Will thank-you notes save the West?

I was quite startled, the other day, to read this column by one of my youngest colleagues. 

Myles argues that the problems of his generation, Gen Z (or Zoomers), can be blamed on a lack of silence in their lives. He contrasted the study habits of the Boomers--who looked for books in silent libraries--with those of the Zoomers, who have a constant stream of music filling their ears as they click around on the internet. It was if he were describing two different cultures. Meanwhile, he suggested that the reason so many twenty-something Catholics are choosing the Old Mass over the New is that they find there the silence they so desperately crave. 

"What else does your generation need?" I asked a Zoomer friend as we walked along a sunny Edinburgh street. 

She thought this over and said, "Challenge." 

In her view, Gen Z is given everything on a plate, and nobody challenges it to do difficult things. I thought this very interesting. It occurred to me that this may be more of an age problem than a generation problem, since the kind of young people who go to university have been throughly coddled since the end of the Second World War or (in the UK) since the end of National Service.*

On the other hand, I was made to do many things I disliked (for example, walk two long blocks between home and Brownies all my 7-year-old self), got regularly bruised playing ice hockey, rode my bicycle all over the neighbourhood, had reasonably restricted TV viewing, was bribed into silence with chocolate on 10 hour car journeys to Indiana, almost drowned in the municipal pool, had to call adults on the (rotary) phone, took coffee shop jobs, and rocked infant siblings back to sleep. Apart from the multiple infant siblings, I think these experiences were pretty typical of Gen X. 

One thing that I suspect may be typical of Gen Z is that it doesn't answer RSVPs or write thank-you notes. And here is where I get anxious because the primary directive of a hostess is to set her guests at ease. Do I want to embarrass my guests by publishing reminders that they should send me emails to announce their intended presence or absence at my tea dances, let alone a demand for thank-you notes? Decidedly not. And do I want to give the impression that I am a queen of etiquette? I'm afraid Benedict Ambrose, who has been known to flinch at my colonial lapses in taste, would object most strenuously to any such pretence. (This reminds me, my bread-and-butter note to Mrs. Polish Pretend Son is shockingly late.) 

"But if you don't tell them, who will?"asked my Zoomer friend, and suddenly I recall that one of the charges against Gen X (from which God has hitherto spared me by not sending babies of my own) is that we want to be friends or, to channel Hilary White, "fwends" with our children instead of parenting them properly. 

So I have gloomily concluded that I should lead a small seminar on Traditional Social Manners on behalf of The Youth on the grounds that this will challenge and therefore help them. And indeed I think it will help them because, like it or not, they are now in Grown-Up Land, and grown-ups like other grown-ups who respond to the acronym RSVP and are charmed by the ones who send thank-you notes, particularly the kind that come by post, after parties. In this electronic age, social media messages are perfectly acceptable, but the little cards are more tangible, make a greater impression, and linger in the memory. 

"So-and-so," I think as peruse the back of the envelope, "was very well brought up." 

Another challenge I would like to offer, since I am out on a social limb anyway, is a script for graciously saying No to a gentleman's invitation to dance and what to say if you are the gentleman receiving the No. Bear with me while I think out loud here:

Gentleman: Would you like to dance?

Lady: No, thank you. That last waltz tired me right out.

Gentleman: In that case, may I bring you a cup of coffee? 

Lady: No, but I'd love a glass of our TLM watered-down squash. Thank you!

Gentleman: I will be right back!

Off he goes.

Gentleman 2: Would you like to dance?

Lady: No, thank you. [Gentleman 1] has just gone to get me a squash. 

Gentleman 2: Yes, it is quite hot in here, isn't it? I wonder if [Lady 2] would like to dance?

Lady: Ask her, by all means!

In short, if you don't want to dance with someone, give him a polite excuse. And if your invitation to dance is turned down on the grounds of tiredness/heat, ask the lady if you can get her something to drink. If the excuse is that she is in anxiety about some no-show, offer to look for him/her. But, to be on the safe side, don't ask her to dance for the very next tune. Wait until later. 

(This scenario, by the way, presumes that everyone is acquainted and standing in a respectable parish hall or ballroom, not Club Super-Sexy in the Cowgate.)

The virtue underlying the RSVP, the thank-you note, the gracious negation and acceptance of negation is thoughtfulness. This is a quality for which I myself was not famed as a 20-something. Poacher turned gamekeeper, eh? But later in life I noticed that the secret to popularity was neither a fashionable wardrobe nor compliant parents--nor even the ability to speak Italian--but being known as a thoughtful person.

A thoughtful person someone who strives always to put people at their ease, who says please and thank you, who says how much they appreciate this or that, who brings the culturally-correct offering to dinner parties, who gives up his or her seat on the bus to the person who clearly need it (for example, not any lady but the old lady or the lady carrying bags or leading children, and not any old man, but the old man who looks past caring).  

