Author: Bethany

31Mar

Mortification Monday, Ch. 4

Posted by: Bethany in Mortification Mondays 4 Comments

Mortification Monday, v. 1.0 (Disclaimers here)
Chapter 4: Underlining Love!!!

When we last left our protagonist, she was dealing with prophetic visions of marrying another man. Paisley ties were involved, and horrors abounded, horrible horrors of a genitalian nature. I know you all have been in suspense these last two weeks, wondering if Bethany’s fate is indeed sealed. Has Igor Dreamboat’s destiny as her husband been dashed upon the rocky shores of Southern Baptistism? (Deep breath now…)

Thursday, February 20th 1 (Age 12)
“Tonight was the [2] play. I am [lead female character], and Igor was my husband again.3 He has been each time for the 3 plays we’ve done so far. But I don’t really mind.4 I’ve liked Igor ever since I first saw him, many years5 ago. Mrs. Dreamboat has been desperately trying to make a match of us since she first saw me6, and I’m sure that he likes me. He has said that he would pick me to marry out of the 12 girls in our class, and he acts like he likes me if putting his arm around me and looking straight into my eyes, and talking like he likes me,7 means anything. It does to me. I really, really like him.8 He’s really sweet.9”

1 Technical note: This journal entry was written exactly one (1) day after the nightmare entry. Apparently, since the nausea-inducing marriage did not, in fact, “come to pass” within 24 hours of my dream, I was in the clear. Or, there’s a remote possibility that I slightly exaggerated my panic of the previous day… Not that I am was ever dramatic or anything…

2 Name of play deleted in order to yadayadayada, etc.

3 Class, we call this “foreshadowing.” Also “literary irony.”

4 Again with the saintly not-mindingness… Obviously, my passion ran deep.

5 And–are you all taking notes?–we call this “hyperbole.”

6 I was only five when she first saw me, and her enthusiastic praise of my good behavior MAY not have been a direct invitation to marry her son… but otherwise, this statement is the plain and unembellished truth.

7 Guys, are you paying attention? Forget talking dirty. Talking like you like a girl is the most direct way to convey your love and secure a place in her heart diary. Spread the word!

8 Really.

9 Really.10

10 Listen up, class. Sometimes, underlining can be used to emphasize a word. We call this a “rhetorical device.” Other times, underlining can be used to emphasize the point that you are a twelve-year-old girl who needs a social life, a bigger chest, and a double dose of Valium ASAP.

Next time on Mortification Monday: I objectively psychoanalyze our relationship — without underlining a single word!

30Mar

When I Think About Heaven

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 9 Comments

I imagine our gauzy sapphire of a world new again.
Snowflakes twirling like crystal confetti, untouched by smog –
Newborn flowers breathing, blooming, stretching their souls in unpaved meadows –
Deer laughing as they leap in the open, unafraid of bullets –
Turquoise waves lapping jeweled sand, ignorant of tattered plastic and toxic waste –
Pure skies, undiluted clouds, stars like celestial spotlights –
An innocent earth, inviting, intimate.

I imagine the colorful mosaic of humanity new again.
90-year-olds salsa dancing in the prime of their youth –
Children exploring the vast bounds of imagination in perfect safety –
Languages entwining around an international soundtrack of
laughter –
Sex, food, friendship, and work each a passionate celebration of
life –
Art flowing through individuals and communities like endless spring water –
Hearts bursting with enough love to light up the universe.

I’ve heard it described as an everlasting harpfest,
An endless church service somewhere in the void
With halos and wings and the insufferable weight of being good.
But someone who knows promised to make everything new;
No more death or mourning or crying or pain,
The world–this world–as it was always meant to be.

Beaming,
Breathgiving,
Beautiful,
Beyond imagination.

28Mar

Scrap Paper Possibility

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

I scribbled the following on a scrap of notebook paper during my senior year of college. It was a stage of life when everything was simultaneously new and old: A brand new marriage with eternity in its sights; A looming graduation date with old friends fluttering away like leaves; A pulsating awareness of my own possibility shrouded in self-doubt, busyness, writer’s block. I wrote down my confusion, impulsively, and it instantly became a friend as paragraphs sometimes do. We sit down to tea together some days, this paragraph and I, and it says, “Honey. Your life is far from over. See?”

