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Bitter/Sweet

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Not many people know that I left home at sixteen. It’s one of those facts I tend to keep stuffed in the back of my sock drawer unless it very specifically comes up, and that doesn’t happen often. I can’t help wanting to protect that girl who grew up without anyone to protect her.

That statement would probably confuse anyone who knew my family. We were protected from television, from popularity, from music, from current events, from trendiness, from junk food, from differing religious opinions, from school, from doctors, from other cultures, from puberty, from bad words, from the law. We lived in a double-plated steel bunker of protection. But my heart was left wide open—sometimes even pried apart—to deeper and vastly more sinister dangers than tank tops or measles shots.

I only had an inkling of my own identity, but that turned out to be enough. I snuck out of sermons and found ways to cope. I rose my own money each summer to escape to the Pacific Northwest, Central and South America, Africa. And less than a month after my sixteenth birthday, I left home. No one thought it was a good idea except for me, but I knew. I had to get away to give my heart a fighting chance.

In doing so, I made a surgical cut with iron resolve —no more church or high school friends or employers or family, no going back. And what I struggle with these days is what happened after I made the cut. My friends went on to attend college, marry, have babies, and attend afternoon barbecues together. I’ve contacted several of them lately, thanks to the miracle of Facebook, and they all wave awkwardly from the other side of the chasm wondering, Doesn’t she remember burning this bridge?

Relationships feel odder still with my family, which changed in enormous, unthinkably good ways after I left home. When I visit them—less than once a year since I’ve been married—I hardly recognize them. My siblings are happy and close-knit, every trace of their stress-related illnesses gone. After so many years of feeling guilty that I left them defenseless when I moved out, I am delighted to see them this way. But I am a stranger, by my own choice. They are with their family; I am with mine.

For the first time in my life, I feel pangs of homesickness for the people I walked away from. I chose a life of luggage tags and freedom instead of old friends and permanence, and this is absolutely what I needed. But as most choices in life go, this one has turned out equal parts bitter and sweet.

21Aug

Conservative Hippyism

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

Dan turned on Audio Adrenaline this afternoon just especially to annoy me as I finished cooking lunch because he loves me so.

Remember this?

I used to like them because even though they were Christian (a requisite for my mid-‘90s music collection), the long-haired bass guitarist used to paint his nails. SUCH A REBEL. Anyway, I hadn’t listened to them in 150 years or so, and some of their lyrics startled me today:
“You can take God out of my school
You can make me listen to you
You can take God out of the pledge
But you can’t take God out of my head.”

I was still brainwashed a good conservative Baptist girl when the issue of prayer in public schools stirred up tremendous controversy in the church. I earnestly believed what I was told: that you would be arrested for having a Bible in your backpack or praying at your desk. Of course that was simple misinformation, spread in hysteria by panicked churchgoers. (If any of you are interested in the actual details of Supreme Court rulings, here ya go.) It never has been and probably never will be illegal to pray in schools; it just isn’t legal to force everyone else to participate. (I am so tempted to go ask the hysterical doomsayers of my childhood how they would have reacted if it had been Muslim prayer or Native American rituals or Wiccan chants being banned… but I guess that is just the heathen in me.)

The subject launched Dan and I into one of those long coffee-fueled conversations that remind us how glad we are to be on the same page. (He calls us “conservative hippies,” a fabulous description for two people feeling out the balance between standards and open mindedness.) We’re coming into that delicate stage of parenting where our preschooler absorbs every word she hears and works it into her own context of the world, and I desperately want to protect her from all the damaging teachings I grew up with. For Dan, who grew up in a different (and more, uh, functional) culture, the challenge is in noticing all the subtle hints of religious dogma that pop up.

For instance, I was reading a new picture book to Natalie today—a gift from relatives who no doubt found the story wholesome. However, I almost threw it away when we got to the page when the spoiled little mice realize how ungrateful they’ve been and start to cry. “I’m so dreadfully ashamed of myself,” sobs the girl mouse, who had refused to eat her parsnips on page 6. Wham. One little sentence packing a life-long punch of obligatory guilt. I know it all too well. (I decided not to make a big deal out of it at the time and finished the story—Natalie has a few years yet before she needs to learn about the religious-cultural doctrine of shame—but that book is never going back on her shelf.)

Dan reminded how much of this idea of making oneself miserable to be moral comes from ancient Jewish culture, and later, Roman Catholicism. (It’s not, by the way, from the Bible. In fact, Paul wrote a lengthy letter directly to the Romans explaining that forgiveness was God’s job, not theirs, and was free, free, free, free, and did he mention free?) It’s incredible to me that shame, a monumentally damaging emotion, is held up as a hallmark of holiness in so many circles.

