Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 91

7 Quick Takes

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I saw something this week I still can hardly believe happened. There are a number of homeless men begging at various intersections around the mall right now, and on the way home from picking Alex up from piano lessons, I gave a dollar to one of them. We were a good distance back from the light, and the man had to walk to get to us. He said the standard “God bless you, ma’am,” and headed back to his spot. As Alex and I started talking about the whole what-is-the-appropriate-response-to-the-homeless issue, I noticed the woman in the car in front of us giving me a hateful look in her rearview mirror. Weird, I thought, but whatever. Then the light changed, and as she pulled forward past the homeless man, I saw a peach pit fly out of her window and smack into the curb below him, spattering juice and nastiness.

Around the corner and up a long block, at the other end of the mall stood another man begging. The light was green, and as she sailed past him, I didn’t see her action, only him turning to shout after her with a raised fist. Maybe she flipped him off, I don’t know. I just couldn’t believe anyone would react that way. It was unsettling, especially after the reflections on poverty I’d shared that very morning.

___2___

After that kind of a start, it feels abrupt to transition to anything else. So I’ll just do it, I guess. We’ve entered formal discussions with the Catholic school about Julianna–had a meeting with the principal yesterday to begin discerning whether it’s possible to move her over from the public school next year. I love Julianna’s school and teachers and staff, but this business of multiple calendars, parent organizations, fundraisers and so on is brutal. It spreads me too thin. I’m basically an uninvolved parent at both schools. We have to figure out many things: 1–can a teacher and classmates substitute for a para, because she won’t have one at Catholic school. 2–what kind of therapy services will the public schools will still provide her if she’s not on site, and is it enough? 3–what sort of schedule will it follow, and will that be just as brutal on me, since I’ll be responsible for transporting her?

___3___

Anyway, one of the things the speech  therapist has been working on with her is final consonants. The other day she called, “Bah-ee, moh-ka!” I turned, puzzled, because that wasn’t something I’d heard out of her before. Mommy, mocha? She doesn’t even know what mocha is, does she? She was holding her glass up. Oh, milk!

___4___

Speaking of speech-related development, Michael is a stubborn cuss. He won’t sign. Stinker.

___5___

Alex has been driving us crazy. In the past few weeks, he’s forgotten to take his homework to school, forgotten to bring his homework home, lost a library book, lost a COAT…and it routinely takes him half an hour to get from his room into the shower, and forty-five minutes (no, Dad, I am NOT exaggerating) to sweep the floor under the table after dinner. He’s off in some la-la land of imagination all the time, which is incredibly endearing, except when it increases my workload. The library book was simply the last straw. I took away his entertainment privileges for two weeks and told him he’s going to be doing a LOT of chores to pay for the book. Because you see, he had to go pull money from the bank to pay for the coat, and we can’t keep raiding his savings forever.

___6___

Weight loss has stopped being easy. I seem to have hit my first plateau. I’ve been under calorie budget for four days, sometimes significantly so, and yet the weight is stubbornly not changing. I dropped a nursing and took away some of the calories I’d added in, but it hasn’t helped. Neither did going to Jazzercise two days in a row. I’m not sure how to proceed. :/

___7___

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this book, which I acquired secondhand sometime in my childhood, and gave it to Alex, who wrinkled his nose and eyed it suspiciously. But I told him I’d loved the stories when I was a kid, and asked him to read a few pages and give it a try. Honestly, I thought he wouldn’t bite, but he humored me and then began gobbling up stories. These stories are set in a clearly pre-V2 time frame, but when I was a kid, the difference in their clothing and what the priests and sisters wore didn’t even register. I mean, I noticed, but it didn’t occur to me that there was anything particularly weird about it. Kids accept so much more than adults, who try to make an issue of EV.ER.Y.THING.

Bonus: St. Lucy buns, anyone? (Yesterday’s Advent activity.)

