Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 71

It Takes A Parish

Sorry about the blurry shot. This is what comes of an iPhone in the hands of a (then)7 year old.

On any given choir day, we are likely to lose a child for a couple of minutes. When Mommy and Daddy are powwow-ing with instrumentalists, conducting a four-part choir, setting up mics, testing levels, and leading Mass, it’s very easy for a child to pull a Houdini.

For this reason we send Nicholas to Sunday school on choir days, and Michael to the nursery, keeping only the older kids with us. For this reason we also only lead music twice a month; we know it’s important even for the little ones to go to Mass.

But the nursery volunteer list has shrunk to zero, and they’ve closed it for the time being. And this weekend was parish festival day, so religious ed was canceled. So we had four children with us in the music area on Sunday. I drew a deep breath as I emerged from leading the choir through a challenging Communion song and did a head count of my children.

And came up one short.

It took me about five seconds to locate Julianna. She was halfway across the church–the front, mind you, right where she could distract everyone–with her arms crossed, waiting at the end of the last line as Communion wound down. One of the Eucharistic ministers put a gentle hand on her back and guided her back toward us. She had a big smile on her face and was doing her “happy walk,” this adorable, ungainly walk that makes her torso swing back and forth.

Confession: this wasn’t the first time she’d wandered off that morning. I spent most of the opening song wrestling Michael and craning my neck trying to figure out where she’d gone until someone in the back row behind us waved and mouthed, She’s here with me. That time she got away because I was preoccupied with leading the choir while restraining Michael from the high-tech playground that is a contemporary ensemble setup (trombone! trumpet! flute! electric bass! guitar! sound board! microphones! and oooooh, drum set!) Shortly after he tried to wrestle my flute out of my hands during the psalm, a parishioner took mercy on me and offered to hold him for the duration of Mass. He went into her arms with a wail that drowned out the priest.

And I thought: It takes a parish.

I wasn’t the one who came up with that pearl. Let me back up a week.

Julianna is developing a serial escapee habit. The last time we “were choir,” as we say in our house, she did the same thing: took advantage of parental preoccupation to go make friends with people waiting for Mass to begin. I’d been in the nursery with Michael, waiting for a volunteer who never showed, and when I arrived at church five minutes before Mass, she was already gone. Christian scanned the church. Came out from behind the piano. Scanned the pews again. Started walking. And then a little girl hurried across the front of the church, pointing behind her. Sure enough, there sat Julianna, beside a family on the far side of the arc of pews next to the Eucharistic chapel.

The soprano beside me–one of the holiest women I know, although she would make face if she knew I said so–chuckled softly and coined a phrase we will use forever. “It takes a parish,” she whispered.

It is true. We have come to trust our community to help us in our ministry. We don’t want our kids to bother or distract other people, but sometimes your best efforts to see that the kids are taken care of fall short: like, for instance, when the nursery and religious ed departments are closed. Last year during Christmas rehearsals, Julianna left the rehearsal room and walked all the way out to the parking lot with some other family leaving religious ed classes. They brought her back to us and waved off our thank yous. (And don’t forget this moment!)

It should have been terrifying, but I couldn’t quite muster the appropriate emotion. Our kids have grown up at this church, in plain sight of this community. Most people know who Julianna belongs to, and as we established last week, virtually no one is immune to her charm. We all have gifts to share, even if some of those gifts are in the “support” realm rather than the “in front of God and everybody” realm. We all need each other. Just as other people need Julianna’s gift for love, and the parish needs our musical gifts, we need other people’s loving arms and willing spirits to enable our ministry to continue in these years when the kids are small.

We depend on each other. And that is a good thing.

Moment

They sit at the kitchen table, my husband and my only daughter, going over spelling words on a Sunday evening. “Spell it, Julianna. Spell ‘we.’”

“Dubba, yew.” It always reminds me of those “double mint gum” ads from my childhood.

“‘W’-what?”

“Dubba, yew, ee.”

