Tag: Remembering

31May

Holy Writ Hives

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

“I like gypsy moths and radio talk
‘Cause it doesn’t remind me of anything…”
(Audioslave)

I was one of the coolest twelve-year-olds to enter our church’s youth group, oh yes. All the other denim-clad girls envied my broomstick skirts and the knitted granny shawl I wore as protection from the A/C.  I was widely admired for my mad worship-band-understudy flute skillz, and the guys were always ogling the sexy training bra outline on my cookie sheet chest. Everyone cheered when I alone took on the youth pastor’s challenge and memorized the entire biblical book of James to get a free trip to youth camp. Oh, and a mere two days into that camp when I was sent home with a case of the mumps? Well, that cemented my position as the most popular teen in church history.

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha. Oooooh, boy. ::wipes eyes::

I know I’ll be dashing some hopes here, but this entry is not about junior high fashion. (Sorry!) Nor is it about the many reasons to vaccinate your children, youth camp being one of the more compelling. No, this is about the holy tradition of Scripture memorization and why I think it sucks.

See, my brain is a neurotic sponge. I never had much trouble memorizing, whether it be Shakespeare or sacred texts or shampoo ingredients. I routinely dazzled my Awana leaders by breezing through the required ream of Bible verses to then learn hefty chunks of the New Testament. I blasted through the competition to win first place in regional Bible drills. I could even recite the lineage of Old Testament kings by heart. (See above re: popularity.) I memorized and memorized and memorized and memorized and didn’t learn a thing.

It turns out that the proper ordering of words does little to reach a heart. In fact, the tuneless march of verses through my mind made reading the Bible impossible once I reached adulthood. I found myself paralyzed by each familiar page, with memories of the words leading to memories of the past leading to fog-banked panic. The holy writ gave me hives. It wasn’t until a friend bought me The Message (and, uh, it sat on the shelf under my suspicious glower for a few years) that I was able to understand what Jesus and Paul wrote. The Bible finally made unrecognizable; what relief!

As I’ve discovered the power of newborn words to seep far below my skin into soul territory, I’ve shunned attempts by family members to help Natalie memorize Bible verses. I don’t want forced familiarity with God-commissioned words to breed contempt before my daughter even has the chance to work out her own beliefs. This has kept me consistently uneasy about her Sunday School class, as week after week, Natalie’s classmates recite Bible verses for a gold star sticker leading to a yearly prize. Should we make her memorize the verses too so she’ll fit in? Should we remove her from the class, risking a million kinds of confrontation? Should we keep ignoring the issue?

This morning in Sunday School, things came to a head. In preparation for a church presentation next week, the children had been memorizing Psalm 23. Never before has a peaceful poem of cross-stitching fame wound a person as tightly as it did Natalie’s teacher. “Why can’t you say it all together?” she yelled at the group of preschoolers shifting in their hard-plastic chairs. “THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD—Fabio! Straighten up this instant! Ester, sit down! No, no, no, Gabriele, be quiet, we’re starting from the beginning, QUIET! THE LORD IS—Laura! Why aren’t you saying all the words? What is wrong with you? Well if you’re tired, you should have gotten more sleep last night, huh? No, Beniamino, you can’t go to the bathroom until we get the whole thing right. STEVEN, QUIET! Do you all want your parents to be disappointed in you?”

Still fuming at how badly the children had been treated, I got in the car with Dan after church and told him, “Those kids are never going to voluntarily memorize another Bible verse for the rest of their lives.”

And then…

I grinned.

27May

Mortification Monday, Chapter the Last

Posted by: Bethany in Mortification Mondays 3 Comments

You may (or may not) have noticed that I stopped my Mortification Monday series early on. Awfully early on. I mean, the soap opera goes on for three years, which is something like forty-five teenage lifetimes, and I originally intended to drag you through every mortifying detail. However… Well, first, let me tell you the microbot version of the story.

I fell for Igor Dreamboat (not his real name) when I was twelve. He was two delectable years older and the cutest specimen of eventual manhood ever to sprout dimples. And he was funny. And charming. And every time we ended up within speaking distance of each other, I was terrified that I would accidentally start making out with him… because, you know, that sort of thing happens all the time.

After two years of loyal infatuation on my part, he started to come around. Not that he ever said as much, but when he started holding my hand under the table, I took that to mean we were together. My teenaged heart did a somersault off the nearest balcony, and I ran home that evening to write in my journal, “I shall never be depressed again!” This is called literary irony, folks.

