Author: Bethany

25Sep

Unstuck From the Molasses Swamp

I woke up this morning already wading two feet through the floor. Between yesterday’s toddler overdose, the callerless phone calls at 1 a.m., and the overnight transference of all my remaining brain cells to the baby, I started today with the mental acuteness of molasses. (IQ in 2002: 130. IQ this morning: Ooooze.) If I had been capable of conscious thought, it would have sounded something like this: The dishes are piled around the sink, the floors are sticky, the refrigerator is empty, my daughter is needy, my husband is gone, and if I get out of bed today, I will surely die.

Right on cue, the phone rang. I choked on the momentary bout of panic I experience every time I realize I will have to communicate solely in Italian but answered it anyway. And the cheery voice of Help replied.

Now, I am the kind of gal you often see lying semiconscious on the floor with a fractured hip, flames bursting out of the stove, and a tornado tearing off the roof in the next room who will not ask for help because she doesn’t want to inconvenience anyone. Plus, she is sure she can fix it all herself, even though she is neither a surgeon, nor a fireman, nor Zeus. Nor, apparently, capable of dragging her 8-month-pregnant self through a day of banal household duties alone.

So I didn’t exactly call for help, but I allowed myself to be the damsel in distress that I unquestionably was today. Graziella flew in first, like Superman, rescuing me from the drafty ledge of grocery shopping and taking poor, cabin-feverish Natalie to the playground for an hour. Then Mari showed up for a chatty lunch so that my aura could shift from beached whale to “Sex in the City.” She and Graziella put their superpowers to work doing the dishes and sweeping the floor, while I lounged back wanting to cry from relief. Heike sent me a heartwarming package stuffed with enough chocolate to make me swoon and a soccer ball to be Natalie’s bosom companion for the next few hours. Vanet and Maria bounced by to mop the floors, clean the bathroom, and bestow on us a stuffed duck and a dazzling array of cookies. Then another Maria called to apologize for not coming by and promise an outing with Natalie tomorrow.

Though I’m still ending the day fatigued and straining to breathe through the crushing weight of my abdomen, I feel full rather than drained. I feel the familiar pang of guilt too, as if gratefulness were a vice, as if I’ve wrongfully indebted myself to others. But it’s not debt; it’s a gift. And as I watch Natalie play delightedly with her new soccer ball and duck, I realize it’s not so bad to be on the receiving end of people’s generous hearts.

I want to say something more eloquent and profound, to give proper homage to the beautiful souls who have lifted my day out of swampy futility, but I’m already typing like this,

Sleepy Bethany

and do keep in mind that my brain resembles this,

Gloppy

so I’ll do us all a favor and stop

24Sep

Love’s Interest

I encountered my first personal miracle on a crystalline December afternoon nearly five years ago. It snuck like whispered lightning into the suitcase-sized booth at Coney Island Hot Dogs where I was sitting with my boyfriend of one month, our knees kissing quietly under the table. We had reached the silent place in conversations where eyes start filling in the unsaid words, and I was thinking despite my best intentions…

Dating was not new territory for me, even though only one of my previous boyfriends could stomach the meager commitment of being called such, and then I was the one saying, “Oh, let’s not use labels.” In fact, the dating mantra was simple: Girlfriends are to be touched and not heard. I eventually clued into the fact that the guys in my life so far had been… well, something impolite to say (hint: starts with “jack” and ends with “asses”), and decided to become a nun.

Then I met Dan. Technically, we met the first day of Stupid English when he started whispering to me without realizing I was the tutor… and I oh-so-graciously shushed him. But I blocked don’t remember that particular incident. I do remember him coming over to see my roommate, me telling him she wasn’t in, and us suddenly realizing we had been talking for three hours. And then realizing we still had more to say.

I suppose that a relationship between two people who are preemptively opposed to the idea can only start as a series of small accidents, like falling deep into a conversation without realizing how. Like ending up on a movie date after all your other friends back out. Like listening to your own thoughts grown from a different soul. Oh, we convinced ourselves that we weren’t attracted, that our conversations were like Scotch tape that could be pulled off in an instant. Even after the awkwardness of knowing set in, we played it off as the stress of school.

After our third date (thought I was kidding about the denial factor?) and two solid hours of whispering, Dan finally admitted–as much to himself as to me–that he was falling for me. You would think after three dates, I would have come to the same conclusion, but my ego was clinging tenaciously to the idea that I. did. not. like. him. Even though it was already 3 a.m., I stayed up with my journal, trying to untangle a barrage of sticky emotions from the crevices in my brain. However, all I could come up with were two words: “It’s him.” I wrote them on a sticky-note and then threw the sticky-note away.

