epicurious mothering

Empowered

2012-02-11T01:04:00.002-07:00

Tonight, after living in our house for two years next month, we finally changed our chandelier over our kitchen table.

Yep.

I went to Ikea (my favorite store obviously) and found the knock-off of a gazillion dollar light that we liked and bought it.

Then, between two of Henry's soccer games, John and I (ok, mostly John--I held the lamp while he did the rest) switched out the lights.

Twenty minutes tops and I had the light I wanted in.

Seriously, it was THAT easy.

Why on earth did we wait two years?

Makes me think about all the things I want to do but don't because I don't think we can/I can do it.

I wonder if they are easier than they seem too?

Hum.

Oh, and I bought me a chair (from a serious discount store). A soft comfy chair so that when I write my bum won't vibrate as Henry drums or go to sleep if I write a bit longer than expect.

It's heaven.


I know, it's ugly. John said, It' looks like a Warty Toad. But oh, the comfort of that wartiness!

HEAVEN.

Why didn't I do this sooner?

Hum.

I wonder . . .

Did I forget to post this?

2012-02-06T21:04:00.003-07:00

Oh, yeah, I totally did.

I totally forgot to post the single best costume year in the history of the THOMAS family.

It's your lucky day because, haha, I've found the coveted family dressed up for halloween photo and here they be . . .

CeCe

Finn--Dolphin. He begged for this for months and we looked for a costume for months . . . and couldn't find a thing. So three days before Halloween and six yards of gray material, I created a costume copying a stuffed animal dolphin. Not bad if I do say so myself (of course, it only lasted the ONE night, but hey . . . )

My other sewing miracle--a red cape. Again, who is making costumes these days that there isn't a RED CAPE to be had in all of Utah Valley. So gritting my teath and saying not so polite words under my breath, I sewed at Phoebe's urging an help, a cape. HOLY MOSES, by some miracle, it turned out!

After the sixth costume change leading upto the DAY of Halloween, PIper with JOhn's crafty help, created a super cool Gypsy look. Which in this photo, Henry is attempting to CUT THE LIFE out of.

Add caption

Link. Yep, made this one too. I was not at my best at the end of this sewing day. NOt at my best at all.

Satisfied Halloweeners

Bad Mama and Thursday Looks

2012-02-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

Confession: I forget half the things I'm supposed to be doing at any single moment and these days, I don't even worry about it.

I woke up this morning and thought, Oh my heavens I'm turning into my MOTHER!

I swore up and down my whole adolescence that I would NEVER shrug my shoulder when I forgot a birthday party that my child was supposed to attend or was fifteen minutes late in picking up a child from dance class. NOOOOO. That would NEVER be me.

Heh heh.

I didn't know how CRAZY life gets and seriously, it's not that I mean to shrug my shoulders and say, Mah, and go on. It's just that I don't have time to stress over the missed things. There's a boat load of things to miss the next second!

So Kudos to you, Mom, for somehow raising 8 children and usually not forgetting us and almost never forgetting birthday parties (and I seriously doubt you would forget your friend's baby shower!). I think you were more on the ball than I am!

**********

It's five hours later and I've ditched a meeting that my friends are teaching (which, to paint me in a slightly less evil light, I only heard about this afternoon) to take the family to Ikea for dinner and window shopping. I have to say, it was the most fun we've had together as a family in weeks.

I'm not saying, "Meh" about tonight. I'm totally bummed I missed it and I feel a twinge or two of regret. If I could, I would have divided myself in half tonight. But I had to make a choice, the kiddos and John and fun or my friends amazing classes? I hate choices like that. When you throw a night of not cooking and some seriously funky furniture into the mix . . . well, Ikea tipped the scales.

Bah. Next time, I'm choosing awesome friend classes. I promise . . .

Until then . . . here are some photos of our St. George/Mesquite Soccer tournament weekend photos:

Phoe

John and the Girls doing some bouldering in Snow Canyon

Dare Devil Thomas Girls!

Toesies

My Main Squeeze

Leaping Pippa

My peeps

We are, it's true, dorks, but happy ones at least!

The boys--where Henry is standing there is a thousand foot drop off. I didn't know this at the time of the photo, but as soon as Finn got to the top of the rise, John started yelling at Henry to GET BACK!

For no good reason, I love this photo

Where in the world is Henry?

Now on to the Thursday looks:

Piper insisted on getting her Photo Moment/ Glamor shot in this post

This is pretty much her photo expression--What? Why are you taking a picture of me?

And me! Take one of me!

the Phoe-ster (love those socks!)


Today when I went into the school to deliver something to Henry, the office ladies said, "Are you OUR HENRY'S mother?" I said, Uh, yes. And they said, boy we love him. He's so great. And his style sense . . . uh . . . it sure is unique! You don't have to worry about that boys self confidence! My answer: Nope.

This is the girls (Pips and Ce) walking off to school this morning. What you can't see is that it's blizzarding and there is 35 mph winds gusting. Yep, that's right. You need stories to tell your kids, I yell to them. Git Movin!

Christmas Past

2012-02-01T12:54:00.002-07:00

I know, what has gotten into me that I'm blogging so much?

I'll tell you, FAMILY HISTORY.

I know, where is the connection?

I'll tel you.

You see, last week for Young Women we had my darling (and I use that word because it PERFECTLY describes her) friend Lynsie's mom come and talk to us about Family History. It was AMAZING. I sat there feeling super lame because though I have lots of factoids about family history, I haven't been doing any of it. There are photos that I know are floating around at one of my cousins or aunts house of my great grandparents that I don't have. There are stories inside my parents brains about their parents and grandparents that I don't know. But one thing she did say we all can do is keep up on our blogs--that's family history in the making.

Light bulb moment.

I, Mary Elizabeth Malcarne Thomas, have a blog.

Though . . . come to think of it, I've been lame about keeping up on it.

In fact, tons of awesome things have happened in the past few months and I haven't recorded a single thing.

Hum.

I don't have photos. I don't have my parents near by. But I do have photos of my life now and I do have stories of what's happening each day in my life that I can write down.

So . . . I'm making Family History alive right NOW.

Wheph.

I don't think I'll do it every day, that's pushing it (plus, can we all say YAWN, BOOOOOORING!), but I'm going to do it as often as I can--even if it isn't that polished.

(Plus, I have to add this . . . I had to figure out which day I bought our Ikea couch--long story which I will tell later--and I found I used my blog to estimate my days. See? It works).

Christmas. We spent it, two weeks of it, in New Hampshire with Jayne and York and kids. It was amazing--even without snow. Seriously, I don't think the kids stopped smiling for the whole two weeks. When we came home, the kids were teary and moapy for TWO WEEKS. Phoebe kept saying, Our family is sooo smaaaallll. It's too small. We need cousins with us EVERY DAY (and this is the girl who tells us regularly that she is only having two children who she will spoil rotten with everything she didn't get). Henry asked me if I felt sick when I thought about the East Coast--sick with missing it. Piper and Finn want a calendar so they can mark off how long it is until Hannon comes and lives in Utah with them.

Plus, we got to see Joseph and Jen and family. When I asked Phoebe what she thought about their house and the visit, she said, "It's crazy . . . Crazy like HEAVEN!" Between the five ipads, the three tvs, ping-pong, a wide assortment of motorized vehicles, and a work out room with squooshy floors and hanging bars, there was nothing but joy and laughter for the two days (oh, and did I mention unlimited treats and delicious food?).

So here are the limited photos I took. My camera ran out of batteries and I, silly me, forgot to bring the charger. But still . . . they capture the essence of the visit.

Joeseph teaching Maya and Finnegan how to play some sort of airplane traffic game--they were like this for the whole 24 hrs we were there!

Cousin Pig Pile--somewhere under the girls are a few cousins.

Jen and Celia playing mind bending games

Look at that, something NOT electronic going on . . . Speed (my mom taught them the game during her stay in October and since then, it's played with amazing regularity)

One of my favorite shots--totally epitomizes the happiness of the whole trip

It doesn't get much better--love this one too

Ok, I know we look super tired (and we were), but I think it's sort of sweet too.

Phoebe's favorite spot--in front of a roaring fire with a book

Some of the mentioned ATVs--this is the closest I got to them :)

Joseph

Serious Jumping (and flipping--go Leah!)

Back at Jayne's house--playing some serious games

The joy of having your children completely entertained by cousins . . . yes, a magnificent vacation!

See these faces? This is how they looked for two weeks straight. Yep, there is nothing like Christmas with family.

Sumu Wrestling, Jr. High Outfits (and office outfits), and A Thought

2012-01-31T08:36:00.003-07:00

After dinner, while John and I are sitting on the couch, trying to look at tile samples, Finn keeps asking us to stuff one of our couch pillows up his shirt so he can be fat. Then Piper asks to have one stuffed up her shirt and says, "I look like a Sumo Wrestler!" Before we knew it, Henry had out the tape and was taping pillows to their bodies and then taping a dohyo (circle thingy) on the grown and the rest . . . well, I haven't laughed that hard in a LONG time.

The sisters . . . guess who won?

Serious now, they're getting REALLY SERIOUS.

The brothers . . . Finn totally took Henry down!

Goal this week is to photograph Phoebe and Henry for a week of what they wear to school (I will hold this ransom at a later date)

Here is MONDAY'S showcase:

Phoebe, 12

Henry, 14

And here is TUESDAY (with guest appearance from John--sporting the Vice President of Legal Operations outfit):

Henry, 14

Phoebe, 12

John, 38

A Thought:

We are drawn inexplicably to two different types: The Savior and the Devil. If we're saintly, we're drawn to the sinful. If we're sinful, we're drawn to the pure and sweet and untouchable. In both cases, we want the other to turn into ourselves--becoming more saintly or devilish.

Why is that?

Because we want to feel validated that the course we've chosen is the RIGHT one? Because we don't want to be alone in our sainthood/devilry?

Perhaps the REAL goal in life is to let both sides go and just accept that we are BOTH--devils and saints--and to find a balance between the two?

As I was running down my thinking hill, I thought of all the myths and stories and novels written about one or the other (saints and sinners) and how the HERO (or who becomes a hero) is a person who has ever chance to choice the evils and wrongs and KNOWINGLY chooses not to.

