Stop This Train

How do I shut off the interior noise?

How do I ignore the gritty, tacky texture of frosting on my fingertips and ringing the ring on my finger?

How do I remember that the ashes on my forehead are an outward sign that everything I do is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

How do I stay focused with the distraction, the inability to focus, gravity pulling me elsewhere, my eyes to the side when they need to be focused front and center?

My brain feels fuzzy. It has that detached feeling that comes with being unhinged. “Unable to prioritize” as the postpartum/anxiety literature says. That’s a nice neat term for what I’m feeling. A gross oversimplification of the split between my rational and emotional selves. I can prioritize. My mind can still order things, ranking them in order of importance. But my [free will, stubborn mule, FU factor, overwhelmed stressball of anxiety – pick one or all of the above] ignores that list, places it behind a film so the suggestion of it is there, but I can’t quite grasp it.

In the sleep-deprived days following the birth of my third, I finally came to understand what my grandmother and other relatives described as a futile searching for a word in conversation. You know what you want to say. The idea is fully formed in your head, but you cannot transmit it out your mouth and to the understanding of those around you. Grasping, pinching, clutching, coveting those words, like a linguistic Scrooge, you can’t pull the one you need down from the clouds in your head. You would share if only you could. Being at a loss for words truly brought home how sleep deprived I was. With the birth of the second, third, et al, child, you don’t have a choice but to continue on with the routine of your family as if nothing happened except a new addition to your family and sleepless nights. It’s easy to ‘forget’ or repress how damn tired you are – until you stammer like a blithering idiot because you truly cannot form a sentence.

That’s the sensation I get now – only not with words, but thoughts. I cannot light on one particular thought before being pulled to another before it’s fully formed, and another and another, ad infinitum, until I write obsessive lists because I’m so desperately afraid that one most important thought will fly out of my head.

With my three year-old chatting next to me and the priest’s microphone shut off for the second half of mass so his words only slightly permeated the walls of the cry room, I actually did get some peace. Before the microphone went off, a handful of most important words permeated the walls of my heart. Everything we do is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Comforting and terrifying at the same time. The ashy smudge on my forehead, at least for today, gives me a tangible reminder to hold my tongue, cull my words carefully, not let my obnoxious, self-absorbed anxiety-ridden self rule my role as mother, wife, human being. I want to ooze peace, love, and hair grease (well two of the three anyway). I’m in my own miserable little world lately, but I need to relate to the greater world and try to improve at least my little corner of it.

It’s hard to break out of rotating loop of mindchatter, though. – especially when it comes at you like the feed from a manic channel surfer.

So how to do it? Shut off the TV by going to sleep? Prayer? Beating my head against the wall? Go on vacation?

Any suggestions?

Living

Winter is Coming*

I saw a man gathering kindling in his arms. A backhoe sat idling nearby. Was he collecting that much wood or was he planning on ramming trees to the ground for firewood? And the logs that he had gathered, had they sat long enough on the forest floor to kindle a fire tomorrow when the snow comes?

I moved to the country just as the cold season started. ‘Seasoning wood’ was a term somewhere on the horizon of my consciousness. It was not something I needed to understand or attend to. Luckily the people we bought our house from left some logs stashed in the back of the garage, seasoned from last year’s growing season.

The image of that man hugging a bundle of logs close to his chest made me wonder. Will those logs in the garage be enough if we lose power this weekend? And what about the stack of logs in our backyard, sawed and split after Hurricane Sandy? Will they watch in moldy moisture as we freeze when our seasoned wood runs out?

And then I wondered . . . what did people do before meteorology? Did we actually have to pay attention to our surroundings and changing seasons and be prepared? Were we ants to today’s grasshoppers?

I hear the calls for bread and milk. For full gas tanks and new snow blowers. I see the last-minute hustle of wood gathering.

I do not see the storm clouds yet. I do not feel that raw damp that precedes snowfall.

If it weren’t for advanced radar, we might get caught unawares.

But were any true New Englanders ever caught unawares? As much as their means would allow, the pantries were stocked, the log pile stacked, the hatches battened.

Modern life had made us soft; has made us forget how to pay attention to our surroundings and react accordingly.

We rely on the convenience store down the street for our jug of milk, the mindless flick of a thermostat for heat, the talking head on TV when to tell us to be alarmed.

Good old Yankee ingenuity and self-reliance never hurt anyone. Maybe it should make a comeback.

