Category Archives: Identity

Identity, Spirituality

Epiphany

In high school, somewhere around the time I began to expand my vocabulary, realize the power of words – and prep for the SATs? – I came to love the word epiphany.

This phenomenon also coincided with my own spiritual awakening, but ironically, it had little or nothing to do with the three wise men heralding Jesus’ birth.

I would excitedly proclaim I’d had an epiphany when some amazing truth would whack me between the eyes. An amazing idea or affirmation. When the whoosh of a flock of shorebirds made my heart swell with the certainty of who I was as I stood sentinel on a sandbar.

As life rushed in to fill the free spaces, however, the epiphanies got fewer and fewer – until at some low point, they stopped. A noisy, dissonant place where even the chorus of bird calls could not be heard.

And yet, I still maintain our Christmas tree until January 6th. I still display Jesus and His cast of adorers in the creche. I try, I try to push back the doing, the speaking, the thinking – to open space for His coming.

And in short bursts, He has. I’ve opened windows just small enough for a spark to shoot through. A movement in a certain direction. A push toward a way of being.

I want the lightning bolt, but it can’t strike as readily under all this stuff. The circuit is closed. A spark will have to do. But great flames can burst forth from a tiny spark. And purify everything in their path.

from tcc-online.org

from tcc-online.org

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Identity, Living, motherhood

One Big Blob

The past few weeks have been a little trying. Our family seems to be on the cusp of something big. I can only say that now after these last few weeks. In the midst of running, running, running, it was all I could do to put one foot in the front of the other – or shuffle them along. I knew things were crazy, and was reacting accordingly, but I didn’t know why.

Now I wonder if my elevated stress levels and difficulty in calming them were not a direct result: my subconscious reaction to what my conscious self wasn’t ready to admit was a huge deal.

My five year-old, in her last year of preschool, more and more frequently laments the fact that she cannot ride the bus to big-kid school like the others. She wants to stay at preschool and eat lunch with her friends. She’s ‘reading’ books to me and asking how to spell different words.

My seven year-old is coming into her own, blossoming with independent applications of math reasoning she’s learned at school. She reads books aloud with an expression well beyond her years and worthy of an audio recording. She’s requesting and engaging in social interactions and activities – on her own.

My nine year-old has joined two after school activities, doubling her previous involvement. She is in her last year of elementary school; her last year of recess; her last year of riding the bus with her sisters. She is looking longer and leaner every day.

And me? I am nearing the destination of days full of adult time. All three of them will be in school full-day next year. I will be free to . . . earn the money we’ve sorely been missing since I’ve been at home? Write my way into posterity? Query until they can no longer say no?

I haven’t been gazing longingly at this point in time as the end all and be all. But it hovered like some kind of talisman – a time when, my life would go back to normal? When adult life (ie working, I guess) would resume? When I’d be able to exhale that breath I’ve been holding since the first labor pain of the first child?

And though my mind has set up the first day of the next academic year as the first day of this new life, I’ve finally realized that we’re all in the transition to it now. My five year-old is prepping to be the big girl – already a little too cool for preschool. My seven year-old is branching out in social groups – excited and a little less apprehensive to do so on her own. My nine year-old is claiming activities and beliefs as her own – independent from her parents and sisters.

Friends, acquaintances, and other parents always asked what activities my kids were in. I always thought I saw some semblance of shock when I answered, “None.” We didn’t do adorable dance classes at three years-old. We didn’t do t-ball, and soccer, and gymnastics, oh my. They never expressed an dire interest in any of these things and my husband and I never pushed it. There was plenty of time for that – and they would determine the time.

The time is now.

We may have avoided the cost and inconvenient schedules of such activities up to this point, but now it’s on. I’ve started the taxi-driver lifestyle I’ve avoided thus far.

It hit me like a ton of bricks last week when I rushed to finish an on-line Girl Scout leader training, compile fund raising monies, feed the kids dinner before we rushed to a Girl Scout meeting, dress them in Halloween costumes for a Girl Scout Halloween party, babysit one of their classmates, see my husband, help (nag) the kids to finish their homework, steal Halloween candy they’d acquired before even Trick-or-Treating, talk to my husband, smear their faces and hair with foul chemicals to turn them into unrecognizable ghouls for Halloween and rush late to another party after peeling countless tangelos to make festive pumpkin snacks – all while suffering from a compound case of sleep deprivation and PMS.

Unbelievably, it took me awhile to realize why last week was so hard for me to handle. Any week has the potential to be miserable. But when the everyday congeals into one big blob of ‘life is about to get a whole lot more complicated’, sometimes the blob is so frickin’ big it takes awhile to digest.

