Signs?

For many months now I have prayed rosaries for my wife, though not nearly as often as I should, certainly not every day. When I have been strong enough to pray, however, I have most happily prayed the Joyful Mysteries: the Annunciation, the Visitation to Elizabeth, the Nativity, the Presentation, and the finding of the Christ Child in the Temple, for the obvious reason that they are about the miracle birth of Jesus, and we are in need of a bit of a miracle now. We prayed these mysteries in our Rosary on the drive out to Omaha, even though it was on a Sunday and it is suggested that one prays the Glorious Mysteries. When I told my wife we were praying the “wrong” Mysteries, she said, “Can you do that? Is it allowed?” I told her it would be fine.

I was prompted to mention this because, I discovered on the day of my wife’s surgery – yesterday, Tuesday the 24th of June – that three of that day’s scripture passages (the First Reading, the Psalm, and the Gospel) mention the role of God in forming us in the womb. Here are the relevant passages, with their locations:

The First Reading:
1 … The LORD called me from the womb, from the body
of my mother he named my name. 2 He made my mouth
like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me
away…. 5 And now the LORD says, who formed me from
the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him …
(Isaiah 49: 1-6)

The Psalm:
13 For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit
me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise thee, for
thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works!
Thou knowest me right well; 15 my frame was not hidden
from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately
wrought in the depths of the earth (Psalms 139: 1-3, 13-15).

The Gospel:
57 Now the time came for
Elizabeth to be delivered, and she gave birth to a son. 58
And her neighbors and kinsfolk heard that the Lord had
shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. 59
And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child;
and they would have named him Zechari’ah after his
father, 60 but his mother said, “Not so; he shall be called
John.” 61 And they said to her, “None of your kindred is
called by this name.” 62 And they made signs to his
father, inquiring what he would have him called. 63 And
he asked for a writing tablet, and wrote, “His name is
John.” And they all marveled. 64 And immediately his
mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke,
blessing God. 65 And fear came on all their neighbors.
And all these things were talked about through all the hill
country of Judea; 66 and all who heard them laid them
up in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be?”
For the hand of the Lord was with him. 80 And the child
grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the
wilderness till the day of his manifestation to Israel
(Luke 1: 57-66, 80).

That last reading is of course related to the Visitation – it is the birth of John, later the Baptist, the child who leaps in the womb of Elizabeth when the pregnant Mary visits her older cousin. I don’t believe in omens, and I doubt I am worthy of signs, but finding out that these were the readings for the day of my wife’s surgery, I hoped.

I had another moment, a possible communication through ordinary happenstance, of what might come of this surgery. Just before we pulled out of our parking spot at home to start off to Omaha, my wife asked me whether I had brought our “pod” – which is what we call our i-Audio mp3 player. When I said no, she said, “Go up and get it.” So I did, and as I came out to lock the door, I heard the new baby upstairs crying. It seems like nothing, but he’s been there for a month, and we’ve never heard him crying before. Again, I don’t believe in omens and I consider myself unworthy of signs (or perhaps I am simply weak in my faith), but some things make one wonder.

Operation Day

The psychological ordeal is over, for the time being, and now the physical ordeal has begun for my wife. It really began last night, when she first drank her bottle of magnesium citrate, but this morning she will be put under and have to go through surgery. I’ve thought to write about this, and I’ve thought about this over and over, but I’ve not written much down. I’ve been too stressed out by the thought of thinking this over. My most common thought has been fear, fear of losing my wife, fear for her parents’ loss and loneliness, and fear of being blamed, by myself, by my family, by her parents, perhaps by God. And though I don’t think I am, I’ve also been afraid of finding out I’ve been wrong.

We met with Dr. Thomas Hilgers again yesterday (we last saw him after her exploratory laproscopy last December). He’s a quietly intense man, a slightly disconcerting presence, a bit inscrutable, like most doctors, and with penetrating, appraising eyes. He’s jovial, though, bearded and rotund, a bit like a well-trimmed, tailored, gray-haired Santa Claus. He repeated a few times, “Well, we have our work cut out for us,” in relation to my wife’s severe endometriosis and adhesions. That unnerved her a bit, but she observed that he seems confident; he just seems to be communicating that what he’s doing is labor- and concentration-intensive.

