A sign of hope, Moon Festival celebrations, and a nod to St. Francis (7 Quick Takes)

~1. Rainbow connection~

Whenever it rains, we look outside for a rainbow. But the other night we hadn’t really noticed that it was raining—and it was getting dark. My husband went outside for other reasons, though, and came rushing back in to tell us to hurry outside.

A beautiful double (triple?) rainbow was outside, extending the whole way across the sky. It was breathtaking and such a surprise.

I like to think when we look back on this time in our lives, we’ll remember the rainbow.

~2. What is mom’s job, anyway?~

My years of working as a newspaper reporter in busy newsrooms trained me to work while surrounded by noise, so I usually don’t hear much of what happens because I’m working during my sons’ virtual classes. The other day, though, I overheard my younger son’s teacher ask him, “What does your mom do?”

“Um,” he said, swiveling his chair to look over at me. “Her job is just basically typing, I guess.”

You can’t work in communications and not do some typing. But it made me smile. He’s been watching me work non-stop since mid-March, with days packed with meetings and phone calls, and all he’s noticed is that I type.

~3. Celebrating the Moon Festival~

We usually acknowledge Chinese holidays, but somehow the Mid-Autumn Festival crept up on me this year. Suddenly the festival—also known as the Moon Festival—arrived on Thursday, and I had no plan for how to celebrate.

So, we did what you do on a Thursday night when there’s a Chinese holiday and you’re exhausted: We ordered Chinese food for our boys for dinner. We just had Chinese food a few days ago, so John and I ordered Italian food for ourselves.

When the box of Chinese food came, John looked at how much was there and said, “What are we going to do with all of that! They must have sent us the wrong order!”

But no, it’s just that by Day Number Whatever in the pandemic, I know how quickly we go through leftover Chinese food when we are always home.

Besides, it’s not a festival if you don’t have any leftover lo mein for breakfast the next day.

~4. How know a good recipe~

My brother Ricky emailed this week to ask for the carrot cake recipe I used to make frequently when we were growing up. I told him I didn’t have it, but I said I remembered it was in a cookbook my parents had called Vegetarian Pleasures.

My father went and found the book and looked for the recipe. When he got to the page, he knew he had the right one. I had dripped and spilled on the page so many times over the years.

It made me smile. You know it’s a good recipe when the recipe page is this stained.

~5. Finch family fun~

We’ve had a bit of bird drama among our finches. In normal behavior for a male finch, Ron has been chasing Hermione around the cage and plucking her feathers. When one of the boys said he saw Ron pluck a feather from one of the babies (also normal behavior), I decided we should probably separate him from his finch family.

Does it sound easy to transfer a finch to a new cage? Well…it took us about an hour to achieve it, prodding and panicking, arguing and pleading, holding cages awkwardly as our arms turned to rubber, and yelling, “Who has the net?!” Two of my friends suggested it would have made for good reality TV—and I can’t disagree.

We finally moved Ron into a shiny new large cage, but the next day we could tell the babies were hungry and no one was feeding them. Hermione was just perched there chirping for Ron to feed the chicks. So, we moved him back into the cage. I figure we can take Hermione out, if necessary.

We love these birds so much, and I’m so grateful our younger son talked us into starting down this road back in June.

~6. Ready to fly?~

Our two finches who hatched two weeks ago are growing every day. They both have white feathers at this point, which might mean they are girls or might not. Some male finches are primarily white, too. And we don’t know that they will be entirely white like Hermione. Apparently, we’ll be able to start telling their genders—based on plumage and beak color—at around 6 weeks.

For now, we are waiting to see when they will start flying. I thought they might start on the Feast of the Archangels on Tuesday or the Feast of the Guardian Angels on Friday, but now I’m thinking maybe it will be their birthday gift to John and their way of celebrating the Feast of St. Francis on Sunday.

We shall see!

~7. St. Francis, pray for us~

This is our first Feast of St. Francis with pets, and I see pet blessings popping up in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. If you’re looking for one, you can find a list of local pet blessings here.

If you’re like me and still sheltering in place because of Covid or because you’re certain that transporting a cage full of nesting birds defies reason, you could bless your pets at home. I found this pet blessing online.

We’re hoping to bless our birds with a little holy water. Ron and Hermione will love that.

Find other quick takes on Kelly’s blog, This Ain’t the Lyceum, and have a wonderful weekend!

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