This reminds me that the answer to the horrible woman who snaps at you for holding the door for her is "I apologize for having offended you, ma'am." That should take the wind right out of her ill-bred sails while leaving your dignity unimpaired. Normally, your good manners should never cause anyone discomfort. I once knew a man who practically had a seizure every time I touched a door. This was very unpleasant. 

To paraphrase the late Father Bernard Lonergan, the lovely old rules governing social life in the West have  torn to pieces, and it is up to young men and women of good will to put them together again. It would be absolutely lovely if, alongside silence, Zoomers who flock to the TLM also learned the social skills that would set them apart from--or, even better, edify--their generation. These are neither affections or the entree to a clique but manifestations of the thoughtfulness that fosters peace and friendship between men and women and even--dare I hope--between Boomers and Zoomers. 

*Or, in Poland, since post-communist prosperity.

Strauss at last!

Confirmation classes are over for the summer, so I can rent the technically-no-longer-a-parish parish hall for as long as I like on Sunday afternoons. 

This month I decided to shell out for three whole hours, so my Waltzing Party guests would have ample time to review the Polonaise/Polonez/Chodzony [pron. HOD-zon-ih] and the various turns of the waltz, drink a leisurely cup of coffee, and get back to the dance floor for "free dance." This did not mean, of course, bursting from the constraints of ballroom dancing but being free to... 

Well, in the end it meant being free to say "No" to a dance, which various belles did, leaving the askers to tell others that they had been "rejected." 

"It's all part of it," said I and made horrible faces at one rejectee and jerked my head in the direction of a young lady I knew longed to dance. He got the hint. Hashtag Doyenne. 

The real problem, I suspect, was that there was too little time between Mass and the Waltzing Party for lunch, and some of my poor guests were very tired by the time the "free dance" came along. Clearly I must think about what to do to spare them. I may have to smuggle them sandwiches to eat during the After-Mass Tea-and-Coffee-Hour, for B.A. and I cannot at this juncture afford to buy a flat in the West End. 

As always, I felt some anxiety about the male:female ratio because there are simply more young men than young women interested in the Traditional Latin Mass in our corner of Christendom, and the mother-chaperones always have to make up the numbers. Yesterday I was the only mother-chaperone, as it were, and we ended up with only 9 women to 10 men, which wasn't too bad. Come to think of it, it does create an impetus for the men to hurry up and ask the women to dance. 

However, there was no real impetus for them to ask anyone to dance during the "free dance," even when I, being spun around the room by a 14-year-old, wailed "Gentlemen, the ladies can't ask you; we're Trads."

The 14-year-old assured me that he much preferred having the whole room to dance in, which I could well understand, as he travelled all over the floor as if we were actually at a Viennese ball, and my sticker came off afterwards.

Yes, I have followed through on my sticker idea, and it has worked beautifully. Last month I bought two packages of rectangular neon green stickers, and my female guests have all worn them on their left shoulder blades. 

"Why don't the men have to wear stickers?" demanded one of the yesterday's female guests.

"Because the top of the shoulder is rather more obvious," rumbled the dance instructor. 

"Because men don't care if your hand accidentally slides any which way," thought the hostess. Hashtag Safeguarding Officer.

The one problem with the stickers is that they fall off after a particularly vigorous waltz, and I ended the afternoon wearing a plaster (band-aid) instead. However, I watched the 8 other couples carefully during the first waltz, and the hands remained firmly clamped to the shoulder blades, where they belonged. Am pedagogical genius.

Meanwhile, the waltzing instructor decided that we were all enough advanced to have real classical music, and not Whitney Houston or whatever horrors he has inflicted upon us unworthy non-Austrians in the past. Thus, we danced to Dmitri Shostakovich's "Waltz No. 2" and later--hooray!--real Strauss, including "Wiener Blut."  

When the waltzing instructor disappeared to entertain his visiting parents, he took much of the energy in the room (and one of the ladies) with him. However, Polish Pretend Son arrived soon after, having paid a visit to his old Edinburgh pastor and then supplemented his drawing room gin-and-tonic with a pint at a nearby pub. 

PPS had been shocked to hear that there is no alcohol at my Waltzing Parties and amused when I forbade him from turning up drunk, as he had been known to do at Edinburgh tango evenings. He wanted to know how I knew this, and I knew because it is a very small world and at least two women have told me. He certainly had returned intoxicated from tango parties to the Historical House, while staying with us, eyes horribly bloodshot. Nevertheless, he is also known to be an excellent dancer. Women have told me that, too. I certainly have chosen an interesting Pretend Son. 

Anyway, PPS turned up perfectly sober, held a civilized conversation with the young men to whom I introduced him, and then asked me to dance. 