My girls are growing up! As wistful as I was watching them walk away from me for the first time, leaving them in the classroom alone for the first time, hearing ‘Mom’ instead of ‘Mama’ for the first time, those were mere speed bumps compared to this swift elevation. I have entered the ‘Mom, could you drop me off at so-and-so’s’ part of motherhood; the ‘Mom, pick me up after school’ part; the ‘We’ll be done at 4:15, Ma’ part; the ‘But I want to eat lunch with my friends, Mom’ part.

In addition to my ambivalent mom underbelly, I also have my own personal fears to fight. I’ve been home exclusively since 2008. The thought of returning to my previous job, even if I could even secure it, makes me want to vomit. Launching the totally exciting, yet daunting new idea I have for employment makes me want to seize. Not only am I being forced out of my old ‘job’ with all these developments, but forced into a totally new one.

All of our times, they are a-changin’. No wonder the woman, mom, worker in me is revolting.

from Blue-Cat00

from Blue-Cat00

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Identity, Living, Mental Health, Mental Illness

Quirking

Marking the distance yet to cover when your arrival time has elapsed. How close can I get?
Noting how many more steps yet to complete a recipe before your spouse returns. How far can I get?
Washing clothes and putting them back in drawers before it’s been a week since you first took them out. How anal retentive can I get?

Perhaps we all have such markers, paces we put ourselves through – though we might never know because not many would admit them. For fear of – sounding crazy? Mental? OCD?

I actually asked my therapist once if I was OCD. She said there are such things as OCD tendencies or even an OCD personality without an actual OCD diagnosis. One way to tell, she said, if whether such routines disrupt our way of life. If they stop us from all the other bits of living we could be getting to because they take up too much time – or if we cannot even begin living if we don’t first complete them.

So I may not have full blown OCD, but I have my quirks.

Not being fully free of a dinner party until the platters, teacups, tablecloths are all clean and back in their original homes.
Reading library books in the order they were taken out of the library.
Impelled to leave pieces of projects out, where they will taunt me, until I’ve completed them.

My mind works in weird ways. Segmented. Compartmentalized. Whatever part of it that is responsible for my control freak tendencies has trained me to believe that physical limits lead to overarching control. What a quirky rule of thumb. And I fall for it mind, heart, and fingers.

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Children, Identity, motherhood, parenting

Good Imagination for a Mother

Dinner at our house can be a little trying.  That is, if you’d like to eat without acquiring indigestion, without running to the kitchen after two bites to refill the glasses of milk the wee ones finished in 2.5 seconds, leaving no room in their tender bellies for the food they wouldn’t eat anyway because it has green stuff on it – but I digress.  (See Dinner with Kids for further clarification)

In an attempt to keep them at the table for longer than the 0.5 seconds they usually last after finishing their milk, I bought packs of cocktail napkins (at the discount store) with conversation starters on them.  We started with the jokes and riddles.  Even funnier than the corny jokes was my middle daughter’s uncanny knack at figuring out the punch lines.  Hmmm . . . perhaps that’s why she wanted to pass out the napkins.  After a few nights of that, we graduated to life’s important questions.  If you could invite any one – living or dead – to dinner, who would it be?  Again, the middle stole the show – and my heart – when she replied, without missing a beat, Grandma Julie, my beloved grandmother and her namesake whom she never met.

from seasonedkitchen.com

from seasonedkitchen.com

Another night, we had to reveal which superpower we would want as a superhero.  I piped up with my response first.  “That’s easy, definitely flying.”  Like with a cape?  Flapping your wings like a bird?  “No, just with my arms out as I floated above the trees.”  My answer came easily because I automatically remembered my most favorite dreams – those where I soar above the tops of the trees and roofs of neighbor’s houses behind my childhood home.  The psychological conclusions one can glean from this dream are fodder for perhaps a whole series of posts, but the upshot today is what my oldest daughter said with a look of impressed surprise on her face.

“You have a good imagination for a mother.”

I think that says perhaps more about my existence right now than my thwarted desires of dreams.  All sorts of high-falutin’, politically feminist, empowering responses came to mind, but I simply said thank you and took it as the compliment I’m sure she meant it as.

What a strange psychological experiment parenting is – for all parties involved.  I suppose mind-expanding conversation – even if they need be started with paper squares we smear across our faces – is one way to navigate the maze and see the different paths available.  If not, there are always our dreams and unbridled imagination – even for moms.

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Identity, Poetry

City Bird, Country Bird

 

I flit above the treetops

you hear me chirp as I await the rise of the moon

The hush of evening falls over me

I revel in it before nestling my head under my wing

 

Yet another part of me

thrills to see the moon float above the streetlamps

another bulb – burning brightest

The cool of dark causing their glow to vibrate all the more

The energy of a people awaking to their culture

 

To be in two places at once

To fly from one pole to the other

To appreciate the beauty in each

 

To have a wing in each world

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Identity

Alone

It took me a moment upon waking to realize I would not be pounced upon by little people; that there was a depth of silence, solitude that would stay; the kind I hadn’t felt in over a decade; the kind that resonates deep within the soul and allows me to remember who I am – or better yet, allows me to just be.

