PLEASE DON'T DRINK

THE HOLY WATER!

by Susie Lloyd

Sophia, 2005

200 pages, $14.95

To order: (800) 888-9344 or sophiainstitute.com

Attention home schooling moms: How on earth are your kids going to make it in the “Real World”? That's the question Susie Lloyd takes on in her whimsical, yet wise, book Please Don't Drink the Holy Water! Home school Days, Rosary Nights and Other Near Occasions of Sin.

A home schooling mom of five girls, Lloyd — a frequent contributor to the Register's sister publication, Faith & Family magazine — always wondered what the term “Real World” (note the initial caps) meant. After probing a little, she found out that the “Real World” is, according to the “experts,” a place where “any child brought up in Shelterhaven would immediately die of shock. Therefore, parents should send their kids into it as soon as possible, especially if they show unhealthy signs, like getting too attached to their mother in preschool.”

Shelterhaven, by the way, is her term for that “dangerous place where Catholics who take seriously the admonition to be in the world but not of it live.”

Not satisfied with that answer, Lloyd takes us along for a tour of the joys and trials to be found in the real world of a real Catholic family: her own.

Although targeting a home schooling audience, Lloyd relates her series of genuinely funny anecdotes that any mother of a large Catholic family can relate to.

“People with large families are doomed to watch reruns,” she writes. “The dialogue in these reruns goes, ‘Better you than me’; ‘So, are you done?’ and ‘You have your hands full.’

“No matter how many times your ears have heard these comments, you have to humor these people because they really do innocently think that they are being original. You know this because their eyes are bugging out and they are gasping as if in shock.”

The content is not just amusing. It's useful, too. For example, maybe you're having a hard time trying to fit the family Rosary into your everyday routine. Not a problem. Susie shows you how to do it. She calls her version the “rosarius rapidus.” Can't sleep at night? Perhaps a good confession will cure your insomnia. “Catholics go to confession,” she writes. “Other people buy Nyquil.”

Please Don't Drink the Holy Water! will bring comic relief to any mother suffering from maternal overload. As I settled down in bed after putting my own six children to sleep, my husband could always tell that I was reading the book just by my repeated laughs. It's the perfect book to read after a long day of diapers, dishes and discipline.

Women who have large families, along with and including those who home school, can often feel isolated in a world that undervalues and ridicules both. We often doubt ourselves and the choices we've made, wondering if our kids really are missing something out there in the “Real World.”

Nothing can bring a sense of calm and reassurance than to know that others share in your struggle and believe in your values. It's good to be reminded, by such enjoyable means, that this path we've chosen is the better way — and that, ultimately, it will help lead us and our families to the real Real World.

Veronica M. Wendt writes from Steubenville, Ohio.