Breathing | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Breathing

Pomegranate Seeds

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

The girls are finally in bed, and I’m sinking into the couch with half a beer and two fresh clementines, impulsively ignoring the to-do list that I wrote in flowery cursive to make mopping seem more appealing. (It didn’t.) These November days have been studded with these impulses, little sudden choices in favor of irresponsibility. A ten-minute detour at the park on the way home from school. A midnight game of mancala in bed when Dan and I are too restless to sleep. Guests on a whim. Dissecting a gorgeous red pomegranate instead of ironing. A second cup of tea. Rocking-chair rides with tired little girls, wrapped up in my arms with nowhere else to be.

To tell the truth, I feel embarrassingly petty writing this. Something in my soul believes, deeply, that it was meant to change the world. I feel it in music, I snag against it in great literature, I catch a glimpse of it on perfect blue-skied mornings. And yet, here I am coloring in my November with impulses. Pomegranate seeds.

But, for reasons I can hardly explain, I’m satisfied. I’ve settled into a rhythm of peace—or at least an armed neutrality—with housecleaning, and the cogs of our little family purr smoothly again. (Clean floors cover a multitude of sins, you know.) And my little spur-of-the-moment decisions toward happiness have put more than a year between now and last November. In fact, greatness may not be as far away as I once thought, wispy shreds of a future. I’m finding out that it’s more like pomegranate seeds and heart’s impulses. Like being completely present for one of my girls’ giggles. Like hopping off the beaten path with my husband. Like choosing deep breaths and whimsy. And really, that’s not so petty at all.

13Aug

A Tale of Two Cities

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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…]

21Jul

Loose Woman

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

Ballet is a foreign galaxy the first day. Everything is wildly unfamiliar—the sharp odor of sweat on metal as clammy hands grip the barre, the buttery resistance of Marley floors beneath scuffing feet. Your ballet slippers are far from pretty, at least up close. They are the color of nausea, scrunched up with too-tight elastic, and the suede soles feel misplaced. You point, you flex, you wobble on tip-toe. These are not your feet.

The first exercise, the plié, sounds like a joke: Bend your knees, straighten, repeat. If this is ballet, you’ll be dancing Swan Lake in no time, floating across the stage in your tutu and natural bendy-kneed ability. But of course it’s not that easy. Your dance teacher is suddenly a drill sergeant, and you are smacking straight into the many hurdles of gracefulness. Shoulders back. Hips tucked. Chin high. Spine stretched. Head tilted. Arms curved. Neck straight. Legs turned out. Stomach pulled in. Breathe small, straight up and down, up and down. Never let your diaphragm move. Tighten, tighten, tighten, tighten, tighten.

At first, you feel claustrophobic inside your own muscles as they contort into new positions. Your brain is locked in a grimace, trying to convert unfamiliar French terms into movement into some semblance of beauty, and you feel exactly like a duck. But after awhile (maybe months, probably years), your body adapts. Your feet expect the pressure of elastic and blister tape. Your rib cage compresses obediently, your head tilts the right direction by instinct. You turn out, tuck under, stretch up, suck in, and learn how to survive on stringent tastes of air.

—

When I was ten years old, I placed second in a mile-long running race against thirteen-year-olds. I ran in my Keds (remember those?) and was hardly winded at the end. When I was thirteen, I participated in the same race again—this time with running shoes and a title to uphold—but gave up halfway through. The stitch in my side was so bad that it took me a good thirty minutes to limp back. When I was fifteen, I quit ballet after realizing I didn’t want to do pas de bourrées for the rest of my life, but my body was already trained to be a tight, leggy ribbon, and so it has stayed.

Two years ago, after weeks of lunchtime workouts, I was able to complete five minutes on the elliptical machine. I had worked hard to make it that far, but I couldn’t celebrate. I just looked around at the college girls in their hot pink sweat pants, their round butts emblazoned with “sexy” and “angel” in glitter, breezing through their second hour of aerobics. Why was I such a wimp after years of intense physical training? Needleholes of painful light pricked against my eyelids, my forehead burned, and I resigned to becoming a couch potato forever.

—

I’ve moved far away from the galaxy of ballerinas. Their lipsticked self-control, their masquerade of effortless grace no longer apply to me. But as I’ve moved farther down the path of joy and spontaneity and chocolate cake and yoga, I’ve started realizing how starved I am for breath. All these years, I’ve been sucking in my stomach instead of air. I’ve lost my ability to run; I don’t know how to relax.

So I’m relearning how to breathe these days. I rest my hand on my diaphragm and will it to move, to draw in air instead of blocking it out. I relax my way through the sputtering of unused muscles, the pain of fresh oxygen in dusty passages of my lungs. I loosen and loosen and loosen and loosen, and my gray barnacled control begins to chip away. I want to run again, and I think, If I can be a real, live person who can love, adapt, and dream in Technicolor without air, just think what this life will be once I learn how to breathe…

Just think!