I’m still unsure how to cultivate the spiritual side of my daughters in a way that will be relevant to them now. I can guarantee I will never be hammering the concept of obedience into their heads as the path to preschool Godliness. (We do teach them to obey us, by the way, just not in the vein of “morality is the point of life, now clean your room.”) Neither will shame or deeply burrowing regret ever be sensations we teach them. We’ll let them read the Bible in time, once they are able to process context and applicability, but there will be no gruesome history lessons for now. (Do you know how many Noah’s Ark-themed gifts I’ve had to throw away? I would like to punch whoever keeps insisting that the story of worldwide homicide and destruction is good for kids just because some animals were involved. And Jesus’s horrific torture, murder, and abandonment by God? They deeply traumatized me as a young child, and I am not willing to put my girls through that at such sensitive ages, no matter how foundational the story is to our faith.)

That only leaves the question of what do we teach them now? I still find myself a bit undone spiritually, decades of righteous BS unraveling while my true un-churchy beliefs begin to form. I feel bad that the girls are not benefitting from a mother who has her own convictions figured out like the mothers of my past all did (or pretended to), but perhaps my honesty in the matter will be enough. Maybe my lack of pretensions can accomplish what severe doctrine failed to do for me: inspire their spirituality to grow and breathe and seek out the truth with confidence.

19Aug

Gargoyle Daydreams

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

I remember her sobbing under blood-soaked sheets, moaning and gasping and stifling screams. She would not go to a hospital. Not to save herself, not even to save her unborn baby. Only when she had lost too much blood to protest was an ambulance called. It snuck down the street in the middle of the night, lights muted and siren off, to carry her to whatever help she would accept. The next morning, her living children woke to babysitters who told them “Your mom is away seeing a friend, now who wants pancakes?” Of course, who would tell young children that their own mother had been willing to abandon them to a darkly looming life and a pile of bloody sheets, all for a misplaced fear of doctors?

***

I find myself immersed in gargoyle daydreams so often these days that the filmy wisps of imagination are becoming stone. I’ve always been good at picturing catastrophe, but these dreams are darker than anything I’ve experienced before.

In every single one, Sophie dies.

I spoon applesauce into her grinning, teething, lovely mess of a mouth and try to talk my heart out of breaking. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real. I snuggle her against my chest the way we slept in my hospital bed, all cozy curlicues and softness, and nuzzle her perfect dollop of a nose, all the while trying not to panic. This isn’t a goodbye.

I didn’t figure the reason out until tonight, while I browsed sites like Glow in the Woods, other women’s haunting and exquisitely beautiful stories of their lostbabies. One mama in particular wrote about the day her thirteen-month-old died, how she had known he was sick even when everyone else blew off her worries, and I suddenly understood.

It was exactly like that, seven weeks ago. We were at church when it dawned on me that Sophie was not okay. “Of course she is!” argued the other women, the relatives, all the grandmotherly types. “She’s just teething. See, her forehead’s not even warm!” And even though I sensed deep down that something was wrong, I let myself be cowed by the other womens’ years of experience.

After lunch, I couldn’t ignore the heart-tug, so I did all I knew—Tylenol, Pedialyte, kisses. I rocked her back and forth while her temperature climbed from 103º to 104º to 105º (“The thermometer must be broken,” offered a helpful relative) and consciously decided against taking her to a doctor. No American health insurance, and we’d be back in Italy soon anyway. So we went shoe shopping instead, Sophie limp and expressionless in her carseat.

She had the seizure in the parking lot of Famous Footwear while I was inside merrily trying on high heels. I ran straight out and was nearly bowled over by her lumpy lavender skin, her rolled-back eyes, her forced breaths. I couldn’t look at her again, not once on the eternal ride to the hospital. I just held her head and willed us both to keep breathing.

When we first arrived at the ER, the medical staff seemed duly alarmed. They slapped a “Red Alert” bracelet on her tiny ankle, and a team of nurses bustled with needles and machines and pint-sized magic potions. “Just hold her hand, Mom. Just keep talking to her.” It wasn’t until hours later, when the adrenaline had worn off and sheer willpower was holding me upright, that the on-call doctor coolly mentioned, “Oh yeah, this is no big deal; happens all the time. She looks perfectly fine to me.”

At that moment, I felt as stupid as I had that morning in church when the grandmothers pooh-poohed my instincts. It’s no big deal… What kind of idiot must I have been on the trip to the hospital, imploding from the silent pressure of holding back sobs? I felt very distinctly that I had been robbed of my experience and, more importantly, the right to intuitively care for my baby. But the doctors knew best. I stuffed the whole episode into some scraggly Room of Requirement in my memory and locked the door.

