Beadwork: The Origin of Motherhood

It hangs in the the closet, tucked in the back with all the other clothes I don’t wear anymore, flowing concert black and high school prom red…

Like another of my blog friends, I, too, like to pull it out and put it on once in a while, as my mother did when we were little. And Alex, who after attending a wedding recently is newly intrigued by this weird grownup ritual of wearing impossible-to-keep-clean, really big dresses, insisted upon being photographer instead of one of the subjects.

So, for a few brief, glorious minutes, I got to be my bride-self again…the juxtaposition of who I once was with who I have become: flowing satin amid piles of laundry, and jammie-clad little ones on my lap.

And when it was done, we resumed our routine as if nothing had happened. Resumed the world of books, prayers, tucking in, and procrastinating by protesting that the radio is hissing, by screeching for water…

…to the ordinary tasks of cutting hair…hair that once was all black, but now begins to turn white at the temples.

Beadwork and tuxedos. That is where motherhood begins: in a union of two who become one, whose union becomes enfleshed again and again. Praise God.

Write on Edge: RemembeRED

(Note: this is a repost from July of 2010. But with the possibility of a baby sooner than I expected, and me not feeling very good, I have a lot to do, and this post is one of my favorites–and it fit the writing prompt this week perfectly. So I hope those of you who’ve been with me a while will forgive the repeat!)

Published in: on November 29, 2011 at 4:39 am  Comments (19)  

Confessions of a Wistful Romantic

RomanceI dreamed I kissed a man who was not my husband.

It was one of those dreamy, romantic, revelatory kisses that squeezes your chest and leaves you breathless. It was amazing…and then horrifying. How could I face the man to whom I had promised forever? Did I really have to tell him? After all, there was no way I would never allow myself to be alone with this person again. Maybe I just had to swallow my guilty conscience and be a better wife.

I woke up lying beside my husband in the Hampton Inn, in a king-sized bed cramped by the presence of a thirty-pound pixie who somehow manages to take three times as much space as her size justifies, my brain roiling with worry about the upcoming confession. And then, with one of those beautiful rushes of relief, I realized it was a dream. I hadn’t actually cheated on my husband.

I rolled over and pressed up against him, wrapped an arm around his chest, and my hand landed on my daughter’s long, soft hair and angelic skin. My heart relaxed inside me. But as I lay there, snuggling two of the five most important people in the world to me, I couldn’t help thinking how easy it has become to neglect the romantic moments that make our hearts stop when we see them on the silver screen.

Just last week I was chuckling at a friend’s reminisces about a fight she and her husband had shortly after they were married. I can remember some real doozies in our first year or two, too. It’s not so much about getting adjusted to each other as it is getting accustomed to acting like a grownup 24-7. There’s no room for toddler temper tantrums in a marriage, you know. All I could think was how glad I was to be done with that phase of life. (Perhaps it’s obvious, but just in case: I’m talking about my temper tantrums, not my husband’s.)

And yet…as tantrums give way, so does the starry-eyed romantic stage. When was the last time you and your spouse shared one of those heart-pounding, breath-stealing kisses that turn women to jelly-legged mush when we see one in a movie theater?

When Christian and I went on our Engaged Encounter weekend, it seemed the question on everyone’s mind was, “How do you keep the romance alive?” We looked at each other and rolled our eyes. It seemed like an infantile concern.

But twelve years into marriage (sixteen years altogether), I do miss those kisses that felt like the first time. I love walking hand in hand with my little ones—but there’s just something about the firm grip of the man I love that can’t be replaced. I love family dinners, with kids giggling and doing silly cute things, but in those B.C. (before children) years, we were a little too cavalier about tossing junk on the table and not bothering to make it a nice, romantic dinner. I miss what we didn’t really have.

And I think it’s the couples who manage to keep some sense of starry-eyed newlywedded bliss in their marriages who turn into those elderly couples that we love to see sitting on the front porch together in rocking chairs.

