This month we’ll be allowed to try on bigger homes for size, drooling over the amenities on our wish lists and finding new ones to add. And you can linger a little – pull open the jewelry drawer, step inside the master-bathroom shower – because the Joneses haven’t moved in yet.

Last fall my husband and I joined his parents for Minnesota’s Parade of Homes. We seized one of those magical October afternoons when the slanted sun makes everything glow, piled into their Lincoln and pointed it west, toward Lake Minnetonka and Minneapolis’ richest suburbs. It was time to see how the other half lives.

We started at a suburban community called Locust Hills, where an empty lot had been reduced from $650,000 to $480,000. My father-in-law, a farmer, crinkled his face at the price.

We ended our excursion with the most expensive: an 8,000-square-foot classical home in Edina that cost $2.4 million. I read the description from the magazine as we pulled up to the corner lot: “This spectacular custom Dream Home will melt your heart and stir your soul.”

Dream Home, an official Parade of Homes term that necessitates capitalization, is code for costs-$5-a-person-to-enter. That wasn’t the only pretension awaiting us: Unlike other Parade homes, where you leave your shoes outside the front door, we were instructed to carry our shoes in a plastic bag while we toured the home.

My husband refused to be undignified by the mandate, so he stashed his sneakers in a bush.

He had the right idea. It’s hard to be swept away by the make-believe Parade of Homes world and pretend this fortress is your own when you’re carrying your shoes in a grocery sack.

I don’t know that our souls were stirred, but we did get lost. About two-thirds of the way through it was hard to determine where we had come from, where we were headed and where my father-in-law had gone. (He was checking out the garage.)

The home was impressive, but not quite my style. A little cold.

Deep down, that’s the response I was hoping for. You parade through the Joneses’ home with the secret goal of spotting something, anything to critique.

You look for something that cost too much or not enough, something that would be hard to clean. So much Brazilian cherry you’d live in fear of scratching it, you’d long for a little carpet to warm your feet. So many amenities – wet bar, indoor gym – you’d never leave home, you’d become antisocial.

But parading through the Joneses’ home can be risky business, at odds with the first commandment – making gods of granite – and the 10^th, the prohibition against coveting a neighbor’s goods. (That includes the kitchen and closet, pantry and porch.)

I want to be like my husband’s aunt, who indulged neighbors in an in-depth tour of their big new home, then smiled and offered the heartfelt remark: “We’re really happy for you!”

Life is a collaboration, not a competition, and Lent is the perfect time to fast from comparisons and focus on the many blessings we do have: good friends, warm homes and a reason to step outside every now and then.

The news was part of a ping-pong pop-culture recap that ended with Williams describing the latest YouTube sensation: a golden retriever bobbing its head to the strumming of guitar.

Broadcasters tout iPads to remind us that they’re hip, sliding graphics with their index fingers. Reality TV’s before-and-after formats serve up immediate gratification, creating a which-house-will-they-choose, which-dress-will-she-say-yes-to suspense that is quickly satisfied. And then there’s the Spike TV formula: a skateboarder crash every five seconds.

The other week CNN featured three panelists, each face in its own box. Whoever was speaking jumped to the top center, yielding a rotating triangle that made me dizzy.

That’s how I felt when I stumbled upon CNBC’s “Mad Money,” where host Jim Cramer appeared sandwiched in rows of stats and stocks, all regularly changing while he walked around his studio packed with flashing screens.

Do TV producers really think we need that much stimulation? No one expects us to be naturally interested; no one believes content can carry its own weight. There must be juggling and tap dancing, a constant flicking of the magician’s wand and fluttering of fake eyelashes. News as a three-ring circus.

It is an assault on our attention spans, and I consider it a spiritual offense. How are we to know it is well with my soul when we cannot achieve the silence needed to assess its state? How can we heed the Psalm’s command to “Be still and know that I am God”?

One of the great surprises of my 20s has been the discovery of my inner introvert – this, following a college professor’s pronouncement that I am a “raging extrovert.”

I take pride in this new dimension and actively cultivate it: outdoor photography, ambling New Yorker essays. I delight in simple pleasures like a card I can write, stamp and seal and the magic of that next-day delay, the secret knowledge it’ll be in another mailbox tomorrow, waiting quietly – so unlike a text that announces itself loudly at the hip or in the hand demanding attention.

“How good it is to write!” a Catholic dad emailed me tonight, having chronicled his conversion for the first time, prodded by an assignment in his MBA class.

