Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 101

Due When???

This summer, I’ve been doing everything BUT cleaning my house regularly: field trips, writing, doctor appointments, kid care…a day or two ago,  ban the massive archaeological excavation of my computer desk and to  my horror, discovered my work list for 2012, containing a major deadline I totally forgot about. In two days.

I’m going to take a bit of time to get  my work done, and then I’ll be back.

(Note to self: think through your deadlines better next year.)

Fiction Friday: Because of a Yellow Card

In retrospect, I should have handled things differently.

David came home from his Toledo run last night, his face bleached white with jealousy. “What’s this?” he demanded.

“What’s what?”

He waved a yellow envelope. “‘I’m looking forward to seeing you Friday’?”

I looked up from the dishwater. “Who’s that from?”

“Eric.” The word was a thunderclap.

I snatched it out of his hand, soapy water and all. “You read my mail?”

Mistake #1: looking guilty.

Pasty white turned dull red. “It’s on the outside of the damn envelope, Bec! Not very subtle!”

That idiot. “Oh, come on, David!” I turned my back, tucking the card into my sweater pocket. “I married you, not Eric.”

Mistake #2: drawing attention to my husband’s favorite singer, a country star twice named Sexiest Man Alive…and the guy I almost married when I was chasing country stardom myself.

It got ugly in a hurry. “At least now I know why you were so all-fire determined for me to work tomorrow!” David yelled, adding a few choice words for emphasis as he stormed out of the house, leaving me in tears.

Mistake #3: keeping my secret instead of throwing the blasted card at him.

*

The alarm goes off early this morning, and I rest a hand on David’s back, which is a little too rigid. “David,” I whisper, but he breathes deep and even.

I try to conjure that night ten years ago, at the end of the worst week ever, when my tour bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. David pulled off on the shoulder behind us, a knight on an 18-wheel charger, managing to quote Dickens without sounding pretentious. It was love at first sight, but to this day I’m not sure he believes it.

At the moment, it strains my credulity, too.

By the time I get out of the shower, I can hear the truck skipping through gears on its way out for the day’s run.

Jerk.

For a moment I debate calling the whole thing off. But the path of least resistance lies ahead. Sighing, I go downstairs to set the future in motion.

Eric and I meet at noon, as we planned. Nothing’s changed; his smile still takes my breath away. He kisses my cheek. “Ready?”

It takes all afternoon. When my energy flags, Eric rubs my back gently, but I shake him off. “Why’d you have to send that card, anyway? Why didn’t you just bring it with you?”

He smiles and strokes my hair. “You know my memory. So he’s suspicious?” Eric shakes his head. “Marriage. I’m glad I never got caught.”

“Smooth,” I say drily. “Real smooth, Eric.”

“Hey, I made you smile.”

At 5:30, everyone is in position. My phone trills a warning.

The door opens, and a beam of light falls across the darkened room, connecting David to me. The band starts playing, and Eric and I break into “It Had To Be You.” David takes in the balloons, the wishing well of cards, and understanding dawns. His sheepish smile banishes my lingering anxiety.

“Happy birthday, babe,” I say.

*

Concrits welcome, as always. I tried to use more action and dialogue this time. Any suggestions for what is or isn’t clear, what seems contrived or awkward?

Environment, Family, and Planning

Birth control pill (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not that long ago I wrote a blog post called Too Big For Me. I know the world’s problems are too big and too complex to be reduced to black and white. But there is a topic that most people consider closed, no longer worth debating, that warrants another look.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=birth-control-in-water-supply

I’ve shared before what happened to male fish when exposed to trace amounts of the estrogens used in birth control. The question is whether birth control residue is being filtered out of our water supply or not. The Scientific American article above stands a bit at odds with a statement made in another article, which seems to indicate that this is a non-issue. Put those two side by side and I can only draw the conclusion that here is another case of the experts not really knowing for sure. So the question is: is the risk important enough to warrant action?

If there was no option, it might be an easy answer. But here’s my thing: why is it that virtually everyone thinks getting hormones and chemicals out of our food supply is a good idea, but at the same time see nothing untoward about pumping their bodies full of hormones to shut off a perfectly healthy bodily system?