* As should Game of Thrones, which I no doubt would be watching during this storm – if the power didn’t go out and the next season didn’t start after the season of winter is over!

Living, Poetry, Spirituality, Writing

Crystalline

The country road I drove down this morning looked magical.

A feathered path down its middle where the few cars had passed.

A vortex of flakes pulling me through the windshield.

Boulders, trees, leaves touched by a light dusting.

The magic messed with by industrial orange dump trucks spewing their salt,

but reemerging in a parking lot, of all places.

A perfectly formed star pulled from the sky and placed on the fleece forest of my glove.

Another and another.

In relief against the black rubber strip of my car,

the honey colored curls of my daughter,

the harsh, manipulative world we live in.

A tiny reminder of

the awesome, wondrously made world we sometimes forget we live in.

Identity, Writing

Schooled in the Ways of Crap

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school . . .

I have always loved that song by Paul Simon. I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with it, because I did, in fact, learn lots of useful things, but his thrumming on the guitar was so infectious I’d bounce along in time.

Then I became a teacher. I student-taught in high school, but ended up in the seedy underbelly of the ancient junior high building I attended myself as a skittish prepubescent. Many of the veterans I spoke to said junior high was where we all started out, paid our dues, and then transferred to the high school. The general tone was that no one wanted to spend much time with the roiling turmoil that was the junior high population. I can still hear the words of a talented veteran, though, who also happened to be the mother of a good friend I made in that school years earlier. She said stay put until you earn tenure and if still like junior high kids at that end of those three years, this is where you’re meant to be.

I spent the next seven years with junior high kids, teaching English/Language Arts.

I might still be there if it weren’t for an extended leave after the birth of my second child that turned into stay-at-home-mom-dom and a third child.

I’m still very much a teacher, though. And not just in the “parents are the first teachers” sort of way. It’s definitely a mindset. I’ve kept all the instructional materials I created, the units of study I formulated, the texts I used to teach. I still read books in such a way that makes me wonder if I’ve taken my analytical reading to another level or if I’m dissecting it in order to reconstruct it with an imaginary class. I listen intently to fellow parents’ descriptions of child behavior and learning experiences as if I have a stake in their success or struggle. I’m sure I make my child’s teachers wonder why I’m nodding as if I know exactly what they’re going to say when they explain how educational standards are once again changing.

These are all positive carry-overs from my teaching career.

There’s also a bane that comes with teaching: the feeling that you never graduate.

I counted down the final days of student teaching until graduation, only to fall headlong into another classroom. The fact that it was in a junior high that I had already spent two years of my life in added to the sensation of demotion. Back to homework – because giving it to students means you yourself have it. And that’s just the correcting. Not the involved planning (though the planning and successful execution of lessons was by far the most enthralling part of teaching). You perpetually feel like a student yourself.

Like I did when I sat down to the computer this morning.

Hmm . . . how to start today’s blog entry. Let’s see. Well, I started with a question last time. Oh, a quote?

That’s when I realized I was walking myself through the eight types of leads I’d taught my students. And that I was as haunted by all that crap I’d learned – and taught – in school as Paul Simon was. The role of perpetual student did not end when I left the classroom – neither sitting in the desk nor in front of it; it still follows me. And while it’s humbling and rather uncomfortable to still be learning the lessons I taught my junior high students, it’s validating to know that at least one lesson was valuable if it’s germane to my current writing. At least that day I wasn’t trying to learn them some crap.

anxiety, motherhood, postpartum depression, Recovery

Chopping Mangoes

Is there an easy way to cut a mango?

I tried the avocado method. Cut in half, drive knife blade into pit, rotate blade quarter turn, and pull. Not so much. That pit was not having it. Didn’t budge.

I tried digging it out. That just hacked up the fruit flesh around it.

I did not have such warm feelings toward my mango.

I finally sliced the fruit away from the core, apple style.

Except my hands were completely covered in goo from the pulp most of the fruit had become.

Goo + santoku = not the optimal chopping situation

As three small children pulling at your pant-leg while wielding said santoku is not.

Giada’s fish tacos with mango salsa be damned. I was ready to fling that mango out the window or smash it against the wall. I’d have squeezed it in my fist if only it weren’t so damn slippery.

No, you can’t have fishies right now.

Mama’s trying to concentrate.

No, fish tacos aren’t disgusting.

Yes, I’m putting that green stuff in them.

How the hell do you cut a *&^%*(# mango!?