I know how he feels.

Though I’m still working on strengthening my prayer life, I’m practicing stillness and noticing more of God’s goodness. The impact is profound: My heart has never been more grateful.

I was pleased to see Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet” published in the Jan. 1 New York Times become one of the website’s most emailed articles. He wrote about a growing demand for hotel rooms without TVs or Internet and then recounted his regular visits to a Benedictine hermitage, where he retreats to “take walks and read and lose myself in the stillness.”

In the February issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, Ms. Winfrey dedicates her back-page column to her experience practicing transcendental meditation in Fairfield, Iowa. “Housewives, shop clerks, engineers, waitresses, lawyers, moms, single ladies and me – we all gathered in our dome for the sole purpose of being still,” she wrote. “It was a powerfully energizing yet calming experience. I didn’t want it to end.”

I challenge you to seize this leap year by attempting the opposite: total stillness. Spend at least a few minutes of that 29^th day in silence. You may be surprised where it takes you.

It was Sunday and the first day of July. The last of the 13 British colonies to be founded, Georgia, was being settled, and each colony was working out its own system of self government.

Young Franklin was ready to look within and devise his own self governance. He broke down his day – eight hours of work, seven hours of sleep, a two-hour lunch break – and dedicated one week to each of the 13 virtues he had identified, beginning with temperance.

“I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined,” he wrote in his autobiography, “but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.”

It is an impulse that returns each January: to systematically detect and diminish one’s faults, day by day, row by row, like yanking weeds or drilling cavities.

This month we adjust to a new year and celebrate the patron saint of writers, St. Francis de Sales, and whether the prospect of 2012 has you feeling ambitious or overwhelmed, I can think of no better response than writing.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough owes part of his career to the fact that founding fathers like Franklin wrote prolifically.

“The loss of people writing – writing a composition, a letter or a report – is not just the loss for the record,” he told Time magazine last year. “It’s the loss of the process of working your thoughts out on paper, of having an idea that you would never have had if you weren’t [writing]…People [I research] were writing letters every day. That was calisthenics for the brain.”

McCullough uses a 60-year-old Royal typewriter to pound out his thoughts on the page. “I’ve written everything I’ve ever had published on it,” he said. “It’s a superb example of American manufacturing.”

But writing is not just an intellectual exercise. It can also be a religious one.

I recently interviewed Mitch Albom, author of “Tuesdays With Morrie,” the bestselling memoir in history. The Detroit journalist told me that writing is an inherently spiritual endeavor. “You need to be infused with a certain spirit in order to be able to create,” he said, “and I believe all our talents come from God.”

We write to make sense of our lives and our world, to examine who we have been and who we hope to become.

That’s what Anne Bradstreet did. Among the British colonists settling in America, she was the first to have a book of poetry published. She chronicled her first impressions, having found “a new world and new manners, at which [her] heart rose.” She wrote about her pregnancy, her granddaughter’s death and the burning of her home. In a poem honoring Queen Elizabeth, written 13 year after Bradstreet had arrived in Massachusetts, she wrote of “terra incognita” – Latin for “unknown territory,” “unexplored land.”

Stepping into 2012 with our private struggles and secret hopes, our Catholic faith and our piecemeal education, each of us faces terra incognita, and we owe it to ourselves to process it on paper. Every journey requires a journal.

None of the Marys feel right. The lips are taut. The face, unblemished. We see none of the bliss and bewilderment that must have surged after birthing the son of God. We see no emotion at all – serenity as vacancy, sainthood as sedation.

This year’s traditional Christmas stamp issued by U.S. Postal Service, Raphael’s “Madonna of the Candelabra,” shows a stoic Mary casting her eyes away from her infant. Painted in the early 16^th century, it was a product of the Italian High Renaissance, but it’s hard to imagine the new mom letting a single moment pass without studying the Savior in her hands.

Eventually I found a card that compelled me, the store’s last boxed set of its kind. First I noticed the baby, who looks as he should: like a baby. Brown fuzzy hair, apples for cheeks and a light in his eyes. Mary holds him close, kissing his right cheek.

The painting was inspired 11 years ago when Morgan Weistling, now a 47-year-old father in California, heard Steve Amerson’s song “Mary, Did You Know?” on the radio. It was the Dolly Parton version.

One phrase stood out to him: “when you kiss your little baby you’ve kissed the face of God.”

“Immediately I felt I was supposed to paint this,” Morgan told me. “I had been praying and asking God, ‘Give me an idea here.’”