I think the resistance comes from the belief that there’s no other option; without the hormonal manipulation women willingly subject their bodies to, they would be barefoot and pregnant all the time. That would be an even greater environmental strain, all those extra people, right? Because how else can we space/limit family size? We really don’t have any other choice.

Wrong.

People are appallingly uneducated about their bodies and how they work. The fact is, you can space children and limit family size simply by watching the cycle of fertility as it circles, and matching your behavior accordingly. I am, of course, talking about natural family planning.

Now, in general, the assumption is that NFP = rhythm and thus using it is, ahem, ineffective. Rhythm was, indeed, pretty ineffective, but modern NFP has almost nothing in common with rhythm. Modern sympto-thermal NFP has been studied at 99% effective (that’s the same as hormonal birth control, by the way). If you don’t want to wade through the scientific jargon, the summation can be found here, but I wanted to provide the non-”biased” source.

We have been using NFP from the very beginning, through infertility and the subsequent successful planning of three more children. Although I began down this path “because the Church says so,” it has been most of a decade since I have come to realize that in this case, there’s an incredibly practical reason beneath what the Church says. It makes me furious to see the objectification of women in modern society, and to realize that women are participating in it themselves by allowing their value to be defined based on their sexual availability.

In short, I’m all about people planning families, I just don’t see how it’s good for or respectful of human beings in general and women in particular to deliberately shut off a healthy, functioning system in order to do it. I don’t have all the answers; I just want women to wake up and realize that birth control is not the only, or even the best, answer in most cases–it’s only the path of least resistance. And I think it’s irresponsible to ignore the health and environmental risks simply because abstinence is inconvenient.

Related articles

Why You’re Not Enjoying Sex (snspost.com)
Ecology of the Body, NFP, and “Adam and Eve After the Pill” (insightscoop.typepad.com)
NFP and PR (ignitumtoday.com)

Just Write: A Letter To Age Twelve

Love yourself (Photo credit: QuinnDombrowski)

This weekend, my family hosted a baby shower for my youngest sister, who is expecting a baby girl in November. One of the activities, which we found here, was for each guest to make a card for one of the baby’s childhood birthdays, up through age 21. We asked our grandmothers to make cards for Baby’s 21st birthday, and our mother chose 16. The rest of us picked a number. I drew 12. Since I think better at the keyboard, I decided today’s blog would be all about what I would want my twelve-year-old daughter to know.

*

Dear Twelve,

When I started thinking about what I want to say to you, I tried to remember what my life was like at age twelve. It didn’t take long, because that was when I started Journaling. My body was changing, and I didn’t like it. I wasn’t ready to stop being a child. I wanted to keep jumping off hay bales and climbing trees, playing Nazi resistance on tractors and grain trucks.

But most of my classmates seemed eager to be grown up, and I didn’t feel like I fit in. I thought everyone else “got” something I just didn’t “get.” Do you feel that way, too?  I promise you, all your classmates and friends feel the same way, even if it doesn’t look like it. Everyone’s body and mind are changing, and everyone has to figure out how to adjust. And everybody does that a little differently.

It’s okay not to have a ton of friends. Your mom had a gift for making lots of friends from different social circles. I never did, and I used to think there was something wrong with me. But some of us are made to only have room for one or two really close friends at a time. And that’s okay.

You are beautiful. You may roll your eyes at me, sitting at a computer a thousand miles away before you’re even born–how can I know whether you’re beautiful or not at age twelve? I know because beauty is something inside. There are Beautiful People out there, people who get on magazine covers for being beautiful, and we may recognize their beauty right away. But most of the rest of us are pretty ordinary-looking, and we learn to recognize the beauty in each other as we get to know them. The crazy but wonderful thing is that I don’t just mean inner beauty. I mean that a person will become more attractive physically as you get to know them. And the same happens with you.

So love yourself, respect yourself–your body and also the beautiful soul inside it. That is where God lives, and where God made you in His image. Take care of yourself. Eat well, stay active, and take time just to sit still and rest. The world is opening up in front of you, and it’s going to be an exhilerating and terrifying ride. Stay close to your parents, even when they drive you nuts. You need deep roots to help you fly. The rest of us can’t wait to see where you go.