It’s a rare quiet evening in our house…well, quiet is a relative term. In this case it means the noise went downstairs, where the boys are chasing each other around with a new light saber brought home from the parish festival.

“Spell ‘we’,” Christian says again.

“Dubba, yew, ee.”

“Very good! Take a bit of ice cream.”

She doesn’t have to be asked twice for that one.

“Now spell ‘with’.”

Th is a hard one for her. She’s a simple gal; one letter should equal one sound, by golly. They spell that one about six times.

There is thundering on the stairs as the epic light saber battle moves onto the main floor. Julianna looks around; Christian redirects her, and the boys turn the living room into a war zone.

As the spelling lesson goes on, her ice-cream coated spoon wanders, and she pulls it through her hair Little Mermaid-style, thus ensuring yet another night of fun brushing her hair at bedtime. But she looks up at her daddy with such adoration, hanging on his every word, that I let it go, and the homework continues as the boys make NASCAR laps around the main floor with light sabers in hand.

Unanswerable Questions

murky waters (Photo credit: freerangeart)

Last week, NPR reported about a Syrian town blockaded so effectively in an attempt to squelch the rebellion there that people are subsisting on olives, grape leaves, some pumpkin and mint.

“Up to about two months ago, those who sympathized with the plight of the people who are trapped in Moadhamiya would drive past the town and toss grocery bags out of their car windows in their direction. And often people would come out and take the bag, but it would be at great risk because snipers might shoot them. The government realized what was going on so it completely shut down that section of the highway.”

Later in the piece, the government justifies its actions by saying, in effect, “They did it first.”

Justification, indeed, for starving people to death, the guilty along with the innocent.

I felt a little nauseous when I turned the car off after that story. How can such incredible disregard for the human person exist in the world?

You can tell me that the Syrian government isn’t operating on the same moral standards as we are. You can insert gratuitous comment about Islam versus Christianity.

But over the centuries Christian entities have also laid siege to cities, starving the innocent alongside the offending party. And last week, in my state, a state senator–my state senator, in point of fact–asked the governor to consider funding a gas chamber, because as long as we have the death penalty, we have to be able to carry it out. Of course it never occurred to him that maybe he’s pursuing the wrong side of that equation, that maybe someone who claims to be prolife ought to be respecting all life, even that of the guilty. Since when did we develop divine wisdom, wisdom sufficient to decide who deserves to live or die?

I tell myself the world has always been ugly, filled with cruelty and disregard for the dignity of the human being. In Rome they fed people to animals. In revolutionary France they beheaded people. In Japan they were expected to kill themselves if they failed at a task.

For all that we consider ourselves enlightened/followers of Christ/fill-in-your-chosen-descriptor, we tolerate, even encourage, a lot of cruelty and ugliness. The situation in Washington, for crying out loud. Why do we keep sending these people back? Is our world and our governmental system so fatally flawed that it is irredeemable? Why is it that we spend so much energy teaching our children the value of sharing, compromise, love of enemy, only to turn around and pretend none of those things apply to us in adulthood? Do we think our concerns are so much more important, that such tactics are justified? How dare we call ourselves Christians, enlightened, or fill-in-your-descriptor, when we continue to flame people we don’t know from the safety of a computer screen, knowing we’ll never have to look the person we’ve just flamed in the eye? Does no one else’s conscience twinge when yelling at drivers who cause minor inconvenience? Does no one else recognize that name-calling and expletive-laden insult-hurling is at least as offensive to the dignity of others, not to mention the harmony of society, in adulthood as it is in a day care or an elementary school?

How do I explain all this to a child? How do I introduce him to the foul ugliness that is the systematic termination of an unborn child, or the termination of a murderer? How do I explain why things like massacres and starvation by blockade are allowed to happen?

Big questions. Too big for a Sunday night, or a Monday morning. I wish. I pray. But I don’t have much faith in anything changing. I cling to doing the best I can, and I tell myself “success is not the prize.” And I go on, because that’s all I can do.

