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1Feb

Gelato Before Breakfast

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

When my alarm rocks me awake, the horizon is just beginning to bloom. The valley outside our bedroom window sparkles under the lightest dusting of powdered sugar, a gift from the sweet-toothed godmother of 3 a.m. Mount Subasio’s snowcap rounds out the purple sky. It is morning.

The horizon’s blush deepens, silhouetting familiar bell towers against a backdrop of vivid rose, and then pales as the sun makes her debut. One, then two, then fifty stufe curl feather-white smoke into a sky the color of lemon gelato. Hints of blue in the distance whisper of our Apennine guardians. This is home.

In a few minutes, I will finish my cappuccino. I will button Natalie up in her grembiule for school and give the house its morning airing (though I might avoid draping all our bedding out the windows as our neighbors are prone to do). The olive grove behind our house will rustle off its snow as the day warms marigold, and the local guild of songbirds will get to socializing. A typical day will be in full swing before I know it.

But at least for the moment, I do know it. Looking out over the cypresses of a 2500-year old city and in over the nuances of our Italian life, I am humbled. The expat experience is often challenging (if not downright frustrating) and requires a heaping supply of flexibility (if not insanity)… but it is the kind of long-term adventure that fills our hearts, remodels them for greater capacity, and fills them again. And at least for the moment, this sunrise—like the day it colors in, like the Etruscan stones gleaming from the next hilltop, like the adventure we wake up to every morning—is an immeasurable gift.

28Jan

Fireworks

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

I have to remind myself to calm down.

This is only the third day of early alarms. Only three morning hours pulled away from the stars and given to the words that tug on their leashes. 686 words the first day, 738 yesterday, 505 this morning—not many, but almost 2000 more than I started the week with.

This is something to celebrate.

This is something to take in stride.

As it goes every time a writing project lights up my mind with fireworks, I treat inspiration like a house ablaze. Every moment is an emergency with exclamation points and a fierce dread of what will happen if I don’t write twenty pages NOW. I kick myself under the desk for being such a slow writer. (I mean, my paragraphs come together about as quickly as Medieval cathedrals… and that’s with coffee.) I compare the timeline of my life to other authors and bemoan that I’m three years overdue for my Great American Novel. The housework falls behind and the girls entertain themselves while I stare at my computer screen, trying to coax a few more sentences out of a tired afternoon.

This sense of urgency was hardwired into me a long time ago—admittedly in a religious context, but so effectively that I fill up each day’s schedule with an impossible number of tasks and then feel guilty for not finishing. My mind fights continuously against my brain, my heart, and my energy levels to accomplish more, more, now, now… and it’s worse when it’s something I love.

I so appreciate the Julia Cameron quote Christina posted a few days ago:

“Most of us live with a continual sense of emergency. We have a fear that we are too late and not enough to wrestle a happy destiny from the hands of the gods. What if there is no emergency? What if there is no need to wrestle? What if our only need is receptivity and a gentle openness to guidance? What if, like the Arabian horses grazing outside my window, we are simply able to trust?”

That there are more days to this life, more hidden springs of inspiration, more quiet hours of words set free in sequence, is a concept both foreign and wonderful to me. It whispers that I can write without sacrificing my girls’ childhoods or my own sanity. It means that a few hundred words a day are enough. It gives me permission to walk toward the fireworks without grasping or giving up and to write a book over a ten-year span if that’s how long it takes.

(Though I really hope it doesn’t.)

12Jan

Bandwagon

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

We’ve been back nearly a week in a house with wireless internet connection and more computers than human beings, yet my Google Reader is still shouting at me in bold type: 109 unread posts! Now it’s 110! Alert! Social prospects dwindling! (My computer is often as dramatic as I am, coincidentally.) I’ve been working my way back to the blogging bandwagon a few minutes at a time and spending the rest of each day on activities that don’t come with touch pads or hyperlinks… but even as I’ve left my computer to pine away at my desk, the internet community has been a significant part of the last two weeks.

For instance, one side of our guest room is now stacked with bags of clothes—scratchy wool sweaters that look great but make me want to claw my own skin off, favorite outfits from the Stone Age college, and good quality undershirts that resolutely refuse to stay tucked in. As I bagged up a chunk of my closet for charity, I kept in mind the revolutionary (to me) insights picked up over the past year from Reachel at Cardigan Empire. She contends that clothes should work to flatter us, not the other way around, and that a sparse collection of outfits that make us feel truly fabulous is better than a closet bursting with “nothing to wear!” items. Who knew? I applied the principle to the girls’ overflowing and rarely-touched bin(s) of toys as well, and now everyone feels a little lighter. In a very good way.