"I cannot dance your slow English waltzes," he said, sounding rather like the waltzing instructor, and so we danced in the fast Polish (or Viennese) fashion. 

Incidentally, you may be wondering where Benedict Ambrose was, for one or two of my dancing partners asked that, too. The answer is that he was at home working on his diploma course, but he will come to the Waltzing Party next month. 

Sticking to it

How do you make yourself do things your higher self wants to do when your lower self doesn't want to do them?

I contemplated this question on the treadmill today around the 4 minute mark, as my lower self didn't want to continue whereas my higher self wanted to run 3 kilometres in fewer than 18 minutes. My immediate answer was "Practice," and that is indeed what we are doing when we are fasting or forcing ourselves to scrub the tub or to apologize for a misdeed. We are practising rising above the lower self to live up to the goals and values of the higher self. 

But as a matter of fact, my lower self wanted to go the the gym today only because she knew that if she did my higher self would reward her with a sticker. And suddenly I realize that my lower self is known to my oldest readers because--goodness gracious--she's the "bodice riper" writing Inner Child. At last my attachment to stickers makes sense. 

A sudden thirst for stickers came over me after months of buying sheets of stickers to send to my youngest relations. I had begun writing letters to them and thought that if they didn't enjoy the letters at least they might enjoy whatever else I tucked in the envelope. As there is not a wide variety of flat gifts, this is usually stickers. 

These are not the boring coloured dots I used last year to mark my visits to the gym and study sessions, mind you. No. They are either cool or super-cute. And then I found out about hobonichi art--that is, the art of drawing, painting and affixing stickers to one's own daily planner. Why, I wondered, was I marking off my study sessions with red and green dots when I could celebrate them with actual Polish and Italian flags? And why ink in a boring barbell when for very little money I could buy a multicoloured sheet of them? 

I couldn't think of a good enough reason, so I ordered some Italian flags and asked Polish Pretend Son to get me some Polish ones.

Now, as we all know, the first half of 2023 is coming to an end, and it may be time to review how our New Year's Resolutions are going. Mine involved eliminating anxiety, eating 5 portion of fruit and veg a day, 240 gym workouts, reading and writing both Polish and Italian 6 days a week, and writing letters to my younger relations.  

As it happens, I do not have stickers for eliminating anxiety and eating fruit and vegetables. However, I have been using boring old yellow dots in my planner to indicate sun therapy, which we're supposed to get first thing in the morning to help us get better sleep at night. Fruit and veg... Well, maybe I should invest in some fruit and veg stickers because I have been much more successful with the gym workouts: 98 so far, which will mean an even 100 on Friday morning. 

Interestingly, though, stickers alone did not keep me at my books. Despite my cheery flags, I studied Italian only 10 times in January and 6 times in February. In January I had only 5 sessions with Polish and and in February only 9. However, I seem to have had a language revolution on Shrove Tuesday, for after that the gaps between stickers are few. 

I studied Italian 21 times in March, 25 times in April, 27 in May and 17 so far in June--the sudden drop explained by a long weekend in Poland. As for Polish, the numbers are even better: 21 times in March, 26 times in April, 26 times in May and so far 24 in June. Thus, Poland is beating Italy 111:106. 

There are two reasons for this sudden spurt of study. First, I hit upon two challenging, but not too challenging, courses of home study: this gave me something similar to return to every day.  Second, I think the Catholic mind is more primed to accept Lent as a time of hard work, sacrifice and overcoming lazy impulses. 

Meanwhile, B.A. occasionally asks why he doesn't get stickers for the various chores he does around the house, and at last I have ordered him a set: they include cheerful skeletons and the motto "I was brave for the radiographer." 

I was going to add a photo, but I have to rush off for vigil Mass, tomorrow being a HD of O in Scotland. Thus, I'll do it later.  

The Next Battle

I apologize, dear readers, for neglecting you. My mornings are taken up with the accounts, language learning, and going to the gym. My afternoons and evenings belong to my employer. At night I sleep--or try to. 

Occasionally I wonder if I should have displayed so much of my life, unfictionalized, for readers, but I seem to have come out unscathed. Indeed, if anything, writing so much ended my chatterbox ways. Of course, I am still capable of conversation, but the only time my voice is guaranteed to take a frenetic note now is when I talk about Benedict Ambrose's brain cancer battle 6 years ago. I always feel wrung out and exhausted afterwards--a symptom, if I remember correctly, of post-traumatic stress. 

Therefore, I am not particularly interested in talking at length about B.A.'s latest diagnosis. 

When I mentioned to him a year and a half ago that I had a sore back, he said that he had one, too. Being a woman, I went to a doctor and then to a physiotherapist and did exercises to strengthen my core. Being a man, B.A. did nothing. Eventually, however, I ordered him to go to a doctor, which led to his oncologist suggesting he have--just in case, just to put his mind at rest--a scan of his spine. 