So I know I speak for all us young’uns when I ask for the wisdom of years. For those of us in the trenches of raising small children, who frequently get through the day on glazed-eyed necessity after not enough sleep, who by necessity spend a lot of our “couple” time dealing with the business of parenthood: how do we make sure when we shoot out the far side of this high-maintenance couple of decades, that we are able to take advantage of our newfound freedom to be close?

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Published in: on November 28, 2011 at 4:59 am  Comments (2)  
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What I Have Seen With My Own Eyes (a 7QT post)

Lately I’ve been enjoying the mental challenge of writing to a prompt while remaining true to my essential message. Or at least, attempting to do so. (Faithful readers, you’ve been quiet lately. I miss you! It makes me wonder if I’m not as successful as I think I am!)

Anyway, Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop used this prompt yesterday: What seven wonders have you seen with your own two eyes? I missed the prompt, but I loved the idea, so I’m using it today instead for my quick takes. Here’s the funny thing. With my attraction to nature, I thought I’d be listing mountains and rivers and forests. But no matter what image I brought to mind, it seemed stale. The only things that seemed to hold up were of an entirely different nature:

  1. After a wretched muck of a love life, looking across a darkened truck cab at a black-haired Italian piano player and realizing that my dream man thought I was his dream woman.
  2. After a valiant attempt to screw up the best thing that ever happened to me, walking up the aisle toward that same man on a hot Labor Day Saturday afternoon, surrounded by two hundred people who loved us both.
  3. Two lines on a pregnancy test, after all realistic hope of biological motherhood seemed gone.
  4. Seeing my face reflected in the eyes of my firstborn. I always thought that was just a poetic line…seeing yourself in someone’s eyes.
  5. Comforting my daughter in the night and realizing that the dark-veiled image of her face looked almost exactly like the shadowy ultrasound image of her younger sibling.
  6. Little ones, flesh of my flesh, with their hands on my belly, talking to the sibling they haven’t met and yet already love.
  7. And looking down at the child snuggled against me, and closing my eyes because the sight distracts from the wondrous sensation of small, soft hands clasping mine, and soft, chubby cheeks pressed against my chest.

I’ve seen many beautiful things, things majestic and awe-striking and worthy of heartfelt  “yay God.” But these are the things that pierce me so deep that they change me. That make me anew.

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 152)

Published in: on November 18, 2011 at 4:20 am  Comments (5)  
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Fiction Friday: In The Mist

Today’s “Red Writing Hood” fiction prompt was to write a scene based on a picture. I was going to include the picture, but it turns out to be rights-reserved, so I’ll send you to the original instead. Two weeks ago I introduced you to Alison, whose marriage is on shaky ground. Now we hear from her husband Carlo…and get a glimpse of why.

**

Carlo eased the pickup to a stop down the street from the church. Slowly, he stilled the engine, but he did not remove his hands from the steering wheel. Instead, he laid his head on them, listening to the steady plunk on the roof and the hiss of tires furrowing the wet pavement outside. Fitting, that the rains should begin today.

Carlo breathed deeply, as if to draw the strength to face the coming task from the stuffy air inside the cab. The busyness of the day had shielded him, keeping him at a distance from the tight spot within his chest, the one that cried out for attention he dared not spare. For the first time, he wondered what this day must have been like for Alison.

As if the thought of her stirred the connection between them, his head jerked upright. He saw her seated on one of the wrought-iron benches that stood back to back between his parking place and the stone façade beyond.

He got out of the truck and pushed the door shut with an almighty squeak of rusted metal. He hunched his shoulders while he raised his umbrella, then hurried up the street toward his wife, who sat statue-like on the bench, showing no indication that she felt the rain slowly soaking her expensive wool coat. It gave him a moment’s disorientation. Surely this hunched, lifeless woman, her bedraggled hair more gray than blond, couldn’t be his lively, vivacious bride?

Hesitantly, he touched her shoulder. “Alison?”

She looked up then, and he recognized the contours of the face, knew the unfamiliar form was indeed his wife.

He swallowed. “Are you ready?”

Her eyelids twitched. Small as the gesture was, Carlo shrank from it, for it contained a repressed fury he had rarely seen her express. “It’s done,” she said. “I took care of it all. While you were babysitting your precious wines.”