Sunday Snippets

I’ve been absent for a couple of weeks…life is really such a zoo! Today at Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival, RAnn asked us to weigh in on the Liturgy of the Hours: do we use it? Have we ever?

I tried it for a period of time, and I still like it, but morning and evening prayer are a real time commitment and in this stage of life I find myself more in need of stillness–brain and heart stillness–than the structure of the divine office. My favorite part by far is Night Prayer. That formula: “May the Lord grant me a restful night and a peaceful death,” is just so beautiful.

Okay, so here’s what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks:

It’s Down syndrome awareness month, so I’m posting weekly about Julianna. This week it was about Julianna’s Fan Club.

I wrote about the phrase “It Is What It Is.” And then Colleen wrote her own post in response.

We celebrated my grandmother’s memorial in the last couple of weeks, which inspired A Fry Pan Can Be A Holy Thing.

And in case you’re interested, here’s Your Weekly Fix of Kid Funnies.

Your Weekly Fix of Kid Funnies (a 7QT post)

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We finished Jazzercise last Friday and Michael ran away from me on the way to the car. When I caught him I swung him high up over my head. “Whoa, baby, you’re about to be too big for me to do that,” I said. “What am I gonna do when you get too big for me to throw up in the air? Maybe Miss K__ will let me throw her baby up in the air.”

Nicholas pulled out his toy phone. “I’m gonna call her and ask,” he said, and proceeded to do so. Then he flipped it shut and said, “Mommy, Miss K__ said no, you can’t throw her baby in the air.”

Man! Foiled!

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Alex’s class is spending this fall preparing for the “wax museum,” in which they all choose a saint and make a costume for All Saints Day. Alex chose St. Michael, because he loves his baby brother and because, yanno, St. Michael is a bad@$$.  He did a web search and chose this picture to fashion his wings after. Go on, click on it. I’m not allowed to paste it in, and you really need to see this picture.

Sometimes I wonder if the angels ever chuckle at our attempts to portray them.

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Just call me Mayhem.

Michael Mayhem Moments of the Week Tuesday:

Locking me out of the house while I was putting Julianna on the bus. (Thank Heaven for key pad entry on the garage!)
Helping himself to the pepper and shaking it all over the floor in an attempt to help me make chili
Opening the bottle of Penzey’s vanilla and taking a nice big swig of it while my back was turned (well, at least he’ll sleep well tonight! I thought), followed up within one minute by…
grabbing the cart of eggs and turning it upside down on the kitchen floor
Rubbing copious amounts of soap in his eyes in the bathtub

You caught that all of that was in ONE DAY, right?

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Which happened to be the same day that Christian was out of town, so I was flying solo. And the same day that Nicholas decided to grow horns and a tail again, after weeks of angelic behavior. (Well, let’s be honest. His wings have been tarnishing for the past five days.) Anyway. When he got crossed at bedtime, he started stomping his feet and banging plastic cups on the tub. Because I had three other kids to deal with, I elected to ignore it. “Mommy, I’m throwing a temper tantrum,” he explained with calm beyond anger.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Get out of the tub.” I went to deal with a load of laundry.

No, no, no, that wouldn’t do at all. STOMP STOMP STOMP, big dramatic pause right beside me. “Mommy, I’m STOMPING!”

You all will forgive me if admit I just cracked up, right?

“Why are you LAUGHING?” he demanded, wounded.

“Because it’s FUNNY!”

More stomping ensued.

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Speaking of Nicholas, see if you can Name This “Tune”:

“Heaven-ee O God, beyond my wants, beyond my ears, from death into love.”

Stumped? Fit the words to this. (He sang this repeatedly yesterday afternoon, until Alex began screaming at him that it was annoying. Then they just fought about it.)

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This week, both the bathroom scales and my heart rate monitor/calorie counter have stopped working. This is cause for some serious soul stretching for a type-A, monitor-everything-for-precision kind of gal like me.