I could write on this for ever, but I'm in my pjs and have to take Finn to school and get myself showered and dressed in ten minutes.

Until tomorrow . . .

It's all in the details

2012-01-27T13:34:00.001-07:00

I wake up at 5:50am every morning when John's alarm of quacking ducks goes off.

Sometimes we run. Sometimes we do yoga. Sometimes we do Jillian.

At 7:00am we wake everyone.

I make breakfast every morning (German Pancakes, Pancakes, Breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal, toast and boiled eggs).

If John is home, he helps make lunches for the eldest four. If not, I do.

Two leave at 7:41am. Two leave at 7:58am. And Tuesday through Friday, Finn leaves at 9am.

During those two and a half hours, I run a thousand and one errands, visit teach, clean (not often, thank goodness), make some phone calls, write emails, and do my PTA secretary stuff. Two and a half hours is NOTHING in the scope of what needs my attention, but I make the most of it.

I grab Finn and we have lunch.

Between 1:20pm and 2:20pm, I own my own life.

It's the one hour a day I give to myself to do whatever I want--even if the sink is full of dishes or there are ten emails I need to respond to or the school newsletter that needs to be worked on--and I usually sit on the couch or my bed, put my feet up and breath. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I just sit and think.

It is my favorite hour a day and sometimes, it's the hour I live for.

Monday through Thursday, Phoebe has one and a half to two hours of ballet a day. I have car pool help some days. Some days I don't. On Saturday, she dances for four hours.

Henry has between one and four activities with soccer. Sometimes I have car pool help. Sometimes I don't.

On Thursdays Piper and Celia go to rock climbing (though last night they both called me sobbing that they WANT TO QUIT) in Sandy--twenty minutes away. Sometimes I have car pool. Sometimes I don't.

Finnegan has a play date at least three days a week. Sometimes at our house. Sometimes not.

Each night, I make dinner. Not always a big dinner, but always a dinner. Usually a big dinner. Active children create hungry mouths. The kids each have a day they pick what is for dinner and help me. Sometimes they do help. Sometimes they don't.

If John's home, he's in charge of clean up. When he's not, the kids all help me.

Between all the children there is about four to six hours of homework a day that I need to oversee. When John is home, he does it.

I LOVE when he's home.

The oldest two shower each day. The other three need to be forced to bath every other day.

I am a Beehive Adviser at church so every Tuesday night, I'm gone from 6:50 until 9pm.

I'm PTA Secretary.

I'm Room Mom for Celia's class.

And once a month, I teach Piper's Art Class at school. And now, I teach Celia's Art Class each week (until a parent comes along to help).

We believe in reading to the children before they go to bed each night. We usually do. It takes a hour to put the youngest three to bed. It takes three hours to put the older to to bed.

I usually fall into my bed at 10:45pm.

I used to stay up until 11:30pm watching fun things with JOhn.

Haha. Those were the days.

On Fridays we clean the whole house.

It takes me four hours.

The kids jobs . . . well . . . between half an hour and three depending on how hard they work. Or how motivated they are by TV. Friday and Saturday is no holds barred TV watching. It's brutal and they love every moment of brain melting trash watching shows.

On Saturday we don't do anything . . . unless we have to do something. We usually have something to do.

On Sunday, we go to church and spend the rest of the day together. Often, with other family. We love Sundays.

Now, to add to all this, we've decided to do a minor which has morphed into major remodel of our kitchen/upstairs. I'm the contractor. We have however (hallelujah) hired an Interior Designer.

HOLY MOSES. What on earth was I thinking?

Not thinking.

Oh, well, it's just one more thing. Right?

Right . . . . ????

These are the details of my life.

It's not glamorous. It's not often exciting. It's usually impossibly tightly scheduled. But I've discovered that there is always time for three things: friends, food, and family (and if I can stay awake, reading).

Details. It's all about the details.

Here are a few details about the off-spring:

Finnegan reads--full on (to quote Ferris Bueller, He "never had one lesson." I have no idea where he picked it up). His eyes have turned the same clear gray-green as Henry and I have to say it, I think he might be even cuter than Henry was.

Henry's soccer team won a tournament (I know, FINALLY!). He tries out new clothes styles every day. The latest was a green flannel shirt with gray jeans tucked into mustard yellow socks with rainbow colored flat sneakers--eek. He came home beaming. What sort of school does he go to? Kindness Itself? His two best friends are beautiful girls. He's got a six pack--seriously, Jillian DOES work--and still likes to hang out at home on the weekends.

Celia is getting A's at school (who would have thought?). She dreams of dogs and tells us about them in great detail almost every morning. She actually reads books (as long as they are funny) and has mastered the art of puffy Germain Pancakes (they touch the top of the oven!).

Phoebe is so happy I barely recognize her (I thought 7th grade was supposed to be the worst year ever? What? The girl glows). She's totally fascinated by how easy it is (for her) to get 100% on tests--well, all of them except TYPING. B- never looked so good.

Piper, man, that kid . . . she's crazy. She's worn out three pairs of boots this winter alone. She has leather palms from Monkey Bar Club and killer arms from Rock Climbing. Don't even think about a push-up competition because she'll kick your butt. Her goal in life is to make us laugh--and she always meets her goals.

John, well, he's traveled way more than I've wanted him to--gone two to three days each week for the past few months--overall, he's amazing. While he still doesn't care much about Coal Mining or transportation or the billion other Coal things he now knows, he really likes the company he works for and for the next six months, it's solvent.

Details.

I know, probably way more than you wanted, but well . . . details.

It's all in the details.

Four months in Pictures (thank you phone)

2012-01-08T19:59:00.003-07:00

Finn and Me . . .

First day of 7th Grade for Phoebe

Sweet Henry--Goofy Henry

True thinkers . . . :)

first day of school for the rest of them

Piper going into her first first grade

Slip sliding away . . . how we do September in Highland

Celia eating crepes . . . gooey

Celia's new passion--rock climbing

A rainbow--I saw this on one of ickiest days I've had in years. I stopped the car and took a photo and smelled the air, rain cleaned, and smiled.

Best friends.

Wagon ridin'

Grandparent's day

My scout and cookie theif

Crazy hair day

Good friend, Lynsie

Home--Connecticut Style

NYC

Henry . . . in green pants

Halloween Phoebe

Finn wearing a size 6month Lion Costume--I shook my head too.

Off to a Masquerade . . . freaky indeed.

Piper and her "Great to be 8" pals

Fall at Thanksgiving Point

A Final Fire of the season

Thanksgiving in Washington State

Me and the Bean

Midnight shopping (blah

Florida for my mom's 70th surprise birthday

. . . Yeah, we didn't have any fun at all.

My personal teddy bear.

Spring In January, 200 Months

2012-01-05T23:25:00.000-07:00

As I drove home from my book club meeting tonight, an old U2 song came on. Mysterious Ways and just like that I was thrust back twenty years to the winter of falling in love with John.

Yeah, twenty years is a LONG time.

But it seems like yesterday. I listened to the song and remembered exactly how it felt to be kissed by him--in his parents old yellow station wagon at the mouth of the Provo Canyon--while the song played. It was December and my family had flown out to have a Christmas in the west and I was recovering from a 24 hour flu. He didn't care.

I hadn't seen him for five months. And the last time I'd seen him was at pageant. I'd spent probably six hours with him total during the three weeks of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. He kissed me there too, even though he wasn't supposed to and I had a boyfriend waiting for me in Connecticut. I didn't know he liked me, I thought he might, but didn't know for sure until the night I walked away from him angry (why? I can't for the life of me remember) and he came running after me. He grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the crowds and our companions and into the dark paths where no one was supposed to be. There in the dark he pulled me down beside me on a bench and pointing holding my hand, leaning into me, he showed me Orion in the sky. I stared and wondered but mostly, I felt his hand in mine and thought perhaps I was dreaming.

Then he told me loved me.

Just like that. After a few weeks, not really talking, just staring at each other across fields and pavement and through trees, he said something odd and silly and ended it with love.

I laughed at him. We don't know what love is, do we?

Probably not, I think he said.

We laughed and ran up the hill alone and down another dark hill, through the staging and down behind the Costume shop. He stopped me, tugging on my backpack to stop me. He turned me around moving me to the left and then the right until he nodded. Then he slipped my backpack off my shoulders and let it drop on the ground. Perfect, he said, and then he pulled me to him and kissed me. It light and sweet and silly. We both laughed.

Do you think we'll get married? He asked.

I laughed and snorted. No! No one ever gets married after something like this. It's just for now.

Maybe, he said.

Then he kissed me again and I wondered why everything felt so right. So easy. So natural.

I brushed those thoughts aside. I was here. He was here. All that mattered was this wonderful moment.

I didn't know.

I'd only ever paid attention to one other boy and he'd been my boyfriend for four weeks before I left for Pageant. I was new to all this. I thought it was just a BIG crush.

Silly me.

It was when he came to my house after we'd been apart for a week that I realized something was VERY different with this crush. I never thought I'd see or hear from John again. My sister called. She was sobbing. He came and then he left, she sobbed.

I was laughing at something my other sister was saying. We were at work.

What? I asked, not really listening.

John. He came with his dad and then he left. I didn't know how to tell him where you were.

WHAT?

I screamed that.

John. He's gone, but he was here.

I dropped the phone.

I dropped.

Onto the flagstone patio of MacKenzie's house. I curled into the fetal position and sobbed and screamed.

I came to (and seriously, I LOST it) with my sister and her friend standing over me with owl eyes and sweet MacKenzie ringing her hands asking what on earth was going on.

What's the big deal? They asked.

John, I sobbed. He came and then he left.

So?

So . . . ! Nothing else came out. I was sobbing too hard. I sobbed for another two hours until MacKenzie told Jayne she'd better take me home. I cried the seven miles I biked home. As we biked down Bahr road, the soft summer air swirling my hair and cooling my burning, swollen eyes, I told them, I'm going to marry that boy.

They laughed.

What are you talking about?

I shook my head. That was crazy, what I did at MacKenzie's house. I went crazy. This isn't normal. I think I'm going to marry him.

They laughed and then looked at my face and said, Well, maybe you will.

When we said good-bye, John told me he wouldn't write or call. It's dumb to drag things out, he said. I agreed.