Advent Wednesdays: Waiting

What I love about the blogosphere is the way we can touch and be touched by people we’ve never met and may never meet face to face–yet we can all help each other along our spiritual journeys. (I started to say “life journey,” because it’s not only religious blogs that challenge and shape my thinking, but everything I encounter online. But the simple fact is that for me, all journeying is spiritual journeying.) Last week in the course of visiting other people’s blogs for 7QTs, I came across a reflection on Advent that brought my full-speed-ahead to a dead halt. I asked Jason, of Pannoneappetit, if he would allow me to share it here:

Of all the figures in the Infancy Narratives, the one who resonates most with me is Simeon.  Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting… for years… for the promised Child Whom the Lord revealed that he (Simeon) would see.  And then one day — Emmanuel appeared, and he held Him, blessed Him, and pronounced his terrible prophecy to our Lady (cf. Luke 2:22-38).

Waiting — in the digital age, what can be harder? Could I be like Simeon, waiting for seemingly endless years to see the Messiah, with death drawing ever closer?  Today, we expect to click a button online, and voila!  Something happens or appears instantaneously.  “Yes, God, I’ll choose the ‘See the Messiah’ option; charge it to my credit card and make it snappy, since I’ve got a holiday party to attend this evening.”

But we forget that history stretches farther back than five minutes ago. Salvation history unfolds slowly over centuries, until, in the fullness of time, when God entered human history directly in the Second Person of the Trinity, in the truly new and radical event of the Incarnation.  There are periods of preparation, sometimes centuries-long, before we are ready to behold the Messiah.

And Advent waiting is not passive.  It is a time of waiting, yes, but also of preparation for the Lord’s Incarnation.  It is a time of cleaning house, setting things in order, making the stable of the heart ready for the Lord to take His place therein.

To wait expectantly — not passively; to wait in humility — not trying to force my timetables or plans on God (as if I could)… to be more like Simeon this Advent, and beyond.  May it be so for me.

(Jason’s original post may be found here. You should visit him. He shares recipes.)

First World Problems

English: Photo showing some of the aspects of a traditional US Thanksgiving day dinner. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was pulling into Macy’s yesterday afternoon when a story came on NPR about the food supply, or more accurately the lack thereof, in North Korea. When I think of North Korea, I think of world security, nuclear weapons and a hostile dictator–but I’ve never thought of starvation. Until now.

“I saw one family, a couple with two kids, who committed suicide. Life was too hard, and they had nothing to sell in their house. They made rice porridge, and added rat poison,” he recalls. “White rice is very precious, so the kids ate a lot. They died after 30 minutes. Then the parents ate. The whole family died.”

I sat in a parking place, preparing to go into Macy’s and buy a pricey gift for someone who doesn’t need it, and my stomach flipped over. I started thinking about the things I was worrying about. A missing cell phone that I hardly ever use. The noise the car was making.

Eating few enough calories to allow me to have gingerbread for dessert.

I don’t even know what hunger is.

When I was twenty weeks pregnant with Alex, I woke up on the floor of the bathtub, Christian bending over me. I had been on metformin (to treat polycystic ovaries) for two years, and it was a new enough treatment that there wasn’t an established protocol for how long into pregnancy to continue use. Well, now we knew. For the next six weeks, my body went crazy as it tried to return to regulating sugar on its own. I felt horrible all the time, and learned to dread low blood sugar to the point where I never allow myself to get very hungry–I grab a slice of cheese, or some carrots, or a cracker or two.

The process of slimming my caloric intake has made that more complicated, but I realize now I can’t tell the difference between “hungry” and “sugar imbalanced,” and I’m too scared of the second to risk the first.

