2Mar

Fortune

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 4 Comments

We’ve reached the best moment–the drowsy hum just after a huge Italian lunch but before espressos. The scent of coffee is already twisting through the air in those soft, bohemian swirls artists love to paint, and sunlight settles warm and heavy on our eyelids. Now, a deep breath, a half-hearted effort to stay awake… One more nibble of dark chocolate…

It’s a time machine, this moment, like a Dear Diary peek into the future. It’s a snippet of home video, showing our girls grown up into their own beauty and our little family traditions as familiar as furry slippers. It’s a glimpse into the connectedness we share, hot coffee together after lunch in twenty, thirty, forty years.

Maybe it’s just a drowsy mid-afternoon daydream… but I’ll take it as my fortune. Any day.

29Feb

More-Beautiful

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

It happens the first time in complete darkness. The cell quivers, stretches, and divides itself in two. That’s all, but it’s everything–the hint of beginning life, deep in the secret shelter of your belly.

The second time it happens is under bright lights, expectant faces all around. Your cells waver, strain, hesitate like water droplets on the tip of a leaf. Then, in a rolling burst of released tension, you find yourself divided eternally in two.

I believe there are few aches in this world as profound as having a baby, and none as glorious. I’ve always felt that ache to a small extent at the symphony or the museum, feeling my heart lift out of my body, simultaneously wanting to call it back and wanting to relinquish it to that more-beautiful realm. That’s what the instant after giving birth is like, magnified to an unfathomable degree.

You gaze at her cotton-candy cheeks, her precious blip of a nose, her watery eyes. You can’t stop gazing, trying to find that part of yourself that separated with her. It’s there, of course, but only for an instant. Your features and her dad’s pass in and out of hers like a mirage, but in the end, the only face you see is her own. You nuzzle that warm crease where her neck will one day be, and you relinquish your heart to this more-beautiful place. Eagerly.

Of course, real life has a way of diluting wonder, or maybe just coating it in a layer of explosive baby poop. Your little miracles track ketchup across the newly-mopped floor and throw up all over your favorite sweater and WON’T GO POTTY!!! and scream because a milk-dispensing device is not in their mouth at that exact instant. They dump out a box of marbles behind the sofa and wake up before you’re ready and horrifically mistreat their diapers. You find yourself experiencing mother-pattern baldness.

The precious ache, though? It’s never gone–not really, not in those quiet moments when your mind runs wild with What Ifs. What if she never wakes up? What if she gets hurt by a friend? What if she drifts away from me one day? And oh, what if she had ended up with some other family? What if she had never been mine, my little princess? That’s motherlove, the real, painful, cosmically-magnified ache. That’s how you know your heart has settled in the more-beautiful realm for good.

28Feb

Up Yours

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

I’ve never been afraid of a blank page. It’s really more like a mirror to me, a place to sit and breathe and shed the daily lint collected in my mind… then look deep into the clearness of my reflection and write what I see. This has been my daily ritual for months now — tucking the girls in for their naps, relishing an after-lunch espresso and “Scrubs” with Dan, and then settling into that quiet part of my heart where words happen. Coffee-stained clarity.

I’ve stayed away from blank pages the last few days, though, quite suddenly caught in a tangle of insecurity. Maybe it’s my old journal entries that I pulled out over the weekend–my teenage patheticness slamming into me like an anvil. Maybe it’s the remark from a friend that made me feel guilty for being so self-absorbed. Maybe it’s the six or seven hours of sleep each night when my body actually needs fourteen.

I’m back on my computer this afternoon, tentatively, and only because when I listed my reasons for not writing anymore (I’m pathetic, I have nothing valuable to say, and no one wants to hear more about me anyway), Dan simply said, “I do.”* Well actually, that’s not the only reason. It was just the catalyst. The other reason is my daughters. I want them to be able to read my thoughts, years from now, and understand who their mom was, is. I think if I had gotten that opportunity with my mother, many unfortunate circumstances would have turned out differently. I intend never to take communication with my precious girls for granted, and I see writing about myself now as one way to protect our futures.