Potatoes, mangoes – whatever I’m chopping, preparing dinner is always a trigger for me.

It used to be because I hadn’t planned a meal. Countless trashed produce and late nights cured me of that. Now I plan an entire week of meals before food shopping. So that’s not the problem (well, that’s a PIA in and of itself, but that’s another topic for another day). I’m toast by the time dinner prep rolls around. I’m getting hungry myself. I’m tired. The sun is going down. Daddy isn’t home yet. That pot of anxiety boils up pretty quickly.

Revisiting the feelings elicited from chopping potatoes, things have changed. Potatoes are dense; mangoes are much softer, pliable. Potatoes are born of dirt; mangoes have a hard core with a soft surrounding (oh, there are so many metaphors for a post-baby body with that one). Potatoes are a cold-weather crop; mangoes thrive in a tropical clime.

I am a warmer, softer person than I was post-partum. I may not have tight abs, but I do have an inner reserve of power from which to draw. Like slicing through the pulpy flesh, a lot of things are easier, but not all (removing the pit).

I still get pissed off at the distraction and whining as I’m wielding a large, sharp knife, but I no longer want to cut off my fingers to earn an escape to the emergency room.

I’d call that progress.

And I’d call mango salsa on fish tacos freakin’ delicious if it weren’t so hard to chop.

* Against my better judgment, I’ve included the recipe for Giada’s fish tacos. Proceed with caution – and use sour cream instead of wasabi and crème freche, unless you like adding more stress to your life.

** I’ve also included a link to the proper way to cut a mango (There is a mango.org – who knew? Video is worth it for the entertainment value alone). I think I’d still proceed with caution.

Identity, Living, Technology

Keep Calm and – well, you know

I guess I want to be George Takei.

When he first exploded on the internet with his clever and quirky posts, I thought, who died and made him king of our on-line kingdom? How did Sulu earn the clout to be our trendsetter and meme-maker? There were two things that let me rationalize enjoying his posts: the fact that many were freakin’ hilarious and that, well, he’s Captain Sulu.

Then the other day, feeling incredibly down and tired, I opened my blank book hoping to release whatever funk was plaguing me. I stared at the blank pages, too tired to form thoughts and too tired to get up and shut off the radio that was also distracting me. Then this song came on:

In that weird way that the universe seems to speak to us from time to time, the lyrics of this song said exactly what I needed to hear. That we’ve all been in that funk and need to keep going until we pull out of it. One of those great realizations that make us feel alive again. And I thought, how wonderful it would be to share this feeling.

Enter blogging. Facebook. Twitter. What have you.

The perfect platform to share favorite quotes, songs, photos, jokes. All those clever and quirky things that bang around in our heads and until social media didn’t have anyplace to go – except the backs of notebooks, bottoms of scribbled notes, and countless collages that littered my bulletin board or inside of my locker growing up.

Maybe I was snarky about George Takei’s meteoric rise to fame because I envied it. We all have a little Sulu inside us, I guess. Now, engage, and carry on!

Identity, Spirituality

Cultural Catholic

While driving home late last night, I caught the tail end of Terry Gross interviewing Dusting Hoffman. I didn’t know at the time it was Dustin Hoffman, having tuned the station to the middle of one of his responses. I simply heard a distinctive voice telling me his father was essentially an atheist. And that, as a child, he would lay on the grass in the backyard, looking up to the sky, and talk to God, asking him questions – and hear God’s answers.

The discussion then turned to ‘being Jewish’ as a cultural phenomenon vs. a religious one. Hoffman said he most definitely identified with his Jewish heritage, given from where he and his family hailed, his culinary likes and traditions, the idiosyncratic sense of humor. But it was only a cultural connection, not a belief in or adherence to organized religion.

And it occurred to me – is there such a thing as a cultural Catholic?

Those who pray to St. Anthony when they lose something, but don’t attend mass. Those who break the commandments knowingly, yet still feel the immense pressure of Catholic guilt instilled in them since childhood. Those who dangle the rosary from their rearview mirrors yet never recite the prayers. Those who don’t consider an Ash Wednesday, Christmas, or Easter complete unless they’ve attended mass, but don’t darken the door of the church any other day of the liturgical year. Those who don’t get married in the church, but insist on baptizing their children. Those who believe we’re all made in God’s image, but support abortion. Those who are proud to be part of the institution, but don’t uphold its tenets.