~*~*~*~

12/1/03
There’s a baby chicken inside my head, chipping at my skull. Or an orc, yawning in rage at the membrane that just… won’t… break. One day, my little galaxy will fling a meteor explosion until shards of ideas pierce my sight and the world is a masterpiece waiting to be savored. But not yet. Maybe my head will explode anyway, due to the war inside… but then it will be clumsy and black, dripping a mess of my brilliant possibility on my blank, blank paper. And for now, I’m dull and conflicted, misunderstood by my best intentions, focused on things bland and sawdusty to glean inspiration–a legend, I am convinced. I have never noticed my muse until the work was done.

27Mar

No Horny Gumballs Allowed

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

I’ve never been a girl-music girl. (Well, in high school, I was briefly obsessed with Fiona Apple, but she really counts more as angsty-sultry-poetic-despair-music. Perfect for high school, really.) Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera/Jessica Simpson/Mandy Moore? Mariah “I can sing higher than your mating cat” Carey? Janet “My nipple is more famous than yours” Jackson? James “I’m 98% eunuch” Blunt? Please staple my ears shut now.

It might be the pop thing, or the flaky lyrics thing, but it’s mostly the voice thing. These singers sound exactly like melted candy, and each note makes my teeth hurt. I’ve always preferred manly singers, with voices like sexy sandpaper or smooth as aftershave and Irish coffee. (I would list names, but my husband reads this blog. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death, etc.)

However, the times? They are a-changin’, at least in my sphere of musiclove. I’ve been soaking in the gorgeous, earthy nuances of female singers lately: Imogen Heap, Ingrid Michaleson, Yael Naïm, Deb Talan, Leslie Feist, Camille, Corinne Bailey Rae. Maybe it’s due to the sudden loneliness of being in a new country, not yet fluent enough to make close friends. Maybe it’s the full-force onslaught of double-motherhood, making me realize all the more my identity as a woman. Maybe I’m starting to find greater relevance in the words of other gals who struggle with beautifully imperfect bodies and complicated emotions. Or maybe I should stop psychoanalyzing myself already and just enjoy listening to women who don’t sound like horny gumballs.

26Mar

Emotional Flambé Days

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Mothering a three-year-old is not quite as easy as, say, demolishing a brick house with my forehead.

“Natalie,” I explain. “You need to blow your nose. It will help you breathe!”
She shoots me a look of petulant exasperation. “But I don’t WANT to breathe!” Huff.

She’s developed her own brand of logic that runs headlong against mine like a sumo wrestler, ridiculous but unmovable. It wouldn’t be so bad, this earnest illogic, except for the flammable emotions spilling out during each encounter. Tears gush. Drama overflows. Three-year-old PMS sinks its fangs into every other moment, gnaws, flings, thrashes, and leaves it in a mangled heap on the floor.

“Natalie?” I mumble through half-open eyes. “I’m not ready to get up yet. Why don’t you go play with your toys for a while?”
“Noooooo!” she wails, melting into a pool of little-girl despair. “Nooo, I don’t want to! I CAN’T! All my toys are BROKEN!”

I know very well how mothers and daughters can push each other’s buttons. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of female intuition, and shared blood tends to amplify shared grievances. I really do know. I just thought I had another ten years or so before we’d be slumped under the covers, crying from different sides of the same frustration. I thought that these young years would stay light and happy, that I would be the fun playmate-mom and she would be the cheerful Stepford-daughter.

“Why are you crying?” I ask.
“Because I don’t want to sleeeeeeeeep,” she wails from beneath her covers.
“Well, you need sleep so you can be happy tomorrow.” (Again with the logic.)
“B-b-b-b-but,” she sobs, “I AMMMMMMM happy!”

I cringe every time I use the words “need” or “have to,” proof that I consider her opinions inferior to mine. (Even if her opinions are that she should have chocolate ice cream for dinner and stay up all night watching “Toy Story” and balancing glass plates on her sister’s head, they’re still valid. They’re still an honest and valuable expression of her desires, even if they’re wrong. Right?) I worry that she’s developing too slowly because I haven’t been reading with her, playing with her, teaching her enough. (She should know Italian better by now, not to mention be fully potty-trained… Or, at the very least, be able to read at a second-grade level like our friend’s daughter of the same age. Right?) I sink under the guilt of days when I’m too tired or too “down” to give her the attention she craves. (I should be able to put on a brave front for her sake. Right?)

