Author Archives: Jennifer Butler Basile

motherhood, parenting

Feedbag on the front, camel on the bak

I’ve stumbled upon perhaps my most brilliant and self-preserving idea yet.  Not only will it make and keep my children happy, but it will keep me from losing my patience, temper, and ultimately, mind.

I’ve been increasingly irritated by the constant demands for snack and drink from my cherubs.  It’s a never-ending cycle.  I’ve tried to institute schedules.  Three squares, of course, with one morning and afternoon snack.  I’ve taken into account thirst during playtime, allowing a water bottle at any point during the day.  However, independent studies in our home have found that true thirst is only satiated by fruit juice or chocolate milk.  And that if said thirst is not satiated, desperate whining ensues.  And those little bellies just can’t last twenty minutes until a balanced dinner is placed in front of them.  Oh, the horror, the agony, the hunger eating away at the tender muscle at their bones.

Dinnertime itself presents a whole new slate of irritations.  The heretofore-ravenous hunger is somehow sated within two minutes of meeting those colorful vegetables and proteins; the cup of milk drained dry with t-minus ten seconds before my husband and I sit down.  Just as my mouth is about to close around my first forkful of food, the demands come.  Can I have more milk?  Yes, in a moment, I respond, trying to savor a few bites before I return to the kitchen once more.  But I want miiiiiiiilllllllkkkkkk.  I said you can have milk.  Let Momma have a few bites of food first.  But I want MIIIIIIILLLLLLKKK.  *$#&@*.  I grab the offending cup and stomp to the kitchen.  When I return with cup filled and plop into my seat, oh-so-ready to resume my meal, the next little voice says, Can I have more milk?  *&$@*#&#&@(!  You didn’t know you wanted milk when you heard your sister ask for some?  But I wasn’t done with it then.

It was after one such episode that I came up with my brilliant idea.  My patience gone and my language and attitude most definitely flip, I announced to my husband – gesticulated actually – that I was going to strap a feedbag to the front and a camelbak hydration system to the back of each child.  It would make life so much easier, I raved.  Food and drink on demand!  Their needs met with nary an act on our part.  He laughed and pointed at me: there’s your next blog.

One half of my brilliant idea

Yes, and maybe my million-dollar idea.  At the very least, it would make me less irritated.  Though my kids would probably be the next three statistics in the childhood obesity epidemic.  I guess we can’t have it all – though they’d have food and drink all day if I’d let them 😉

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anxiety, Identity, Living

A Change in Me

I was totally on my game last night.  I mention it because it is so not me.  I was laughing, telling jokes, comfortable, making comments without much worrying about what people would think of me.  In other words, I was my authentic self.  Not insecure, not worried, not painfully self-aware.  And there were times throughout the night when I realized this and took note; not quite like an out-of-body experience watching it from afar, but my insecure or irrational or timid mouse inner self noticed and was pleasantly surprised.  And then I tried to tell her to go away, to enjoy it for what it was worth, to follow this relaxed, uninhibited self however far she would go.  Not to jinx it, second-guess it, scare her away with too many self-checks and ruminations.  And now I think of the Halloween party we went to last Saturday.  My kindergartener was invited to a classmate’s family party.  Their neighbors were there, family members, other classmates and their families.  Walking in to a crowd of ‘strangers’ was a bit daunting, but surprisingly only a little.  A playmate’s mom soon walked up and introduced herself.  I found the host’s mom and introduced myself.  I sought out other classmates’ parents.  I told jokes.  I talked to strangers.  I initiated conversations.  I was so not me.  But then, I said to my husband, I was on my game.  Because that is me – part of me, anyway.  The part that is uninhibited, comfortable in her own skin, totally inhabiting the spacious self that is she.  My authentic self.