Her bitterness cut so deep, it sent a shudder through him. “You…you didn’t wait for me?”

She straightened further, stood face to face with him, despite the disparity in their heights. “Wait?” she said softly. “Wait? How long was I supposed to wait? I’ve been waiting for you to prioritize us for twenty years, Carlo. I’m not waiting anymore.” She gathered her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “Your son will be buried with full military honors on Tuesday. Visitation will be Monday evening at church. If you can manage to carve the time out of your busy schedule.” The hardness broke upon the crest of a sob. She hurried off into the gathering darkness without acknowledging the hand Carlo stretched out toward her.

He sank onto the iron bench as the rain picked up, pattering the nylon umbrella.

The ache in his chest, the one that had been building all day, exploded, hurling awareness of all the things he’d been too busy—or too careless—to acknowledge. Missed opportunities paraded across his consciousness, flaunting his devotion to his work, changing it from value into vice.

He looked up, and through the gloom of mist and rain, he saw a single light gleaming orange in the windows of the perpetual adoration chapel inside the church. He focused his prayer there, forming the words with a desperation he’d never experienced before.

Please, God, he thought. Please don’t let me lose her, too.

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Published in: on September 30, 2011 at 5:11 am  Comments (9)  

A History of Anxiety: Conclusion

 

Part 1: Origins
Part 2: The Onset of Freaking Out
Part 3: Engagement

9/4/99

I was pretty low-key about graduating with my master of music degree. I knew that now, I was going home to dive into the last three months’ worth of wedding preparations. And that was a much, much bigger deal than a master’s degree. Because now it was crunch time. If I wasn’t going through with this wedding, it was time to decide.

At times like this, you pray for some incredible moment of clarity, but then, if you had clarity, you wouldn’t really need faith, would you?

In retrospect, it seems clear that I needed professional help. I had allowed normal doubt to turn into a monster of mythic proportions. But if I asked to go see a counselor three months—two months—one month—before my wedding, would not my parents think we needed to postpone the wedding? My rational brain told me that there was no reason to be freaking out; that postponing the wedding would likely destroy my relationship with Christian (who could put up with something like that?); and besides, what would everyone think?

So I didn’t go for help. I expressed a hesitant doubt to my mother on the way home from picking up the wedding dress, about three days out, and she asked, “Is it about a wedding or is it about Christian?” I could answer honestly that I had no doubts about Christian.

By this time…I’m not sure what Christian thought of all this. He was pretty thoroughly sick of it, but I don’t remember him laying down ultimatums. (You want unconditional love? You need to meet my husband.)

Don’t misunderstand: there was a great deal of joy in my life those last few months. Many moments of peace and certainty, and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of wedding planning.

Still, the fear always returned, usually when I reflected on the words of the marriage ceremony: Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? I could hardly claim having no reservations, could I?

Then one day during Mass, I heard something I’d never heard before. Oddly enough, I can’t remember the exact placement anymore. I think it was in the Eucharistic Prayer. It said something like, “Jesus gave Himself without reservation.”

I sat thunderstruck. Jesus spent hours in the Garden of Gethsemane, begging God to spare him his Passion. This is not what I would call “without reservation”! He was definitely expressing reservations. The fear and doubt aren’t the point. The point is that he did God’s will in spite of them.

This revelation burst like a dazzling flash of light on my psyche. For the first time in my life, I had a glimpse of Jesus as a human being—divine, yes, but surely he stared down the specter of Crucifixion with sheer terror in defiance of all he knew to be true, and wondered, What if I’m wrong? And although it didn’t rid me of fear, anxiety or freaking out, this insight was a point to cling to in those last weeks, a message I knew had been aimed at me as surely as the billboard I’d been hoping for.

The morning of my wedding, I woke very early in my bedroom in my parents’ house, with the same paper cranes turning lazy circles above me that had hung there for years. This was it. Lord, I prayed, I really hoped I’d be through with doubt by this time. But I have to believe that you’ve gotten me this far for a reason. Please protect me from freaking out today.

