Author: Bethany

28Feb

A Daily Dose of Beauty ~ February 2010

February 1st – Waking up just before dawn to a snow-sprinkled fairyland.

February 2nd – Watching Sophie’s baby videos with her and adoring her smallness—then and now.

Watching Sophie's baby videos

February 3rd – Taking a five-minute family walk around the neighborhood and being stopped by one, two, three cars of friends saying hi and offering a ride.

February 4th – Giving up delusions of a productive sick day and snuggling into bed with Sophie to nap the morning away.

February 5th – Discovering a wonderful e-mail from an old friend hidden away in my Junk folder.

February 6th – Listening to Natalie spin elaborate stories about the princesses she was coloring all afternoon.

February 7th – Spotting four perfect new buds on my red daisy plant.

February 8th – Braving a couple of Old Testament chapters and finding only goodness inside.

February 9th – Having a lovely, long conversation with a friend who’s taken years to open up.

February 10th – Reliving the joy of marker on my hands and glitter in my hair as I helped the girls make valentines.

Natalie ready to glitterfy her hearts

February 11th – Hearing from two different long-lost friends out of the serendipitous blue.

February 12th – Tasting snowflakes with the girls and getting caught up in their excitement. (S: “Hooray! Hooray! Sophie excited!” N: ::bubbles over with laughter:: S: “Sophie thinking about Missmas trees!” N: ::jumps up and down for joy::)

February 13th – Getting treated to a twenty minute concert about tenniiissss, we should play tennniiiissss, but be caarrefuulllll when you play tennniiissss because of the bad bugs who like to plaaaaayyyyyy TEEEENNNNNIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSS!

February 14th – Playing LIFE as a family to wind up Valentine’s Day and giggling over the girls’ name choices. (Sophie christened her husband, three sons, and four daughters each “Sophie Bassett!”; Natalie chose “Prunes” for her husband and “Creams” for their son.)

February 15th – Listening to thousands of birds chirp and giggle as they spun in circles outside, punch-drunk on sunshine.

February 16th – Having a hug for dessert.

February 17th – Starting the day with a family snuggle in bed.

February 18th – Being in our ailing car with the girls as it breathed its last… right in front of our house… the same day we were finally able to get a bank account to buy a new car… and realizing God might have had a hand in all the timing.

February 19th – Despite all our Valentine’s plans being derailed, having one of the best dates ever at the living room bar with Dan.

February 20th – Enjoying every minute our family car-shopping day. (The girls’ favorite part? Careening around the biggest car lot in a golf cart. The parents’ favorite part? Finding the perfect car for the perfect price.)

February 21st – Wondering over our future and feeling peace despite the uncertainty.

February 22nd – Getting in and out of the post office in under a minute – a miracle!

February 23rd – Beating the winter blahs with a personal concert by Natalie and super-speed Giro Giro Tondo* until we all collapsed laughing on the rug. (* Italy’s “Ring Around the Rosie”)

February 24th – Grooving to ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” while hanging laundry outside for the first time this year.

February 25th – Posing the girls on top of our old car for goodbye pictures just as the next-door-neighbor, who already thinks we’re crazy, walked outside.

Goodbye old car 2

February 26th – Trying to teach “Jesus Loves Me” to Sophie, who very sweetly (and wildly out-of-tune) crooned, “Yeeeessss, Jesus loves you! Yeeeessss, Jesus love you!”

February 27th – Taking our new car for a spin around Lago Trasimeno with the windows down and the stereo thumping.

February 28th – Giggling our goodnights with two small girls who still love to be tickled.

26Feb

A Miracle in Third Gear

The thing about miracles is that they fade over time. The more I run my fingers over the fabric of a perfect memory, wondering at the embroidery, feeling the threadcount of joy, the less color it has to offer until it becomes just another beloved quilt in the bottom of a trunk… and I start to forget that miracles exist. Until a new one falls bright-side-up in my lap.