He called me four days later.

I called him a week later.

And so it went through the fall. The calls got longer and closer together until my family planned on staying with John's for a few days after we arrived in Utah.

I got sick on the flight. Sick all night but it didn't matter. I was weak and shaky, but he pulled me out of the house and into his old yellow station wagon and drove us to the mouth of a canyon, playing my favorite music. He stopped the car and smiling at me grabbed hold of my jacket and pulled me towards him. And kissed me.

Germs and all.

And it was wonderful.

Easy.

Natural.

Right.

It's been twenty years.

And that magic, it's been challenged. The rightness has gotten a little murky. The easiness has gotten complicated by five children, five jobs and five moves. Anger, disappointments, and hurts makes one question the rightness of it all.

I was watching Dr. Who this morning (the new version) and he was inside a monster. The only way out was through the monsters barf. When they landed, slimy and nasty, Dr. Who said, Yes, indeed, to the girl with him, you're covered in sick.

Not barf or vomit or any of the words I'd use, but delicate "sick."

As I was driving home, listening to the song, remembering first love, thinking of what has happened since then, I wished that I had a word--a good, delicate, polite, British word for marriage after a rough patch.

I thought and thought and I'm still thinking, but I can't think of it.

Because, I can't figure out what words I'd use in the AMERICAN language.

Because, the word would have to be infused with love that used to be a tiny cord and is now a vessel docking rope--a thousand strands twined and infused and meshed. And it would have to have understanding of youth and things beyond anyone's control and laughter and moments of joy so pure and intense and beautiful that nothing could break it. A word that described humility that conquered every single time pride.

There isn't a word.

Because it's not words, it's feelings. Those dark times we've had, they're making this spring of our budding new love more brilliant and strong and intense and beautiful than any of the tiny memories of twenty years ago.

And really, I'm still a sixteen year old girl madly in love with a wild, unpredictable blue eyed boy.

And when he kisses me, well, nothing much as changed.

It's easy.

Natural.

And so right.

Letters

2011-11-28T17:10:00.001-07:00

I've been horrible about getting the mail lately.

Last month we realized that we went four weeks without getting the mail.

Four weeks.

This caused a bit of a problem when in the mail, buried under five pounds of flyers, was John's jury duty date--which was set for the day before we got the mail.

Eek.

Lucky for him, the case was dismissed and never went to trial.

I realized that the reason I don't get the mail is because there is hardly ever anything in there for me. It's bills or advertisements.

And really, my email box doesn't give me much more exciting mail either. Half of it is either bill notices or advertisements. The other half is kid/school/calling stuff. Only about once a month--if I'm lucky--do I get a real email. A letter electronically transfered from a far off friend. But these are even getting less and less frequent thanks to blogs and Facebook. We don't need to write, we know what they're doing--in fact, we can picture it.

But the other day as I was writing out some thank you notes to people who housed us on one of our trips, I stopped and just held the weight of the paper, I looked at the uneven scrawl across the page and inhaled the scent of paper and ink and felt a longing for letters.

Addressed to me.

From someone near or far away from me, I don't care, who took a few moments to write me and then walk somewhere or even just stick it outside their door, the whole time in some part of their mind thinking of me.

Crazy right? To think that someone would do that?

They used to. I spent my young adulthood with a handful of people who I corresponded with. I would go to the mail box every day because I knew there was a really good chance there was a letter in there for me. It never got old, getting letters. It always made my day.

And then there was the three year that John and I lived on and there are boxes of letters between the two of us. Those were the days I blessed stamps and pen and ink because it was far too expensive to actually talk on the phone. No, those conversations waited every other weekend for a few minutes in the closet with the cord stretched to the limit.

With our words and sometimes silly drawings, we tried to put down pieces of ourselves and stick them in an envelope and send them across the whole country and hope that the receiver would understand the words.

One day, out of the blue, John called me, laughing.

I got your post card, he said. In fact, the mailman handed it to me personally. He told me, "It's your lucky day," and put the postcard in my hand. And it was. I had to call you.

I laughed to. I knew exactly what postcard he was talking about.

I had painted a posted card--water colors I think-- and on the back all I'd written was, I love you. Then I wrote John's name and address and licked (yes, that's how they got on before) a stamp and walked down the my hill, probably barefoot, holding that thin piece of paper, wondering when he would get it, what he would think of the words and if he could hear me saying them--even though they were written.

He could. He did.

Even when we were first married we would write each other notes and leave them places. When we'd have arguments, we'd write out our apologies. When we were away from each other and without cell phones, we'd write long and super sappy emails. I found a handful of them tucked away in one of my old journals and I was amazed at the longing and love written in each word.

It's been years since John's written me a letter.

I can't remember when I wrote him last.

But today when we had one of our thousand and one quiet, quick and abrupt phone calls, I felt the longing to write a letter more than I have in years.

A letter to him.

A letter that maybe he would read and not only see but hear.

I wonder if he can anymore.

Hear me.

Not the wife, the co-parent, the co-manager of this business of family, church, and social scheduler. No, as the girl who spent hours thinking about him on her couch, three thousand miles away from him, who would have given anything for just an hour with him. An hour to look at him, and see his lips move as she heard his voice.

I'm still her. I still feel that way.

But we've stopped writing letters.

He tells me that's natural and what happens and we're too busy.

But I think he's wrong.

I think the letters, the things written by hand, crossed out or perfect, tell more about us than a thousand texts or phone calls or even face to face conversations.

Letters are a little bit of your soul.

And when you stop writing them, a light flickers and dims inside us.

Tonight, I'm going to write a letter or two or maybe three.

Look in your mailbox. Maybe one of them will be for you.

Neglected

2011-11-11T12:51:00.001-07:00

The blog may be neglected, but man, oh man, my life sure isn't.

Here's photos of the last few months--and this is minus our trip to NYC where I forgot to bring a camera and took photos on my phone (and haven't figured out how to get them onto my computer).

A case of Lime Green Levis

2011-10-22T21:47:00.001-06:00

I blame the pants.

I just came back from dropping Henry off at a party. Watching the kids at the party gather around Henry, dressed in skin tight dull gray skinny jeans rolled up mid-calf, rainbow colored flimsy sneakers, a green t-shirt and white suspenders (inherited tonight from his Great-Grandpa's cast offs), and listening to the kids chirp out all sorts of crazy comments and compliments about his clothes, I had to blame the pants.

No, not the skinny one's he was wearing tonight.

No, the pants at fault are the lime green one's I bought him in the spring on a whim from the Ross clearance rack. I laughed when I saw them and thought Henry would to. Perhaps he'd wear them once to create a stir (something he loves to do) and then never wear again.

It seems, ahem, that they did create quite a stir and CONTINUE to create the stir--they are his icon.

They are, quite frankly, ridiculous. No one who wasn't a crazy movie star has any right to wear anything quite so ridiculous.

But Henry, that boy can pull it off. In fact, as he says himself, he "works" it.

I know, ick, right?

Right.

Again, I blame the pants.

Nothing else can explain how my incredibly shy and keep-to-himself son could have evolved into the loud crazy kid who everyone wants to talk to and whoops over when he walks into the room.

The pants, they most have had something in them--sew into the seams--that infused into his body and created this boy/man. Because, I'll tell you right now, nothing in his personality up until this year has ever lead me to believe this is what he'd become.

Yesterday when we went running together (something as odd as a TALL son who TALKS to girls), he kept pushing me on the inside of the sidewalk or road.

"I'll take the outside," he kept saying as he'd angle himself closest to the road.

When did this happen?

When did he start trying to protect me? His mother? The one whose spent his whole life protecting him--standing between the cars and him--until now?

Pants. Let's just leave it there.

And then there's the moment when he came home from school beaming like a insane asylum inmate.

What? I asked. What happened today?

I felt it today, Mom. I totally felt it and so, at the right moment, while I was on the lockers doing my Tuesday Cat-Walk [no, don't ask, really, you don't want to know], I just pulled off my shirt--it has snaps--and twirled it over my head.

What? Say again?

Yeah, this shirt is awesome, it has snaps instead of buttons and I could just ripped it off. Everybody LOVED it.

I'll bet.

Yeah, they did. And you know what? I think I'm the reason people come to school.

I tried very very hard at this moment NOT to ROLL my eyes. I only just held it in check.

Ok, I said doubtfully.

No, really, Mom, I seriously make people super happy with my shenanigans [I'm not sure he used this exact word, but it was something just like it and well . . . it sounds good]. I make them laugh and feel gooooooood.

I tried not to make gagging noises. Where did this child get such a big head? I need to find a pin, I thought, and pop this boys inflated ego.

But I just smiled (albeit doubtfully) and patted his shoulder.

That's nice, Henry. Now please please please put away the dishes and clean up your room and get your homework done.

Right-o, Mommy, he said saluting me and he ambled (he really does amble) off to ignore me and shake the windows drumming for half an hour.

I allowed myself one eye roll.

Then that night I went to church to do my mid-week activity with my Beehives (12-13 year olds), only this week, we were with the Mia Maids (14-15 year olds)too--Henry's age group.

Half way through the activities (carving pumpkins), one of the girls said, Hey, are you Henry Thomas' mother?

I looked up, Uh, yes . . . , I replied, just a tiny bit apprehensive about what I was going to hear.

He's like my favorite person in the school. He seriously makes me so happy. In fact, he's seriously the reason I go to school.

What? You haven't been talking to Henry have you? I ask.

She looks at me funny.

We're talking about Henry right? I ask.

Oh, yeah, seriously, when he ripped that shirt off when he was doing the cat-walk, I thought I'd die. I've never seen anything so funny in my life. He makes school bearable. And he's always nice.

Another girl chimes in, Yeah, he's seriously nice to everyone--it doesn't matter who they are or what they look like. He is polite and nice to ALL the girls. He calls us "miss" and stands aside to let us pass in the hallway. He makes everyone feel good.

It's his pants, another girl adds, those awesome green pants. One day I wore purple pants and I said, Henry, check out these pants. They're better than yours. He looked at them and said, Debatable.

They all laugh.

Debatable, they say to each other. (A saying I've been hearing for weeks amongst the girls whenever anyone says something is better than something else. Debatable.)

Henry? I ask again. My son Henry?

