Saturday
Oscar is preparing to make his first reconciliation or, as they used to call it (and many still do) confession or penance. I have mixed feelings about it. I love the Church, and this is the tradition that has been passed on in my family since time immemorial. But the older I get, the harder I find it is to believe in anything, and I'm not good about partaking in that particular sacrament myself. I hate to create in him any more complexes than he'll already have, and spare him some of my own. Sometimes, I feel the longing for faith and security of Dostoevsky's devil. "I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God's shrine."
His class is 8 to 9:30 on Saturdays. This weekend I dropped him off at class and then jetted down to St. Peter and St. Paul in Wilmington. Wilmington is now part of Los Angeles, having been annexed as part of the Shoestring Annex to obtain the port, but it was founded in the nineteenth century by shipping magnate Phineas Banning. Banning created a new port. He also gave land for a Union military post during the Civil War, a few buildings of which survive, and left behind a mansion that the City purchased as a park. Now Wilmington is like most of Los Angeles, predominantly working class and Latino with a rough reputation.
The church has always struck me as holy. It might be the church Harrington learned about from a Gabrielino informant which is supposed to have been surrounded by Indian graves. It's hard to imagine much surviving in the densely built-up neighborhood, surrounded as it is by apartments and houses, but sometimes there are surviving pockets under yards or under streets and especially under parking lots. If there really was a burial ground, then it is likely it was the remains of an ancient settlement. But I need to research it more.
I'd been to the church only once before, for a Latin mass. The church is ministered by the Norbertines, a traditionalist order devoted to the Latin mass with a monastery in Orange County. I was there for an exposition of holy relics, mostly tiny bone fragments of the saints set in little reliquaries called thecas, but after circumambulating the parish hall I realized I had the date wrong; the relics would be out on Sunday, the actual Feast of the Holy Relics. I didn't have much time, but I spent it exploring the beautiful church, a concrete building dating from 1930 with decoration and statues matching the period. Despite the early hour on a Saturday, there were a number of groups using the building, one saying the rosary, another carrying an image of Mary in procession and singing the Ave Maria throughout the echoing church.
I hurried back to pick up Oscar, and after lunch took him and Max to the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach. It depresses me how little of the natural world the kids get to interact with, and I want to change that. My brother and I used to wander the fields around our house in Texas when we were young, but I'm afraid to let Oscar go out alone. Oscar asked city kid questions while we were out there, like who planted all these trees? He also wanted to find the playground. It reminded me of what my friend Angie, who grew up in LA, told me, that when she was young she thought that the dirt and plants she saw beside the road must have been brought in by someone, that pavement was what was natural.
We walked the quarter-mile paved path, and Oscar wasn't ready to leave. So we walked the shorter of the other loop paths, the mile-long. The kids enjoyed themselves, although eventually I had to carry Max. The kids did what they do and climbed on things, including barriers set up to mark the path. At one point Max ran and climbed a barrier next to a stream. Before I could get to him he was in the water, although I was there to pull him right out. Fortunately we had a change of clothes with us, or he would have had a sodden trip back. They also enjoyed the nature center building, which had room to run around in addition to kid-centered nature exhibits. This place is less than half an hour from the house, so I joined their Friends; I am sure we will be back again soon.
His class is 8 to 9:30 on Saturdays. This weekend I dropped him off at class and then jetted down to St. Peter and St. Paul in Wilmington. Wilmington is now part of Los Angeles, having been annexed as part of the Shoestring Annex to obtain the port, but it was founded in the nineteenth century by shipping magnate Phineas Banning. Banning created a new port. He also gave land for a Union military post during the Civil War, a few buildings of which survive, and left behind a mansion that the City purchased as a park. Now Wilmington is like most of Los Angeles, predominantly working class and Latino with a rough reputation.
The church has always struck me as holy. It might be the church Harrington learned about from a Gabrielino informant which is supposed to have been surrounded by Indian graves. It's hard to imagine much surviving in the densely built-up neighborhood, surrounded as it is by apartments and houses, but sometimes there are surviving pockets under yards or under streets and especially under parking lots. If there really was a burial ground, then it is likely it was the remains of an ancient settlement. But I need to research it more.
I'd been to the church only once before, for a Latin mass. The church is ministered by the Norbertines, a traditionalist order devoted to the Latin mass with a monastery in Orange County. I was there for an exposition of holy relics, mostly tiny bone fragments of the saints set in little reliquaries called thecas, but after circumambulating the parish hall I realized I had the date wrong; the relics would be out on Sunday, the actual Feast of the Holy Relics. I didn't have much time, but I spent it exploring the beautiful church, a concrete building dating from 1930 with decoration and statues matching the period. Despite the early hour on a Saturday, there were a number of groups using the building, one saying the rosary, another carrying an image of Mary in procession and singing the Ave Maria throughout the echoing church.
I hurried back to pick up Oscar, and after lunch took him and Max to the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach. It depresses me how little of the natural world the kids get to interact with, and I want to change that. My brother and I used to wander the fields around our house in Texas when we were young, but I'm afraid to let Oscar go out alone. Oscar asked city kid questions while we were out there, like who planted all these trees? He also wanted to find the playground. It reminded me of what my friend Angie, who grew up in LA, told me, that when she was young she thought that the dirt and plants she saw beside the road must have been brought in by someone, that pavement was what was natural.
We walked the quarter-mile paved path, and Oscar wasn't ready to leave. So we walked the shorter of the other loop paths, the mile-long. The kids enjoyed themselves, although eventually I had to carry Max. The kids did what they do and climbed on things, including barriers set up to mark the path. At one point Max ran and climbed a barrier next to a stream. Before I could get to him he was in the water, although I was there to pull him right out. Fortunately we had a change of clothes with us, or he would have had a sodden trip back. They also enjoyed the nature center building, which had room to run around in addition to kid-centered nature exhibits. This place is less than half an hour from the house, so I joined their Friends; I am sure we will be back again soon.