Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 53

These Beautiful Bones

For the last couple of years, I’ve had a project in the back of my mind. I’ve been thinking of writing a book or at least an article to lay out the idea that the Theology of the Body is not just about sex–it’s really about everything.

About two months ago  I got assigned to write the article, and I found out someone already wrote the book.

Emily Stimpson’s These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body is a book everyone should read–Catholics especially, but it has a lot of value for anyone who professes to believe in Christ. You can sum up the philosophy of TOB in these words from Stimpson:

“Our bodies are us. Your body is you. My body is me.”

“Through our mouth, our hands, our eyes, and our feet, who we are and what we love is made known to others. Every look we give and every action we take in some way communicates the inmost mystery of our being to those around us.”

“Thought and feeling, belief and unbelief, virtue and vice–all of it, one way or another and one day or another, writes itself on our bodies. None of it stays hidden. None of it remains invisible. The body eventually expresses it all, enabling us to be present to the world.”

(These Beautiful Bones, p. 27)

Emily Stimpson makes a deeply practical case for applying that truth to every area of life, even areas we don’t see an overt religious connection. If we believe in God, that belief ought to shape every part of our life: work, manners, modesty, food, technology use.

This is a great, great book, drawing connections I hadn’t thought about before. For instance: why do we get so much satisfaction out of building toyboxes, making scrapbooks, gardening, and so on? Because we’re made in the image of God, the consummate creator. Most of modern work, Stimpson contends, is not physically demanding. We were built with a need to work at something tangible, using our bodies. Which is not to say modern work is without merit, but it does suggest that when we get home from work we need to do something active and useful with our leisure time instead of more sedentary screen time.

She also connects the idea of showing who we are by what we do with behaviors we all know are right, but frequently fail to put into practice:

“When we honor one another through the gestures of common courtesy, we don’t honor one another as mere creatures. We honor one another as other Christs. … Moreover, in honoring one another as images of God, we honor God.” (p. 80)

There are times when I think the argument gets carried too far. In her chapter on clothing, Stimpson suggests that going to the grocery store in sloppy clothes and/or unshowered is a sign of a lack of respect for human dignity. I think that’s overstating the case. There are many reasons why I go out unshowered in my workout clothes:

I am on deadline and carpool with kid appointments, and the only way to get a workout in and also fulfill all obligations is to skip the shower until late in the day.
I am waiting for the lawn to dry before I mow, but the groceries have to be bought, too.
I have errands to run in the vicinity of Jazzercise, which is at the opposite end of town, and to come home and shower in the middle will involve unnecessary extra trips, which runs counter to environmental stewardship.
I can also think of my husband’s situation: dressing in a suit five days a week, and choosing to go with lounging comfort for Saturday errands.

Stimpson makes exceptions for these sorts of situations, but she implies that they are the exception, and in my life that isn’t really the case. Modesty is important, and it is a good thing to show one’s respect for one’s body by dressing it nicely when possible. But looking nice is a preoccupation of humanity that, in my opinion, is one part image-of-God related and four parts vanity and opportunity for judging others.

Still, the simple fact that she’s making these connections and asking us to think about not only what we do but why–what it means–makes this an incredibly important book for all of us to read and internalize. I highly recommend it.

Construction Zone

For the next several days…if not weeks…I will be working on this site. In the meantime, please pardon the mess!

Ice Buckets, Nazis, Reprints and other QTs

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Well, I did the ice bucket thing this week. I’m kind of scared to say this, but I have to admit to some ambivalence about this challenge. It’s great that people are donating to ALS research, but am I the only one who felt like I HAD to do it or I would look bad? Plus, what about that whole “when giving alms do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing” thing?

My massage therapist shared this with me this week, which I thought also shows the difference between perception vs. reality:

(Links to source)

The huge disparity between the actual impact of breast cancer and the amount of money poured into it is particularly interesting.

Don’t get me wrong, I think any and all of these diseases need research funds, and if a social media is what it takes to get people to donate, okay. I’m just uncomfortable with the peer pressure aspect.

