Tag: Intention

14Nov

The Long Exhale

It’s here, in the collective slump after the girls have been tucked into bed and the dishes washed (or ignored, as was almost certainly the case tonight), when the clock picks up a stray echo from the shadows and my thoughts begin to puddle, it’s here in the long exhale of evening that I most often wonder if I’m any closer to becoming myself than I was one year ago, or two, or five.

I can’t remember a time when this question of identity wasn’t waiting under cover of tiredness to command my attention. It carries a pocket reel of my day and winds through it in reverse. There I am, tripping my way through a chapter of Pippi Longstocking in Italian as the girls color snowflakes and pajama cuffs purple. There I am paying bills, scanning documents, and rearranging euros among spreadsheet boxes as if their military gray borders will hold our finances in place. There I am pushing a grocery cart between produce bins of green, all the while pining for the green of the park and that elusive half hour just for running. There I am, pen in hand at the tip of dawn, trying to make out if my words will fly in formation or startle into a flurry of nothingness today.

Intentional living has never been the problem. I was raised on it, taught to imprison every minute with my mind and reform it into something of eternal significance, and that pressure to force every moment into a holy mold still bullies the way I think. It is exasperatingly difficult for me to simply appreciate life in all its organic, beauty-steeped mystery. Cultivating wonder can be as challenging for me as cramming for a final, and cultivating self is even further from the comforts of routine and right answers.

I’m on my own trail, though; I can tell. My feet are finding familiarity in new landscapes, a heady déjà vu, and I have enough clarity left over to look my question of identity in the eyes when he finishes the reel, thank him for his concern, and wish him goodnight without ever needing to mold our moment into an answer.

11Jul

Re-stitched

One one hand, the ER was not where I’d imagined spending the evening of our 9th anniversary. Sure, the colored reflectors on the operating room lights scattered a certain romantic sparkle through the air, and we had some special moments answering the doctors in two-part harmony. “Which one of you is Bassett?” “We both are.” “Yes, but which one is here for treatment?” “We both are.” Still, we probably wouldn’t have handpicked the emergency room for our anniversary getaway.

On the other hand, how better to commemorate this perpetual adventure of a marriage than to get matching stitches for our matching arm wounds which will be matching badass scars by this time next year?

Yeah, I’ve got nothing either.

It started at midnight, the first moon-slivered seconds of our anniversary, with a tremendous crash just beyond our bedroom door. We (I) were still skittish from the night before when our television had started blaring in the opposite end of the house leading us (me) to imagine burglars hiding in every sock drawer, so I felt totally justified in jumping up and brandishing the first weapon available. Which was… our sheet. I must have looked very fierce indeed, terror-frozen at the foot of our bed with a fistful of linens.

Dan, possessing all of our collective presence of mind and movement of limb at that moment, dashed out of the room to investigate and soon reported that, contrary to popular opinion, we were not under mortar attack. I surrendered my sheet and came out to see what would only ever under those exact circumstances be considered a welcoming sight—a bathroom covered wall to wall in foamy brown liquid and shards of glass.

To those of you still reading, it’s not as gross as it sounds. Promise. My husband brews artisan beer as a hobby and had recently bottled a batch of lovely dark stout to finish fermenting on a bathroom shelf, not realizing that the temperature would creep up to dangerous levels. A bottle had exploded, and despite making a royal mess, it smelled delicious and wasn’t a grenade-launching burglar. I’ve never been so happy to scrub down a bathroom at midnight.

Exploding beer 1

We crawled into bed an hour later, kissed sleepily, and closed our eyes just in time for another explosion to rock the house. Crap. We checked on the damage—at least three bottles this time—and decided to just cordon off the crime scene for the night. By the third explosion, we barely even stirred on our pillows. Any number of home invaders could have blown down our door that night without encountering so much as a single belligerent bedsheet. Prospective villains, take note.

We didn’t really want to spend our anniversary cleaning double malt off the bathroom ceiling, but sometimes life requires maturity. Which is why we waited until nearly suppertime to start. (Why else did God invent second bathrooms if not to allow for slovenly cleaning habits?) Now, some people might have reasoned that walking into a room full of spontaneously exploding glass necessitated flak gear or at least a healthy sense of caution, but then again, some people don’t get to experience unforgettable 9th anniversary bonding moments like the one just ahead.

It happened while I was kneeling over the bottom shelf of bottles hosing away glass chips and yeasty goodness. I didn’t realize that the shelf above it was getting nudged off its pegs until I suddenly found myself trying to catch a dozen beer bottles as they exploded. In my face. Demonstrating the same quick reflexes and superior thinking that I had the night before, I froze in place… that place being a front row seat to my own dissection.

Fortunately, survival of the fittest is trumped by survival of the married, and Dan yanked me onto my feet and toward the door. Just as I was registering that my arm kind of maybe really hurt, he made a sound indicating that some part of his body kind of maybe really did too. We stumbled into the other bathroom where the following half hour remains a bit of a blur. At some point, a pair of blood-splattered jeans ended up in the laundry, and we found a red scatterplot across the mirror the next day, so you know it had to be fun.