Amerson’s phrasing appealed to him. “This little child she bore was God in the flesh, and yet, she cuddled and kissed him just as all mothers do.”

The painting poured out of Morgan in three days. He didn’t feel the need to sketch in charcoal on his canvas to begin, as he usually does; it was oil paint right away. He didn’t go back to make any alterations. The first draft was the final.

Morgan’s paintings are so realistic they look like pictures, and he uses people as models. His Mary was 16, a brunette named Katie who had a “sweet humbleness to her,” Morgan said. “It wouldn’t have worked with a blonde.”

The baby was of Jewish descent, born to a woman with a crack addiction and recently placed in a foster home.

Morgan knew he needed to master Mary’s kiss, rendering it tender, not “hokey.” Her left hand, pressing the swaddled baby to her heart, also was crucial. Morgan had long admired the way Mary’s marble hand grips Jesus’ side in Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Morgan’s published image, titled “Kissing The Face Of God,” sold out in two weeks. It remains his most popular painting – “my big gift from God,” he said – and the only original he’s kept, despite a standing offer of $100,000.

Every year Morgan receives requests to reproduce the image. One year National Geographic used it for a corporate Christmas card.

The painting speaks to the brokenhearted, Morgan told me. “A lot of women who have lost a child really attach to ‘Kissing The Face of God.’”

I’m grateful to the artists who help us see ourselves in the Blessed Mother, because she is for everyone. I once spoke to a victim of clergy abuse who had lost her Catholic faith but held on to Mary. I read about a woman whose conversion to Catholicism began in labor, when she called on Mary in urgent prayer: “Don’t abandon me now.”

This season we celebrate the mother who brings us to God with such capacity for love and grief and everything in between.

Imagine the terror and thrill of squinting at Cape Cod’s thickets.

Mary earned the distinction of being the first European woman to set foot on Plymouth Rock.

The week before Christmas, her father died. Three weeks after Christmas, the illness they called the “general sickness” had claimed her mother. Only half of the Mayflower’s 102 passengers lived to see spring in Massachusetts.

Mary marked her 14^th birthday as an orphan, grasping the ways of a foreign land, where the Wampanoag Indians offered guideposts: how to grow corn, catch fish, extract maple sap and identify poisonous plants.

She was present at what we consider the first Thanksgiving, a three-day feast called for by Governor William Bradford to celebrate a successful corn harvest. The Plymouth colonists were joined by their teachers, the Wampanoag, who arrived with five deer. They cooked wild duck over an open flame, feasted on seasoned corn and gave thanks: for their harvest, for their friendship, and ultimately, for their survival.

Governor Bradford chronicled it all, writing: “Thus they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways and to bless their outgoings and incomings, for which let his holy name have the praise forever to all posterity. They began now to gather in the small harvest they had and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty…”

The general sickness had ceased. Their food was hot, their faith, intact. It was hard for him to fathom what more they could possibly want. It was, to him, “all things in good plenty.”

It takes an awful lot to make 21^st-century Americans decide we have “all things in good plenty.” We haven’t really got there. We’re still upgrading our vehicles, filling our basements and then paying to store the overflow.

It’s hard to see much of the first Thanksgiving in our 390^th, with stuffing and pie and football on big-screen TVs.

But I’m trying to look back. I have such awe for the pioneers who paved the way – saints and settlers, miners and mothers.

I’m praying with St. Francis de Sales, who said: “Give me one more thing, O Lord: a grateful heart.” I know that can cover and cure every matter, turning my portion into “all things in good plenty.”

I’m giving thanks while hoping for a life as full and rich as Mary Chilton’s, who married and delivered 10 children. She died an old lady who had raised a family, welcomed grandkids and written a will. In it, she accounted for six white aprons, three pocket handkerchiefs, two leather chairs and a brass candlestick.

Mary understood what really counted. “Knowing the uncertainty of this present life and being desirous to settle that outward estate the Lord hath lent me, I do make this make this my last will and testament,” she wrote. “First and principally, I commend my soul into the hands of Almighty God, my Creator.”

Here’s to putting first things first.

It is a trial run that delivers many of the same tussles and delights – a tiny, big-eyed creature who is named and measured and potty trained, who interrupts Netflix and upends the budget, protracting Saturday mornings and contracting Saturday nights. Someone to worry about and brag about, to snuggle and scold. Someone to put in the Christmas card.

