Mamalove | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Mamalove

New Skin

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

(Can you tell we visited Pisa recently?)

This morning was long awaited. Pencil sets deliberated over, text flurries exchanged with other moms, backpacks arranged and rearranged a dozen times, clothes laid out for a sunrise start. It’s a wonder any of us slept last night.

Even with plenty of time this morning to amble hand in hand to the local bar for breakfast and neighborly hellos, the excitement of new beginnings beat its adrenaline pace in our ears, and Sophie was the first to arrive at preschool. We left her with hugs and a new teacher who understands that nearly-four-year-olds need balloons. My heart still lurched to leave my littlest girl standing uncertainly in an empty classroom, but friends from last year were already trickling into the coat room, and I remembered her brimful happiness at pick-up times past. I remembered to walk out quickly.

One building over, I waited with Natalie, my ever-amazing firstborn who was suddenly small again under her pink backpack as her first school bell rang. There was a bit of a stampede, a noisy orientation, some half-distracted kisses, and then one glimpse through a crowded doorway of my girl sitting bright-eyed next to her best friend, expectant. I didn’t try to get her attention.

The girls’ excitement and internal rush have blazed out, and now it’s my long-awaited Monday morning. I kept my work schedule clear today so I could dive into the full potential of undisturbed time, but the sinking weight of my short Hope To Do list tells me that I need this time for adjusting instead. So much adjusting these days. I love new experiences, growth, and positive change, but I’m as quick to adapt as a faulty chameleon hand-dying new skin.

In light of this unsettled emptiness while I wait for my new skin to be ready, I’m boiling today’s Hope To Do list down to the following:
1) Be present for my girls when I pick them up in a few hours.

None of my goals for the day are worthier than helping make their adjustment a happy one, and who knows? Perhaps a single clear focus is just what I need to smooth the way for my own transition into the school year.

20Aug

A Cup-Breaking Concept

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This is the inevitable result of letting a six-year-old and a three-year-old unload the dishwasher alone. Little hands, eager and fumbling, lose traction on glossy espresso mugs, and there is a muffled clack and then a collective intake of breath and then two patterns of footsteps, one clambering to escape guilt by association and one dragging. From the next room, I hurry to the rescue of floundering emotions and surprise myself by meaning the words of assurance that instinctively slip out: “It’s okay, it’s just a cup.”

I’ve been reluctant for years to let the girls help around the house, primarily for this reason. Letting them help means mess. Scratch that, MESS. It means tasks taking twice as long and being done half as well, and it requires an expanse of my attention and patience that could be more effectively spent on writing the next Great American Novel or cooking homemade cosmetics à la Julie & Julia. It is far more convenient to slip in my earphones and plow through the housework myself.

Of course, doing the housework myself leads to the inevitable result of Time Deficit Despair, and some gentle prompting by my husband has convinced me to start taking advantage of the cheap child labor we conceived. The thing that baffles me is how much the girls want to work. If I enlist their help around the house all morning, their moods are easily 90% brighter than if I keep them out of the way with toys or cartoons while I do the work alone. They dance while dusting and giggle while hanging the laundry, raising valid suspicion that I am not the mother. (Dan??) The atmosphere around here is so much better than it was when I was running a one-woman show, and if I step back and let them do tasks on their own, I actually, unbelievably, save time. Totally ground-breaking concept, I know.

So really? It is okay. It is just a cup (and one already immortalized by my blog header at that). It’s an occupational hazard of letting my children take responsibility while they’re still young and enthusiastic, and I’ll gladly trade the occasional dropped dish for the happy balance we’re all finding as a result.

3Aug

Prioritizing for Mummies

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 10 Comments

Our kitchen sink is piled like the discount bin in a store at which only desperate masochists or alley rats would shop. We have mismatched coffee mugs, pasta bowls stuck together with parmesan, cutting boards clinging to last night’s watermelon seeds, empty olive oil bottles, take your pick! Although I could swear I had it spotless at this time yesterday, the only proof that civilized folks occupy our kitchen is the vase of freshly-picked African daisies… sitting cheerfully in a pile of crumbs.

Shall we move on to the living room? Here, you can find the ruins of several Lego empires, dismantled by four children in the space of an hour and arranged strategically so as to be tread on by bare feet when least expected. While removing plastic palm branches from your soles, you can observe my mending pile which is second only to my ironing pile, the abstract art that is our formerly beige rug*, and what’s that? You need a tissue? We have one in every nook and cranny of the room for your convenience, and most of them are only slightly used!

* For the record, beige rugs were never meant for use by children, dinner party guests, or people with feet.

Bolts and nails and who knows what else is scattered on the floor around our bulimic tool box in the utility room—the same room that mysteriously accumulates bird poop and produces spiders the exact size of my fleeing dignity. Every single toy with the ability to hold water or to stir water or to be dunked in water without electrocuting anyone is drip-drying above the tub in our bathroom. Papers waiting to be sorted into overcrowded filing cabinets are covering every sit-able surface in our bedroom. Dust bunnies are shacking up with cobwebs anywhere they think they can get away with it (which is pretty much everywhere these days). I’m trying not to think about it.