And B.A., who already has the remnant of a very rare tumour in his brain, turns out to have even rarer tumours in his spine. They settled there after behaving in a very singular fashion--breaking off from the parent tumour on his brain stem and migrating southwards.  

We discovered the existence of these tumours an hour before we had planned to leave our home for the airport and Italy. B.A. explained this to the doctor who telephoned with the news, and the doctor said we might as well go on holiday anyway, as a week's delay wouldn't make a difference. This was in late May.

Naturally I burst into tears and indeed cried myself to sleep that night in a strange bed within 200 metres of the Mediterranean Sea. B.A. was his stoical, cheerful, and optimistic self. In the morning, in the Italian sun, I cheered up. We lived the next six days to the fullest. When we returned to Edinburgh, we discovered that B.A.'s oncologist was also optimistic and that she had a good plan for controlling (if not curing) the tumours. 

The tumours are so rare, she said, that she didn't know if she could cure them or not. However, she assured us, the reason for their spread was not metastasis but mechanical. As spinal cancer can kill a man in four months, this seemed to explain why, after over a year of an aching tailbone and a host of other ailments he had simply thought the post-cancer "new normal", B.A. is still alive. 

So now he is on steroids, which make him bouncy, energetic, loud and slightly distracted. And I am not on anything, so I am lethargic, quiet and sleep late. In a week or so, B.A. will begin a new course of radiotherapy. And I will continue swimming the breast stroke in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch of contemporary news, as that is my duty and my job. 

We have cancelled a pleasure trip to Poland, but the doctor sees no reason why I can't go on a work trip to Canada in mid-July. Therefore, I will at least be spending some time with my family before radiation leaves B.A. feeling tired and ill. 

It is sad--even crushing--to think that B.A. felt tired and sometimes dizzy and ill for so long because he thought it was simply the "new normal" and nobody told him differently. Naturally, for the rest of his life, every time he mentions a slight ache, I will assume it is life-threatening and beg him to call his oncologist. 

I think the only thing left to say is that I have often thought about long-term "Seraphic Singles" readers overjoyed when they found "the One" and embarked upon a new life that turned out not to be a bower of bliss but a rocky journey featuring miscarriages and serious illnesses visited upon either their children or their husbands. 

This may or may not be a lesson to those who despise their Singleness and long for marriage. Of course, a life for which you take a permanent vow may feel more meaningful--whatever the innocent suffering--than one for which you have not. Whether it actually is more meaningful depends on the reader. A unvowed Single life dedicated to service is certainly more meaningful than a Single life dedicated to experiencing the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. 

Married life is not a refuge from pain. However, there is a lot of joy--even at the most unexpected times--and hope. 

Desert Thoughts

I have a bad cold and therefore am not carrying out the morning routine I have been following since mid-March: improving the garden, studying Polish, studying Italian, going to the gym and swallowing a quick lunch before work. Instead I am sitting about in a dressing gown sniffing and treating myself to decaffeinated coffee.

I gave up coffee, proper and decaf, for Lent, and I now wake myself up by opening an east-facing window and sitting in the dawn light for up to half an hour. (That's probably how I caught this cold.) The other benefit of dawn sunbathing is that it helps me fall asleep at night. Dr. Andrew Huberman, the health guru of the moment, advises his YouTube followers to bolster the effect by having a good, long look at the dusk light, too. That way, even if you sit before the glare of Netflix before bed, you still get to sleep quickly.

It does seem to work. Yesterday Benedict Ambrose cajoled me to leave my work and sit out on the porch to look at the brightly setting sun, and despite not being able to breathe through my nose, I soon fell asleep and through the night. 

I am sorry for having disappointed anyone who thought I might to a cost-analysis of Lenten meal planning and shopping this year. It is only now that I feel that I can admit that the really hard work of our carefully planned vegetarian Lent that year fell upon poor B.A. I did the planning, and we shared the shopping, but B.A. did almost all of the cooking, and it exhausted him. 

B.A. likes to cook, but he does so slowly. A pot of boiled potatoes, a pan of blanched spinach, and two salmon fillets under the grill: that's what he signed up for. A vegetarian lasagna or cassoulet takes him a very long time to assemble. And that Lent was more Lent for him than for me because I absolutely adore fiddly vegetarian dishes. I love healthy cooking, and I am sure eating pre-assembled fishcakes from the supermarket will kill us before our time. Therefore, this Lent is more egalitarian, except that B.A. will always miss meat and wine more than I do.

Thought of Lent brings me to thoughts of deserts, and I remember writing an article once on the spiritual buds than bloom during Lent like flowers that bloom in the desert. In Scotland, a kaleidoscope of flowers blossom during Lent, most notably yellow, purple, and white crocuses; yellow and orange narcissi; and pink cherry blossoms. 