Oh, yeah, Henry, they all say.

Crap, I think, I can't ever tell him this. His head will inflate to hot-air balloon size.

Again, I just have to blame those darn pants.

And after tonight, hearing the kids say, "Henry, those are awesome suspenders!" and hearing Henry reply, "They are my dead Great-Grandfathers and they LIVE ON IN ME!" I have a feeling that the suspenders are going to only add to the problem.

The Potency of Diminishing

2011-09-29T13:40:00.002-06:00

I was sitting at the table across from our landscaper and his partner/accountant.

Spread out before us were pages of papers and mind boggling figures. I was on the verge of crying. My chest hurt. My head spun. John was shaking he was so mad; his whole body trembling with rage. The landscaper's face was purple; the accountant's eyes were slanted and her head was shaking.

How will this end? How?

For three days we hadn't slept or eaten. Our whole focus on the mad bill we'd received, thousands and thousands of dollars more than our wildest estimations, for our yard. My lawyers, John and his father, had been advising me and writing very lawyerly letters of . . . hum . . . persuasion that perhaps the bill was inappropriate at best, wildly erroneous at worst. We lived on hurt and anger and were refreshed by outrage: my veins flowed with the most righteous of indignation. Oh, the self inflating power of righteous indignation.

I knew I was right. I knew I held the power. I had the contract, the detailed list of misdemeanors of the landscaper, and I had the check book. I felt it--the power, flowing through me--enlarging me into something potent and formidable.

I was Galadriel being offered the ring by Frodo; my visage something magnificent and fearful and I liked it--that feeling of power and potency and rightness of my position.

And then . . . I looked at the Landscaper and the Accountant. I saw them not as opponents, enemies, despoilers, wreckers of my happiness, but I saw them as . . . people. Humans. Someone's husband or wife. Someone's mother. Someones father. Someone's friend. Someone who was loved and worried about and someone who made mistakes and didn't always mean it.

Who do I want to be?

Do I want to be the powerful, vengeful, omnipotent being who cares and thinks only of herself or her point of view?

Do I want to be the person who, because someone else didn't keep their word, refuses to keep mine?

Do I want to be the person who forgets humanity and human kindness?

Who do I want to be?

Someone kind.

Someone generous.

Someone who keeps their word.

Someone who forgives.

Someone who is probably a easy touch, but at least touchable.

And it was gone, that power, that Towering Galadriel in all her magnificent and fearful glory, and in her place, was me, just me, talking to just them.

I shook inside, just as Galadreil did as she pushed the ring away. "I have passed the test," I felt myself sigh. "I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Mary."

I felt like weeping--from relief, from weariness, and most of all, from gratefulness that I HAD passed the test. I wouldn't turn into that fearful being, but I would remain Mary.

I can't even describe how good it felt. Finishing a marathon was like nothing. The closest it came to was giving birth. The intensity, the pressure, the fear and worry, the unknown, and then, out of it all comes something beautiful and miraculous--me. The best of me (which is actually not often represented). It renewed me. It made up for the thousand and one times I didn't diminish and remain me, but fought on and did the stupid thing.

I thought over and over again, It never is too late, is it? We never walk too far down the path to stop and turn around and become someone better.

Never.

I think perhaps the farther down that path we walk, the more we understand the sheer blessedness of letting go of pride and self-righteousness and being human--the very best kind of human.

If I would have know the relief and peace I would have felt making that choice, I would have made it three days before.

But I didn't know. I hadn't been tested. I had to face it. I had to see all the potency and power, and I had to let it go.

It wasn't easy. It was mind bendingly hard. But once I made that choice, the whole feeling in the room changed. Peace flowed and kindness and sensibility entered in.

It was magic.

And sort of miraculous. That saying, 180 degree turn about? Yeah, it applied here.

The Landscaper's color returned to normal. John stopped shaking. The Accountant smiled even. The rest of the problems and disputations took only a few minutes to iron out.

We both left equally miserable about the final price, but we all left shaking hands and unafraid to meet each other again.

The night before, when I was madly strategizing about how I would take "them" down, John came to bed.

He leaned back against the bed and said, "I know how we need to go into that meeting tomorrow."

I sat up, excited for yet another great angle to present our case.

He pulls out the scriptures and said, "Listen, this is what we need to remember."

I settled in next to him and listened.

These are the words he read:

But ye will ^ateach them to ^bwalk in the ways of truth and ^csoberness; ye will teach them to ^dlove one another, and to serve one another.

And also, ye yourselves will ^asuccor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the ^bbeggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.

Perhaps thou shalt ^asay: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—

But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.

For behold, are we not all ^abeggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind?

And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name, and begging for a ^aremission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his ^bSpirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with ^cjoy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy. (Mosiah 4:15-19)

I sat there blinking. That was the last thing I every thought I'd hear from him.

And in the end, he was exactly right.

And in the end, it was, though perhaps not how we entered the meeting, it was how we left it.

Mayhem

2011-09-25T14:32:00.002-06:00

Wowa.

I've been meaning to write this (and about sixteen other) post for the past four weeks. I literally haven't had a moment to even sit on the computer since my last post. I check email (on my phone) once a day, Facebook is something "other" people (people who can count to ten without loosing track of what number they're on), and meals seriously are thrown together.

If someone would have shown me a snap shot of my life a year ago, I would have laughed at them and said, Who would lead that life? Pashaw, it's idiotic not to mention impossible.

And, really, I would have been right.

A few nights ago, John and I, too exhausted to do anything but lay on our back in bed, said to each other, "Uh, have you ever felt so tired?"

"No. It hurts to think."

"I know."

"I'm too tired to talk."

"I know."

Long pause.

"I'm too tired to sleep."

"I know."

Henry has soccer four times a week (with games all over Utah).

Phoebe dances six days a week.

Celia and Piper rock climb two hours a week (inside).

Finn has preschool four times a week (which you would think would free me up, but the two and a half hours go by too fast for me to even notice).

I am Beehive advisor at church (which I ADORE, but means I get to go to church on Tuesday nights with Henry--which I LOVE--meaning one less night I'm home).

All five kids have homework.

All five kids need attention. Not to mention things like lunches, breakfasts, dinners, baths and clothes.

John works full time (I know, the nerve).

I'm PTA Secretary.

I'm Celia's teacher's Room Mom.

I'm a friend (sometimes).

I'm a daughter.

I'm a sister.

I am, sometimes, usually Friday nights, a wife.

Which all leads to the fact that, really, life is FULL. It's literally BURSTING with activities and engagements and happenings. And even though I fall asleep before I get to the bed (and feel dizzy most days), I find that I'm strangely happy.

Weird, I know, and most likely subject to change. But for the moment, it's true. There is nothing that makes me happier than watching Henry play soccer, Phoebe dance, and the girls shimmy up impossible three story high rock (fake) walls. It's like I get to see them at their best (and occasionally their worst) and am super impressed at what I'm seeing. Even though it's about killing us, the best thing in our lives are our kids. I had NO idea how much work having kids would be and if I did, I'm sure I would have stopped after one.

But I didn't know.

And we didn't stop.

And I'm so glad.

I know, I'm crazy. I should probably be (and possibly might be) institutionalized for this, but these nutting kids are the making of me.

And here they are . . . The first day of school photos:

Piper Jane

Celia Bangs

Henry Grey

All of them (Phoebe, Henry, Celia, and Pips)

Above: Morning routine--lunches. Ballet shoes--becoming master seamstress of elastic, ribbons, and "breaking in." Finn--what he does when we're getting the kids ready in the morning. Finn and Best Friend--what they do while the kids are at school--play animals.

God's Hammer

2011-08-30T14:25:00.000-06:00

Time is running out.

My kids are coming home in 15 minutes.

I've got an afternoon of running kids around, laundry, nasty finger printed dirt and bugger crusted walls to wash, and over due library books to return. Plus dinner to make. Plus homework to get done. Oh, and I've already spent the morning doing school newsletters and copying and school volunteering and forgetting about Finn's pre-school assessment because I thought it was tomorrow.

Fourteen minutes.

Thirteen minutes.

This is how my days are measured out. In small minute increments where I travel from one task to the next. All day I think in lists . . .

Not of things I need to do, in lists of dreams and ideas and silliness.

I brushed my teeth in the dark last night writing a the list "When I am a God"

1. All children will come to earth potty trained
2. And able to ride a two wheel bike
3. And able to read
4. And teeth will never rot and breath will always be fresh so you can go to be without brushing
5. And children will be able to put themselves to bed from birth on

Today as I was making lunch for myself and Finnegan (crying and yelling and sobbing and peeling off his bloody elbow bandaide), I made a list of "Things that I can't live without"

1. Kettle Potato chips
2. Water
3. Water
4. Peanut butter cookies
5. Mayonaise
6. Danish Pastries
7. Loud music
8. Good books
9. Kisses from Finn right by my ear where he whispers "BoobsIloveyou" and giggles loud enough to make me deaf for an hour
10. The kids laughing and screaming in the back yard
11. Cream
12. Grapes that pop in your mouth
13. Eggs
14. And perhaps, John

Last night as I was making dinner (two really), Celia's friend came in and said (yelled really), "I like that your house has loud music playing." Celia shrugged and said, "We ALWAYS have loud music playing."

This is true.

Which made me make of list of things I like about my life "Things I dig about My Life"

1. Loud music
2. Really loud music
3. Blinds that shade my kitchen in the heat of day
4. The sandbox that makes the kitchen silent and empty while I make dinner
5. Neighborhood friends that come over and eat all our creamies (grr)
6. Cooking without recipes
7. Cooking with recipes
8. Having the money to buy food to cook with
9. Skirts to twirl around the kitchen to the loud music with
10. My yard and the deadly new hammock stand
11. Sunset
12. Pound, thumping, you've just got to dance music
13. And Celia

Minus two minutes.

The kids are still not here.

The house is filling up with heat and I just realized that I forgot to shut the windows. I forget so much these days. I feel like my brain is a sieve. I keep trying to capture appointments, ideas, events but I can't. I write them down on pieces of paper, on my electronic calendar with fancy alarms, and I even tell the kids to remind me, but I don't remember them all. I am sorry, Mom for screaming at you "how could you forget me? I go to ballet every thursday every week!" I now know. You didn't even know what day it was much less what time it was. Oh, I'm so sorry.