I’ve been holing up in the kitchen as well with my favorite Starbucks apron (technically it’s Dan’s, but until a good fairy brings me one of these, I’ve claimed it as my own) and inspiring new flavors on the brain. It’s hard to believe that when we got married, my cooking skills were limited to microwave chicken nuggets and canned corn. For the leaps and bounds my culinary ability has taken, I am forever indebted to food bloggers like Pioneer Woman, Bakerella, Molly from Orangette, and Deb at Smitten Kitchen. They taught me how to dice onions and braise pork roasts and decorate cupcakes and melt chocolate, how to make everyday cooking an art, and how to find pure joy on the stovetop. I even like vegetables now; this is no small feat.

In the midst of weeding through clothes and cooking up heart-warming meals and climbing (and sliding back down) the ever-growing slopes of Mount Laundry and busying myself with the million little tasks of a mother, the gentle gratefulness of NieNie and Kindness Girl and Royal Buffet’s Mollie Greene have pulled my attention back to my treasure of a family. I’ve had invaluable moments with my husband and girls over the last few weeks, plopping down on the rug to build Legos, whooping Bowser’s spiky green butt with our Wiimotes, and working out together. Too often, I let busyness get in the way of togetherness, and I’m so grateful for the reminders to love our quirky little household intentionally.

In honor of the fresh-faced new year, I wrote down a handful of happy challenges in lieu of resolutions—a habit I’ve picked up from Andrea of Superhero Journal who suggested putting a positive, uplifting spin on goals. Peaceful sleep is on my agenda for 2010, as are creative financial saving and properly-applied eye makeup. (That one’s already checked off with the help of an eye shadow quad and a short video tutorial; can someone please explain why this took me so many years to try?) Megsie and Elizabeth of Bluepoppy fame have written about the yes factor as well, and I’m in good company as I set off into an inspiring new year.

I took Color Me Katie’s philosophy to heart when faced with the drab task of de-Christmasing the house and made a party of it. I rearranged the girls’ room with concepts picked up from interior design sites like Ohdeedoh and friends like Lizardek to open up more focused playspace. I’ve stolen away from the housework to write my monthly letters to the girls, an oh-so-wonderful tradition that I first learned about from Dooce (and have often regretted not thinking up myself back when Natalie was a baby). Inspired by the ability of bloggers like CJane, Christina from MyTopography, and Nina at The Whole Self to distill daily life to its most beautiful components, I’ve been making a list of the loveliest moment in each day of 2010 to look back on this time next year. I’ve also been picking up The Message and searching through its pages for the kind of open-hearted, un-sermonized spirituality that I so admire in Rachelle of Magpie Girl, Rae from Journey Mama, and Sam, the Sunday School Rebel herself.

Perhaps this only emphasizes how much I need to work on real-life socialization, but I feel so fortunate to be part of the “giant pool of wisdom” as Rachelle calls it, the collection of kindred spirits and talented writers who indirectly share their lives with me. So thank you, dear blogosphere… and please keep in mind that my being away from the computer busy with living and loving is most definitely your fault.

4Jan

Sea Legs

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

It’s snowing in Venice today. We’re tucked up on the mainland without either the outerwear or the gumption to attempt sightseeing, so I content myself with peeking out of our friends’ window at the park, its lake half-frozen and dotted with disinterested seagulls. As always when snow falls, the world is silent.

The quiet seeps over me in little waves, both relaxing and unsettling. I realize what I do every January—that the holidays have directed my time with such a sense of obligation that I’ve lost grasp of myself. Again. Every day of the past few weeks, my need for stretches of personal peace has been reasoned away with “We only get to see them once a year” and “The sale only lasts today” and “He’s taking vacation time for this.” I am incredibly grateful we were able to spend our holidays with family and friends, but I did an abysmal job of recharging… and I’m not sure how much anyone enjoyed my tightly-wound, guilt-enforced presence.

This afternoon, with the house to myself and a few quiet hours stretching ahead, I feel unsteady. Duties swoop and dive like hungry gulls—clean the bathroom, write an e-mail, catch up on blogs, make a phone call, work on the budget, edit photos. But I want my sea legs back, my calm center, my sense of belonging in this deep peace, and that means following one particular obligation to myself.

Hint #1: It starts with “n” and ends with “aptime.”

Hint #2: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

1Jan

Trade-In

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

There are two things I should say before we begin:
1) I slept until noon today, and
2) it was entirely necessary.

I would like to say this was due to our wild party-animal instincts, but the drab truth is that we saw 31 too-late nights in December and were destroyed (as we say in Italian). I am a little miffed with this holiday season for hinting at long, languid hours of relaxation when it actually meant a sort of continuous harried feeling. Gifts to be gathered, events to be attended, games to be played, food to be cooked, meaningful time to be spent with friends and family—all lovely, holiday-y things that somehow arranged themselves into a military formation in my mind. How does this happen every year, I ask? (Just to be clear, love and good cheer still abounded, as evidenced by the photo below. They just had to compete for attention with tiredness and headless chicken syndrome.)

