Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 47

Things are Changing

Photo by yooperann, via Flickr

Things are changing in my heart these days.

We are five weeks into the new year, just about the time when the gyms stop being overcrowded and the motivation to avoid that caffeine, or sugar, or whatever, starts to slip. The year is burying certain parts of the country in deep, impenetrable snow, while in other parts (like mine) the earth rides a wild seesaw between spring and the heart of winter.

This is the time of snow days and hacking coughs that last for weeks, of stir crazy children and sloppy boots and snow pants that no one ever puts away. Of deadlines crowded one upon the next and the mess of Christmas crashing into the insanity of birthdays. The days when children scream at each other over that one matchbox car, even though there are three dozen others to choose from, and the noise level is always about three times what my quiet-loving soul is ready to handle.

And yet this year I’m staying pretty calm.

Things are changing in my heart these days. There’s a word that I’m whispering over and over every day, every time the chaos and the too-much threatens to overwhelm: treasure.

Mary treasured all these things, reflecting upon them in her heart.

Too often, I have chosen to “treasure”—to cling to—the worst of my life. I used to count the number of pieces of laundry I had to fold, gnashing my teeth in resentment. More recently, I’ve approached one of my children with frustration at a constant simmer, waiting to boil over at the first sign of resistance. I have focused on strings of nights with little sleep and the self-centered ingratitude of children. I’ve brooded over injustices and blog comments and Facebook status updates that rankle.

But my heart is changing these days. The thing I’m learning—the thing I’ve always known, the thing you know as well as I, the thing that is common sense, and yet we all conveniently forget—is that like begets like. What we choose to focus on defines our reality. When my emotional energy is focused on the worst facets of my life, the worst soon becomes the only thing I see.

But whispering this word, treasure, over and over when irritations arise is giving me the gift of release. I have the choice to release the bad moments and hold onto the good ones. It’s steering me on a course toward serenity of heart. It’s giving me the ability to head off conflicts with that one child, turning them into giggle fests–not always, but sometimes is much better than never–of keeping me calm when things don’t go my way, and releasing some of the pressure on my temper. I’m noticing the hysterical kid moments these days, laughing over them late at night with my husband in a way he’s always been able to, but I frequently was not. More of my life unfolds within a glow of gratitude these days, an awareness of the richness given to me.

Things are changing in my heart these days. And that is a very good thing.

And the day goes…AAAACK!

The school district, obligingly, gave Julianna a great birthday present–a day off school! For a whole 1/4″ of snow! Wow! What a generous crew they are.

I had this lovely post planned on the subject of what I “treasure,” but it’s a quiet, reflective post, and my house is filled with children screaming over yesterday’s birthday presents and birthday chocolate chip pancakes. So I think I’m going to give you a birthday-photo post, just so you know I haven’t forgotten you, and we’ll attempt a return to regular programming on Wednesday!

Real SAHMs, who have their act together, remember to buy the appropriate number candle. And they have an ability to cut cakes so they are, yanno, flat. With icing the appropriate consistency to make, yanno, shells. Creative-type work-at-home moms, instead, realize that the only two number candles in the drawer happen to add up to the right number for this girl.

The picture doesn’t do it justice, but she dressed herself this morning in her Christmas dress, her polka-dot leggings, and three necklaces. Happy 8th, sweet-pea.

Tree Trivia

I filled out a survey this week about conservation messaging–which message points I thought were most effective. I was already on the nature band wagon, so several of the facts shared were familiar to me, but others were not, and even the familiar ones I thought were interesting enough to share. So here you are, courtesy of the MO Department of Conservation:

Symptoms of ADD in children are relieved after spending time in nature.
A 10% increase in trees in a neighborhood can reduce crime by 12%.
College students with more natural views from their dorm windows score higher on tests.
Girls with a home view of trees and greenery score higher on tests of concentration and self-discipline.
Employees with a view of nature report 15% fewer illnesses and feel more enthusiastic and less frustrated.
Hospital patients recovering from surgery who had a view of nature through their windows required fewer pain relievers and left the hospital a day sooner.
Those who commute along tree-lined roads remain calmer (lower pulse and blood pressure) and drive less aggressively than those who drive along less treed roads.
For every 10% increase in forest cover in a watershed, costs to clean drinking water decrease by about 20%.
The presence of street trees in a neighborhood increases the sale price of houses by an average of $8,870.
Shade from two large trees can save up to 30% of a typical residence’s annual air conditioning costs.

Why You Should Never Play “Nurse” With A Child Who Wields A Light Saber

On the tail end of a three-way after-school light saber duel, Nicholas runs up to me. “Mommy, will you play a game with me?”

Stifle a groan. “What kind of game?”

“I’ll be the nurse, and you come tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it.”

“Okay.”

“My office is up here.”

“Okay.”