This Lent, however, instead of experiencing spiritual flowers bloom, I am being battered and frozen by the harsh winds of the ideological battles against the traditional family--and not just the family. The whole late 20th century philosophy of what it is to be a decent, charitable, even liberal person--looking for common ground with strangers, sharing the value of freedom of speech--with an agreement that certain things are not for children's ears or eyes--modesty about religion, respect for local culture, boys-don't-hit-girls, civil servants being both civil and servants--is not just being spat upon, it's being battered and shot. 

Having spent six years with my face to the hurricane, I am absolutely certain that forces want to destroy Western Civilization as we have known it--I just don't know which ones. 

I have already edited out several frank paragraphs, but I will add another one. I believe that the strength of any society is based in natural law and the natural hierarchy of loves and loyalties. That is, the strength of a society is the self-sacrificing love of a man and a woman who risk getting married and having children.

It is, and should be, something of a wrench, because the first loyalties of both should have been to their parents and brothers and sisters. Now these first loyalties are to each other and their children. Of course, they should continue keeping close ties with their birth families in a way that does not betray their new primary ties. (One reason I was so pro-B.A. is because I knew my family would like him.) Men must do whatever they can to make their wives and children feel loved and protected. Women must do whatever they can to make their husbands and children feel loved and protected. Children should obey and trust their parents, not "because I said so" but because they are incredibly vulnerable in every possible way: emotionally, intellectually, physically, spiritually. In fact, children shouldn't just feel protected; they must BE protected. 

Of course, love and loyalty does not stop at birth families and marriage families--or a wide network of relatives, if you have them. They should also encompass friends and neighbours and co-workers--the people you see around you every day or every week--and so on into ever wider circles to include the whole world, including a solemn obligation to help feed even the very distant poor. (However pathetic, the distant poor must not trump your children or next door neighbour in your affections, however.)

If you find yourself cut out by God and fate or biology or illnesss or misfortune from marriage-and-children, you still have a role in loving and supporting your birth family and the children of your brothers and sisters in a way that does not interfere with their primary ties. This may, in fact, be a way of bolstering the love and protection your brothers and sisters have for their children. And this is more necessary than ever before because there are whole armies of people who want to come between parents and children, robbing children of their parents' protection and robbing parents of their children's love and loyalty. 

I believe the relative success of people of European stock in Canada is down to their traditional family structure and family ties. Whereas Italian-Canadian kids were wrong to tell me in the 1980s that "Canadians" (i.e. local Anglo-Saxons) don't care about family, they were certainly right to fear the devaluation of traditional ties. The long-term misery in which several communities of Canadian indigenous people find themselves is attributed in part to the dissolution of traditional indigenous families in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The effects of the mid-century destruction of the African-American family are obvious and far-reaching. For more on that, we need only read Thomas Sowell. 

The thing is, societies in which the majority of mothers and fathers live together and treat each other and their children decently (and the children respect and obey their parents) are strong, and societies in which the majorities of families are headed by women whose children don't obey them are not. 

Thus, if I were trying to destroy a society, I would do everything I could to break up the traditional family. 

I would convince young men and women that the opposite sex is nothing but thieving cash machine-sex robots and that early marriage is risible. 

I would tell them that allowing their children to be born is irresponsible unless they are over 30 and in a committed partnership, and that they are not ready for either children or a committed partnership unless they have already travelled the world and can buy their dream home.

Because I have convinced them that having children before they are 30 is irresponsible, I would suggest to them that they should overcome their "hang-ups" and try those 100% accidental-pregnancy-free same-sex relationships. 

If they object to this, I will suggest to them that they are moral lepers, i.e. homophobes or even transphobes. 

And if they do manage to give birth to children despite all my advice, I will warn them to keep their human treasures away from their relations' potentially bad influence (Grandma has such antiquated ideas) while encouraging them to buy devices with which their children can talk to strangers on the internet. 

Through the internet, I would tell children all the grown-up secrets their parents won't tell them and suggest that their fears around growing up to become a man or a woman can be resolved by changing their sex. And through the universities, I would make sure to raise up a generation or two of teachers who will tell children the same thing. 

During their every waking moment, I would tell them that "celebrities"--especially entertainers--are the most important people on earth and that they should emulate them. 

As all of these things are actually happening and because they are relentless and so obviously destructive, I am beginning to think that the destruction of my culture is planned. 

And that's very scary for me. I prefer believing the problem is technology (the Pill, the PC) and ordinary human greediness outstripping human intelligence. 

