Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 23

Carrying The Future

Photo by John Vetterli, via Flickr

I know I’m not saying anything revolutionary here, but the world is really screwed up.

 

I’m also aware that this is nothing unique to this particular era, this particular election cycle. The world has always been a screwed up place.

Maybe this is maturity—spiritual or otherwise—finally allowing me to reserve a piece of my mental and emotional energy for the suffering of someone besides myself. (We can hope, anyway.) One way or the other, I’m finally beginning to understand where the term “bleeding heart” came from, and although it’s been a term of derision my entire life (almost always followed by the dreaded “L” word—”liberal”), I finally recognize it and embrace it, because I see it in the mirror.

As I laid awake tonight, tossing and turning, all too aware of the headache and the sting in my scratched eye, a song kept going round and round my head. It’s a song I heard a concert at a pastoral music conference a number of years ago. It goes, “Please break my heart, O God, with what breaks your heart, O God.”

This is the top of the list of things breaking my heart these days.

Click to view slideshow.

My good friend Kelley is doing something amazing in a couple of weeks. She’s going to Greece with an organization called Carry the Future. They provide “baby boxes” that help refugee mothers take care of their children. Mosquito nets, diapers, clothing, blankets, baby carrier, cleaning supplies for Mom, to help her stay healthy so she can safely carry her piece of the future.

And then there’s this telling line on the “baby boxes” page:

“The baby boxes also include a plastic bin and legs to protect and elevate the baby box from hazards at camps such as snakes and flooding.”

Just imagine trying to raise your children in those circumstances. It puts all our fears about kidnappings and head injuries into perspective, doesn’t it?

I’m envious of Kelley for the opportunity to put the works of mercy into action—and I stand in awe of her family’s willingness to shoulder the logistical difficulties associated with the extended absence of its primary caregiver.

My family and I are not that bold, but I can support her efforts, and I can urge those who read this page to donate to Carry The Future, as I am doing today. It should be obvious by now that holing up on our side of the Atlantic cannot protect us from the violence taking place elsewhere. For better and for worse (and it really is both), we are an interconnected world now, and we need to recognize that and start participating in finding solutions. War probably isn’t the answer. Diplomacy might not work, either. But mercy? Mercy just might put a dent in the carnage.

The world is screwed up; our $10 or $20 isn’t going to change that. But as St. Mother Teresa put it: “God does not require that we be successful, only that we be faithful.”

**Note: if you do decide to donate, will you comment here, so we can see if a little blog post from one of the least influential bloggers out there can make a difference?

 

Ghosts Who Snuggle and (Somewhat) Related Musings

The obvious is never the most important thing. Image by Moyan_Brenn, via Flickr

I had a strangely vivid dream last night. I was a ghost, but apparently a very strong one. I was snuggling with my kids, and I could carry a phone, although when I tried to wander too far, I lost my grip on it. And there was something about guys getting ready to load hay bales into the back of a pickup.

Vivid dreams are pretty common for me—they tend to happen whenever I sleep on my back, even for a few minutes—and I really value them, because they give me story ideas. Two of my published short stories originated as dreams, and so did the novel I’m drafting now. And two nights ago I had another. (I have three novels in my “awaiting development” folder now, which is really exciting.)

The circumstances of these dreams never make any sense, of course—the one time I scribbled the entire thing down furiously, sure I could use it for a story, I came back and reread it with my forehead puckered, going, “Why did THAT evoke such a strong emotion? I don’t even see what those five lines have to do with each other!” It’s the emotion that tells me why this dream matters.

I’m sure there are deep psychological implications for dreaming that one is a ghost. Something about being a ghost in one’s life, needing to live in the moment, yada yada. But I don’t really want to chase that particular rabbit down its hole. I’m doing the best I can. I’ve done copious amounts of soul searching on the topics of balance and discernment of motherhood/marriage versus self-fulfillment, and I certainly don’t feel a need to throw the whole works out and start over, just because I dreamed I was a ghost.

Besides, a strange thing happened to me yesterday morning. There was an adorable toddler plastered to the window of the babysitting room at Jazzercise, and I felt no heart-wrench, no longing for another baby. None.

