Mama, When You Said There'll be Days Like This You Forgot to Mention Cheerios

This morning while Aiden attended his Catechism class, Dawson and I went to daily mass. We always sit just outside the day chapel in folding chairs placed specifically for mothers with young children. Today, those chairs were not there.

I tentatively entered the chapel with Dawson and sat in the front row (the chapel was FULL), right under the lectern. Dawson was being relatively well behaved but he was talking endlessly. I thought a good way to keep him quiet would be to hand him the 12 oz. cup of Cheerios I had with me.

He munched his way through the first two readings and on through the Gospel, which just happened to be the one about Martha and Mary. I was really meditating on this one - thinking how all too often I am like Martha, too busy working to make things perfect to sit back and relish the people I am trying to impress. Yes, I thought, I need to spend more time like Mary.

I was thinking all of this through the intentions right up until the final prayer before we sat down for the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer. Right up...until the moment...when Dawson dropped that 12 oz. cup FULL of Cheerios.

Do you have any idea how many Cheerios fit into a cup that size? Well, I don't know exactly either but from the damage I was surveying at that moment I'd say it is somewhere around 500.

In a split second I assessed the mess and realized immediately that I was going to have to get all those Cheerios up and get them up quick. You do remember that we were sitting in the front row…the aisle everyone in that packed chapel had to walk down to receive Communion. Visions of the crunching of each Cheerio as this scene unfolded sent me into a tail spin.

I passed Dawson quickly to my mom and exited with a member of the parish who came out to show me the broom closet. Of course, there were no brooms in that closet so another parishioner joined us at that point with a key to another closet that actually had a broom with a dust pan. As we were walking back into the church she actually said, "Bob, can you get a few folding chairs and set them up out here for us?"

So back into the chapel I hurried, head down, not able to look anyone in the eye. The priest was still sitting in his chair, silent I might add, waiting for me to finish so that he could carry on with mass.

I felt as if there were holes being stared through me as I quickly swept the Cheerios into the dust pan so kindly held by the man who helped me find it. Other mothers got out of their seats to pick up a few strays I had missed. Finally, we put the trash can and broom into the adjoining Sacristy and I sat back down as the priest ceased his pause. Just as I sat down Dawson came up and said, "I want more Cheerios in the cup Mama."

I tried my best to hold it together through the rest of mass but, bottom line, I was completely humiliated. I mean not two minutes before I had been dwelling on the whole Martha thing and then "Crash!" there I was holding up the Liturgy of the Eucharist with broom in hand. By the time mass ended, I was in tears.

I wasn't mad at Dawson. It wasn't his fault. I was mortified. Embarrassed. Kicking myself. Why did this happen? What did I do wrong to deserve this? Was God playing some kind of cruel joke on me? I couldn’t help but to think that maybe “choosing the better part” for me today would have been to skip mass altogether. I was deflated for a good couple of hours after mass.

I spent most of the rest of the day trying to get some big meaning of the whole event, but I just couldn’t find one. I know God didn’t do that to me. The reality is that sometimes things like that just happen.

When Nelson came home around 11 p.m., I relayed the whole story to him and the tears came again. However, with the tears came a bit of laughter on my part and a whole lot of full belly laughing on Nelson’s part. “I’m sorry,” he said with true sympathy through the chuckles, “but it really is funny. You’ll laugh about it one day.”

Well, I’m not there quite yet, but I’m making progress. I guess the biggest lesson is NO MORE CHEERIOS IN MASS.