Author: Bethany

3Jun

Ring-Around-the-Insanity

Less than two weeks until our Stateside vacation, and the detail-hoarding squirrel in my left hemisphere is thisclose to frantic. We Bassetts have a noble traveling tradition of insanity, and those mad dashes across foreign cities take a lot of preplanning. Schedules to be calculated. Maps to be downloaded. Accommodations to be arranged. Insurance to be finagled. Suitcases to be precision-packed (I let my Tetris champion husband take care of that one). And must not forget the passports, wedding gifts, swim diapers, teething medicine, SIM cards, kitchen sinks, and brain cell refills.

I also have a hairy editing project to finish, so date night this week consisted of Dan and I side-by-side on our computers, eyes glazing over, forgetting all about supper. Chick flick material, I know. Add an upcoming move and potty training (why, God, why?) to the mix, and you have the kind of busyness that thunks around in the pit of my stomach at 3 a.m. Priorities keep playing ring-around-the-rosie in that way they do when I’m no longer seeing straight.

So, in the interest of preserving senses of adventure everywhere, please share: What was the craziest travel experience that you (or someone you know) survived?

31May

Holy Writ Hives

“I like gypsy moths and radio talk
‘Cause it doesn’t remind me of anything…”
(Audioslave)

I was one of the coolest twelve-year-olds to enter our church’s youth group, oh yes. All the other denim-clad girls envied my broomstick skirts and the knitted granny shawl I wore as protection from the A/C.  I was widely admired for my mad worship-band-understudy flute skillz, and the guys were always ogling the sexy training bra outline on my cookie sheet chest. Everyone cheered when I alone took on the youth pastor’s challenge and memorized the entire biblical book of James to get a free trip to youth camp. Oh, and a mere two days into that camp when I was sent home with a case of the mumps? Well, that cemented my position as the most popular teen in church history.

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha. Oooooh, boy. ::wipes eyes::

I know I’ll be dashing some hopes here, but this entry is not about junior high fashion. (Sorry!) Nor is it about the many reasons to vaccinate your children, youth camp being one of the more compelling. No, this is about the holy tradition of Scripture memorization and why I think it sucks.

See, my brain is a neurotic sponge. I never had much trouble memorizing, whether it be Shakespeare or sacred texts or shampoo ingredients. I routinely dazzled my Awana leaders by breezing through the required ream of Bible verses to then learn hefty chunks of the New Testament. I blasted through the competition to win first place in regional Bible drills. I could even recite the lineage of Old Testament kings by heart. (See above re: popularity.) I memorized and memorized and memorized and memorized and didn’t learn a thing.

It turns out that the proper ordering of words does little to reach a heart. In fact, the tuneless march of verses through my mind made reading the Bible impossible once I reached adulthood. I found myself paralyzed by each familiar page, with memories of the words leading to memories of the past leading to fog-banked panic. The holy writ gave me hives. It wasn’t until a friend bought me The Message (and, uh, it sat on the shelf under my suspicious glower for a few years) that I was able to understand what Jesus and Paul wrote. The Bible finally made unrecognizable; what relief!

As I’ve discovered the power of newborn words to seep far below my skin into soul territory, I’ve shunned attempts by family members to help Natalie memorize Bible verses. I don’t want forced familiarity with God-commissioned words to breed contempt before my daughter even has the chance to work out her own beliefs. This has kept me consistently uneasy about her Sunday School class, as week after week, Natalie’s classmates recite Bible verses for a gold star sticker leading to a yearly prize. Should we make her memorize the verses too so she’ll fit in? Should we remove her from the class, risking a million kinds of confrontation? Should we keep ignoring the issue?

This morning in Sunday School, things came to a head. In preparation for a church presentation next week, the children had been memorizing Psalm 23. Never before has a peaceful poem of cross-stitching fame wound a person as tightly as it did Natalie’s teacher. “Why can’t you say it all together?” she yelled at the group of preschoolers shifting in their hard-plastic chairs. “THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD—Fabio! Straighten up this instant! Ester, sit down! No, no, no, Gabriele, be quiet, we’re starting from the beginning, QUIET! THE LORD IS—Laura! Why aren’t you saying all the words? What is wrong with you? Well if you’re tired, you should have gotten more sleep last night, huh? No, Beniamino, you can’t go to the bathroom until we get the whole thing right. STEVEN, QUIET! Do you all want your parents to be disappointed in you?”