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 Last night Christian and I started watching The Scarlet and the Black on TV. We’ll have to go to Netflix to finish it. In any case, we were both struck by Christopher Plummer playing the Nazi commander when his iconic role is Georg von Trapp, who leaves his home to avoid being a Nazi. We only watched about half an hour, so I don’t know how his character shapes up over the course of the movie (and please don’t spoil it for me), but the initial portrayal of this Nazi commander as enthralled with Rome and infatuated with his wife and children was also very interesting to me. It reminded me of something that struck me when we watched The Book Thief a couple of weeks ago.

Every portrayal I have ever seen of a Nazi/WW2 soldier is as a bad guy, and not just a bad guy, but a very bad guy, with no redeeming qualities. The Book Thief made it so clear how many of those soldiers didn’t want to be at war in the first place, and how they were just ordinary family men who felt the pressure of living under Nazi regime. It was good for me to be reminded that they weren’t all “bad guys.”

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I had a really, really nice day yesterday. The last several months have involved such a push of multiple projects on deadline, that I haven’t truly felt relaxed in longer than I can put a finger on. I still have quite the backup of projects, but for the moment I’m not on deadline, and it’s amazing what a difference that makes. Yesterday I practiced flute–recital is just over three weeks away!–and took Michael to the pool. He was so worn out, he fell asleep on the table–at NOON–in the middle of his lunch. It was adorable. And it meant I had an extra hour and a half of concentrated work time! When the kids came home and disappeared into their screen time, I read for a while, and in the evening I worked on a craft project and uploaded photos to Shutterfly in advance of my next scrapbooking order. Nothing earth-shattering, just….relaxed.

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Another piece of great news this week: my WLP editor called to tell me they’re reprinting Come to the Manger, my collection Christmas music arranged for flute and piano, because they sold more than half the original run in the first year! Every time I play through those pieces I’m startled anew by how much I like them. Is that weird? I just wanted to write some Christmas pieces that were musically interesting and enjoyable to listen to, rather than elementary-level. I’m thrilled to find that others were looking for the same thing.

(In a Christmas mood? Here are recordings of Lo How A Rose, Sing We Now of Christmas, and “Angels” from the collection.)

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I need input. I’ve asked on FB and now I’m asking you fine people. I need to take this Write-at-home-Mom thing mobile, but my needs are pretty simple: Word and the internet. Word because I want to be able to move documents back and forth between the PC and my whatever-I-end-up-getting without loss of formatting. I need to be able to read comments from crit partners. Things like that. The guy at Staples suggested the MS Surface, but my brother-in-law thinks I’d be better off with the iPad and some sort of app that lets me edit. Have any of you used the iPad with a Word-friendly app? How is it?

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Michael seems to have crossed a speech threshold. In the last two weeks he’s started spontaneously vocalizing words instead of having to be prompted, and he is starting to try new words he hasn’t actually been taught. It makes me so happy!

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Julianna did it again this week: wrapped a whole crowd of people around her finger. This was her at the annual “Tiger Walk” last Sunday:

(Another un-graceful editing out of an unknown child’s face. Sorry. I do what I can.)

She’s something, isn’t she, my girl?

Me, My Kid, And Risk Aversion

 

Photo via Wiki Commons

There was an article in the Washington Post last week about middle schoolers and risk taking. Essentially, it said: in order for children to morph into adults, they have to take risks–defined as anything that takes them outside their comfort zone: crazy hair, weird clothes, a new activity–or scarier alternatives like drugs, sex and alcohol. Kids are going to take some sort of risk whether you like it or not; that’s what makes them grow into adults.

I dug into my memory, looking for confirmation of this argument in my own experience, and I came up blank.

I have never liked risk. I have always been a homebody who wants things to stay familiar and comfortable. My mother had to plant a boot on my butt and make me get my driver’s license, for goodness sake. And I was so intimidated by walking into fast food restaurants and asking for job applications, she had to issue an ultimatum before I would do it.

Even these days I loathe risk. There’s a lot of it involved in writing. The obvious is the risk of rejection, but there are many others: the risk of making oneself vulnerable to criticism (can you say “reviews”?), the risk of intellectual property violation, and so on. To me, risk is a nasty but unavoidable side effect of the drive to create.

