly is an opportunity to grow in our dependence on the Lord. That the fiery furnace Daniel faced, the barren womb Hannah struggled with…prompt post traumatic growth.
While Eric’s been throwing the kids around the pool this break, I’ve been re-reading Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, one of my favorite books from high school:
“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
Wow, that really hits me different as an adult.
In other local news here in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Seb started wrestling at Kenston and spent some time with our dear friend Beau at The Salvation Army shelter serving lunch:
Lastly, I read that John Legend and his wife travel with 4 nannies. One for each child. No wonder his wife always looks camera ready and rested. I believe she might actually be sleeping.
2024 fast approaches. As we face a new year, I pray we will be what David Brooks calls in his new book “How To Know A Person” an “Illuminator” not a “Diminisher”
That we can be what Travis Kelce’s coach called a “fountain”, and not a drain (see WSJ profile here).
That I’ll do less TV, less sugar and less me and more reading and Barre, more violin and more prayer.
That God can shatter the bad and fill us with the good. That, as C.S. Lewis aptly writes, God can take the shabby shack that is us and turn us into a palace:
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
Happy New Year!
Tweets as a send off….
Chaos Coordinator 