Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 17

Photo Friday: Go Ape

Alex and I took a travel writing day trip yesterday, to visit Go Ape in St. Louis…and although I only took pictures with Christian’s discarded iPhone (Alex simply would not believe me that it has no data service and never will) instead of the SLR, I think they’re good enough to share.

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Driving through Creve Coeur Park in Maryland Heights and–look! An Ewok village!

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We were quite early, so we took a walk around the park and found a very un-skittish deer posing for a picture near a dogwood.

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The juxtaposition of the red Japanese maple and the white some-sort-of-stinky-pear doesn’t really come out (needed the SLR!), but you can get an idea.

 

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Headed into the treetops

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And here we go.

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This would be the “extreme” option. The one heading off to the left would be the “moderate/easy” option.

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Another “extreme” option: a whole row of these gymnast footholds. I made it across without any mishaps requiring the safety cables to catch me. When I saw my shadow so clear down below me, I stopped in the middle to snap a photo. Trying to hold still on those dangling rings, I realized this activity was a lot more athletic than I’d anticipated. I could feel every muscle in my legs quivering.

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Alex on the same set of rings. Using his safety harness liberally.

The Gifts I Didn’t Expect

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Photo by Joel Olives, via Flickr

This morning’s daily readings included the story of the man begging by the Beautiful Gate. Peter says to him, “Look at us,” and as the story says, “He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them.” Only they had no money. Peter pulled him to his feet and healed him instead.

I’ve always thought of this story purely from the perspective of the miracle—how wonderful for this man, crippled from birth! But this morning it really struck me that a healing like this forces a huge paradigm shift in the life of the recipient. Presumably this man had spent his life earning his living by begging, and it was socially acceptable because he couldn’t do anything else. But now that he’s healed, he has to go find work to support himself. Now the social niceties and expectations he probably could have let slide his whole life are going to come down full force.

This sparked a couple different thoughts. First, it occurred to me that I’ve never once heard anyone say about Biblical beggars the things that are said about modern-day ones. (They’ll just use it to buy drugs; I tried to give a meal to a homeless guy once and he yelled at me because he wanted money for booze, not real help, etc.) It’s like we can assume the best of those in the pages of Scripture in a way we’re not able to do with people in our own time. I’m sure there are sociological reasons for this—the existence of social safety nets, etc. I’m not trying to pick a fight; it just really struck me this morning that it would have been entirely believable that the man at the Beautiful Gate would be like, “Dude, I didn’t ask you for healing, I just asked you for money!”

But he didn’t. He embraced the gift that wasn’t the one he’d been asking for. And this brings me to my second thought, which is about people like me, utterly ordinary middle-class Americans.

It’s easy to get laser-focused on what it is I think I need, and fail to appreciate–or sometimes even recognize–the actual gift I’ve been given. Easy to get rigid in my view of the world and see only the obstacle that’s just plopped down in my path, and fail to recognize that maybe what I see as an obstacle is actually an opportunity. One thing writing has taught me is that brick walls can’t be beat through, but if I go looking for a path around it, it’s even odds that I’ll find out I’ve just stumbled on the path I was supposed to be following all along.

What if?

Photo by jumpinjimmyjava, via Flickr

The thing about being a novelist is that you spend your life devising creative ways to torment your characters. When you’re writing contemporary fiction (as opposed to fantasy, for instance), these torments are supposed to be 100% plausible for the real world. The question we are trained to ask is: What if?

I love writing fiction, and I don’t use that word flippantly, since my fiction centers around the real meaning of the word love. But I have to be honest: encouraging this question can be a real difficulty for a person who has a history of latching on to irrational fear.

I spent almost two years being afraid of bridges, because one night I imagined the bridge collapsing and myself confronted with the impossible choice of which child to try to save. (Imagine traveling anywhere at all when the Missouri River crosses the highways to the south, west, and east of my home. Crazy twisty rivers.)