Is it this place?  Is it the excuse, the opportunity of a change in place to make things happen, to reinvent myself?   Because I could’ve done all these things in my former home.  But I didn’t.  Was it the memory and residual trauma of postpartum?  Was it the repression of people who knew me from way back when, when I was a certain way?  Was it the familiar that I began to blend into?  I was scared.  I was stuck.  Now I’m free.  I don’t know if it’s the physical space that now surrounds us that is freeing us; the mental space that in turn affords (if you believe if in the elements of Feng Shui); the need to ground ourselves and make connections since we don’t have any.  But life seems to be shaping up.  And me right along with it.


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anxiety, Identity, Living, Writing

A Rock to Remember

Last week, I was forced to go to the beach.

I was cranky.  I was tired.  It was a holiday and all three kids were home, but my husband was working.  I still had tons of tedious tasks to do to get settled in the new house.

My parents said, it’s a beautiful day, let’s go for a walk.

I walked from the breach way to the border of this same beach with my parents when I was a girl.  It was like coming full-circle treading it this day with my own children a short distance from the place I now call home.

The girls dove straight into rock hunting with my mother.  I didn’t even have to chase my three year-old out of the waves, as she plopped down in one spot and proceeded to sift and stack.  I sat down, too, and gave myself over to the sound of the rocks chattering against each other in the surf.

My other home was a short walk from a small inlet on Narragansett Bay.  It was a lovely spot and we were fortunate to live so close to it (though we didn’t make the trek nearly enough).  But it had nothing of the raw power and expansiveness of this beach, the open ocean.  I am not used to the mass amounts of rocks, perfectly pounded and rounded by the constant tumbling of the sea.  The smooth spheres of granite, mica, and other minerals I should remember from science class and Rhode Island history.  Their shapes were so alluring to me, beckoning me to pick them up, roll them in my hands.

And so I did.  I sat just apart from my daughter’s sifting and sorting and felt the weight in my hands.  The cool heaviness, the sun-soaked pressure.  I searched for the one that fit perfectly in the palm of my hand.  Then I spun it round and round, the smooth surface soothing me in a way that didn’t seem needed, but became suddenly essential.

I felt my hackles lowering, my blood slowing in my veins, my body decompressing, my soul expanding.  I was running, running, running so quickly, so constantly, that I didn’t even know how wound up I was.  I didn’t know how much I needed the salve of the sea.

I recalled a stretch of preteen fall days when a friend and I rode our bikes to the sand flats with our notebooks and sketchpads.  I was so disappointed that I was caught without a notebook when the muse was so apparently calling to me, when an epiphany was beating me over the head with a smoothly-shaped rock.  I hoped beyond hope that I could bottle this feeling and bring it home with me.  It’s been diluted over the last week, but I did bring some rocks home with me as reminders.  I picked out some beautifully speckled, striated, spotted ones that I stacked into cairns in my garden.  I selected two larger ones to use as worry rocks, prayer stones, literal talismans to ground me; I planned to give one to my husband so he could benefit from my lesson, too.

As I kneaded these rocks in my hands, I thought of the many manifestations of humanity’s need for physical reminders of the spiritual side of life, of our souls.  Kachina dolls, worry dolls, worry stones, chime balls, stress balls, rocks perched on gravestones, relics . . . there are so many examples.  But they all begin at their basest level with a bit of the natural world.  There is a reason humans turn to nature to reset their moods, their demeanors, their selves.  While I cannot put my finger on it, there is something about it that resonates in our souls.  I’ll just have to wrap my hand around those rocks each time I forget.

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anxiety, Identity, Living

Liminal and Beyond

“The Waiting Place . . . [a most useless place]

for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to come or go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

 

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.”

As I was waiting for the will to write a positive blog entry today, these lines from Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go rang through my head.

I’m waiting.  For the end of PMS.  For the washing machine to finish its cycle.  For an expected tradesperson to show up.  My husband to come home from work.  My children to stream up the stairs and into the corner in which I’m hiding (which took one more line of typing, by the way).  For this new place in life to feel ‘normal’, to reach some sort of stasis.

Well into On Moving by Louise DeSalvo now, I’ve read about “liminal life – the life that is neither here nor there . . . These difficult-to-live-through interstices, I’ve read, are necessary for growth: the psychic spaces where the old self is shed and the new one begins to develop (DeSalvo 72).

