Days of our lives at St. Gregory’s

We have slowly settled into the hotel routine, making it in time or just missing breakfast (depending on how well we slept the night before), relying on the ice-vending machine to keep milk cold durign the night, when Matthias wakes up thirsty, enjoying the functional and extremely good quality bathroom which is nothing like the old bathroom we had on 77th, with unpredicatble levels of heat and even more unpredictable levels of hot water, basking in the sun that floods the room midday, pampered with room service that cleans up after all of us – an ideal existence were it not for its transient nature.  We have purchased online a double stroller and had it delivered to our room, just like we have all the take-out food delivered – people suspect we are rock stars, as we take car service everywhere and allow Matthias to tend to the elevator when we have all our four hands full with everything else and our second child. I am so glad we decided to live this life for a week, it is surely the least stressful of all the time we have had here – back home, tons of challenges waiting, this is the ideal place to recharge our batteries, souls and hearts. It occured to me as being rather symbolic that the name of the hotel we are staying at carries the name of a saint, and of all, a patron saint of teachers, known to have said: “Perhaps it is not after all so difficult for a man to part with his possessions, but it is certainly most difficult for him to part with himself. To renounce what one has is a minor thing; but to renounce what one is, that is asking a lot” (St. Gregory, Homilies on the Gospels).