Catholic means universal. There is no one language, tradition, race, or cuisine that defines it. So I suppose there is no one way to practice it. And it would be impossible to divide it cleanly into two halves of religion and culture as one could argue with being Jewish. But there certainly seems to be a human inclination among some believers to keep secular routines and discard the spiritual aspects. To consider oneself Catholic, but not practice it. To tow some of the party line, but not the parts of the Catechism that drag them down.

When I first heard what I learned afterward was Dustin Hoffman’s voice and heard his responses before Terry Gross’ questions, I had no context in which to place them. They were pure thoughts and information – no judgment, no interpretation. And the thoughts and questions they provoked here are just the same. It is what it is. This is what I see.

I simply wonder if there is such a thing as a cultural Catholic.

Writing

Somewhere Out There

I write best when in my car.

No, I’m not one of those people you see mouth agape going eighty miles an hour applying mascara. I’m not reading the map spread across my dashboard as I try to maintain lane (disregard the fact that ergonomic dashboards and GPS have made this point moot). I’m not even trying to eat a sloppy sandwich as I steer with my elbows.

I have both hands securely planted on the wheel, watching both the speed- and tachometer, the radio adjusted to a safe level so as not to cause distraction. My youngest daughter is safely secured in her five-point harness in the backseat. My eyes are on the road and what the traffic ahead of me is doing.

Some part of my mind, however, is in the hills lit by sunlight on the horizon. The clouds sweeping across the crest of the hill. That part of my mind is parsing words and phrases, building them up and fine-tuning them.

Into poetry.

Into a thousand different perfect prompts for this blog.

Into the character quirk I’ve been needing for Dmitri.

Into metaphors and images, symbols and signs –

all of which leave me when I sit down hours or days later at the keyboard.

There are times it’s happened in the ether just before sleep. When the body has relaxed just enough to quell the mind’s obsessing, but not it’s creative processes. Perfectly formed paragraphs gather and congregate. Teasing me to remember them, knowing I won’t fight the exhaustion to lift a pen and record them in the notebook on my bedside table.

In the morning, the memory of them remains but not the perfect manuscript.

A voice to text application would probably help. But I have such a nostalgia for and dedication to hand- and typewritten words. I’m searching for a place to display the ancient Underwood typewriter my father’s holding for me now. It would feel disingenuous somehow to speak my words into thin air and have them magically transform to text. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. Maybe I just hate to hear a playback of my recorded voice.

I’m hopelessly devoted to forming the perfect mental manuscript and promptly forgetting it when my hands touch the keyboard. If only mental memory would transfer to sense memory in this one instance. Just another form of writers’ block, I suppose. Or another rationalization for not writing what I’m supposed to be. It’s much easier to lament the perfect lost words than write the imperfect permanent ones.

So I’ll take leave of you now. Perhaps to go for a drive. Perhaps to build on the momentum I finally reengaged in my book yesterday. Or maybe to go stare out the window and dream of the perfect words floating somewhere out there.

Uncategorized, Writing

The Next Big Thing

* LATE BREAKING NEWS! I am pleased to announce a last minute addition to The Next Big Thing Blog Tour. Annie Cardi, a fellow New Englander writing young adult novels, has joined us. Please follow the link to her blog as well as the links for the two other writers at the end of this entry. Thank you!

2013 is off to an auspicious start.

As last year came to a close, the lovely and talented Heather Rigney invited me to join her on The Next Big Thing Blog Tour. Heather and I met in our first lives as middle school teachers (though our school was having an identity crisis as one of the few named junior highs remaining in the state). We reconnected in our second lives as writers, attending an institute together at Rhode Island College. Her work is witty, quirky, and entertaining, involving zombies, mermaids, and, yes, junior highs. Her blog, Mermaids Love Sushi, showcases her wit and joie de vivre.

Before I could even digest the questions I’d be responding to as part of the tour, RK Bentley – friend, blogger, writer extraordinaire – hit me with another invite. Rob’s comics have graced my personal library for decades. Within the last year or so I’ve been fortunate enough to see his scifi novel, Where Weavers Dare, take shape in the writers’ group he organized. Rob is an integral part of the local writing scene and he shares his “ramblin’s” about that and his other passions on his blog, RKB Writes.

As part of The Next Big Thing Blog Tour, Heather and Rob answered questions about their current work, much like a published author would do to garner support for their latest book. I think I speak for all the authors taking part in this tour that we do so in the hopes that our writing will, in fact, be the NEXT BIG THING!