It may seem silly, but the multi-vitamin dog treats and rhinestone-encrusted collars come with the immediate miracle of getting outside yourself – committing to that pup and feeling your heart rise and fall with its every whimper.

Puppy training is, indeed, parent training.

Three in four Catholic households report having a pet, according to the American National Election Studies. This month we salute their patron saint, St. Francis of Assisi, and all the motley pets we’ve loved. We gather under the slanted sun for animal blessings, a reminder of the catholicity of Catholicism, that the stuff of home life has a place in the church – even the critters that shed.

Jackie, 48, a curly-haired Catholic who has never married, cherishes her Shih Tzu. Without her, the New Jersey native says, “this house would be really lonely.”

Jackie lost her male Shih Tzu in May, “after 15 and a half years of happiness and love.”

Hallmark introduced pet sympathy cards in 1984, and over the years, sales have steadily increased. “Your pet was part of the family,” reads one card, picturing an empty soft chair. “That’s what makes saying goodbye so hard.”

The more hours I log in my office, the more I appreciate even passing animal encounters, like the four raccoons that cautiously descended our oak after a thunderstorm, crawling in pairs and leaning against each other. Or the tree frog that landed on the front door one August evening, mystifying with its bulging yellow eyes.

Sit too long at a computer and you can forget everything outside the inbox.

That’s why my family packed three binoculars and a 16-gigabyte memory card on our recent Alaskan cruise. We yearned to see some hulking mammal living among the woodland and waterfalls. Goats and moose and bears – oh, my!

Bald eagles flew overhead, salmon swam below us. And I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for whale watching. Two and a half hours and a guarantee of a whale spotting or your money back. I handed over my credit card and signed up.

Two and a half hours later, the outlook was bleak: gray sky, gray water, biting wind and pelting rain.

No whale.

“This is when they toss out the battery-operated rubber whale,” someone joked.

And finally, a humpback. On our side of the boat. Not far.

The dorsal fin made a smooth arc, sliding from right to left. I snapped my camera repeatedly, pointing it at the whale and lowering it to my chin so I could observe directly, without any filter.

Here was a 40-ton beast in an endless ocean choosing that very moment to dip above the water. Witnessing that spontaneous act in that natural environment felt like peering behind the curtain into a secret world. You only get a few seconds, but you memorize the sight.

“All praise to you, Oh Lord, for all these brother and sister creatures,” St. Francis wrote in his Canticle of the Creatures.

We echo his words today, craning our necks to take it all in. The world is big, and we are small.

Another friend gave up blogging for Lent and voiced her anxiety the first week of Easter, back at her keyboard: “So I sat down to write a blog post this morning and saw that my Blogspot followers went down overnight. Unable to help myself (and yet, knowing better) I clicked over to Google Reader and saw that over there, too, I was down by two. Was it something I said or something I didn’t? Am I too fluffy? Offensive? Boring? Fat?”

That’s the trouble with social media. They have created more ways to chase after approval and more ways to fall short of it. We count friends and fans and followers (none of which live up to the real-life definitions). We can see where they live, how they found us and whether they return.

We are still seeking the gold stars dispensed in grade school, now in electronic form: comments and tweets, LinkedIn recommendations, Facebook likes, Flickr views. A click of a mouse and – presto! – a judgment cast globally. Laptop turned voting booth.

We become politicians, campaigning unceasingly and claiming all the credit.

September’s back-to-school cycle heightens the pressure to perform, to make more friends and earn better grades. That’s what makes this month’s Sunday Gospels so challenging and well timed.

St. Matthew understands how we operate, keeping score and holding grudges. Change the setting of his parables from vineyard to boardroom and you see how little has changed. We vent to others before addressing the offender (Sept. 4). We accept forgiveness that we don’t extend (Sept. 11). We begrudge co-workers who show up late (Sept. 18). We agree to tasks that we don’t perform (Sept.  25).

It happens in the classroom and in Congress. And it happens in families. We watch siblings receive credit – forgiven debts, homecoming parties, wedding gifts – and we wonder, “Will I be granted the same benefits when it’s my turn? Will the well run dry?”

There’s only one baby, for example, that turns parents into grandparents, and the other siblings see all the wet kisses, the gushing superlatives, the free babysitting, and the singular adoration.

The siblings who are first to parent also worry, whispering their own silly fears: Will my child enjoy the same affection when a new grandbaby arrives?

We’re all operating on a false notion, bending to the smallest, saddest portrait of humanity.

