16Oct

Happy Slob

Earlier this week, I went to an informal get-together with some other gals from church. Knowing Italy’s take on casual is America’s version of dress-up, I took care to look nice—my good jeans, suede boots, dangly earrings, a pretty scarf. I would have felt pretentious in the States, but here… I was just proud of myself for managing to pull off the fashionable look I knew all the other ladies would have.

Except that wasn’t the case. At all. The others were wearing designer denim, designer shoes, cashmere sweater dresses, skinny belts, chunky necklaces, crystal hair clips, perfectly color-coordinated outfits with purses to match, and makeup that put my mascara-and-Lip-Smackers philosophy to shame. I felt like a complete slob.

Sitting in that circle of fashion models with my stomach sucked in, I quickly forgot all about the Year Without Clothes efforts I’d been applauding. I pushed away the commitment I’d made to spend as little as possible this year so we can finally get out of debt. That sense of satisfaction I’d felt when resolving to forego a new pair of heels this winter? Vanished without a trace. Because not only did I suddenly need new heels, I needed new boots and a new dress and a new coat and new sweaters and new scarves and new jewelry and new eye shadow and probably a new haircut too.

There in my chair, with no provocation other than my own self-imposed notion of inferiority, I turned into a miner. You know the kind—discontented, jealous, ready to uproot their lives for the shoddy promise of gold dust somewhere in a California stream. I needed to fit in, no matter how much cashmere sweater dresses cost.

Two and a half hours later, I pulled up in front of our gorgeous house. I tip-toed up the stairs and into the warm pool of light spilling from our bedroom door, where I was kissed like a movie star by my husband. We peeked into the next room where our girls slept with arms and legs flung on top of their covers, eyelashes resting serenely on cheeks. I put away my not-designer jeans and snuggled into bed with the love of my life as far-away lights danced like pixies on the wall. Peace tucked itself in around us; the knot in my stomach subsided. Through the soft night colors, I could see clearly again that happiness has nothing to do with new shoes or new hair or new anything. And just like that, my fashion crisis was solved.

15Oct

What if They’re Dark Chocolate Salted-Caramel Cupcakes?

Today was about laundry. Hanging loads on the wind-whipped line, sudsing tomato sauce stains in the bathroom sink, swapping my summer wardrobe for wool, tacking duvets into their covers, ironing, ironing, ironing. Yesterday was about terrifying (to me) doctor’s appointments and even more terrifying (to me) social commitments. The day before was about choosing renters for our lonely house in the States and channeling a hefty build-up of financial worries into legalspeak.

Recharge time has been conspicuously absent from the week, and my batteries are starting to flicker and buzz. I don’t like who I become when creativitiy gets pushed to the back burner by busy work; it’s like subsisting on cream of wheat while my untouched four-course dinner turns lukewarm and begins breeding salmonella. It makes me grouchy. (I’m always grouchy when I’m hungry.)

More than that, this sense of having my attention forced toward things that don’t particularly interest me feels for all the world like pressure. It’s not like laundry is especially stressful or someone’s holding a gun to my head over the wording in our rental contract. But still, I feel the heaviness of unmet expectations after a tiring day settling squarely on my chest.

So here’s my question: How do I…
A) Clone 24 hours into 48, or
B) Survive on less than a full night of sleep, or
C) Find a personal assistant who will work for cupcakes, or
D) Be content when the real world’s demands drown out impulses of the heart?

9Oct

Summery Blue

Only the moon knows this is October. It hovers each evening just above the horizon like a hot air balloon, buxom and orange enough to send any Halloween’s heart into a flutter. Pumpkins, it whispers. Cinnamon. Soft leather boots. Hayrides. Irrational nostalgia over the word “harvest.”

But the sky disagrees, still summery blue and floating on breeze the temperature of bathwater.

The trees disagree, supple green yogis all, without a single thought of gold on their minds.

My wardrobe disagrees, t-shirts and flip flops still leading the colorful parade from my closet.

The mosquitoes disagree as they circle in haphazard armies, swooping in for juicy bites of my bare feet.

Even the calendar disagrees, losing track of itself each balmy afternoon and drifting sun-drunk and blithe into the next day.

And though I’m vaguely unsettled by the confusion of seasons, summer merrily usurping the kingdom of shivers and rain… well, I can’t exactly say I mind.

8Oct

Lost Balloon

Of the four computers in the house, one — mine — has grown surly and recalcitrant as a teenager. One refuses to work unless the voodoo powers that be compel it. One is actually a television. And the fourth, the sluggish, crumb-sticky laptop that Natalie claims for her video games, is suddenly my best option. It has a backspace delay of several seconds (resulting in frequent retypings and gnashing of teeth), and my word processing program scares it into shock, but it’s the best I have. At least until the savings envelope quadruples in size and I can pick out a machine that doesn’t have peanut butter under the shift key.

But this isn’t really about computers. I am plenty familiar with the lifespan of technology, how it goes from chrome to rust in sixty, how new and obsolete are not mutually exclusive. I can’t really begrudge these indispensable frames of LCD and soldered brains, even while I’m mashing the manual reset and muttering bad words. They’re temporal. I get it.