It wasn’t that I refused to go anywhere. It wasn’t even that I was terribly afraid in the many moments I was crossing those big bridges. I knew it was irrational. No, it was the “wee sma’s” (inappropriate apostrophe noted), as L.M. Montgomery used to call them, that were the hardest. Unguarded moments before dropping off to sleep, or when rolling over in the middle of the night, when the entire thing would unfold before my eyes with horrible clarity.

Because what if? I live in a state, after all, that is so opposed to tax increases of any kind that one of those crime shows referenced people buying cigarettes here and reselling them in New York at significant profit. A state where the abysmal quality of the roads is a joke as perennial as the weather, and a bunch of bridges are, in fact, in very bad shape–yet just a few days ago, the legislature voted down a tax increase to fund roads and bridges.

It’s an irrational fear, but unfortunately not that irrational.

I woke up at 5 a.m. on Good Friday to an image of Alex eating something that would cause his beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful and creative mind to be riddled with holes. It doesn’t even make sense now that I write it down.

And yet… what if?

Last Wednesday, I let the three younger kids walk from the church to the nursery without me, because I was running choir practice solo and we were running late. They’re all three busybodies. Nothing is going to happen to any one of them without the others coming running to me about it, and who is going to snatch all three at once? Especially when one of them has a disability? Besides which, Nicholas is turning into a pretty responsible and delightful young man these days, for the most part, deeply cognizant of the fact that he is more advanced in every way now than the sister who was his virtual twin for so many years.

And yet… what if?

A few weeks ago, a friend posted a story by a woman who was in line at the grocery store and the person in front of her asked to hold her little one, and how she started to walk off with the child. It was deeply involved and I can’t find the link now, but the upshot was that this woman was convinced it was a group of people involved in human trafficking. It was horrifying, because I spend my life trying to make sure my kids affirm their own competence in doing things without me breathing down their neck—without feeling insecure because they’re outside my sight lines. Take this to the mailbox; take the garbage down to the compost tumbler. Yes, the two of you may play outside together. Yes, middle schooler, you can walk to the bus stop by yourself. I consciously cultivate independence in my kids because I was so insecure about leaving the familiarity and security of home and my parents.

And yet…what if?

The world is such a scary place, and yet for most of us, it’s really it’s only scary when you process the big things, the things that are elsewhere. When I look around my world, here in middle class America, I see plenty to annoy or infuriate me, but nothing to scare me. My world is filled with good people and with evidence of community members looking out for each other. We don’t live in a world where terror lurks behind every bush and within every car that drives by. It’s the very security of my life that enables me to play around with the question “What if?” If there were real terrors in my life, I wouldn’t be wasting time making them up.

This is what I have to remember, as my kids get older and spread their wings.

When Everything’s Broken…

Image by { pranav }, via Flickr

I’m having one of those days when it’s hard to look at my life and see anything worth writing about. Sure, I carried my 10-year-old on my back through downtown St. Louis, and my arms are sore. So what? What does my life matter, when the news in other parts of the world just seems so sad…tragic…horrible.

Drought and starvation and Somalia.

Continuing horrors in Syria.

The climate.

Human trafficking. Close to home, no less.

The fact that making up one’s own reality seems to be becoming the norm in politics, rather than an aberration.

And how difficult, how impossible even, it seems that we might find a way forward to a better future.

There’s just so much. Looking up those links underscores how little my in-depth news coverage out of NPR really covers.

I suppose it’s not a bad frame of mind with which to enter Triduum, the holiest weekend of the year. To recognize that the world is impossibly broken and to recognize the only hope for its healing has nothing to do with human beings at all.

This Friday, my boys and I will spend the quiet hours of Good Friday helping organize a warehouse full of donations destined to help refugees landing in my area. It seems like one small thing we can do, one small offering of self. Even if the attitude of at least one of the participants is less virtuous than I might hope.  If our actions become our reality and eventually our character, then maybe what we do matters more than the attitude we hold while doing it.

See you after Easter.

