Bethany Bassett

Gentle Tsunami

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 10 Comments

I was walking home from the park three days ago hand-in-hand with my daughters, smears of frozen yogurt on our cheeks and playground gravel under our fingernails, when it hit me. Grace. Like a gentle tsunami, it washed over that moment. Then, at half-past-naptime in the afternoon. There, under the silver-glinted olive trees. My hands clasped with the two little girls who make me crazy with love (and sometimes just crazy)… and I whispered “Thank you” into the springtime sky.

I remember another Sunday years ago when I sat in our church’s youth group after a particularly terrifying lesson. I was already a veteran victim of religious terror, and our church had raised the bar impossibly high with the unit study on demons when I was in 5^th grade. Still, this particular Sunday’s message was the most frightening of my life: You are doomed to commit the same sins your parents did. It was an interpretation of Exodus 20:5 that many Christians accept, and it scared me into a hopeless panic.

“Please, God, no!” I prayed over and over like a character in a scratchy black and white film. “Please, God, no! Please, God, no! I don’t want to hurt my own children one day, I don’t want them to end up like me. Please, God…” I muddled through vague resolutions not to ever fall in love or get married, not to ever, ever make a baby. I was heartbroken. Damned.

In college, I met, kissed, and married my husband within ten short months, irreversibly losing my anti-marriage resolve. However, my fear was still alive. I felt it in the secret passageways of my anatomy every day of married life. I tasted its metallic bitterness. It compounded in my chest when I leafed through Anne Geddes books, wondering what kind of monster a baby would unleash in me. I did not want to find out. I adored children, so I was particularly cautious not to have one myself.

Another Bible study turned the tides. I worked through Beth Moore’s “Breaking Free” with a group of college friends and learned that faulty translation had created all this mess. Exodus 20:5 in the original language says that the “sins of the fathers” (oh, what a sinister phrase) are taken into account by God. As in, God understands how the misdeeds of older generations affect younger generations. Other Bible passages such as Ezekiel 18 go into greater detail on how people’s choices and consequences are solely their own… but this isn’t meant to be a Bible study. It’s the story of how my fear let out a surprised “Oh!” and vanished in a wisp of smoke.

That very next summer, I got pregnant with Natalie. And while I still had some freakouts and hyperventilations to work out of my system, I welcomed her to the world with a fuzzy, warm, king-sized happiness. I met my baby and turned into a mother.

Four years and two months later, I played with my daughters all afternoon at the park. We picked Sophie’s favorite miniature daisies and flew on pink horses that Natalie conjured up. We ran all the way home for a potty break and then back out for frozen yogurt topped with white chocolate, strawberries, and heaps of colorful sprinkles. We walked home giggling, and I realized with the full profundity of a once-afraid soul that God answered. For all my faults—getting frustrated with the incessant toddler messes, blocking out every third hour of the incessant preschool chatter, saying “We’ll do that later” far too often—I have been spared the pain of becoming an abusive parent. My own hurts are even healing under the skilled touch of grace. The fear is simply a forgotten nightmare; grace is my here-and-now. Grace is why today, I can hug those little girls with a heart full of our delicious memories and say, “Happy Mother’s Day to you too.”

7May

Résumé

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

don’t

jobs.

For instance, the one in which I entered names and addresses from handwritten cards into a computer for eight loooooooooong hours every day. I bribed myself to keep on living with Mrs. Baird’s cupcakes and one Sunkist a day from the vending machine. Still less fun than it sounds.

…Or the next summer, at the same company, in which I weeded out duplicates from the universe’s longest list of churches. In French. Which I don’t speak. It took me the entire summer.

…Or the summer after that with a company that hired me without actually having a position for me. I occasionally made copies, chatted with the secretaries, and tore sticky notes into miniscule bits to give myself some job security. Oh, and I also avoided their mandatory company-wide “spiritual strengths” meetings, which sounded as pleasant to me as steel wool underwear, by hiding under my desk. (I kept a pile of paper clips on the floor to give me an excuse were I ever caught. I wasn’t.)