 

The Waltzing Party

When I was in Vienna, I harboured a secret: a beautifully designed ballgown folded up in a compact square in my suitcase, wedged under a pair of comfortable ballet flats. As life is full of uncertainty and surprise, I was prepared for any eventuality that would serve as my pumpkin coach to the St Boniface Institute Ball: that Polish Pretend Son would suddenly take it into his head to carry his family off to Minsk instead, or that Godling would revolt and seek refuge with her grandparents, or that Polish Daughter-in-Law would be summoned to the Eastern Borderlands to smooth out some family wrinkle. Happily, none of these possibilities hardened into actuality, and meanwhile I had yesterday's Waltzing Party to look forward to. 

Some background:

Ambitious Plan #1

I seem to recall positing in Seraphic Singles the Blog that older, married Catholics should organize social activities for the younger, unmarried faithful. And indeed a few years ago one of the parish mothers and I agreed that it would be a very good thing to organize a ball for all the Trad families scattered across Great Britain, so that the Trad young could meet each other under amusing circumstances in the company of their parents. (I read many Georgette Heyer novels; can you tell?) My friend's lively, pretty daughters, then in their teens, agreed. Unfortunately, I never worked out how it could be done without great expense, bother, and fuss. 

Ambitious Plan #2 

Then before the Covid crisis, as I believe we call it at work, a local Austrian friend disclosed to me that he would like to take a group from our community to waltzing lessons and then carry them off on a pilgrimage to Vienna's waltzing season. I thought this was a splendid idea, but then the lamps started going off all over Europe, as it were, and any waltzes to speak of went underground. 

Not-quite-as-ambitious Plan 

Now the lamps have been lit again and the waltzes have come back upstairs and, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, our local Austrian friend gave me an impromptu dance lesson. So I lost my head and said aloud that it would be lovely to have a party in which the young people could learn to waltz, and our Austrian friend agreed, and some parents also agreed.  

I was asked about it the next Sunday before a young person, and when I explained to the young person what I had proposed, her face lit up like a spring dawn. So I rolled up my sleeves and wrote to various authorities, including the safeguarding officer, to book the parish hall. I did this as a private person, quite independent of our chaplains, following the model of people who book the hall for christening parties and wedding receptions. To underscore the privateness/independence of the party, I wrote out 19 invitations including 29 people, and to underscore my sterlingness of character and cover any official objections, I impressed upon the mothers of any invited guest under 18 that they had to come, too. The invitations I left to our new dancing master to distribute while I was in Vienna. 

Meanwhile, I wrote a goodly number of emails to those governing the parish hall, followed up with a telephone call as time wore on, sent the completed, scanned application form to authority, paid the fee, bought a bottle of squash and a bag of coffee, made a cake, and noted that only a tiny remnant had yet sent RSVPs. I chalked this up to RSVPs being unusual for the Facebook--let alone the Snapchat--generation.  

However, on Sunday morning after After-Mass Tea while the boys were stacking chairs, my old friend Anxiety took me by the hand, gazed into my eyes with false compassion, and asked where all the girls were. The alarm clock on my phone went off at 2:29 PM, and the parish hall corridor suddenly filled with young men of various heights in sharp suits of various materials. There seemed to be a dozen of them. (In fact, there were 11.) And in the hall itself were exactly five young ladies and two mother-chaperones.  

Aghast I rushed into the car park and pulled out my phone. Where were my friend's lively, pretty daughters? (My friend didn't answer, so I couldn't find out.) Where were the Xs, and where was Y? Was some girl I had momentarily forgotten perhaps coming up the road? But no, she was not. 

It seemed to be as I feared. The TLM demographics--which I thought had improved so much--had defeated me. For years the fact that vastly more men than women go to our TLM--a trend not replicated in any other mixed-sex Catholic community that I can think of--amused me. Yesterday I did not think it very amusing. 

However, I managed to pull myself together and remember that God is in charge, so I went back into the hall, appealed to the mother-chaperones' inner debutantes, and we had our party. It began with Austrian Dancing Master bellowing "SILENCE!" at the top of his lungs, which made everybody giggle.

There followed an hour outside our collective comfort zone as the long line of young men and the shorter line of women watched the Dancing Master's steps and tried to replicate them. The first figure was the box step, which wasn't so bad, and then we were asked to pair up and dance it together. And as I was dancing, I looked to the left at all my dancing guests, and Anxiety disappeared. I realized then that everything was fine, and I had nothing to worry about except putting my feet in the right place.

There followed the Right Turn and then the Left Turn, danced to slow pop "waltzes" so saccharine that my partners and I blinked at each other. In vain did I ask for classical music, for whom we were not worthy or ready or something. It was Dancing Master's first time teaching a dance class, so he was a bit harried. We both certainly learned a lot about teaching waltzing, and when we do this again, I will (with their consent) put big red stickers on all the ladies' left shoulder blades to indicate Your Hand Here.