He may have actually cared for me, but while my love ran fathoms deep, his was a sidewalk puddle good for splashing in from time to time. Knowing nothing of relationships and being vaguely banned from discussing the topic at home, I was the perfect girlfriend for his style. I assumed it was normal dating behavior to show physical affection in private and ignore each other in public. I shouldered the guilt each time he broke up with me for another girl and welcomed him back with open arms a few weeks later. I forgave again and again, fluttering toward each crumb of attention he tossed my way.

It was an agonizing year. During one of our on-again months, I spilled the news to some of my girlfriends at a slumber party, and their chirping congratulations were almost too happy to bear… until the next week at school when none of them would talk to me. “You didn’t have to make up lies to be our friend,” hissed one of the girls before turning her back. I recognized the signature cut of betrayal even before Igor pulled me aside and told me I wasn’t allowed to talk about us. He said he had had to deny our relationship to all our friends and teachers, and he broke up with me for the tenth time.

For the rest of that school year, I received bad grades. My favorite teacher was pointedly cold toward me. My former friends whispered accusations behind my back. My home life was in shambles as well, and I cried myself to sleep more times than I can count. Yet I was so hungry for love and so devoted to the boy with the flashing smile and fine-tuned sense of humor that I waited out the lonely weeks until he was willing to touch me again. Only during those hidden moments with our bodies pressed close did the ache in my chest subside.

The following summer, I traveled to Mexico where I turned fifteen and heard the first piece of relationship advice that had ever made sense to me: Romance is a mystery, and love is companionship. Novel, right? After a few days of thinking, I journaled, “I’m tired of being dumped. I want a guy who’ll carefully pick me up and never put me down.” Then I screwed my courage to the sticking place, told Igor we were through, reminded him we were through, reiterated no, really, we’re through, and got over the first love of my life.

I dream about him some nights, always sweet, aerial dreams. In them, I am confidently beautiful. He is laughing and holding my hand proudly in front of our friends, who cheer us on. It is all very last scene of “Titanic.” Though it’s probably not kosher to be dreaming of other men while I’m happily married, I love that my mind has worked out a happy ending for the aching 14-year-old somewhere still inside me. She needed one. She has experienced plenty of mortification for a teenaged sliver of psyche, and I think she has finally earned her peace. Even if her dramatic journal entries WERE comedy gold.

R.I.P.

Mortification Mondays

2008-2009

21May

Slumbering Magic

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

At least once a year, I read Ray Bradbuary’s Dandelion Wine cover to cover. It has been a soul tradition since I first picked up the paperback at age 15 and lost a bit of my heart among the pages. And who wouldn’t? The book is a celebration of childhood and summertime equally, of life and death and the daily discoveries that make them so much more, written in the most delicious prose I’ve ever tasted.

“His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened.
I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before…” *

Magic.

Every time I venture into its pages, I am twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding. I suddenly feel the need for tennis shoes and old-fashioned lime-vanilla ice, plus a sip of the mysterious dandelion wine just to try.  I experience all the curiosity and fear and wondering joy woven into the stories. But despite how much I love the book, my heart floods with a soft pale-pink sadness at the end of each chapter because I wish it were mine. The writing. The nostalgia. The memories in print.

I have a hard time explaining the way Dandelion Wine tugs at me because it’s not jealousy… yet it is. I dearly want to write a book that captures people’s imaginations in the same way, and I think I could. I feel the magic slumbering just beneath the surface of my ability. But I’m missing the nostalgia, and that’s one thing a writer can’t make up. My childhood memories will never make the cut for an exploration of whimsy, and this dear adult life of mine needs a few more years to brew still.

So I take the book for what it was to me at 15—a miraculous first date with metaphors—and what it is to me now—a diamond trembling with a thousand emotional hues. My sadness is not an enemy, nor is it the face of defeat. Rather, it’s the whispered promise of nostalgia in my future. You will write of your own magic one day, you will…

—

* I had a ridiculously hard time choosing an exemplary passage from the book because every sentence in the thing is perfect. Some lazy day this summer, pour yourself a tall glass of lemonade, pick up a copy of Dandelion Wine, and read until your toes begin to tingle. That’s an order.

12May

Uncaged

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

When I’m 85, the smell of Bath & Body Works’s peach nectar lotion will remind me of that unsettling coaster ride of an autumn with my first boyfriend. The smell of carpet shampoo will remind me of walking into my college dorm room with an armful of books and giddy expectations. The smell of hand sanitizer will take me back to the NICU where infant Natalie recovered from surgery, and the smell of lemons will remind me of this spring.

