Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 64

The Trash We Cling To

Photo by Andreas Solberg, via Flickr

Our associate pastor talked this weekend about giving our burdens to Jesus. Letting Him carry them for us.

As he spoke, I thought of the mountain of rubbish my children create and give to me. Stacks of paper sculptures and paper airplanes and paper “fortune tellers” Alex and Nicholas have been making to amuse themselves. The reams of scribbled worksheets that come home from preschool. Alex no longer expects us to cherish every scrap of paper. He knows the bulk of his school work is looked over and then recycled as printer paper. If we didn’t, there soon wouldn’t be room for us in our house.

It occurred to me that when we give our burdens to Jesus, the same applies. Most of what we carry around is trash, pointless to hang on to and taking up emotional space we don’t have. My bet is Jesus doesn’t really carry our burdens. I think He does the same thing with our emotional baggage that we do with our children’s physical refuse. He throws it away, because it’s not worth hanging on to.

When We’re Busy, We Fight

Cuddle Moments

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you know how much I bristle whenever someone responds to expressions of frustrations about children with the words “Enjoy them, it goes so fast!” Often, in these early years, I’ve felt overwhelmed by the physical demands of caring for multiple littles. We made our family planning decisions with an eye toward the kids having sibling playmates, but we didn’t quite grasp how much Julianna’s needs would intensify her younger brothers’ early childhood demands.

Whenever people would wag their fingers at me to enjoy the experience because it’s so fleeting– inevitably when I was at my wits’ end–I would feel guilty for getting frustrated. Like I was a bad parent for feeling the burden to be so heavy in the first place.

A few weeks ago, right around New Year’s, I realized the weight had begun to lift. I found myself living in the moment and enjoying them fully. We had our best Advent ever. Not once did I feel like I was overwhelmed this December. I thought perhaps I’d finally cracked the right balance of calendar activities, but as I pondered it, I decided it was about the kids themselves.

The positive shift in Nicholas’ behavior alone has lightened the load by half. When every second is a battle and the sparring partner is at home five days a week and half of the other two, it wears you down quickly. Especially when you know how “delightful” he is in every other situation, because people are always telling you so.

Julianna is finally able to dress herself, if I can give her time to do it on her own (glacial) schedule. We can understand more than half of what she tries to tell us now, and that is soul food. I can’t even begin to communicate how that relaxes the spirit.

And not having to wash diapers is a huge shift all by itself. We’re only using diapers at nap and night-time now, and sometimes they stay dry. At Christmas, we traveled without a stroller for the first time in nine years.

We had a wonderful Christmas break. The kids bickered, sure, but I didn’t lose my temper. I didn’t have to shout to get things accomplished. I was even able to be philosophical about the snow days that lengthened Christmas break.

And then? Then school started. Piano lessons. Three-school pickups. Dental appointments. IEP meetings. Cub scouts. Julianna’s dance. By the end of two weeks of school, Christian and I are once again shouting at kids to hurry up. We’re having to issue the same instructions five times per child. We’re always in a rush to get somewhere, get homework done, get lunches made. Getting to the grocery store has only been accomplished because there’s no alternative.

I realize now that what made Advent and Christmas so enjoyable this year wasn’t the change in the kids–it was the fact that we had less going on. The kids’ abilities and attitudes can help or harm my stress level, but the real key is busy-ness. When we’re doing too much, we fight.

“We’re all too busy,” a friend of mine observed when I shared this revelation. “The difference is some of us know it.”

“But it’s not enough to realize it–you have to do something about it,” I said.

That’s the hard part. The part I’m just starting to try to figure out. I have a feeling it’s going to take the better part of the childhood years to do so.

Sunday Snippets

Time for another round of Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival at This, That & The Other Thing. This week RAnn asks us if we chose a patron saint of the year. I did not. Sorry.

I’ve really only written one faith-oriented post lately: Dreams, Burning Bushes and the Voice of God. I did reflect a bit on the concept of “balance.” And if you want some cute kid moments, you can read this post.