 

 

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Identity, Maternal Health Month, Maternal Health Month 2014, may is maternal mental health month, motherhood

Would you change a thing?

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Just as I bowed my head today at mass, to honor and reflect upon the bread becoming Jesus’ body, my three year-old, who was gathered up in my arms and perched on my knee, looked up and kissed me.  My first reaction was that she was distracted at a solemn time.  Then I realized, remembered that she’s all about love.  Jesus became the bread, a sacrifice, gave His life, out of love for us.  Or at the very least, for His father, God.

Did I receive that kiss upon my nose at that very moment to teach me that I, as a mother, must lose myself to them out of love or in love?  That is my sacrifice since Jesus gave his life for us, I must give mine for them?

But, though I am a stay-at-home mom and mothering is a vocation, is not my husband called to the vocation of fathering?  He is not asked to give up his life.  Or is not having the struggles I am.

Or is the kiss a reminder to surrender myself to a life of love?

To serve others and fulfill God’s will by helping them – and through helping God, receiving all I need through Him?

Happiness?  Fulfillment?  Peace?  Well-being?

Am I being selfish balking at the idea of giving my life over to my children?  Or does God want me to preserve some parts of it for me?  Why would he have made me how I am if not for me to find some pleasure in it?  Parts of me must have been made with successful mothering in mind, but there are other parts I get to develop for me, right?  But then, it’s still for others, right?  Which then, isn’t it all for God?

I do need to stop thinking of my children as burdens, though.  I can be of service to them just as I can to others.  I need to see the needs right under my  nose and not take them for granted.

 

The above reflection is taken from a piece I wrote in February 2013.  Maybe it’s because I was/am an only child that I find it hard to relinquish my individual needs for the collective.  For me, the jury is still out as to whether self-care is a right or a privilege.  Where does self-care end and selfishness begin?  Are modern societal mores at odds with Christian teachings?  And I was worried about breastfeeding!  I always feel a certain sense of guilt when I see memes like the one at the top of this post.  But should mothering negate personal desire?

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Identity, Maternal Health Month, Maternal Health Month 2014, may is maternal mental health month, Mental Illness, motherhood

Hide and Seek

 

Jason Good – 365
April 9
Tip: Always be the seeker in Hide & Seek. It’s gives you 30 seconds of peace.

 

Come, now. We’ve all done it. Or at least wanted to. We’ve all paused for a moment before seeking, enjoying that glorious moment of silence, relishing the fact that we are free to roam about the house with no shadow in our steps.

And then we hear the giggle, the irrepressible bubble that cannot be held by hands, cannot be stayed. The insistent pssst, or even the outright, “In here, Mama.” They cannot stand to stay hidden, cannot bear to be apart from us. After they give us a turn at hiding, they will crawl right back into the spot we just vacated, so dear is their desire to be like us, learn from us, stay close to us.

Other than the tempting tricks we can play during this child’s game, there are serious questions and consequences it can raise for adults. In our role as parents, will we choose to hide our mental illnesses? Will we seek to be completely open and honest with our families, including our children? At the very least, we must seek solutions to live a healthy, fulfilled life. But will we pop the pill in secret and stuff the rest of our struggle down our throats with it instead of voicing it, breathing it?

There is the great possibility of two sides to a person with mental illness. Stigma makes me not want to write that because I fear untrained minds will go straight to schizophrenia, but that’s not what I mean. Light and dark. Public and private. Hidden and sussed out. The very same reason I didn’t want to allude to two sides is what may keep sufferers suffering in silence. It may be to keep a modicum of positivity in their lives – rather than dwelling on the difficulties. This and a fierce sense of protection for their children, I think, drive the decisions that most mentally-ill parents make. While I don’t consider myself the best at looking on the bright side, I know I do not want my children to know I suffer from depression and anxiety.

Yet, I resent the times I must plaster on a smile. I regret that I must function in spite of my foul mood. I revile the perfect, perky person I must be at all times for my children when I’m hurting.

There must be a sweet spot, somewhere between ‘Ready or not, here I come’ and ‘A-ha’, in that glorious moment of silence, where mom can hear herself think and child is about to unleash a cascade of laughter. Where child and mother are happy and true to themselves. Where hiding is only temporary in certain situations. And seeking is rewarded with sharing love and validation.

