In our house, we discuss faith a lot. We attend mass regularly, I work at the Catholic school where both kids are students and we often pray as a family. When the children are older, we’ll probably drink beer and play bingo together…because, that’s what we Catholics do.

But it seems I have more explaining to do in the faith department, because as we passed a cemetery the other day, my seven year old son asked, “Mom, is that heaven?”

No son, that’s where people walk their dogs and don’t pick up the poop.

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Yesterday morning, my seven year old son was playing in our back yard. I looked out the window to see him talking to himself…non-stop.

I watched for a few minutes then I walked outside and asked, “Who are you talking to?”

He replied, “My friends.”

“What friends?”

He held out his arm and pointed toward the garage, “The cars. The cars are my friends.”

I found this oddly comforting. Not the fact that my son was going all David Hasselhoff on me, but because these friends of his were real objects.

When my daughter was young, she had an entire entourage of imaginary friends. Friends we couldn’t see. We would get in a lot of trouble when one of them was sitting on the couch and we didn’t realize it. For the record, you can smash something that isn’t even there.

Her favorite friend was Simba. Simba went everywhere with us. Simba ate with us, watched TV with us and even ran errands with us.

And, one time, we accidentally left Simba in a church pew.

After Mass, as the entire congregation was beginning to exit the church, we stood at the back of the building trying to comfort our crying daughter who was throwing a fit because we were leaving her friend behind.

Trying to talk sense into her did no good. Our little girl was crushed. So we did the only thing we could think of doing. People watched as my husband walked back to our empty pew, grabbed at the air, “picked up” Simba and delivered him to our daughter’s waiting arms.

Now do you see why I’m happy about my son’s new friends? You can’t take an SUV to church. Though I will say, his friends do cost more to feed.

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Last Saturday, my 10 year old daughter and I woke at 4:00am to volunteer at breakfast for the Special Olympics. My daughter worked, literally, like it was her job. Running from table to table, wiping them down, pushing in chairs, throwing away trash.

She worked so intensely that she was sweating, and at one point a man pulled me over to his table where a group of people told me they “had never seen a kid work as hard as the girl in the blue shirt”. When my kid walked over, they gave her a round of applause. I got to puff up my chest and tell them she was mine.

My seven year old son’s defective heart has been acting up lately. He’s been complaining of a “funny feeling…like a butterfly” and yesterday his cardiologist hooked him up to a monitor. He has five large leads stuck to his chest and he wore the monitor over his shoulder all day as he ran and played yesterday. He has been a perfect patient. I’m proud to be his mom.

My husband has been working like a maniac. Long, long hours at the office, then hours more from home in the late evening. He often doesn’t eat dinner until 10:00pm, and stays up until the wee hours on his laptop. Then he gets up at 6:00am to walk both dogs, rain or shine, sleet or snow and on the weekends he spends lots of time with his kids. Everything he does, he does for his family. He is a good man.

As for being proud of myself? Well, at least I have that whole being able to hang a spoon on the end of my nose thing.

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