Cute (and Terrifying) Moments of the week (a 7QT post)

I’ve been really floundering on 7 Quick Takes lately, so this week I was determined to capture the funny moments as they happened. Ready?

#1: Subject: Michael

Who, me?

Sunday. Choir. During pre-Mass warmup Michael tripped over two–count ‘em, two–microphone stands. “He’s really living up to his nickname today,” said one of our sopranos. But that was only his warmup. While I was conducting Grayson Warren Brown’s “God Be In My Head,” sung a cappella, at Communion–the beginning of Communion, while no one was yet going to Communion  in our 850-seat, completely full church, so the impact was fully maximized–Michael helped himself to the sound board slide controls. No self-respecting Mayhem would pull them down, of course. Only up. All the way up. With a resulting roar in the speakers you’ll just have to imagine. I corrected the damage almost instantly, but as the roar subsided I heard the entire gathering chuckling. Not just those close by us, but the whole works.

(My insecurity is telling me people are wagging their fingers at me for having him with me in the choir. There are no nursery volunteers anymore, so we have no choice but to bring him with us, and although we usually ask someone to keep him for us, he’d fallen asleep mid-Mass on that person’s shoulder and when he woke up he would only take Mommy. We do what we can.)

#2: Subject: Michael

At Alex’s piano lesson this week, one of the teacher’s children was playing with Michael. Trying to amuse him, she put marbles in her eyes,then ears. He was staring at her with great concentration. Then one of the marbles fell out of her ear and down into her shirt. She kept trying to find it and eventually had to pull up her shirt from the waistband to get at it. Michael, relieved to find an action he felt capable of imitating, pulled up his  shirt and stuck a marble on his belly button. And then looked perplexed that it wouldn’t stay put.

#3: Subject: Alex

Earlier this week the little boys and I baked a chocolate torte right before we picked Alex up from school. Michael’s face, post-baking, was covered with chocolate (it was a very gooey torte) but I didn’t realize how bad until I already had him out at the van. I didn’t have time to take him back inside, so he just went with a dirty face. When we got to school, Alex got in the van, took one look at Michael, and said, “Can I have what he had?”

#4: Subject: Nicholas

This week one of Christian’s coworkers asked if Nicholas could participate in a promotional video the university was making. They needed his voice to record a couple of lines for it: “Mizzou is Truman!” and “Mizzou is where I want to go someday.” We had to go to the NPR station to record it. The NPR station is tucked under the dome of the same building where Daddy works, so the little boys got to visit Daddy at work, too. Exciting stuff. Nicholas couldn’t quite grasp it. “So they’re gonna take pictures of my voice?” he asked.

#5: Subject: Julianna

Julianna began adaptive dance class this week. A picture will suffice. It’s not very good; sorry, I was taking pictures from a distance and to get it trimmed enough not to include other children’s faces, I had to sacrifice quality. Anyway, you get the idea.

#6: Subject: Danskos

I finally took the plunge and bought a pair of Dansko clogs. I am in love.

#7: Subject: Me

On a more sober note… Thursdays are a zoo in our house, with Nicholas going to half-day preschool and Alex having Scouts and various other activities after school, and my one regular flute student needing lessons on that day. So I set up with my student to have a lesson at school while we were waiting for Alex to finish with Cub Scouts. I’ll spare the extra complications (because there were a lot of them) and just say that we couldn’t leave for school until Julianna’s bus dropped her off. But the bus didn’t come, and didn’t come, and when it was half an hour late we weren’t going to get there in time to give the lesson before Alex finished with scouts. So I started making calls. The bus barn told me the bus left the school late; I called the student’s mother to ask what she wanted to do. By now she was getting ready to leave work to pick up her daughter. She suggested that she bring Alex home and we could have the lesson here. I said Great! Except you’re not on his pickup list, and they won’t let him go. Let’s see if we can get ahold of the scout master. Which she did…and at that moment, when she found the scout master at home, I discovered Alex did not have scouts at all.

I took a deep breath and called the after-care program, where they send kids who haven’t been picked up after school. They didn’t answer. I called the school office, but by now it was so late, they didn’t answer either. Then the after-care director picked up her voice mail and called me back, and said: “Alex did not check in at after care today.”

