Author: Bethany

20Feb

When In Rome

When in Rome…

Breathe slowly under the ancient weight of the Colosseum. Inhale the centuries of legend engraved on its stones, the faint anxiety that history waits to repeat itself in this place. Exhale under its watchful shadow, now the keeper of Metro stops, busy streets, and bustling gay bars. Breathe. Stand. Marinate in your smallness.

Colosseum portals - Picasa remix

Let your heart race at the sudden sparkle of turquoise on white, the Trevi Fountain against a backdrop of stars. Caress the sculptures with your eyes, following each curve, each breathtaking intricacy. Kiss for the camera, but really for love. Close your eyes and intoxicate yourself with lips and tingling breath and the sensuous rush of waterfalls at night.

Kissing by the Trevi Fountain

Navigate the mid-morning crowds surging toward the Vatican. Weave in and out and around and through–the tourists with their guidebooks and cameras and perpetually open mouths–the devout Catholics with their quick, reverent footsteps trailing determination like a wake–the vendors with their wiry glances and blatant flouting of personal space. Join a line inside the gates, a line like an eternal wave, carrying you around and up and crashing down finally in the most sacred spot on earth.

St. Peter's Basilica 3

Forget about nonessentials like speaking and thinking and breathing the instant you step inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Just see, look, gaze. Let your eyes understand lavishness for the rest of your body, at least until they overload on gold scrollwork two minutes in. Give yourself mental vertigo by realizing that people, real, living, human humans made this gargantuan cathedral, this redefinition of opulence. Get goosebumps.

Bronze canopy in St. Peter's

Ride the Metro plastered in graffiti. Wander through the open market. Take pictures of funny signs. Ascend slowly to reality; decompress. Come, see, conquer, and leave dizzy with the hope of returning.

TOO MANY Ns

19Feb

Construction Zone

I know people whose days are shaped like circles, bringing them smoothly back to their concentric beginnings each night. I know of others’ days like squares and rectangles and octagons, structured in short, linear periods. Some ambitious people live in shooting lines, and some spontaneous ones ride out dizzy rollercoasters. Little children play on their days like playground equipment; octogenarians sink into theirs like pillows. PMSing women survive days shaped like chocolate briar patches. And my days? They’re the erratic patterns of an echocardiogram.

That upward peak is my heart bursting into light when one of the girls giggles, and that downward surge is my pessimistic realization of how quickly their joy will be diluted by age. This low point is the laundry basket lid, floating on the sea of my never-ending responsibilities, and this hopeful spike is an uninterrupted hour to pretend I’m Zen. That sudden quickening is a mad dash of courage to leave the house, and this gentle slowing is a half-asleep bear snuggle with my family. The points fluctuate, beeping steadily, a constant gauge of my emotions.

I once overheard someone close to me indicate that “moody” women aren’t worth marrying. That thought has stuck perniciously with me. I think of it during both up and down moments and especially during those dark flat-lining days. I’ve spent numerous birthday wishes on stability. I’ve hammered at my brain, trying to reshape its landscape, trying to replicate those titanium-plated models I envy. After all, multi-colored emotions = moodiness = worthlessness.

But believe it or not, self-performed brain surgery doesn’t work. Not even when I’m desperate for a transplant and especially not when my fingers are skidding on the guilt of being “complicated.” I often feel defective, and, unfortunately, the frontal lobe doesn’t come with a return policy. (Damn frontal lobe.) I guess this is the main reason there are often gaps and caverns and craters of time between my blog entries–because I can’t think of anything un-moody to write about–because no one will want to marry me* if I can’t equalize my feelings.

However, there’s this funny thing about the blogosphere… It’s made up of people–real people, not just unattainably cool, authory ones–who “sit down at a typewriter and open a vein” as Red Smith said. And I’m learning, in large part due to some wonderful, open-hearted bloggers, that nearly every woman is an emotional storybook. I had no idea that so many women found themselves dog-paddling through sudden oceans in their minds. Loneliness. Confusion. Depression. Doubt. Frustration. Irrationality. Pessimism. I also hadn’t realized how many women buoy the world with their hearts. Creativity. Appreciation. Compassion. Hope. Wonder. Devotion. Beauty in a million shades.

I’m still thick in my quest to disown regret, and this might need to become a construction zone. Maybe we women were made this way on purpose, to touch a largely impersonal world with our varying forms of tenderness. Maybe our emotions provide both the balance and the upheaval necessary for life to plunge forward. Maybe vulnerability shouldn’t be shamed or hidden or stigmatized. Maybe I should stop grimacing at my honest reflection on the page. Maybe someone can remind me that the heart monitor’s peaks and valleys and persistent beeps signal above all that I’m alive.