My arms, legs, and shoulders were peppered with tiny nicks, but there wasn’t a single splinter of glass lodged in my skin—a mercy. Even more remarkably, my face was untouched. Not a mark. I didn’t recognize the miracle of this until much later because that was about the time Dan realized that a few Angry Birds Band-Aids and wishful thinking were no match for the slices on our biceps. Always a people pleaser, I myself was reluctant to head to the hospital. In my mind, the ER is for head injuries and heart attacks; wouldn’t the doctors frown on us for taking up their valuable time with something as mundane as cuts?

As it turns out, there’s a generally accepted rule of thumb about this very situation: If you can see your own muscle, get thee to the ER.

Exploding beer 2

A mere hour and a half later (I know!), we were sewed up and headed back home, five stitches apiece and gratefulness all around—for the neighbor who took in our girls with thirty seconds’ advance notice, for the friend who cleaned up every bit of broken glass in our absence, for the spouse cracking jokes and grimacing in sympathy across the triage room, and for the divine current of goodness carrying us not only through our 9th anniversary but to it as well.

This last year has been one of our hardest as a couple, and I know that probably sounds worth an eye roll or two in light of the marriage letters and the Dear Nearlywed and the happy Instagram feeds. None of that is an act; we are happy, but some days, it’s a happiness hard won. Some weeks, life pressure turns into a geyser under our feet and we jump in opposite directions without meaning to. Some months, we can’t really tell whether the intensity we’re channeling is primarily push or pull, both instincts being so strong and our minds so weary. We’ve spent so much of the last year facing obstacles and scanning for miracles that we’ve often forgotten how to look at each other, how to look and really see.

This is why our 9th anniversary came as such a gift. Fresh out of the emergency room, twinges of pain reminded me of the pain avoided—the deep mercy of an untouched face, of blood beating soundly inside our two skins. And then this interpersonal rawness after an intense year… it floods me with gratefulness for the new bonds we’ve forged throughout, the promises kept, and the sacred still of forgiveness.

I’m not used to picturing us with scars, and my mind keeps reverting back to the way we used to be like a dog who can’t understand its owners have moved. I can never adjust to new realities without a ridiculous amount of head-swiveling. However, the new us is quickly growing on me. This is the year we start rocking the scars, and honestly, I love that we share these testaments to coming undone and being restitched. Even the ones on our arms.

Exploding beer 3

(All pictures by Dan, who had the presence of mind to take them)

19Jul

Sultry Sprinkles

I wanted my head to be in the game today, I really did. After all, one’s birthday is a rare creature, and I fully intended to grab mine by the horns and ride it for all it’s worth. However, this blanket of summer heat with its cicada underbuzz has lulled me into a daze that not even a fresh supply of Illy can penetrate.

I wanted to recap my birthday list from last year, to share the happinesses that have come from living with intention—the surprising taste of bruschetta topped with chocolate shavings and olive oil, Natalie’s rapt smile as I read through Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a vertical strawberry patch flourishing on our balcony, pen-pal correspondence with a long-lost friend. I have loved challenging myself with each little adventure, but I can’t find the focus to lay out a whole year for display right now.

Ergo, all I have for you now is Birthday List version 3.0. Soon, I’ll have some camping stories spruced up and ready to share. Sooner than that (I hope), I’ll reclaim my brain power from the sultry weight of July. For now, though, I simply have a new year sprinkled liberally with hopes:

~ Host an all-tapas dinner party
~ Get lost in a field of sunflowers
~ Read a novel in Italian
~ Get over my nervousness of playing piano in public
~ Complete an unfinished project
~ Cook an entire meal of Indian food
~ Face a fear
~ Organize a night out with girlfriends
~ Keep my beloved two-year-old mint alive all winter
~ Write a poem
~ Make friends with my midriff again
~ Help the girls start their own Daily Dose of Beauty lists
~ Learn how to make tiger bread
~ Conquer the subjunctive tense once and for all
~ Reach for something that feels impossible
~ Call up another mom from the girls’ school to arrange a playdate
~ Make pickles from scratch
~ Instigate a knock-down, drag-out, rocking-awesome living room dance party
~ Publish something
~ Invite guests over at least once a week
~ Teach Natalie to read
~ Surprise someone with kindness
~ Laugh so hard I cry

16Mar

From Doorstops to Dishes

“The dishes!” I wail, glancing into the kitchen on my way to bed. “Why are there always and forever dishes needing to be washed?”

Dan replies kindly: “Because we use them.”

