Bethany Bassett

A Daily Dose of Beauty ~ August 2010

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August 1^st – Playing piano for church without the perspiring palms or misplayed notes that usually plague me.

August 2^nd – Giving Natalie my pink pen and encouraging her to go to town on letters; this teaching process is making my English-nerdy heart so happy.

August 3^rd – Compensating for the lack in stores by making bread and butter pickles from scratch (with coriander picked from our balcony, no less!).

August 4^th – Spending a family evening at the park to breathe fresh air and recharge.

August 5^th – Catching a mesmerizing sunrise mere seconds before the day turned overcast.

August 6^th – Chilling with my brother-in-law over lunch, grateful for family who are also friends.

August 7^th – Deciding on the spur of the moment to pack our lunch and go camping near Pitigliano.

August 8^th – Spending the most delightfully lazy Sunday swimming in the pond, picking fruit, and relaxing as a family in the great outdoors.

August 9^th – Indulging the compulsion to write despite a jillion-long to-do list.

August 10^th – Appreciating and clinging to my dear husband all the more in light of a friend’s divorce.

August 11^th – Cracking up over the girls’ lyrical interpretation of a light saber fight.

August 12^th – Waking up to the first morning of Dan’s unexpected mini-vacation.

August 13^th – Getting a free jazz dance performance by Natalie in front of the Duomo in Orvieto.

August 14^th – Introducing our house guests to the magical, laughter-producing power of the Wii.

August 15^th –Slurping up homemade Nutella malt milkshakes—with cherries and chocolate sprinkles, of course—in four-part harmony.

August 16^th – Spending the last day of Dan’s work vacation doing nothing, glorious nothing.

August 17^th – Finding a wiggly tooth in my five-year-old’s mouth and cheering together for the fantastic process of growing up.

August 18^th – Watching my husband step up and offer unconditional love and support to friends in need.

August 19^th – Hiding safely inside while Dan and his brother played a hilarious version of tennis with the bees infesting our balcony.

August 20^th – Baking cherry chocolate cupcakes with Sophie, who kept smiling up with a chocolate-smeared face to exclaim, “We are the best bakers!”

August 21^st – Giving some family TLC to our balcony garden; home improvement projects always make me happy.

August 22^nd – Unexpectedly not having to play piano for church, performance pressure dissolved instantly.

August 23^rd – Taking myself out to shop for clothes in luxurious solitude.

August 24^th – Enjoying our typical summer evening of freshly-baked baguette slathered in stracchino and a side of ripe, red watermelon, eaten together on our balcony while the sun melts out of sight.

August 25^th – Journaling through some tangles in my brain and gaining perspective in the process.

August 26^th – Scanning approximately 50,000 pages of the girls’ artwork from the last month, like taking a vacation in their funny, colorful worlds.

August 27^th – Rising above a heavy rejection letter to work on a story and finding I still have the capacity to enjoy writing after all.

August 28^th – Taking a spontaneous trip with friends to Isola Polvese for a day of ferrying, picnicking, and playing on the beach.

August 29^th – Watching and trying out circus acts with the girls at the children’s festival in the park below our house.

August 30^th – Being blown away once again by the brilliant, saturated colors in the evening sky.

August 31^st – Falling even more in love with my creative Miss Natalie upon reading her color chart.

30Aug

Phobeea

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Let me be clear: This is a tale of survival, and it is not for the faint of heart.

Last Monday, I took myself out for the evening. “Evening” here is a relative term since my husband doesn’t get home from work until 7:15 and the local mall closes at 9 (which the shop owners tend to interpret as 8:45). However, I had a little birthday money to spend, and an hour all my own to try on clothes without small offspring pointing out my anatomy at top volume, suddenly remembering they need to go potty, or throwing open the dressing room door when I am the least… uh, prepared… sounded so relaxing it felt illegal.

I had the house clean and the girls fed when Dan arrived, but I still felt a little rebellious sashaying out the door alone. (Hey, I was far too cowed to rebel in my teens like a normal human, so I tend to get my taste of insurrection from anomalies in my routine… and let me say, it is delicious.) I rolled the windows down, cranked up the music, and sped off into a glamorous sunset.

One minute away from the mall, I was startled when a small rock sailed through the passenger window and landed with a thud in my lap. There were no cars around, and I was mildly curious what would cause a rock to take such a horizontal trajectory. I slowed down just enough to glance at it… and my spine immediately began clawing at the base of my skull for an exit. The object in my lap was not a rock. It was a bee. An enormous bee. A spiky, hairy, hell-hued beast of a bee.