The practicalities of a wedding day kept me too busy to freak out. I could feel it hanging around back there, probing for openings, but I kept letting go, and I rode on a buffer of the Spirit until I was standing at outside the church with my dad in the Labor Day weekend heat, with football fans walking past calling congratulations on their long walk to the stadium. The door opened, and cool air washed out, and when I entered the church and saw Christian standing at the front, a great spring of joy erupted inside my soul and bubbled out of my mouth in a giggle that lasted almost all the way up the aisle.

**

I cannot claim that the fear never returned after that blessed moment that was our wedding day. On our honeymoon, in the first weeks and months of our marriage, the fear lingered. It had lost a great deal of its venom, but it was still there. Two years later, it made a valiant effort when infertility reared its ugly head: Maybe this was God frowning on me for marrying a man after I’d been told not to.

Still, time does heal much, if not all, and having made the commitment, I gradually found myself able to stop wrestling with the fear and let it dissipate into the tapestry of a beautiful life. And of course, becoming a parent meant I ran out of time to worship at the altar of irrational fear.

We are the sum of our experiences. I value this one, because through it I learned the value of quieting my soul, of seeking God in stillness. I learned lessons about love that paved the way for more advanced lessons still to come.

Although the comment box has been quiet, I can see that you all have been reading, and for that I thank you. This is tougher to write about than infertility, because paralyzing fear still lies dormant within me, waiting for an opportunity to attach to another subject and tear me to pieces.

This much I know, however. If it does resurface, this time I won’t hesitate to seek help. My life is too beautiful, to blessed, to sacrifice to years of pain again.

Published in: on July 27, 2011 at 4:08 am  Comments (11)  
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A History of Anxiety, Part 1: origins

Relationship Status

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For quite some time I’ve been thinking of writing a blog series about anxiety. Like infertility, the experience of prolonged, debilitating anxiety is one that really has shaped me as a person. I’m not going to do it in the intensive way I did the infertility series, but I will take some time in the next couple weeks to break open the subject. Today’s topic: Origins.

At the dawn of 1995, I thought I knew where my life was headed. I’d been in a relationship for two years, I had a ring on my finger, I was finally coping with the tendinitis and carpal tunnel that had threatened to derail my shining plans for a career as an orchestral flutist. The only trouble? I wasn’t really happy. Only I didn’t know it, because to me the commitment was made, and my emotional state was pretty irrelevant. I had grown up watching my parents live and work together. I’d watched them smile and laugh and bicker and argue their way through a twenty-five-year (at that time) marriage. It didn’t really matter if my chosen partner drove me nuts, if he refused to see reality or spent too much money. It didn’t matter if he hated everything that defined who I was. It didn’t matter how often I thought how much easier it would be if we agreed on things. Once committed, love was unbreakable.

And then, late in February of that year, after yet another fight, he told me, “I’m not as committed to this relationship as I ought to be.” He left that night with the engagement ring in his pocket instead of on my finger, asking for a little distance to think about things. My world was spinning. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I’d made a commitment, and all of a sudden, instead of the clear line that had stretched before me for so long, I saw a crisscrossed web of paths, with no clear direction as to which one was my destined road, and which ones were going to land me in the path of oncoming traffic.

As the spinning stopped, I began to recognize that I, too, had not been seeing reality. After eighteen years of dreaming of romance without ever once finding the barest hint of it, I’d been so bewitched by the idea of being loved that I was willing to throw away everything I was. My mother, who surely had been praying for this day as fervently as Monica prayed for St. Augustine’s conversion, came rushing to my side. We took a long walk in a state park—one of the many things denied me over the past two years because of my fiance’s refusal to accompany me, or to let me go alone—and I began to reorder my view of the world. Yes, once the commitment is made, it’s made. But the public wedding vows are the point at which that commitment is sealed, not the engagement. Engagement is a time of discernment.

The break wasn’t quite as painless as I’m painting, but as breakups go, it was pretty clean. As the spring of 1995 began to flower, I found myself renewed as well. I had a different idea of what I wanted in a life’s partner. I recognized, too, that God had been nudging me for some time that this wasn’t the right path for me. I’d shoved the instincts away, not out of disobedience, but because I didn’t recognize them for what they were: divine promptings. I vowed that from that point on, I would be open to those promptings, and nothing would ever get in the way of my faith relationship again.