*Except my glorious husband, who insists on liking me despite my chronic unmarriageableness. (::Love::)

14Feb

Arugula Is My Valentine

Valentine’s Day makes me want to start a cooking blog, like right now. Even though I have only recently learned essential cooking techniques like brining chicken and putting arugula on everything, I still feel compelled to invite you to the party in my mouth! (Which I totally do not mean in the way you are thinking right now. Remove mind from gutter, then proceed.)

I already have the blog categories worked out:
~ Vegetables I don’t hate to the very core of my soul
~ Mythical children’s book concoctions (Ever tried Pineapple Butterscotch Ding-Dang-Doo? Or broccoli stew for breakfast, ew?)*
~ Unnatural disasters, part 1: When cakes join the Dark Side**
~ Unnatural disasters, part 2: When microwaves catch the flu***
~ Dirt, upholstery, canned lasagna, and other inedible objects enjoyed by baby girls
~ The proper humiliation of perfectly innocent beverages****
~ Calm down; that chicken’s already dead

*
Broccoli stew for breakfast, ew

**
Peach Upside-Down Disaster Cake

***
Microwave with the flu

****
Corny martini - dark

Growing up, I didn’t really learn much about cooking… at least not anything I want to remember. (Though if you want a recipe for Super Butter–which includes 3 parts organic grass and 0 parts butter–I can hook you up. Also in my repertoire: birdseed bread, sautéed grasshoppers, and chocolate meringue pie in which both the chocolate and the meringue are replaced by kidney beans. Feel free to gag with me.) In college, I mostly ate canned soup and chewing gum just because I could, and during our first year of marriage, I subjected my poor husband to plenty of microwaved chicken nugget suppers.

Fortunately, I’ve learned a few things since then. Some days, cooking feels like a chore, sure, but most days, it’s a creative outlet–a tasty form of art. Penne al dente melting with fresh mozzarella, grilled zucchini, and cured sausage… Leafy lettuce heaped with rotisserie chicken, yellow pepper strips, pine nuts, kalamata olives, and homemade garlic croutons… Chunks of baguette layered with slivers of prosciutto, hard-boiled egg, and ripe tomato… Strawberries wrapped in creamy white chocolate frosting, dipped in toasted coconut… Food that sings opera and food that plays jazz, food that raps and whistles and sings multiple languages. Food that, just… mmmm.

This isn’t actually a post to brag about my cooking skills because, honestly, they’re nothing extraordinary. It’s more a way of wishing Happy Valentine’s Day to taste buds and tummies everywhere. It’s also to remind you–if your chocolate mousse seems to be lacking that certain gourmet essence, try some arugula on top. It can’t fail.

11Feb

Globe Trotters

I’m decompressing from our weekend trip to Milan in the scrumptious glow of a strawberry IKEA candle and trying to remember where I packed my words. Or perhaps I left them behind? As always, I’m wading through the Twilight Zone until all our suitcases are empty. (On that note, grumph.) I know there’s significance in venturing out our front door. I know there’s a vast, luminous value in our impromptu travels, small children and spirits of adventure in tow, and once I’m over car lag, I’ll be able to fully appreciate these steps we take to live in 3-D.

{Gah. Also, Agh. I’ve been trying to finish this for hours, but I might as well be typing on a dinner plate. Did I lock my brain in the trunk? Also, GAH.}

The highlight of my trip was more a sensation than an event, though it was disguised as individually-wrapped moments throughout the weekend. Exploring castle ruins with Natalie–peeking into stone coffins, taunting rabid cats, moat-diving, and running in traditional medieval circles–and seeing her lit up with discovery… Wading through rivers of Carnevale confetti while more was tossed into our hair by short, giggling Power Rangers… Wandering through a National Geographic photo exhibit and suddenly starving for each exotic, breathtaking piece of the earth I’ve never seen…

All the pieces came together on the drive home when I asked Dan what was on his list, his do-before-dying-or-turning-thirty-whichever-comes-first list. He immediately said “travel,” and I couldn’t help smiling. That’s my list too, even above a hot air balloon ride.* We daydreamed the car ride away, talking about Egypt and Kenya, Nepal and Japan and Thailand, Jamaica and Brazil. Surfing in Indonesia, snowboarding the Andes. Losing minor limbs to Amazonian piranhas.

It’s one of the things that pulled me inextricably into love with Dan, our shared wanderlust. It’s why we live in Italy. It’s why we will have to work until we’re 107 because we will have spent our retirement fund on trotting the globe. Which will be worth every penny, absolutely.