The problem here is that my mind is treating our uncooperative computers as a roadblock. No, not a roadblock… more like an intruder, someone locked in my house keeping my things hostage while I watch bewildered through the windows. I’m embarrassingly helpless without my dear little organization system, my lists at fingertip access, my photos subcategorized and standing at attention. I hate having to wait when a sentence springs to mind. This, my reason mumbles wild-eyed, is why you don’t have a hope of writing. It’s right. Until I can get into some kind of happy routine, my stories will coalesce in the “Snippets” folder. Until I can confidently delegate minutes to exercise and food and fairy tales and playing author, I will continue to feel shut out of my own head. And until I have a trustworthy set-up for all my niggling technological needs, my schedule will keep wandering in a stupor.

At least, that’s how it seems right now. Inspiration formless and void, drifting like a lost balloon… My words temporarily homeless, carving out awkward niches to spend the night… October a quarter gone, still disoriented and unsustainable… It seems the question for this autumn is not how to adjust to a new way of life or how to recoup my fragmented emotions or even how to keep the kitchen floor clean (I’ve got that one covered for once), but how to stop pinning my writing aspirations on the technology that makes them possible.

Okay, so maybe this is about computers after all.

7Oct

Desperate Intentions

Another one of my friends just announced her divorce. That makes two in the last month, and I am suddenly out of breathable air.

I have no judgement for all my friends whose marriages have ripped in two… only a desperate sadness that applies as much to me as it does to them. I guess in my mind, we’ve always been in this together. Not just Dan and I, but every person who’s taken the brave step into lifelong commitment. Love strong enough to inspire vows is a marvel, and I adore the thought that at least one person treasures each of my married friends even more than I do. Other couples’ contentment is an airborne love potion for me. It sharpens my focus on my own marriage, on the immense value my husband holds, and I find myself snuggling deeper into security by association. If they can hold tightly to their bond over the years, so can we.

This is why, when yet another Facebook status changes to “single,” I feel like someone has shoved the word into my throat. I taste the tears, the painful timbre of shouted words, and the flat gray of hopelessness. As absurd and egotistical as it may seem, I feel as though I have been divorced as well, at least to a tiny extent. The solidity of my marriage is dependent on no one else’s; this, I know. Yet when another couple’s faith crumbles… it plants the suspicion that I’m wrong about committed love, its adaptability, its storehouse of second chances for happiness. Maybe love truly can grow brittle enough to be unmanageable.

I do my best to pluck these thoughts out the moment they sprout. Logic helps — the sturdy facts that I am myself, Dan is himself, and our marriage is simply ours. No one else’s handwritten vows. No one else’s wedding picture hanging above our bed. No one else’s arguments to slog through. No one else holding me as I fall asleep each night. Besides this, we have the strong relationships of our parents and grandparents to lean into when the wind picks up, as well as the support of so many dear friends. I am grateful beyond words for the trust that pulses every day through our clasped hands. Even if that cannot immunize me against the pain of others’ separation, it is enough to turn that heartache inward and use it to cling even more intentionally to my own brave and hopeful promise.

3Oct

Starry-Eyed

Sometimes,
I forget that marriage is my own real-life romance,
the same filigreed fabric woven with
our luminous first kiss,
vows handwritten as love letters,
anniversary trips to Venice, NYC, and Rome…

Sometimes,
among the bills and dirty diapers,
our orbits colliding within the same four walls,
marriage lowers its starry eyes
and takes on the antiseptic green of
an institution.

But sometimes,
when he’s away,
memories sift like sunlight through the holes:
glasses of wine in cobblestone cafés,
the living puzzle of our hands,
the core temperature of our last kiss melting memories of our first…

And sometimes,
I have to turn off the chick flicks halfway through
because glamorous actors
and heart-nudging storylines
are only a Netflix imitation of
this.

1Oct

No One Starved

This morning, I was up by 7:30. This counts as a significant Bethany accomplishment even with golden sunlight streaming in my windows, my husband bribing coaxing me out of bed with a hot cappuccino, and health on my side… none of which being the case today. The only thing streaming in my window this morning was afa, that dense Italian haze that transforms air into swamp water. Dan is out of town for work, taking his cappuccino-making skills and our family’s sense of solidarity with him. And a spiky bowling ball with aggression issues has taken up residence in my previously healthy skull. So in my estimation, being up at 7:30 this morning was a victory worthy of an epic Old English poem.

I say this because from a more objective standpoint, today qualified as an epic FAIL. I did not manage to get Natalie to school or to stop by the store for diapers or to leave the house at all. In fact, the three of us never made it out of our pajamas. And in the interest of full disclosure, I should confess that I slept so long after breakfast that lunch wasn’t made until 4 in the afternoon. (“Are you hungry?” I asked the girls, forcing my throbbing head upright and trying to beat back waves of child-neglect guilt. “Uh, sure, I guess,” answered Natalie as she sat back down to play computer games. “Melmo’s World?” suggested Sophie.)

In the end, no one starved. The girls played happily all day, and I kept the house passably clean. Bedtime was unexpectedly lovely—because the girls were already in their pajamas, we had some extra time to read stories and snuggle. I was even able to talk to Dan for a few minutes over Skype, and I realized that while I miss him to a rather ridiculous extent, I am capable of keeping the family afloat (if not exactly clothed) in his absence. I’m going to go ahead and chalk that one up as a significant accomplishment as well.

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