Love,

Aunt Kate

*

Now it’s your turn. What would you tell age twelve? Am I missing anything critical?

(Linked to Just Write at The Extraordinary Ordinary)

The Beauty of Life and Dark

Photo by exquisitur, via Flickr

There’s a quote I think of often, from a movie that never hit the big time, but which has really stuck with me over the years: Grand Canyon. “Everything seems so close together,” the character Claire tells her husband. “All the good and bad things in the world. I feel it in myself, even. And in us. Our marriage.”

There seems to be a deep truth in that quote, but I’ve never quite managed to wrap my head around it, until this week in my nursing-time reading, I started reading what Henri Nouwen had to say on the subject of gratitude and celebration.

His argument is that every occasion of celebration also involves loss: when you get married, it’s union, but also departure from the family ties that formed us; when you graduate and get a job, you lose the environment of constant seeking and stimulation of being in school. And so on. To celebrate life means to celebrate the whole works–the ups and downs are part and parcel of the same thing; we aren’t supposed to celebrate one part and merely tolerate the other. “Those who are able to celebrate life can prevent the temptation to search for clean joy or clean sorrow,” he said. “Life is not wrapped in cellophane and protected against all infections.”

“Gratitude is a difficult discipline, to constantly reclaim my whole past as the concrete way in which God has led me to this moment and is sending me into the future….I am gradually learning that the call to gratitude asks us to say ‘everything is grace.’”

 (Quotes from The Essential Henri Nouwen, edited by Robert A. Jonas . You should buy this book. Today.)

I know the truth of this; if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, that there’s a reason for all we’re asked to suffer, that it’s in life’s difficult moments that we learn the most important lessons. But it’s easy to wax philosophical when life is good. Not so easy to touch that truth when the tough times come calling. Or move in.

But where I really see these words intersecting my world is in the everyday. It’s not the big stuff that gets me, it’s the constant low hum of self-sacrifice, noise and chaos when my soul’s natural state is quiet and solitude. And yet the blessing is the curse. Look how rich my life is. You can’t have four little ones running around, eight pairs of chubby, soft arms around your neck, four separate adorable giggles, all the heart-catching moments beyond count, without the noise and chaos.

Everything is so close together. The good and the bad, they are the same thing, shined on from east and west. I may never say, “Thank you, God, that my children are banging on everything in sight and Michael finds things on the floor to choke on even after I’m sure we’ve gotten every single thing up and I have to issue the instruction six times for every individual book I want them to put away.” But I can appreciate the gift–that amazing gift so many long so deeply for–of my children. I can acknowledge that what seems like light and dark are really one and the same, and simply be grateful for the gift of life, with all its shades, and choose not to focus on what irritates.

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. (I Thess. 5:16-18)

*

Shared with Hear It On Sunday, Use It On Monday and Multitude Mondays.

Sunday Snippets

Is it the weekend again? Already? What a week! The kids and I spent every day traveling so I could teach at liturgical music camp in our diocese. Havoc with naps, and chaos in the kitchen. And today we hosted a baby shower for my baby sister. Craziness! In any case,  weekend means time to gather at RAnn’s This, That and the Other Thing for Sunday Snippets:  A Catholic Carnival. My contributions:

Too Big For Me

Angel, Imp, Trouble (Julianna strikes again)

Parched

Fiction Friday: Secrets

Noise And Chaos

Noise and Chaos: a 7QT post

___1___

A couple of years ago, my editor wanted me to add a parting thought to a story I had written, something to sum up the stories I’d told, of people who were trying to discern family size. Something, she said, to illustrate the noise and chaos I was always talking about in my emails to her. And I got to thinking maybe I am just a whiny brat about the whole thing, and everybody’s life is like this with kids. Right?

___2___

Not long after that we found our family motto…one I don’t say often enough anymore (to myself!): “EVERYBODY JUST CALM DOWN!”

___3___

More recently, one of Alex’s friends came over to play, and in the glazed eyed look on his face, I saw the truth. “E,” I said, “is your house this noisy all the time?”

He widened his eyes and shook his head wordlessly.