Allow me to provide visual clarification:

~~~

Let’s back up a couple of decades. I liked bugs as much as the next grubby-fingered kid. I remember farming roly-polies in our gravel driveway, coaxing butterflies to land on my nose, and poking beetles simply because… well, antagonizing beetles is one of childhood’s great joys. But then came the fateful morning that a cricket got tangled in my hair. I couldn’t see it. I could only feel it, it’s spindly legs, its bony wings, all the little scrambling bits of sharpness and slime getting increasingly enmeshed in my hair. That morning, a phobia was born, fully-grown.

My little brothers took full advantage of the shift in my psychosis. They chased me with grasshoppers and spiders until I was in hysterics (another of childhood’s great joys), and even though I realized my fear had nothing to do with logic, I couldn’t stop it from pulling me in head-first. At least my reaction these days is a little more refined. When I see something with more than four legs in our house, I simply shut the door to that room and wait until Dan comes home to take care of it. No more weeping or screaming. Not so loudly, at any rate.

~~~

Need I take you through the horror of that moment in the car? If you had been within a hundred meters (and thank goodness no one was), you would have heard a rather eloquent scream followed by the equally eloquent “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD…” If you’re concerned for my salvation, rest assured—not a syllable of it was in vain. I needed God to get rid of the bee nownowNOW before the car and I came to a tragic demise.

I could still feel the weight in my lap and the pricks of its legs sticking through my jeans. God apparently hadn’t heard. “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!” I didn’t dare look down. All I could do was keep the car more or less on the road and try not to imagine all the awful ways that bee was going to kill me with its barbs and fangs and beady-eyed horridness. I suppose I do have to give credit to divine powers for getting me into the mall parking lot without panic wresting the steering wheel from me—and believe me, it tried every quarter-second—because I was certainly not in the proper frame of mind to handle heavy machinery just then. Nevertheless, after the longest minute of my life, I managed to park the car. It may have covered three spaces, and I might have forgotten to actually turn the motor off, but we were safely at a standstill when I snuck a second peek at my lap.

Allow me to provide visual clarification:

If you had been in the parking lot (and unfortunately, plenty of people were), you would have seen a crazed woman leap out of her still-running car and start doing the Riverdance while stringing together Shakespearean curses in a helium voice and beating at her own legs with a purse. You would have seen the jumping abruptly replaced with full-body shuddering as she retrieved the contents of her purse from the pavement and barricaded herself in the car (this time remembering to turn it off). Eventually, you would have seen her glance mistrustfully out the window, climb over the console, crawl out of the passenger door, and head into the mall trying to pretend away her jellified ankles and wild eyes.

It may not have been my most dignified public appearance, but survive I did. I even enjoyed the solo shopping experience, gruesome flashbacks notwithstanding, and when I finally returned to the car, the bee was gone. It probably just flew away in search of some new victim, but I like to think that it returned to Hades from whence it came.

Take it away, Beyonce.

19Aug

I’ll Even Pay For Shipping

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I’ve had a heavy couple of days. Friends of ours who have been together as long as Dan and I just ended their relationship, and a small but sharply-elbowed portion of their pain has crammed itself under my rib cage. They weren’t married, but they had made a home together, and they had both been thinking in forever terms. The break is jagged. We have offered the guest bedroom and listening ears, but these feel as useful as a cup of tea trying to put out a fire. What I really want to offer is a solution.

The man, A, told us candidly about his reasons for initiating the break-up. He loved E, loves her still, has wanted to give her the sparkly ring and the commitment and the curly-headed babies she’s longed for… but he can’t do that until she checks back into her own life. Dan and I see it too, how she’s been drifting along aimless and emotionless. She loathes her job, halfheartedly subscribes to a religion she doesn’t believe, no longer recognizes her desires by name, and has forgotten how to love. She’s floated so far away from her own heart that apathy is towing her down without the slightest opposition. E wouldn’t even acknowledge her partner in a life raft with his hand outstretched, and A couldn’t continue to build a life with a drowning woman. His decision was necessary and heartrending.