Still fuming at how badly the children had been treated, I got in the car with Dan after church and told him, “Those kids are never going to voluntarily memorize another Bible verse for the rest of their lives.”

And then…

I grinned.

27May

Mortification Monday, Chapter the Last

You may (or may not) have noticed that I stopped my Mortification Monday series early on. Awfully early on. I mean, the soap opera goes on for three years, which is something like forty-five teenage lifetimes, and I originally intended to drag you through every mortifying detail. However… Well, first, let me tell you the microbot version of the story.

I fell for Igor Dreamboat (not his real name) when I was twelve. He was two delectable years older and the cutest specimen of eventual manhood ever to sprout dimples. And he was funny. And charming. And every time we ended up within speaking distance of each other, I was terrified that I would accidentally start making out with him… because, you know, that sort of thing happens all the time.

After two years of loyal infatuation on my part, he started to come around. Not that he ever said as much, but when he started holding my hand under the table, I took that to mean we were together. My teenaged heart did a somersault off the nearest balcony, and I ran home that evening to write in my journal, “I shall never be depressed again!” This is called literary irony, folks.

He may have actually cared for me, but while my love ran fathoms deep, his was a sidewalk puddle good for splashing in from time to time. Knowing nothing of relationships and being vaguely banned from discussing the topic at home, I was the perfect girlfriend for his style. I assumed it was normal dating behavior to show physical affection in private and ignore each other in public. I shouldered the guilt each time he broke up with me for another girl and welcomed him back with open arms a few weeks later. I forgave again and again, fluttering toward each crumb of attention he tossed my way.

It was an agonizing year. During one of our on-again months, I spilled the news to some of my girlfriends at a slumber party, and their chirping congratulations were almost too happy to bear… until the next week at school when none of them would talk to me. “You didn’t have to make up lies to be our friend,” hissed one of the girls before turning her back. I recognized the signature cut of betrayal even before Igor pulled me aside and told me I wasn’t allowed to talk about us. He said he had had to deny our relationship to all our friends and teachers, and he broke up with me for the tenth time.

For the rest of that school year, I received bad grades. My favorite teacher was pointedly cold toward me. My former friends whispered accusations behind my back. My home life was in shambles as well, and I cried myself to sleep more times than I can count. Yet I was so hungry for love and so devoted to the boy with the flashing smile and fine-tuned sense of humor that I waited out the lonely weeks until he was willing to touch me again. Only during those hidden moments with our bodies pressed close did the ache in my chest subside.

The following summer, I traveled to Mexico where I turned fifteen and heard the first piece of relationship advice that had ever made sense to me: Romance is a mystery, and love is companionship. Novel, right? After a few days of thinking, I journaled, “I’m tired of being dumped. I want a guy who’ll carefully pick me up and never put me down.” Then I screwed my courage to the sticking place, told Igor we were through, reminded him we were through, reiterated no, really, we’re through, and got over the first love of my life.

I dream about him some nights, always sweet, aerial dreams. In them, I am confidently beautiful. He is laughing and holding my hand proudly in front of our friends, who cheer us on. It is all very last scene of “Titanic.Though it’s probably not kosher to be dreaming of other men while I’m happily married, I love that my mind has worked out a happy ending for the aching 14-year-old somewhere still inside me. She needed one. She has experienced plenty of mortification for a teenaged sliver of psyche, and I think she has finally earned her peace. Even if her dramatic journal entries WERE comedy gold.

R.I.P.

Mortification Mondays

2008-2009

26May

Proof

When Natalie was born, I had some doubts as to her origin. There was absolutely no question that Dan was the father—she was a tiny Bassett photocopy with his Lebanese ancestry peeking through her impossibly dark eyes—but who her mother was, none could tell. Neither her features nor her easy acceptance of being alive pointed to my genetics. And while I loved seeing the many bonds she shared with her daddy, I ached for more proof than leaking milk and a C-section scar that she was my girl.

Fast forward four years. I am yelling at Natalie out of frustration, and feeling guilty because I’m not a yelling mom, I’M NOT, and wondering how my sweet preschooler ends up so deep under my skin, and wallowing in the shame of misplaced intentions when I finally see it: her personality. Proof that we are cut from the same emotional fabric… and yes, the reason why we so often run into each other like road blocks when we’re trying to connect.

