Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 56

Learning To Deal

Image via Wiki Commons

One of the blessings prayed over the couple at a Catholic wedding says, “May the cares of life never cause you undue anxiety.” I had to chuckle at a presider who recently flubbed it up, saying, “May the cares of life never cease to cause you undue anxiety.”

I have had at least three bouts of anxiety in the past nine months. I’m still too busy to be paralyzed by it, but I am beginning to realize that this is a cross I will bear my entire life. It surges from the deep in times of stress, of course, and in particular when I’m stepping out in new and unfamiliar directions.

I am a type-A German, more than overly fond of being in control. And I hate the idea that anyone might ever think badly of me–or worse, have reason to think badly of me. If I stayed in my tiny, safe circle, where everything and everyone is a known quantity, I would spare myself the risk of screwing up or getting on people’s bad side. But then a lot of the gifts I’ve been given to share would atrophy. You know that parable about burying the talents.

So when I contemplate a new experience, I do a ton of research, and then I take a deep breath, remind myself that I am a strong, competent woman, and I step out in faith. And still, because I’m human, I screw up. Say something stupid. Forget something I should have remembered.

So I undertake a tug of war. On one side is the desire to chase down unreasonable amounts of reassurance. On the other is living with crippling fear because I don’t want to be a pest to others by asking for that reassurance.

Even writing about it makes the anxiety stir.

And therein lies the lesson for the day. Anxiety, at least the crippling kind I’m talking about, is characterized by lack of reason. It is irrational, and thus sometimes the cure is to talk yourself through it in rational terms.

But–and this is a big but–everyone’s tried to reason with an irrational person, and you know how well that works: not at all. Most of the time, trying to reason with anxiety just teaches it that it’s getting to you. It gives it power. Like I said when anxiety cropped up nine months ago, it’s like a dandelion: it roots hard and fast and sprouts babies by the legion. In other words, it morphs into a monster.

That’s what happened to me last week. The initial trigger birthed a dozen additional ones completely unrelated to it. And there was fallout: in my marriage, in my productivity, in my ability to be a good human being. At last, I had to give up attempts to reason and instead meet every onslaught of WHAT IF’s with a refusal to engage in battle. JUST SHUT UP. THIS IS NOT A REASONABLE FEAR. After about two days of that, the anxiety began to recede.

It’s been a week since then. Anxiety is still hanging around, a low rumble at the edge of my consciousness. But I can ignore it now, at least when I’m not writing a blog post about it.

I’m learning to deal with this nemesis, this cross. Like Paul, I want God to remove the thorn in my flesh, but I keep hearing, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” And so I will struggle on.

Movies, House Numbers, and other Random Quick Takes

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Does anyone know  the logic behind the numbering of houses in suburban neighborhoods? I’ve puzzled over this for years. I assume some numbers get skipped because in an urban setting, with no yards between, they would use every number, but the presence of a yard between makes a difference. And yet it doesn’t make any sense that along my street there are three houses in a row, with equal distance between them, numbered 3911, 4001 and 4003. Why did they skip 3913 through 3999?

One of those mysteries I would really like cleared up.

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We brought Enchanted in on Netflix as a family movie last week. It’s so much fun to see Julianna finally, finally start making connections with girly movies. Enchanted was a universal hit. Nicholas came up to me the next day and said with a total little-boy lovesick sigh, “Mommy, I llllooooove Giselle.”

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I had forgotten how stinking funny Enchanted is. I adore that scene in Central Park: “How Do You Know?” I love that Amy Adams and James Marsden sing, too. And Patrick Dempsey, for that matter. I wish movies gave actors more opportunities to sing. People have this idea these days that singing is an activity reserved to a very few people who are “good enough.” Until mass entertainment came along, everybody sang. It’s a rare person who truly can’t sing at all.

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Julianna wrote a letter to Mary Poppins this week. i.e. to Julie Andrews, only I didn’t try to explain the difference. It said, “Dear Mary Poppins, I want to ride the pink carousel with you. My favorite song is Spoonful of Sugar. I hope you have a Jolly Holiday.”

Okay, I guided her through the first two sentences. But that last little pun? That was all Julianna. I asked her what else she wanted to write, and that’s what came out. Wow.

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Nicholas is feeling pretty exhausted after three weeks of summer school. He and Alex had a typical 9-year-old-vs.-5-year-old argument about it.