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“Famine” (Photo credit: Anosmia)

So the voice coming out of the radio yesterday was like a mirror. I suddenly saw my family’s life, modest (even miserly) by cultural expectations, as wanton–our Thanksgiving feasts and Christmas cookies, the plethora of gifts growing under the tree, golf and scrapbooking. I thought of the five homeless men I’ve passed by lately because I was in the far lane, and the one to whom I gave a dollar. They’re all the face of Christ; how far does my responsibility extend? How do we strike a balance between enjoying the bounty we’ve been given and being wasteful, immorally profligate at the expense of others starving to death because we won’t simply give our excess to save them–because we think we need Thanksgiving feasts and new cars and acid-free scrapbooks?

The existence of poverty stretches so many fingers in so many directions, inserting uncertainty and questions into so many other issues. Half the population objects to genetically modified food, but the industry insists it’s necessary to increase yields to feed the world–that natural and organic is a path to world starvation. Is that true? Or is the real reason we need those kinds of high yields the fact that we’re a nation of gluttons? We ate at the Olive Garden on Sunday, and I scoured the menu for calorie counts ahead of time. You could easily–easily–consume 2500 calories in one meal, and not even be aware you’d done it. I ate half an entree, two fried zucchini medallions, one bowl of salad, and half a breadstick, and I consumed over 750. And was still hungry, mind you.

Last night, our Advent calendar activity was to take coffee and cereal to a local homeless shelter. It was the first really cold night of the year, and the place was full. The director invited us to stay and visit a while, but we were too uncomfortable. In the car on the way home, we talked about it. We need to do that, I said. We need to spend time with them, not just sail in like benevolent aristocrats and drop our tiny donation and escape. There were men in that room I recognize after three years of Advent visits.

What is the answer to these conundrums? I’m not claiming an answer–I’m only struggling with the questions. What is the Gospel-driven response to poverty, to hunger around the world? How far does my responsibility and yours extend? Are any of us meeting it, or are we all hoarding most of what was given to us to ease others’ suffering? Where is the line between saving to prepare a stable future for us and our children, and simply being greedy by not passing on what we aren’t using to those who have nothing?

Related articles

Advent: On Seeing Light and Poverty
Harvests improve, but famine still threatens North Korea (fsn.typepad.com)
The Dangers of the Coming North Korean Famine (usnews.com)

I Got Nothin’

I had two ideas for blog posts to enlighten and enrich your Monday morning, but one of them fell apart as I tried to pull the ideas together, and the other turned out to be so banal I recognized it even before I started writing.

So I thought I’d skim through the most recent batch of picture uploads for inspiration, and the result is a post full of cute pictures of Christmas tree hunting.

A Christmas Tree Farm is a great place to play hide and seek.

Up close & personal with creation…even if they are shaped and painted (!), as we discovered this year.

Love this shot.

The Ponderers. (Les Penseurs?)

And now, to demonstrate a principle of life, namely: You Will Never Get All Your Children To Pose For A Picture At The Same Time:

Illustration A

Illustration B

Illustration C

Cute? Check.

Deep and insightful? Not so much. But hey, I can’t be deep and insightful every day, can I?

Sunday Snippets

It’s another Sunday Snippets day, hosted by RAnn of This, That and The Other Thing…

Since it’s Advent, and I’ve written a book on Advent, my mind is on…gasp…Advent calendars. I shared some pictures of different kinds of homemade calendars, including a couple that are real people’s real-life calendars. Lots of fun ideas there–makes me sorry we have a boring old house with doors that open!

I also chatted with Sarah Reinhard, author of Welcome, Baby Jesus, about…wait for it…Advent.

My only controversial post this week is on dressing up (or not) for church. A touchy, and perennial, subject that got more hits than anything else I wrote this week. I’m sure some of you will have thoughts to add to that conversation.

I have some cute kid moments to share, as well as a fiction piece exploring a the post-apocalyptic world. My take isn’t quite as grim as most.

Happy second Advent!

Cute Quick Takes

___1___

You know you’re in a breastfeeding home when your three-year-old BOY says, “Mommy I gonna nuss da baby.” And you turn around to see this: 

(Notice the pulled-up shirt. Naked doll mandatory.)