Glimpsing The Future

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Older images, same sentiment

Two sixth graders in black T-shirts, in a garage on a warm, windy Sunday afternoon. Their friends and their mothers (except for me, because every time I sit up I feel like throwing up) are out in the driveway, cutting and Gorilla gluing and holding pieces of cardboard together until the glue sets, to make a boat for the Food Bank race in two weeks.

 

But these two boys, in their slim black jeans and their black t-shirts advertising basketball and Marvel heroes, the utterly ordinary stuff that preoccupies preteens, have been called into the shady, cool garage by a single noise from the 6-month-old baby sister of Alex’s friend. She’s in a bouncer amusing herself while the crowd works.

Alex goes down on his knees and starts going, “Hi! Hi!” with a big smile. The baby stares at him–let’s face it, probably his glasses. Alex glances up as his friend comes in and tries to wave him off. “I got this,” he says.

“No you don’t!” says Big Brother. “I’ve been dealing with this for, like, ten months!” And because unlike Alex, he has no fear of looking like a fool, he makes truly crazy faces and noises, and thus wins the Make The Baby Smile Challenge.

Two preteen boys, on their hands and knees on a concrete floor, utterly powerless against the charms of a baby.

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Despite my general not-feeling-good, I enjoy a private chuckle and a big warm fuzzy, and I think, I am glimpsing the distant future.

And it is beautiful.

Parenthood: A Series of Un-Winnable Battles

Photo by quinn.anya, via Flickr

It’s happening more and more often these days. I find myself frustrated with something my kids are doing (or not doing), saying (or not saying), and I think: Did we act like this when I was a kid? How did my parents deal with this?

There are long stretches of life when you sort of glide through life and you feel like you’re basically doing okay. There are bumps in the road, but they’re just that. Not crises. Just little bumps.

And then there are times when you see what your kids are doing and you think, Did I cause this? Is this my fault? Am I somehow teaching them this appalling behavior without realizing it?

Those days, it’s really easy to feel like a failure as a parent, and not even really know why.

My kids fight a lot in general, but it seems much worse lately. They’re all in each other’s business. The mantra of my early-childhood-parenting years– “You take care of you” –seems to have lost its effectiveness. My entire life seems to consist of statements like, “It is NOT your business to tell your brother to eat his vegetables!” and “Did I ask you, or did I ask your sister?”

It goes without saying that they are calling out their siblings’ misdeeds while blissfully (or willfully) ignoring their own transgressions.

Worst of all is yelling at one of them for being a bossy busybody, and then having to turn to the victim of the bossing and tell them the bossy busybody was right. I mean, that’s a no-win situation! I have to choose between affirming Busybody’s busybody-ness or letting Lazy child get away with Laziness!

And it all escalates, and parental tempers short out, sometimes in public, and it’s embarrassing and potentially relationship-damaging, and I circle back to this question:

How did we get here? What did I do to make it happen? Because it surely has to be something I did!

My middle- and high-school journals are filled with the word “lecture.” As in, complaints about parental lectures. Remembering this, I’ve tried really hard to keep my own parental lectures compact. I don’t want them to tune me out; if all I’m doing is flinging verbiage at a reflective surface, I’ll only increase my own frustration.

But it’s hard, because I’m so sick of giving the same instructions over and over and over and over. How many times have I told children to flush the toilet and wash their hands? Why do they still need to be told this every time they exit the bathroom?

How many times have I said, “Put your shoes IN THE CUBBIES”? or “Put the toy/book AWAY,” and the first response is crickets, the second is to pick up said item and lay it on the stairs, the third is to carry it up or down the stairs and drop it on the floor?

I often feel like my parenting consists of a) instructions followed by b) the need for consequences. This is not okay. I mean, how many times a day can you take away screen time, which is the only thing they actually care about?