A few weeks ago, I said that I felt I could become my authentic self in this house.  I didn’t realize how much the move would shake things up though – both our physical possessions and my own psychological foundations.  Everything can’t feel just as it did in the other house, though, because then I’d fall into familiar routines and frustrating ways of being.  Now’s the chance to fix things that are broken.  Discard things that are hindrances.  Create new ways of living and doing and being that improve our life, not just get us through it.  I wouldn’t have done that in the comfortable nest of my other home.

On the flip side, I cannot ignore the pieces of myself that will remain no matter where I am, those rituals that will follow and sustain me wherever I go.  DeSalvo said, “I’ve been waiting to ‘settle in’ before I start writing.  But writing will help me ‘settle in’.” (DeSalvo 88)  Just as there are certain beloved objects that will travel from home to home and comfort with their mere presence, so must I make time to practice these rituals that will soothe me.

I cannot wait for everything in my home to be set up perfectly before I roll out the yoga mat.  I cannot avoid writing until the perfectly appointed writing desk sits in its nook.  I cannot avoid ‘living’ while I run through my unpacking/set-up list.  If I ignore those foundational elements of myself that will indeed make anywhere I live a home, the window of liminal time will close and this chaos will become my life.

No more waiting.

This is not ‘the waiting place’.  These are the living rooms.  This is home.  It’s time to start feeling it.

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anxiety, Identity, Living

Eat the Frog

I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

Suffering through those things I don’t want to do in order to get to the ones I want.

Problem is, by the time I eat said frogs, I’m usually too damn tired to do the things I want, which never really were obligatory anyway.  Or, I take so long staring down the frog or pretending I don’t hear him croaking that I have just enough time to gulp him down hurriedly before the sun goes down; it’s time for dinner; time to pick up the girls from the bus stop.

Procrastination and perfectionism are not mutually exclusive.

When, pre-move, I described how I was failing to meet my goal of packing five boxes per day, an acquaintance pointed out how I couldn’t possibly be an overachiever and a procrastinator.  Luckily, another such duality came to my defense.  She concurred, that, oh yes, it is possible to be so worried about doing something perfectly that it stops you from attempting it at all.

In college, I grabbed a pamphlet from the career center on procrastination.  I’ve since thrown it out – though it took me quite some time ; ) – but it laid out similar terms.  I didn’t necessarily agree with it.  I am not one obsessed with the pursuit of perfection.  At least not overtly.  I understand the human condition and all its frailty.  I like to think I empathize and can forgive our various faults.

But do I refuse to start projects until I have sufficient time to complete the entire task?  Yes.  Will I stay at that task far into the night or despite my husband’s repeated attempts to beckon me to the dinner table until it is finished?  Yes.  Will I avoid beginning a task until I know exactly how to execute it?  Yes.  Do I fail to commit to a task until I know I can fulfill all the obligations that go along with it?  Yes.  And regardless of all reasons not to start, do I place an unrelenting sense of guilt heavy upon my breastbone until I do start?  Yes.

Hmmm . . . maybe I threw out that pamphlet because I was not ready to see myself in its words.

What is it with these freakin’ frogs?  And why do they all float on lily pads obscuring what murky depths really cause all this angst: ANXIETY.

Because that’s what it really is, isn’t it?  I worry about getting things right because I’m anxious.  I put things off because they make me nervous.  Or I’m worried about getting it all done.  Or I’m worried I’ll run out of time.  Or it’s an unpleasant task.  Or it’s out of my comfort zone.  Whatever hue or size these amphibian friends and foes come in, they’re all from the same frog mother.  And what a mother-f*&%$#@ she is.

The more I learn about myself, my reactions, feelings, and disposition, the more I realize how much of my life has been colored by anxiety.  I don’t know if I’ve ever known what it is to live without it.  There was a time when I didn’t know I was living with it, but looking back, now I can name it unequivocally.