Yesterday’s miracle started three Octobers ago…

Dan, Natalie, myself, and my prodigious baby bump had recently moved to Italy (after a summer that gave itself calluses fixing us up with miracles). We had a little apartment near Dan’s workplace but no car, so on this particular evening, we had taken a bus to the grocery store. We loaded the bottom of Natalie’s stroller with packages of diapers, cartons of milk, and a whole crate of mineral water before slinging as many bags as possible over the handles. My superhero husband shouldered the rest, and Natalie chattered two-year-old pleasantries while we made our way out of the store and up the hill to the bus stop—an endeavor that made me wonder if babies could pop out of their mothers’ straining neck muscles. Getting the loaded stroller and all our purchases onto the bus turned out to be something of a spectator sport, but at last we got ourselves settled in. Hard part over. All we had to do was relax and enjoy the ride home, albeit with the eyes of the entire bus on us crazy Americans and our menagerie of bags.

Two blocks from our stop, the bus took a hard left turn. In one dreadful moment, Natalie’s heavy-laden stroller fell over and our grocery bags flew down the aisle. Everyone on the bus let out a collective gasp and watched with various degrees of shock as Dan and I scrambled to right the stroller and comfort our terrified toddler. While I tried to balance Natalie on my massively pregnant lap feeling like the worst mother in all of human history, Dan tracked down peaches and jars of tomato sauce from under people’s seats. Any hope of dignity had fled the scene.

After making it home, checking Natalie over for bumps, and laughing a little ruefully over the whole thing, we came to a decision: We needed a car. Neither our produce nor our self-esteem could handle another bus episode like that (as if our impending Sophie weren’t reason enough), so we forked over €1000 for a rather old, rather used station wagon.

The idea from the beginning was that we would drive the car until it died and then get a better one. The clutch was already going, so it wouldn’t be long, but we expected to have all our legal paperwork and an Italian bank account  within six months so we could get ourselves a proper family car. Only… the paperwork was delayed. And delayed. And then lost in a governmental black hole for two years. Meanwhile, our temporary car cheerfully zipped us around town. Okay, so one side-view mirror fell off (twice), and the other had to be held on with duct tape, and the gear shift knob tore off, and the trunk hydraulics broke, and the indoor lights didn’t turn on, and some days the hand brake wouldn’t work, and the battery had to be replaced after a harrowing experience in Rome with Rachelle, and we received dire warnings about the clutch going at a moment’s notice.

However, the car was unswervingly faithful to us and our lifestyle. It took us over ancient cobblestones, up the Dolomites, along the Amalfi Coast, through Austrian Alps, into Welsh fields. It accompanied us on countless day trips, on trains and ferries and country roads, and on our fantastically insane road trip to Ireland and back. We asked more of that car than we had any right to expect, but it always came through.

This brings us to last week when Dan finally received the document we’ve been waiting on this whole time and opened a local bank account. (Hooray! we say; also, How could that take 2½ years?!) The following afternoon, I was driving the girls home from the grocery store when the clutch started sticking, then growling and nipping and digging in its heels. It abruptly refused to go into gear anymore the moment I pulled up to our driveway. I shook for half an hour afterwards thinking of what could have happened had the car died a moment earlier and felt quite sure a divine power was looking out for us. But the miracle wasn’t quite finished yet.

We found our dream car over the weekend (at an incredible price, thanks to a dealership goof). The salesman agreed to take our old car as a trade-in, and we got the call yesterday that everything was ready for the switch. We arranged for the insurance to be changed over at 6:30; the problem was that Dan didn’t get home from his business meeting until 7. And that wasn’t the only problem. Possibly more concerning than the lack of insurance was the lack of gas in the car, and more concerning still was the stuck clutch. However, we had to get the thing to the dealership, so Dan managed to jam the car into third gear and set off into rush hour traffic. Without gas. Without insurance. Without being able to drive in anything but third and neutral.

And then the clutch bottomed out.