___4___

Two days later, Christian came upstairs from teaching a lesson to a new student. “WHAT was going on up here?” he said, a question I think I answered with a blank look of confusion. (It all goes kind of hazy after a while, you know.) “I thought the ceiling was going to come down. My student looked up and asked, ‘Is it always this loud?’”

___5___

On the 4th of July, we attended an ice cream social in conjunction with the Grand Hotel’s yearly carnival on the lawn. Michael, deprived of the chance to eat Nicholas’s ice cream, took advantage of Mommy and Daddy running off after water cups (the lawn is completely airless and it was around a hundred degrees down there) to go in pursuit of Second Best: good old-fashioned dirt from the Grand Hotel’s newly-planted flowerbeds. When I returned, I couldn’t decide whether to grab the camera or the baby wipes. (After all, I’d sort of like to have proof!) Ah well. At least he was wearing mostly black.

___6___

In the last two weeks, Michael 1) began to eat everything he can get his hands on, and I do mean EVERYTHING; 2) crawling, which makes #1 even more dangerous; and 3) poked his first tooth through. I can’t tell whether it’s crazed mommy brain or reality, but I sure don’t remember any of my other children careening headlong through milestones this quickly. It took all of three weeks for Michael to progress from being barely able to sit unsupported to being a full-blooded crawler, capable of traversing the entire length of the hallway in the time it takes me to wash my hands after a diaper change. (Insert creepy music:) NOTHING IS SAFE.

___7___

Ah, well. Amid the noise and chaos, I managed to get a Fiction Friday post ready this week. Enjoy!

Fiction Friday: Secrets

night tree (Photo credit: Adam Foster | Codefor)

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

(This is a followup to the story begun here.)

When I invited everyone out to Grammy’s cabin, I thought it would be fun–a way to shed the baggage of the last few months. But you can’t undo the past. It clings like cobwebs I can’t shake loose, despite the laughter, despite the music echoing around the cave, despite the free-flowing beer.

I look at the circle of my friends lounging against rock walls. We all own secrets we’re desperate to conceal. It’s amazing, how much I see in the flickering shadows of this cave I’ve known since childhood. The way Hanna casts furtive, speculative glances at Kresta, who’s dancing hip to hip with Jon. The skeletal thinness of Geena’s wrist protruding from the heavy sweater that can’t keep away her shivers, even as the rest of us fan ourselves in the heat of the fire. Eric’s bloodshot eyes and constant sniffling.

I wonder how Zin’s doing with Grammy. I feel bad. She thinks I planned this, to keep her away from Ned. How little she knows.

“C’mon, Dee, let’s dance!” The music nearly drowns out Chad’s voice–the very limestone seems to shake–as he pulls me to my feet. He swings me round and pulls me in, and I lean into his warmth, fling my head back, let the music and the sensation take me. All I want is to be part of something safe and whole and complete, even if it only lasts a few fleeting moments.

I can feel Ned’s eyes on me. He unfolds his long limbs and ducks under a low-hanging rock to grab my arm. “Don’t do this again, Dee,” he says in my ear, too low for other ears to hear. “You know he’s only after one thing.”

The raw place in my soul breaks open again, throbs physically in the wounded place where my secret was ripped from me, and suddenly all the world is a great, gaping emptiness.

“C’mon, guys,” I yell. “Let’s go back up to the house.”

The chorus of complaints is good-natured. Maybe, like me, they sense that in the darkness of this cave, all our secrets will betray us. Mine seems to hover in the treetops. I could swear I hear her name flying over my head a dozen times before we reach high ground.

At last, the trees break around the cabin, and in the dim light from the bare bulb on the porch, I see Grammy and Zin huddled together. Zin looks up, her eyes aglow with a fierce, protective, and hisses: “Quiet! She’s sleeping!”

When I see the newborn baby in her arms, the earth shifts beneath me, and I realize: no secret stays hidden forever.

Parched

God’s been calling me lately. As the blasted earth bakes and leaves wither on their branches; as they drop ungracefully to the ground, bleached and crunchy  three months before the proper time; as big, billowy clouds form and dissipate listlessly amid gray-brown-blue skies impenetrable with humidity; as priceless, fleeting storms direct their energy southward (mostly) and northward (occasionally); as tempers fray and human interaction shrinks to the confines of air-conditioned walls; as overcommitment saps energy and it’s a struggle to get through every day for weariness. Suddenly, the beauty of the many Scriptural references to lush earth and flowing water seem so profound.