You can probably see the pitfalls in this… But I think that’s long enough for today. (After all, I have a cute 4-year-old patting my arm and a 6-y-o asking to go ride on a train, and a 2-y-o on the toilet. Definitely time to get the blog posted & on with the day.)

For part 2, click here.

Published in: on July 13, 2011 at 6:52 am  Comments (6)  
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Chores, Sex and Marriage

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This is one of those days where I’m going to be very frank on a very personal topic.

My reading list lately has been long on the heavy stuff—like Bad Mother, by Ayelet Waldman. This book came highly recommended by several people I respect. I’ll have more to say about it later, but today I want to focus on the chapter in which she talks about sex and marriage. After writing that after four kids, she was still interested in sex with her husband, Waldman got lots of feedback. Men wanted to know how to get their wives to have sex with them.

There’s talk of resentment, of inequality in household chores, of women who are too worn out by kid duty—whether or not they work outside the home—to be willing to trouble themselves with their husband’s desires. Waldman tells her male correspondents to do housework. “There is nothing sexier to a woman with children than a man holding a Swiffer. … You inevitably feel warm toward someone who is clearly thinking enough about you to relieve you of part of your burden.”

The thing that blows my mind about this chapter is how prevalent the marital discord over sex seems to be—how deep the resentment runs. I freely admit that my husband is much better about chores than the stereotypical man. And I freely admit that physical intimacy is nowhere near the top of my priority list. But it is important to my husband, and so I keep it on my radar anyway—because I love my husband.

There are bloggers out there who come across very happy-happy and, well…creepy. The ones who talk about changing clothes, getting dolled up, and having the house pristine every day before their husbands get home. Who talk about subordinating themselves, about giving sex to their husbands, as if the men have no answering responsibility and no call to do anything but be manly and The Provider.

This doesn’t sit well with me. There are things that are implicit in marriage. They’re not in the vows, but we ought to be able to generalize that if love is patient, kind, not dwelling on wrongs, and so on, then love calls both husband and wife to be focused on the other person’s needs and desires, not just their own.

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When you get married, you are subordinating the constant pursuit of “me” to the love of your spouse. It’s a two-way street. It doesn’t mean the responsibility falls on one partner. It doesn’t mean you never get to do things for you, because your spouse is making the same commitment. In our household, I try to make sure Christian gets out to play golf; he tries to make sure I have time to unwind by novel writing, sitting out in nature, scrapbooking—whatever it may be.

He also recognizes that after a rough day with the kids, I’m just not going to be in the mood. And I recognize that sometimes no matter how rough the day is, I need to get in the mood.

None of this can be kept on a score card: X cleaning jobs = 1 free intimacy card; you got three hours of free time, so I get three. You just give, that’s all. Both of you. The balance is never perfect; sometimes you have to assert yourself, but married love can’t flourish—maybe it can’t even survive—when one or both partners think the other person’s job is to make them happy.

Marriage is a total gift of self. To love means that sometimes—maybe even most of the time, once you have kids who assert their own rightful demands—someone else’s “want” is more important than your own. We get this instinctively in our dealings with our kids, but for some reason we don’t apply the lesson to our spouses. Why is that? Why does resentment over chores and sex seem so widespread? Do people just not get it?

Maybe that’s the problem. When do you ever hear about this concept? It’s totally off the cultural radar—even, generally, in marriage prep programs. I’m not even sure it was on my radar when I got married. I think I understood it instinctively, to some extent, but internalizing the lesson is a long process of maturation. (One I’m by no means finished with, I might add.)

I really began thinking about this clearly in the past few years, when I started being exposed to the Theology of the Body: the idea that our call as children of God is to reflect God’s love in the way we use our bodies. In marriage, this boils down to a total gift of self. Not holding back parts of ourselves (like, say, our reproductive systems), but giving everything we are to each other, all the time.