The lemon trees and perfume and homemade limoncello and lemonade (more on that soon) have swirled deep into my perception of life this spring, and I have to tell you: I am infatuated. With lemons… AND life. Remember how crap-coated existence looked in January? And in February? And in March? Man, March was a doozy. I didn’t share most of the horror that was my brain this last winter out of embarrassment and pride and a respect for your collective wills to live, but my personal journal entries are like something out of Mordor.

But then… One afternoon toward the end of March, I was researching psychiatry in Italy in preparation for the next day when I was going to beg my skeptical doctor on my hands and knees for antidepressants. If I was going to grovel, I at least wanted to be prepared. I learned that “antidepressant” is “antidepressivo” and that “panic attack” is “attacco di panico” and that around 75% of women taking Yasmin end up on depression medication. Huh, I thought. Could this be as easy as going off the Pill?

It was. Only seven weeks later, I am a completely different person. Actually, I was a different person within seven days. I can hardly believe how easy it is to get out of bed each morning now that homicidal hormones are no longer running around chewing holes through all my happy thoughts. That endocrinologist who assured me I certainly did not have a hormonal imbalance owes me one year of lost happiness and a delivery truck of Lindt chocolates, at least as I see it.

I figured I owed you all an update now that I’m on the outside of the cage. So many of you have encouraged and supported me through a truly crap-filled (and -coated and -battered and -fried and -garnished) time. You’ve sent me e-mails and earrings and reminded me that I have some worth as a human being after all, and I am a thousand kinds of thankful. The future holds promise again. The world is habitable again. My creativity is waking out of its coma, and when I look inside my brain, I finally see myself. And when I’m 85, the smell of fresh lemons will remind me all over again how lovely it is to be.

7May

Résumé

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

I

don’t

like

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 7th 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.

Wanted poster

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.

1Dec

Gloom and Cheer

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

My little sister is sixteen and gorgeous. She sports a sparkly little nose stud, stylish clothes, and a haircut adorable enough to kill. She brims over with smiles, and in the Thanksgiving pictures, she and my mom are cheek-to-cheek with matching lipgloss, making silly faces together. I grin at the photos, but I can’t help the urgent stinging under my eyelids.

It’s not jealousy. I love my sister, and I’m quite honestly delighted with my current life. However, I wasn’t when I was her age. Frumpiness was thrust upon me young, and I spent nearly every moment of my early teenage years sinking with humiliation. Sinking and hiding. My mother—burdened with griefs I’m only now beginning to understand—never smiled at me. We never giggled together or shared makeup or staged silly photos. Any photos, for that matter. And when I see my beautiful sister and my beautiful mom having fun together, it inflames my war wounds. I may be a decade and an ocean removed from my past, but recovery still eludes.

Holidays in particular bring out the tangles in my emotions. No matter how happy I am with my sweet husband and precious girls, I can’t entirely forget the family life that once hurt me so deeply—the tense mealtimes, the clouds of violence, and the Christmastime hopes that always failed to fully materialize. While the New Year rang in on my fifteenth year, I lay in bed discussing suicide with myself. Happy holidays!

If I could ask any gift from my sister this year, it would be a memory—just one would do, and I’d return it in perfect condition. If I could just once remember my teenage self feeling beautiful or treasured or brimming over with shared smiles… well, Christmas would be a bit easier to look forward to.

—

With the gloom worked out of my system, I have to say that I really am excited about this month. We’re planning Christmas crafts and outreach projects and deliciously sneaky shopping trips with frost-tipped noses and hot chocolate at the end. One of my favorite parts of the holiday is planning gifts for friends, and I certainly can’t overlook the wonderful blog community this year. My husband may be getting tired of me telling him how much I like the internet, but I really do. I’m madly in love with it. I love having a place to spill my thoughts and having you all sop them up for me, and I love the way gratuitous kindness can spread unhindered across the globe. I know it’s not much, but I’m excited to send out a little end-of-the-year gift to you in time for Christmas. (Hint: It’s a recipe, and it’s Italian, and I promise it will be in the best interest of your happiness… and that of your sweet tooth. Enough said.) Just e-mail me with your mailing address, and I’ll send an envelope of holiday cheer your way! ‘Tis the season… and I’m grateful for you all.

9Oct

15.333485

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 9 Comments

When I was 15, I loved filling out surveys. LOVED. Would happily have born their children, etc. I considered myself very clever too, filling out my age as 15.333485 and my eye color as “pond scum.” As was done back in those days, I circulated my very clever surveys to all my friends and chuckled to myself at what they would think when they read that my preference between chocolate and vanilla was “Hello, do you KNOW me?” (Chocolate and I had quite a reputation back then.)