When Dan recounted the story to me later, I had a heart attack at this point. Rush hour traffic is brutal around here, and there are no road shoulders. Even with him talking in front of me, I was sure he had ended up in a mangled heap on some roundabout with the coverless gear shift sticking through an artery. I couldn’t look as he continued telling me how he could no longer take the car out of third or take his foot off the gas, and the engine was fighting for life in the bumper-to-bumper traffic… how he made it through the big roundabout but nearly stalled navigating the U-turn entrance to the dealership… and how the car shuddered to a final stop in the one open parking spot. A miracle.

We took our new adventuremobile out for a family joy ride later, but my thoughts were still with our old car. As I saw it, the timings of the past week could not have been coincidental, and I could feel the residual glow of the supernatural touching an otherwise mundane circumstance. It was a moment for feeling the thanks I couldn’t quite articulate. And with the texture of our experience still palpable and lush in my mind, I wished one thing above all else: that I could see the saleman’s face the moment he tries putting our old car into reverse.

Goodbye old car 2

Rest in peace, sweet car. You’ve earned it.

P.S. – Hello, sexy.

24Feb

Where Art Thou, Orlagh

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”
~ Wm. Shakespeare

I was late the day they assigned muses. By the time I rushed in, damp hair undermining any credibility to my car trouble story, Mrs. Butterworth and Lemony Snicket were already taken. So were the Woset in my Closet, the world’s hottest chili pepper, and Frida Kahlo’s eyebrow… and despite my hopeful nods toward the corner where Mr. Darcy sat brooding, I ended up with Tinkerbell’s hormonal older sister Orlagh.

Like all fairy folk, Orlagh is drawn to sunbeams and jewel tones, sugar crystals and laughing water, words that twist and melt and sparkle on the tongue; however, neither her name nor her thyroid is doing her any favors. She gets overwhelmed easily. Weeks strung along with gray days send her into a sulk. She tends to get bogged down in jealousy when she should be inspired, and she is endlessly worried over which color petals go with her skin tone (periwinkle makes her face look puffy, buttercup washes her out).

She refuses to show up without caffeine, no matter how many times I reminder her it’s an unhealthy habit. She won’t come in to work on the weekends, and she often decides she needs a few hours of beauty sleep just as I’m sitting down to meet with her. She abandons perfectly delicious sentences to moon over Peter Pan. Head colds and out-of-town guests provide equal rationale for her to jet off to Maui without so much as an “aloha!” and when she returns—sometimes weeks later—her telltale tan fades more quickly than her reluctance.

However, beneath all its moody layers, Orlagh’s heart is deep and lovely. Many of my happiest hours have been spent creating with her, brainstorming in whispers and coaxing letters into life. When I have time (and adequate caffeine in my system) and her hormones have a temporary foothold, we work so well together that it’s more like playing. I like her. All except for the jet-setting and flaky work ethic and downward emotional spirals. And that awful name. But besides that, I really have grown fond of my muse.

So if you’re reading this, Orlagh, I’d love for you to come on home now. No combination of seasonal sicknesses and dead cars and weepy two-year-olds and allergy immunotherapy treatments and unfortunate bedtimes is enough to make me stop wanting you around. In fact, I’m craving another of our morning-long creative sessions. I miss you, and I promise not to say anything about your extended absence if you bring me back a piña colada and maybe a cluster of freshwater pearls. (Tiny ones, in graduated shades of orange and brown. Strung on silk. With a silver pendant.)

“Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem

And gives thy pen both skill and argument.”
~ Wm. Shakespeare

“And if thou canst thy fickleness outgrow
Or thy vacations halt, I shall, methinks,
Back to the reassignment center go
And hire as my new muse Jar Jar Binks.”
~ Me

17Feb

Sugar and Spice

When I was growing up, I wanted a sister more than I wanted sugar.

Let that sink in a moment. Dessert in our house was all-natural peanut butter mixed with carob—a substance which may actually be dirt—and such was my longing for sugar that I would eat friends’ bubblegum toothpaste. A grandfatherly type at church would occasionally pass out those cinnamon hard candies blistering in red cellophane wrappers, and I would choke every one down despite the open flames in my mouth. I spent 95% of my babysitting money on contraband Girl Scout Cookies and swiped sweetener packets from restaurants when no one was looking. I dreamed about sugar.