Nicholas: “I loooooove school but I hate being there all day!”

Alex: “You can’t love school and hate being there at the same time!”

Nicholas: “I love school so much! But I hate being all day!”

“Alex: “You can’t love it and hate it!”

Me: “Alex! Stop being such a know-it-all! He’s saying he loves school but he’s tired because it’s so long!”

One more week, and summer break starts for real. I am both looking forward to it–field trip season!–and not.

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I finally went to the neighborhood pool at 6 a.m. to lap swim today. I am not a big pool person because I think sunbathing is both unwise and uncomfortable, and I hate cold water. And I really hate sunscreen. But a pool before sunrise, after two weeks of hot weather–that is a pleasant form of exercise indeed.

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Baseball is almost over. One more night, and we’re blessedly free. The boys have enjoyed it, but it’s been a brutal three months. I feel like we lost the entire spring for bike riding and playing outside and taking walks after dinner. More of those adjustments that come as the kids get older.

Have a great weekend!

Challenger Baseball

A photo post for a Wednesday…

On Monday night, Alex volunteered at the “Challenger” league for his little league organization. Challenger is for kids with special needs. Christian asked this young man’s mother if we could post pictures, and she gave us permission, so here we are: a moment in which I am very proud of my firstborn, who was kind of nervous about this particular new experience:

 

 

A New Stage of Parenthood

I’ve been firmly entrenched in the “small child” phase of parenting for so long, I kind of forgot there was another stage coming.

Well, really in the grand scheme of life, it isn’t that long. I’ve been married almost fifteen. With Christian for almost nineteen. Playing flute for thirty. Writing for thirty-five, and going to Mass every Sunday for almost forty. But there’s something about the intensity of parenting small children–especially when one of them has a condition that extends every stage–that makes it seem to last longer than aspects of life that have much more staying power.

There’s never a dull moment with a house full of small kids: you’re tripping over something that wasn’t there thirty seconds ago, having to clean up the accident. One child thinks he needs help going to the toilet and another screams at you because she doesn’t want help, even though you know she actually does. It’s milk spilling and “get back in the kitchen with that food!” It’s the fascination with turning switches on and off, on and off, pushing the doorbell twenty times in a row. It’s giggles and tackle hugs and raspberries on baby fat. It’s blowing out the pilot light on the gas fireplace and closing the valve and stuffing it with plastic bags for seven years and counting. It’s three separate children waking up screaming when a hard rain pounds the front windows. It’s boo boo kisses and bath time battles, toilet training and diapers and speech therapy and cajoling every bite of food into the mouth.

For the past two years, I’ve had two kids in elementary school and two at home. This June, I have also had two in summer school and two at home, but the dynamics are different. My house with Children #1 and 4 in it is a very different place from my house with #3 and 4. Alex is like a ghost. He’s quiet. He goes to his room and reads for hours. He plays Wii. He plays piano. Once in a while we get some noise: he loves to chase Michael around the house roaring. But it’s so very, very different from having two small children in the house. The intensity just isn’t there.

There’s a bit of ego in all of us, an insurmountable self-centeredness that makes us think all experiences are brand new just because they’ve never happened to us before. I’m well aware that every parent who has ever walked the face of the Earth has experienced the double-take when they see the child they cuddled as a baby morph into gangly arms and embarrassed giggles over the opposite sex. That every parent has experienced the sense of “is this really happening?” when they face their child to break open the topic of puberty.

I love this picture, because the reflection in the window is Baby Alex staring back at his 9-year-old counterpart.

But it doesn’t keep me from feeling like the whole world is turning on its head. I’m a parent of small children. That’s my identity. It’s been my identity for such a long, intense period of my life, I’m not even sure how to wrap my head around the thought of being anything else.

Thus, this is a mind-stretching time for me. A time to get used to a vision of myself as a parent of kids whose identity is increasingly independent of me, whose need for me is less about demands of self-care and physical comfort, and more about socio-spiritual-emotional formation.

It’s wonderful and it’s terrifying, exciting and overwhelming. And it changes so many things.

Sunday Snippets

Time for Sunday Snippets, hosted by the one and only RAnn of This, That & The Other Thing!

RAnn’s question of the Week: My Right to Life calendar says that the National Right to Life convention is this week in Kentucky. What do you to do promote Right to Life?