…Or my first job out of college—pregnant and newly moved to Unemployment City, U.S.A. I searched high and low for English-nerdy jobs, particularly ones that I could do at home with the baby, but I ended up settling for a part-time position at a dusty resale store in an abandoned shopping center. (I still kick myself for not at least applying to Starbucks. Why? Why? Why? Why? Oh right, placenta brain.) I stocked dusty shelves, reorganized dusty knick-knacks, and coughed over the dusty cash register while dealing with unreasonable customers. I also dusted. And then quit.

…Or the next job I got as a church custodian since it allowed me to bring newborn Natalie along. She slept in the nursery cribs while I scrubbed bathrooms and vacuumed between pews, then I’d read novels from their library while she nursed. It wasn’t such a bad setup (besides leaving me exhausted and grumpy at the end of every day), but I couldn’t deal with my bosses. I would single-handedly clean up debris from a giant church dinner, steam clean the carpets, scrub the urinals, wash the windows… and one of the elders would complain that I had left some dust on the underside of a table in the attic. Perhaps I have a problem with authority figures (make that probably), but (okay, definitely) my days as a “sexton” were over.

…Or the last teaching job I took in the States. I was hired to teach several different courses to students ranging from kindergarten to college in both one-on-one and classroom settings. And now I need a nap. I loved the teaching experience itself (Have you ever played Study Skills Jeopardy with 7^th graders? Or taught anything to first graders? They were a blast!). However, the company I worked for required me to make my own curriculum for each of the different classes from scratch. I also had to drive myself across town to different schools throughout the day, and I consistently put 60 unpaid hours a week into the job. In addition, I kept getting called to the principal’s office for:

1) Wearing the wrong kind of jacket.

2) Taking too long to drive from one school to another across town during rush hour.

3) Failing to adequately prepare my English student for his math test.

4) Not allowing a student to do unrelated homework in my class. (After a parent complained… “But my little girl is just so busy! She doesn’t have time to be paying attention in class!”)

5) Breaking the ice with an international student by telling him I would be moving to Italy the following year.

6) Failing to come prepared to a tutoring session. (I brought colorful worksheets I had written and printed up myself, my own books, two packs of markers, a homemade memory game, and a timer. But I made the mistake of asking my student if she had a favorite pen she wanted to use. Her parent called in irate that I had come “unprepared,” and my boss refused to hear my side of the story.)

That last one was the kicker. Irrational parents are one of the most insidious forces in all of nature, and I simply could not deal with them without support from my employer. I was stressed from my peeling toenail polish to my split-ends. Ironically, we were also losing money due to my work-related expenses—gasoline, daycare, vodka by the truckload. I called it quits after one eternally long semester.

Only two of the fifteen jobs I’ve held over the years met my needs for both creative outlet and a boss who didn’t make me cry. However, something tells me that I am unlikely to find a career as a university student worker. (It’s too bad; planning freshmen orientation was fun AND involved free food!) So where does that leave me now?

☑ Large, sticky psychological issues with authority figures

☑ Unsatisfied with my [quite lengthy] résumé

☑ But absolutely no desire to re-enter the workplace

☑ But wishing I could earn some money all the same

☑ Dreaming of the day I can write at home in my pajamas as a professional writer rather than just an errant blogger with a snarly job history.

Amen.

29Apr

From To-Do to Tourist

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Part 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

“Tourist” has always struck me as a bad word, even as I’ve filled the role. When we go out here in Italy, I take care to wear nice clothes and speak Italian… as if locals could possibly overlook my freckles and accent. I have a proper horror of becoming one of those intruders who bosses her way through other cultures with too-loud laughter and flip-flops on cobblestone streets. All the same, the Italians were the ones sticking out like dissonant notes as we wound our way down the Amalfi Coast three Saturdays ago. Despite the shimmering sunwaves, locals trudged the beach in coats zipped tightly over sweaters. I had only to imagine the sweat pooling in their Armani boots before realizing I didn’t mind looking like a tourist so much. Sleeves up, camera out, adventure on!