He climbs into place. “Okay, I’m ready. What’s wrong with you?”

“I can’t sleep at night.”

Nurse Nicholas looks blank. The idea of not being able to sleep is utterly foreign to him. “Okay. Well I’ll give you a sleep medicine. Let me go downstairs and get it.” He goes down the slide and ducks under the playhouse, coming up with a pretend bottle. Climbs back up to his “office” and hands it to me. “There. Drink that every night. And bring it back to me tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“MOMMMMMMMM!!!!! MICHAEL BROKE THE LIGHT SABER!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Just calm down, Alex, we’ll tape it back together. All right, Nicholas, are we switching now?”

“No, you do it again. Are you bringing back your bottle?”

“Sure, here you go.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“Um.” I only had one illness up my pretend sleeve. “I have a cold?”

“When did you get it?”

“Last week.”

“Where’d you get it from?”

“I don’t know. If I knew that I wouldn’t have gotten it, would I?”

Frown. “Well, you…I’m going to have to use my needles to fix this.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He looks so innocent, too…

“Give me your arm. My needles and my tweezers really hurt. Just so you know.”

“Is that so?”

“I’ve got to go downstairs and get my needles. Don’t move your hand. At all.” Once more, he goes down the slide and fiddles around in the playhouse beneath. Climbs back up. “You haven’t moved your hand, have you?”

“Nope, it’s still here.” And getting friggin’ cold, I do not add.

“You have a bruise,” Nicholas says, pointing at the heel of my hand. “I’m gonna have to dig it out. I’m gonna pour really hot water on it, so it’s gonna hurt. Now. Let me sharpen my needles. Shkt. Shkt. Shkt. There. Now they’re really sharp.”

“Mommmeeeeeeee, I, want SWING!”

“Michael, get out of the swing, it’s time to go inside.”

“Mommy!” Nicholas glares at me. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“What? Oh. OWWWWWW!”

“Just a minute more. Shkt. There! I got it! See?” He holds up my bruise (I think he means “splinter,” but what the hey).

I refrain from asking if I need stitches.

And that, my friends, is why you should never play “nurse” with a child who wields a light saber.

PSA for the day.

Me, My Boy, and the Words on the Page

I wrote my first story in the fourth grade, in the back seat of the “new bus” (at that time, my rural Catholic school had two bus routes; I was on number 2) with my second cousin. We knelt on the floor and used the vinyl seats as a desk. We were writing fan fiction. Mine was on Annie and hers, E.T.

Once I got started, I never stopped. Poetry, journal entries, essays, and stories. Stories about princesses and ice skaters, even (during my first journey through the Lord of the Rings) cough-cough epic fantasy. Not until I was out of grad school did I realize the epic length of these so-called “stories” meant I was actually writing novels. Very bad novels, with head hopping and “telling” and immature, annoying characters and pages upon pages of clichés. But novels nonetheless.

I started learning the rules, and then I set out to write a brand new story, something not a derivative of earlier ideas. I learned a lot with that novel. The next was a complete reworking of an older work. That became The Wine Widow, which placed third in the Rising Star contest last year. But there are some problems with that manuscript, too, and while the problems percolate in my mind (for months…and months) I started a new book.

Writing this book has been exhilarating and terrifying. In the past, my novels have evolved from a simple plot to something nuanced and layered. When the structure’s already in place, it’s fun to play with it and weave the new layers in. This time, though, I have all those nuances in mind at the start. Let me tell you, that kind of novel drafting is a much different beast. Really, really intimidating.

Especially when you have half a dozen other deadlines–ones that actually pay–hanging over your head. I’d all but abandoned the novel for the first part of January, and when I was grocery shopping a couple of weeks ago I spent the drive thinking about how I could possibly get it all done. The answer came in a whisper: Half an hour a day. Take half an hour a day for the novel.

So I did. And it is amazing. Late last week, things coalesced and I fell in love with my characters. It was amazing.

What does this have to do with “my boy”?

Well, Alex brought home an essay assignment from school over the weekend. Now, Alex can play for hours, coming up with scenarios for superhero characters. He’s endlessly creative with building Lego constructions and showing us what characters might be able to do using them. He designs starships, and the child can make paper sculptures like nothing I’ve ever seen before. At the moment, he wants to be a priest, a Lego designer, or do something with the movies, like art.

But you ask him to take any of what he sees in his mind and put it on paper, and he shuts down.

Now, I’m fully aware that art and words are separate charisms, but for me all creative ventures have always been bound together. Not so for Alex, my mini-me. He spent forty-five minutes sitting in front of the computer on Sunday afternoon, and he came away with three sentences. Three really terrible, awful, horrible, no-good sentences, filled with generalities and platitudes.

By far NOT his most elaborate or impressive paper sculpture work, but the one I have a picture of.

