How much does the past weigh?

This is one of the questions posed by my nominee for best movie of 2009. I am not alone in my enthusiasm for this film. Internet Movie Data Base is a Web site in which members can rank movies from the past and present on a 10-point scale. At the time of this writing, 36,326 individuals have voted for the film, giving it an average score of 8.7 – one of the highest ratings on the site.

The movie is titled simply “Up.” In my opinion, it is the best film to come out of that wonderfully creative studio, Pixar, which has a solid string of animated hits. To dismiss “Up” as a mere cartoon would be a big mistake. It’s a showcase for how animation can combine art, drama and comedy to tell a moving and complete story that should be nominated for the best picture of the year.

Pro-life bumper stickers make me uncomfortable. So do pro-life T-shirts with their large pictures of unborn babies.

They don’t make me uncomfortable because I’m pro-abortion. I agree with the church’s teachings on the sanctity of life at every stage. I do not believe in the death penalty; don’t believe in euthanasia and rarely think that war is the only answer to an international problem. Rather, my discomfort with some aspects of the pro-life movement in general, and the Catholic piece of it in particular, arises from my perspective as a foster and adoptive parent. I see too little of a connection between the pro-life movement and the foster and adoptive community.

As of December 2008, there were 2,638 children in Milwaukee County who needed placement outside of their homes because of allegations of neglect or abuse against their parents. That year, there were only 857 active, licensed foster homes able to receive those children. The rest of the children had to be placed with unlicensed relatives or in group homes. In Milwaukee, as well as in other cities its size or larger, the families who step forward to foster are too often marginal themselves. Recent tragedies highlighted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s series on the ills of the Milwaukee foster care system illustrate just how dire the situation is.

The story haunted me for weeks and even now, some eight months later, it still sends shivers up my spine.

The tragedy of Maddie Kiefer, the Whitefish Bay High School freshman who was left to die in a driveway on a winter morning after overdosing on prescription drugs seemed such a waste of a beautiful life.

Her solitary death was such a contrast to the photo of Maddie that ran in the newspaper and on television for days to follow. Such a beautiful girl with an engaging smile, she seemed to have the world at her feet.

Her story also hit close to home. Maddie was two days older than our oldest daughter, Marisa, and from what I read, Maddie had a similar upbringing, including a Catholic school education and connection to their Catholic parish.

Q: Our sons are ages 9 and 7. At this age, how much should I encourage them to learn to pray the rosary?

Kids learn best through their senses. The rosary is truly a “hands-on” prayer because as we pray, we finger the beads. It is a time-tested and wonderful way of meditating on the life of Jesus through the eyes of his mother, Mary. She remembers the sad times, the joyful times and the times that gloriously revealed Jesus’ true nature. In 2002 Pope John Paul II “refreshed” the rosary prayer by adding five “Mysteries of Light” which help us to meditate on five important events in Jesus’ public ministry.

The rosary is a simple prayer that everyone can learn and your boys are a perfect age because in their religious formation they have been memorizing the essential Catholic prayers that make up the rosary: the Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.

A businessman who owns his own company talked to me recently about the secret of success. He said he was inspired again by reading the Stephen Covey classic, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” The book reinforced many of his good habits.

What is success? It has many definitions, but in this context I’ll define it as the ability to get things done. An effective person is able to set a goal, initiate steps to reach the goal, and persevere until the goal is achieved. The successful person can also be flexible enough to change the original plan, if the plan is not achieving the desired results.

When a child comes home from school and announces that she was just assigned a science project due at the end of the quarter, experienced parents often say, “Uh-oh.” They know that achieving that goal will require many steps, and that unless your child is Thomas Edison Jr., you will need to be there to shepherd him or her through them. That’s a nice way of saying get ready to run an errand to get the materials, go back to buy extra materials to replace the botched first set, ask the teacher again about the instructions and go out for yet another display board the night before the project is due.

It was the socks that did it.

The large puffy envelope from St. Lawrence Seminary High School arrived this past August containing a brown pair of socks bearing the initials SLS – a gift to my son from the rector, Capuchin Fr. Dennis Druggan, “… so you don’t get cold feet,” according to the accompanying letter.

Cold feet?

I pawed through the envelope looking for another pair. Certainly there must be something in that package for me because I surely had cold feet. I was supposed to be the brave one, the rock – and the comfort to my nervous son. Did anyone care that my knees were knocking, and I was feeling a bit light-headed while placing folded, solid colored polo shirts into my son’s footlocker?

I began to cry. Not just a few tears, but loud, blubbering, sobbing, gut wrenching wails. I tugged our 16-pound moppy Bichon Frise onto my lap, held him tight and cried into his fur for an hour. My youngest son, Erin, and my husband Blaise, his step-dad were attending a movie. It was a guys’ night out, and thankfully, I was home alone or they might have decided that Mom needed medical attention.

When our oldest son, now 14, was a preschooler, my friend Brigid told me about an experience she had with her own preschooler after Mass one Sunday. It was shortly before Christmas and gifts for needy children were arranged under a tree near the front of church. While Brigid and her husband were chatting with some friends and the priest, her son grabbed a present, brought it back to the group, and asked if he could open it.

“I let the priest handle that one,” I remember Brigid telling me. “I wanted to see how he would explain to a 4-year-old that the presents were for other children.”

At the time, I remember being amazed that Brigid decided to give the situation to the priest. I knew that if Jacob had done something similar, I would have been mortified and would have quickly taken matters into my own hands. But a decade more into parenting, Brigid’s decision to let someone else lead the lesson sticks with me.

It’s a beautiful approach to parenting, “Give your child roots to feel secure and wings to allow them to fly.” Yet, the wings part can be tough on a parent.

As proud as we may be of our children, it’s tough to watch them leave our protective care and venture on their own. In incremental steps, children are learning daily to leave the nest and set off on their own life journey.

Those many steps, as they gradually pull away from us and slowly strap on the wings, can tug at our hearts. In our family, some of the recent steps have included a week away from home for our oldest daughter, Marisa, during a summer service program, a horse camp for Chiana and Alicia, and sometime in the very near future, a big one, a driver’s license for now 16-year-old Marisa.

The background picture on our computer desktop is a photo of my friend’s husband, Mike Richter. Every time I go [...]