There was a 20 minute break for tea, coffee, squash and snacks, and then we learned--or at any rate were taught--how to transition between the Right Turn and the Left Turn. Those who had partners this time gave it the old college try, and then--after tumultuous applause for the Dancing Master and a kindly round for me--the party disintegrated into a montage of putting the tables back, washing all the dishes, and hoovering the cake crumbs. There was, you see, a Confirmation Class at 5 PM. 

Afterwards my guests dispersed or stood outside the hall in a cozy group chatting, and after locking the hall I took Dancing Master out for a drink. Apparently six guests or so had asked that there be another waltzing party after Easter Sunday, so I think--despite the demographic problem, which I will solve if it kills me--the party was a success. 

 

"Freezing breath on a window pane"

WARNING: Long and detailed.

So the title is a line from Ultravox's "Vienna", Benedict Ambrose's favourite song of 1980. Sadly, B.A. did not come with me to Vienna last week, for he needed to work on his studies. Thus, I navigated the train route from Vienna International Airport to the Café Tirolerhof all by myself. Happily I did not buy the wrong tickets or choose the wrong train or get lost or even panic when my ticket didn't fit in the validation machine. (It wasn't supposed to.) When I popped out of the wrong side of Wien Mittel station, I admired the cathedral (Stephansdom) before me and then turned around to find the route I had carefully memorized on the train. 

Thursday

That was Thursday late afternoon, hours before Polish Pretend Son and family were supposed to arrive or Vienna Host was to leave his workplace. Vienna was indeed very cold (as in the song), but it was a dry, refreshing cold. The buildings around all seemed to be beautiful and every corner charming and full of promise. The Café Tirolerhof, with its uniformed waiters, well-dressed elderly ladies, white-washed walls, woodwork, banquettes and newspapers on sticks, was very much like the Vienna cafes B.A. and I had seen on YouTube.

I should mention here that, being deficient in knowledge about Vienna, Austria, and the Hapsburg Empire, I watched a fair amount of improving television shows and YouTube episodes before arriving. I am glad I did because I was in town for the St. Boniface Institute's Catholic Resistance conference and was thus around people who talked a lot about all the above. Also, I knew I could sit as long as I liked in the café and was not even nonplussed when the waiter shouted "Bitte, bitte" at me while slamming down my apple strudel, for I had been warned that the Viennese can be rude. And the waiter soon ceased to be rude, perhaps because I was joined by my Austrian colleague and then by my Viennese Host, who was not Alexander Tschugguel, in case you are wondering, but impressive all the same.  

But of course I did see Alexander Tschugguel at the evening's reception, which was about a half-hour's walk away from Café T in the meeting rooms of some pious or scholarly club. I had toddled along with my colleague and my friend after paying for my coffee and strudel, and duly noted the golden back of the statue of Strauss in the Stadtpark when it was pointed out to me. I admired alone the marvellous baroque buildings lining the streets, my companions remarking that they had got used to them. 

The clubrooms were at the top of some stairs in an amazingly old building and full of young men in Austrian jackets and of young women in skirts. There was also tobacco smoke and glasses of wine and A.T. saying "I know exactly who you are!" I was introduced to two of the conference speakers, one of whom had wanted to meet me and the other happy to chat about U.S. politics, and eventually Polish Pretend Son turned up with his wife and my god-daughter, who also knew exactly who I was. PPS sniffed the air and rushed back down to his car to get his smoking gear. I fetched a Polish storybook from my suitcase because there was very little in the adult (if rather young), German-and-English-speaking party of interest to my god-daughter. Poor tired Polish Pretend Daughter-in-law began to read it to her.

Friday

The evening ended after midnight at my Viennese Host's beautiful flat in the northwest of the city. I was given a little white minimalist bedroom that was very restful and conducive to sleep. The PPS family got the principal bedroom, and Godling got a mattress her parents had brought all the way from Poland in the car. We all went to bed very late, and it was noon before we got to the conference and discovered it was now lunchtime. (How happy I am this was not a work trip and that the duty of being on time fell to my colleague instead.) As it was Friday and we couldn't find fish nearby, we all went to the Café Tirolerhof, which at least had non-meat options, and cluttered it up with a stroller. 

The PPS family is extremely anti-carb, so as people familiar with Austrian cooking can imagine, there was quite a fuss, and the appearance of noodles with scrambled eggs caused much dismay. For my part I had creamed spinach with a fried egg and rosti potatoes, and the lesson I took from this is that it takes some planning to eat out in Vienna on Fridays.

After a visit to an eyewateringly expensive men's tailor shop, where Godling could not be dissuaded from playing with the umbrellas, we all went back to the conference. Gabrielle Kuby gave one lecture, Charles Coulombe gave another, and a repentant doctor the last. And then, if I remember correctly, it was time for dinner, so we went to the Naschmarkt, where there was another grand fuss although noodles were avoided. Back in the elegant flat, where Mr. Coulombe had been given a sofa-bed in a small but book-lined office with a parlour palm, cocktails were made and cigars came out, and I anticipated another late start on Saturday morning. 