I am a fervent believer that the contraception issue is critical to the right to life issue. That is one of the reasons I teach and promote (and write about) matters of holistic, healthy sexuality and natural family planning.

My posts this week:

12 Years A Slave

The Run-And-Hug Game

Happiness Is…

Happiness Is… (a 7QT post)

I’ve been feeling particularly snarky lately, and although I realized it before it was pointed out to me, the fact that it got far enough that someone had to point it out to me gave me that “ew, guilty conscience” feeling. Who wants to listen to me gripe all the time? So today is about things that make me happy.

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Julianna’s freckles. Oh. My. Word. I adore those freckles. They just popped out in the last few months, and they make me so happy.

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Julianna’s hugs. She is so stinking sweet about them. She knows she can render me powerless with two words: “Mommy, snuggle.”

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The fact that our complement of choir babies now outnumbers their elders. And the fact that we have two wonderful, devoted women who have volunteered of their time to supervise the….you know, “zoo” doesn’t quite do justice to it. We truly have 15 children in the nursery for some of our choir rehearsals. I love the fact that so many young families have chosen to make this commitment to ministry. It is humbling and a true cause for praise and gratitude.

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The way Alex loves to play with Michael. It makes my heart hurt in the best of ways to see my oldest and youngest loving each other so hard. Alex doesn’t believe it. He thinks Michael doesn’t like him. He can’t see, as I do, that Alex is Michael’s #2 favorite person in the entire world. He even beats out Daddy–although Daddy’s giving him a run for his money lately.

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Speaking of Daddy…this makes me happy:

Taking a picture of just the two of us on Father’s Day. (Of course, pictures can lie. Because the middle two children were determined to photo bomb this picture. But digital editing is a great thing. Even if all I know how to use is the crop tool.)

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Taking Alex to the food bank this week to help with a huge load of potatoes. I have to admit, it was not a pleasant task. Let’s just say there was a reason this particular load of potatoes was donated. Still, it felt good to do something for others, and especially to do something for others with one of my children along.

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Nicholas’ happiness going to summer school. He adores it. He runs to the bus every day…

 

The Run-and-Hug Game

Obviously, we’re making progress at getting him to tolerate dogs. As long as Julianna doesn’t see them first and start screaming.

There comes a day in the life of every toddler when the great concept of “I want” butts up against the concepts “I have three siblings” and “I can scream really loudly.”

On that day, life gets a whole lot less pleasant for the mommy of the house. Because it used to be that when the non-verbal child cried, he or she was the victim. Now there’s no telling.

There’s a reason small children are so cute. Michael kept me up all night a few days ago. All night. Screamed. Wet the bed. Came downstairs looking for me after I’d retreated to the couch from insomnia. I was in tears at 2 a.m. I dragged myself to Jazzercise at 5:45 anyway, and when I came home Michael came tearing down the stairs, warbling and squealing “Ma-ma! Ma-ma!” I gave him The Look. I had no intention of giving in to any amount of cuteness. Mr. Mayhem was on my you-know-what list. And yet I found myself smiling and getting all warm and fuzzy anyway.

You know what’s nice, though? It goes both directions. One thing I’ve learned from my first three children is that it’s better to get compliance through words and postures that invite rather than those that threaten. “Get up here right now! It’s time to go to bed” doesn’t work as well as “Would you like a bedtime story? C’mere! Let’s read a book!”

Of course, eventually they get too savvy for that particular example to work, but you get the idea.

I’ve been very conscious of the moments with Michael in a way I haven’t been since Alex was very small. Alex was a gift so long in coming, I spent his entire babyhood in wonder, living in the moment. Once the other kids started coming, all that changed. But now I’m there again, or at least attempting it. Life is a lot busier now, both professionally and as a mother. I don’t want to waste any time fighting with him if I can get cooperation through hugs and cuddles and games.

Somewhere along the line, we developed a good one. I sit down on the floor, throw my arms out wide, smile and say, “C’mere, you!” And he giggles and giggles, and backs up three steps so he can get a good running start to tackle me.

One day, he was mad about something. Sulking because he didn’t get his way. I assumed the position, and he turned his back on me. Lip stuck out. Looking at the floor. “Michael,” I said in my sweetest voice. “Miiiiiiiii-chael.” He wouldn’t look at me. I started making silly noises. “Miiiiiiii-chael!”

