Blog Posts by Monika Basile

Blue Christmas?

Some of us hide behind facades during the Holiday season. We pretend to be having a wonderful time and fill our lives up with parties and gift giving and spreading good cheer. When in our realities we are falling to pieces. We are sad or disappointed or lonely or grieving. Yet, the world expects us to buck up and push it all aside.

I want to not be ashamed of my sadness. I want it to be okay to say, "Yeah, I know the tree is lovely but it hurts to look at it and remember other Christmas's." I want it to be okay to simply cry all day and feel my grief and not try to hide behind a false bravado. It would be such a relief to allow myself the time to just actually fall to pieces until I could not be broken anymore and then quietly begin to glue myself together.

I wonder if the reason we have lingering sadness is due to not being allowed to feel it completely and to its completion. We cut our grief short because we are supposed to go on and remember others have it worse. We

Online dating

I recently decided to give the internet dating world another shot. I am not sure if I will regret it or not but figured it is worth another try.

"Why are you still single?"

This is a question I am asked a lot as I am sure a million other singles are asked. I also get, "Why would he let you go?" with a quizzical raise of the eyebrow as if someone letting go of me implies there is a true deficit to my character.

I am usually puzzled as to how to answer these questions with real honesty.

Why am I still single? Because I fall in love with the wrong men and sometimes too easily. Because I was either too picky or not picky enough. Because I want what every other single person wants-the person I am with to compliment my life. Because I need time, a man's time, not all of it-some of it. Because I am not out in the world enough while I spend forty hours a week working a job where I meet few people who are not mentally ill and under my care. Because I won't settle for a

$3.60 for a purse... what a deal! Thrift stores are filled with great money saving options, and many feature half-off days or huge discounts.

They say you can discover the state of a woman's life by looking at the state of her purse. Now who exactly "they" are I am unsure of but "they" must exist somewhere as "they" made the statement. I have been thinking on this and know in my case the statement is definitely true-my purse exactly matches my life. I wondered if this were true for other women and decided I would investigate.

The smart thing to do would have been to start by asking women I knew to see what the inside of their purses looked like. Alas, I do not always think rationally and began my game at an irrational starting point-in line at the grocery store.

An elderly woman stood in front of me, she watched the register screen fiercely. I watched her purse, waiting for her to open it so I could give it a peek. She kept glancing at me and then held her purse tighter. I just smiled nonchalantly. The checker shouted her total and the woman opened her purse. Bingo! My eyes dove right in. The woman, with lips

Single? You're lucky

She is sitting at the kitchen table chopping imitation crab meat with a butter knife. We are preparing for a party that I forgot I was throwing until yesterday. She is eight and exhausting at every turn. I know my mother must have said the same about me. She is a miniature version of myself-my own personal mini-me.

"Mom? Mom? Mom?" she begins, "Is this real crab?"

"No it isn't. It's made from fish."

"But then it's not crab at all because a crab isn't a fish."

"Well…does it matter? It probably is a fish because it lives in the water."

"A submarine goes in the water and that isn't a fish at all."

I sigh, I have been cooking and cleaning all day and I am too tired for this conversation. I am too tired for incessant babbling to cloud my brain. "Okay, Kate you are right." Anything to stop the noise.

"Mom? Would you ever want to meet a mermaid?"

"I don't know. They aren't real."

"But if they were? If you could…would you want to meet one?"

"I

Handmade Quilt

We are women and we survive and of course, we rely on each other to get through the heartaches of our lives.

A particular moment in time is forever captured in my memory of something a dear friend did for me as my marriage was ending.

When I first asked my ex-husband to leave our home, I couldn't sleep in our bed. It smelled of him. It didn't matter that I washed the sheets or changed the blankets and comforter. His scent lingered in our bed of twenty years. It made me crazy to still feel him there when he wasn't.

I threw away the sheets, the blanket the comforter. I bought a single pair of new sheets. I used an old blanket of the kids and borrowed a comforter from my mother. And there, I forced myself to sleep alone without his smell permeating the air of our room. I didn't like it-but I was able to rest some nights.

Six weeks later, I allowed him to come back home. I gave him the last of the second, third, hundred chances-just to be sure. I did what many women

money,glass,wine

I am not judging, though obviously I am since I am starting this piece with those words. But I would rather call it an observation, a thought or a "musing" that I have been rolling around inside of my brain. It's a phrase that has caught my attention or for some, should I say, the phrase has become a way of life.

"Hey at least it's a fee dinner…"

I could really use that free dinner due to my continuous deteriorating financial standings, however, I can't accept. Nothing is free.

It's not that I am against a man taking care of me-I definitely am not. Most women, no matter how much we shout out how we want to be super independent and take care of ourselves-most women are lying. Now that does not mean we want a man to do everything for us, but we want the give and take and the part where you have someone to depend on and someone depends on you. What I am against-is taking advantage of a man's position in life to better my own.

Sometimes, women can become blinded by

The journey I am taking is a wondrous one and a most confusing one. It is strange to see why certain things happened as they did in the aftermath. If we could be so lucky to know before those unknown steps are taken, we would never stick one toe out into the world.

Yet, this is how we learn about life and about love. We tentatively step-we courageously leap-we blindly fall-right into the midst of our lives not knowing what lies out there in the future. Sometimes we are damaged in our haste and sometimes, the damage is what in fact builds our characters. It makes us more, it makes us see, and it makes us become who we should be.

Recently, I had an odd experience. I had a few amazing dates and then a kind of lackluster one with a lovely man and then did not hear from him for awhile. I wasn't too bothered. I was okay about it. But I did wonder now and then what had happened.

You see, in my heart feelings had been lingering of someone else. I seemed to still have this small

I was conceived the night before my father left for Vietnam.

However, this is not my story; this is Richard and Inge's story. This is the loveliest love story I have ever known in my life. I am lucky to have been an eye witness to something that a lot of people think does not exist. I have seen it. I still see it each and every day of my life and it is beautiful.

My name used to be something that I was embarrassed of when I was young. It is different and pronounced a bit different. It is the German version of Monica and it is a part of their story. My father loved a song, a song he heard while with my mother in Germany about two young girls. When he found out about my impending arrival, he asked my mother to name me Geesela, the other name in the song, if I turned out to be a girl. My mother didn't like that name.

The day I was born, my mother had not heard from my dad in months. She thought he was dead. And here, into the world, I arrived in the midst of an aching