I would have rather gone than not, but when a grandmother-type approaches afterwards to tell me that I'm brave, it just makes me wonder whether I shouldn't have.

I don't like being brave. Or being called brave. I don't like being noticed ... for that sort of thing. It can't be good.

And it wasn't very good.

I missed the homily because Ella got into a (rare) crying fit. When I directed the two boys out, they were clueless at my meaning. "All this time, she's been ordering us to stay in the pew, now she wants us out?" The fact that there were other mothers with small children hanging about the narthex was a comfort at first, but as they gradually returned and I yet remained, I struggled to hold on to hope.

But the appropriate time manifested itself to me, after the foot-washing ritual - no creed recited - during the General Intercessions. Thankfully, no one had taken our seats. I'm not sure that anyone was pleased to see us return. We marked out our place early so that anyone who chose to sit around us knew what they were in for. At least I think it was fair warning. I suppose they could have mistakenly thought that my kids might behave.

Everyone around us was strikingly devout. I was touched by it. Holy Thursday brings out the spiritually serious Catholics, I guess. I would have thought that any of the young men seated around us with their parents were considering the priesthood, so fervent was their focus, so earnest their posture. I hated to mess that up with my two (three?) little wiggle worms.

Tim is good at finding things, little bits of things. He found several thin strands of palm from the previous Sunday. No matter how well the church is cleaned, those tiny pieces linger on. He was happy to manipulate the strings in his hands but his younger brother was set on pulling apart the strands into even smaller parts. Now, if the larger small pieces got by the church cleaners, how much more the smaller small pieces? I couldn't let him pull apart the strands but he wasn't happy about my interference especially because I allowed Tim, who wasn't doing anything wrong, to continue to hold his strands.

I had practiced my Pange Lingua/Tantum Ergo earlier in the day, but as the music commenced, Tim dropped the hymnal - on cue, you'd think! - and just enough time passed in recovery that I couldn't find my place until three stanzas later, towards the end. So few people were singing that it was very difficult to make out the words.

The candles were roped off for the Triduum, a custom that I wasn't familiar with - I've said before that I'm not much of a candle person. But Tim was very, very disappointed about not being able to light any candles. I just had to remind him that he lighted some candles at St. Gabriel's on Wednesday evening on his own, which I was still getting my coat on. He said that he wanted to show Chris how the electric candles worked. "But you didn't deposit a donation," I chided. That's ok, Jeff says, he didn't pray a prayer either.