Tonight, it finally dawned on me that it was a big deal. Oh, was it ever a big deal. Because when I look at bereaved mamas’ photos, I see my own little girl. When I read their heartbreaking stories, I read mine. My story has a different ending to be sure, and I could never presume to understand the pain these other women are going through, but it didn’t have to end differently. If I had just… or she had just… or we hadn’t been able to… The truth is that a happy ending doesn’t erase guilt. It doesn’t settle this urgency to turn back time and do things differently as some kind of cosmic insurance against my dreams.

It was a big deal, and maybe it’s time I faced that.

***

I tend to flaunt my faith in doctors around people who are afraid or skeptical of them. It makes me feel wise, I suppose, and independent and so very mainstream. But there is more to healing than textbook medical knowledge, nodes of intuition and loving concern that matter. I know that, now.

15Aug

Free-Range Eggs

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Everything is quiet now. A brief thunderstorm earlier this evening scrubbed the air clean of all its sticky summer-night noises, and the whole world has gone to bed. Our vacation is almost over, and even though it has sucked every puff of energy out of my body, I’m still reluctant to give it up. I know that like all good things, this has to come to an end to make room for other good things, but I have a hard time with little transitions.

I can’t explain this vague dread I’m harboring of the upcoming year (years have always started in September for me, no matter how many balls drop in January). It sounds ridiculous to say this year contains too many unknowns, considering that this time last year, I was hugely pregnant and Visa-less. But then, I guess I knew which basket my eggs were in. Right now, life looks a little formless and void, and I can’t tell where the firmament separates from the wrinkles in my brain. There will be so much rampant growing in my precious family this year, and here comes the dread: It’s always a gamble whether that growth will bring us closer together or shoot us in opposite directions.

It seems that daredevil bike rides and stormy stroller races and fried octopus dinners have been only the prelude to the real adventure of stepping in own front door together again. And oh, it will be epic.

14Aug

As Easy As

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Monday, August 11: Day 4 of Vacation (Day 3 here)

“Good morning!” Dan began. “Want to ride bikes to the beach?”

“Sure!” I answered, because 1) I tend to lack common sense among other brain functions first thing in the morning, 2) My husband has a way of bringing out the lunatic in me, and 3) I didn’t realize that the beach was 20 kilometers away, an island called Lido orbiting the far side of Venice.

We got through the rigmarole of finding the beach towels, piling prosciutto on bread, and bathing in SPF 4,000 and set off just as the streets began to sizzle. At first, we wound through lazy neighborhoods, past bakeries and stationary shops and bars all closed for vacation, breathing in the singular thrill of morning. We turned down a long avenue with its own bike path—double lanes!—and a sidewalk for the hundreds of perky dogs taking their owners for a walk. It was beautiful and relaxing, as easy as waking up one pedal at a time.

BUT. Of course there had to be one, and this particular BUT was a doozie. The straight tree-lined path ended, and I found myself swerving through a roundabout—those navigational horrors of European driving that only begin to feel natural once you accept that the other cars will veer into your lane without warning. And then a sudden bridge, far steeper than I expected, and oh my god, we’re on a highway, OH MY GOD, WE’RE ON A HIGHWAY AND IS THAT A BUS? A BUS, A BUS!! SPEEDING THREE INCHES FROM MY HANDLEBARS?! ARE YOU KIDDING, WE HAVE TO CROSS THIS INTERCHANGE, AND HOLY GUACAMOLE HERE’S ANOTHER BUS!!!!!!!!!!

My life, it flashed. Sophie babbled happily behind me as I gripped the lifeblood out of my handlebars and practiced Lamaze breathing techniques all the way down a gravelly merge lane and onto the second terrifying highway. I have never felt so close to death for such an extended period before, even though the bus drivers were exceedingly courteous in that not one of them ran us over.

And then Death got distracted by something more interesting, a drunk hang-glider or perhaps a Qantas jet taking off, and we were finally on the infinite bridge to Venice—long and arrow-straight and glory of glories, equipped with a bike path. I know by this point, you’re getting bored and thinking So are they ever going to get there?, and believe me, I was wondering the same thing as the bridge stretched on in front of us. And on. And then on some more. And then once we miraculously reached the end of it, there were still two mammoth hills between us and the ferry, and a mile to ride once we got off the ferry, and hunger and sweat and my butt weeping in pain…

…but make it we did. I have never been so grateful to lie down in a big pile of hot sand surrounded by topless grandmas and diminutive Speedos. We had our inevitable beach disasters—Sophie catapulting herself into the sea and Natalie disappearing (and my resulting coronary, of course)—but our time there as a whole was deliciously serene. Dainty blue hints of waves, sand castles decorated with copious sand flowers, our own umbrella-niche of shade to relax while the breeze whisked away the effort of our trip.

Natalie on the ferry through Venice

We made it back home as well with 75% fewer hyperventilations on my part, the girls’ sleepy heads bobbing to and fro in the waning sunlight, bike pedals moving of their own accord to get us to our gate. We dragged ourselves inside, collapsing in a family heap on the bed, and I decided that #13 from my birthday list, “Have an adventure”? Is officially crossed off.