But I wanted a sister even more. An older sister would have been ideal, but even in preschool I grasped the chronological difficulties that presented. A younger sister would do as long as she was close enough in age to share clothes and secrets and hobbies with me. I had it all planned—we would whisper under covers late at night, play pranks on our brothers, swap Lip Smackers, and grow up best friends for life. She would understand me as only a sister could. And eventually, we would marry two brothers and live happily ever after on adjacent horse ranches in the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

However, the sister position stayed vacant until I was old enough to babysit her. While she and I have always had a good relationship, my sisterhood fantasies never had a chance to materialize before I left home… and the more people I met, the less faith I had that close, secret-sharing family ties existed. By the time Natalie was born, I had all but forgotten the allure of sisterhood.

Until our next baby’s 20-week ultrasound during which we learned she was a Sophie and not an Ebeneezer*. Dan and I had both suspected a baby boy was brewing, so the news rocked my perspective into fairy tale territory. Sisters. Shoe swappers, secret whisperers, dance partners, goodnight huggers, lifelong friendship givers.

My daughters may still be young, and they may fight multiple times a day over who’s the princess and who’s the ballerina, and I doubt brother-husbands with horse ranches are in their future**, but at least one of my childhood theories has landed on proof: Sisters are better than sugar.

*Note to Social Services: We never actually picked out a boy’s name. You can put down your pitchforks now.

**Though I haven’t lost faith in the Big Rock Candy Mountains just yet.

8Feb

Heart Extension

Dear girls of mine,

I saw today that the younger sister of one of my high school friends just had a baby. She’s in her early twenties now—no longer the bubbly little girl I remember—and is unmarried. The father scuttled away upon hearing she was pregnant, and she’s now raising her darling little daughter on her own with more intention and joy than I see in most parents. She’s also terrified… but fiercely in love with her baby and determined to view the situation as a the most beautiful kind of gift. Life. Dimpled wrists. An extension of her heart to cherish.

What broke my heart is the way others have responded to her, particularly her own family and their Christian compadres. They have told her she has no right to celebrate this new life, that she had no right to take gorgeous maternity pictures or keep the baby or think that God loves her in spite of a surprise pregnancy. They followed standard etiquette for conservative types and abandoned her to the “consequences of her actions.” (Such a stone-hearted phrase, that; it practically comes with its own gavel and Arctic wind.) Instead of congratulations or compassion or newborn diapers or listening ears, they offered scorn. And this in the name of a Jesus who told a woman caught in adultery, “Does no one condemn you?… Neither do I.”

Thinking about their reaction makes me furious until I consider how marginalized and unloved someone would have to feel to treat others with such supercilious contempt. Graceless actions come from graceless hearts, and I suppose this girl’s family deserves pity more than hate mail. All the same, I hope they one day realize what they missed out on.

(Like this


Precious toes

and this

Happy girl 2

and nibbling soft cheeks and snuggling a tiny, trusting person to sleep and receiving slobber-kisses and celebrating milestones and building a relationship and getting to watch a precious new story unfold.)

However, the words weighing on my heart right now are for you. I want you to know that your dad and I love you. Unconditionally. This means our love stays even if you reject us, commit a crime, join a cult, scribble with bright green marker all over the newly painted walls (to use a hypothetical example), or come home from high school one day with a positive pregnancy test. And while we hope your eventual families grow out of the same deep commitment that started our own, new life will always be welcome here. You will always be welcome here. No matter what mistakes you make or what curveballs the future throws, you will have two sets of arms ready to hug you… and any little ones you bring into the world. (No matter the circumstances. Really.)

My friend’s little sister is right; children are the very most beautiful kind of gift.