So here goes:

1) What is the working title of your book?

Next in Line

2) Where did the idea come from for your book?

Ironically enough, a kitchen remodel. We totally gutted the kitchen in our previous home and a plasterer came in to patch things up. He was so knowledgeable and kind that we learned a lot about his personal background, which got me thinking about family businesses and legacies.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

young adult/realistic fiction

4) Which actors would you choose to play in your movie rendition?

I’m really fighting the urge right now to call on the cast from My Big Fat Greek Wedding; my main character’s name is Dmitri Tslakas!

Maybe Zachary Gordon from Diary of a Wimpy Kid could play him.
Camilla Belle for the lovely yet unassuming Francesca.
Olympia Dukakis for Gram? Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Mandy Patinkin with a beard for Spiro, Dmitri’s dad.
Isabella Rossalini for Maria, Dmitri’s mother.
Can I get Max Cascella from his Doogie Howser, MD days for Dmitri’s friend, Anthony? This whole thing is wishful thinking, right?

5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Dmitri, a seventeen year-old sculptor, is trying to build his skills and his strength – to hone his craft and stand up to his father.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Any takers? I’d like to see what an agent could do for me.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

~ two years, in fits and starts.

8) What other books would you compare this story to?

Takeoffs and Landings by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Lord of the Deep by Graham Salisbury

9) Who or what inspired you to write the book?

My plasterer and his teenage son on the brink of adulthood
any kid who’s trying to get out from the shadow of his or her parent(s) and stand on his or her own.

10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Dmitri has undiscovered family history that ties him to the past as well as his father’s expectations pushing him toward the future.
He is an amazing, naturally talented artist.

I’m so honored to be part of this blog phenomenon! A big thank you to Heather and Rob. I’d like to share the love with two very talented writers both of whose work I highly enjoy and which you should check out, too (They’ll have their posts up in about a week).

Julie Robertson Dixon

Kelly Kittel

Annie Cardi

motherhood, parenting, Spirituality

Critical Mass

Taking three small children to church is always a crapshoot.

Taking three small children to mass after a long night of merry-making and a morning of present-opening and candy-eating ups the ante even more.

Our three made it through the three readings from the Bible and the pastor’s homily surprisingly well. I’ve found, however, that it’s always the second half of mass where the clapper hits the bell.

The fidgets start: the foot-thumping, kneeler-diving, seat-switching. And that’s only the non-verbal. Then you have the inter-sibling jibes and jokes, the giggles and snorts. And the doctrinal observations and questions, which at any other juncture would be welcomed wholeheartedly, but not when presented in a stage whisper in the midst of a lull in the sound issuing from the PA system. They never make noise when the organ is grinding, do they?

My five year-old came out with some good ones this Christmas mass. When a prayer included a request for “eternal rest”, she turned to me incredulously: ‘a turtle?’ During the prayer of the faithful for the departed, I hushed her vehemently when she said what I thought was, ‘this is boring.’ Then I realized she was adding to the prayer, ‘like Grandpa Warren’, my deceased grandfather, the great-grandfather she never knew.

At what point do we as parents and parishioners expect children to behave “appropriately” at mass? There is no magic age at which they suddenly will learn to sit still and attend – especially if they’ve been excluded from mass up until that point. In my constant vigilance to keep her quiet, I nearly reprimanded my daughter for realizing the importance of a prayer and adding the memory of a loved one to it.

If we shut them down totally, we’ll miss gems like my two year-old last Christmas, who asked loudly enough for all those around us to hear, “Where’s Baby Jesus?” A woman with three teenaged boys approached me afterward and commented on how nice it was to hear her little voice, to see the innocence and wonder of the young; that she knew the true meaning of the season. At first, I laughed it off, a bit embarrassed at our disturbance, but then realized how nice it was to hear this older mother’s comment; a validation that this is how children are supposed to behave, that we need to appreciate it; and that it’s not a failing on the mother’s part to seal her child’s lips.

My favorite church faux pas by far, though, is when my eldest daughter was maybe four years old. She proudly belted out the words to the closing hymn of mass, “All the Ends of the Earth”. Only she didn’t know that was the refrain. Instead, she sang, “All the ants of the earth.” Classic. All of us can see the power of God if only we look closely enough. And watch for lessons all around us – even in the wee ones kicking the back of our pew as we try to pray.

Chopping Potatoes

and other metaphors for motherhood

Author Archives: Jennifer Butler Basile