Which is not to say that I don’t like babies anymore. We had a baby at choir practice last night and it was all I could do to focus on, y’know, leading the choir. But I’m not feeling that deep, visceral longing for another of my own. I kind of like having both hands free to conduct. Or play flute. Or type. Or cook.

No doubt it’s cyclic; that gut-wrenching longing will come around again in a couple weeks. But it seems significant that this thing that has defined me so long is relaxing its grip. I’m transitioning into a work-from-home mother of school-aged kids, and feeling tremendously fulfilled by that role.

This is not a well-unified blog post. It’s more a free-form journal entry. For the past several days I’ve been intending to journal if I couldn’t get to sleep, but I’ve always managed to get to sleep. Apparently I just couldn’t take it anymore, and decided to spew the contents of my brain here instead. I’d better stop, before I start typing a missive opinions about presidential politics…

If I Were Planning An Epic American Road Trip…

I’m in the midst of writing a road trip book right now, and it was ridiculously fun to plan my main character’s route across the country. So I thought today I’d share a few of the gems I discovered—places I hadn’t heard of before, but which have been given a place on my “someday” list. (Although only one of these made my book. Want to guess which one?)

There are quite a few “soul food” places, of course. I was surprised at how many I hadn’t heard of, given that I’ve taken multiple trips to these areas of the country:

Antelope Canyon (Arizona):

Photo by Moyan_Brenn, via Flickr

And The Wave, also in Arizona. Who knew there was more awe-inspiring beauty in this state than the Grand Canyon? (Probably everyone except me, but there you go.)

Photo by Moon Howler 97321, via Flickr

Oneonta Gorge, Oregon:

Photo by Sarah McDevitt, via Flickr

And there’s Hamilton Pool, in Texas:

Photo by Knowsphotos, via Flickr

There are historical locations like Taos Pueblo, in New Mexico, where residents still live a traditional Native American life. (But Fodors had me at “fry bread”):

Photo by Phillip Capper, via flickr

Then there are the quirkier locations, which were a whole lot of fun to explore. There’s a great site and app called “Roadside America,” which has done the work for you. Check it out, but do it when you have some time to kill, because this site is the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes.

Ft. Worth Stockyards

Photo by Jeremy Wilburn, via Flickr

The “Enchanted Highway,” North Dakota.

One of the sculptures along the Enchanted Highway. Image by drewweber, via Flickr.

Because sometimes cheesy looks kind of fun: the Gunfighters Wax Museum (Dodge City, KS)

Photo by TravelKS, via Flickr

It also seems like it might be a fun thing to take a spin through Casey, Illinois, which seems to boast an inordinate number of the “world’s largest,” to wit: wind chime, golf tee, knitting needles, crochet hook, rocking chair, mailbox, and pitchfork.

But this one is my favorite: the UFO Watchtower, in Hooper, CO

Photo by anyjazz65, via Flickr.

 

In Gold Field, Nevada, there’s an art car parking lot:

Photo by what’s_the_frequency, via Flickr

And finally, closer to home is this: the Billion Gallon Lake, formed in the defunct Bonne Terre mine in south Missouri: (You can scuba dive here, too, and see the mining equipment abandoned there. How cool is that?)

Photo by The_Gut, via Flickr

So what other beautiful, quirky, or just plain fun places should I add to my list?

That Moment When I Realize the Problem is Me

Photo by Jangra Works, via Flickr

This might come as a shock to many people. (Brace yourselves, sisters!) Occasionally…very occasionally…I do fleetingly think, “Gee, if I had a smart phone right now I could…”

I always decide that for me, the benefit would be far outweighed by the nuisance, the expectation of being always available. But I’ve realized in the past few days that my reasoning is faulty. I’m absolutely right to stay disconnected, but the real issue in having a smart phone wouldn’t be the technology. It would be me.

It seemed like for a week, I kept hearing stories about people who had found their family relationships strained—in some cases broken—by addiction to screen time. Then I read a striking reflection, provacatively titled “I used to be human,” by Andrew Sullivan, who embraced life online until he realized his physical health was failing and so was his ability to have meaningful relationships. Yesterday, I heard him on NPR’s program Here and Now (a great interview, btw).