Minus four minutes.

I've used up too much time. THere is a load of laundry that didn't get done and I've got to make a meal for Henry so he can rush off to a soccer game and a snack for Phoebe for ballet and some sort of dinner figured out and some sort of way to contact Finnegan's preschool teacher to try and re-schedule.

But really, I'm thinking up a list: "What my next book with have in it . . ."

And "What God's Hammer really means . . . "

Not Perfect, but pretty darn close

2011-08-18T22:50:00.000-06:00

I am of course referring to myself . . . NOT my yard . . . shaah.

(Like those silhouettes? Ee gads)

Engaged

2011-07-24T23:23:00.000-06:00

I love that word . . . it's so romantic and industrious and present and . . . rarely ever used to describe me.

Tonight we were talking about stop signs. More particularly how the stop signs with white around the edges are optional, something I was told right after I got my license and something I BELIEVED until my best friend--laughing hysterically--informed me was not exactly true. She informed me that ALL stop signs have white around them. I tried to argue, but seeing as we were driving and I blew through quite a few, I realized that by golly, she was right. (Yes, it is indeed a very good thing I grew up in a VERY small town with two cops ever on duty because . . . well, lets say I could have gotten quite a few tickets.)

"I'm so gullible," I sighed.

"No," John said, "not even. You just don't care enough about what people are saying and just take it in without even thinking about it."

"Huh?" I said (and he suddenly had my COMPLETE attention).

"You know, you DON'T care about anything you DON'T care about. It has to interest you. Stop signs don't interest you. Someone told you something about them, you just absent mindedly took it in. You didn't ever give it much thought."

"Really? Is that what I really do?"

"Yeah, totally."

"Oh," I said, giving this idea some thought, "I can see what you're saying . . . hum . . ."

"Mary . . ."

"Yes."

"I don't know what I'm talking about."

Darh! He got me and he wasn't even meaning to. See? I'm completely gullible. I even believe craziness about myself. But I think he did have something there . . . I do just trust what people are saying about mostly everything because I'm off somewhere in my mind thinking about something else. My kids are known to yell my name multiple times before I answer and even then, I can't quite seem to comprehend what they're telling me. They're used to it, bless their hearts. They often take my hand and staring straight into my eyes say, "Mom, what did I just say?" And when I realize I cannot for the life of me repeat a word of theirs, I come back from wherever I was or whatever story I was writing or essay or other THOUGHT I was having and engage with them for a few moments.

Oh, there's that word again. That word that grounds us suddenly in the PRESENT. Pay attention to that word.

There is a woman who lives down the street from me. She has six children, she's BEAUTIFUL, smart, funny, and engaged to be married to a man that lives just UP the street from me. He has four children, is handsome, smart, funny, and feeling quite lucky to get the catch of the neighborhood. You see both these catches had spouses once, but a few years ago, said spouses decided to live a bit of a risky lifestyle and well . . . made choices that made it impossible for my neighbors to be married to them anymore.

When I asked my lady neighbor how on earth she got through it (her oldest 17, her youngest 8 months), she said, "Well, I had to. I had six kids. You just get up and go on and let them (the other spouses) do their craziness without you and the kids."

"But . . . aren't you sad and lonely and mad and scared?" I asked.

"Yes, but I've got six kids. I can't fall apart. I need to be there for them. So I am."

And man is she ever. Her kids are AMAZING. AMAZING. You can tell that she's engaged in parenting those kids and giving them the best possible support she can.

When John talked to our Man neighbor, he said, "Look at Lady Neighbor's kids--you look at them and see they've totally got it together. You look at my kids, you can tell we need a lot of help. I need her to help us get it together." And you know what, they need him. They call him Dad and that house full of girls (only one boy--the oldest) is desperate for a strong, kind father figure.

All ten of them are engaged, yes?

YES.

And then there is me, this summer, starting out a bit whiny and glum and "poor me" and "why me" and blah blah blah. I didn't even know I was doing it. And, ahem, I'd been doing it for quite some time. I remember sitting around stewing about something someone had said to me and thinking all sorts of virtuous self righteous thoughts justifying my rather negative attitude. I let my mind for a few moments stew on all the upsets and wrongs in my life and began making a list of "if onlys." If only John were happier with his job then we'd be happier together. If only the kids kept the house clean, then I wouldn't have to nag them and spend all my house of the day picking up after then. If only I didn't have to cook THREE meals a day and make a thousand snacks and clean up AFTER EVERY single person ate. If only I had a thousand hours in a day instead of 24, then I would FINALLY get something done. If only . . . I went on for quite some time, maybe even days. I saw all the ways the wrongs could be righted and how unjust it seemed that I couldn't just right them. I mean, why CAN'T life be perfect?

I set about trying to figure out a way to do that. First on the list, a therapist to "show me the way" to happiness.

Ahem. We all know how that turned out.

Well, as I was trying to figure out what my second on my list was, I couldn't get my friend out of my mind whose mother is suffering from a rather depressing condition. I hadn't written her in weeks, perhaps a month and I felt horrible about this. She was one of my best friends. She IS one of my best friends, but distance and my crazy lifestyle got in the way. I finally wrote and vowed that I would right her one funny thing that happened to me each day. I mean, I had time for three sentences right? Well, I think I wrote to her for two days and she wrote back five times and made me laugh so hard I thought I'd pee my pants. What kind of friend does that? You're trying to cheer her up and she cheers YOU up. Yeah, the kind you REALLY want to keep.

But the craziest thing happened during those two days (and the twenty after that I vowed would end in an email but didn't), I began looking out for the funny, the beautiful, the precious, and the sacred in the hum drum everyday life of mine.

And suddenly, my life didn't seem so bad.

It seemed . . . well . . . kind of awesome in a somewhat demented, twisted, completely crass, often stinky (Henry) and down right pee your pants hysterical way. Perfect? I wanted perfect?

Boring.

For the first time in years, I'm not so lost in my thoughts. I'm not dreaming of how good tomorrow will be. I'm not thinking of how great it was when we lived here or there or how in love I was during this time or that or how the kids were so good when I do this or that. I'm not thinking at all. I'm just here. I'm soaking it all in. The crazy mad days. The days where I can't stop laughing to save my life. The days when I'm so tired, I can't move my arms and the kids have to drag me up and down the stairs at the pool and somehow drag me in the pool and before I know it, we're all diving for toys and watching boogers float by in the water and finding bandaids on the bottom and STILL (though perhaps gagging a bit) swimming. It's not perfect. I'm getting a thousand more wrinkles each day. I'm not running faster and faster because I'm barely even running. I can't for the life of me remember what I eat. I just eat and love it.

I know, I sound manic. I'm not (well, not MOST of the time at least). I get tired, I get cranky. I yell. I cry. I'm ridiculous and make John roll his eyes and hug me while I tell him how really, we could do this and that and the other better. I want a clean house. I want good meals. I still think I do know the best way to do everything, but I'm not so worried about it.

I had guests for four weeks this summer. I had about a gazillion parties. I drove my kids to a bazillion places. I've read only one book (blessed, sweet, sappy cheap and dirty romance). I have only written two blog entries (this being the second) and I've slept about five hours a night.

I have NEVER been happier.

Ever.

If this tells you a bit about my summer, I feel like yelling "Best day EVER!" at the top of my lungs.
I wake up each morning with a prayer on my lips--a sweet prayer, like a strawberry starburst--that whisper with my eyes still closed. "Thank you for my life. Thank you for my John. Thank you for my Henry, Phoebe, Celia, Piper and Finn. Thank you for the sun or rain. Thank you for my parents and JOhn's parents. Thank you for all our brothers and sisters and their spouses and my gazillion and a half nieces and nephews who have NO idea how much I love them (so will you tell them pleeeeaaaasssseeee). Thank you for the legs that carry me places. Thank you for my friends. Thank you for strawberries and blueberries and pink nail polish. Thank you for sunglasses and butter, bacon and cotton. Thank you for the five minutes I had last night to actually go to the bathroom in peace. Thank you . . . " It's my favorite time of day--that prayer. If I forget it (which, cough cough, I do on occasion), I find my day isn't the same. I feel a bit tense and cranky and ok, NEGATIVE. I didn't get my sweetness in. And man, do I ever need that sweetness.

Because I'll tell you something, that sweetness, that morning burst of delicious thanks, it's done something AMAZING--or maybe, just maybe (please don't strike me down!) miraculous--because I have (drum roll please) become ENGAGED in and with life.

Yep, that word. Engaged. Finally, it's applying to ME.

Wheph. Thought it'd never happen.

What the Heel?

2011-07-13T11:35:00.000-06:00

This is what I tell my kids Avril Lavigne is yelling in her song, "What the He*%."

I do this so that I can without (too much) guilt blast it big time and dance to it and ok, sometimes even sing to it.

Yep, just one of the few "alterations" I make to form my own happy reality.

Which is what I've been thinking about a ton lately. I think a lot of this was brought on with my one visit with a therapist a few weeks ago. I got into my head that if I could go to a therapist they would have some secret formula to give me so that whenever life tossed me a bump or two, I'd know how to hang on and not get all discombobulated and confused. Instead, I'd sail right through with perhaps some wind tossed hair and nothing else. With this idea in my head, let me tell you, I've been sort of desperate to find a good councilor. I've been to doctors and asked everyone under the sun if they went to therapy (yes, a personal question, but I was on a QUEST and pride took the back seat--everyone's pride) and finally I found a place that seemed right. Of course, we played phone tag for SIX calls (when will I learn to heed these Universe messages?) and got lost for half an hour (I seriously NEVER get lost) trying to find the place. So when I finally arrived, I was exhausted, confused and ruffled (what a good word).

I walked into the place, cool, dark, and smelling slightly off, and knew that I'd made a mistake. I met the therapist, a middle aged, middle sized, middle looking woman and followed her into her office, listening to her tell me that thanks to my lateness, we would only have 15 minutes to talk.

Great.

15 minutes.

Hum.

Not long, but seems like plenty of time to give me the secret "how to survive all bumps in life" formula, right?

Ah . . . NO.