Through the archway - Note the tour buses

The town of Amalfi looked like I’ve always envisioned Caribbean cruise stops—gimicky souvenir shops, colorful paint jobs, and a wealth of sunburnt tourists. But instead of dance halls, it had cathedrals, and instead of coconuts, it had lemons. Correction: LEMONS. Asteroid-impersonating, substance-abusing, borderline-pornographic, “holy crap, is that a fruit?!” LEMONS that were sixty different kinds of impressive. In addition to crates of these yellow footballs, shop owners offered an array of lemon-themed products that would have done Bubba Gump proud: lemon liqueur, lemon soap, lemon jewelry, lemon chocolate, lemon glassware, lemon pasta, lemon candles, lemon zesters, and a teensy bottle of lemon perfume that I immediately claimed as my own. One vendor even gave us each a slice of freshly peeled lemon to eat, sour pulp and sweet pith combining in a magical springtime flavor. We were powerless to resist.

We spent the day with absolutely no plan except enjoyment—the perfect antidote to my to-do list disorder. My only jobs for the afternoon were to wander the sun-dappled streets of Sorrento eating gelato with my family (tough, huh?) and to lean out the window like a breeze-drunk puppy as we drove the coast. Not a mop in sight, just the bright April air and peace. Every vacation should be so lucky.

If I could, I would take you all back with me to breathe in every blue nuance of the Tyrrhenian. We would stand above the Emerald Grotto memorizing every sparkle of the sea and the mysterious architecture of cliffs. You could help me amuse my husband by gasping after every one of the bajillion bends in the road and swooning over each bloom of wisteria. You would help me find friendly faces and flesh-eating zombies in the rocks above. We would soak up the sunshine like the thirsty sponges we are and come home smelling faintly of paradise.

Three weeks later, I still haven’t written a to-do list.

22Apr

Pot-Smoking Ants

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

Part 2 (Part 1 here)

Dan and I approach vacations the way pot-smoking ants on a budget might. We pack smart, arrange for the cheapest accommodations that will let us sleep without fear, and then get busy chilling the hell out. We’ve been perfecting our technique for the last six years, and we have a pretty good ratio of relaxation to insanity by now. It works wonders, too; nary a trip goes by without granting us a story to tell.

Take this last Good Friday, for instance. Not that we remembered it was Good Friday—those first magical kilometers of the Amalfi Coast had driven everything but beauty out of our minds—but we could not have planned a more unique overnight stay had we tried. As we drove through the quaint town of Minori looking for directions to the campground, shopkeepers and homeowners busied themselves nailing red cups to their outside walls. “Any idea what that’s all about?” I asked Dan. “Not remotely. Any idea what turn we’re supposed to take?”

We soon figured out why not even the omniscient Google Maps could provide us with directions to the campground: It was smack-dab in the middle of a mountainside lemon grove. No roads. Just steps… and steps… and steps. “I think this is more than 80 steps,” I panted down to Dan as we lugged our children and camping gear up the uneven stone staircase. “The website said 80!” he answered dubiously while I took my sixteenth break. We counted some time later, and here’s a question for you mathematically-inclined readers: Are 80 and 254 the same number? My aching muscles are not as sure on that point as the website writer apparently was.

False advertising aside, the campground was worth every one of those 254 steps. Not only were we setting up tent in a fairyland of ripe lemons and glossy leaves, but the children’s playground featured two gentle, snuffling ponies. And from our site, we could look down across the treetops to the town nestling like an old friend up against the sea.

Once the sun set, we tromped down the hill and drove toward town for supper, only to be stopped by a policeman in the throes of excitement. “Park there! Turn your lights off! Now!” he whisper-shouted, pointing to a 10-foot-high burning cross. We obeyed, wondering what in the world we had gotten ourselves into. Every light in the town had been turned off with the exception of thousands upon thousands of red candles. Oh, and the burning cross of course.

We had to park in front of the KKK cross

“KKK?” Dan and I asked at the same time. Two minutes later, as if eager to corroborate our frightening first impression, the flame-lit streets filled with white pointed hoods and gowns. I have never seen anything outside of movies with which to compare that ghostly parade. Hundreds of white hooded figures marched quietly up the street, brandishing candles and lanterns, then a brass band somewhere in the darkness began to play a dirge. Men in their funeral best walked by shouldering a coffin atop which lay a horrifying, emaciated figure of Jesus, while others followed closely behind carrying the gaudiest statue of Mary I had ever seen. I felt at once anxious for people to know we weren’t Holy Week participants but also amazed that we ended up in just the right place and time to see something new. Eerie, yes. Skull-itchingly creepy, yes. But worth seeing all the same.