And when Christian and I talked these things over, we found ourselves stumped by the lack of self-regulation that seems ubiquitous to modern life. I scolded him for how often he feels compelled to check his work email day, night, morning, weekends. And he pointed out how much time I spend on the computer.

That was when I realized that I am not immune. I, too, am driven by a need for distraction. If I get stuck while I’m working, I’ll click over to email, and when there’s nothing there, I’ll hop on Facebook or (less frequently) Twitter. (There’s always something to distract me there.)

I value going out to the Pinnacles or Gans Creek to write because it takes me completely off the grid. It’s just me and my muse and the Spirit. I go out there, first, to be still and meditate, but despite devoting half my nature time to stillness and not doing, I generally get more writing done than I would if I stayed home.

I haven’t been going out much lately. We invested in a set of patio furniture that has made my back yard like a retreat—at least, when the wind is out of the north, as it has been the past week or so, and I can’t hear the interstate roaring. But there’s wireless down there, and any time I ran into a speed bump in my manuscript, my brain went, “SQUIRREL!” and I ran off to check Facebook.

Late last week, I decided to safeguard my writing time by unplugging the wireless router before I went downstairs to write. See, theoretically you could just turn off the wireless on the computer (or turn off the phone). But I’ve tried that. When all it takes is a flip of the switch to reconnect, there’s not a whole lot standing between me and distraction. It’s been illuminating to see how often I’ve said to myself, “Oh, I’ll just go look up…oh, wait.”

I’ve accomplished a ton in the past week.

Then, early this week, I imposed a Facebook cap on myself. I’m now only allowed to get on Facebook three times a day. (Only! There’s your first clue, Sherlock.)

The sense of withdrawal engendered by all this clarified for me that the only way I can do everything I do is by staying disconnected, by opting into the digital realm on my terms instead of being in by default and having to consciously opt out. I might be able to control myself, because self-discipline and self-regulation are key to my world view. But I would spend so much mental bandwidth policing myself, I would be taking away from the energy required to do the things that are more important to me.

So for me, not having a smart phone, not texting, not doing All The Things Everybody Else Does, are what allow me to be the woman I want to be. But I’m glad that now I recognize the problem isn’t the technology—it’s me.

Notes from The War Zone

That’s my candy pumpkin! No, I had it first! You’ve had three already! MOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!! (The LEGO storm troopers never disappoint. Image by DuckBrown, via Flickr)

A lot of days, I feel like I live in a war zone. And a lot of days, I just want to throw in the towel. Like yesterday, for instance. We let the kids sleep in, let them wake up slowly, gave them no responsibility whatsoever. Just a nice, relaxing morning, in advance of a once-a-year treat: a baseball game.

By nine-thirty a.m., there had been three major fights, at least one of them taking place outside for the edification of the entire world.

Every so often I ask adults how they got along with their siblings when they were kids, and how they get along now. Christian likes to say that his brothers beat each other up, but then it was done—and nobody, but nobody, outside the family had better mess with them. And now, generally, they get along great.

A lot of other people tell me, “Sure, we fought some, but mostly we were really close. We were best friends.”

When I hear things like that, I can’t help feeling like a complete failure as a parent. Because surely it’s our fault—and really, mine, because I’m the primary caregiver—that my kids haven’t learned how to deal with each other with some slight measure of tolerance. That they get in each other’s business to the point where the fighting sometimes seems nonstop. I get so tired of being asked to arbitrate “he hit/kicked/pinched me” or “he won’t give me the fill-in-the-blank.” Because a hit was almost always provoked by the victim at the end of a long escalation, and you can never tell who actually fired the first shot. And there’s virtually no way to get a straight answer about which kid actually had dibs on the toy (or book, or article of clothing) in question. Sometimes I just take it away from them both, because it’s easier.

Not that long ago, I told them I refused to arbitrate, because they were asking me to play favorites, and that wasn’t fair to me.

We try to teach conflict resolution in love. We require apologies—often from both parties, because so few conflicts are one-sided—and we require the words “I forgive you” (NOT “It’s okay,” because that’s flatly untrue; it’s NOT okay; if it was, there wouldn’t be a need for an apology in the first place) and a hug. Which is the hardest part, by the way. Words are easy. Actions make it real. We talk about Jesus, we talk about love and kindness and the importance of family–that someday, when we’re gone, all they’ll have is each other.