There was a funny exchange between us regarding colleges. I had mentioned a mutual friend to Dr. Hilgers – a local doctor – noting that I knew the man because I had gone to college with his daughter and her husband. He asked, “Where’s college?” When I answered Notre Dame, he remarked, “Well, there you go!” – a remark that wasn’t clarified by the context. He followed that up by asking my wife where she went to school. She was surprised to know that he was familiar with St. Olaf – “oh,” he said, “in Northfield.” It turns out he is from Minnesota, went to St. John’s for college, and did some of his medical training at Mayo, to which my wife responded, “Well, there you go!” to general laughter. Hers seemed pretty clear – it seemed to say, “Wow.” His could have been “Wow,” or “Figures,” knowing how divergent opinions on ND can be.

When I first came into the waiting room, around 6:30 this morning, there were two TV’s on. I was the only one there, and they were both blaring, and so I turned one of them down entirely. I was too slow to turn the other one down, as a group came in while I snooped around the room looking for anyone who might reprimand me for turning off a waiting room television. They left eventually, so I girded my loins and charged over to turn it down. When they came back, they seemed unbothered by the change in sound level (they had previously been sitting right in front of it as it blared, and went back to the same place), so I had peace up until now, about 9:00, when the nice old lady in the waiting room came over to turn on the TV for a young boy who’s waiting on his own. The boy, a son of African immigrants, to judge by his beautifully deep black skin, is sitting without anything to do, other than look across the room at the TV (he seems not to be interested in the magazines), and so she came over to turn up the closer television for him, which is right next to me. I silently groaned, but after she fiddled with it for awhile, she asked the boy if he wanted to watch it. He said no, and she turned to me to find out whether the still low volume was too high. I said no, not wanting to lord it over the whole waiting room, but she then decided to turn it off, since no one would be watching it.

Later:
Just heard from the nurse liaison, a trial position here at Creighton Hospital. She makes a circuit of the operating rooms to find out how the patients are doing. She then comes to the waiting room and updates the family members who are waiting for news. About an hour or two into the surgery, my wife is doing fine. The anesthesiologist says she is stable, and the surgeons are inside, just beginning to take bits of endometriosis out – they are using lasers to cut away the adhesions. I then went out to make a call to update my wife’s parents, who are eager for news, as one might expect.

Later:
The nice old lady came over again. The boy is apparently Sudanese, and they apparently are quite friendly and have the nicest handwriting – or at least he does. She’s a garrulous old gal, but perfectly friendly. When I signed in to the waiting room, she asked who my surgeon was. When I answered Dr. Hilgers, she said, “I knew it. The nicest young couples always come in to him.” Now she wanted to tell me about the Sudanese boy. He’s apparently finished middle school and is on his way to a high school. She advised him not to stay out late, because our culture has changed and there are bad people about. He assured her that he’s always in early. She was quite happy to hear that I am a teacher – I get far more praise for that than I deserve – and commiserated with me like Socrates over the state of today’s youth. She seems to think the Sudanese boy is an exception, and I do too, from the little I saw. He was quite polite with her when she sat down to talk with him, taking her advice without resentment, and when I left to use the phone, I asked him to keep an eye on my laptop, which he did without incident.

Later:
The nice old lady is being nice again, now at 10:34, this time inquiring as to whether a few other people, who aren’t apparently interested enough in their own amusement to bring something to read, would like to watch TV. She asked the woman in question what she would like to watch, CNN? The woman responded, “CNN, Home and Garden, whatever.” “Whatever.” Doesn’t that say it all?

Later:
It is now 12:48. About an hour and a half ago I heard from the nurse liason that things were going well. My wife is still stable, and they have found the fallopian tubes. Way back in December, when they did a laproscopy to check out her interior, they couldn’t get very far. Most importantly, they couldn’t find her fallopian tubes, which might have been damaged or even obliterated by the scarring of the interior by the endometriosis. Dr. Hilgers has found them, however, and they are open and in good shape. I was told at the time that her surgery, instead of finishing between 11 and 12, would now finish closer to 1:00. So, as might be expected, I am starting to get a bit nervous.