And now it is next year. I’m a little surprised to find that I can believe an entire twelve-month span is over already; we put a lot of mileage on 2009, and it’s time for a trade-in. Besides traveling to eleven countries and over forty cities, I learned how to cook clams and braved black diamonds and started running (and stopped running… but have noble hopes to start again) and found a way out of an emotional quagmire and celebrated six years of marriage and moved houses and started wearing skirts again and cemented more than one close relationship and began teaching English and picked up piano playing again and attended weddings galore and had questions answered and spent delightful hours getting to know kindred spirits and finally found my taste for bitters and laughed more than cried. The year was richly layered with experience, and I feel comfortably full. It’s a good feeling.

As for 2010, I hope for much more of this…

…and this…

…with maybe just a wee bit more of this to go around:

Happy New Year, everyone!

18Dec

Merry and Bright

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

Yesterday evening, I was dusting the living room in a flurry of last-minute prep for our annual white elephant party. Sophie was finally sleeping after an asthma attack that reallocated our afternoon to doctor’s offices and pharmacies and tight-throated cuddling, and I was dashing through my list of chores when the obscene bleat of a bus horn sounded outside the window. The dust could wait; I peeked over the balcony to see what the fuss was about.

In typical Italian fashion, someone had parked a car with courageous disregard for either logic or legality, i.e. – in the middle of the road. I watched for several minutes while the driver was procured, she failed to produce any keys, and various angry motorists contributed to the solution by honking while a neighbor pushed the car out of the street. I am sorry to say this little story has nothing whatsoever to do with this entry except that while standing on our balcony overlooking our city’s hills and valleys, I noticed something: no Christmas lights. Out of the thousands of houses visible, only one or two sported a strand of red bulbs on the balcony.

Italians celebrate Christmas jubilantly and with glad tidings of tiramisu and wine, but outdoor decorations just aren’t their thing. And while I love living in this warm-hearted country, I really miss driving around on December nights to ooh and ahh over twinkling Christmas displays. I also miss parades and candy canes and gingerbread mochas and a children’s section stocked with gorgeous holiday books.

The past two Christmases here, I felt desperate to hold onto that melted-butter sensation of holiday nostalgia. I planned red and green and cinnamon sparkles into every day, but I only found exhaustion where enchantment was supposed to be. So this year, expectations have been called back from Jupiter. I’ve been up front with myself about the traditions I miss, and I’ve whittled down my priority list to the essentials. Cookies are no longer on it, nor is our Christmas Eve brunch with friends. To tell the truth, this December looks as glitzy in my mind as a rain cloud. A hormonal one.

Yet this clammy, gray mindscape is exactly where nostalgia decided to find me. Maybe I just needed to release the pressures of baking and printing newsletters and feeling holiday cheer, damnit, or maybe the gloom of the last few years was simply another side-effect of my depression pills. Either way, this coming Christmas has been a reason to seek out magical moments in otherwise ordinary days—postponing naptime to decorate the rug with paper scraps, sitting down at the piano with Vince Guaraldi, brainstorming ways to make our friends and family feel loved… belting out carols when traffic fills the horizon (“Away in the ranger” is Natalie’s favorite; Sophie’s is “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, all da waaaaaayyyyyy!”)… anticipating the daily surprise in our advent calendar… reading a story each night that leads to the miracle birth we celebrate… sprinkling nutmeg on my coffee and calling it a success.

And as it turns out, twinkling yard displays are not the slightest bit necessary for a holiday to be merry and bright.

9Dec

Rodeo

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

::tap tap::

Hello hello, one two three, anyone there?

I actually had to read my last blog entry to figure out where I was in life before the rodeo that is December came to town. That is acutely pathetic, I know, but at least it makes me feel good about not hosting ads on my site. Because if, say, we had to finish Christmas shopping on distant planets like IKEA and our car died and our water heater (which heats the whole house) broke and our gas went out and our car died again and our water heater broke again and it was a national holiday so no one could repair it and our utility room flooded and I caught a virus and the bathroom heater started leaking and the washing machine wouldn’t start and our car died AGAIN and we suddenly found ourselves scrambling to get all the right documents together so that we could buy a new car only to run straight up against the Italian beaurocratic system which will be on coffee break for the next three months… If, for instance, those hypothetical things were to happen, I would want the freedom to callously ignore the blogosphere until our life got itself to rehab.

There’s been so much I’ve wanted to write about though, like the visit from lovely Rachelle (and how my girls were so smitten with her that I may have been demoted to nanny), and the Paolo Nutini concert that almost had to go on without us, and the e-mails from someone Dan and I have never met who feels led by God to have us bring American television church to Italy (!!), and the thrill of Christmas shining from the girls’ eyes. There are so many of your lives I’m eager to catch up on as well.

However… All that may just have to wait until things stop breaking around here.

They have to stop sometime.

Right?

Right?

::tap tap::

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