Two Cyd Charisse understudies

I love you to the moon, to the sun, to the farthest reaches of uncharted future and back,
Mom

1Feb

Gelato Before Breakfast

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.

31Jan

A Daily Dose of Beauty ~ January 2010

January 1st – Just after midnight, giving the girls a glow stick each and watching their faces light up in neon green and pink smiles.

The girls welcoming New Year's with glow sticks

January 2nd – Grabbing a single pair of jeans off the sale rack and trying them on just as a formality because I already knew they were The Ones.

January 3rd – Going to see “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” in a nearly empty theater and sharing the magic of 3D glasses as a family. (Natalie: “Mommy, did you see that cat that came too close to me?” Sophie: “Sophie has glasses on! Mommy has glasses on! Daddy has glasses on! Natalie has glasses on! Wow, meatballs!”)

January 4th – [Censored… ::grin::]

January 5th – Seeing genuine smiles on the faces of our overworked friends as we played Perudo together into the late hours.

January 6th – Sinking down into our soft bed after eleven days away from home.

January 7th – Unpacking my baking supplies with a chatterbox Sophie who frequently stopped talking to give me pretend cupcakes and real kisses.

January 8th – Doing an obstacle course on Wii Fit with Natalie who mostly ran in circles around me giggling and cheering “You can do it! Go! Go! Oh man, try again!”

January 9th – Winning the Wii Olympic Winter Games championship with Dan and finding out the agonizing truth that we are great at curling.

January 10th – Making myself a better-than-Starbucks caramel coffee, lighting a gingerbread candle, and plopping onto a pile of pillows to write.

Caramel cappuccino

January 11th – Sitting down as a family to homemade sundried-tomato risotto and four-way conversation.

January 12th – Being greeted by all the cashiers as Sophie and I walked into our neighborhood grocery store.

January 13th – Crowding around the living room window with the girls to watch the sunset glow pink and orange on surrounding hilltops.

Sunset

January 14th – Realizing that I haven’t changed a diaper in over a week. (!!!)

January 15th – Walking home from the bakery in the breezy, blissed-out morning sunshine—more April than January.

January 16th – Hearing the entire theater cheer around me when beauty and wonder won over evil in “Avatar.”

3D is the new black

January 17th – Triumphing over the gloomy weather with a silly family Lego session involving swimming pants, noseless sharks stealing fried chicken, and the girls’ quirky imaginations at their best.

January 18th – Flirting with Dan like newlyweds after the small ones went to bed.

January 19th – Bouncing, sliding, climbing, crawling, diving, tickling, and giggling with my girls for three straight hours at our neighbor’s amazing indoor play place.

January 20th – Filling the house with the magical scent of baking banana-orange-pecan bread.

January 21st – Snuggling a sleepy-eyed Sophie in the rocking chair at nap time.

January 22nd – Ploofing homemade marshmallows into powdered sugar with Natalie and licking our fingers with a delicious, guilty thrill.

Maple-vanilla marshmallows

January 23rd – Indulging in an old-fashioned pancake brunch after a hopeful suggestion by Sophie.

January 24th – Reading Winnie-the-Pooh in a dog pile on our bed with Sophie occasionally dive-bombing everyone and Natalie adding “tiddely pom” to the end of each sentence.

January 25th – Watching Natalie fall over from laughing so hard when we all died in Super Mario Bros.

January 26th – Sitting at my desk by 7 a.m. with coffee, candles, and a yummy burst of writing mojo.

January 27th – Spying on my sexy husband as he rocked an apron and cooked dinner (an expat ode to Taco Bell!) for our in-home date night.

January 28th – Joking with my ESL students entirely in English and feeling that warm sense of teacherly accomplishment.

January 29th – Remembering at the end of a long, hard, poo-intensive day that I really do love these daughters of mine with every scrap of my heart.

January 30th – Catching hail on our balcony for the girls to taste and marveling at the wild beauty of storms.

January 31st – Closing out January with a family storytime, little fingers wrapped around big ones, big hearts bonding to little ones over Dr. Seuss.

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