We eventually escaped from the clutches of the Good Friday parade and tracked down some pizza, limoncello, and a complimentary Jehovah’s Witness for supper before hiking back up to our campsite. The girls giggled themselves silly in the tent while Dan and I soaked up the starlight. Civilization, with all its hustle and bustle and joy-starved intensity, felt worlds away; we could breathe again. The four of us fell asleep together like accidental woodland creatures in our tent, the scents of lemons and the sea mingling on the April breeze. And as simple as that, our one night’s stay turned into two.

Part 3 to come.

15Apr

The Ghost of Happiness Past

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Part 1

The lemon perfume brings it all back, nostalgia setting in after only three days back home. Perhaps this makes me a drippy sentimentalist, but I’m okay with that. This was a trip worth feeling drippy and sentimental over.

It all started on Thursday. The spouse who comes up with 90% of our insane great ideas casually mentioned over lunch, “Hey, I have tomorrow off work. Want to go camping on the Amalfi Coast?” Try as she might to get bogged down in details, the practical spouse’s latent whimsy had been triggered. “Sure!” I chirped while sprinting for the grocery store.

As often as spontaneity gives me spasms, it’s one of the things I love most about our little family. How a day can morph from average to incredible in the space of a sentence, how my husband and girls are always ready to take on the world. I don’t thank them nearly enough for stirring up glittery waves in the life I would all-too-readily leave stagnant. “We’re standing on memories!” Natalie announced when we piled out of the car at Herculaneum on Friday. Glorious.

Herculaneum is not exactly on the Amalfi Coast, but how could we pass up the opportunity to explore a city once buried in 20 meters of volcanic debris? We couldn’t. We entered houses last occupied two millenniums ago, pushed strollers up cobblestone streets, imagined ourselves serving restaurant patrons from the giant clay cooking pots… and my heart stretched a size or two larger as it always does when I discover new corners of the world. A real person painted that fresco. The neighborhood women bathed together in that tub. The owners of this house must have had an unbelievable view of the sea. The ghost of happiness past never fails to take my breath and replace it with a reverent joy.

Natalie and Sophie consider ancient city ruins their own personal playground, which assures me that this crazy life we’ve brought them into is a good one. It’s the future Dan and always hoped for—watching our laughing children play balance-beam in an archaeological dig. History and future, projected together on the sun-dappled stones… with a splash of silliness, because we’re really still twelve.

Driving away from the ruins through the never-ending outskirts of Naples was a noteworthy experience in itself. Neapolitan traffic is a noisy tangle of bent-fendered anarchy, and we were utterly fortunate considering that we DIDN’T DIE. On the main one-way street outside of Herculaneum, four cars were disregarding the stoplight. A delivery truck and sixteen scooters were driving the wrong direction. Several motorists had ventured onto the sidewalk, and everyone involved was using his horn in lieu of the brakes. I took no pictures because I was busy narrowly avoiding death, but I desperately wish I had at least videoed the rotunda. The Rotunda Of Bedlam And Nearly Certain Demise.

Despite being a mere three hours’ drive from our city, Naples is a different world where trash piles line the streets and laundry flaps off the edge of crumbling balconies. I never realized how grimy southern Italy would feel compared to the breezy affluence of the north. Whenever we spotted a well-kept house, Dan and I nodded at each other like experts—“Must be Camorra”—and drove a little more quickly. I was relieved to get out of the city and catch my first glimpse of La Costiera Amalfitana…

…And by “relieved,” I mean mesmerized, breathless, smitten. My daily dose of beauty for the next decade lay right before us. Sparkling sea guarded by intricate rock formations, purple wisteria sunning itself on garden gates, hillsides hidden beneath ripe lemon trees… Descriptions do so little justice to a part of the world that is, at heart, a sensory feast. Just trust me that magic was alive and generous around every bend of the road.

Look for Part 2, coming soon to a blog near you.