Thus began the worst ten minutes of my life. I called my cousin, who works in the parish office and lets Alex come over on Tuesdays until I can get there. I was hoping someone might have taken him there, but he wasn’t there. I completely fell apart. I told myself Alex knows his parents’ names, he knows his phone number, but mostly all I knew was that I didn’t know where my child was. And I couldn’t even go look for him because I was still waiting for Julianna’s bleepety-bleep bus!

It turned out he had art club–not Cub Scouts–I was right to schedule the lesson up at school, I just had the wrong after-school activity in my head. But I was a mess when Julianna finally got home. She came over to me and snuggled against my chest for fully three or four minutes while I pulled myself back together. File that one under Moments I Hope I Never Repeat.

All right, what an epic-length blog post. Sorry! I needed to work that out of my system. Now, off to make lunches, pull the trash, and get everyone ready for school…

A Journal Entry

Photo by ed_needs_a_bicycle, via Flickr

I try not to write about writing too often, but I hope you’ll indulge me this once. I’m in transition right now. My last novel is finished and in the query phase, but its first forays into the hands of the industry were not as successful as I hoped, so I put the brakes on. My last novel I sent out repeatedly, thinking I just needed to find the right set of eyes, and I collected a full file of form rejections. I’m not about to make that mistake again. So I’m in the process of finding fresh eyes to help me revise yet again.

I set aside the first couple of months of this year for fiction work, so I don’t have any looming deadlines right now. But I’m finding it difficult to get started. I have a new project, but I am not a pantser who can just take a good idea and dive in, see where it leads me.

When I write music, I spend very little time with a melody or lyric before I know it’s a keeper or not. I have a lot of musical ideas orphaned in my staff notebooks, because I could tell they were trite. But fiction is quite different. You can spend hours crafting ideas into scenes and putting words together, only to find that it has to be lopped unceremoniously from the piece.

I never mourn the loss of material, but I wince at the hours I lost creating it. I try to tell myself it isn’t wasted, that everything is a learning experience and I can use that material somewhere else later, but it rings hollow.

I don’t have enough time as it is; I loathe wasting it. So I’m turning into a confirmed “plotter.” I want a good solid outline to work from before I dive into drafting a novel.

But I’m afraid now I’m crossing from prudent planning to procrastination. I’ve been in revision phase for so long that I feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the act of creation. In many ways I find the revision phase much easier; I can break it down into smaller pieces, some of which can even be done with little people around.

Mostly, though, fiction requires concentration. To wit: at least a solid hour in which nobody is climbing up on my lap, shouting at me or each other, or getting into the refrigerator without permission. But between Christmas break, snow days, and random appointments, I just can’t seem to get back to a good routine. Writing keeps getting pushed to the side in favor of parenthood. Some of that is inevitable (dental visits, IEP…) and of course, my children are my primary responsibility. Still, it’s hard to know I’m spinning my wheels and wondering how much of it is because I’m using distraction and tiredness as an excuse not to dig in.

Over the weekend I resolved to get up early and work with pen and paper on a short story revision. But it took three full days to get through those 2000 words. And I think better with fingers on a keyboard, so what was sketched out on the page in pen and paper was only a framework. Yesterday when I tried to put the changes in the computer, I found that my brain was full of cobwebs and crying out, “Nap! Nap! Nap!”

Perhaps unstructured time is not a recipe for success for me. Perhaps what allows me to succeed is the stress of having multiple projects on tap at any given time. Perhaps the need to stay focused keeps me productive.

To the handful of writer buddies who read this blog, I’d love to know how your process works when you’re starting a new project. How do you get from the germ of an idea to a full-fleshed outline? How do you get to know your characters? How do you flesh out subplots? For me it’s always started with an extremely immature first daft requiring many, many major revisions. It’s quite inefficient. For my new project I have all the elements in mind, but I’m having a hard time plotting the structure to incorporate them. I’d love to hear how other people make it work. Care to share?