Hence my continuing problems with anxiety.

But all that is just navel-gazing. The reason any of this is blog-worthy is that I have a nine year old who is already broody and moody, teetering at the edge of the adolescent abyss. It seems ludicrous to suggest such a thing, the distance between 9 and 13 being almost half the length of his life thus far. But he’s definitely changing. More to the point, he’s me with an XY instead of two Xs.

In this case, that means he does not like risk. Which is defined as “anything new that does not involve a video game or a mythology-spinoff book.”

He’s eligible to be an altar server this year, but he doesn’t want to do it. When I asked why not, he said he didn’t want to be up in front where everyone was looking at him. I pointed out that nobody is supposed to be looking at the altar servers. I pointed out that he likes acting, where people are supposed to be looking at him. He did not answer. (Whatever that means.)

I don’t like to make the kids do things they don’t want to do, but in this case we thought it was too important not to. This is entry-level ministerial work: service to the people of God. So last night I took him to altar server training.

And you know what? Once they got to the part where they were learning about the items used at Mass–once they got to pass around the huge Lectionary and the heavy, gilded Book of the Gospels and touch the paten and chalice–I could see interest in my son’s  eyes.

That is basically the shape of my own life: parental foot on butt, shoving me out of the nest; insides quivering with terror; followed, at some point (not always right away) by the discovery that I’m having fun.

I had to be forced to take risks, and Alex is shaping up to be the same. In fact, I think I need to harden myself to the necessity of being the foot-on-butt. My risk-averse personality caused me to play it safe far more than I should have in adolescence. Instead of venturing out, I built a safe cocoon around myself. And when it was time to fly the coop I had to be kicked out of the nest, because I didn’t want to leave home. It took me until I was twenty-five to learn to be friends with a man, independent of romantic entanglements, and until I was almost forty to be able to interact with liturgical music colleagues as, yanno, an adult and not a fan girl. I always knew I came into my own much later than I should, but until now it never really occurred to me why.

So maybe I have to stuff that I-don’t-want-my-kid-to-suffer empathy into an iron box and shove it in some deep dark corner of my soul for the next few years. Maybe I have to force my mini-me to take some of the risks I was too scared to take when I was his age. And maybe…just maybe…I can spare him some of what I have suffered because of my own risk-aversion.

Taking Stock at Forty

When you’re a kid, certain ages stick out as milestones. Ten, and thirteen, and then of course every single one of the teen years, up to twenty. Twenty-one is a big deal because of the alcohol thing. Twenty-five. Thirty.

But I have to say I never looked beyond that. Forty, obviously, was middle age.

The trouble is, if I vocalize a sentiment like that now, half my blog readership and half the people in my choir will chuckle and pat me on the head and tell me what a young’un I am.

You would think by the time you reach forty, you would be safe from that, but, as my husband’s grandmother would have said, her hands conducting her words, “What’cha gonna do?”

One way or another, the second half of my life is opening up, and it seems appropriate to pause and take stock. Because things are changing.

The veins in my hands and arms are visible through the skin.  I haven’t tried to count the strands of gray, but certain days when I put my hair up, I think I’m developing a Rogue streak. The crease between my eyebrows and the lines when I raise them never quite go away these days. I’ve started wearing a hat when I go outside in a rather belated attempt to keep them from becoming permanent.

My joints aren’t as pliable as they used to be, and the tendon/muscle problems that have accompanied me ever since my sophomore year of college continue to influence all my activities. I have to be on guard for inflammation in the lower arms and the backs of my hands, especially. My hips ache after I hold certain postures for a while. Like “criss-cross applesauce.” Sometimes the joints in my fingers ache for no identifiable reason. And it seems harder to climb up in the matrix at Bonkers with the kids. Climbing around the City Museum a few weeks ago caused knee pain that still hasn’t completely cleared.

All this seems a little surreal to me. These days I really appreciate how young my parents are. My mother was only 43 when she moved me to college.

43 doesn’t seem very far away, and I still have a toddler.