Of course, trying to block out the din of Messes, Messes Everywhere only makes them squall louder. The ever-annoying shoulds like to join in too: You should be scrubbing the dishes! In fact, you should have done it already! We shouldn’t even be having this conversation! I’ve always found the shoulds both logical and persuasive (in their ever-annoying way), but I can’t give in to them this afternoon, and here’s why:

My children are napping.

Did that sentence read with the weight of a divine decree? If not, try reading it again. Slower this time, maybe in Morgan Freeman’s voice.

My children are napping. In about half an hour, they will wake up and ask me to snuggle the sleep away and then clamor for shows or snacks while I say no, no, and bluster around getting supper together and changing for work and getting the girls presentable and fed and all three of us out the door on time to pick up their dad so I can hand over parenting duties and win a little bread myself and return home to kiss sweet faces goodnight and then plop down on the nearest available surface. And as the day’s energy slowly ebbs out of my toes, it won’t matter to me whether or not the kitchen is pristine; the dishes will likely survive until morning. I won’t care that our living room has been taken over by Legos; it’s instant playtime for the girls tomorrow. The feral utility room won’t even register; who needs to do laundry anyway?

I’m discovering that at the end of each day, my delusional drive to be June Cleaver evaporates, and the only thing left is a pulsing, present need to be me—
a mama who treasures her daughters’ imaginations and sleep-drenched hugs
a wife who loves undistracted time with her husband more than just about anything
a friend who can’t wait to write back, call back, come over
a soul-searcher who meets the sacred in unexpected ways
and
a writer who feels ridiculous even considering the title but who begins shriveling as a mama, a wife, a friend, and a soul-searcher when she doesn’t allow herself the gift of words—
which is why our kitchen will have to live in a squalor for a little while longer.

My children are napping.

26Jul

Mrs. Bean

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It’s summer break!

…Or at least that’s the word on the street. “Summer” implies a certain temperature range which this soggy gray July is failing to reach, while “break” seems to indicate time off, and oh my goodness gracious. I can remember times of my life in which I must have been busier, surely, but my here-and-now has a competitive streak and refuses to concede the Most Likely to Drop Own Skull While Juggling Schedule award to any former time period.

This is the first summer that I’ve worked in addition to having the girls home from school, and I’m basically feeling like Mr. Bean on both fronts. My children have to call “Mommy!” in a steady crescendo for an average of four minutes before I hear them because I’m too busy making lesson plans or translating, and my bosses have to accommodate babysitter dashes and my awkwardly-sized schedule openings. Ideally, I just wouldn’t work over the summer, but our family has some big adjustments coming up, and every chance to bolster our bank account eases a bit of stress.

As with 95% of the things I worry over, the Mr. Bean routine probably shouldn’t register as a big deal. After all, most of the other moms I know also work. However, they also tend to have nannies (or willing grandmas) and housecleaners (or extra-willing grandmas), and summer camps siphon off their children’s excess energy quite nicely. Here is where I start to feel [rightfully] ashamed of my first-world problems, because my outlook keeps boiling down to Waaaa, I want a nanny! Waaaa, I want a housecleaner! Waaaa, I want an investor to cover my children’s summer camp expenses for life so I don’t have to keep agonizing over their lack of organized fun! Good grief.

What I really want is to feel sure that I’m meeting my family’s needs in the right way, and please tell—Does any mother ever feel truly, completely certain that she has found the right balance between parenthood, finances, and good old-fashioned sanity? If so, I could use her secret before parenting or working morale drops any lower around here.

(Sanity, as you can see, has already left the building.)

20Jul

Mt. Grampie

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Sweet, honest Natalie.

We had a bit of turbulence throughout our morning today. No gales or typhoons, mind you, but enough rough patches that I ended up expressing my displeasure in a rather loud way that may or may not have involved yelling into a pillow. The girls convened with each other in whispers and then tiptoed into the other room, emerging several minutes later with the above letter held in front of them like a shield. There were giggles, kisses, and plenty of “I’m sorry”s nuzzled into forgiving ears, and the girls cheerfully got back to their day. I, on the other hand, spent the next hour in mental self-flagellation.

I have never been not frustrated as long as I can remember. I don’t know how much of this is my personality and how much of it is from growing up in an environment where perfection was expected with the understanding that I would never be good enough to attain it. I still don’t get how a too-heavy sense of responsibility can coexist with utter helplessness, but the mix has stewed under my shoulder blades for nearly all of my life.

Most of the time, it’s just sort of there, not doing anything worse than fogging up my sunglasses. Other times though—for instance, if I’m tired or hungry or, God save us, both, or if I have to call any form of customer service, or if (hypothetically) it’s the second morning of post-vacation summer break and the girls and I can’t remember how to occupy the same house without sounding like screech owls—in times like those, the simmering mess bursts like lava up my throat, and the only way I can find to direct it is out. Thus the mistreated pillows and the formal requests from my kindergartners to please not be so grumpy.