Balance Redefined

Photo by WoK11, via Flickr

Raise your hand if you fret about keeping your life “balanced.” Come on, admit it. That’s one of those things women, in particular, obsess about. We’ve grown up to a soundtrack of “you can do anything you want,” but most of us have taken the word anything to mean everything. And this leads us to think we can do it all, all the time, and achieve a balance among the commitments and the desires of our heart: career, family, marriage, self, hobbies, volunteerism. The only trouble is that rarely do any of us feel we have found that elusive “balance.”

Being a daughter of the times in this way, if not in many others, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. A comment my mother made once whispers in my ear quite frequently. “You can perform many ministries consecutively,” she said, “but not necessarily concurrently.” And yet when I ran down the list of my commitments and tried to figure which one/s to pull back on, I couldn’t see a workable way forward.

I’ve come to realize the wisdom of something told to me by a priest when I brought it to him in Confession. Balance isn’t a static point at the center of your life, a six-ton stone balanced at the pinnacle of competing interests, and if it is off by a millimeter the whole works comes crashing down on your head. It is a constant push and pull, with one aspect of life taking the lead at one time and another taking its place in turn. We tend to think that balance, once achieved, simply has to be maintained, when the reality is that balance is a matter of constant wrestling, constant motion. Because let’s face it: life itself is not static, nor are the commitments and desires of our hearts. Wherever human beings are involved, there is change.

In the past year, as I have wrestled with that inevitable push and pull, certain things have come to fruition organically. I decided to stop taking on new voice students, and with the steep dropoff in demand for flute lessons, my new reality involves only a scattered few music lessons. I am now more a writer than a music teacher. I have been able to scale back the time devoted to coordinating our local Couple to Couple League chapter, because another woman has stepped up–not all at once, but piece by piece.

As the kids’ activities tick upward, these things become not only desirable but necessary. I’m easing out of the diaper era and into the “chauffer” era. New challenges. New solutions. Brain stretching. And that’s a good thing.

In Which Julianna And I Find Something In Common

Photo via Wiki Commons

I was nine years old the year I discovered figure skating. That was the year Katarina Witt won the gold medal at the Sarejevo Olympics, and it was my first fandom. In retrospect, I think what I loved most about her was the fact that she served as a mirror for me, or rather a more beautiful version of me. That was my fourth grade year and my school picture was unequivocally the single worst photo ever taken of me, tiptoeing at the cusp of an incredibly awkward puberty. She was German, like me, her hair looked like mine when my mom did the fanciest braids; she had the same body shape (although mine was just starting to develop, so I didn’t really know that then), even her name was a mirror of mine.

For several years, in defiance of reality (i.e., the nearest rink was an hour and a half away and I never took a single lesson), I dreamed of being a figure skater. I spent my recesses “practicing” my jumps and striking poses, pretending I was in the middle of a routine. I graduated from that when I realized how foolish I looked, but instead I wrote a proto-novel about an Olympic ice skater.

Over the last thirty years my tastes have shifted. The singles no longer hold a lot of appeal for me. I find ice dance and pairs far more beautiful. But I haven’t watched much, because we’re always busy and even when I made note of an event that would be televised on a station we actually got (we were on basic-basic cable for over a decade, and then dropped it altogether for a few months), I usually would forget to turn it on.

Well, with the Olympics coming up it’s time to get back in touch. So Saturday afternoon we watched part of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Alex was grumpy–he wanted to use the Wii–but he could hardly argue that Mommy’s request to watch a single program was unreasonable. Mommy never, ever, ever claims the TV.

I swept the kitchen during the advertisements and sat on the couch while the pairs programs were on. Julianna and Nicholas were mesmerized, watching with me. When it was over I went to the computer to look up a program from the last Olympics that I remember being exceptionally beautiful. And in the middle of the program I looked up from YouTube to see my daughter on the other side of the computer desk, slowly and carefully twisting and turning…pretending to be a figure skater.

How to describe the emotion of that moment? I have all these boys running around. We’re a superhero family. I know far more about Transformers, Avengers and Justice League than I do about Strawberry Shortcake or, what are those creepy dolls called? Monsters High, or something? Christian and I have an inside joke; we call the girls’ toys section the “creepy girl aisle” because it gives us the willies.