I don’t use the word “mercy” with the kids, because it’s taking me so long to wrap my head and heart around it. But mercy is what I’m trying to teach. They’re very aware when I’m having to take deep breaths and self-regulate my own reactions. I don’t try to hide it. And I’m pretty open about apologizing when I don’t succeed.

Some days I think this is all part and parcel of the learning process. I can take it philosophically.

Other days, I just feel frustrated.

(Can you guess which is true today?)

Recently I wrote an essay for Columbia Magazine called “Mercy Begins in the Home.”. My kids opened my eyes to that reality, but there’s a vast chasm between recognizing something to be true and teaching them to choose mercy themselves.

Of course, choosing mercy is a tall order for children at ages almost-5, 7, 9, and 11. But if we don’t expect it now, how can we expect it from them ever?

Empathy and “here’s what works for us” would be welcome.

For posts containing more actual “mercy,” click here.

Rest and InSpiration

I came downstairs after my shower yesterday—midmorning, post-workout—to find Michael lying on the couch, half-covered up by a throw and staring out at nothing. I had intended to take him to the basement and let him play with the multitude of toys there while I worked at the piano on edits for the last piece for my Easter collection for flute & piano. But it’s been a rough transition for him, going from morning preschool and afternoon nap to afternoon preschool and no nap at all. So instead, I laid down on the couch beside him and wrapped him up in my arms. “You tired, sweetie?”

“Yeah,” he said in his “forlorn” voice.

“You want to take a nap?”

An extended nod, there against my chest. Then an extended shake of the head. I laughed, and so did he.

I knew I should just cover him up with the throw, kiss his cheek, and go do my work. An unplanned nap? In the morning? This is a gift from God, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a bow.

But I was sleepy, too, and he felt so good in my arms. And maybe, after all, the gift was a different one: the gift of stillness, one I could embrace—literally—or toss away in favor of an extra half hour of work time.

I closed my eyes, and we snuggled down in the quiet house. My brain treated me to a tour of all the things I could and should be doing, but I pretended it wasn’t talking, and the shrieking faded to a dull roar.

I love being snuggled up with a child in the moment when they go to sleep. The breathing changes. The body relaxes. I couldn’t sleep myself, but I laid there with his head on my arm, eyes closed, opening them every so often to look at those impossibly long lashes, then closing them again to rest in stillness.

And then, after a handful of minutes, inSpiration trickled through the synapses and sang me the solution to my editing quandary. Regretfully, I maneuvered his head off my arm and onto the couch pillow and went downstairs, knowing I’d probably solved the problem more quickly by NOT doing than I would have if I’d gone straight to the basement as planned.

And filled my heart in the process.

Of Mammograms and a Rising Star

I am trying to figure out how to open this post with something snappy that will make everyone click through, and I’m coming up blank. There are weeks when all you can do is put your head down and charge through. But I realize it’s pretty whiny to call what I experienced the past seven days “intense.” After all, the tests came back negative, and my book won a contest!

But still.

I knew last week was going to be bad going in. And by “bad,” I don’t mean “I hate my life,” I mean, “My life is so crammed with richness this week, I don’t have time to work, exercise, do dishes, or sleep.” Of course, it didn’t help that I started the week with the last two weeks’ worth of laundry to fold, plus a child home sick, and already four days behind from a trip to southern Illinois.

I launched into Tuesday still playing catchup, and tacked on eight more PT sessions for Julianna to the list of Places To Go And Things To Do in the coming weeks. But the day went as smoothly as it possibly could have, and that night I got to talk about writing for forty-five minutes to people who actually wanted to hear about it! (Gasp!)

I also begged for clemency from the teachers at school for one of the Thursday events, so by Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., when I was at last sitting at the kitchen counter in an empty house working on my new novel, I thought I was all done with “My Life is Madness” and had reached smoother waters.

And then the phone rang. It was the hospital. I thought, Huh. This must be about Julianna’s PT.

Until the friendly lady on the other line mentioned the cancer center. And I thought, Oh, right, I had a mammogram last week.