We need to hear the landowner’s question in Matthew 20: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

The human heart is not a trophy case with limited shelf space. It’s not a bank account that runs out after too many withdrawals. Love exists in infinite supply.

We have elastic hearts: There is always more to give.

Deep down we know this truth, but sometimes we need reminding. So just think of Grandma:
Each additional grandchild brings her more joy, which warms everyone. Generosity begets generosity. A heart stretched by one act of charity is open wider for the next opportunity.

When we throw away the scorecards, our humanity gives way to holiness. We celebrate the divine love that encircles us.

It is an act of surrender and of conquest. What you lack in self control you make up for in self knowledge.

My self-imposed Twitter sabbatical has been a good move, setting my summer on a sunnier course. More than 200 million people use the website, firing off tweets of 140 characters or fewer.

But me?

I’m ready for a break. I’d like to think longer thoughts.

I decided to seize the summer, vowing to replace my aimless web surfing with creative endeavors. Less technology, more art.

On Memorial Day I bought a $16.95 sketchpad, cringing at the price – no sale, no coupon – while relishing the splurge. The hard, black cover and thick pages dignified my work. Soon I was drawing teacups and peacock feathers, tilting my head and smiling inside.

Later that week I memorized some poetry, which I hadn’t done since high school Shakespeare. I’ve been reciting the verses all summer, and each time it’s like unwrapping a Hershey’s Kiss.

I assembled my clarinet, read in the porch and journaled my heart out – 103 pages since Memorial Day. It’s much more honest when no one else is reading and you’re not secretly vying to pick up followers. How often life morphs into a popularity contest – and how often we play along.

But the most formal artistic undertaking of my summer was also the most foreign: taking a stained-glass window class through St. Paul, Minn., community education.

Oh, to be a student again, experiencing that same old arc of emotions that makes you feel so young: thrilled to get an email from the instructor, anxious to depart for the first class, empowered to master a new skill.

I’m one of five students gathering on Monday nights to cut glass and solder lead. One student looks to be 20. Two appear close to 60. And we all look happy to be there. We want to make art.

Before the class began, I’d put a lot of thought into my design, dreaming up intricate patterns and imagining them as birthday gifts. But stained glass is more about skill than artistry.

I like the physicality of it – standing there for three hours, leaning into an oak work bench and hearing the sizzle of severing glass. It is a welcome antidote to a day at the computer, a pleasant switch from head to hands.

I panicked when I cut my longest section of glass and veered off the line. The Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” was playing in the studio, and Peggy, the student across from me, helped me through it.

When I cut the wrong side of the glass, I beckoned our instructor, Bob. “I think I made a mistake,” I told him.

“We don’t say that in art,” he said.

Later we slid our glass into lead, which made our imperfect pieces fit together perfectly. “It hides a lot of sinning,” Bob said.

I thought of 1 Peter 4:8: “Above all let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins.”

God is the One who takes all our broken pieces and turns them into art. He is the sunlight that makes our stained glass radiate.

I’m seeing the world in sharper lines and richer hues this summer – and it is one unspoken, unceasing thank you to the Creator, who looks at everything he has made and finds it very good.

It was half way through our second annual Christmas party, and I was flitting around, refilling glasses and collecting empty plates.

Preparing for the party had kept me moving – wrapping presents, baking shortbread cookies, stringing 3,200 white lights on our Blue Spruce. Not exactly meditating to Silent Night.

I brought some water to Grandpa, sitting in the corner facing everyone, and sat down beside him.

“Look,” he instructed me, his blue eyes misty. “What do you see?”

I scanned the kitchen: nodding and laughing. Then I looked at Grandpa. Somehow he had stepped outside the scene and was observing it from a distance.

“No ill will,” he said, answering his own question. “Everyone’s happy. You see love.”

In that moment, I glimpsed it, too, rising above the particulars and seeing the picture in broader strokes. Here we all were, shoveled out from the snow, marking another Christmas together, bound by blood and by love, standing in the sacred space where duty meets desire.

It was the perfect Christmas gift, to step outside the party like the Ghost of Christmas Present and then re-enter, relishing all the little things that had seemed ordinary a moment before.

That is Grandpa’s magic. He has a painter’s grateful eye, sharpened 10 years ago by a heart attack. Surgeons patched the hole in his heart, and he steadily recovered, embracing each day as a gift from above.