E still isn’t talking, and I wish I knew what was happening in her—if this pain that not even apathy can immunize against is sparking recognition in her again or if she is simply counting on the anesthesia to kick in soon. I want to shake her until her eyes refocus. I want to show her the warm, gentle man who made a brave decision in hopes that she will come back to him with motivation all her own. I want to remind her of the lively and radiant woman she is beneath the lethargy. I want her to take stock of her priorities and realize that a life with love and fulfillment is worth too much to float by listlessly. Wake up! I think from the pressure center under my rib cage. Wake up! Wake up!

I hope, however foolishly, that my brain waves make their way to hers and that the heaviness knotted inside my chest will somehow translate to a happy ending for my friends. I believe this is exactly the kind of situation in which miracles thrive. I just wish I could insure that their miracle comes with overnight shipping… and maybe an extra-loud alarm clock. The one in our guest room really isn’t up to the task.

18Aug

Dizzy Ankles

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It’s after 10 p.m. The girls are tucked away to dream about tooth fairies and strawberry milkshakes, and Dan is out with a friend. I’ve claimed the night as my writing space and am sitting crosslegged on our balcony letting the full weight of star-studded infinity muddle my brain. I loved doing this as a child, gazing into space until the dizzy wonder of it dangled me by my ankles.

This summer has been nothing like I expected. Remember my worry over failing to plan enough activities? This is the part where I get back into a yoga routine just so I can gain enough flexibility to kick myself upside the head. If you have a weak heart or a judgment complex, please don’t read the following sentence: I haven’t taken the girls to our neighborhood park once this summer. Not a single time. And that was the one activity I didn’t plan as we would already be going every day, duh. What I failed to factor into my research on libraries and water parks was that our family thrives on spontaneity. Since returning from Scotland, we have gone on three more trips, hosted visitors twice, had seven groups over for dinner, and gone on a variety of social outings, none of which came with much advance notice. Combined with the surprising fullness of daily life with the girls, I haven’t had enough downtime to remember I’m supposed to be combating boredom.

To throw another little twist in the mix, summer abruptly went from HOT, HOT, MUST DUNK HEAD IN A VAT OF PARTIALLY MELTED POPSICLES NOW to breezy and Septemberly a couple of weeks ago, and all the pool playdates I had imagined were relegated to the same dusty corner as the fans. If you live in the Southwest, please don’t read the following sentence: I am wearing a sweatshirt right now. The mind, it boggles.

I feel I should assure you all that I have been working on my recap from our Scotland trip, but it has quite the ego and has started fancying itself to be a novel. I will be sure to share once I wrangle it into submission. Not tonight though. It’s time to turn off my computer, look into the sky, and let the breezy impulses of our summer spiral into the vast universe until I am weightless.

9Aug

Back From Hither

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I’m completely taken with the sky this summer.

She’s been moodier than usual, whipped into rages and shadowed with intrigues, spiraling from coy to caustic to radiantly congenial in the span of a single morning. She blushes. She glares. She showers, dresses up in Adriatic blue, and beckons.

And if we keep forgetting our responsibilities and running away with her for the weekend… well, we can hardly be blamed, can we?

2Aug

Dragonfly Days

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For the record, I have no idea how any parent accomplishes any kind of work in the summer.

I remember this feeling from the first few months after Sophie joined our family—I didn’t necessarily have more to do, but the time in which to do it was suddenly occupied by a needy, albeit adorable, little person. We’re out of milk-smitten newborns around here, but the children of the house still have a way of curling my time around their pinkie fingers and then using it as a jump rope over which one of them will invariably fall and blame her sister who will protest and up the volume ante until both girls are trading reproach at a decibel generally reserved for banshees.

If our livelihood depended on it (and I’m a little embarrassed that it doesn’t), I’m sure I could find hours in these dragonfly days for writing. However, that would require me to give up a thing or two—

chatting each evening with our balcony garden… coaxing the strawberries to climb, pinching off fragrant basil blooms, harvesting nut brown coriander, selecting fresh chilis and the brightest daisies for our dinner table… pruning, watering, and befriending each homespun leaf—

busting out the pens, paper, and bookworm stickers after breakfast to a chorus of cheers and teaching the girls about the alchemy of letters into words… singing [rather terribly] about short vowel sounds, cheering for silent “e,” and watching a new universe unfold in Natalie’s star struck eyes—

maintaining my status as worthy foe to the army of ants living under the doorframe by keeping the place crumb-free, popsicle-puddle-free, and ever ready for guests… being able to invite friends over on a whim for board games and cold drinks, pasta salad and conversation into the night… sustaining the peaceful and social home that makes our family thrive—

riding the tide of childhood with a pair of sunblown girls… taking them camping and swimming and playground hopping, settling onto the floor with them to work puzzles and Perler beads, helping them [help me] whip up desserts and steep iced tea, reading books by the armful, sampling gelato, lazing around in hammocks—

catching up with family, editing photographic evidence of our adventures, reminding my fingers how to dance on piano keys, putting together birthday gifts for loved ones, nibbling the haze-ripened moon with honey and wine, attending to the precious minutiae of motherhood…