And then she said, “Do you have a minute to talk?”

And I thought,

Oh, crap.

Because we all know good news involves a breezy twelve-second script and a hasty hangup. Never, ever, ever “a minute to talk.”

As we discussed 3D mammography and ultrasounds and what to do with my preschooler while I had the followup screening the next morning (doctors in a hurry: also a scary sign), I shoved a rogue hairband around the floor with my toe and tried to emotionally dissociate. I carefully reminded myself of the controversy about whether it’s really even useful for women my age to have the test, because the false positive rate is so high. Keep it together, I told myself.

“Do you have any questions?” she said at length.

“Many,” I answered, “but I’m pretty sure you’re not the one I need to ask them of.”

I was pretty emotional for a while. I resisted the urge to go public, knowing it was likely nothing and would trade a few hours’ worth of lonely terror for a whole lot of messy, public cleanup on the back side if everything turned out fine.

Which it did, by the way. Turn out fine, I mean.

But as you might imagine, by the time Friday night rolled around, and I knew the announcement of the Rising Star winners was imminent, I was emotionally exhausted. And then, just when I thought it was too late at night to hope for good news, the Facebook messages started pouring in from my friends gathered in Albuquerque, and the contest coordinator called.

How does one react to such an honor? Amazed, honored, overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and support of my online community of writers…and a little too stunned by everything else to properly process it. (I still am.)

And how does one decompress after such a week?

Like this.

Click to view slideshow.

In Which The Letter “L” is a Bittersweet Milestone

When I think about my kids, I often have to chuckle at God’s sense of humor.

I always claimed that I would accept any child given to me, that health or disability wouldn’t matter. But I didn’t mean it. And I knew I didn’t mean it, although I never admitted it, even to myself. I started college pursuing a BM/c (bachelor of music with certification), which was more performance-heavy than a normal music ed degree, but still certified you to teach. It seemed smart, but in my sophomore year, when tendonitis & carpal tunnel threatened to end my chances of playing at all, I realized: I *hated education classes. I did NOT want to be a classroom teacher.

And then came That Class.

Special Education for Non-Special Educators.

It was a three-hour, once-a-week seminar on a Thursday afternoon, one of the few classes I had in college that fit the stereotype of a huge lecture hall and zero participation.

It was excruciating.

I found the subject matter repulsive. (Don’t judge. I’m coming clean here.)

And that was what convinced me that I had to take a leap of faith and remove the stressful, not-life-giving requirements from my college plan and focus on what I really wanted to do with my life.

In other words, I was so NOT open to children with special needs, I changed my major.

And then came Julianna.

Like I said, God has a sense of humor. No, that’s not right. God knows what we need, and facilitates our growth through experiences—and people—who challenge us to become more of what we were meant to be.

But none of that lessens the irony: that I, the woman who really wasn’t open to having *any kids with special needs, ended up with not one, but two children on IEPs.

Well, that was a tangent.

I’m thinking about this today because Michael started saying “L”s this week. He’s been capable of it for quite a while. When he turned three, he entered an early childhood special ed classroom devoted to language, including intensive speech therapy. At the end of that year he graduated with flying colors and transitioned to being a peer model in a different ECSE classroom—providing a model of appropriate behavior for kids with a number of different disabilities–but for a while they continued giving him speech therapy on site. His speech therapist there addressed the “L” right before she graduated him and he became, officially, IEP-free.

But although he *could, he *didn’t. It was still “I wuv you” and “I wike wowwipops.” In print it makes me want to roll my eyes. But oh, my heart, in real life, it was adorable. And he’s my last baby. So I didn’t push it.

And then, this week, out pops, “Mom, who are you giving the blog to?” Only it’s very self-aware, so it comes out as “Who are you giving the balog to?” and “I a-love you” and “I a-like a-lo-a-llipops!”

Not coincidentally, he’s also replaced his “f”s with “th.” So now he actually says “I think” instead of “I fink,” and “Thor” instead of “For.”

I am in mourning.

I’m glad he’s decided it’s time to talk like a big kid, but I didn’t need further proof that I’m passing out of the cuddle-snuggle-chew-kiss-raspberry stage. I’m enjoying the fact that my kids are older, that their schoolwork is no longer paralyzingly boring to supervise, that I can start to talk to them about the world and ask them to recognize patterns. I love that they (generally) sleep through the night now, and can even put themselves to bed, if things are too busy for me to get upstairs and tuck them in.