I whispered to the friend sitting beside me, “He doesn’t want to look at me because he can’t resist this game.” Raised my voice again. “Miiiiiii-chael! Boo-boo!”

He stole a glance. Tried to look away again and discovered he couldn’t. Fought the smile and lost. Swiveled, his entire face lighting up, and ran giggling to me.

Crisis averted.

It’s my favorite thing, the run-and-hug game. I don’t know what I’ll do when he gets too big for it, along with being chewed on and tickled and have raspberries blown on his belly. Go into mourning, probably.

Oh, yes: Michael learned to kiss this week. Heaven. Heaven, Heaven.

Did I mention Heaven?

12 Years A Slave

Photo by Michael Rosenquest, via Flickr

There are times when you walk through the world filled with awe and joy and gratitude, aware of the wonder, the beauty, the innate goodness of all that exists on earth.

Other times it’s like a veil is ripped from your eyes, revealing the brokenness of the world in all its heartbreaking clarity. A brokenness so deep, so profound, so widespread, you realize it’s beyond the possibility of healing by any human effort.

And sometimes, being aware of one sensitizes you to the other.

I had another post planned for today, a post about joy and the search for the beautiful and the holy. But as I watched the passing moments in preparation for that post, the brokenness made itself clear, too. It came out most clearly in the news that a shelter for abused and neglected children in my town got muscled out of its planned location by residents saying “not in my back yard.”

Then last night, Christian and I started watching 12 Years A Slave. I expected it to be disturbing, but I wasn’t prepared for how deep it pierced, how mercilessly it convicted. It’s not just about the past, you see. What I realized, watching that movie, was that the state of our world, the problems that plague our nation today, began there, with the dehumanization of an entire race of people.

When I write it out like that, it’s a clear “well, duh” moment. But I had never seen the connection before–or at least, not in a way that transcended the theoretical. Like many people, perhaps most, I’ve always placed a dividing line between the past and the present. Our nation has done so much to work toward equality; what good is there in lashing ourselves for slavery and reconstruction and Jim Crow? It’s past. It’s done. The world isn’t perfect, but the real problems have been addressed.

Watching that movie unfold in all its shattering ugliness, I realized they haven’t.

A friend of mine told me once told me a story that has I’ve spent a lot of time puzzling over. In a teacher training they were told that they had to understand the culture their students inhabited: a culture in which kids thought it was normal to receive their Christmas gifts from the Voluntary Action Center, and in which parents paid for a Lexus with spinning hubcaps before putting food on the table for their kids–because that was what was considered important in the circles in which they moved.

I thought: There is no way. It sounded like a lesson told by bigots, not by educators. To this day I have trouble believing it.

And yet if, indeed, a mindset like that exists, it’s because for hundreds of years one group of people–mine, I’m sorry to say–systematically dehumanized another, suppressing the expression of intelligence and the desire to achieve in order to keep them safely under control. Whites literally tried to beat it out of them.

We don’t do that anymore. But we do blame people for not breaking out of the cycle of poverty and poor education. There’s a less obvious and more plausibly denied racism that we cling to–the underlying assumptions that poverty and poor choices are a person’s own fault, because they just didn’t try hard enough. Ignoring the history that created the culture of poverty. Acting like it’s in the past, and thus not a real problem at all.

It makes me wonder: if I had lived a hundred fifty years ago, would I have been a participant? A collaborator? Would I have had the clarity of vision to recognize the abomination for what it was?

These are the times when I see the world and I want to weep for it. For myself. So broken. So far beyond helping ourselves. I move in my privileged middle class circles and rage at the super rich like the real battle is between me and those higher on the socioeconomic ladder, when the reality is I’m just as much to blame.

But I’m grateful for the clarity of vision, however painful, because it strips another layer of sanctimonious pride off my soul. And if somewhere there is a solution, I’ll be more likely to see it.

Sunday Snippets

I’m joining up this week with the Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival folks. RAnn asks this week if we do Sacred Heart enthronement. We do not. The longer I am around the Catholic blogosphere the more I realize how much I am NOT the super-Catholic I have occasionally been called. :)

Here are a few posts I’m sharing this week:

Julianna Attempts To Hijack the Eucharist

In Which We Start The Treehouse

In Which I Admit I Am Not A M.O.M.