___2___

Things to warm a Catholic mama’s heart: the boys dressing up in Indian clothes, going on a hunt-and-fish expedition, and setting an imaginary Thanksgiving feast in front of the couch, which they preface with the sign of the cross and “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts…”

___3___

Nicholas came wailing down stairs one morning while Julianna was playing with SonoFlex (a communication app). “I can’t find any long pants!” he said. (End of the world, you know.) Julianna, at this precise moment, hit a button on the iPad and the electronic voice said dryly, “Are you kidding?”

___4___

Sunday night, we made Christmas cookies. We finished dipping peanut butter balls in chocolate, and I told the boys they could use spoons to clean out the bowl of paraffin and chocolate. Ten minutes later they came into the living room, where I was rocking Michael, with very red mouths lined with very black chocolate. Nicholas had chocolate all over him. “Nicholas, you have chocolate on your arm,” I said.

Alex piped up, “Yeah, he fell.”

“He fell in the chocolate?”

“Yeah.”

Okay, then.

___5___

Nicholas has not learned the fine art of secret keeping. I should have known this, but I thought I started including Alex about this age. We went shopping and had a pointed conversation about keeping it secret so it would be a surprise for Daddy. He came home and helped me wrap the present and put it under the tree.

And when Christian came home? “Daddy we got you TIES!”

When we all stopped laughing, I said, “That’s it, Nicholas, you’re fired from Christmas shopping!” Good thing that’s not his only gift.

___6___

I wrote a post for Catholic Mothers Online about celebrating saints’ days in Advent–the easy way. Here’s what we did as an Advent Calendar activity for St. Nicholas’ feast day yesterday:

St. Nicholas bread. Like his miter? (Mitre?)

___7___

And I have a fiction piece up today, in which Dystopia might not be all bad. I’m happy with this one; I think it has potential.

Oh yes–bonus if you read the whole post: what my boys do while Christmas tree shopping:

Fiction Friday: After

Dystopia Two (Photo credit: orangedrunk)

Just before dawn, Matthew wakes abruptly from a nightmare. Shivering, he looks at the boy huddled beside him for fleeting warmth. His son’s hair is matted with sweat. The fever’s broken, then. Matthew breathes a thank you; of all the things they lost After, medicine is what he misses most.

He abandons the paltry warmth of the blankets and dresses in the layers required by an Iowa winter. He stokes the fire, sets a pot of water to boil. The pot of rabbit stew Holly brought sits empty on the stove; he never washed it up last night. He never brought the wood in, either. With Karl sick, he’d forgotten everything else.

Matthew slips out the door, the cold whisking his breath away. He thinks wistfully of central heat, and debates again making the long trek southward. But he knows they’ll weather this winter as they’ve weathered each one since the lights went out for the last time. They aren’t leaving, because Madeline and Eve are buried in the church yard under an oak tree.

A sliver of white clings to the eastern horizon. Wood smoke tangs the air from the cluster of cobbled-together buildings. By the time Matthew stacks the day’s wood beside the door, every window is flickering. He tucks his hands into his armpits and glances toward the two-story farmhouse where Holly lives. A shadow moves across the light.

Matthew grabs the last handful of wood and hurries inside, where Karl’s awake. “What was it like, Dad?” he asks. “Before. When I was a baby. Tell me about the pictures that moved, and how you could talk to anyone, anywhere, any time.”

Matthew hesitates. He used to tell stories about Before like fairy tales. But now that his son is a man–and there’s no doubt Karl is a man these days, even at fourteen–fairy tales seem like a recipe for discontent. Sooner or later, Karl will hear the rumors about places where lights still gleam and water still flows. Matthew knows, as Karl cannot, the cost of that fairy tale.

He sighs, looking out the window. The horizon glowers brown.

“Life was easier Before, wasn’t it?” Karl persists.