A very talented writer friend of mine just shared a story wherein a character and her mother try to pinpoint the exact origin of the mother’s obsessive-compulsive disorder.  They realize that not only is it impossible, but it is a form of obsession in and of itself.  What does it matter where it began?  One must learn coping mechanisms to take forward with her.  I find myself doing this repeatedly with my anxiety.  But why?  When did it start?  How?  What purpose does that serve beyond making me more anxious?  Why roll back the reels over those years over and done – and with a pretty good measure of success?  Why create suffering where there may have been none?  Or where there was some, but where I had the wherewithal to function despite it?

Maybe it’s the perfectionist in me, but I feel that the fact that I’ve reached a point in my life where I can’t hack it when I previously could makes me a failure on some level.  I know this is my masochistic overachiever unrealistic hair shirt-wearing self, but it is still part of me and I can’t turn it off no matter how hard I try to push with my rational self.  And all that croaking just reminds me of it.  Why do I get a mental block when I assess my to-do list?  Why can I not complete tasks that I know will reap rewards?

Guess the only way around it is to choke the frogs down before they choke me.

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Living, Technology

Incommunicado

Being unavailable, unreachable, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Tomorrow afternoon marks a week we’ll have been in our new home.  Only three people know our new phone number.  Only two bill collectors have found us.  I’ve been on Facebook once and haven’t logged onto WordPress at all – let alone post!

Today as I walked home from retrieving the girls at their new bus stop, I felt that my necessary reentry to the world was coming.  Inevitable.  I can only use the boxes around me as an excuse for so long.  Though I still do not have anything hanging in my closet because I don’t feel I’ve sufficiently de-furballed it (their special cat friend left me many presents).  I still do not have things packed into the bathroom cabinets because I haven’t disinfected them yet.  I still don’t have routines and patterns and familiar places to put things.

But the world does not care.  The world will not let me milk this life-change for all it is worth like the sleepy, hazy period that is life with a newborn.  Eventually I’ll have to answer the phone.  Eventually the beep of a text message will wake me from my reverie.  Eventually I will while away an entire evening checking for updates, statuses, and pictures of cute kids.

And while I’m dead-tired and sick of putting the kids to bed and starting another round of housecleaning, I haven’t missed checking multiple e-mail accounts and social media accounts and staying in constant contact.  I got a lovely snail mail correspondence from a dear friend.  Two wonderful friends of mine brought a ‘housewarming’ lunch.  And legions of family and friends trooped in to help us set up our new home.

Funny how we seemed to survive before we were attached to technology.

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anxiety, Living, parenting

Next Stop: Transition Town

Ironically, the section of the book I’m reading right now is all about transitions.

To ease the transition of moving for our children, I gathered a thematic collection of books to borrow from the library:

  • Fred Rogers’ Moving (classic – right down to the 80s fashion in the photos!)
  • Mo Willems’ City Dog, Country Frog (we are going from city to country – though I didn’t expect the heartbreaking twist!)
  • Our House by Emma and Paul Rogers (inspired my daughter to suggest leaving a time capsule; guess it translated my idea of legacy and different chapters in life)
  • Moving by Michael Rosen (the cat giving his family the cold shoulder b/c of the move didn’t quite get across the positive vibe I was going for, but I guess it shows that even ambivalence can be won over with food!)

As I sifted through the on-line card catalog, I extended my search to books for me.  I think originally I was looking for books on the logistics of moving, tips and tricks.  Maybe.  Who knows?  I’m all over the road lately.  But in any event, I found two titles that sounded interesting.  The first, Moving On by Sarah Ban Breathnach, caught my eye because I’ve had Simple Abundance on my shelf for years.  I figured the universe might be giving me a nudge if I was seeking books on moving and here was one by the woman who first introduced the idea of a gratitude journal to me.  Though I know her other title to be more of a self-help, for some reason I expected a memoir on the rigors and epiphanies of moving.  There are personal anecdotes, but it’s also about finding one’s true home regardless of physicality; being comfortable with one’s space in the world regardless of where she calls home.  The idea of home and making the space within those four walls enjoyable is tackled, but it’s really more about letting go of excess baggage to make room for that enjoyment.