Is Faith Vertical or Horizontal?

 

Remembering Grandma and Rants About Technology (a 7QT post)

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Today would have been my grandma’s 99th birthday. It’s been nine months since she went to her rest and reward, so I wanted to share some “then” and “now” photos in her honor.

1974, with me on her lap

Grandma with Michael, 2011

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I forgot to include this oddity in my “weird things” post a couple of weeks ago:

Because I ordinarily buy them one shoe at a time, don’t you? Ahem.

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The world has a new blogger, and it needed this one. You must click over and read. Right. Now. And then add her to your blogroll. I mean it. Right. Now.

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Me and technology are not good friends. The other day I tried to get on Finale to input music, and my MIDI interface went dead mid-phrase. The computer began beeping and hollering about how there was a problem with the software, or the cord, or the drivers, or some such nonsense. The keyboard is twenty-five years old, so the fac that we ever got it to work is sort of miraculous. Nonetheless, when I need my keyboard to work, I need it to work! I restarted Finale. I unplugged it and replugged it. I shut down the computer and restarted it. But nothing I did convinced that keyboard it needed to talk to my computer. I did Finale input manually for two days. And then, on a whim, I tried again–and it worked.

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Then, of course, there’s the deal with the printer. Let me back up. I had a Canon inkjet printer-scanner I adored. But it sort of became a catch-all surface. And one day it “caught” the iPad cord. Which was no big deal until Christian tried to print something, and the feed mechanism grabbed the end of the iPad cord and pulled it into the guts of the printer. The tech guys eventually got the cord out, but the printer was useless. (Incidentally, the blame for this incident does not rest with me, but with my husband. I feel compelled to share that, because I have so many problems with technology that are my own fault, I need to make it clear when it WASN’T my fault.)

So now we have a Brother printer-scanner. It is our first laser printer. It began wagging its finger at me to change the toner cartridge over a month ago, every time I start up the computer or turn the printer on. There hadn’t been any falloff in the print quality, but I bought a replacement cartridge from the recycled ink store so I would have it on hand when the print did fail.

And then, one day IN THE MIDDLE OF A PRINT JOB, the printer simply stopped printing and flashed, “CHANGE THAT CARTRIDGE RIGHT NOW WOMAN, I AM NOT PRINTING ONE MORE PAGE UNTIL YOU DO.” Only IT WAS STILL PRINTING JUST FINE! I tried shutting it off and on, turning the computer on and off–nothing would convince this printer that it was capable of printing another page until I changed that %^&**( cartridge that DIDN’T NEED CHANGING.

At last I called the Ink Factory, and was told that Brother sets its printers BY THE NUMBER OF PAGES. Now, how stupid is that? Part of my “consume less and protect the earth” campaign involves printing everything at low quality on the back side of used paper in order to user less of both. I always have. The only exception is writing submissions. So my mother bear growl is in full force. The idea that these technology companies can screw us over like this to ratchet up their bottom line is offensive. They’re undercutting attempts at conservation. Grrr!

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Speaking of technology, I lost my cell phone. And apparently I’m being unreasonable to want a dumb phone without a monthly plan, i.e. an emergency only cell phone. When we went to replace my phone, Virgin Mobile informed us that they no longer have a prepaid plan. I’ve been grandfathered in for a while, so they honored it as long as I kept my phone, but no longer. Well, fine. We switched over to TracPhone, because we had to. And if you’re one of the privileged few who had my cell #, just lose it, because it’s different now.

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As long as we’re talking about phones, I’m also apparently the only person in the universe who still knows phone numbers. My first major boyfriend wanted to program my # into his house phone–this was back in the 1990s. I got irritated because I thought there were certain phone numbers you just needed to know by heart, and your girlfriend’s was one of them.

These days, no one knows phone numbers, because everybody puts them in their phones. And I gnash my teeth and think, “What happens when something happens to your phone and you need to get in touch with someone? Huh? Huh?” But then it occurs to me that the kind of apocalypse that would take down a cell network would probably negate anyone needing to get in touch with anyone else, anyway.

Still, I remember phone numbers. A lot of phone numbers. I look at it as a mental exercise.

Well, I’ve been wordy and snarky today. Better get my two middle children ready for summer school!