Then I found maturity at the ripe old age of 15.792144 and destroyed all those surveys that I had poured all my very clever immaturity into. I became a… Meme Snob. The experience is not unlike discovering crème fraîche, fresh Asiago, and cavatappi al dente and then turning up your nose at Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese forever after. Only, sometimes, you still secretly crave the taste of orange powder and soggy noodles. Come on, ‘fess up.

Today, I found myself craving a soggy orange meme… and instead of ignoring it sanctimoniously like usual, I decided to be 15.333485 again and enjoy it. (Plus, I had nothing else to write about today.) This is for you, Kelly!

6 Random Things About Myself (why does it feel like I’m starting a 3rd grade essay?)

1. My favorite food in this or any other universe is fried okra. Which pretty much limits me to the southeast quarter of the USA. Oh, and Cracker Barrel! But sadly, Cracker Barrel has yet to set up a franchise in Italy…

2. No one can deny that I’m a disgrace to my Texan upbringing. I start to melt at 85 degrees or medium salsa, whichever comes hotter. I own neither a pickup truck nor a shotgun.* Country music fills me with fantasies of puncturing my own ear drums. Need I continue?

However, though I’m not officially admitting it, I often miss the landscape of Texas… Those rugged oceans of sandstone and grass that manage to look safe in their rampant wildness… Red bluffs crowded with stubby pine trees overlooking friendly fishing lakes… Fresh-baked prairie and wide open spaces in every direction… Those Dixie Chicks were onto something (country music notwithstanding).

—
*Nor a rifle, a pistol, an AK-47, a bow and arrow, a BB gun, a Bowie knife, or a rocket launcher. Though I have used all of them before. Yes, Unreal counts.

3. I have ten piercings, including three that have closed. My little sister, who got a darling sparkly nose stud at 14, owes me BIG TIME. At 14, I was going for double-pierced ears, which might as well have been nipples for how well certain parents of ours took it… but they’ve come a long way in the meantime, and my jewelry and I are willing to take full credit.

4. During breakfast, Natalie looks at the backs of cereal boxes, and I read sugar bags. Sugar comes with poetry in Italy (why not?), and here’s a particularly charming translation for your reading pleasure:

 “The Sugar in a Cup:”
Sweet as an enamored boy,
Candied as an unexpected kiss,
Light as a hug without end,
Simple as the waves of the sea,
Sugar is everything and nothing,
It is not, but it is present…
It hides in a cup,
Reappears in a bag, the sugar…

5. My hair in college went something like this:
Normal: light reddish-blond (I call it Irish)
BLUE
Blonde
Blonder
[Christmas break] Blonde of a strawberrier variety
Long
PERM (I know, but it was tasteful, plus it saved my life during those 4 a.m. hygiene sprints sharing a dime-sized mirror with 75 other girls in South Africa)
[Summer break] Cinnamon-apple red
Straight
[Convince best friend DeAnn to dye her hair, though her hair resists mightily] Longer
Honey-blonde
[Christmas break] SHORT
Dark Irish
Mahogany
[Summer break] Chestnut
Back to normal
Spiky fuchsia wig
Roasted chili red
[Future husband falls in love with me and vice versa] Shoulder-length
[Christmas break] Chestnut, round 2
Pomegranate blonde
Long
[Summer break] Longer
I’m-getting-married! red
[Wedding] SHORT
Just plain brown
With a touch of red
And then several touches more
[Christmas break] PURPLE (it was temporary, but still…)
Caramel
Blonde highlights
[Graduation] EXCEEDINGLY SHORT 

It seems that every time I get bored with The Way Things Are™ or just need a breath of fresh figurative air, I reinvent myself by way of hair. It’s the only viable option for me, really. I will never be able to tan beyond the shade of fluorescent white. I will never be able to afford replacing my wardrobe every few months. I seriously doubt I will ever have the time to go on a Pilates spree or a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas, though, um, yes please. I can’t change much about my routine with little ones to care for, and I can’t rearrange the furniture in our shoebox apartment. B
ut I can disappear into the bathroom with a little box marked “#556, Red Mahogany” and emerge forty minutes later a different person.

6. I am not afraid of heights… exactly. However, my hands begin to sweat profusely the moment I’m up high. Or when I watch a movie scene depicting someone up high. Or when I think about watching a movie scene depicting someone up high. For instance, right now; my palms are literally gushing as I type. It would seem I was not blessed with survival instinct.

—

I am a Meme Snob no more. Now please pass the Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

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