We just don’t talk about that, and I can’t help thinking that if we did, if we stopped focusing so myopically on “me,” that marriages in general might be happier and healthier.

Published in: on June 15, 2011 at 5:30 am  Comments (5)  
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“I was there when you got engaged…”

It was September of 1995 when Christian appeared in my life. (Actually, that’s not entirely accurate…we did meet, sort of, three years earlier.) Newly recommitted to the faith of my childhood, I joined a choir at the Newman Center. One of the first events of that semester was a liturgy for which we joined forces with the college-Mass choir, so it took a while for me to get straight which of the younger members belonged with the 9p.m. group, and which belonged with mine. Christian, it turned out, was one of the latter.

On All Saints Day he asked me out, and the rest is history. For three years, we structured our lives around school (for me), work (for him), and church choir.

On a sunny Sunday morning in August 1998, just a couple of weeks before I headed northward for my second year of grad school, Christian came by my apartment and picked me up on the way to church. I was mad at him because he’d been on edge all weekend; the only explanation I could come up with for his anxiety was that his mother was in town, but he’d never reacted this way to her presence before. It was really annoying. And it didn’t help that we were both sick.

It was a big day in the choir. One of our members was celebrating an anniversary. Christian added to his edginess by insisting on videotaping the Mass for them. But eventually everything settled down and Mass started. It was a good music day. Lots of energy in the choir. Fun music. After Communion, Father launched into an unusually long set of announcements. I was perched on the step by the piano, whispering to Christian, when I realized that my mom was sitting in the back row. “Hey,” I whispered, smacking Christian’s arm. “My mom’s back there. What’s she doing here?”

He shrugged.

“That’s all I have,” Father said, “but I think Christian has an announcement?”

And I’ll be darned if that boy didn’t get up in front of 850 people on a Sunday morning and propose to me.

Suddenly, everything became clear. Obsession with video camera—check. Edginess all weekend—check. His mother coming to town—check. My mom appearing in the back of church—check.

To this day, complete strangers as well as people I only met since moving across town to Lourdes still come up to me and say, “I was there the day you got engaged.”

That’s my engagement story. Anybody else feel like sharing? Betty Beguiles is letting us all share today. Hop on over if you feel like wasting lots of time being gooey and romantic.

Published in: on June 14, 2011 at 5:46 am  Comments (12)  
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How Did You Know?

“How did you know, Mom?”

My mother paused in the act of shredding lettuce for salad. “How did I know what?”

“How did you know Dad was the one?”

…I’m guest posting today over at Catholic Mothers Online. This one is not just for Catholics. Come on over and tell me how you realized that you had met The One!

Published in: on May 16, 2011 at 5:20 am  Leave a Comment  
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Three Keys to Successful Marriage

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Last night, we spoke to the parish Confirmation class about the sacrament of marriage and, by extension, marital sexuality. At the end, we asked for questions, and we got this one:

“You talked about the three things that cause the most marriage breakups. What are the three things that a marriage has to have to survive?”

(I know. That’s a good question, isn’t it?)

I’ve written about this before, but to distill it required some thought. Eventually, we came up with:

  • Common values. This has more to do with world view and life philosophy than it does with overt religious belief, although for some people religion is certainly going to be a primary concern. What I’m talking about is more practical. A really lazy person and a driven self-motivator are likely to have a lot of problems. Someone who is thoughtful and empathizes with a person on the other side of the conflict isn’t likely to be happy with someone who makes snap judgments and doesn’t care to see any other point of view.
  • Good communication. Obviously. But I think this also implies being open to changing your mind and your behavior, not just being good at talking.
  • A willingness to subordinate yourself. This is the thing I find the most difficult. I don’t know, maybe everybody has to fight a tendency to think of what I want to do or have, what I need my spouse to do for me, instead of what I need to do for him. It’s not that a person is never allowed to assert his or her own needs and desires. But I think it’s much easier for us, as human beings, to go overboard in the direction of selfishness than in the direction of selflessness.

What do you think? If you had to list three deal-breakers for people discerning marriage, what would they be?

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Published in: on February 28, 2011 at 7:32 am  Comments (6)  
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