Shortly after I received that phone call, I got my in-laws and my parents up-to-date; my father was jokingly unhappy to be called last – in fact, he called me, while I was talking to my mother – but I think he understands. My mother-in-law has been quite nervous, but I think is doing ok. She was moved to tears to hear that my wife and I said some prayers together before she was wheeled out. As a staunch Protestant, she may not have been as moved to tears if she knew the prayers were three Hail Mary’s, but she’s a good woman and easily moved, so she might well have. I also said a Rosary as I sat in the waiting room, a somewhat flawed rosary, however, as I was dozing off in the later decades, due to waking up at 4:30 or so. My final religious effort was a minor sacrifice: last night I ate what my wife ate – broth, jello, and popsicles – and this morning I decided not to eat until I knew she was in the Recovery room. At that point I’ll get up and go out of the hospital to eat something somewhere, but until then I’m devoting this very minor fast to her health and to the Doctor’s success.

Later:
Just heard that Doctor Hilgers might be out to see me in the next fifteen minutes. My wife is apparently doing well, and she will be in the recovery room in about an hour. Ran downstairs to give Sandy a quick call, and then shot right back upstairs.

A Bit of Belloc

I don’t know how well respected Hilaire Belloc is as an historian, whether he’s simply regarded as a polemicist, a mere popularizer, or whether he is deemed to have legitimate insights that historians take seriously, no matter whether they agree with them all. That said, the following passage from the opening of his Characters of the Reformation, which at the very least is eminently readable, strike me as plausible, though this part of my knowledge is deeply lacking:

The break-up of united western Christendom with the coming of the Reformation was by far the most important thing in history since the foundation of the Catholic Church fifteen hundred years before.

Men of foresight perceived at the time that if catastrophe were allowed to consummate itself, if the revolt were to be successful (and it was successful), our civilization would certainly be imperiled, and possibly, in the long run, destroyed.

That indeed is what has happened. Europe with all its culture is now seriously imperiled and stands no small chance of being destroyed by its own internal disruption; and all this is ultimately the fruit of the great religious revolution which began four hundred years ago.

This seems to me to have some truths to it, though I would wonder whether the original schism from the Eastern Church, or the rise of Islam (did one allow the other to succeed?), were more important. I also wonder whether the Reformation could have been combated effectively or not. He was certainly right about the break-up of the West, though not, perhaps, for the exact reasons he expected. The book was published in 1936, and Belloc lived to see the end of the war which so thoroughly damaged and separated Europe. The irony was that in their attempt to make World War II the war that would end all wars, since the First had failed to do so, the Europeans attempted to create an artificial unity that has been building and, it sounds like, becoming hollowed out from within by the wholesale cultural transformation enabled by multiculturalism.

"Private Revelationism"

Was up all night last night for no particularly good reason, and so am desperately tired. Will go to bed soon, but read a bit in Touchstone as I was brushing my teeth. Stopped partway through an article and decided to jot this down for future reference, and just to get it out there to my widespread readership. Brian McDonald, in his article “Merely Saved or Merely Damned?” (not available online, as of this posting) writes a paragraph that I felt described an aspect of my life precisely. Dad says he married his second wife, my stepmother, because he felt God was telling him to. He essentially felt called, as one might in a vocation, to marry her following his divorce (please know that the somewhat heartless tone that seems to be taking over – I almost typed, “to marry this woman” – is simply a result of my trying to use no names). Writing of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, he says,

Screwtape emphasizes that even other-directed prayer, properly managed, can immunize the patient against reality. If Wormwood can get him to indulge in high-toned prayers for his mother’s “soul” [do I do this, I wonder?] while ignoring the needs of the real woman, then “in time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling for the imagined mother will ever flow into his treatment of the real one.”

Thus, while Screwtape regards prayer as a disagreeable subject, he also shows that a skilled tempter may turn it into an effective means of getting patients into the house of “our father below.” The trick is to “keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the actions of their own wills.” Such prayer will become an exercise in imagination insulated from fact and ultimately from God himself, “the Fountain of all Facthood,” as Lewis calls him elsewhere.

A will bent on manufacturing feelings may well veer into private revelationism and away from the hard and public revelation of God and his will in the Scriptures and the Church. (Note the phenomenon of modern Christians justifying their divorces on the basis of inner illuminations rather than the Lord’s teaching or the Church’s counsel.)