Three years later, at 73, Grandpa taught himself to play clarinet, putting numbered tape on keys to correspond with his fingering chart. Within months he was playing the second movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.

He is a dark-skinned, light-eyed artist, the fifth child of a Florentine immigrant raised in the shadow of the Duomo.

Grandpa spent his career painting Catholic churches, refinishing statues of saints and applying gold leaf. Now he is enjoying retirement, playing in the St. Paul Police Band, fishing at his cabin and watching “Jeopardy” with Grandma. (She would be a brilliant contestant, he insists.)

He’s on his second pacemaker and awaiting the birth of his third great-grandchild. He began writing a book called “Life Begins At 70.”

He’s come to love reading, and in March he wrote to World War II P.O.W. Louie Zamperini, the subject of Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller “Unbroken.”

“God sure must have had a mission for you in life to put you through so much,” he wrote. “We will probably never meet in this life but look forward to meeting you in God’s heaven.”

In May Grandpa gave a toast at my cousin’s wedding. “May earth and heaven mingle,” he told the newlyweds. I’ve seen him cry at every grandchild’s wedding, and that evening, he found the words for his tears.

In June Grandpa turned 80. We celebrated on the second Saturday of the month, which happened to be the day the cottonwood trees had been buffeted by just enough heat and just enough wind to unleash their flossy seeds.

Wrapped in cotton clusters, they are designed to travel long distances.

So is Grandpa.

To experience 80 years and rejoice in each new day is his singular joy. He has taught me that heaven brushes earth — in paint strokes and clarinet notes, in written words and spoken prayers, in first Communions, in every Communion. And when those moments happen, we hold them to our hearts, never quite the same.

They have enjoyed 15 years of marriage and music, raising a daughter and a son while chairing their respective departments at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn. – she in music, he in theology.

Last March came the news that Stage 4 colorectal cancer had seized Russ’s body, bringing with it a two-year life expectancy. He kept singing in Patty’s choir, savoring each measure.

This March came the news that the chemo wasn’t halting Russ’s cancer. His life expectancy dropped to six months.

Russ has lost hair, energy, weight, and, most painful of all, the ability to sing. When it came time for Patty’s choir to perform the premiere of a requiem by Jocelyn Hagen called “Ashes of Roses,” Russ knew he would have to sit it out.

He wrote about the Mother’s Day concert on his CaringBridge journal. “I have a prayer for Patty about this, one I have been praying for a while: I pray that she will so lose herself in this beautiful music, get so involved in making something beautiful happen, that for the hour or so that it takes to perform, she can give away all the anxieties and worries that she is living with so bravely.”

Bravely, indeed: 56 and facing what was likely her last Mother’s Day with her husband, preparing to conduct a requiem with Mass parts for the dead.

Patty opened her heart to the rainy Sunday, receiving gifts over breakfast and attending the 8:30 a.m. Mass at Holy Spirit before slipping away to study the seven-movement score.

At 3 p.m. she stepped onto the stage, wearing black and smiling, and she wished the audience a happy Mother’s Day. She would’ve selected another Sunday to perform, but that’s what was available and there she stood, poised and elegant.

There Russ sat, son at his side, head in his hand, eyes on his wife. She raised her baton and ushered in a low tremble from the cello. Soon the choir was chanting, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine” – “Grant unto them eternal rest, Lord.”

Conducting the requiem consumed Patty and answered Russ’s prayer. “It’s thrilling to work with so many musicians,” she told me the next morning. “I did lose myself in the music.”

Patty described the requiem’s “tricky rhythms and unexpected harmonies.” The orchestra rarely plays in the same harmony as the choir, resulting in dissonance. The meter and tempo shift often, and even within the same meter, she said, you’ve got “triplets and duplets and quadruplets and septuplets to negotiate.” Just as soon as a pattern is established, it changes.

For Patty the requiem’s joy is tethered to its complexity. “It demands such absorption and rewards one for that,” she said.

What a brave response to life’s changing patterns: inhale deeply, dig in your heels and listen for unexpected harmonies.

One of Patty’s favorite movements in the requiem is the last one, “Lux Aeterna,” eternal light. It begins with a trumpet fanfare, “like a joyous march into heaven,” she said, and then the upper strings dive in – first violins, second violins, violas, each group divided in half. “That makes six different parts playing a sixteenth note and each of them begins an eighth note apart. It’s very challenging but it creates a shimmering effect.”

When those bows flew, you could feel an ascent. Russ lifted his head and Patty leaned forward, unafraid.