(I am suddenly reminded that I am to tell a local priest that Mr. Coulombe sends his regards.)

Saturday

On Saturday morning, though, I decided I was the captain of my ship and mistress of my fate and rushed off into the cold, sunny morning to get to the conference by myself. It took two trams and a short walk, and I got lost for only 5 minutes, and there were jugs of coffee outside the lecture room. The repentant doctor told the story of her conversion, which was very moving, and then Alexander T. gave a lecture on the Cardinal Virtues, which was very edifying. Then we milled about before we were driven out into the street to be given a short tour encompassing a few churches (e.g. the Franciscan, the Jesuit, the Teutonic Knights [?]) and then led down into a restaurant's ancient cellar where 35 of us or so, including now  Viennese Host and the PPS family, waited and were never served.

This was a new level of Viennese waiter rudeness. In fact, when a waiter did turn up and take my party's drinks orders (after an hour or more), another waiter came and shouted at him. Our waiter said something in protest, gesturing to our table, and the shouty waiter shouted "DU MUSST!" So that was the last we saw of our waiter for some time. When he came back with a laden tray, he noted that half the company had left, exclaimed something later translated for me as "I can't do everything," and went back upstairs with his tray. At that moment, PPS lost his temper, Godling, putting salt in her eyes, began to scream, and chaos reigned.

In the end, poor Viennese Host, the PPS family and I ended up in the Café Englander, where we were greeted at once, given drinks within a few minutes, and served Weiner schnitzel with lemon and other delicious things.  

The St. Boniface Institute hosted a ball this evening, and now I fear I will disappoint my readers by confessing that I did not go to this classic Viennese delight but instead stayed in the elegant flat to baby-sit Godling. The men of the temporary household decked themselves out in white tie and tails. Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law arranged her hair and put on a beautiful dark blue ballgown. Then off they all went, leaving the poor Polish child in the hands of Perfidious Albion. Naturally, Godling was more than a match for me; somehow I found myself reading four stories instead of the agreed-upon two, and giving her a glass of water because I couldn't remember what her mother had said about this. 

Sunday

I was punished for my lapse of memory at about 1:30 AM when I was awoken by heart-rending screeching. "Ciociu! Ciociu!" wailed a voice outside my bedroom door. Outside it I found Godling in an absolute state of grief and remorse, and it wasn't until she led me back (still shrieking) to the master bedroom and handed me a dry diaper that I realized what had happened. 

So I attached the dry diaper and dispensed with the wet one and read the poor child another story and lay down on her mother's side of the bed to wait for her to fall asleep.

"I want water," said the precious monster in her native tongue.

"No," I said in that language.

"Yes. I want water."

"If I give you water," I said very slowly because remembering how to form the Polish conditional after being woken up from a deep sleep at 1:30 AM is taxing, "you will make siusiu again."

Godling seemed to admit this was so, for she said no more about it.

On Sunday I made another break for morning freedom by going to the local bakery, where I discovered that the lady behind the counter knows no English, that she doesn't take debit cards, and that all the bakery German I learned 17 years ago has disappeared. However, she did take my 100 euro note, so I arrived triumphantly back at the flat with the best danish I have ever eaten in my life.

Then there was an hour of packing the PPS automobile, including with me, and some fuss about who was taking a cab to Mass and who was going in the car. Amazingly, the PPS family, its stuff, Viennese Host and I all fit. On our way to the Oratorians, we passed the world's most beautiful trash incinerator (Spittelau), which has a golden ball on the top. And when we got to the Oratorians there was another fuss about parking, so Viennese Host told me sottovoce to make a break for it. Thus I found myself clambering into an ornate wooden pew in the back of yet another glorious baroque church just after the Kyrie.

This is where I would remark that one wonderful thing about Mass is that it is "the same all over the world" if that were really true. At any rate, for us it was the good old TLM with the Epistle and Gospel read over again in the Vernacular, which I also did not understand, followed by what was probably a very sound homily in the Vernacular, during which I prayed two decades of the Rosary. 

After Mass there was a lot of greeting and farewell and photo-taking amongst the participants in the Conference, and then Viennese Host, the PPS family, Mr. Coloumbe and I found an Austrian restaurant and ate goulash, schnitzel and such other meaty stuff. After paying up, the PPS family and I said goodbye to Viennese Host and Mr C, and we went to the airport, where PPS dropped me off. 

So that is my lightning account of my 72 hours in Vienna, and the only other thing I can think of to say is that I worried beforehand that I would reflexively respond to waiters et al in Polish instead of English, and I was right.