13Aug

A Tale of Two Cities

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

The first two days of vacation never count, at least for me. We emerge from our car sticky and discombobulated (not to mention caked in vomit and puréed peas), and at least a full 36 hours are needed for the sediment to settle. Once the clean towels have been found, the fridge stocked, and everyone’s shoes lined up serenely beside the door, the real vacation starts. And here it is, piecemeal (one post at a time, for now).

Sunday, August 10: Day 3 of Vacation

I’m fascinated by the cobblestones and weathered Latin inscriptions in our current hometown, the hairpin roads veering sharply upward to spy on vast hills dotted with olive groves and pieces of castle. We live in Italy’s oldest city—Etruscan history is around ever corner—and the view takes my breath away. Still, I’ve never felt quite as settled there as I do here in Mestre, my husband’s hometown. The city can boast no quaint hillside beauty as it sprawls from Venice into the Po Valley, but it is alive in a way that the older cities have forgotten.

Bicycles! They roam the streets carrying old ladies in cotton dresses, little girls with pigtails flying furiously, beaming dads with their sons strapped behind, couples holding hands, entire extended families out for a joy ride. Herds of bicycles cluster around the entrances to grocery stores, grazing warm pavement as happily as ever metal and rubber could. Bicycles have their own crosswalks here, their own parking spots, and their own traffic jams. I haven’t ridden a bike in ages—nobody does in our city, for good reason—so an evening ride with Dan and the girls is an immense pleasure.

We set off just as the air begins to cool. At first, we are mirages of sweat and insect repellent, wobbling down the street as we slap at mosquitoes and scratch fresh welts between fingers and behind ears (how do they know?) But intoxication sets in soon. We pedal faster until our faces are bright with wind and sunset, ringing our bells because why not? Churches and pharmacies fly by, and long, colorful streets canopied with trees—giant symphonies of trees, overwhelming green, trees that swell my heart to bursting after a year of scrubby olive groves. A stop at the neighborhood gelateria is compulsory, and within seconds there is chocolate in cones, on fingers, and, of course, dripping off delighted little chins.

We ease our bikes back down the street, past the carabinieri (Italy’s version of military police) fingering their machine guns which are pointed straight at us as they call “Ciao!” with huge smiles. Past the enormous park with its duck ponds and soccer courts and happy memories of Dan and I as newlyweds, riding through enchanted paths at night. Past houses and houses, all perfectly Italian in gorgeous muted colors and tiled balconies spilling over with flowers. Then back to the house we’re staying at that we both kind of wish were home.

[More to come. Don’t touch that dial…]

7Aug

Ovariansanity

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 7 Comments

Ovaries are dangerous, folks. They sit quietly in the background while you explain to your husband-to-be that you only want two kids, no exceptions, and certainly none until you’re well settled into marriage. You are sure of this. That is, until The Ovaries don their black ski masks and sneak into your cerebral cortex in the dead of night. An adjustment here, an alteration there, and you suddenly find yourself thumbing through Anne Geddes albums at the book store and wondering if two weeks of marriage could count as “settled.”

I mean, look!

Photo credit: Anne Geddes

You go through your two pregnancies with mixed feelings, most of them worthy of Chandler Bing: “Could I BE any more uncomfortable?” and “Stick a fork in me; I’m done.” Gestating feels neither gorgeous nor idyllic, and you feel unprecedented relief once your secondborn is… well, born. You have certain “married people” talks that cause the other party in question to cringe. You give away your maternity clothes and, eventually, burn your nursing bras at the stake. To deal with two children, who together have twice as many arms as you and about seventeen times your vocal capacity, you develop coping strategies like fantasizing about the very distant future and chugging sipping vodka for breakfast before bed. You are done.

But The Ovaries, they are evil. They swap out your memories of pregnancy with Angelina Jolie’s. Nausea, exhaustion, and the unfortunate side-effect of labor? No big deal. Not even sleepless nights or financial concerns or the fact that you already burned your nursing bras matter. The Ovaries have spoken; you want another baby. Except that it’s more like need than want—true desperation for those tiny dimpled fingers, that soft, milky newborn smell. It’s a craving. An obsession.

I suppose it’s unfair to say ovaries are evil when what they really are is inconvenient. I don’t know if all women go through this, but my body is the type to hold onto the vast magic of baby-having that my mind only recalls in traces. My mind latches onto practicality; my body lets itself be enchanted. And even though my husband is likely to ship me off to an asylum after reading this post, I’m so glad to be back thinking in “oooohs” and “awwwws” and giddy delight over humanity’s most delicate form. (As opposed to “How much vodka can I slip in her bottle before someone notices?” Ahem.)

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