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Last Friday I was supposed to share some funnies from a car trip my sisters, one brother-in-law, and I took around our hometown after my grandmother’s memorial Mass. Of course I forgot by the time Friday rolled around. And I’m not sure they’d come across so much funny as in poor taste, anyway. So I’m not going to share unless you ask me.

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Oh yes, how could I forget to share what you get when Michael gets hold of the iPad?

Now, back to your regularly-programmed madness…

Fiction: Stardust

It began on a magical night beside the river Thames… or so my mother tells me. There was a twenty-car pileup and my parents were stranded in the fallout as her labor gained momentum. By sheer dumb luck, there was an OB three cars up and one to the left. An hour later, I came screaming into the brightly-lit night beside the blackened river, with all the lights of the city twinkling in its eyes, and beyond it, St. Paul’s gleaming like something out of a fairy tale. “The whole world was alight,” Mom used to say. “There was magic in the air.”

It’s been a good run since that  night. I don’t regret a moment of the twenty-three years I was given. We all knew my run was going to be shorter than most, although I admit I wasn’t prepared for it to be quite this brief. Still, I’ve made the most of the moments. I’ve learned, I’ve loved, I’ve given my all.

And tonight, it will end, at the far corner of the world, in a place where no created light has ever shone. I feel my smallness here, beneath the dark skies and the deep silence of the back country. I can feel it coming, death spreading its fingers out from someplace deep within. I rest my head on my husband’s shoulder, our sleeping bags zipped together and our fingers threaded together. There’s nothing to say, only one last moment to embrace as we gaze up at the stardust slung across the heavens like a thick carpet for me to tread on my journey into eternity.

Julianna’s Fan Club

Julianna after heart surgery, age 6 months: Possibly the only time in her life she ever left a hair bow in her hair.

The first few times it happened, I was disconcerted. Whenever I would take Julianna to Target or the grocery store, people would do a double take. As in, stop the cart, turn around and stare.

Oddly, I never found it offensive. It’s all in the body language, and the body language in these encounters was not one of revulsion, but awe.

It took a while for me to realize that what was making these people disobey every law of common etiquette was the fact that they knew she had Down syndrome, and yet she was beautiful. Because our cultural standards of beauty make no room for someone with a flat face, extra skin at the back of the neck, a tongue too big for her mouth, and rounded, tipped eyes.

And yet, from day one, something about Julianna has drawn people. As she got older and began charging down the mall corridors shouting “Hi! Hi! Hi!” to people, I began to see her magnetism manifest differently. People become invested in her very quickly. When she moved up to kindergarten, she took her school by storm. By the time I came to school for my first visit, to make her sit still and behave for a hearing test, I was the tagger-on to her wagon train of glory. As I took her back to her classroom, half a dozen kids (not in her class) and every single adult we passed greeted her by name. Mind you, she’d only been in this school for a few weeks.

A few weeks ago,  year, her para greeted me with, “If you ever come pick her up and she’s not here, it’s because I stole her and took her home with me. I just love her!”

The thing about Julianna is that she doesn’t let you sneak by without acknowledging her. She loves people and she loves her life, and she wants everyone to share the experience. So wherever she goes, she leaves a trail of smiles, of people whose legs are tingling from her hugs and, I would bet, whose hearts are a little stirred up by her attention.

I’ve heard this sort of thing said about people with Down syndrome before, but seeing it in action is a whole different thing. We’re not a terribly “touch”-y society, obsession with sex notwithstanding. We like to keep each other at a distance. Maybe it’s that whole “rugged individualism” thing, or perhaps it’s our history as a British colony.

But those rules don’t apply to Julianna–probably because she won’t let them. As a parent I’m always caught between the desire to teach my daughter that the rules apply to her, too and the wonder of seeing what a leavening influence she has on the world.