A week later, after I decided from a purely-intellectual standpoint to “officialize” our relationship, I very intellectually started freaking out. Nothing in my entire life has ever scared me as profoundly as holding Dan’s hand for the first time. I still don’t know why. After all, I adored our times together–how he challenged me, how he encouraged me, how he made me laugh. He emanated the kind of unassuming strength that I could lay the fragile bits of my heart open on. Plus, he had the cutest butt I’d ever ogled seen.

I guess I fell squarely within the cliché of women scared senseless by the prospect of true love. I wanted to keep emotion out of the picture. I wanted the safety of distance. I wanted desperately to break up before our hearts had a chance to intertwine. I knew I was hinging each day on irrationality, and I’m sure that Dan knew it too, but his endless patience provided just enough of a tether to keep my irrational, confused, terrified heart from tearing away.

So, despite my efforts to remain unattached, I wound up in a tiny Maryland town for Christmas break, meeting The Parents, putting up Christmas decorations, and walking through the snow with my fingers contentedly tangled in Dan’s. And, of course, sitting in a tiny restaurant booth trying to process the short history of our relationship. I looked up from my thoughts, straight into Dan’s smiling eyes…

…and in that instant, I fell in love.

Old Couply Pictures

One month later, I was dizzy from the sparkling significance of a new diamond ring. Six months after that, I was falling asleep curled in my new husband’s arms. And 4-1/2 years after that, I’m missing him ridiculously after only a few days apart. Of course we don’t always feel romantic–sometimes, we don’t even feel much like friends–and it’s easy to let familiarity dull our appreciation for each other. But love has a knack for expanding the treasures of memory, like money temporarily forgotten in a bank, and every time I revisit them, I realize I am richer than I ever thought.

23Sep

The Slightly-Less-Cowardly Lion Emerges

So far, Sundays have been the lines on the ruler measuring my adjustment to Italian life. During the week, I run errands and take walks, and we’ll have dinner with friends at least one night, but I stay relatively cocooned in our little apartment… especially now, with Daughter #2’s gravity pulling me in to a constant center of fatigue. Sundays, however, combine church, lunch, and occasional game nights into what feels like Italian inundation, and I get plenty of opportunity to find out just how well I’m functioning in our new life.

I’m grateful for the steady measurement. I’m often tempted to feel like nothing has changed in the past seven weeks… But then I remember our first Sunday here when I sat in church trying not to 1) cry, or 2) make eye contact with anyone who might speak to me in Italian (which would be… well, anyone). And then I measure it against today, when I plunged into a 5-1/2 hour marathon of church and lunch without a husband to translate or help carry my conversations. I feel like I climbed a mountain.

In reality, the mountain was not so much talking with people as it was finding the courage to venture out. Once I surmounted my introvert tendencies, my perpetual worries, and that stubborn little fear of making mistakes, communicating in a foreign language was a breeze. I know I will still struggle to find my bravery, but maybe next time I can remember this glow, like a bear hug enveloping my self esteem, and maybe resolve will start to feel a little more like a friend.

22Sep

Operation Visa

Up this morning at 5 a.m. to bid farewell to my hero of a husband, off to Operation Visa. Or, as I like to think of it, Operation Please God Help The Female Hitler Who Works In The Consulate To Temporarily Get Over Her Chronic PMS And Give Us The Visa Before I Have This Baby Or Teleport Myself Across The Ocean To Her Cubicle To Break The Sixth Commandment, Whichever Comes First. We have gathered every official-looking document within a 20-mile radius and have only refrained from including Dan’s first-grade report cards because The Womanazi would tell us they need to be signed in triplicate by the king of Libya. Only if our names were Dan & Bethany bin Laden would I understand the efforts this lady has put forth to not help us.*

Exaggeration aside, I truly am worried about this trip. Roundtrip airfare to the States seems an enormous price to pay for the chance to get a stamp in my husband’s passport. Yes, he’s been approved and authorized and affirmed by every necessary Italian office, and yes, he’s taking literally every document one could possibly show to get a Visa (and then some!)… It’s just that we’ve already tried so many times, and after nine months of waiting, my sense of realism feels a lot more like pessimism.

Plus, there’s the little person inside me kicking in Morse code, “I’m coming out soon!” Which she’d better, considering that her 33-week ultrasound showed she was already 6 lbs, 3 oz. If she goes to full-term, the doctor says she’ll be 10 lbs. So, ahem, she’d better come out soon. Just not next-week soon. That would result in a 1991-style comedy caper of Dan running through the airport to catch the next flight to Italy while I gracefully hyperventilate at the whole childbirth-in-a-foreign-country-without-my-husband concept. Which I would rather avoid.