She and I have precision wound tightly into our DNA, a virtue I finally started to see as a fault in adulthood. Things must be just so, or the world will fall to bits. We are right, and if this is not universally acknowledged, our heads will implode. The IKEA mug goes there. “Caramel” is pronounced like this. Blue-green is so very different from green-blue. I was at least halfway through college before I realized people are allowed to have various and conflicting opinions, and I continue to be grateful that the burden of rightness is no longer mine to foist on humankind. However, relativism is still beyond the grasp of four-years-old. I get frustrated that she will not taste my soup created from ingredients she loves, and she gets frustrated that I force her to use dinnerware that is neither pink nor princessy. Our brains lock.

And then the next morning, she wakes up with a fever. It’s nothing serious, more summer flush than griddle-hot skin, but her small voice wakes up every mother-urge in me. Natalie finds a nest on my pillow, and I find another piece of proof: tenderness, the kind that cannot be manufactured for anyone else’s children. Fierce, elemental tenderness, strong enough to carry us through any kind of sickness and deep enough to carve allowances into our personalities. And I realize this, this, is my daughter’s origin.

Sweet girl 2
21May

Slumbering Magic

At least once a year, I read Ray Bradbuary’s Dandelion Wine cover to cover. It has been a soul tradition since I first picked up the paperback at age 15 and lost a bit of my heart among the pages. And who wouldn’t? The book is a celebration of childhood and summertime equally, of life and death and the daily discoveries that make them so much more, written in the most delicious prose I’ve ever tasted.

“His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened.
I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before…” *

Magic.

Every time I venture into its pages, I am twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding. I suddenly feel the need for tennis shoes and old-fashioned lime-vanilla ice, plus a sip of the mysterious dandelion wine just to try.  I experience all the curiosity and fear and wondering joy woven into the stories. But despite how much I love the book, my heart floods with a soft pale-pink sadness at the end of each chapter because I wish it were mine. The writing. The nostalgia. The memories in print.

I have a hard time explaining the way Dandelion Wine tugs at me because it’s not jealousy… yet it is. I dearly want to write a book that captures people’s imaginations in the same way, and I think I could. I feel the magic slumbering just beneath the surface of my ability. But I’m missing the nostalgia, and that’s one thing a writer can’t make up. My childhood memories will never make the cut for an exploration of whimsy, and this dear adult life of mine needs a few more years to brew still.

So I take the book for what it was to me at 15—a miraculous first date with metaphors—and what it is to me now—a diamond trembling with a thousand emotional hues. My sadness is not an enemy, nor is it the face of defeat. Rather, it’s the whispered promise of nostalgia in my future. You will write of your own magic one day, you will…

* I had a ridiculously hard time choosing an exemplary passage from the book because every sentence in the thing is perfect. Some lazy day this summer, pour yourself a tall glass of lemonade, pick up a copy of Dandelion Wine, and read until your toes begin to tingle. That’s an order.

15May

Trial Period Has Expired

Adjusting to a new culture is never easy, and there are some quirks to Italy that may always prick under my American skin. The disorganization, for instance. When you show up to an appointment at an Italian hospital, you have to wander the halls and peek into doors until you find your doctor… or at least someone who can find him for you. Or when you need to contact the gas company about an error in your bill, you have to go to their headquarters and stand in a tangled huddle of a line to talk to someone who will inevitably tell you “Come back later.” And those basic permission documents you need to legally stay in the country? They’re held up in some Italian black hole for 1 ½ years (and counting).

The disorganization and bureaucratic laziness certainly top the list of Things That Rankle, but there are plenty of smaller irks:

          How bill-paying is done exclusively at the post office, where long lines make it frustrating for those who want to actually mail something

          How shopping cart wheels swivel at will and must be pushed with full-body strength to avoid collisions

          How the libraries do not have children’s sections

          How awkward run-ins with gypsies, beggars, and peddlers are unavoidable

          How fashion dictates that women navigate even the cobbliest of stone streets in strappy stilettos (I haven’t mastered that skill yet)

However, there is so much utter loveliness to Italian culture, and most of the “quirks” I noticed when first moving here have turned out to be little blessings. Many of them are relational, such as building a rapport with the local pharmacist since we don’t have the option of grabbing medicine off a shelf, or elderly women talking freely (and good-heartedly) about our personal business. I love the way Italy’s easygoing personality translates into holidays every few weeks, national two-hour lunch breaks, and limited store hours (it’s easier to do without a 24-hr Wal-Mart than you’d think!). I’ve even grown to appreciate the lack of air conditioning and clothes dryers; the absence of both gives spacious, breathable air a place of honor in our lives.