But I don’t grudge aging, really. Thanks to Jazzercise and LoseIt.com (credit goes to Kelley and Janelle, respectively), I weigh barely more than I did when I was eighteen, which is pretty incredible if you think about it, and I’m stronger than I ever have been in my life.

Plus, there are good changes that come with age–if you seek them out, anyway. I’m far from considering myself wise, but I know I am a better person than I was just a few years ago. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s maturity or motherhood that gets the credit, but my spiritual life is changing for the better. I am seeking deliberate, intentional ways to turn my focus away from me, my desires, my preferences–because let’s face it, I am a very, very self-centered person–and to learn to be self-gift. I’m not always successful. Frequently, as a matter of fact. Yet I can feel the effort making me into a better person, a better image of who I was made to be.

I just pray for the grace to age as gracefully as some of those I’ve been privileged to know.

So what have we been up to? (a 7QT post in pictures)

So what have we been up to, this middle-of-August, as summer break winds down and school begins?

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On Friday, we had our final field trip of the summer, with some friends: a trip to the Capitol museum…

(why yes, I know my toddler picked out a prairie girl dress)…

and of course, the iconic ice cream shop in the state capital:

Yes, you did count that correctly. There are seven children in that booth. They would not split into two groups, so the kids’ mommies (and Miss K’s baby) got to have the neighboring booth to ourselves.

You should have seen the looks on the other customers’ faces as they walked by.

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On Saturday, these two kids had a birthday party:

No, I didn’t make this cake. I’m not that good.

We called it our “40 and a half” party, because Christian turned 41 a few weeks ago and my 40th is next week.

Wait–did you ask why do we look wet? Well, that would be because we got 2 inches of rain in the first hour of the outdoor party.

It was only sprinkling when I took this one. But after we ran tables up and down the hill and the kids gave up and went inside, the rain did stop, so we just had a wet, soggy party. And Julianna?

A baby? Heaven. Her day is made. Actually, there were three babies at the party over the course of it.

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Monday we did a Farewell to Summer trip to the lake with friends.

The other kids were there, they just weren’t quite so photogenic. Besides….

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….Tuesday was Julianna’s first day of school….

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….and Wednesday was Nicholas’s first day of kindergarten!

No tears for this kid. He didn’t even look nervous. And after school, when the carpool dropped him off, he literally ran into the house and shouted, “I LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

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So what am I doing with aaaaaaallll that free time, now that I only have ONE child at home?

Hold your horses. This kid is used to having a ruckus around. He’s so, so bored. He climbed all over me for seven hours straight. I got so fed up I let him drive the van.

Just kidding.

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I spent my kids’ first day working on my novel opening for the finalist round of Rising Star, which was due by the end of the day. And today (Thursday) I’m trying to catch up on the nonfiction work that had to be set aside while I was on that deadline, and which is now coming up on its own deadline.

Place-holders

Oh, right. I’m supposed to blog today.

But since I have to turn in my Rising Star finalist revision today, I’ll just leave you with the obligatory “school-opener” picture:

Adventures in Liturgy With A Musical Mom

Not this organized. (Photo via Wiki commons)

Friday morning, I flew into church at 7:59 a.m. for 8:00 holy day Mass, trailing a widely-spaced gaggle of little ones–the last one wailing. With Christian out of town, I was single parenting, and it was also the last field trip day of the summer, with speech therapy thrown in for good measure. We’d left for church with the van packed for the day but no cell phone, because I couldn’t find it.

Did I mention I was the pianist for that Mass?

#Pastoralmusicianfail.

There is a certain poetic symmetry in this. After all, for every action in the universe, there is an equal and opposite reaction, right? The feast of the Assumption in 2004, while I was on retreat with Jeanne Cotter, was one of those transcendent moments that stays with a person.

The tenth anniversary of that transcendent moment?

Long, loud toddler wails filled the church as I strode up the aisle, retrieved the keys to the music closet, and got out the microphones, trying not to meet the eyes of any of the parishioners. I got the mics set up in less than a minute, by which time three of my children were sitting quietly at the end of the first row of the music area, and the last–the wailing one–was coming up the aisle with a friend from our choir. I announced “Immaculate Mary,” and off we went. By now, however, Michael had escalated to that catch-breath crying. You know, the kind that is beyond all self-control.