7Jun

In Hiding

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I just realized I’m in hiding. I haven’t been to church in three weeks, and I’m feeling nauseous at the prospect of tomorrow. We haven’t entertained guests in even longer; I actually cancelled an invitation to have lunch with friends last week. Grocery trips broadside me, the unfamiliarity of aisles and aisles, the threat of another language. I’ve been grasping at solitude, even tucked away here at home. An hour alone, headphones on.

Is it just cowardice? Maybe I’ve depleted my stores of bravery in these last ten months of culture shock. Or could it be dysfunction finally taking over my sense of logic and social responsibility? All I know for sure is that I’m tired. Inspiration comes in fitful bursts but never stays long enough for me to build up energy. I have projects on the burner, but the pilot light is out. No more fuel.

Sweet Dan gave me the afternoon to write my short-short fiction piece for a contest next week, but the instant I sat down, I slammed into a brick wall. It doesn’t feel exactly like writer’s block since I’m bursting with ideas. It just feels like can’t. So I bit my nails and beat myself over the head with guilt and read bits of Jen Lemen’s beautiful blog in search of inspiration until I found this paragraph in her archives:

Sometimes an internal monologue of shoulds is a sign that some little voice is calling the shots, and it’s not me. At least not the me that understands deep down that love is always the way, that TRUST melts into opportunity, that the joy of discovery is the most creative, fruitful enterprise every single time, that I always finish best in an atmosphere of grace not just pressure.

I desperately need that atmosphere of grace. I suspect I am the only one keeping myself holed up in isolation until the imagined pressure of church and guests and writing deadlines is too hard to face. So here’s a teeny flutter of a plan:

Tomorrow morning, I’m going to go to church without worrying what I look like and say hi to people because at least that I can do. I will breathe.
Right now, I’m going to feed my crying baby and put the computer open on the table in front of me. Maybe I’ll come up with a sentence in between spoonfuls. Maybe I won’t, but it’s okay. This week is not my last chance to write.
And later? I’m going to go to bed early. I’ll stretch out and make happy, comfortable noises and not worry about a single thing because all I should be doing at night is getting enough rest. So I will. It’s a start.

18Apr

The Importance of Disastercake

Posted by: Bethany in Sunday Scribblings 12 Comments

Have you ever dipped your hands into a bag of cake flour? (It is impossibly soft, like fluffed air.) Have you listened to the crackle of fresh bread crust? Smelled a spicy fruitcake bubbling in the oven? Seen the rich gloss of a half-melted chocolate chip? Tasted raw brownie batter? (Of course you’ve done that, with brownie batter being its own FDA-recommended food group and all.)

This is why I love baking: It provides unexpected treasures for all the senses. It is a whole-body experience, with love and delicacy and intuition being every bit as important as the baking powder*. I’m still learning the ins and outs, of course. In all my years of baking, I’ve only recently discovered that you can’t leave cream of tartar out of a recipe just because you don’t know what it is (though I’m not sure anyone really does). After 6,729 burnt candy bars, I’ve finally found the secret to melting chocolate**. And since moving to Italy, I’ve learned about baking’s greatest aphrodisiac: parchment paper. As long as your pan is lined with a buttered layer of paper, not even your Aunt Millie’s notorious Caramelized Rubber Cement Bars would stick.

Like any skill, the ability to bake comes through trial and error. (And error, and error.) For me, this little domestic pleasure has been worth every lumpy biscuit and soupy disastercake; however, I have trouble explaining why baking means so much to me. Maybe it’s because sending a plate of lemon bars to The Hubby’s office can brighten his coworkers’ entire day. Maybe it’s because I subconsciously want to be a Colonial housewife***, with my kitchen the warm and lively center of my home. Maybe it’s because baking is a tangibly creative endeavor, as if I were a composer and these were my masterpieces. Rhapsody in apple-cinnamon. Vanilla bean minuet. Opus n. 87 with a dark chocolate ganache.

Or maybe it’s just because a bag of flour costs 40 times less than a manicure.

—

*Which, just for reference, is rather important.

** It’s called a microwave.

***Hoopskirts! Embroidery! Taxation without representation!

20Feb

When In Rome

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

16Oct

Marshmalliracles

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized Comments Off on Marshmalliracles

I feel like I’m holding miracles–this thin sheet of paper with smudgy blue stamps that says I’m a legal resident, this printed green postcard that says I have health coverage. I can’t help feeling like somebody else’s name should be written across the top or that some saw-toothed disclaimer is waiting to jump out and bite me. My ability to relax is wobbly from months of disuse.

But, as reluctant as I am to believe, everything is OK now. I can breathe deeply without fear of triggering uninsured contractions. I can stop plugging each moment of my daughter’s upcoming birth into a mental cash register. I can read Baby, Come Out! to Natalie with the kind of giddy excitement our littlest girl should be greeted with.

::Relaxation (which sounds exactly like the marshmallowy steam swirling up from a mug of hot chocolate)::

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