I never want my kids to bother other people, but she is such an ambassador for Down syndrome, and that’s something the world sorely needs. We need to be reminded that there is beauty and value in every person, simply because they are people, independent of their IQ or their potential to achieve. We need to be reminded that every person has a contribution to make to the world, not just those who are conventionally beautiful or talented or book smart. And that perhaps, in the end, those other things aren’t even as important as the ability to connect and to throw one’s whole heart into loving others.

It Is What It Is

Photo by Sam UL, via Flickr

When I was a kid, I thought it would be great to be a grownup, because grownups got to do whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it. Now don’t laugh, I know you all thought it too.

We all know better now. As adults, we get to direct the big picture more than we did as kids. Sometimes we even get to direct the little things. But I don’t think there’s a single part of life that you get to spend doing just what you’d like. There are always limitations and obstacles, and that’s more true in adulthood because there are so many more responsibilities. You do what you can, when you can, and you either make peace with it or you become, as my kids have taken to saying with great giggles, “Mr. Grumpy Pants.”

These days I find myself constantly having to regroup, redirect and re-organize my plans and expectations. I tell myself again and again, “It is what it is.” This summer, I took a hiatus from writing magazine features. Last summer I had myself tied in knots, trying to juggle four kids at home with the work, and I didn’t want to repeat that experience. Besides, I figured without the deadlines, I could finish my novel.

As you might imagine, it didn’t work out that way. As day after day passed, it became a mantra: It is what it is. I ratcheted my expectations downward, and didn’t meet them. Ratcheted them down again, and missed them again. We had no access to respite, and every time I had a sitter there were errands that had to be done. Kids bickered. Kids whined. I abandoned my work time again and again to break up their routine, trying to break the cycle of fighting and bad attitudes, and the attitudes retrenched. It is what it is. Face it and go on.

Someone–I don’t remember who, but it stuck with me–recently expressed how much they hate that phrase. I puzzled over this for a while, and I think perhaps the reason is the human need for control. This phrase, with its overtones of resignation, is an acknowledgment and acceptance of our lack of control. None of us like to be reminded that we don’t have a choice most of the time.

Actually, that’s not true. We do have a choice. The choice is to gnash our teeth and fight the inevitable, or to accept with some semblance of grace what cannot be changed, and look for an alternate solution.

To me, that’s what this mantra encapsulates. There’s an awful lot about my life that I can’t change. I can’t make Nicholas have a better attitude. I can’t stop Michael from wailing every time he doesn’t get his way (which is all the time, because he inevitably wants what someone else already has.) I can’t change the brutal school dropoff/pickup schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can’t change the fact that Julianna needs hands-on help with all her homework.

The choices we’ve made were made for good reasons. If they come with side effects, well, I have to deal with it. Raging at the inevitable is just a recipe for misery. Multiple mother-writers have confirmed recently that this is absolutely, 100%, the hardest stage for juggling child-work responsibilities. It is what it is, and I will just keep doing the best I can with the time I have.

In Which I Am Having A Serious Case of Adolescent Identity Crisis

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This week in novel writing I have been tackling the dreaded Query and Short Pitch. For those who are not initiated into this most stress-inducing of rites, let me enlighten you. Or not. Everyone has a different idea of what works, and it is the ultimate game of “read the teacher’s mind,” trying to figure out whose solution will actually work. I have lost all confidence in my ability to write. I am convinced that I will never, ever, ever get my novel published, and in fact the only reason I get any freelance writing gigs is because I got lucky and now about three editors know I can hit a deadline.

In other words, I’m having a Don Music moment.

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Drama (Photo credit: sniggie)

This is ridiculous, of course, but recognizing excess drama for what it is doesn’t banish it, because the central problem remains: I can’t figure out how to distill my story into something that sets it apart from the slush pile. Despite the drama, I do believe in both the story and the writing…but how do I find the words that will get somebody to look at it? I am in desperate need of inSpiration. Please pray for me.

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You know how bad I’ve got the pubescent self-loathing bug? Right now I don’t even believe I have anything to say on my blog that anybody would want to read.

