Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 94

Some Food For Thought On Election Day

Voting (Photo credit: League of Women Voters of California)

I spent several Thursday mornings this fall attending a class at our local Newman Center. The topic:  the history of Catholic social teaching, taught by a Dominican brother. It was illuminating, to say the least. I had hoped to share more of what I learned, but it hasn’t worked out that way. But this morning, in honor of election day, I’d like to share four definitions that were either new to me or placed a familiar concept in a new light.

First: liberal vs. conservative. Depending on your chosen “flavor” of politics, both of these words are tainted, but in their origin they are both beautiful and praiseworthy goals:

conservative­–having a desire to conserve the best of the past

liberal–having a desire to liberate humankind

Even more striking are two words I had never heard at all before: rigoristi and opportunisti. They are used to describe different approaches to faith and life. I was hoping to find some online references for these, but I couldn’t, so the singular/plural may be off here; my apologies. Still…

One who fits the category rigoristi will not compromise on principles: I want the Kingdom of Heaven, and I won’t accept any less.

One who is an opportunisti takes a more pragmatic view, saying in effect, I know I live in an imperfect world, so I’m going to focus my efforts where they can be most effective, and not beat my head against an impregnable wall. Our teacher used two examples:

St. Thomas Aquinas thought prostitution should be legal and regulated, because he didn’t think you could actually get rid of it altogether and it was preferable to keep it corralled and controlled in order to lessen its impact on humanity. My jaw dropped when I heard that, but here’s a link.

Pope John Paul II never tempered his words on abortion–except when he went to Poland. Poland had one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and yet when JP2 went there, he never addressed the subject, because he was focusing his efforts on undermining Communism. But on his first trip to Poland post-fall-of-Communism, he lit into them about abortion. It was a matter of timing.

Just some food for thought on Election Day. (My apologies to Brother E. if I have misrepresented anything he said!)

Making Marriage Better

I’m qualified to write on that topic, don’t you think? Today I’m sending you to a guest post I wrote. I’ve talked before about how the experience of infertility convinced me that planning our family naturally was so much more respectful of who I am as a human being in general, and a woman in particular. But NFP, in turn, has reinforced the very skills that make marriage successful. I hope you’ll go over and read today:

http://nfpandme.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-nfp-does-make-marriage-better.html

Sunday Snippets

That’s it, it’s official: I HATE time changes. I don’t care what direction they’re going. I hate them. I’ve been up since 3:45 a.m. because Michael doesn’t know he’s supposed to have an “extra” hour of sleep. Psychotic people. If you’re so darned attached to daylight savings, why didn’t you just leave us on it permanently? It’s not like there’s some worldwide rule that says we MUST return to uncorrupted time for a week or two. Does anyone in the entire world actually LIKE this bizarre tradition in which we randomly decide that 1a.m. is 2 a.m., or 2 a.m. is 1 a.m., and ask our bodies to adjust accordingly?

All right, that has nothing to do with Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival, which is what I’m here to share today:

I know you all need some pure, un-political kid cuteness in order to remind you that the world is still a beautiful place despite all the political nonsense. Especially two days before the election. Right?

No? How about a little girl with Down syndrome showing off her blossoming kindergarten skills? Or a cuddle moment with a second grader who’s about to be too big for such things?

Yes, I’ve been mostly posting personal things this week, but here’s something a little more universal: Body Image, Body and Soul.

Head on over to RAnn’s place for more!

 

Because you need a break from election stuff, don’t you?

Of course you do. So let me share some kid moments. This week it’s Nicholas’ turn.

Nicholas-ism  #1:

This week his preschool took a field trip to Hy Vee, and then to DQ. (Lucky kiddos.) “What kind of ice cream did you have?” I asked. “Twawkwet,” he said.

Nicholas-ism #2:

His lack of “r”‘s is pretty stinking cute, but he doesn’t recognize the difference between what he says and what we say…nor does he appreciate having it pointed out. “Mommy, can you open the doy?” he asked.

“Open the doy?” I repeated, smiling.

“No! Open the doy,” he said firmly. “Stop it, Mommy!”

Nicholas-ism #3:

The night before Halloween, we were looking for his tool belt to complete his Bob the Builder costume for Halloween. That tool belt is one of those items that is so well-loved that it often vanishes completely for long stretches of time. So while Christian taught piano and I did dishes, chatting intermittently with the student’s mother, I sent the boys to pull their Halloween costumes together. “Where’s your tool belt, Nicholas?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, after walking in circles around the living room (last known whereabouts of the tool belt) for about two seconds. “Maybe Bwandon’s mom is sitting on it.”

Nicholas-ism #4:

Speaking of adorable mispronunciations, he asks me regularly for “macanoni” for lunch.