“Oh. Right.”

~~~

On Valentine’s Day, 2004, I kicked my brand new husband out of the house for four hours so I could make Chicken Parmesan as a surprise. To this day, I have no idea how a pile of chicken-topped spaghetti could possibly have taken four hours, but it’s fair to say I had no idea what I was doing. (The consistency of said chicken, which could have better served as packing material, agrees.) However, I so longed to make something beyond our standard fare of Campbell’s and Kraft. Surely, surely, with a little effort and the clucking, grandmotherly help of that red plaid cook book, culinary pleasure could be found in our dining room.

We ate Taco Bell the next day.

A lot changes when one moves to a country without fast food, though. When we first arrived in Italy, I mostly fixed packages of risotto mix and frozen chicken cordon bleu, and we picked up pizza a few times a week. However, I took mental notes each time we were invited to an Italian meal. One friend taught me how to make melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi; another gave me her recipe for amazing oven-roasted potatoes. I learned—thanks to my longsuffering husband—how to make cappuccinos, and I started auditioning new dessert recipes with his co-workers each week. I made a New Year’s resolution to learn how to cook meat so that people would rather eat it than use it as a doorstop. The next year, with a tasty repertoire of brining and braising techniques, I made a New Year’s resolution to make friends with vegetarian fare. I started jotting down menus and grocery lists for the first time in my life.

This year, my attention is drawn more toward my desk than toward the kitchen, but the process of cooking still engages my heart in a way I couldn’t have imagined six years ago. There’s something sacred in the challenge of planning meals to nourish my family’s bodies and souls while guarding our time and finances. There is mindfulness in rubbing fragrant herbs into a pot of soup, serenity in rolling pastry dough. Food preparation is no longer just a means to survival—it is a classroom, a laboratory, and an art studio. A love song. A risk, an exploit, a gathering of the usual five senses plus a few more. A thrice-daily dose of beauty to share and savor.

It is also, as reluctant as I may be to admit this, worth every single always-and-forever-dirty dish.

28Jan

Fireworks

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.)

19Jul

Era

A few days ago, had you been paying careful attention, you may have heard the universe take a deep breath and gently release an era to extinction. The following puff of breeze was the door to our shoebox apartment closing, and the electric crackle in the air was the current of joy waiting just inside our new fairy tale house. We are surrounded by boxes and have bruises in strange places, but are hopelessly happy to be here. (Pictures will be coming once we shed the cardboard décor.)

And it’s my birthday. I couldn’t ask for more in this abundant world of ours than waking up (gloriously late) this morning to birdsong and sunlight pooling on my bed, to PDA from my husband and sticky-sweet kisses from my girls, and to home. A trip downtown for outdoor jazz and Venetian ice cream didn’t hurt though. I’ve also loved looking through my birthday list from last year, seeing how very many things are checked off (all except 3 ½, if you want to get technical) and how much delight they added to the last twelve months. It seems a birthday tradition has begun.

Birthday gelato

Wishing on each unborn day of next year to:

~ Get lost in a field of sunflowers

~ Host a fabulous dinner party

~ Make millefoglie from scratch

~ Go to a concert with my husband

~ Put our new guest room to use

~ Try a new food

~ Respond to every e-mail in my backlogged inbox

~ Find an agent already

~ Visit another country for the first time

~ Organize a night out with girlfriends

~ Find the perfect pair of jeans

~ Surprise someone with kindness

~ Read a dozen good books

~ Grow some kind of fruit on our balcony

~ Re-learn obscure Italian verb tenses… and try not to forget them again

~ Work out regularly

~ Create a unique dessert

~ Eliminate holiday stress in favor of holiday cheer

~ Find my daily groove

~ Write something from true heart-compulsion

~ Restore a lost relationship

~ Read through a chapter book with Natalie

~ Find my soul mate in stationary and write newsy letters on it

[And the carry-overs from last year:]

~ Learn one beautiful piano piece well enough to play by memory

~ Start college funds for the girls

~ Submit at least ten short items for publication

~ Finish my book

Here’s to a new house, a new year, and new era. Cheers!

20Nov

Pomegranate Seeds

The girls are finally in bed, and I’m sinking into the couch with half a beer and two fresh clementines, impulsively ignoring the to-do list that I wrote in flowery cursive to make mopping seem more appealing. (It didn’t.) These November days have been studded with these impulses, little sudden choices in favor of irresponsibility. A ten-minute detour at the park on the way home from school. A midnight game of mancala in bed when Dan and I are too restless to sleep. Guests on a whim. Dissecting a gorgeous red pomegranate instead of ironing. A second cup of tea. Rocking-chair rides with tired little girls, wrapped up in my arms with nowhere else to be.

To tell the truth, I feel embarrassingly petty writing this. Something in my soul believes, deeply, that it was meant to change the world. I feel it in music, I snag against it in great literature, I catch a glimpse of it on perfect blue-skied mornings. And yet, here I am coloring in my November with impulses. Pomegranate seeds.

But, for reasons I can hardly explain, I’m satisfied. I’ve settled into a rhythm of peace—or at least an armed neutrality—with housecleaning, and the cogs of our little family purr smoothly again. (Clean floors cover a multitude of sins, you know.) And my little spur-of-the-moment decisions toward happiness have put more than a year between now and last November. In fact, greatness may not be as far away as I once thought, wispy shreds of a future. I’m finding out that it’s more like pomegranate seeds and heart’s impulses. Like being completely present for one of my girls’ giggles. Like hopping off the beaten path with my husband. Like choosing deep breaths and whimsy. And really, that’s not so petty at all.

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