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So I think I’ll blog at least once, and maybe twice a week, on Down syndrome topics during the month of October, which is DS awareness month.

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Probably what I need is a few days’ distance from the book. And the timing on that is good, because I have quite a few nonfiction deadlines looming. But the way I’m feeling right now I’m more likely to turn a couple days’ space into a giant mental block. I am in serious danger of writing paralysis.

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my FLUTE (Photo credit: ken2754@Yokohama)

Okay, way too much navel gazing. Practice update: In the month of September I have practiced 16 days out of 26, for a total of 6 1/2 hours. I still shake my head when I think of spending three hours a day in a practice room, but I suppose that’s not bad, and I definitely feel my chops returning. The music is coming along nicely, too, and aside from the endurance question I’m relatively confident that I’ll be ready come spring. Now if only I could find an accompanist.

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To end on a positive note, I’ve been under 130 pounds ever since my horrible virus two weeks ago. And that’s a darned good thing, because Panera has pumpkin bagels and cherry vanilla bagels right now, and my world is a richer place for it…both in the experience and the calories.

If you made it through this self indulgent drama fest, congratulations. You win a prize, or something. Or not. :/

Fiction: Peaches and Bread

“What d’you wanna be when you grow up?” asked Steve.

“What kinda question is that?” responded Malachi. “I’m gonna be a machinist like my dad. Just like you. Right?”

Steve didn’t answer. He lay on the soft grass in the shade of a peach tree, his hands behind his head, and stared up at the sky. It was a perfect day: cool, with little whorls of warmth twisting up from the earth and down from the late fruit, as if summer and fall were flirting with each other. All the windows along Sycamore Street were open, and beside Sam’s house, the mouth-watering smell of baking bread made the boys’ stomachs rumble.

“Why, what you wanna do?” Malachi said.

Before Sam could answer, his little brother’s head emerged from the anthill he’d been examining. “The ants are looking for big bugs to fight the grasshoppers,” Benji said.

They ignored him. Everybody ignored Benji, because he never shut up. “I want to fly planes. Maybe the space shuttle,” Sam said.

“Whaaa? There’s no more space shuttles, genius. They’s all in museums now.”

“Well, whatever comes next, then.”

“Is blue a color?”

Sam sighed. “Yes, Benji.”

“Is orange a color?”

“You know what your problem is?” Malachi grabbed another peach from the pile beside him. “You gotta learn to be satisfied with what you got. Look at this. Nice shady spot to sit, all the peaches we can eat, and all in your back yard.” He tossed a peach.

Sam bit into the soft flesh. The juice ran down his fingers, sticking them together. He and Malachi had been friends since they were knee high to a chihuaua, but on the cusp of high school, there was no denying they just weren’t headed the same direction anymore. “So that’s enough for you? You don’t want something more?”

“Like what?” Malachi tossed the pit and wiped his fingers on the grass, then sniffed the air. “Matter of fact, I do. I’m thinkin’ a piece of that bread sounds like just the thing.”

Benji pounded on Malachi’s arm. “Can I tell you a joke?”

“Sure, Benji.”

“What if a person went down the drain?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying,” he said, “there’s gotta be more to life than doing exactly what our dads did. Haven’t you ever wondered what’s out there?”

“Benji bow-wow!”

Malachi laughed and knuckled Benji’s head. Benji giggled and ran off singing his ABCs “rock star style,” which meant lots of air guitar and no pitch at all.

“Hey!”

The boys scrambled up as Mr. Olivet, with his shock of wild hair that always seemed to be running away from his craggy features, stalked across the lawn toward them. “Yeah, you, ya little punks. Who told you you could sit under my tree and eat my peaches? Get outta here! You’re lucky I don’t call the cops!”

Sam grabbed Benji and dragged him toward home, away from the heady smell of late-season peaches and fresh bread and back to the house that smelled of stale smoke and leftover Chinese takeout.

Back. But not for good.