Come September, we’ll be on to a new phase of life, a both-girls-in-school kind of phase. And while I’m looking forward to the free time with a hungry glee, it also makes my throat prick against the back of my eyes until I can’t see quite straight. Sorry, writing (and reading and budgeting and blog-catch-upping), but you’ll have to wait. I’m busy accomplishing summertime with my two darling banshees.

31Jul

A Daily Dose of Beauty ~ July 2010

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July 1^st – Poking around the kitchen at Eilean Donan Castle and thanking the Powers That Be that I’m not actually a scullery maid.

July 2^nd – Hiking through Glen Affric hand-in-hand with Natalie who sang her superspeed version of “You Are My Sunshine” to me on repeat.

July 3^rd – Careening with my crazy little family down the grassy dunes at Nairn Beach.

July 4^th – Catching the total glee of the girls as they spent the morning whizzing down water slides.

July 5^th – Eating Indian takeout on the floor and laughing over mis-translated menus with my very favorite husband of seven years.

July 6^th – Surviving the hike up to Arthur’s Seat as a family and feeling on top of the world.

July 7^th – Finding, in a very Private Eye move, the Tesco Superstore whose address had been written wrong. Without GPS. In an unfamiliar city. In which one is expected to drive on the wrong side of the road.

July 8^th – Chowing down on piping hot fish and chips to bid farewell to a wonderful two weeks in the UK.

July 9^th – Sharing a chair lift with my wide-eyed Sophie up above the quaint streets, serene river, and fairy-tale castle of Vianden.

July 10^th – Splashing away the afternoon sweat in a Munich creek with dear friends, water cannons, and plenty of giggles.

July 11^th – Spending time with friends in two different countries and finally falling asleep in our own soft beds; it’s good to be home!

July 12^th – Opening a care package from a friend who somehow knew I needed to start the week with glitter and a good book.

July 13^th – Watching an episode of Wipeout with the girls and cracking up together at all the good, clean painful, mud-splattered fun.

July 14^th – Seeing the thrill radiating from Sophie as we watched Toy Story 3 in the theater.

July 15^th – Sorting photos of our trip, each click a newly-minted memory.

July 16^th – Taking the afternoon off to read a fantastic book guilt-free.

July 17^th – Cracking up as my fearless husband swatted wasps out of the air so his much-more-fearful wife could enjoy her evening outdoors.

July 18^th – Hosting a pool party only hours after setting up the girls’ inflatable pool… and it being a smash hit!

July 19^th – Joining in the girls’ silliness in the pool and remembering the magical combination of water and children’s imaginations.

July 20^th – Driving through a gold-tinged evening with the windows down and the music up—one of my favorite simple pleasures in the world.

July 21^st – Filling an even trillion bottles with bright pineapple limoncello with Dan and thrilling to think of the friends who will enjoy them at Christmas.

July 22^nd – Beating the heat with popsicles and pools and realizing I don’t miss air conditioning anymore.

July 23^rd – Modeling my old ballet gear for my star-struck girls and dancing the morning away with them.

July 24^th – Bobbing around in the turquoise waves of the Adriatic with my little fish of a Natalie.

July 25^th – Chilling in our friends’ Brazilian hammock in the beach breeze.

July 26^th – Playing airplane (now with turbulence!) with the girls until my legs gave out and we were all breathless with laughter.

July 27^th – Doing my first reading lesson with Natalie and catching the infectious joy on her face as she read “Zac the Rat” cover to cover on her own.

July 28^th – Doing my second reading lesson with Natalie and discovering the joy hadn’t worn off.

July 29^th – Picking richly brown coriander seeds one at a time from June’s cilantro patch as my thoughts shifted from salsa to pickles.

July 30^th – Impulsively inviting friends over for games… and having them accept just as impulsively.

July 31^st – Finally getting all the photos from our Scotland trip captioned and neatly distributed online; it’s so good to be done!

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