After sitting on a squishy couch that I sank into and felt like I couldn't get out of, she started asking questions in a tone that left me little doubt she was convinced I was in serious trouble. She sat about ten feet away from me in a high back chair staring down at me asking about my marriage, my children, my religion and why I thought I was dying all the time.

I shook my head.

I couldn't keep up.

Each answer I gave her seemed to trouble her more. When it came to John and the kids and my age of marriage and having children, I could see in her eyes a big old mental nod--too young for all that. And I won't even go into the messages her eyes were giving me when I talked about my own childhood. (Remember this is all in the first TEN minutes). I felt my heart rate rocket. My belly flipped. Things started going dark.

Good Lord, I thought, I'm having a panic attack IN THE THERAPIST OFFICE!

What?

This isn't supposed to happen! I'm supposed to be getting cured from all this! What? What the HEEL?!

I remember leaning forward and saying, I grew up in a home wacky and strange and unorthodox home, yes, but it was filled with love. I married young, yes, but to someone I loved and still love with perhaps too much strength, and my children (and at this point I was crying), they hold me here. They are the roots that ground me to this world and without them I'd be lost. They are the bravest, strongest, smartest, funniest things in my world and I would do anything for them.

Again, the odd shift of the eyes and a strange nod of the head.

Well, she said, now lets get down to business.

WHAT?

I just told you something about me. Something so big that it made me cry in FRONT OF A STRANGER and you're just nodding your head and tell me that we need to get down to business because the clock ran out?

Hum.

So we get down to business. I fill out (with shaky hands) oodles of paper work. I hand over insurance cards and listen with half an ear about her business ramblings. It isn't until she starts talking about diagnosing me that I realize somethings going on here.

What? I ask, confused.

Well, I have diagnosed you, but i'm only doing it so insurance will pay for you. REally, it's nothing. Now did you sign here and have you signed here and oh, you need to fill that out all the way.

So I go back to my signing and filling in names and numbers and other busy work while my mind tries to grasp what she's talked about . . . a diagnosis? What? AFter ten mintues? And what exactly did she diagnose me with.

Um, I say about that . . .

Yes, now I'm going to tell you how I work. You are NOT broken and I cannot FIX you. That's how I work. I can see a few things you do well, but they're coping mechanisms and I can see a lot of things you do wrong. We have our work cut out for us . . .

I blink. What? But . . .

I nod my head as if I know what on earth she's talking about but I'm still reeling from that word "diagnosis" and my hearts still racing and the room still looks suspiciously dark and I can't remember John's cell number that I'm trying to write down.

Then she goes on to tell me the history of her degrees and her alternate styles of therapy and her DOCTORATE and how she's a PHYCIATRIST and how if we don't fit she'll switch us . . . for me of course . . and Now Time is up and we'll see you next week.

I'm ushered out of the office down a dull colored hallway to a waiting room filled with people staring at nothing sitting as far away from each other as possible. She greets a couple, the woman hugely pregnant wearing a tiny tank top and short shorts and a slick backed hair with sparkly jeans man and asks them to follow her. The woman catches my eye and I see a bleakness in them that makes my heart sink. I walk over to the water dispenser and pour myself a cup with shaking hands. I crumble up the cup and toss it into the waste basked and then, trying hard to keep breathing, I walk out of the office.

It's not until I'm walking down the curving stair case of the lobby, the sun streaming through the wall of windows, that I realize that I can finally take a breath. My legs are wobbly and my head hurts. I walk out the door and I feel like I'm an escapee. I feel liberated and free. Giddy almost.

I survived.

I SURVIVED!

I climb into the car and sit there, letting the stifling heat of the sun baked car soak into my bone chilled body. Lordy, that was horrid. Horrid and I never ever want to go back. EVER.

But I should.

I didn't get the answer to sailing through life's bumps.

I have to go back.

I need those answers.

I will.

I can do this.

I'm strong.

I'm . . .

I started the car and drove off.

But two weeks later, I can finish that "I'm". . . it ends with a "stupid." Yep. I'm not saying therapy is bad. Glory be, I think it's wonderful. But that therapist for me (and she might be fantabulous for others) is dead wrong.

Sometimes I think we are BROKEN. And sometimes there are people out there who FIX us. When I really and truly thought I was headed straight for the Loony Bin, my friend Emily sent me a text--a line--that fixed me. It made me feel fine about my broken-ness and my imperfection. It HEALED me.

This morning, as I was crying to our Landscaper (and it takes a lot to get me to cry to a man who isn't my husband or brother or father) about the stupid things that just don't get done to finish this job, and he told me, "There isn't anything we can't fix. We'll make it right."

Those words, they calmed me right down and I caught my breath and my tears stopped.

What did he say?

That there isn't anything we can't fix?

That we'll make it right?

What?

Wait. Wait a second . . . I think it's true.

And at that moment, I had an epiphany.

A Great Jumping Jehosephats epiphany.

I got my answer to "going through life without being ruffled" answer.

This is it: YOU'RE NOT. I'm not. None of us are going to go through life without getting the socks knocked off them. We're all going to be laid flat and no therapy or medications or vacations or money is going to fix that.

But there is NOTHING that we can't fix. We can make everything right. It just may take a while, but as Emily texted me, Perfection is way over-rated.

Moral of this story: Why go to a therapist when a Landscaper has all the answers?

In which you can see the progress of the yard . . .

2011-06-26T22:33:00.000-06:00

Ok, so here are two or three sets of shots (taken a few days apart) of things ACTUALLY happening to our yard. They are pretty self explanatory, so enjoy.

(sorry about the over exposure of quite a few of them . . .)

I have not idea why I took so many photos of the stairs . . . but aren't they great?

Notice the tethered slide (the wind was mighty).

And now . . . mostly done!

wonky slide entrance that NEEDS to be fixed, but that doesn't stop the kids from sliding away . . .

When the landscape architect that designed our yard came to place the plants, I said, Um is this side yard supposed to look like a saggy boob? She looked completely seriously and said, Why no, it should have much more lift and shape. Then we both laughed and as you can see by the thin dark line, we're giving it a bit of a fill.

To get into our house, you have to traverse the uneven, dirty, mucky ground and step up three feet. Or, as most people do, they knock on the garage door.

In which you can see the progress of the yard . . .

2011-06-26T22:32:00.000-06:00

Ok, so here are two sets of shots (taken a few days apart) of things ACTUALLY happening to our yard. They are pretty self explanatory, so enjoy.

(sorry about the over exposure of quite a few of them . . .)

I have not idea why I took so many photos of the stairs . . . but aren't they great?

Notice the tethered slide (the wind was mighty).

And now . . . mostly done!

wonky slide entrance that NEEDS to be fixed, but that doesn't stop the kids from sliding away . . .

To get into our house, you have to traverse the uneven, dirty, mucky ground and step up three feet. Or, as most people do, they knock on the garage door.

In Which I Contemplate . . .

2011-06-19T19:44:00.000-06:00

Ragnar

June 17th (Sarah Shaw's bday) to June 18th, 2011

Van #1: Doreen, Kamie, Holly, Julie, Anne, and Me (with my eyes shut--duh)

Our whole team: Project Runaway! HOtties every single one!

Oh, yeah . . .

Can you feel the women power? We even got interviewed by CNN . . . we were that amazing!

Me and the sisters--fresh and ready.

Me at the starting line--feeling amazingly nervous. I felt at that moment I had the whole team waiting on me.

How the exchangest worked (Doreen trading off with power-house Holly), the slap bracelet got handed off to each runner.

Avon pass--7. something miles up. Holly was amazing--the scenery wasn't so bad either . . .

How our car looked--not much room for stretching out . . .but it strangely felt like home for 25 hours.

Me . . . passing a six foot plus guy (who was suffereing from a stomach flu)

Waiting for Annie to come in from her last run . . .

Hotties . . . our car decorations

Doreen and Anne running together . . . amazing, strong, happy women.

Partying it up while Holly chugged up Avon pass.

Seriously, music blasting dancing . . . all that energy drink did us good while Holly worked for us

I was there too!

Holly and Kamie running together during a water break. There are only a few places that Ragnar gave our runners water, most of the time we were/are responsible for hydrating and feeding ourselves. So every few miles, one of us got lucky enough to run and cheer on our teammates while hydrating them.

Par-tay!

Night Gear--everyone needed a head lamp, reflective vest and a great attitude . . . Holly had all three!

Ok, so this is really dark, but this is where we bunked down for the night. Dark, short carpet over cement hallways of the local high school. I thought, I will never be able to sleep on this. That was my last thought before our alarm went off a whole three hours later (sleep time: 3 hours from 3:30 am to 6:30am)

Finished! I seriously have NEVER felt that tired in my life. Wait, I have, after twelve hours of labor and two hours of pushing Henry out. Yeah, it was like that and I think I"m actually more sore. But just like birth, man, I'm so glad I did it.

Feasting on pizza and pasta and loving up the husband.

End result: I love Jessica for asking me to be on the team and I love those five ladies I shared a van with for 36 hours. I do. Three of them I didn't know them before and now, I feel like I know the most important things about them--they're cheerful even when starving, freezing, exhausted, slightly ill, and in the horrid heat and all of them ROCK at running.

I can see why people get addicted to this.

Zions and Yard in photos

2011-06-13T09:00:00.000-06:00

It's working, the internet, for the moment:

Piper heading up the path to Angel's Landing

Bid and kids blowing grass

The first corner--ah, so unaware of what's ahead--of Angel's chain half mile hike

The face of fear--note the nothing behind her

Henry and our friends hiking up ahead of us--doesn't look too bad, right?

Here's another angle of where they were standing

The top--Phoebe refusing to move until I found John and the littles--notice how there is slant on both sides.

Me and the Piper

Rock Star Piper in front of the fin we just traversed

Quail Creek Camping with the Hogans

Side yard with an image of the slide that is hopefully going to get put up one of these days . . .

Beds cut and ready for cement and soil and . . . well, finishing. It's looked this way for two weeks. Fingers crossed it won't look this way much longer.

Back Yard--garden on the left and a berry patch straight ahead.

Heights

2011-06-12T22:44:00.002-06:00

Our internet is on the fritz. During the digging of our new sprinkler lines, the workmen accidentally severed the Comcast cables and so now it’s internet schizophrenia—on off, on off, on off. I keep trying to up load photos of what’s happening to our yard, but that just doesn’t work with the internet not being able to make up its mind. I will tell you that nothing much has happened in the yard (for weeks now), so you’re not missing out on the photo side.