Ha, ha, ha.  So funny as my days are filled with purging and packing.  I am totally in limbo.  This home no longer looks like my own as the boxes begin to outnumber the intentional home décor.  My new home is still occupied by someone else.  So I’m hanging out somewhere in the ‘twain’.  I can’t do any of those exercises she suggests for finding what works about your home because I don’t know which one to focus on!  I know the chaos that surrounds me right now certainly isn’t working.

So I get about halfway through this book and reach the section on transitions.  A major thrust of it is that we actually make these difficult times even harder for ourselves by refusing to let go, go with the new flow of things, honor the past and appreciate the future.  Who, me?  I hate change.  There are some people who have wondered if I want to move.  Yes, of course.  And another scared, change-hating part of me, says, this is so freakin’ hard.  I lay in bed one night and realized I’d have to leave the blades of grass I’d stenciled onto the walls of our first nursery (affectionately known as the grassy knoll).  So between the stress of actually making the move a reality and the mental and emotional preparation, I probably do come across as a little ambivalent at times.

But not because I’m not looking forward to settling in our great new house and setting up shop, exploring the community, meeting people.  It’s just because I’m apparently really good at setting up roadblocks on the way to transition town.

And so this is where another highly appropriate quote from Moving On comes into play.  Ban Breathnach shares the words of Mary McCarthy, who says,

“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.”

Ha!  If that does not describe me in nearly every aspect of my life, I don’t know what does.  How often have I relearned something I’d already known?  How often have I ignored what needed to be done though the answer was staring me in the face?  Human frailty, I suppose.  That damn weak free will.  We know what’s best and yet take the easier, more convenient, if insanely repetitive and possibly destructive, path.

I know I need to focus on the amazing truths on my doorstep.  A rich life lived in this beautiful little house with many pleasant memories to pack.  A lovely, airy, hope-filled home waiting for us to fill it with sights and sounds and silliness.  I know I can be my authentic self there.  I know this transition will make me stronger and truer.  It’s just a hell of a lot easier to feel it when you’re at the other end of the journey.

 

In a somewhat related vein, the other book I chose to read is a memoir: On Moving: A Writer’s Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again by Louise DeSalvo.  I have yet to read it.  I’ll let you know what epiphanies that unveils ☺

What books have helped you and your children make a successful transition when moving?

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Literacy, Writing

Blank

Words haunt me in my dreams, in my waking hours

They carve themselves in my grey matter

They pull my hands in loops and lines

The click of keys, the satisfying clunk of return

Bits and pieces of phrases and lyrics

Familiar yet fleeting

Disparate yet part of my collective consciousness

Inspiring love, eliciting hate

Droughts or a copious spate

A blank screen, a taunting cursor

Time to sit, reflect, create

A swirling maelstrom in my brain

I cannot settle on a name

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motherhood, parenting

Unfair Labor Practices

I’d like my fifteen-minute break now, the first of two, of course.

Then I’d like to take my lunch break where I will leave the confines of the workplace for a change of scenery.

I’d like to punch out when my eight-hour shift has ended, after tidying my workspace and locking the door on it until morning.

I’d like to collect my paycheck and cash it at the bank, cold, hard, currency in my grimy little hand.

But I don’t get breaks.  I don’t have free time.  I don’t get off work.

Lately I don’t even get to sleep through the night.

If only I had some vacation credits to cash, but my employer doesn’t offer those either.

These three are the toughest little tyrants I’ve ever worked for.

 

[Bad Mommy Disclaimer: this post is tongue-in-cheek, of course.  Most of it anyway]

 

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anxiety, Living, medication, motherhood, postpartum depression

You Can Call Me Peri?

So I crack open this month’s issue of Family Circle, the latest installment from the gift subscription my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas, and see an article on menopause.  Ok, think it’s safe to skip that one.  But oddly compelled to read all printed matter that comes across my radar regardless of whether it pertains to or interests me, I scan the first page.  In speech bubbles strewn about the page are various questions, worries, and anecdotes from peri- and post-menopausal women.  More than half the bubbles could have been direct quotes from me!  And I am not very peri at all!

