Play and Service Guide Family of 8 Thru Each Day

" Let the children come to me "

Jesus: Mark 10:14

 

 

 

 

By Robert R. Schwarz



        When asked her goals for the family, Gail Madden's life story of marriage, motherhood, and the family's bond to their Catholic faith showed in a good natured smile. "Our goal is just to make it though the day," she said.

     Making it through the day for Gail and husband Al has meant finding quality time for their eight children and a full-family commitment to the St. James parish; facing this challenge and others has meant lots of prayers, regular attendance at Sunday mass, and volunteer service that is more than token. Quality time, for example, is not always to found, Gail admitted.

    If the Madden family appears to have avoided all the common dysfunctions of our culture, much credit would go to Dad and Mom's love of playful fun with their kids, the youngest being eight. For example, on this early February day with the mercury at 46 F., Al and 15-year-old Jeff had been playing baseball in street shortly before this reporter rang the doorbell.

      With a son in medical school—his June wedding will be the family's first-- two in college, one in high school, and then Emily (the eight-year-old, who plays the piano), well, no wonder Al's major goal is "to get everybody through school." The eldest, Kathleen, is a physician in New Mexico, and daughter, Julie, teaches first grade in a Catholic school. Another son, Paul, teaches history at a Phoenix high school.

Actually, there are two other family members: a St. Viator high school student, Jae Hyun, who is an 17-year-old Korean youth to whom the Maddens have given a bed in their home; and there is Brenna, a black, feisty Terrier.

        Al is a 58-year-old pension fund lawyer for the Teamsters union, and Gail, five years his junior, a registered nurse working part-time in Palatine at the Clearbrook Center, an agency for the disadvantaged; she also puts in one day each week at Luther Village, a retirement community in Arlington Heights. The family lives a block from the St. James church parking lot in a corner two-floor home with a mortgage that has been refinanced "several times."

      "We don't go out very often," Gail said. "It's too expensive. We have no time for hobbies. "The skills she acquired sowing clothing for her children she now applies to making quilts and knits for charity .

      The Madden family has a history of all-season hiking in forest preserves, biking on nearby woodsy trails or around Lake Arlington, and being Harry Potter fans. (They have seen all the Potter movies and read all the books.) What the Maddens don't do outside, they do in their home; it’s a comfy home with traditional furniture. Some of their family values are reflected in the piano with sheet music displayed on it and seen on the two walls with family photos and four impressionistic water color paintings done by Al's deceased mother, an exhibiting artist who once worked painting portraits of other families on tombstones. "She also loved to paint barns and farms," Gail noted as we walked through the rooms. Nothing idle showed up in the kitchen, where Al, as had father, bakes cookies for the kids.

        If the Madden's dining room could speak, it would likely tell of all the games Al and Gail played—and still do—with their children. Gail especially recalled those weekends "when all the chairs would disappear in order to make forts." In the basement at times you'll hear the grinding hum of a scooter and roller skating—Al tried but could not master the skates.

       "I'm really very juvenile," Al joked—well, sort of. "I like to play what kids play, and this eight-year-old [Emily] has been so much fun."

    Twenty-two years ago the Maddens, having then been married eight years, moved into their home with three children and a fourth on the way. "I met Fr. Peter Bowman [then pastor of St. James] that same day," Gail said. She and Al had first met at a friend's lawn party when Gail was 18, a student at Loyola University in Chicago; Al was a first-year law student at De Paul University. "I thought she was very nice," he said. Gail countered with, "I thought he was very nice, too." A two- and a half-year courtship followed. Al, born in Oak Park, had been working part time for a law firm. "I really didn't know what I wanted to do," he said. Gail, a Niles native, had wanted to teach special education but went for the nursing degree when the demand for those teachers ebbed.

      There is an endless list of volunteer activities which engage the Madden family. Gail serves as a communion and Eucharistic minister, brings communion to Northwest Community hospital, and annually spends a week with her youth ministry on a mission to St. Malachy's parish in the Inner City. Emily has accompanied her mother to Chicago on this mission since age three while her father that same week is using his vacation time in helping his church's youth ministry join forces with the national Catholic Heart WorkCamp. This year , Al, with four other adults, the St. James youth minister, and 30 St. James students will travel to Greensboro, North Carolina to be with seniors and families in crises as they renovate homes and help spruce yards. The group might also facilitate Bible school for children, many of whom are "neglected," Al said. The entire family also pitches in to serve dinners for Catholic Charities.

        Gail and Al serve the St. Vincent De Paul Society,PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter), and, for three years, have been religion confirmation leaders. Since 1989, they have been active members of the Christian Family Movement, a national organization that promotes monthly meetings among parish families to discuss issues of faith.

The children are altar servers, and son Jeff serves as Eucharistic minister every other week. "We've always taken the kids to mass on a Sunday since day one," Gail said. As for confession, Al takes the kids to parish reconciliation twice a year, and he himself annually goes on a rosary pilgrimage to Maryville, Des Plaines, led by nearby neighbor Donald Knorr. Al said he follows up with confession within three weeks.

When we talked about life challenges, the Maddens were candid, never holding back a spontaneous chuckle or frown. "I just know that God is going to send me only what He knows I can handle, "Gail said. "When the kids were little, the challenge was trying to give them all enough time and attention."

        Al waded in: "We've been very fortunate. We haven't had any big problems with unemployment or health or any economic problems." He did mention, however, that trying to model right behavior for his children while his 90-year-old mother was dying was "rough." So was the time when his brother unexpectedly had a fatal heart attack while the family was out of town enrolling Paul in college. Then Gail mentioned her miscarriage years ago and the time when Jeff had his jaw broken by a fluke baseball hit. And, a few months after that, there was that phone call saying Mark had been in a car accident and was in the hospital with two broken ribs.

"I feel sad for people who don't have faith and strength to get through tough times," Gail said.

      With several of their children now living in different states, family reunions are another challenge. Yet, last Thanksgiving, all of Gail's family slept over for a 36-hour-long holiday. Gail did the cooking—an obvious challenge made more bearable by dessert having been designated to a home belonging to Al's clan.

     "Life for me," Al said, has "been a gradual learning process of making decisions about what best thing reaches my goal of getting my family and myself to heaven."

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rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2012 Robert R. Schwarz 

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