“Natalie?” I sigh. “I have a headache and need you to be quiet for now.”
“But!” she shrieks. “But don’t you wanna hear my song? My really, really, really long song? Listen! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE!”

Of course I don’t see the humor until later, when I’m detailing the hardships of my day to Dan (“…and then my head literally exploded into little bits all over the rug because she wouldn’t stop singing about mayonnaise”), and he doubles over laughing. I wonder some days if my parenting skills have expired, if I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life as a sour-milk mom. I gravitate toward hopeful theories too, when I’m in less-pessimistic moods, like she’s just going through a stage or I’m still medically classified as a post-partum mess. (And this too shall pass.) Who knows? Maybe all that matters is that I still love her enough to hurt over our battleground relationship, and that when she starts school in September, I will look back on these emotional flambé days with nostalgia.

Right?

21Mar

I’m Confused a Lot

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 17 Comments

I just don’t get

binary numbers, C++
matrices or calculus

economic policy
political bureaucracy

John Milton’s prose
Paris Hilton’s beaus

gambling on horses
billion dollar golf courses

prenuptial agreements
the-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince

privatized health care
armpit hair

the King James translation
ethnic discrimination

spelling bees
honorary degrees

talk radio shows
bros before hos

anything liver-and-onion
running just for fun

broomstick skirts
sugar-free desserts

sweaters on pets
blondes vs. brunettes

erotic fan fiction
smoking addiction

hair plugs
the point of slugs
wannabe thugs
recreational drugs

cubism
terrorism
fetishism
veganism

and

last but not least
brewer’s yeast

20Mar

The Family Stain

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Now, I’m going to need to get your medical background. Does anyone in your extended family have a history of diabetes?

No.

Cancer?

No.

Heart disease?

Nope.

Anything else we should be concerned about?

No.

Well…

Except for depression and divorce and racism and sexual abuse and religious fanaticism and betrayal and lying and lying and lying and violence and does repeatedly buying into pyramid schemes count? Well, financial squandering then, and alienation and mistrust and selective ignorance and censorship and suicide and hate and always the secrets.
*****

Family history clings like a spider web this time of year. It comes with the clouds, draping over me like shreds of rubber cement. Or maybe it’s just this week, which has kicked my ass Chuck Norris style. Or maybe it’s this coming Sunday, Easter, which has always ranked as my least favorite of all least-favorite holidays (President’s Day and Take It In The Ear Day* coming in close behind).
*****

(Lapse in thought here. Both girls have decided to cry rather than sleep this afternoon, and the kitchen that was finally(!) clean(!) for twenty(!) whole minutes this morning has taken revenge by sprouting wok-shaped mold, and the computer I’ve been using since my laptop died has belatedly joined the writer’s strike, and I’m TIRED. Chuck Norris, etc.)

(I’m sorry. That turned out much more like stream-of-consciousness whining than the excuse-my-disjointed-thoughts disclaimer I intended. I’m off to take an absolutely necessary nap, and then? Please excuse my disjointed thoughts.)
*****

I know everyone’s got a messed-up family to a degree, and some of you are laughing right now because your family could SO take my family in a fist fight. But my history–the gnarly fabric of generational flaws–is plenty difficult for me to shoulder. I want it gone. Undone. Far, far away from me and my dear husband and my precious little girls. I often wake from nightmares, eyes wide as oceans in the dark, praying that I could just bleach out the stain of my name.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen, and it probably shouldn’t. Their mistakes, stark and magnified in my perspective, have taught me a lot of ways not-to-be. And Easter, that holiday reeking of ugly lace dresses in frigid, too-early mornings, of confiscated baskets full of candy I wasn’t allowed to taste, of back-to-back-to-back church activities and lengthy descriptions of Jesus’s death that I was far too young to handle? I have the chance to do it right with my new little family, and if not right, at least better. We can have giggly Easter egg hunts and celebratory meals with friends and sleeping late in a cozy, cuddly nest and so much love our minds will spin out into the stratosphere, far beyond nightmares, pain, and this inherited human stain.

—
* December 8th. Look it up! Or don’t.

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