The kicker, the point of retyping the whole passage, as the discerning reader will by now no doubt have realized, is the parenthetical expression. (Let me take this moment to briefly decry what appears to be a new trend of using parentheses in lieu of brackets when inserting one’s own words into a quotation – what does one do when the quotation itself has parentheses, revert back to brackets temporarily?) I have no way of knowing just how true my father’s personal revelation was, though I have no doubt it was sincerely come by. I think, however, that McDonald’s dimetop landing on just the spot of the philosophical airfield my father occupies was more than coincidence. Lots of people are crowding that aerodrome, attempting to fly, and perhaps succeeding for all I know, though I believe they are not. There’s been something in the water, though, through the last sixty years, and either the generation’s wrong, generally speaking, or the Church is.

My apologies if I’ve not been entirely coherent; I’ve got to go to bed just now.

From Feb. 4, mostly written on the bus, so that it simply trails off...

Missed Mass yesterday. Planned to go to the 5:00, but didn’t really want to get up at 4:00 to shower (hadn’t done so yet), and decided to get up at 4:30. At 4:30, I made no new plans, as their absurdity would become immediately apparent, but just kept putting off the getting-up. At around 4:57 I conceded that I was not going and watched the Super Bowl instead. Tonight I did not dilly-dally quite as much, and so am attempting to get to the Basilica for 6:45 confession. We’ll see whether I make it. I caught the 6:00 bus, but the train I catch afterwards doesn’t disgorge in any proximity to the church. I might have to take the city bus on the same route, which is where the unlikelihood of my making it in time becomes most likely.

The night is foggy. One sorrow of life in middle America, one bolster to an hereditary nostalgia for Ireland, is the lack of fog in the former – at least in my part. A kind of glamour – and here I copy C. S. Lewis in noting that I mean the old meaning of glamour, magic, not the true modern definition, ala Audrey Hepburn, or the false modern definition, ala Paris Hilton – takes over the landscape. Especially at night, forms appear out of the nothingness and the world seems ancient yet unexplored. The world is not the old world yet, yet come out of the fog, I will be I, my things will be wet.

I wonder whether there is a half-life on my teaching career. I was told by my “cooperating teacher,” he who supervised me when I student-taught (I believe they were once called “mentor teachers,” in a slightly more hierarchical age), that one’s best years of teaching are the fifth to the fifteenth, when one has the most energy and zeal, the least exhaustion, the most creativity, the shallowest of ruts. I have no true creativity. Often I am seized by a zeal for some new way of doing things, but I rarely hold on to that zeal. An example will serve: When I was in college, I learned the meaning of the word “schanachie.” I don’t remember now whether I spell this correctly (anyone who cares to check may look up albums by the Chieftans – their Ballad of the Irish Horse is published by a outfit of this name). In Irish it means “story teller,” and I was instantly seized with the thought that it would be a great name, at a school that calls its teams “The Fighting Irish,” for a literary magazine, and that I would be the one to start that magazine. I walked around in an unobtrusive sort of a fever for a few days, but never mentioned it to anyone, or only to a few non-literary types, primarily because I was utterly unsure how to go about founding a literary magazine, partly because I had the feeling that I would be mocked for such an unabashedly Irish name (this due in part to a stay in Dublin, where the locals are anything but sentimental about their heritage), partly because I didn’t know many literary types, though I could certainly have found them in my English classes. Eventually the fever petered out, and I soon learned that there was already a literary journal, called The Juggler. Though I had two poems published in it, during my senior year, I never bid to join its editorial team.

I have no true creativity, I said above. I do, though I don’t exercise it. And when it comes to teaching, I am not particularly interested in finding ways to interest them. I am interested in literature. I want them to come in interested in one of three things: literature specifically, learning generally, or academic success. Unfortunately, even at a school as smart as this one (our lowest PLAN test predictions were 18-22, for two students, meaning that the dumbest kids in my school – or at least the worst test-takers – score as well as the average kids at my last school), I run into plenty who are uninterested in any of these things, or at least uninterested enough often enough that they don’t put the effort forth.