Nicholas-ism #5:

How he processes babies is just hilarious. For months, when I said Michael was hungry, he would race to give me the Boppy. Lately, as the main-floor Boppy has languished unused, he instead plops down on the floor and puts it around his belly. “Mommy I gonna nuss the baby,” he says. I remembered this a moment ago because he was sitting in the living room playing with a miniature pumpkin he painted bright blue at school today. He was pretending it was a baby in his tummy. He was cooing to it and calling it a “cute baby.” And telling me he was about to have it cut out of his belly. (Ah, the legacy of C sections…)

Nicholas-ism #6:

Alex and Nicholas love to play together. Nicholas is still in that starry-eyed stage where he doesn’t care, he’s willing to be bossed around as long as Big Brother lets him play. He seems completely oblivious to things like winning and losing. “I have a five,” Nicholas says in the middle of Crazy 8.

“Don’t tell me your cards, Nicholas.”

“But I have a five.”

“Stop showing me your card!” Alex forcibly turns Nicholas’ hand around so he’s not baring his soul to his competitor.

“Five. Five. Wight heew.” He turns it around to show me, on the other side of the kitchen, instead. “See? Five.”

“NICK! A! LIS! STOP! SHOWING! ME! YOUR! CARDS!”

“Five,” Nicholas says.

Nicholas-ism #7:

Then there’s the newfound awareness of stalling at bedtime. ”But Mommy I need a dwink,” he says when I tell him to lie down.

We get a drink. “Get in bed now,” I say.

“But I want a book.”

“We already read a book. Get in bed.”

He hops in bed, lies down, lets me hug and kiss him, and as I turn away he pitches his voice upward. “But maybe I gonna frow up,” he says.

We now return you to your regular (election) programming.

Julianna Shows Off

When you’re raising a child with a disability, you have a fine line to walk. You can’t set the bar at an unattainable level; it sets you up for disappointment and frustration, and your child for feeling never good enough. But neither can you set it too low, because we all know kids will live down to expectations as well as up.

The best plan is to stay free of expectations altogether, and just watch as things unfold. None of us are perfect at this, of course, but you do get a certain amount of practice when you raise a child who doesn’t walk until 2 1/2 and at 5 still communicates primarily by grunt and sound effect.

And in that case, the achievements pierce you with wonder, but also something else, something sharper, like a fine cheese or a fine wine that feeds both body and soul. A fine point of joy, carving designs on the boundaries of the soul, making room for it to expand.

You already know Julianna can read. I’m told that kids with DS have trouble “generalizing”; in other words, she can recognize the words on the screen or the cards but not in other places. But Christian wrote “orange,” “red” and “green” on a piece of paper and she read them with confidence.

All that to set up a single photo. This is Julianna’s October homework packet. All month she’s been writing single letters, five each: five Ls, five ls, and so on. But this one was different: draw a face on the pumpkin, and write a sentence about it. Julianna asked for help, so I held her hand. But I did not move it for her. I only gave her support and told her what letters to write.

She’s blossoming in kindergarten, and…wow. Just…wow.

When the Stars Aligned…

Most days, I know what I want to blog about well before I make it to the computer. This week, not so much. I have a very big post in mind, but I’m not quite ready to write it yet, and besides, after I spent twenty minutes on the Nordic Track and made it downstairs at 6:02 a.m. to turn on the computer, Michael started crying and I had to go back upstairs. And now I have fifteen minutes till the Great Tuesday Madness begins. Do I share a picture of Julianna’s homework? The “money shot” I got of Nicholas jumping in the leaves the other day? Do I try to capture a video of Michael’s newest adorable habit? Or do I stick a toe in the controversial waters and share some enlightening definitions I encountered through a recent class at church?

Alex comes in to say goodbye to me as I’m finishing morning ablutions, a whirlwind of too-long hair and cracked teeth and second-grade joy, and suddenly I know. Because last night, somehow–two of Daddy’s lessons canceled, the miracle of three younger siblings in bed and content before 8p.m.–the stars aligned and I got to have some dedicated time with my firstborn. After we read a chapter of The Horse and His Boy, we snuggled down together for a minute or two on my bed. He’s all arms and legs these days; I only have about six inches on him. Wonderful skin, although he always thinks I’m going to tickle him when I pull him close. But he knows he can trust me not to tickle if I tell him I’m not going to tickle. So he snuggled close beneath my chin, our legs all wrapped up in each other, and I thought, It can’t be long now before this is no longer okay. “I hope you don’t get too old for this too soon,” I whispered into his temple. “Because I love it.”

A second or two, and an answering whisper. “I do, too.”

Man, I love that boy.