In the toilet training years, people are always saying, “Oh, don’t stress about it, no kid goes to kindergarten in diapers. It’ll happen.” I’ve always wanted to shake people for saying that, because kids don’t just magically do it on their own. They have to be taught—even Michael, who did sort of magically train himself, needed several months’ worth of parent-led practice first. If the parent has to lead, it’s the parent’s JOB to stress out about it.

That’s the way this feels, too. Part of me whispers, Chill, Kate. They’ll grow out of it. And then I think of families I know in which the adults really still don’t get along all that well, and I think, Um, I’m not so sure I can count on them“growing out of it.”

So Sunday morning, I did the only thing I could think of. I stopped everyone at breakfast before church—before anyone had a chance to get in someone else’s business, before there was time for an escalation, before there was time for a parental explosion—and I re-instituted the “screen time depends upon getting along with each other” rule.

On Monday, one child lost his privileges.

Tuesday is a no-screen-time day, anyway.

We shall see what happens today.

My Alternative Spring Break

[image error]You know those trips organized by campus ministries every year, where college kids go to build houses in Appalachia or Central America? I never did one of those. I was way too timid (shocking, I know) and way too comfortable in my own ordinary. Those kinds of missed opportunities are the only real regrets I have about my life.

These days, Spring Break is usually a week I simultaneously try to a) pretend isn’t coming and b) plan to fill with activities so my kids don’t destroy 1) my house or 2) my sanity and their own before it’s over. This year was particularly worse than usual because A) my husband was out of town for the first 4 days of it and B) IT RAINED ALMOST THE ENTIRE FREAKING WEEK.

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Whatcha gonna do? (as my grandmother-in-law used to say)

Of course, I didn’t know point B when I first heard that the University of Illinois was doing a study on how children with Down syndrome learn to communicate. I did, however, know that we had tickets to see The Illusionists in St. Louis at the end of the week, courtesy of Santa (wink-wink). I suggested to Christian that we could go to Champaign-Urbana and participate in the study and visit his brother and sister-in-law there and do some travel writing visits and the show in St. Louis on the way home.

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Thus it was that last Thursday afternoon, Julianna and I spent an extremely cool, rainy day in adjacent rooms on the U of I campus, doing our tiny part to aid the future of the Down syndrome community. They put me in a room next door, where I could watch on a computer monitor while I filled out six, yes, six, questionnaires about our family, Julianna, and communication. (The height of irony: the woman who complains about paperwork every single time volunteers to do a whole stack of it.)

They started out by asking Julianna to complete some tasks without any verbal cues at all—only by silent modeling. Then they moved on to patterns and recognition of facial expressions and all kinds of things. Some of it I missed, because I had my own tasks to complete once my paperwork was finished. I’m not entirely sure how this fits into the big picture—we can only assume they wanted to compare the abilities and strategies of typically-developing parents with those of their developmentally disabled children.

It was a visual test, mostly. They started out with visual analogies: a picture of one tree beside a picture of three trees. Then a picture of a single flower and a blank, and I had to point to the picture below that showed a bunch of flowers. I settled in for an enjoyable ride. Until they switched to patterns, and then my analytical brain kicked in, thinking, oooh, a nice spatial challenge.

But folks, those things got HARD. For a while, I tried to do all the thinking in my head, but it got to the point where I said, “Um, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to let me talk this through.”

This was one of the last ones:

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When I saw this, I admit, I whimpered a little in my heart and considered pointing to a random image, because saying “I have no idea” was not an acceptable answer. Eventually I narrowed it down to two and gave it my best guess. My brother-in-law, that night, paused in the act of scrubbing oysters and spent thirty seconds staring at the puzzle, talking through it, and pointed to the right answer. I went, Oh! Now I get it!

(Alex and I did each eat a raw oyster that night. In case you’re wondering. Another first.)

After the puzzles, I had to choose the image on the page that illustrated the word or phrase the examiner read to me. And then it was concept riddles, for example: something you see through, has a sill, and is put in a wall. Most of them were not much more difficult than that, but a couple of them tripped me up.

My brain was completely shot by the time we were done, but I had one more task: take a picture book without any words at all and read it to Julianna on camera.