My favorite teachers were the ones who were clear, organized, lively, and had interesting or provocative things to say about their subject. Where the subjects in question were just not that interesting inherently, at least to my limited brain, the first three could be pretty successful. From seventh grade through high school, when I first really became a student, I count two science teachers, two math teachers, two history, one economics, one theology, and three English teachers as my most effective. I discount two more English teachers who were good but not quite on the level of their English peers; they may have been as good as the other non-English teachers, but my natural liking for the subject may have improved my opinion of them. Not one of these people used much in the way of “student-centered learning.” Not all of them were personally inspiring (Let me just note how much I hate the sanctimonious braggadocio of “I don’t teach; I inspire” sweatshirts. Let your students say it if it’s true.). All of them, however, were personable, in control of their classrooms, knowledgeable about their subject matter, and able to present it clearly. I’m not even sure they were each and every single one of them that organized in their presentation. I don’t know how tightly their assessments measured precisely what they taught (potentially one of my weaknesses). But I do know that I learned with them.

I am clear in what I say. One of my refrains is, “Is that clear?” I look them in the eye. They nod. I understand that this question is not always answered honestly, but …. But what? Perhaps I should test them more often, ask them to repeat what has been taught in their own words, some of the less able ones, at least, but the classes are sometimes so difficult to move forward at all that sometimes one just has to move on so the smarter kids don’t get bored out of their skulls. And sometimes I do that stuff, but it doesn’t stick with all of them.

I Know Next to Nothing of Paul Claudel

This is going to be a brief and inconsequential post, useful perhaps only as a forgotten note scribbled and found in a book years later, or as a purposely-bent tree branch growing askant the forgotten path to the door of a forgotten mine. Perhaps I'll see it later and remember, go down that path, explore what once seemed to betoken riches, if only I had the time to seek them.

I know next to nothing of Paul Claudel. I have heard the name. I can tell he's French, just from the name, probably not from memory. But having once again renewed my subscription to The Chesterton Review, I have in its pages come across an article reprinting a reprinting of a translation of an excerpt of his works. First is cited Job: "For he wounds, but he binds up; he smites, but his hands heal" (5:18): the paradox of God in that most imperious and pitiful of books. Then comes another paradox, a startling image, I suppose of Claudel's: "We meet again those wise and gentle hands that not so long ago were thrust into us through the gaping cleft in our being ...." Thomas's hands nearly did this to Him for their loss of faith; what does it mean that His hands have done it to us? It is not for a lack of faith, for we are not believed in, but known. Thomas sought faith as knowledge; he wanted to know instead of, or at least before, believing. (As it was, he chose the lesser form - he knew far more than I or any of us have known, but he finally refused the opportunity to touch, to make more sure of what he saw and heard.) God has knowledge, knows us inside and out, has no need to believe because he knows us, having made us.

"The left hand sustains, presents, and adjusts, and the right hand creates."

"How can we resist the hands that molded us and that know more than one way to resume their potter's work?"

The comparison for me, an American who's taught American Literature, is inescapable: how much greater is this God than Jonathan Edwards's God? I don't know Edwards as deeply as I should; and I have been at pains to make sure my students understand that his sinners in the hands of a famously irate God are at the center of a paradox, being held up and sustained above the flames by His mercy; and I have at times taught parts of his "Divine and Supernatural Light" to show that Edwards is not a cartoon (sometimes I even think he is a proto-Romantic, out there in the woods in his booth, praying); but these lines from Claudel seem so much more true. God is not reluctant to keep us, constrained by His better nature, or in keeping with a tacked on and capricious quality called mercy, to act against His wisdom in condemning us. He positively wants us. He desires our love. Does He weep for our love as He did in the Garden?

I wish I knew my theology better. I might know whether I could even consider answering that last question.