I can’t get inside my daughter’s head; I never know for sure what she’s thinking or if I’m getting a genuine answer to any question I ask her. I’ve learned, for instance, that I can’t ask her if she did what I told her to do, because she’ll say “yes” no matter whether she has or hasn’t. Instead I have to tell her to do it again, and if she says, “Wye dee!” (“already did!”) in a tone of great personal affront, then I know she did it.

She’s the hardest child to shop for because nothing really interests her except music and books, and we already have so many of both. It’s hard to know what sorts of activities will excite her. It’s hard to include her in the family activities as her younger brother shoots past her in cognition and verbal ability and physical prowess.

All of this went through my head in a shock wave as I realized something that was infinitely precious to me as a child, and remains the only sport I actually like, is also special to my little girl. There’s a connection between us I didn’t even know was there. And it made my day.

We’ll be watching a lot of figure skating this year, I think.

A Busy Week In 7 Quick Takes

Some weeks are really productive. Effortlessly productive. Others, not so much. Take a wild guess as to which kind I’ve had this week.

___1___

First there were the snow days. Which don’t match up from school to school, of course. Then there’s the round-and-round-and-round process of figuring out what feedback I need on my novel, and how to get it. And just when I get everybody back to school, it’s IEP time. An IEP meeting, for the uninitiated, goes over the entire package of academics and the breakdown of services–what, by whom, how long, etc.–and lays out the goals for the next twelve months of learning. Since it only happens once a year, naturally this means it’s a llllllooooonnnnng meeting. It took us an hour and a half. And I had the three youngest children along, to add to the fun. Good thing it’s a school with plenty of iPads to go around. That could’ve gotten ugly with only our iPad.

___2___

Oh yes, and then we had dental appointments on Thursday. It was everything I have come to expect from a visit in which Julianna has to interact with medical personnel. Michael, who is glued to my side, watched the whole thing, of course. And then he didn’t want That Lady going anywhere near his mouth, either! Fun times, I’m telling you. And afterward I had to drop kids off late at school–three kids, three schools. By the time I got home I was shot, and it was only 10:30 a.m.!

___3___

Nonetheless, school has started up again…in fits and starts. The parochial school started before the other two. The eve of Alex returning to school, I called his piano teacher to check whether he had piano lessons after school. She sent an email the next morning saying we could have a lesson or start the following week; either way the # of lessons would be the same–we’d just make it up later. To illustrate how I deal with my life, this was my thought process upon receiving this email:

1. Alex didn’t take his piano books to school. Forget it, we’ll wait a week. That way I can trade carpool days for tomorrow, when I have Julianna’s IEP meeting at the same time I’m supposed to be picking up kids.

2. Wait a minute. Julianna’s not in school today.

3. Julianna’s school gets snarky about taking kids out of school early.

4. I don’t have to take her out of school early for a lesson if we have it today.

5. That will be one less time I have to feel guilty and get kids up early from nap to facilitate pickup on lesson day.

6. We’re having a lesson today.

___4___

I will say, however, that it continues to rock my world, how easy life seems when I’m going from point A to points B-Z without having to worry about changing diapers before or after. I feel several pounds lighter…and I never even hauled diapers around. I know, I keep talking about it. I just can’t get over it.

___5___

Did you guys see this one? I love our new pope. He’s so real, so right down here in the trenches. (Sighs contentedly.)

___6___

Does anybody else still have their Christmas decorations up? We do. Our tree is raining needles, it’s so dry. But it’s been nice to have it to look at. The house always seems so bare after the decorations go down. I did put away the Christmas music, but we’re still lighting the outdoor lights every night. (It’s jus so easy with remote switches! We don’t have to go outside to do it!

___7___

Just so we’re clear…

A Cold Story

This creek resisted freezing shut until late January. I crossed it every day going to and from school my first year.

