Monday Musings: A Saint Joseph’s Day to Remember

This St. Joseph’s Day was one I won’t soon forget.

If you’ve been a longtime reader, you know I love my sweets. If you’ve been reading even for a short time, you probably know I love my sweets.

And if so, then you also know how much I love my zeppole on St. Joseph’s Day. So much so that I was literally counting down the hours this year. I could not wait for the day to arrive.

I had a whole plan in my head: Tuesday was St. Joseph’s Day and it’s also the day I normally type all my stories for the Cranston Herald. My plan was to get up and ready like a normal day and as.soon.as the kids got on the bus, I’d get right in the car, go and get a zeppole, and come home and savor it, all alone while I typed the morning away.

Sounds like a very good plan, right?

Right.

Wrong.

6:50 am Tuesday morning I go in to wake Child #1, who lifts her head and says, “Oooh I don’t feel good at all. My head hurts, my stomach hurts, my throat hurts.”

Yikes. I talk her into going in. I knew she’d be missing another day that week due to some oral surgery coming up and her attendance record has been less than stellar already. She’s had a tough year. So I gave her some Advil for the headache and she dragged herself out the door.

7:20 am I wake up Child #2, who lifts her head and says, “Ooooh I don’t feel good. My head hurts, my stomach hurts, my throat hurts.”

No. No, no, no, no.

No way.

7:22 am…I’m sure you can guess. Child #3. Same wake up. Literally, she said the same thing.

I see my zeppole dreams fading. Fast.

By 7:45 am, I had one kid in tears and one kid heading in that direction.

I let them stay home, knowing full well that it meant no zeppole for me and also meant one pretty mad oldest kid when she got home and realized all the other sickies got to stay home and she didn’t.

By 8:00 am I had started my typing. It was snowing, sleeting, raining. Miserable day out. Two sick kids in and NO zeppole for me.

This was not what I had planned at all.

As I typed, I shared on Facebook that I had sick kids, that I had no zeppole, that I was eating Apple Jacks while I typed.

I was so sad.

And I never let on to my kids that it was St. Joseph’s Day. I didn’t want them to feel bad about being sick.

Suddenly though, a Facebook friend, another mom from our elementary school put a comment under one of my pathetic status updates:  Do you want me to bring you a zeppole?

Well, yes. Actually I do. I would love for someone to do that for me.

But do I say yes?

I did. I said yes. I wanted one so badly. But then I said to her she didn’t have to because she didn’t really live close by, probably 10 minutes away and it was nasty out. Raining, snowing. I didn’t want her dragging her kids out, going to the bakery, in and out, coming here, all just for me.

But she did.

She did that just for me. Just so I could have a zeppole.

I was so incredibly touched.

In a world where there’s such terrible news out there: murders and missing people and fires and robberies, joblessness and more and more and more, there are some truly very nice people out there too.

A zeppole may not seem like a lot to some people, but to me on Tuesday it was huge, and it was such a downer to be missing out on that.

Not only did I get my zeppole, I got a boost in my confidence in people overall.

It was a St. Joseph’s Day I won’t soon forget.

Thank you Angela!

My box of zeppole. My name is on the box and everything. And, you can see by all the raindrops how nasty it was outside.

Tags: dessert, Jennifer L. Cowart, kids, motherhood, parenting, St. Joseph's Day, Zeppole