And then, reasonable fears or not, I just miss my hubby when he’s gone. Quite a lot, in fact. Sure, Natalie and I will stay busy, and life will go on, but we’ll feel the empty space at every meal and during every long evening and when we go to bed every night. Our world just doesn’t rock anymore with him gone.

So now that it’s almost a reasonable hour to wake up, I’m going to curl back up in my big, empty bed and console myself with the knowledge that at least life is never boring.

(Ever.)

______
* Yes, I used a split-infinitive… ON PURPOSE. Oh, how daring I am!

19Sep

Fragmentation

I’ve been a bit lost the last few days…

This is the same week of pregnancy that I was hospitalized with pre-term labor last time. I expected everything to be different this time around–after all, no complications had presented themselves yet–but then I woke up Sunday night with the familiar tightening across my belly.

So I’m waiting it out in a haze of fatigue and worry, relieved at the permission (a.k.a. order) to stay in bed all day but disheartened at the sight of Natalie wandering the house listlessly. I wish I could do bright and exciting things with her. I wish I could be productive. I wish I could fully relax. But my mind is too fragmented to focus on any one thing; it’s skipping recklessly from anxiety to anxiety, leaving no time for perspective.

Looking up stories on Italian hospital procedures isn’t helping. Everything sounds so different, and while I can get used to different transportation systems and different business hours, I can’t welcome the idea of a different birthing environment… at least not the kind I’m told to expect. This, plus looking up pictures of a dear friend’s wedding we couldn’t attend, and I’m spectacularly homesick for the first time since we moved here.

Is it OK for me to just be a little bit hormonal and emotional and possibly even irrational tonight?

15Sep

Going Hoarse

Apparently, a week away from writing was too much. Or maybe late-pregnancy unmanageability has finally settled in my brain. Maybe I just haven’t gotten out enough lately to refill my stockpile of words. At any rate, I’ve had a dry week.

Writing the last few days has consisted of me sitting at my desk in a pool of afternoon sunlight, feeling the baby fidget, staring into space as I try to corral my creativity. I’ve typed an average of one word a minute, and reading back, it sounds so forced. I explain to Dan that it just isn’t clicking, as if my brain and the blank page were puzzle pieces, temporarily mismatched.

I want my voice back, soon, while I still have the opportunity to use it. I’m apprehensive about losing my spare moments or my motivation (or both) once the baby comes; I feel like the next month is all the time I have left in the world. Irrational, I know. But once I have two little girls here, I don’t know how I’ll manage even grocery shopping, much less building a schedule that includes time just for me.

Dr. Phil would probably say that anxiety about the upcoming birth is stifling my creative process. Oprah would probably tell me that I’m not in-tune enough with my own spirit. Jerry Springer would… I don’t know, but it would probably involve getting hit by a chair. Which might be exactly what I need. Who knows?

What I do know is that making next to no progress on my writing project this week has turned me into a grouch. Grumpy, frustrated, unsatisfied, disappointed. My mind feels like a movie kept on pause for far too long–spinning in aimless circles, leaving the rest of the story unplayed. I also feel guilty that my blog entries haven’t been the happy, waltz-y, sunshine-with-a-balloon-on-top variety. I guess I’ve gone most of my life putting on a good face no matter what, and it feels intrinsically wrong to admit ugly, gritty, human things like frustration.

I’ll keep trying to write, just to prove that I can. I’m very, very good at beginning projects, and very, very bad at finishing them; it’s my version of smoking, and I want to kick the habit. I only have one question… Am I desperate enough to actually conquer myself this time?

12Sep

Is There Life Outside of Blogging?

What I’ve been doing instead of blogging:

– Staggering around in a state of mild extreme shock at the fact that our earthly possessions actually made it across the ocean and to our door. Intact! In just one month! Our stuff! (Keep in mind that we haven’t had access to it since May. See, it’s not that bizarre for me to keep groping our lovely, soft mattress…)
– Unpacking, and unpacking, and then unpacking just a ton more.
– And cleaning, which you would think could have the decency to wait for a week or two while I tackle our sea of boxes. (You would be wrong.)
– Eating marvelous food at the homes of marvelous new friends, and keeping up with conversation more easily every time. Perhaps I will learn Italian after all, despite the fact that I have been
– Not studying my Italian books. Bad, Bethany, bad!
– Growing more bellyful and simultaneously less capable of things like movement and rational thought.
– Pining away for DSL, which I am estimating–based on current speed and helpfulness of phone company–will arrive in 2010.
– Forgetting how to write.

To those of you still reading, thank you. I’ll get back into my daily rhythm eventually. Or rather, since I haven’t had a daily rhythm since EVER, I’ll just try to carve out more quality time with my laptop in between unpacking the picture frames and forgetting where I put them. (Ah, the joys of placenta brain…)

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