Post-Holy Week reflections
Happy Easter, everyone! Hope you had a meaningful, grace-filled Holy Week and the chance to renew your relationship with our God.***
I spent Holy Week by myself, for the most part. I had to work on Holy Thursday. I had to meet with two different non-profit organizations by myself because my OC supervisor told me she believed I could handle the meetings by myself from this point onward (yeah, right!). But I was able to make it to the service at Loyola just in time. Nakapag-adoration pa ako. On Good Friday, I attended the service at my parish. Loyola also had a prayer service commemorating the burial of Jesus later that evening, so nakahabol naman ako despite some things that got in the way. I've attended such a service twice so far (during Holy Week of 2003 and this past Holy Week), and it's always been a moving experience for me. I attended the Easter Vigil at the church in my school, and got to see some students get baptized and confirmed, which also moved me to tears. I also went to the mass at my school on Easter Sunday. I meant to go to the mass at Anawim Center, a Native American spiritual center that I worked with as part of my assistantship (they're under the Catholic church so they celebrate sacraments like the mass, and they integrate their Native traditions), but the place is a 30-minute train ride from my apartment, and it took me longer than usual to get ready. So I had only enough time to make it to the service at my school. In all of the services I attended, I was by myself. It felt kinda strange. During my first Holy Week here, I stayed with my friend/ex-roomie Elizabeth, who still lived in Chicago and got confirmed and became a Catholic at that time, so I had someone to go to church with. Last year, I spent Holy Week with Elizabeth again, this time at the motherhouse of the Grand Rapids Dominicans in Michigan, where she lives at the moment. So it felt strange to be alone this time around.
I couldn't go anywhere for Holy Week not only because of my schoolwork, but also because my mom's friend flew in from LA with her husband and daughter to check out different universities in Chicago that her daughter could attend for college. So I felt obligated to stick around. We had planned on getting together for brunch or lunch on Easter Sunday, but it turned into dinner. I couldn't even get together with my own relatives here for that reason. My cousin initially wanted to invite us--that's my uncle, her brother, her sister, and myself--for lunch, but she wasn't able to cook anything, so she decided to just get together at around 3:30PM. Well, I had made plans to meet up with my tita at 5PM and I needed to give myself about 45 minutes to get to their hotel in downtown Chicago. Since my cousin's apartment is north of where I live, I knew I wouldn't get to stay there for a long time (probably just 30 minutes) if I wanted to meet my tita at 5PM. So getting together with my relatives was out of the question. I decided to just stick around at my apartment and get some homework done before meeting up with my tita.
So after the mass yesterday, I came home to an empty apartment. My roommate was over at her aunt and uncle's house (her family obligations). Good thing she said I could have the pizza that she bought the other day for lunch. Otherwise, I would have had to go out...alone. Normally, I enjoy my solitude but there are times (like on special occasions) when it makes me feel lonely.
Yesterday afternoon, after the mass, I ended up making telebabad with Sr. Dinah, one of my close friends here. We've become so close ever since I moved out here and I guess it's because we're each other's support systems, since we're both Pinay and Bisaya. Even if she's a nun, I can be myself around her, and she can be herself around me, too. Hehe, I can cuss in front of her (or over the phone), and it's okay. She'll just tell me, "Okay lang yan. Pantanggal ng stress." I can show her my crazy, maldita side, and vice versa. She was on her way to the motherhouse to greet the sisters a "Happy Easter," when I called. In fact, she got there while we were talking, but she ended up hanging out in her car for the next three hours because she had a lot of stuff to share with me. I told her, had I known we would end up talking that long, I would have asked her to just stop by my apartment so we could hang out and chat in person. It's all good, though. I had lunch, gave myself a manicure, and even coded some data for my thesis throughout our conversation. Now I'm a certified multi-tasker!
Share ko lang...I know we're encouraged not to do any work on Good Friday, but I had no choice but to do laundry because I was running out of underwear and socks. Who would have thought that would turn out to be a crazy experience in itself? I threw my clothes in the washer about two hours before the Good Friday service, then cleaned my room for a bit and spent some time in prayer. I meant to move my clothes to the dryer before the service, but I was running late, and decided to just do that after the service. Well, someone decided to take my clothes out of the washer for me. I didn't want to go back and forth between the laundry room and my apartment just to check if the dryers were vacant, especially since I live on the fourth floor of the building. So once two dryers stopped spinning, I took out the clothers and put my clothes inside. I assumed the clothes in those dryers belonged to whoever it was (a guy, based on the clothes I saw) that took my clothes out of the washer. Big mistake. That person threw a tantrum, I heard, and tossed most of my clothes--take note, newly washed clothes--on the floor. I found out about it when I went back to the laundry room to check if my clothes were dry. This girl who was on her way out told me she had found my clothes on the floor and just put them on the table in the room. Good Lord. I didn't have enough energy to complain. So I just did my laundry from scratch.
The moral of the story: Thou shall not do laundry on Good Friday. Hehe.
found herself @ 4:11 PM
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