And he was sitting underneath the hanging microphones. The ones you can’t turn off.

Mid-phrase, I waved at Michael to come over to me, thinking he’d hug my leg until I finished the opening hymn. No, no. This child began climbing. In the middle of verse 2 I had to break off the left hand to haul him up, because otherwise I was going to derail altogether.

Luckily, he calmed down once he was on my lap. I didn’t even try to stand up until the Gospel.

Father started his homily by introducing the topic: Mary, motherhood, the importance of the mother-child bond.

And me.

“Look at Kate, this morning!” he said, sweeping a hand in my direction. “Her child followed her around the church, crying for his mother. You cannot keep a child away from his mother. The mother, she is so important.”

Never once have I envisioned myself being invoked as a homiletic example. And if I had to choose a time to focus on me, this would not have been it.

But Father was right. It was a very apt illustration. And everyone laughed.

Michael spent most of Mass on my lap at the piano. Once he settled down, it got steadily harder to play. He reached for the keys. He pulled the hair on my arm. He wiggled his bottom down my legs, then grabbed my arms and used them to haul himself back up. Have you ever tried to play the piano–think “type,” it’s the same idea–with a child pulling on your arm? I found a lot of wrong notes in the piano that morning.

Like this. This is his “won’t-look-at-you” look.

Finally I had to banish him. My friend took him onto her lap. By this time–mid-Eucharistic Prayer–he tolerated it. “But he wouldn’t look at me,” she said.

By the grace of God, even epic pastoral musician fail moments can make way for moments of grace and transcendence. When it was all over, Father met us in the prayer garden outside church. This priest, from the Ivory Coast, spent a semester here when I was full-time liturgy director, and he’s been coming back to the States almost every summer for over a decade to cover our pastor’s vacation. We had him over for dinner this summer, and he blessed our family. It was more than a hand motion; I could feel the blessing descend. I have never felt that before, but I felt it that day in my kitchen.

I felt it again in the prayer garden outside our church, as he blessed each of my children in turn and we said goodbye for at least a year. And I was grateful for the reminder that ceremony and solemnity are not, in the end, as important as the love that underlies them.

A Novel Accolade and Lots of Kid QTs

I intended this 7 Quick Takes to be all about the kids, but first I have to share a piece of really exciting news……

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My novel, The Wine Widow, made the finalist round of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s inaugural contest, the Rising Star! All novels are a labor of love, but when you’re trying to write one around the edges of paying writing gigs and musical composition–oh yes, and raising that gaggle of destructicons, I mean boys, and a chromosomally-gifted girl…well, let’s just say this is an affirmation I cannot even put into words.

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So how does one celebrate such a moment? Well, if you’re Kate Basi, you:

don’t have time for a shower after your Jazzercise video
take four kids and go visit a friend and her adorable baby
take four kids to swim lessons
practice for a flute recital
watch 11 kids at choir practice because the regular sitters are out of town
fall into bed and lie awake for hours because you can’t sleep.

I know. You all wish you were me. Admit it. ;)

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So–on to the kids. Michael’s speech therapist wants him using three-word sentences now. So last weekend, he somehow hurt himself following Nicholas around the basement. He came upstairs wailing. Christian made him say “I want booboo.” As in booboo kiss. When the fireworks were over, we said, “Did you fall down?”

Michael said, “I…want…faw.” And we all laughed.

From such moments are born games like the I-Want-Fall game, which has become all the rage in our house:

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We cleaned the upstairs this week, which might have gone faster if I hadn’t discovered the archaeological dig of clothing in the boys’ closet. By the time we were done we’d found all the missing dress clothes and gotten Nicholas’ new(ly rescued from the uniform closet) school uniforms hung neatly: summer clothes, then winter clothes.

This got me thinking about something counterintuitive I’ve discovered in the four years since Alex started at the Catholic school. When the kids have a non-uniform day, I cannot find anyone. You would think the clothes being distinct would make the people more distinct, but the reality is the opposite. I’ve come to the conclusion that when they’re in uniform there are less distractions from faces. Has anyone else experienced this?