And as the words churned and screamed in mad circles in my brain, such that I kept having to abandon tasks in process to get the ideas down into Scrivener, I felt so bad for him. And I knew I had zero ability to help him bridge the gap. Because I just don’t get it.

I did try, but in the end it took Christian—who says he’s always struggled with writing—to guide Alex through the transformation of thoughts to sentences and the transfer of sentences to paper. (It’s worth a public acknowledgment that Christian is far, far better at helping Julianna with math homework than I am, too. Apparently he’s the one with the “helping with homework” charism.)

I feel bad for my boy, because I know there is more than a decade of writing to come for him. Writing for assignments was frequently boring and uninspiring, but still, it was writing. Poor Alex…because the way he inflects that italics is quite different.

You should like my daughter because she’s amazing, not because of her special need (reblog)

Down Syndrome support t-shirt available at Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/128498762/down-syndrome-support-shirt?ref=market

“I have a pet peeve that may seem a little weird. I had to think about it a lot before I decided that it even was a pet peeve, but now I’m sure that it is. I feel like I need to explain it here so that maybe you can think about why this would bother a person.

“I’m not usually the kind of person that is easily offended. When I see other people getting up in arms over something that I perceive as being very small, it’s annoying. I’m probably being one of those annoying people now, but that’s ok.

“In the news lately I have been seeing a lot of publicity over people with special needs. For example, a girl with special needs is elected prom queen. A boy with special needs is asked to the prom. Someone’s daughter was nice to a kid with a disability.

“None of these things are bad. In fact, they are quite good. This, in and of itself, is my pet peeve…the fact that it is making news.“

When I read this post, I almost gave myself a concussion from nodding so hard. Please click through to read the post, because it says everything I’ve always thought but could never quite figure out how to articulate.

(Mostly) Wordless Wednesday: When You Give A Boy A Brush…

Okay, we didn’t give it to him. He found the brush that came with Tinker Bell, and after dinner the other night he decided he just had to do this…

(I knew there was a reason I don’t comb my hair. You can see where he’s been combing because it’s already turned to frizz.)

The Line Between “This Is Real Life” and “I’m A Whining, Complaining, Insensitive Jerk”

It was just a joke. Christian and I were sitting at a restaurant Saturday night–around 8p.m., very, very late for us to be out at dinner–and the check was a long time in coming. Across the room sat a family with an eighteen-month-old baby. I thought, “Who brings a baby out to dinner at eight p.m.?” In another part of the room, a seven- or eight-year-old girl dropped a glass, which shattered spectacularly. The look on the dad’s face made me nod. Been there. Done that.

I looked over at Christian and said wickedly, “We should bring our whole family here for dinner at 8p.m.”

Christian grinned. “Right before bedtime.”

“Yup.”

“We should do it on Valentine’s Day!”

We both laughed, and Christian made an offhand comment about Facebook. Feeling tremendously witty, I went home and shared the little joke.

About an hour later I got to thinking: That wasn’t funny. That was tasteless. What sort of message am I sending? That my children are a bother, such a strain on my resources, that I crack jokes about inflicting them on other people, to help me cope?

Image by Crappy Pictures, LLC (crappypictures.com)

Social media allows you to feel a sense of kinship with a million people when you honestly thought, from your husband’s reaction, that you were the only person in human history who was ever lousy and lazy enough to let your toddlers run around without pants on.

It allows you to cheer each other on and laugh until you cry at someone else’s struggles with parenting. It doesn’t substitute for sharing those stories in real, face to face communities, but it runs a close second.

But then I think of the people out there who are desperate to be parents. I think how much these stories, which are often told with an equal dose of humor and exasperation, can be like a knife in the gut. I used to feel physically ill when people talked about their children as if they were a bother. Facebook, at that time of my life, would have been a near occasion to sin. All those stories we like to tell about family life? They’re funny, but they also sound dangerously close to complaints.

It’s so easy to get so wrapped up in my own life, the sweet-and-salty mix of sharing family stories, that I come across as a jerk, complaining about the best thing that has ever happened to me. I remember a couple years ago, someone posted a status update that suggested kids must be a real pain in the ***, judging by how parents talk about them. I wrote an impassioned response (and so did a lot of other people). Only much later did I learn something that made me think that status update was born of pain of loss rather than an anti-child attitude.

And lest we pretend this problem exists only on Facebook, let’s be honest: we do this in real life, too. This is how parents talk about their families: with love and pride, sometimes, yes–but more often with humor and exasperation. How do we balance the need to laugh about real life with the potential to be a real jerk to those who would give anything–anything–to be plagued with exactly what we’re complaining about?

Michael and other Quick Takes

Even when he’s doing the “I WON’T smile” thing…

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Michael’s always been a cute kid, but he’s entering that stage where he’s cute not just because of how he looks—in fact, he’s starting to look like a boy and not a baby—but because he says hysterically funny things. Or maybe they just seem that way to parents. But either way I’m going to inflict them on you.