Body Image, Body and Soul

private insight (Photo credit: contagiousmemes)

There seems to be an inevitable progression women follow in the childbearing years. Your body expands, its imperfections get pushed around by little ones, and when it’s all over you never quite look or feel the same as you did before. You gnash your teeth, you adjust your eating habits, you lose some or none or most of the baby weight, and then you do it all again. Eventually one day you look in the closet and realize you hate all your clothes because when you wear them, you see all the imperfections. You look in the mirror and curl your lip, and then you have to decide what to do about it.

You adjust your eating and exercise habits some more, but the constraints of family life prevent you from doing everything you’d like to do. At this point, you have several choices. You can resort to an unhealthy pattern of unsustainable diet and weight gain. You can do the best you can without dieting and make peace with a body whose shape you don’t really like. You can say “forget it, I am who I am, and who I am is someone who doesn’t like exercise and does like brownies and ice cream and pasta and…”

Or you can knuckle down and undertake the long-term discipline to make a permanent change.

As a teacher of natural family planning, everything I believe is tied up in the fact that body and soul are inseparably connected, two facets of the same jewel. The way I treat and use my body matters. So for me, throwing in the towel isn’t on the table–this is an issue of holy living. If my body has this innate dignity, I have to treat it as such, keep it at a healthy weight and strength, treat the problems incurred by multiple pregnancies and C sections.

That also means I can’t succumb to the rollercoaster of diet and weight gain. I’ve seen that play out, and the long-term effects are not pretty, for either body or soul.

When I started counting calories two weeks ago, I was pretty suspicious. The last thing I wanted was to hop on that roller coaster, and to me, that’s what calorie counting has always represented. But it turns out that all the protein and carbohydrate counting I’ve lived with for the last six years, for PCO and “silent” gestational diabetes, has taught me how to balance. The calorie count is the bottom line, but all paths to the same calorie count are not equal. And although I have to learn to approach cheese and eggs with a new restraint, in general my outlook on “good” food versus “food-to-be-careful about” holds up under this new system.

I’m finding new motivation and learning new levels of self-discipline. If I keep to half a stuffed chicken breast, I can have a 2×2 square of brownie and still hold the line. I can’t have a 4×4 square like I would have before, and I certainly can’t have ice cream with it (at least, not without shifting the whole day), but I’m not required to give up all enjoyable things. I like how my body feels in my clothes. I like what I see in the mirror.

What’s more, the way I feel is changing. I’m not dragging so much. I’m sleeping better, I’m finding motivation to be active every day (because it impacts how much I’m allowed to eat!), and my head is clearing. I’m seeing pathways out of the quicksand of imbalance in areas of my life besides food.

I’m only two weeks in. It’s entirely possible that down the line I’ll fall off the wagon or decide there’s something better. But at the moment this works. It works without requiring me to eat something other than what my family eats. It works without being draconian, now that I’ve added some calories back in to account for the remnants of breastfeeding. It works because the accountability of online recordkeeping keeps me honest.

It’s working for body and soul, and in the end, that’s the most important part.

Related articles

The ONLY way to lose weight… (gritbybrit.com)
Free Diet Plans Online (answers.com)
3 Tough Realizations to Help You Lose Weight (and Keep It Off!) (news.health.com)
Women Vs. Women: The Battle over Body Type (lupinelife.com)

Sunday Snippets

Another weekend, and another gathering over at RAnn’s place for Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival. My week in a peek:

Little Boy, Big Ears, in which we are reminded to watch our mouths

She Picked Me, the last of my Down Syndrome Awareness month posts (but it’s really just a cute moment)

A post about Alex, including asking for advice on catechesis for a second grader

And just for fun, some people-watching musings from the mall

Alex, Alex, Alex (a 7QT post)

This is a post about this boy of mine:

___1___

Finger games are all the rage in our house right now, at least for the two older boys. Alex brought us this gem from school the other day: “What do you think they played before they had scissors and paper? ‘Rock rock rock. Rock rock rock.’?”

___2___

Monday after school, we stayed outside enjoying the warm weather while we waited for Julianna’s bus to arrive. Alex was trying to dribble a tennis ball (yes, I do mean “dribble”) and bounce it off the garage door while Michael came toddling along, proud of himself as he could be for still being on his feet. Alex threw the ball, which bounced in front of Michael and then smacked him square in the middle of his forehead. If he’d tried, he couldn’t have been that accurate.

 ___3___

Speaking of boy-related self-damage: Last weekend, Christian and I went on an ice skating date. We were gone for five hours, of which we talked nonstop for 4 3/4 hours, about kids, about loves lost, about friends and how they’re doing, about charity and how to use money…and when we got home, Alex greeted us with, “P. and I were wrestling on the trampoline, and I cracked my tooth.” He was so matter-of-fact about it, I rolled my eyes. And then I looked at it. Half the tooth was missing. And part of the one next to it.