But I really love little ones. And you just can’t go around chewing on other people’s kids. Even if it was socially acceptable, it doesn’t feel right.

It’s a bittersweet milestone, the letter “L.”

The Incredible Sick

Image by Sky Noir, via Flickr

Every superhero movie these days involves a mind-blowing escalation of the final battle. You know. The Avengers are fighting creepy mechanical creatures that fly around knocking New York City to pieces. You think it can’t get any worse, and then it does: there’s a lull in the action, a low-pitched roar, and my kids start singing, “The FISH thing! The FISH thing! The GIant GIant FISH thing!”

 

Sometimes life feels just like that.

Every two or three years, in the early fall we have an epic, extended Battle of the Ick. (In case you haven’t intuited it? We’re in one.) This year it got an early start with a dry, hacking cough around the 20th of August. I remember that because I saw my 90+ year old grandmother on the 26th and I was afraid to kiss her because I thought I was probably incubating the boys’ bug.

A month later, we’re all still coughing. And before anyone invokes the almighty doctor, we’ve been to urgent care twice and the regular doctor once, each for a different person. So far in the month of September, we have spent $200 on copays.

It’s not a bad illness, but it wears on you after a while. Nicholas is dramatic by nature, but when he gets sick, he’s even dramatic in his sleep. His coughing can keep the entire house awake, because he sounds like he’s choking. Mama Kate hasn’t been sleeping much the last month, and most of the time it’s not because of a full brain. It’s because I’m getting up and rolling over sixty-pound kids, smearing them with Vix, re-dosing them with Triaminic or Dimetapp, and the like.

In the past three days, I finally feel like we finally started getting a handle on it.

But now we’re staring down the barrel of one of Those Weeks: upcoming deadlines; catching up from a weekend trip to Illinois that set me back by five days; the need to grocery shop on a Monday because a bunch of the weekly staples are flat out gone; the lawn that is threatening to turn into a set for the Jungle Book (see: out of town over the weekend); an NFP class to teach; a massage for which I’ve been waiting for over a month, to fix the burning tendons in my feet; a flute lesson; a DS group plotting session…

And that’s just Monday!

And on the eve of That Week, we came upstairs at bedtime to discover…well, I’ll spare you the details.

So here’s the thing: there’s this little set of instructions for Christian living called the works of mercy. And one of them is “visit the sick.”

But in the past eleven years I’ve had ample opportunity to beat my head against the fact that nobody wants to visit the sick, because nobody wants to GET sick. In fact, as a mother I’ve often felt that the time I most need support is the time the support completely evaporates.

Photo by muscalwds, via Flickr

It got me to thinking that we take these works of mercy too literally. The thing is, when you have a sick kid, the rest of your life doesn’t stop. The deadlines are still there, the family still needs to eat, the lawn still has to be cut, and the other kids still have to do their homework. Some things can be rescheduled. Many can’t.

I realized this weekend that we need to rethink the meaning of “visit the sick”. There are ways to help a family overwhelmed by illness—even the petty kind that lasts a month and doesn’t threaten anyone’s life–without exposing yourself to the same illness. Mow their lawn. Rake their leaves. Bring the un-sick family members a meal, or just pick up a handful of groceries and drop them off. Help transport the un-sick kids. Supervise them outside, where carriers will be less likely to share their germs, so they don’t have to tag along while parents drive the sick kid all over creation to see doctors who have oh-so-thoughtfully decided to move their practice to the OPPOSITE END OF TOWN.

Do the things the parents can’t do, because they’re too darned busy taking care of the stuff that can’t be put off.

And when it’s all over at last, help them catch up with everything they had to let slide in the interim.

We’ve got to stop putting mercy in a box. Mercy wants out. Mercy means finding a way.

*****

Note: this is not a thinly-disguised plea for help. God willing by the time this posts, I’ll have the lawn mostly mowed. I’m just realizing we’ve got to quit thinking two-dimensionally and give mercy a place in real life.

Mighty Waters