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Conducting at Christmas Eve, with two little boys sitting on the podium with me, tickling my legs, brings a whole new perspective to multitasking.

My kids are generally pretty good eaters, but only because we’ve trained them to be. We break things down into vegetables, fruits and proteins, and they’re told they can’t have crackers, bread, sweets etc. until they’ve finished the other. So my kids are being indoctrinated into balanced eating at an early age. But the understanding of a newly-minted three-year-old is clearly not complete, as witness: At bedtime the other day, Michael came running out to us with an unopened loaf of bread. “Mommy, I hung-ee!” he shouted. “I want pwotein!”

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I wasn’t going to include this picture until I saw Nicholas’ expression in the background.

Speaking of misunderstandings, we caught him flinging the cushions off the couch the other day and jumping on it, shouting, “Mommy, I, eck-a-size!”

Now come on. I know it’s annoying when people share random kid quotes, but that is cute!

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Michael picked his first-ever favorite Christmas song. Any guesses? No?

Jingle Bell Rock.

Of all the random songs to pick. Not Away in a Manger or even Frosty. Or Jingle Bells, for crying out loud! No, he loves “Jingle Bell rock.” Only it comes out more like “Dingo Behw Wock.”

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Michael’s apraxia makes it hard for him to speak fluidly; he tends to speak with a comma between words. I wondered if singing might be easier because it’s already slower, but I’m not sure it really is. But it’s pretty cute:

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All right, enough cuteness.

The first couple days back to school post-Christmas were a fever of productivity. And then came the Late Start Days. It was cold, and then there was a trace amount of mixed precip, so the district called a late start. When they do that, they cancel morning preschool. So Michael missed three days of school in a row, and the way they fell it translated to an entire week. And yesterday Julianna stayed home sick, and spent the morning sitting at my feet saying “Mommy look! Mommy look!” while I was attempting to work. I am trying to hold to my philosophical-shrug, it-is-what-it-is thing, but I’m not sleeping well, either and I am really hoping for better weather, sleep and overall ability to focus next week.

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I’m sure I’ll come up with several more things I should have shared, but I got a late start today and it’s another busy one, so I’ll sign off. Head over to the linkup for more!

Rolling With The Punches

Photo by avrene, via Flickr

Life is a well-oiled machine, dependent on every cog to keep chugging along. Have Michael in the van and ready to pull out the driveway when Julianna’s bus arrives at 7:50 a.m. Fasting blood work at 8, when the doors open. Drop Michael off at 8:20. Meet friend to work through flute duet-in-progress at 8:30. Breakfast packed for consumption following. Park butt at church for ninety minutes to work until Michael’s school dismisses. Pick up Michael. Replace heart monitor battery and run to the library on the way to Jazzercise. Home for lunch and nap.

A good, time-efficient plan, starting at one end of town and working my way to the other.

Until the bus failed to show up.

The busses are notoriously inconsistent around here, but when they changed Julianna’s route in November, it seemed I’d finally hit the jackpot, with two drivers who really could be counted on to be on time.

But by 7:58 a.m. my efficient, non-gas-and-time-wasting plan was in jeopardy, but I thought I could still manage to pull it off, just a few minutes late. I took Julianna to school myself. You’re not allowed to drop off until 8:05 a.m., when the teachers come outside to supervise the process.

Except the teachers didn’t come outside. At almost 8:10 I had to take her inside myself, because after all, this is Julianna we’re talking about…the sneaky wandering child.

By the time I got her where she was supposed to be and back to the car, I knew I didn’t have time for blood work anymore. I had ten minutes to get Michael to school, and another ten to get to my flute appointment.

And that’s when I realized: I’d forgotten my flute.

Now, everybody knows plans have to include a certain amount of flexibility. And parents know that you have to be ready to make complicated plan changes on the go. I remember when I was first reading blogs, I kept coming across stay-at-home moms defending their decision to let their careers go, saying they had to exercise more brain power as mothers than they ever had in the work force.

This, I think, is what they meant: spend an hour concocting a complete, workable plan that accomplishes everything. Then life happens and you throw it out and concoct a new one in ten seconds.

And it works. It’s not ideal, but it works.

Not so long ago, having my whole plan for the day upended would have put me in a foul mood. But something amazing is happening to me as I focus on the word “treasure” this year: things are sliding off my back a little more easily. Disruptions, work interruptions, late school starts that equal no school at all for Michael. I could choose to treasure the irritation of having my will thwarted, but that just leads to me griping and looking at the world through a fog of negativity.

I don’t know how long this will last. Is this a miraculous, permanent change to my outlook? Or is it just the first blush of a new resolution, soon to wear off—about the same time the gyms empty out again?

That remains to be seen. But permanence comes one day at a time, so for now I’m just going to focus on today.