The article invites me to “read on to find out how to outwit, outplay and outlast the next chapter in your life.”  Thus begins a decade-by-decade breakdown on how to outwit this personified beast that threatens to overtake all women all over the world.  “In [my] 30s,” I can expect my fertility to decline.  Yes, knew that and no, that does not bother me in the least.  I should become my healthiest self as “what [I] do now impacts how early menopause starts, how intense the symptoms are and how they affect my body.”  Right about now, my dander is starting to get up – and it’s not just the lack of the third comma in the lists of three things that is doing it.  I need to “bust stress” as “mini-meltdowns will be happening.”  I should try tai chi or yoga or a “peaceful play list on [my] iPod” to “help alleviate menopausal related anxiety.”

It’s about now that I realize I’m fucked (and, no, I don’t mean the uncomfortable sex that I can look forward to in my 50s).

Either I’ve been perimenopausal since my prenatal visits for my third bambino or it’s gonna get a whole lot worse.  How does one who seems to be suffering from post-partum post-trauma prepare for a whole lot more of the same?

There is a sidebar by my decade entitled, “Get the #1 Test You Need Now.”  Apparently a baseline hormone panel (“an easy blood, saliva or urine test that determines [my] optimal hormone levels”) will assist my doctor in prescribing hormones “specific to [my] ideal range instead of the range of an average woman” when the time comes.  I actually laughed out loud when I read this, eliciting strange looks from my daughters.  My oldest asked what I was laughing at; how would I even begin to explain?  That, when it comes to Mommy, there is no such thing as ‘optimal hormone levels’?  That if the doctor prescribed me hormones based on the ‘range of an average woman’, the cocktail would be akin to a stiff drink of water?

While discussing “the (formerly) ‘silent passage’ is no longer taboo,” many women are still petrified by the thought of it.  Except maybe for my friend – who has such irregular periods, she was almost wishing for it.  But when I mentioned this to my mother-in-law, joking about it, she responded very seriously, “No, she doesn’t want it.”

So where does that leave me?  No, I don’t have hot flashes.  I haven’t gained mysterious pounds regardless of what I do or eat.  But mood swings, irritability, anxiety – all de rigueur already – and I’m only in my first decade, according to this handy little guide.

I’m starting to view women’s susceptibility to hormones as this insidious little secret that was only hinted at as my mother described my body’s cycles to me as I sat on the bathroom floor over two decades ago.  By no means was my mother light on the details; I understood my body’s workings in what, to a twelve year-old, was a revoltingly clear manner.  But I didn’t know how pervasive those pesky little hormones were.

Yes, I knew there’d be a few days of PMS.  Yes, I knew I’d be overly emotional during pregnancy.  Yes, I knew there’d be a few days of baby blues.  Then I noticed extra irritability that seemed to coincide with ovulation.  Then those damn hormones ganged up on me with crazy, heart-wrenching situations in my life to send me into a swirling storm of anxiety and depression.  Thankfully, my head broke water a while ago, but only with medication and therapy.  And I still struggle.

I’d like to say that an awareness helps me prepare for and deal with the effect hormones have on my life – just as the article touts the “18 Things Every Woman Should Know About Menopause.”  To a certain point, it does.  But when you know the beast is coming no matter what – and you can’t run and hide because life won’t allow it – what do you do?  Grin and bear it?  Pray to the gods that in your next life you come back with a penis?  I love yoga, but unless I take my strap and choke the hell out of the beast, it’s not gonna make it go away.  Maybe I can drown it out with the soothing sounds of my peaceful play list while I try to achieve optimal hormone levels.  Maybe instead of ‘silent passage’, it should be ‘silent scream’.

UPDATE May 2014: I spoke too soon on the hot flashes!  My past three menstrual cycles have been ushered in by a week of night sweats.  Good, clammy times!

 

 

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