We started the summer by packing up the van (saying naughty words and vowing that we were going to buy a roof carrier NEXT TIME) and heading down to Zion’s for a weekend of camping with our old law school friends, the Hogans. We left freezing, windy Highland to arrive four hours later to sweltering Southern Utah. And even though I vow I hate hot weather, the sweat running down my back and dry heat making my throat feel cracky made me feel blissfully happy. Heat. Blessed heat and blessed blessed sunshine. Course, by the time we set up our tent and put the sleeping bags inside, I was not feeling quite so kindly about the said heat.

Oh man, Angle’s Landing is a person who is afraid of heights (me!) nightmare and then add five of your precious children into the mix and it’s seriously a recipe for early death.

Watching Celia stumble along clutching (or not clutching) the iron chain bolted into the wall of the rock (the only thing keeping you from sliding down thousands of feet to your DEATH!) made my insides shiver and my legs buckle. Phoebe, blessed afraid of disaster just like her mother Phoebe, sat down once we finally made it to the top (which was an iffy thing—she said at least three times, I AM NOT TAKING ANOTHER STEP! I HATE THIS! I AM GOING BACK DOWN!—to which I always heartily agreed and offered to happily accompany her . . . but her father’s stubborn blood also flows strong and she’d scrunch up her face and shake her head and grab the chain links and go on, climbing up the freakishly high and devastatingly scary heights) and said to me, “I WILL NOT MOVE until you find Daddy and Finn and Piper and make sure they haven’t fallen off the top of the mountain.”

I went (and for those of you thinking that once you reach the top of Angles landing there is reprieve—think again—there is nothing but a narrow strip of rocky, stumbly rocky, uneven, tilting both directions DOWN, stretch of ground) and found Piper and John about thirty feet from the top. Piper had no wish to make the final 30 feet ascent and so together, like the slowest turtles to ever creep across the ground, we made our way down. Me always holding onto either her hand or her camel-pak and pony tail (just to be sure I had lots of things to grab if she slipped). She would sometimes complain when I was holding just her hand (and red welts would appear from my firm grip), but I would still her by saying, Piper, Mommy just HAS TO DO THIS. And then behind us we’d hear an echo of all the people traveling at our tortoise pace echo my words. “Just let her hold your hand, Rock Star,” they’d say.

I kept offering to step aside to let the masses behind me pass, but they’d always assure me (their voices was all I heard, there was no way I was taking my eye off Piper) that they were just fine traveling at this pace. It was when we finally reached a relatively safe and wide enough to let the entourage we’d formed pass us, and they each said some sort of encouragement to Piper (her favorite being that she was AWESOME DUDE!) that I realized that they were all just as terrified as I was that she’d slip out of my fingers and go careening down the cliff side. It was a possible car wreck they couldn’t quite stop but also couldn’t stop watching either.

John thought he was fine about the whole thing, poking slight fun at my utter exhaustion after it was all over (a nap has never sounded so good), until that night in the tent, all of us tucked in together, laughing and finally the silence of all the children’s sleeping. “Mary!” he whispered frantically to me, “I just imagined . . . oh, it was horrible . . . I just saw Celia fall from . . . it was so high and I couldn’t stop her . . .”

I rolled over and patted his arm, “I know, I’ve been having them all day. I’m now going to think of unicorns and dolphins and dogs and try to go to sleep and we are never climbing that again with our children until they are in college.”

He agreed.

With only one other moment where I saw Celia teetering over a thousand foot drop trying to chase a chipmunk over a ledge (I was calm, I will note, calm and quietly urging her to just come over here, just a little . . .), we left Zions.

I slept the whole ride home.

I slept the whole day Monday.

And it wasn’t until Wednesday that I really believed that my children were truly on solid ground. I look up at the mountains by our house and they seem so kind and easy and safe.

And I do believe that it was on Wednesday that I personally discovered that not only were my children safe, but they were on vacation . . . which meant . . . I was on vacation.

Oh, man. Oh, MAN! I’ve read a book every day. Sometimes one and a half. We do only the essential jobs. We haven’t done a lick of homework or reading. We’ve swum every day. We’ve eaten three watermelons. I have only cooked three meals and the house in general is a disaster.

SUMMER!!!

Here we come . . .

Yard Day 1

2011-05-26T20:28:00.000-06:00

We're turning our drab yard into (fingers crossed) a thing of beauty.

This process, I'm sorry to say, takes time. They are estimating three weeks to a month. I'm planning on five weeks so I'm not horribly disappointed. Seeing that my writing/thoughtful brain has taken a sabbatical, I'm doing everything these days by pictures and simple gestures (usually involving pointing to things or waving my arms while I make noises deep in my throat that sometime make sense--but often don't), I've decided to let you, my wide, oh so wide, audience get a day by day visual update of the yard.

And perhaps, if my brain begins to function, I'll give you a bit of thoughts here or there. But I wouldn't hold your breath.

And now, BEHOLD . . . the first day of Thomas Yard Revitalization:

Be warned, it doesn't look like much . . . yet . . . but patience, and a few weeks, and then . . . well, you'll just have to watch and see.

Just a little close up of what they're doing--marking out and cutting up the grass where our new sidewalk/entry walkway will be.

Until tomorrow . . .

A Walk Before the Rain

2011-05-23T15:28:00.000-06:00

Three Amazing Things Before Dinner

2011-05-17T15:38:00.000-06:00

1. Celia's art

I love this girl. If anyone asks me who my easiest child is, I will immediately reply Celia. Not that she doesn't make me crazy, she does. Of all my children, it's her that gets me to use my trailer-park-mom voice in full swing over the tiniest things. But she's my kid I can always rely on to forgive me and everyone as soon as you say, I'm sorry. No sulking for her. She just looks at me, usually hugging me, and says, It's Ok, Mom. Half the time I tell her, No, Celia, it's not. I was mean and I shouldn't have been. You should be mad at me! But she just hugs me hard and tells me, It's ok, Mom. How could I not love her?

Lately, she's been leaving paintings tucked into my computer (yes, she obviously knows where to put it so that I will for sure see it) and hanging her art around the house.

computer paintings

I love them, the paintings and the drawings, and I love the fact that she gives her favorite ones to me.

2. Piper and Finnegan. They were hard to get here, lots of tries and lots of heart ache, but I till you what, today when they both came up wrapped in their blankets and spent three minutes straight hugging me and telling me how much they loved me, I was VERY GLAD we didn't give up. I swear they came to earth just to make sure I knew brilliant moments of joy each day.

Finn and his girlfriend and neighbor Tessa (who he is, according to him, going to marry)

Piper in her Kindergarten Patriotic Show (best yet)

Driving her Kindercar around the school

What happens to all the pictures they (and I) draw and then color

3. Phoebe's ballet and Henry's soccer

The wouldn't let us take photos during the performance, but her is Phoebe in her make up with John and his parents.

Watching Phoebe dance on Saturday night seriously brought me to tears. She was in three tiny parts and barely danced at all, but sitting there watching her poise and presence on the stage, I was struck with the fact that she's growing up and she's growing up well. I can't take any credit for it. I can't take a bit of credit for my kids anything because I'm pretty sure they're mostly raising me and they're doing a really good job. She's filled with light and grace and confidence. John and I looked at each other and just smiled, knowing that we both felt the same way, proud and lucky to be her parents.

I don't have photos of Henry playing soccer because I can't hold still long enough to take them. I'm glued to the field (even when he's not on it), cheering those boys on (making other parents crazy I'm sure), feeling this insane HUGE joy that he's doing something he loves. He got a yellow card two games ago and laughed the whole way home about it and at the same time, when he knocked a kid over who couldn't get up, he ran over and reached down and helped the other player up. Across the field I heard him say, "Hey, are you ok?" It's making him a crazy, tough, and tender guy. I was so afraid moving up a level he'd lose his sense of gentleness and kindness. And I have to admit, I love to see him race down the ball and steel it. He's awesome and by golly, he's mine.

Hum, I guess it's really four amazing things before dinner.

Now, the rain and sleet have stopped for a minute and let's see if I can do a fifth amazing thing before dinner and go for a run.

Now I know . . .

2011-05-15T16:52:00.000-06:00

I had these great plans to write down this list of all the things I've learned in the past three decades in poetic form, but the kids came home.

Piper's crawled on my lap complaining that Henry almost gave her a concussion slamming her to the ground when she tried to steal the soccer ball (I believe this).

Phoebe flopped on my bed and asked me what time they left, how long they've been gone, how I liked her outfit, and what music I was listening to.

John's trying to organize the kids into helping get dinner on the table, but mostly he's frustrated and I can hear in his voice he wishes I'd go out there and help him.

Now Celia's rubbing my shoulders and spitting whatever she's eating into my hair (all a rouse to get the ipad off my desk).

I don't have time to write down all the great wisdom of my life because I'm too busy living it.

I'll boil it down to what I've learned this week:

Hold that thought. Finn is here with his big blue eyes begging me to "come here and close your eyes and it's a surprise, but DON'T GUESS."

How can I resist?

What do I know now?

That there is a time and place for everything and this isn't the time or place to tell you what I know . . .

Rebirth

2011-05-08T20:58:00.001-06:00

It's raining out. Heavy, pattering rain that knocks up against the windows and thumps on the roof and creates puddles everywhere. I'm inside, staring at it fall and splash and watching it turn the dead grass outside my window from a dull yellow to a fresh, rich green.

I'm noticing that the trees that were full of tiny, tight buds are bursting open, and tiny, soft new leaves are unfolding. I look at those leaves and I can feel their tenderness and their fragility. In a few weeks, they'll be firm and strong and weathered, but right now they're still so new that you can press them against your cheeks and they feel like velvet.

It's here--the shift from winter to spring is happening right before my eyes. I can't remember the last time I stopped and watched spring unfold but I know it's been years, perhaps decades. I've always been a bit too busy or preoccupied with life to stop and watch the transformation. But not this year. This year with all it's changes, good and bad, has hobbled me and made me stop and sit and watch. It's been long and it's been hard waiting for spring.