Naturally, this happened on Saturday, so we had to wait until Monday. On Monday I discovered that our dentist is only open every other Monday, and only till 2p.m. a couple other days a week. We ended up going to a pediatric dentist, and I think we may need to transfer there. After all, Alex is only #1. I have #3 and #4 coming up through the ranks of boyhood, and if this is any indication, well, we need a full-time dentist.

___4___

This week, Alex has demonstrated a skill I didn’t know he had–an appropriate one for the child of a mother who writes, as it involves some serious language thought. I’m going to start callling him the Pun-ster.

For instance:

Why was the dinosaur strong? Because it had dino-might!

Why was the dinosaur a bomb? Because it was dyna-might!

Why was the person poking the girl’s dress? Because it was a polka-dot!

(update: at 12:11 p.m., Alex comes running upstairs: “Mommy, I just came up with another joke! What kind of wolf wears clothes?” (wait for it…) “A WEAR-WOLF!”)

___5___

Last weekend Alex played Edmund in a children’s review of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. He really enjoyed theater, although he thought it was embarrassing to have girls holding his hand and hugging him. So it begins.

___6___

We also had his fall parent-teacher conference last night. His teacher said everyone loves him; he’s empathetic and helpful and considerate of everyone. Sniff-sniff. We also got his standardized test results, which confirm his intelligence. I got to thinking about my own test results from years past, and I’m pretty sure I was always in the 96-+ percentile across the board. For the first time it made me realize what a freak I was for that. LOL

___7___

Sorry to hit you with substance at this late date, but I’d like perspectives. I remember in school always thinking that my religious formation was too easy, the answers too obvious. It didn’t bother me at that time, but since then I’ve been very concerned to make sure that formation and catechesis deals with reality. Alex is only two weeks away from his first reconciliation now, and as we go through things with him, it seems like he’s seeing it, too. Almost rolling his eyes at how obvious the answers are, and the connections between the Scripture stories and the sacrament. And the examples he comes home with from school don’t ring true to me. Like, it’s sinful to push someone down on the playground. Yes, but I mean, who really does that? It seems like it would be too easy to think, “Well, I’m a pretty good person, I don’t do stuff like that, obvious sins, so I must not really need all this.” To me, this does not facilitate proper awareness of one’s faults. But Christian does roll his eyes at me and tell me, “Kate, he’s in the second grade.” We-ell, yes, that’s true. But I feel like my religious formation stalled out at a second-grade level, it was always shallow, never digging deep enough to be real, and the only reason it became so was because I went looking myself. So, what do you think? How do you navigate the narrow path between too much and woefully insufficient?

Whew–on that note…have a great weekend!

She Picked Me

She always picks Daddy–always–so on Wednesday night, when Christian asked Julianna which parent she wanted to take her down to “church school” (religious ed), I rolled my eyes and wondered why he bothered. She didn’t answer at all, and we went about the craziness of clearing dinner and getting kids rounded up for the weekly trip to church.

Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, we realized Julianna was trying to say something. “Go…dyoo…goo…Bah-ee,” she said.

“What did you say?” Christian asked her, but I took a wild stab. “You want Mommy to take you to church school?” (dyoo=church; goo=school, and Bah-ee is, well, me)

“Yeah!” she said, her voice about three octaves higher than usual, and threw her arms open to me with a huge smile.

“You picked ME?” I shouted. I ran to her and scooped her up, and she locked her arms around my neck giggling with that wild abandonment of dignity that renders her beauty angelic. I can’t capture that smile on the camera, but it knocks me out.

At church, I put her on my back and carried her down the stairs as if she was a much younger child, shaking her from side to side to make her giggle again. When it was time to leave her in the room, she came running to cling to me again, not out of anxiety, but just an unselfconscious display of love.

The standard stereotype of a person with Down syndrome is that they are very social, very loving children. That very afternoon, I heard from a fellow parent who picked her up for me when the bus broke down while I was teaching lessons: “She has quite a following at that school,” he said. “She was waving and yelling ‘bye’ to everyone.’”

But my children are all very loving, and very demonstrative about it. This is not about Down syndrome, per se, but about mothers and daughters. As a mother I adore boyhood. (Most of it. I can’t stand the propensity for breakage, but yanno.) But there’s some part of me that craves the love of a girl, and it’s not a gift I get very often. I used to have regular dreams in which Julianna called me “Mommy.” I have yet to hear the word in anything resembling a true form; it’s special, and it’s cute, but “Bah-ee” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. So this night was pure gift. And I guess that’s all the conclusion I need for this post.