7Apr

Second Opinion

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

A Middle-Eastern man walks around our building playing the one song he knows on his accordion. It sounds like a sea lion in distress, and Sophie wakes up from her nap in terror. The man stands under our window shouting “Signora! Signora!” and squawking away on his instrument for a solid five minutes while I try to comfort my sobbing baby. I know he expects me to toss down some coins, but I’m more inclined to toss the refrigerator at him. I think of pretending not to see him and dumping a bucket of water out the window. I think of yelling at him to go away, to stop tormenting us with his horrible playing. I think of throwing a euro coin at his head so hard it sticks… but he cornered me into giving him a euro once before, and I’m still seething at his undeserved gain.

I have a long-standing animosity toward illegal immigrants. Maybe not all illegal immigrants, but the ones who want something from me… the tall African men selling knock-off watches by the station, the short Indian men shoving roses toward us on dates downtown, the Albanian beggers canvassing the trains, the kerchiefed women knocking on our car window. I tell them “No, no,” avoiding eye contact and adding up their annoyance as criminal charges in my mind.

I’ve had ample opportunities to judge my reaction to foreigners since moving to Italy, where countless refugees take advantage of the long and unprotected coastline. It is my understanding that European laws require incomers to stay in the country of entry unless they are specifically accepted by other countries, so Italy’s larger cities are full of clandestini—unwanted immigrants with little hope of finding legitimate work.

An acquaintance of ours routinely yells at beggars to go get a real job, and I get why he’s angry. But my husband’s approach is the one that stops me in my tracks. He waves hello and smiles at the Pakistani windshield washer who works the traffic light by our house. Dan lets him squeegee the front of our car for a euro or two and asks him how his day is going, and the man’s face floods with light. His job has to suck—standing in an intersection all day asking belligerent motorists if he can wash their windshields—but he always answers cheerfully with many thanks and good wishes. He also takes care that his window-washing crew never hassles us like they do the other vehicles.

I did a mental backflip when I realized how different my husband’s actions were from my own… how, for him, the inherent importance of people applies even to those whose source of income is annoying us. I’m embarrassed to admit that this is hard for me to remember. Prejudice against other races and lifestyles is something I learned early enough in life to become instinctual, and when I see a peddler, my mind instantly buzzes with superiority. I hate that compassion is never my first instinct, but at least it’s started piping in as a second opinion.

Instinct: That accordion player is terrorizing my child. He must die.

Second opinion: He probably can’t find any other work and is counting on his musical talent (however dubious) to support his family. Just think what awful circumstances he must have come from if playing an accordion for tips is a better living than what he could find in his own country! And you can at least be glad that he’s not playing a tuba. Put down the refrigerator.

Third opinion: My husband deserves a hug.

6Apr

Genesis

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Hello to all of you up there in the land of the living. Hello to you in the land of make up and home-cooked meals, to you who leave your front door on a daily basis, to you who get up the first time your alarm rings. You’re within my sightline now, and that’s good.

Civilization has been clouded from view lately, or rather, limited to a dim series of doctors’ offices. The four of us have been trading sickness like collector’s cards for weeks now, and our schedules ordered by nebulizer sessions and naps. Sophie and I are the lone holdouts at this point—she fussing inordinately and rubbing yellow goop from her eyes, I holding my cough-wracked sides together and sleeping while my husband cooks dinner. However, I left the house twice yesterday and realized I haven’t forgotten quite as much Italian as I thought. I can still say “buon giorno” to friends, and that’s good.

My list of failures is extravagant at this point. I have consistently been two days behind on house cleaning, and I’ve only managed to make one grocery trip in the last month. I’ve abandoned my friends and my inbox and my fingernails. The balcony planters are still sprouting last year’s twigs. Editing work is piled up around my ears, and the many blank pages in my writing folder feel like the worst failure of all. There is one and only one thing I’ve done well in the last week: loving my little family. I’m hopelessly smitten with them, my daughters with their sunny imaginations and deep blue eyes, my husband with his warm smile and oh-so-scrumptious hugs. Tender moments are alive and well in our family, and that’s good.

And spring is here.

Our wardrobes are switched out, the windows are open, pink and yellow flutter in our periphery. The world is a hundred shades brighter, and… well, that’s good.

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