Cribbed Comments on India

A moment, a few hours, of procrastination on a Sunday morning, brings with it an e-mail from Site Meter, which brings with it a reminder that I have a blog, which brings with it a weak desire to someday do something with it, which brings remembrance that I wrote some sloppy reflections on India in e-mails to family, which ushers in the somewhat guilty decision to keep this poor crippled work crawling along with a few cutandpasted paragraphs, with apologies to anyone who happens to happen upon them:

From Christmas Eve:
My wife and I are here safe in smoggy Delhi. We haven't seen much of the town yet, having gotten in last night at around 11:00 and having just finished up breakfast in the hotel. She had a masala omelette while I had a bunch of unidentifiable but rather tasty Indian delicacies from the buffet. Everyone has been very friendly, the service is extremely attentive, and "Jingle Bell Rock" has played consecutively at least six times in the lobby of the hotel. I'm hoping to catch an afternoon Mass, but it sounds like they only had them in the morning - something we didn't find out until it was too late. Nonetheless, we'll go into the Sacred Heart cathedral (apparently the oldest cathedral in the city) and spend some time praying. Hope you're all well. I'm missing getting up in the morning and watching everyone open presents, but we had lots of fun at our early Christmas parties, for which we both thank you.

Mother, we enjoyed our Christmas Stollen in the hotel room last night after we met here. It was a wonderful treat.

From December 26:
We flew into Khararajho (sp?), India, today, to visit ancient Hindu temples, rediscovered 150 years ago after being hidden for 500 years in the jungle, covered with carvings, many of them erotic and even pornographic. We only spent about half the day sightseeing, but the flight took up the other half of the day, so we are tired. I am happy to be out of Delhi, as the air here is fresh and the roads much cleaner than in the capital. Delhi I'm sure has tons of urban culture, but it's so big that we didn't see much of it, and the slums and dust are psychologically oppressive (though I'm sure they're not so oppressive for me, in my hotel, as they are for the people living in them daily). Hope you're well, and will write to you later.

From January 2:
We are in Varinasi this morning, called the holiest city in all India, and watched the pilgrims and residents make their ablutions in the river Ganges [at dawn]. We saw the remnants of some cremations and watched a family take the body of an infant out to the middle of the river for burial. What was also quite interesting was the old town, a warren of twisting streets not big enough for a single car to pass through. I would like to write and tell more, but I'm in the so-called "business center" of the hotel, which is really just some manager's computer, and I don't think I should monopolize it for long. We'll be home soon, and my stomach will get a chance to relax finally (I've been fine, up until just today, when I started having some trouble). I've loved the trip, but I look forward to home.

From January 2 (later, to other family members):
We are in Varinasi right now, called the holiest city in all India. Its old town is fascinating, a warren of streets that is positively medieval (with the exception of the motor scooter horns screaming from around the corner as they scud through the lanes). The people walk along, yielding right of way to the occasional cow, buying morning breakfast ("poori & bhaji" - a potato and pea curry served on a tortilla-type bread) and tea at cubbyhole stores that open from the walls. As frequently as the stores, one comes across shrines or tiny temples, their sometimes unrecognizable gods splashed with orange paint. In at least two locations (we saw only a small part of the old town), two-hundred year old trees sprout from behind and above and around a shop, and grow at an irregular angle, twelve feet above street. The river Ganges is a sight, lined with empty sand flats on one side and piled temples and "ghats" - steps designed for pilgrims' ease of bathing in the river - on the other. The river is shrouded in fog as the sun rises, and it only slowly becomes visible as a big pink ball over the empty east bank of the river. The river is bobbing with ancient boats filled with tourists (mostly quiet) and pilgrims, and the ghats populated by half naked men, some of them saddhus - Hindu holy men - taking their morning bath in the filthy water. Some women are also present, though not at the cremations taking place at two locations along the banks, for they mourn too loudly, apparently, for such a place as the Ganges.

This is not complete, but I had best get going. Hope all are well, and can't wait to see you again. India has been fascinating, but Chicago beckons.

From January 5 (at home):
My wife and I went off to India for the break, which was a bit exhausting but utterly fascinating. We were visiting her father who was finishing up a three-month teaching in the south of the country. He came up north to Delhi, where we met up with him and my mother-in-law, who had met him in the south a few days before, and commenced on the Golden Triangle tour of the most holy (Hindu) and otherwise famous sights of India. These included the "Taj," as they invariably call the Taj Mahal, the pornographic temples at Kajuraho, the cremation sites on the Ganges at Varanasi, the deer park where the Buddha preached his first sermon, and innumberable fortresses and palaces. It was all interesting, but the relentless differences between Indian culture and our own, not to mention a few microbes in my case, wore us down, and we are happy to be back. Hope you're both well.