 

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Identity, Maternal Health Month, Maternal Health Month 2014, motherhood

A Thread of a Different Color

I am an only child. I was usually more comfortable around adults than other children, used to the gentle progressions of conversation, safe in the shadow of my mother. My extended family was small; there were no scads of younger cousins to follow, entertain, and torture. I wasn’t used to hitching a child on my hip from a young age. When I did babysit, it was for short stints, while the mother busied herself in other parts of the house or ran to the store quickly. I was not one of those girls who had planned out the exact size and shape of her family, fixing the outcome of games of MASH. I figured the fates would sort that all out for me. I didn’t goo and gaa over pudgy, pinched faces at the grocery store. I didn’t swoon when a teacher brought a baby to visit a classroom. I was relatively unimpressed. They were little people. We all were once. Even when I was pregnant and attended a family function (on my husband’s side) where extended relatives tried to pass off babies, telling me I should practice, I declined, saying I’d be getting plenty of that soon enough. I didn’t want to hold other people’s babies; I wanted to hold my baby.

And when I held my own child, it was a different experience. Sure, I still had misgivings about my performance, about baby’s well being– as all new mothers who are finding their way do – but there was no doubt I was totally devoted to the cause. This was my baby, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones. I didn’t have to worry about breaking someone else’s child. She was all mine, totally my responsibility. I decided how to raise her and why; what to do with her and when – and most importantly, I was totally comfortable with her.

The idea of a certain mold all mothers are meant to fit into is where trouble begins. Because of the vision of motherhood society had shown me, I grew up doubting that I had the skill set and temperament to be a mother. If I had stuck with that vision and hadn’t tried motherhood, I’d have missed out on a truly life-giving, life-altering process. And the world would’ve missed out on a truly amazing kid (and two subsequent others).

This brought all this to mind.

 

1871 by Joe Cunningham

1871 by Joe Cunningham

 

Joe Cunningham is not only counterculture because he is a male quilter, but also the content of his quilts. It’s modern art on muslin, mind boggling batiks. The piece above looks to me like a full-scale photograph or an etching – and yet it’s tiny stitches that form the image. If Joe Cunningham had listened to society’s prerequisites for quilters, the art world would’ve missed his cotton canvases. Joe Cunningham’s quilts wrap my argument up in a nice, neat package, as well, because they turn a predominantly female practice, done as part of homemaking duties, on its ear.

There is room to function and flourish outside the confines of stereotypes. I can swaddle my child just as well as the “perfect” mother – even if I didn’t make the quilt myself. Each and every type of mother should craft her distinct square to add to the quilt of our calling. And our catalog should be as diverse as Joe Cunningham’s portfolio.

It is a fallacy to think that original design can only be achieved after years of training. 
— Inspiration of Embroidery, Constance Howard, 1966

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Identity, Legacy, Living

Battery and Rebirth

The land is repairing itself now from the spring deluge it experienced this past weekend. It is still trying to assimilate the stands of water upon its surface, soaking and sucking, trying to get back to base. Clogs of leaves and rivers of sand mark the slick black surface of tar. Mini mountains of rock crumble and crunch beneath car tires.

As I traverse curvy country roads and see nature doing its best at damage control, I realize it’s also pushing forward with its plans of renewal. It’s not just attempting to achieve stasis, it’s battling for the burgeoning growth that has been swelling beneath the surface for weeks. Carpets of moss are a brilliant green against the rust colored blankets of leaves up to their chins. In sunny snatches of land, the green points of daffodils are poking up. The air has lost its bite, but blows a breeze still fresh and new.

In this push and pull of survival and revival, I pass a farmyard with a basketball hoop. The grains of the weathered wood on the backboard peeking through the paint, it hangs sideways, the mottled metal loop of the rim vertical rather than horizontal. Of all the images I see in my travels, my mind’s eye freezes this frame.

Why does human ephemera coexisting with a totally divergent context appeal to me so much?

I ponder this as I drive on and suddenly realize why. All of us – broken backboards, bushes and trees swallowed by muck, humans sunk in quicksand – we all struggle to survive despite the forces that strive to push us down. And we do. Despite chipped paint and rusty bolts that no longer mount us firmly to our foundation, we stand. Though rivulets swell into rivers and strain our roots, we hold. Even while downward sucking motion seems inevitable to overcome, we keep our heads above the surface.

A few years ago, my mother was sorting through my grandmother’s old tool shed. An avid gardener whose advancing age had taken both her stamina and her partner, she hadn’t opened the shed in years. In the discard pile of rusty tools, I found a spadeless spade – a thick wooden handle leading to a corroded metal tip even sharper than its original piece. “Can I have this?” I asked. My mother looked at me incredulously. I wanted it as a reminder, that even in an imperfect form, items made with quality materials and craftsmanship would endure. Also, that any job is easier with the proper tools (ie of course you’ll get frustrated if you try to dig a hole with a broken shovel).

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Even with the most vital part of its existence broken, this object will endure and possibly inspire others.

May you find your battered backboard or broken shovel.

Photos: Jennifer Butler Basile

Photos: Jennifer Butler Basile

 

 

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