Before, Madeline and Evie wouldn’t have died from influenza. “It was convenient,” he says. “You could grab a hot meal any time. As long as you could pay for it.” But the distance between them–Maddie’s job, his job, Evie’s dance and music and Brownie meetings–had been tearing them apart from the inside. After, there is only survival. Survival, and community, because there is no survival without community. Holly was the one who taught him that.

Karl touches his arm; he starts. “You’re thinking of her, aren’t you?”

“Who? Your mother?”

Karl rolls his eyes. “Holly. Your face changes when she comes around. I’m not stupid, you know. You should tell her you like her.”

A man, indeed. Matthew puts an arm around his son and finds the words at last. “In many ways, it was easier Before. But much more complicated. We were never happy. We were always scrabbling for more. Never satisfied with what we had. We have to work much harder now, but…we’re happier. We’ve learned to depend on each other. To take care of each other.”

Across the distance, the farmhouse door opens, and a slight figure hurries through the semi-darkness toward their cabin.

Matthew smiles.

And the winner is…

April, of My Feminine Mind! April, email me at kathleenbasi gmail com.

(My apologies for the lateness of the notice! When the baby wakes up screaming at 5, requiring a diaper change and a drink, and the 3yo wakes up wailing at 5:15 with an epic nosebleed and a high fever–thank God for husbands–and you have to take them both to the doctor, which requires 5 shots and a blood draw…well, let’s just say the day got away from me!)

Advent Wednesdays: So You Want A Creative Calendar?

Well, here you go. If you’re a make-it-yourself kind of person, you can try one of these lovely ideas:

First up, from my ever-awesome long-time friend and fan Shelley:

Second, from the lovely Elizabeth at That Married Couple comes this (click the picture to read her post on what she’s chosen to do as an Advent countdown! If you think a daily activity is too much, this might be right up your alley):

The website Inspirations For Home has several to offer, including this:

This one is adaptable to all kinds of ideas–I’ve seen this done using stars of david, for instance, instead of tags

and this:

Another perennial favorite is the mitten garland calendar (this one is paper, but you can do it with real mittens too; see here for an example):

 
Photo by Anders Ruff Custom Designs, via Flickr

Do you have a crafty or creative take on the Advent calendar? Please share!

Who Are We Dressing Up For, Anyway?

Photo by dullhunk, via Flickr

There’s a topic that people of faith spend a lot of time fretting over: what we wear to church. I did a search this morning and came up with a very revealing list of online articles. Clearly, a lot of Christians are incredibly concerned about what everyone else wears to church on Sundays.

But a post I read late last week raised a good question, namely: who are we really dressing up for?

I was taught that you wear your best to church on Sunday because God is the most important person in your life, and that’s how you show respect for Him. Over the years, I’ve gnashed my teeth as much as anyone else about the increasing trend toward casual dress at church. People dress up for funerals and weddings and going to work, but not for Sunday–what’s up with that? If you respect your job enough to dress in a suit, you sure ought to be dressing up that much for God! Hello!

But as time goes by, I’m moderating my thinking. Because let’s face it, it really isn’t any of my business what anyone else wears on Sundays. What we wear is only important because it might be indicative of a person’s internal state of mind. In other words, how much you bother to dress up might indicate how important you think the occasion is. Might.

But.

It’s not God who expects us to dress up. God made us naked, remember? The only reason we wear clothes at all is because after the Fall, we can’t look at the body with the appropriate mindset. The obsession with what is and isn’t proper church attire really has no Godly connection at all–it’s entirely a worldly one. We dress up for church because human beings place importance on clothes. Not because God does. More and more, I’m coming to believe that when I wag my finger about what others wear, it’s a sign that my mind is in the wrong place.

I will continue to dress up for church every week, because this is one way I can show respect for the God I’m coming to worship. I will teach my children to show respect for God by dressing up for church. But I’m no longer going to obsess about what other people wear to church on Sundays. Frankly, it’s just none of my business.