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Speaking of archaeological digs…this morning while putting away dishes, a Corelle-type lid slipped out of my hands and smashed spectacularly on the counter/sink/floor/drying dishes/spice rack. As I was sweeping up the pieces, Nicholas (who else?) asked, “Why don’t you glue it back together, Mommy?”

“Oh, there’s no gluing this back together, honey,” I said. There was nothing bigger than a thumbprint left of that thing. “You can’t put things like this back together.” Then honesty compelled me to waffle. “Well,” I added, “archaeologists put things like this back together sometimes, to see what things used to be like.”

And suddenly I had this vision of some ancient Greek woman dropping a pitcher, cursing a blue streak as she cleans up the mess and throws it in her trash heap, and then looking down from Heaven and face-palming as those foolish post-modern scientists try to put her trash back together.

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I was trying to get Michael to come to me one day this week. He’s reached the stage where he doesn’t come just because you say so. It has to be a game. So I said, in my best jokey voice, “Michael, bring that bottom over here.” A beat. “Oh, I suppose you can bring the rest of you too.”

Nobody got the joke. Sigh.

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Oh yes…Alex has joined the ranks of the vision-impaired.

Have a great weekend!

The Un-Twinning of the Littles

She still looks older to me, but maybe that’s just because I know.

It lingered so much longer than I expected.

When Nicholas first left babyhood, he seemed like Julianna’s developmental twin. I expected it to last just a few months, but the twinning grew firmer and firmer. For over three years, they have kept pace with each other, Julianna managing to stay just far enough ahead in key areas–like reading, for instance–to counterbalance Nicholas’s exploding cognitive and speech capabilities.

I should have realized, when I started referring to “the little ones” and meant Julianna and Michael instead of Julianna and Nicholas, that the twinning had passed at last.

But I didn’t. Not until Friday night, when we had company over and I caught a snatch of conversation between Christian and Nicholas. Christian said, “But Nicholas, Julianna’s older than you.”

“No she’s not! I’m older!”

Christian and I exchanged a look across the room: half amused, half pained. “Nicholas, you are not older than Julianna,” I said. “Julianna is two years older than you.”

You should have seen the incredulous, rebellious look on my third-born’s face.

How in the world did we miss this long enough for him to internalize a wrong-headed view of the world that thoroughly?

Julianna keeps to herself a lot. She’s not big on playing; she likes listening to music and reading books. And swinging. She loves to swing. She’d still rather ride a tricycle than get on her bike, because she’s intimidated by the size–although she can ride it. She’s expected to do chores, but they’re the simple sort: pull the chairs out of the kitchen, bring the dishes to the sink.

Meanwhile, Nicholas is learning concepts and play skills and chore duties by leaps and bounds. We intended to pull the training wheels off his bike this summer; I just didn’t get it done because my work load was heavier than I had realized. He outweighs her, although he’s still marginally shorter. He cleans the bathrooms (though not necessarily very well) and makes his bed. He’s writes as legibly as Julianna (which is to say, not very), although he can’t spell and she can.

And this is all about to intensify, because Nicholas is starting kindergarten in a week. Since we held Julianna back, she’s only a year ahead of him in school.

One of the things that comes up periodically at Down syndrome conferences is the reminder that we have to let/force our children to grow up. Julianna is seven and she thinks she has to have me put her shirt on for her. She still wears her underwear sideways (can you imagine being skinny enough for that even to be possible?). And I know she can’t brush her teeth well enough to be left on her own.

It’s ridiculous that we haven’t tackled independence for her in these areas–but that’s a response to being so crazy-busy. With four kids and a mom who works at home, the practical aspects of life turn into an assembly line: meal prep, morning ablutions, bath time. The focus lately has been on getting Michael to talk. There’s only so much parental effort to go around. Sometimes you just opt to sacrifice independence to the concept of get it all done.

But that’s not good enough anymore. It’s not fair to her. Because she isn’t a “little one” anymore. I have to stop treating her that way.