He is like a tree planted near running water, That yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade. (Ps. 1)

In verdant pastures he gives me repose; Beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul. (Ps. 23)

God’s been calling me lately, whispering that I’ve neglected the solitude and silence and refreshment my soul needs, but I didn’t recognize it until I began reading Henri Nouwen:

“Without prayer, we become deaf to the voice of love and become confused by the many competing voices asking for our attention. How difficult this is! When we sit down for half an hour–without talking to someone, listening to music, watching television, or reading a book–and try to become very still, we often find ourselves so overwhelmed by our noisy inner voices that we can hardly wait to getbusy and distracted again. Our inner life often looks like a banana tree full of jumping monkeys!”

“Often we are so restless and so unable to find inner quietude that we can’t wait to get busy again, thus avoiding the confrontation with the chaotic state of our minds and hearts. Still, when we remain faithful to our discipline, even if it is only ten minutes a day, we gradually come to see…that there is a space within us where God dwells…”

It’s far too hot to be outside, and there are far too many obligations screaming for attention. But my soul, the core of who I am, feels like a sickly reflection of the earth all around me: oppressed, overwhelmed by forces beyond my control. God is calling me away to rest, if only for an hour. Today, I will answer.

*

(Henri Nouwen quotes from The Essential Henri Nouwen, edited by Robert A. Jonas)

Just Write: Angel, Imp, Trouble

Don’t let my angelic exterior fool you. Wait a minute, what am I saying? Yes! I am an angel…I am an angel…you will not notice my impish tendencies…

I’m teaching at a liturgical music camp this week, and yesterday afternoon we did an icebreaker game  in which we had to tell as many things about ourselves as we had M&Ms in our cup. Alex watched with fascination and then, giggling, whispered to me that one of my things should be to say I had four children and they were all named Trouble.

It seems appropriate given Little Miss’s Sunday morning shenanigans. We’ve been assured and reassured that she’s really no trouble in Children’s Liturgy–certainly no more than any other, typically-developing, child–so we let her go by herself this week. Alex saw that we weren’t following and decided to go with her. Fifteen minutes later, I had my flute at my lips and was breathing in to start the preparation song when Alex came down the aisle at a dead run. “Mommy, I need you to come NOW! I’m having trouble with Julianna!”

I slipped my flute back on its peg and started around the perimeter of the church, hand in hand with my firstborn. But when I got to the back and saw what he meant by “trouble,” I broke into a run. Julianna had commandeered some poor elderly lady’s “rollator” and was pushing it around while Alex’s first grade teacher was trying, gently and unsuccessfully, to separate the two of them without making a scene.

Julianna only gave a halfhearted howl when I pried her hands off it. She knows better. Stinker. You think she’s not aware of her disability? She knows exactly how to use it to her advantage.

Photo by Steve Snodgrass, via Flickr

After Mass, we let the kids wander while we packed up books and instrument. When we got ready to leave, I saw Julianna by the “gifts table,” studying the heavy pitcher of wine as if to measure whether she was strong enough to pick it up. She saw me coming and hastily redirected, snagging the small wooden cross they lay out for a family to pick up as a sign that they’ll bring up the gifts. She took that cross, held it up in front of her, and sedately and deliberately began processing down the main aisle, a miniature altar server in red ladybugs and white tulle.

As I stood there with exasperation and amusement and awe swirling around each other, a woman caught me by the arm and said in a voice heavy with disapproval, “Your daughter was into the Communion hosts. You might want to keep an eye on her.”

If I had reacted as I wanted to–by laughing out loud–I would have confirmed that we are Those Parents–the ones who won’t control their wild children in public. I wanted to take her by the arms and say, don’t you see that? Don’t you see how big a deal it is? She’s paying attention at Mass. She thinks it’s cool enough to imitate and want to experience herself. Sure, one of her phrases is “go-church” (sounds more like “go–dyoo”), but until this moment, I had no idea she was processing what happens under this roof at all!

Besides, it’s so stinking cute! How can I discipline such cuteness?