So. Up yours, insecurity! And even though I now want to apologize for saying “up yours,” I won’t, because confidence is valuable. Believing in my own motivations is valuable. Even embracing my inner pathetic teenager is valuable.** (Yes, yes it is.) So stay tuned, because my blank-page, espresso-scented séances are far from over.

*No, I won’t share him with you.

**At least in the sense that you will soon get to read VERY DRAMATIC excerpts from my fourteen-year-old tragic love saga, as chronicled in no less than five journals. Look for Mortification Mondays, coming to a blog near you!

25Feb

Tribute

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Today is the most perfect tribute to springtime I’ve ever experienced. Those of you still slodging through gunmetal winters, take a deep breath and imagine…
Pastel-tinted sunbeams bounding through your open window.
Tufts of sky-scented breeze rolling end-over-end like cotton balls at play.
Ice cream swirls of pink and white dripping from shy tree buds.
Bird chirps like flutes and oboes and tinkling celestas, piping grace notes over the mid-day traffic.
Fresh laundry line-dancing (ha!) for the joy of warmth and light and newly unfolded air.

Springtime in Texas, where I grew up, is really more a melty form of winter. The sky takes on the surly color of old pipes, leaking gray water continuously until summer hits it suddenly with a wrench. Texas never really gets cold, but its Februaries and Marches suck out inner warmth like zombies, complete with the drooling and the clammy outstretched fingers and the diseased-cow moaning. (“Uuuuunnnnnnnhhhhhhhh.” I have no nostalgia whatsoever for the sound of spring.)

This winter has been a rodeo for me… and not just me, I suspect. One of our friends told us the other night that he has two wives–a cold-weather one and a warm-weather one. I understand, though I often wish I didn’t. Surviving winter can be a fight, a constant bundling and layering and gritting teeth; it’s a struggle to unclench, a struggle to thaw. However, when the outside world suddenly softens and blooms, I feel myself relaxing. My pent-up tensions drift away on a stray breeze. I lighten up.

There may be a month of winter left, but my mind is bursting ahead into spring. I’m already thinking in terms of strawberries and open windows, flower pots and Easter egg hunts, swinging with Natalie and picking daisies with Sophie. I’m taking the heavy blankets off our bed and planning picnics, and oh, it’s a much-needed loveliness.

What springtime hopes are warming your minds today?

22Feb

The Terrific Twos

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Yesterday, Natalie walked around the house with my earphones, looking like a miniature iPod commercial, and I had to slam my head in the door to remember that she’s only two. I forget pretty often, to tell you the truth. What has possessed my child to run in shrieking, geometrically challenged circles for the last hour? How is the word “potty” still an emotional stumbling block in this house? And why won’t she just drive herself to the park for once? I watch her sweeping the kitchen or reading stories to her sister, casually brushing hair out of her face, observing her world with deeply intelligent eyes and a running commentary full of words like “actually” and “patella,” and I can hardly believe she’s not yet twenty-five.

But then she eats my birth control the second my back is turned, and she liberally applies baby powder to every square inch of her room, and she loudly sings, “I have in my pocket!” until I ask her what and subsequently turn back time to take “Daddy’s shave” away from her before any fingers are severed. She cries about the injustice of breakfast. Lollipops cause her to spasm with joy. She marches around the living room chanting, “Eighteen, nineteen, tenteen, eleventeen, twelveteen, three!” In those moments, I re-remember that she’s two…

Lollipop love

…and why that rocks my socks off.

21Feb

Good Things

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

(Because who wants to stop at five?)

1. White chocolate yogurt heaped with toasted coconut flakes. (How can one get addicted to something as theoretically revolting as yogurt?)
2. The soundtrack to “Once” — an emotionally genuine masterpiece.
3. Sophie grinning at Natalie, and Natalie happily reporting, “Him loves me!”
4. Electric lemon sunshine, making me want to kiss global warming right on the mouth.
5. The writer’s strike being over (“Chuck” withdrawal is painful–think amputation).
6. Both girls letting out simultaneous sailor burps this morning and then cracking up together.
7. Living room dance parties, which, sold in pill form, would be the world’s most effective antidepressant.
8. The first fluttery kicks of new inspiration.

What good things has today brought you?

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