There have been some Conversations around here lately about my similarity to Vesuvius, and while I’d be happy to cut back on the lava eruptions, I simply don’t know how. My coping arsenal consists of two strategies: 1) remove self from the frustrating situation, and 2) put a lid on it. The problem is that #1 is rarely an option—I often feel helpless in the face of existence, and there aren’t many socially acceptable ways to take a breather from that—and #2 usually just results in the lid rocketing out with the rest of the molten angst. All new frustration! Now with projectiles! Hard hats recommended!

Ergo my question: Which direction besides downward or outward do you channel chronic frustration?

Revised question upon realizing that you probably don’t have a stratum of helpless negativity simmering somewhere south of your clavicle: How do you deal with turbulent mornings without earning a cease and desist letter from your six-year-old?

6May

Not[with]standing

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The afternoon had started so full of promise. I had already wrapped things up at work, gone for a [reluctant] run, and picked up my favorite two offspring from school. Homemade pizza was on the agenda as was writing an insightful blog post about mothering… but first, story time. The backyard was decked out in a golden-green sunswath, newly-clustered cherries gleaming like crown jewels, so we scooped up an armful of books and the picnic blanket to go revel in the finery. I laid the blanket out on a mattress of daisies, we plumped ourselves stomach-down to read, and BAM—my old arch-nemesis the allergy swooped in for the kill.

Within twenty seconds, I was ready to take a pick axe to my inner ears, a power sander to my eyeballs, and a double-edged Microplane zester to my nose. Shortly thereafter, my brain’s functionality began shutting down as it tends to do in these situations, and by the time we finished meeting the infamous Nellie Oleson, I was only two sneezes removed from a zombie.

The blog entry was clearly not going to happen. I moped a bit about the turn of events while sifting through the brain fog for any usable scrap of intelligence, but I finally had to give up. How can a gal compete against airborne forces of darkness that simultaneously wipe out her energy and her motivation to make coffee? She simply can’t. So after a mere hour of brooding through prickly eyes at a blank page, I shut off my computer.

Instead of writing, I played Wii with Natalie and enlisted her help in the most giggle-intensive freezer defrosting ever. I snuggled Sophie and let her use her magic touch on the pizza dough. (Hint: Sophie’s magic touch involves a lot of pummeling.) We tried on hats and thoroughly ignored the house’s pleas to clean it, and the afternoon of not-so-very-productive fun with my girls ended up far better than the one I had neatly mapped out in my head, allergies notwithstanding… even if I didn’t manage to get an insightful post about motherhood out of it.

2May

Sanity at its Handiest

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Here is my mantra for the day: “I am going to blog today, dangit, I AM GOING TO BLOG.”

Principalities and powers and double-part-time* working hours have conspired to keep me away from the blank page lately, and they probably would have continued unabated had my husband not looked straight into my crazed eyes over the weekend and reminded me that some cultures value sanity. The man makes a convincing argument, and not just because he accompanies it with freshly-brewed espresso. I mean, I’ve gone so long now without catching you up on our Easter camping trip that both it and Princess Beatrice’s hat are old news. (But will that keep me from doing so anyway?)**

* Doesn’t count as full-time because I’m a freelancer and also like deluding myself.
** No.

Two Easters ago, we went on an impromptu camping trip that was so magical and life-infusing that we dubbed it a new family tradition and went back the next year. This Easter, we decided to expand our horizons a bit and head north to Lake Como from whence not even a rainy forecast could deter us. What did deter us, however, was our car, which fainted rather suddenly in the middle of a roundabout mere hours before our scheduled departure. It was Friday evening; the holiday weekend had already begun. No mechanic shop would be open until Tuesday, and even that was doubtful as traditional Italian Easter feasts require several days of recovery. Como would have to wait.

Just in case you ever find yourself in this situation, I’ve put together a handy guide gleaned from our experience – What to do when your car breaks down in Italy negating your anticipated Easter camping trip:

Set up the tent on your balcony, avoiding eye contact with the neighbors. Stock it with My Little Ponies. When your preschoolers ask if they can sleep out there by themselves in the rain, shrug and answer, “Eh, why not?”

Ride the bus downtown to chase pigeons. Purchase giant parmesan pretzels from an Austrian entrepreneur. Chase pigeons with giant parmesan pretzels. Sample every single shade flavor of lip gloss at The Body Shop. Invent the extremely safe and socially acceptable sport of escalator racing.

Have a pizza picnic on the floor. Have a strawberry picnic on the floor. Have a banana split picnic, not on the floor. Discover that your children do not like banana splits (“My ice cream and bananas are touching!”) and ease their distress by eating the rest for them.

Hurl football-sized chocolate eggs at your unsuspecting spouse and complete a nutritious breakfast with the fragments. Host an Easter egg hunt in the backyard so as to have enough candy on hand for a nutritious supper as well. If running out of chocolate, dine on green eggs and ham—just so long as eggs are somewhere on the menu.

Sleep in until noon, build nerdy Lego contraptions, watch music videos and talent shows and hilariously awful infomercials, impersonate cows, play a very pink version of kickball, and if you hit a lull, go with the failproof Granny Pants Dance.

There you go. Sanity has been restored, my blog is marginally more up to date, and a new wisdom-packed vacation guide is out in the world. And who knows? One of us might even get a new Easter tradition out of it.

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