I can only imagine Julianna’s was even more exhausted than I was, by the time it was over with, but it was a good experience. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it. They’ll be collecting data for several more months, so if there are any readers interested in giving this a try, here’s one more image to point you in the right direction:

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Oh yes, incidentally–The Illusionists? FABULOUS. And the Fox Theatre in St. Louis? Wow. And not just because of the architecture. That was the most helpful, courteous theater staff I’ve ever encountered.

Friday Funnies, Courtesy of Oldest and Youngest

At bedtime during Spring Break, Alex remakes Michael’s pajamas to more accurately reflect his brother’s life and times.

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The Queen of Random (a Friday Funnies post)

[image error]Christian, at bedtime: Hello, Miss Horse Woman.

Julianna: Stop that.

Christian: Why do you want me to stop?

Julianna: Because you are old.

Parenting requires a  serious sense of humor. That’s all.

With my husband going out of town for a conference, I’m giving myself permission to take a Spring Break from blogging. See you all in April!

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A Manifesto on Parenting

[image error]When I was newly married, I spent one year substitute teaching in the local schools. That was a very educational experience. There was the elementary school that was universally viewed as the worst in the district (it has since been closed and reopened as a Title One/gifted/Early Childhood location), which started requesting me after I worked there once, and I couldn’t figure out why. There was the first grader in a different school who dropped the f-bomb and I was so appalled, I said, “No. Not ever” in a tone of voice I’d never felt within or heard from myself before, as if some other, more authoritative, human being had momentarily possessed me. (I use that voice regularly now.)

Most importantly, there was the day I was assigned to be the second teacher supervising last-period suspension at a middle school. After the kids left, I got into a conversation with the other teacher about these troubled kids. She was telling me about research showing the damage that had been done to many kids in young childhood. It wasn’t that they were abused—it was that they were ignored, stuck in front of a TV or whatever so the parents didn’t have to be bothered. These kids had problems forming attachments and trusting authority, and for that reason they struggle with behavior and human interaction for the rest of their lives.

Her takeaway has stayed with me word for word: “By the time these kids get to kindergarten, it’s 100% unfixable, and it was 100% percent preventable.”

I did not realize it then, but these experiences were shaping me as a parent as much as anything I learned growing up. And having to wait three years to become a parent gave me an excruciatingly long time to think and process what I saw unfolding around me. I often struggled not to judge, but that’s a different topic. From then until now, I have always taken a very intentional approach to parenthood. It goes like this:

My children will know they’re loved. They’ll know it in their bodies, in their minds, in their souls, so completely at such a deep, visceral level that they won’t ever have to question it.

They will know there is right and wrong. It won’t always be simple to identify; it will usually involve shades of gray and require mercy as well as sound judgment; and more often it will be harder to do than to identify. But they will know it exists.

They will know being part of a family involves responsibility. They are valued and important, but they are not the center of the universe. This means chores and looking out for each other, even when they don’t particularly like each other. The boys, especially, are being formed in the knowledge that they have to be responsible for their sister.

I will honor their unique interests and gifts. It’s not about having them reproduce my formative experiences—or, for that matter, fulfilling my unfulfilled childhood dreams. It’s about finding who they are called to be.

Luxuries and privileges are just that—luxuries and privileges. Privileges are earned and luxuries can be enjoyed more if they’re not experienced all the time.

They will know you can’t have it all. Sometimes you have to choose between good things, and just because “everybody else” does two sports and, and, and, doesn’t mean it’s a healthy lifestyle. Because…

Family and faith are #1. Being involved with church is non-negotiable, and family dinner is the rule, not the exception. Family game nights, family outings, building a community centered around the real-world practice of the faith—these are the things that keep us grounded and give us the emotional and moral strength to be good—and no less important, happy—people.

My job is to raise holy, happy adults who have the mental and physical discipline to do good things in the world. And everything I do as a parent is done with that central principle in mind.