I enjoy living in a place where everyone has a bidet, an armoire, and a love of good wine. Where I can take for granted that I will be kissed on both cheeks in greeting and that a hospital stay will treat our wallet gently. Where an attendant will pump my gas and where late night TV guarantees to be insanely amusing. Where laws are flexible and ham is cured and windows are open and parking spaces are subject to imagination and lunch is the big meal and cleavage is always appropriate and roundabouts keep intersections spinning merrily. This is a country I want to know more deeply.

~*~*~

We found our house o’ dreams yesterday. I am afraid to write about it in the same way I was afraid to speak as Dan and I walked through the rooms, squeezing each other’s hand over and over to make sure we were seeing the same thing, terrified someone else was going to snatch it away before we had a chance to sign the contract (okay, so the irrational terror was entirely on my part). But nobody snatched it away. As of one hour ago, it’s ours.

Imagine cozy and airy waltzing together in a gabled hilltop condo. Shiny wood and windows everywhere and a Texas-sized patio with a breathtaking view of downtown. A lush green yard with rose bushes and a darling wooden swing. Three silky dogs for the girls to play with and downstairs (and next door) neighbors we already know. A marble bathtub. A fireplace. Oh, oh, oh. I did not realize one could fall so desperately in love with a house.

We’ll be moving in July (a whole two miles away from our current apartment), and the tedium of packing and changing addresses shines like joy on the horizon. This perfect little dream house is where we will put down roots. I can’t wait to finally be part of a neighborhood community, something a high-rise apartment can never provide. This feels like the end of our trial period—depression, temporary job contract, and cramped living space all traded in for something so much better—and the true beginning of our happy Italian life.

12May

Uncaged

When I’m 85, the smell of Bath & Body Works’s peach nectar lotion will remind me of that unsettling coaster ride of an autumn with my first boyfriend. The smell of carpet shampoo will remind me of walking into my college dorm room with an armful of books and giddy expectations. The smell of hand sanitizer will take me back to the NICU where infant Natalie recovered from surgery, and the smell of lemons will remind me of this spring.

The lemon trees and perfume and homemade limoncello and lemonade (more on that soon) have swirled deep into my perception of life this spring, and I have to tell you: I am infatuated. With lemons… AND life. Remember how crap-coated existence looked in January? And in February? And in March? Man, March was a doozy. I didn’t share most of the horror that was my brain this last winter out of embarrassment and pride and a respect for your collective wills to live, but my personal journal entries are like something out of Mordor.

But then… One afternoon toward the end of March, I was researching psychiatry in Italy in preparation for the next day when I was going to beg my skeptical doctor on my hands and knees for antidepressants. If I was going to grovel, I at least wanted to be prepared. I learned that “antidepressant” is “antidepressivo” and that “panic attack” is “attacco di panico” and that around 75% of women taking Yasmin end up on depression medication. Huh, I thought. Could this be as easy as going off the Pill?

It was. Only seven weeks later, I am a completely different person. Actually, I was a different person within seven days. I can hardly believe how easy it is to get out of bed each morning now that homicidal hormones are no longer running around chewing holes through all my happy thoughts. That endocrinologist who assured me I certainly did not have a hormonal imbalance owes me one year of lost happiness and a delivery truck of Lindt chocolates, at least as I see it.

I figured I owed you all an update now that I’m on the outside of the cage. So many of you have encouraged and supported me through a truly crap-filled (and -coated and -battered and -fried and -garnished) time. You’ve sent me e-mails and earrings and reminded me that I have some worth as a human being after all, and I am a thousand kinds of thankful. The future holds promise again. The world is habitable again. My creativity is waking out of its coma, and when I look inside my brain, I finally see myself. And when I’m 85, the smell of fresh lemons will remind me all over again how lovely it is to be.

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