By Anne Rampa
ONE of the perks of being a Catholic Worker is you get to meet the kindness in people.
Often they are complete strangers who you don’t get to repay either.
Yesterday it was three blokes who helped me start my car in a car park.
Two of them didn’t even need to be asked, they just stepped forward to help.
This brought to my mind the many times blokes have helped me when I was stuck broken down in our old cars. I am so very grateful to them.
Now, just in case the beginnings of thoughts about what sort of feminist I am happen, let me assure you all that I have fixed cars by myself many times.
Three times I had to unbolt the driver’s seat from underneath the van, unclamp the fuel line, and blow it out. Then I put it all back together.
Once it was in the dark, on a hill, with six little children in the van.
Eventually Jim dismantled the petrol tank and found the little plastic circle causing the problem.
A few times I had to start the van by connecting the starter motor terminals with a large screw driver.
To name just a couple of issues I’ve dealt with. Hopefully that puts in place my feminist credentials.
Anyway there are a few memorable times when great blokes have come to my aid.
There was the truck driver whose home I fortuitously knocked on the door of when I was stuck on a hill in the van.
The spare tyre was under a hot water tank Jim had put in the back, with instructions for me not to open the back of the van or it would fall on me.
The van was facing uphill.
I had a car full of kids and a puppy on a busy road, and he did the entire job by himself.
Another time I was stuck, eight months pregnant, with a flat tyre.
The spare was bolted under the tray of the ute.
The bloke parked next to me didn’t hesitate.
He offered to change the tyre and was gratefully accepted.
Then there were the two blokes having a nice lunch in a café I had to ask for an uphill push of the dirty van, when only a teenage Marissa and I were in it.
I needed to be pushed up and across a busy street and into a side street so I could clutch start the van going downhill.
They agreed to do it if I also asked the young man in the tie, looking nervously like he was waiting for a lunch date.
He agreed and off we went to the van with me apologising profusely for how dirty it was – we live in the country up a dirt drive.
Then they saw all the political slogans on the back, and asked if they had to agree with them all in order to push it.
I said they’d be forgiven for not agreeing with any of them if they’d push it – which they did – and I bid them farewell with a cheery window wave, too scared the car would stop if I got out to thank them.
One morning at 2am, after a trip to emergency with little Ben and a cut foot, I had to ask two blokes to push the van along a flat road to get it started with another clutch start.
They were not in the best shape, looking pretty inebriated, but they managed to get enough of a run up for us to get home.
I’m sure these are experiences that many of us can relate to, and although helping with cars is not the only way to be a great bloke of course, it is the way in which I have most often encountered kindness in men.
Another refection on gratitude I have been indulging in over the years is for my “other mothers” as I call them.
They are my friends who have helped me raise my children.
They have worried with me, rejoiced with me, and looked after my children with theirs when I have been busy, or my children have needed play dates, or I have lost track of time and left them at school or at the bus stop ( I know – shameful).
Most of my children have experienced the comforting warmth of the care of these “other mothers”.
It has led me to consider how important they are to us, and also how these other mothers appear in the Gospel stories of the life of Jesus.
God knew Mary needed them, and He gave them to her.
First there was Elizabeth – someone who also had been gifted a miraculous pregnancy.
Mary did not even have to speak and Elizabeth knew the whole story, which was fortunate because how do you tell someone you are pregnant with the long awaited Messiah and Son of God?
What a wonderful meeting of mothers that was – from the angelic annunciations of their pregnancies to the communication between the unborn boys.
Then they had months together of companionship, prayer and praise, as shown in their first interchange.
They were part of a very big picture indeed, and had the support of each other at the beginning of their tasks.
There were also mothers on the road with Jesus and Mary and His disciples.
We are told they helped by feeding and providing for the fledgling movement following the Messiah.
And they were with Mary at the foot of the cross as she suffered the agony of her son’s torture and death.
They understood the reality of what He was called to do, and I imagine they had talked much with Mary about the future of what was to happen too.
Jesus was talking about His impending death, but the men did not seem to comprehend what was going on.
The women and John seemed to have a better grip on the situation, and were prepared to accompany His heart and His mother to the cross.
I can feel gratitude for those mothers with Mary, and I’m sure they have a special place in her heart, as the mothers who accompany me have in mine.
Of course I have also tried to be “another mother” for the women in my life, as all these reflections have given me a depth of understanding and purpose in my shared motherhood.
We mothers know that whatever our child goes through, we go through too. We are not entirely sane when it comes to our children.
We are biased, emotional and not always rational, and that is how we are made. I think our children need us that way.
They have the world and their fathers to give them a reality check, they have a Mum to be one-sided.
There is also a meeting point of these two gratitude themes.
Last night my friend Malynda, another mother and experienced old car driver, drove me to buy some jumper leads, helped me start the car, and then drove ahead of me on our way home, as I didn’t have headlights.
The car is now in the dock at home for that great bloke in my life, my husband Jim, to work out what the problem is, and fix it.
Since Mary had other mothers, I also wondered if she had any great blokes too. The obvious answer is in her husband Joseph, who protected and provided for her and Jesus, and helped raise the Messiah into manhood.
I recently consecrated myself and my family to St Joseph using Fr Donald Calloway’s book.
In this year dedicated by Pope Francis to him I have grown a new appreciation for this fatherly saint we call “Terror of Demons”, among other titles.
It also occurred to me that the two Australian orders of nuns that I know of are also Sisters of St Joseph.
Perhaps he was always in the consciousness of the fledgling Church in Australia.
I am accompanying the Pope in asking him to pray for our Church and the world. May he be the great bloke we need now to help us follow the Divine Will in our lives.