Being in the deep freeze for a couple of days reminded me of something that happened when I was in grad school in Iowa. When I first arrived in Cedar Falls in the fall of 1997, the locals were determined to impress upon me the extent of the cold I was going to experience in an Iowa winter. I didn’t have a car, so I had to walk everywhere, and my first year I lived a mile or more from the school of music. Knowing there was nothing I could do about it except adjust, I got my attitude and my wardrobe set.

By the time my second winter rolled around, I had the routine down: long underwear, jeans and sweatpants over top; two pairs of socks, fur-lined boots and a pair of shoes to change into when I reached school. T shirt, sweat shirt, coat. Two scarves, earmuffs, a pair of gloves with mittens over top. I still got cold walking from point A to point B, but not dangerously so. And actually, I complained less than the locals did, because I figured I’d chosen this climate, so I needed to deal with it.

Ice skating at George Wyth Lake. It was a big lake, as you can see. One of the cooler experiences of my time in Iowa was getting to skate out in the middle. Our ponds at home rarely froze that solid, much less a lake.

One day in my second year I bundled up in my dozen layers and went outside without checking the weather. As soon as I stepped out the door I realized it wasn’t as cold as I had been expecting. But I wanted to get up to school and practice, so I wasn’t going to take the time to disrobe. I just went ahead.

When I rounded the corner of the music school, I came face to face with a fellow graduate student who hailed from Canada. He was wearing a light jacket–unzipped–one pair of jeans, and Birkenstocks (no socks). He and I stopped and stared at each other. “Uh, Kate, it’s not that cold,” he said.

“It’s not that warm, either!” I said.

May your Wednesday be warmer than the last few days!

Michael

My baby came over to me last night while I was on the phone with my mother, wearing one Rainbow Brite leg warmer on his arm and a Power Rangers mask on his face while he tried to feed himself blueberry yogurt. Unfortunately, the mask doesn’t have a mouth hole. I couldn’t see his face, of course, but his body language stilled as he tried to figure out this conundrum, and I wished with all my heart I had a camera handy. In its absence, I had to make do with an internal chuckle.

Since he decided to (mostly) toilet train, I’ve had so much more attention to spare to notice the other things about him. Consequently my life is a series of heart-catching moments, interspersed liberally (and about equally) with laughter and exasperated attempts to moderate disputes among two children who can reason, one who sort of can reason, and one who is not yet aware that he is not the rotation point of all creation.

And Julianna just insists on tackling him. She loves him so much, and she wants to mother him: put his coat on, wipe his nose, the whole works. She just wants him to be a baby, and he will have none of it. He is a big boy. He roars protest when I try to help him get his legs in the proper holes of his underwear. He insists on putting on his own pants. When I had the audacity to pull a shirt over his head yesterday, the protest eventually forced me to take it back off so that he could do the whole thing himself. He even insisted on putting on his own socks. (Upside down.)

And yet if he falls down, I have to boo boo kiss both his palms. He won’t stray very far from me; periodically he wants to climb up on my lap for a snuggle (half this post was written that way).

He makes me laugh with the way he runs–that classic toddler run; what self-respecting toddler will walk when he can run, feet slapping the floor (eighth notes at q=120), frequently giggling?

He will not talk, but when I look at him I can see the gears spinning. He looks like my dad’s family–the shape of the eyes in particular. His brothers have these wide, limpid brown eyes that pierce the soul. They’ll flatten every girl they turn those eyes on. Alex has already had girls chase him around, trying to kiss him. He doesn’t even pretend to dislike it.

But Michael’s eyes are mischief eyes, glimmering at all times with a spark that intensifies as his eyes narrow beneath one of his many giggles.

I don’t know how I got such a good-natured child, but I have a theory. My theory is that he wasn’t held or touched much for the first ten days of his life–he spent it hooked up to heart leads and pulsox monitor. He spent it cuddling with a sheet and an oxygen hood. And when he got out of that nonsense, he just came into real life with a gut knowledge that life is beautiful, and he’s going to enjoy every minute of it.

Then again, maybe he’s just holding it all for age three–the worst age, as far as I’m concerned.

But I can always hope he’ll just stay this way. Because he makes me so happy.