*Now 2% more exciting than an afternoon nap!

Bethany's final resting place

(Did I say “peeking into stone coffins?” Because I meant “inhabiting.”)

5Feb

Q & A

A: To remember.
To validate.
To appreciate.
To inspire.

I suck at talking, really. Just ask my husband, who usually has to pry my head open with a crowbar to find out what’s on my mind. I could quote someone eloquent and witty, like C.S. Lewis or House, M.D., and the words would still sound ridiculous coming out of my mouth. (Imagine a kindergartener who’s just swallowed a bottle of vodka and six helium balloons. Classy.)

When I write my thoughts down, though, I feel like they matter. I can actually convey my meaning without all the squeaking and the slurring and the drunken-five-year-old stammering. Often, I’m not even sure what I think until it slips out the ends of my fingers onto a page, and only once it’s written can I see its etchings on my personality… and then I feel a million kinds of validated. Maybe even a kazillion.

Writing does all sorts of lovely, warm, hot-chocolatey things to my emotional center as well. It makes me slow down enough to see the beauty in everyday life and scrapes calluses off my heart until I’m madly in love with everyone I should be madly in love with. I suppose it’s a way to both preserve and cultivate the precious pieces of my life. This might make me certifiably insane (that is, if I weren’t already, ::cough::), but I would take a day on a comfy couch with my laptop over a day at the spa. Or a day wearing plaid atrocities and hitting little white balls with sticks. Or whatever else real people do to relax.

I don’t really try to inspire–you should know by now that I consider myself as inspiring as Cream of Wilted Lettuce–but every once in a while, a bit of my heart on a page connects with a bit of someone else’s heart. Those tiny moments of relational electricity keep me buzzing for days. I’m learning to loosen up, to take personal honesty a little more public, and I love that it matters to others. Even at my most lettucesoupy, I want my words to matter to others.

Q: Why do you write?

4Feb

The Graveyard Shift

“People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.” ~ Calvin, to Hobbes

An idea has been rattling around in my mind for a while now. It sounds simple enough and maybe even fun: write down some happy childhood memories to share with my family, past, present, and future. But it’s not so simple. Every time I think about it, seriously consider starting, I find myself waist-deep in an emotional briar patch.

I’m sure everyone has things that he or she doesn’t like to think about, but I’ve made repression a way of life. It’s a twisted art form, learning to cope with trauma by shoveling six feet of dirt onto memories. Unfortunately, the good often gets buried along with bad, so I find myself in my twenties barely remembering my teens, much less earlier times.

I stare at this photograph

Young Bethany - Hudson Taylor

and remember my cat–his name (Hudson Taylor), his affiliations (Mimi the PMS-y wifecat), and his hobbies (poetry, cross stitch, world travel)–but I can’t remember my interaction with him. I can’t remember rocking him or wearing yellow overalls or being six years old.

I find this photo

Young Bethany - Ballet

and can’t remember my first ballet class, my first year of ballet classes even. I don’t know if I enjoyed it or if I liked my teacher or if I was any good. I wonder how long it took for my knobby-kneed legs to learn French. (And plié, and up, and pas de bourrée, jeté battu…)

I come across this one (I’m the third from the left)

Young Bethany - Smoking birthday candles

and remember the way the girls laughed, my first batch of genuine friends since first grade. I remember the pranks we pulled and the atrocious poetry we wrote and the boys we used to giggle about, but I don’t recall who I was in junior high. I’m told I was the one who suggested we smoke birthday candles, but was I really that silly? When did I start pulling my hair up? What was my life like at home, away from my friends?

The answer to that last question is the reason I used to cry and shake and write “fuck” in my journal and think about the afterlife in very near terms. Then I went the therapeutic route, talking to close friends, writing everything down, turning my brain inside-out so the pain could float away on the breeze. At least, I hoped it would float away, and when it didn’t, I started shoveling.

I’m now realizing that I’ll have to dig around in the graveyard for even the happiest memories, and let me tell you, it’s a mess. Fragments of memory are scattered like misplaced bones. Unmarked graves hold mental snapshots, many of them moldy and disintegrating. The dirt clings to me for hours afterward, even when I don’t manage to find anything.

I’m so, so reluctant to dig deeper, down to where the whole memories and undiluted hurt lie intertwined. At the same time, I know how much the happy moments of my childhood will matter to my daughters, to my parents, and probably to me. I haven’t found the necessary strength yet; I’m still clinging pretty tightly to the idea that my childhood was 100% bad. But I know there were times of laughter and imagination and closeness, and I owe it to many to rediscover those moments. I owe it to myself.

If at first you don’t succeed…

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