I think of that Frog and Toad story, "Spring" where Frog is looking for spring and everyone keeps telling him, "it's around the corner" but it's not. So he goes around another corner and still, it's not there. He keeps going around corners until . . . at last, when he's about to give up, spring is shooting up through the ground and out of the trees and bushes. That's how I've felt. And really, this spring has been very cold and very gray and very depressing. The snow pack is at 200% (a fifty year or something like that high) and there are still people skiing every weekend. The weather prediction kept saying warmth, but then the wind would shift and cold would come and gray and icy winds.

So we've all been waiting. Waiting and hoping and I think as each day of cold has continued, being just a little more hungry for warmth and the smell of earth thawing and grass growing and the sound of birds.

Then last week, a night warm enough to crack the window through the night, I woke as the sky turned from gray to pink, to the most beautiful sound I think I've ever heard. It went straight through my skin and ribs and sank right into my heart. It was a bird, a tiny plain looking bird that I still don't know the name of, hopping around the yard, raising it's head calling me out of bed and calling to Spring. I lay in bed and smiled. I couldn't help myself. It was the best magic trick ever and it was REAL. Spring's first little gift.

Each day this week, I've found more of those gifts. More birds sing to me. More leaves are pushing their way through the hard shell of buds. More sunshine and moments when I feel warm. More Spring.

This past year, I can't even begin to tell you how hard it's been. I don't even want to. I thought things in the past that I've gone through had created enough mental and spiritual muscles to insulate me from more challenges. Silly me. I look back and I see flashes of the best and the hardest moments of my life and sadly the scale in the past year dips heavily on the hardest side. I have been waiting for the good part to start happening. I've been waiting for the Spring to come into my life. I've been turning each corner with complete hope that this would be the last corner I'd have to turn before everything would be good again. But it's not happening. Life isn't getting good or easier. On lots of levels it's just getting darn harder. In fact, each corner I turn sends me into a harsher storm than I came from. I'm ready to sit my butt down and let the winter take me.

Which is why when I was in Walmart looking through their books with Phoebe, I grabbed a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin like a drowning victim grabs a life vest. Surely, I thought, while looking through the book and read about a woman somewhat like me who should be really happy but wasn't and wanted ot change it and decided to, I can do this too. Surely I can figure out how to be happy. I ordered it and along with it a book along the same theme, The Same Kind of Different as Me.

I ended up reading the first twenty pages of The Happiness Project and all of The Same Kind of Different as Me and bawling my eyes out (sobs that shook the bed and snots that dripped on my shirt and I didn't even care) and felt myself shift and change. I stopped rushing around looking for happiness to come to me and began looking for it instead. I realized that a huge part of my problem was that I've been waiting for other things and people to make me happy. Not a great idea. Now I'm looking inside of myself for that. I'm figuring out what makes me happy. What hurts me and heals me and what I can do about it. That's why this year's been so hard. Marriage and motherhood out of necessity has a way of swallowing you whole and then at some point you realize that you've drown and you don't even know what your favorite color is or what cookies you like or what clothes you like or what makes you happy because all you worry about all day every day is making everyone else around you happy. I'm in the storm that strips me back down to who I am at the end of the day. I am unhappy because I fundamentally don't know what makes me happy.

But I'm learning.

A bird that sings to me each morning makes me happy. The sound of the rain makes me happy. The sight of spring.

I have a long way to go. I'm fragile, but I'm budding. I'm like those new leaves, easily damaged, but I have the potential to become strong and tough. I've got a long long way to go or perhaps, perhaps the answers are just around the corner.

April 2011

2011-05-03T20:30:00.001-06:00

Our life in Photos:

The Bean

Phoebe

Celia (and the baby elephant)

My Peeps (watching the Baby Elephant)

The Pipster

Finn and Johnny

Henry Parkouring (he proceeded to disconnect the blue stuff from the pole and spent the rest of our time trying to re-attach it)

Totally Cheesy, I know, but I love these crazy kiddos

Making The BEST Asian Feast ever

Celeste teaching the girls (and Finn) how to make gyozas

Gigi and Celeste

The Frying Place (and Slave Matt cutting veggies for the tempura)

gyozas

Hand-rolled (by our hands) sushi . . . oh, heavenly!

The frying feasting delicious mess

EASTER

Annual REAL egg hunt (we do NOT stop until every last one is found--for obvious reasons)

Easter at Grandma and Grandpa's house

THE FAKE EGG HUNT

GIGI

HUGHBE

ELLIS

PIRATE UNCLE TRAVIS

Pips (first one done by about fifteen minutes)

Celia: "Mom, wait, I've got the perfect face . . . now take the picture"

John and his 95 year old Grandfather

Our view post my race April 30, 2011 (and really, it hasn't gotten much better)

Letting Go

2011-04-25T21:55:00.000-06:00

We danced tonight with the windows and doors open as it rained outside. Crazy loud music that had us all pounding our feet and laughing, pouring out of our house and filling the hills around us. We didn't care. We danced until we were sweaty and out of breath and laughing.

Henry is pounding on the drums directly below me--directly below my desk and our bed. This is how I wake up Saturday mornings and am made aware that he's home in the afternoons. Wild pounding and thumping that makes my bum vibrate.

John is putting the others to bed and I'm stealing a few moments of silence before staring on my Joy School (ug) preparation for tomorrow. Did I just write silence? Ok, a few moments of not answering questions or talking--silence as my bum is vibrating is not exactly what I'm getting. I've chosen to spend these few minutes writing.

We weren't expecting this job of John's. In fact, we're still surprised by and a bit mystified and confused. We spent most of last week in denial. When he got the job offer, we didn't call anyone. We weren't sure it was true. We kept waiting for them to call back and say, Oops, that was all a misunderstanding. We are NOT offering you the job. But days went by and they were serious.

John looked at me and I looked at him and we said, Well, I guess we'd better be serious too.

It's nearly exactly what you said you wanted, I told him. So, it's not ideal ever way, but what job ever is? Let's do it.

And so we did it.

Yes, we have guilt that we are quite frankly unduly blessed, but I'm working through that. What's the point of a blessing or a gift if it doesn't give joy, yes? So I'm letting go of that guilt and worry and I'm letting my soul fill up with the lightness of a known future. It feels wondrous.

I am rejoicing. We're all rejoicing--in dance and LOUD songs that fill up the hills all around and drumming the vibrates and rattles windows.

Details

2011-04-21T21:20:00.000-06:00

Ok, now that John's officially accepted the job, here are the details:

Company: Ambre Energy in downtown Salt Lake City (Coal mining company with ties to Australia and Canada)

Position: General Counsel (oh, yeah, baby, just what he was dreaming of)

Salary: Good enough to pay the bills

Perks: Health insurance and an Iphone!

How we feel about it? Good. Plane old good.

Then again, it's pretty easy to feel good about almost any job with John's job history. No worries about getting sick of it or not liking it because . . . right about then, he'll lose it, sell it, or change jobs. Yes, we live exciting lives . . . maybe just a little TOO exciting.

Thanks for all the prayers and patience with our (my) laments. We're luckiest of all in family and friends.

SLOB

2011-04-20T21:41:00.000-06:00

Ok, I'll admit it, I love that word--SLOB. It's not only fun to write, it's fun to say--just annunciating it conjures up all sorts of slobby images.

Slob . . . slob . . . slob.

At the moment, I think this slobby word applies most accurately to me. As I was going for my lame 3 mile run today, I couldn't help reminiscing about myself a year ago. Oh, what a mistake.

One year ago, I was a woman of action and purpose and drive and productivity. I nearly single handedly finished unpacking my house (ok, so 99% of it was done by blessed angles, but that last 1% was amazing), I organized my garage, shuttled my kids between Highland and Orem/Provo three times a week, finished writing my book, trained for a half and full marathon, cooked amazing meals every day, read to my children every night, and read to myself amazing award winning books. In short, I was nothing less than super human.

Fast forward a year. I've got a full time nanny, a house cleaner, a tutor for my children, a handyman, and a trainer and what on earth have I done?

Jack and squat.

I have about three pages of writing to my name.

My meals have taken a drastic turn for the worse (toasted cheese three times a week and breakfast for dinner twice).

And reading? Hah, I can't stop falling asleep whenever I pick up a book that actually might improve my IQ.

In short, I've become an idle woman. I.E. Slob.

I remember reading about a woman writer who was a widow with six children and a mother and mother-in-law and brother to support at the turn of the century. She wrote something like this, The most prolific writers are busy mothers. I was in graduate school at the time of reading this (research for my own thesis), a mother of two and a wife of a top of the class law student. Busy was an understatement. But I finished (three years and two more kids later) and I produced amazing amounts of work.

That is until, I, ahem, got an at-home-farm-boy-slave unemployed husband in the house. He came from being a man in charge of selling a bazillion dollar company to being a homebody. So of course, he took over . . . everything. Carpools, school tutoring, house cleaning, home organizing, food shopping, dinner and dessert making--the WHOLE deal.

Seriously, he did it WAY better than me. And looked for jobs at the same time.

So I was left to idle away the days. Seriously, I know you may not believe this, but I actually got sick of shopping for clothes. I started missing (just a little) car pool. And I really began liking the never having to clean my house.

But this is all about to end.

Because in one week and three days, my nanny/tutor/house cleaner/handyman is leaving me . . . for a new job.

Yep, it's not the pie in the sky job, but it's got the right title, it pays, and it seems to promise some sort of excitement--obviously more than I was offering--and so John will soon return to the world of employed.

So where does that leave me?

Hum?

It leaves me thinking my slobby life is ending. And maybe, just maybe, that's not such a bad thing. Though, I tell you what, I sure enjoyed it while it lasted (the nanny/never have to clean up the kitchen or toilets part) and I will surely miss it/him when it ends.

Why I want to go to bed early . . .

2011-04-15T00:06:00.000-06:00

I am probably the sleepiest person you'll ever meet.

I could go to bed at 9:30pm, sleep until 8am and then at noon go down for a two hour nap and then go right back to bed at 9:30pm. I love sleep. I love the soft pillowy warmth of floating down the river to dream land. I love waking after long refreshing hours of sleep and just dozing in my covers.

Alas, this ideal sleep routine, even thought I dream about it, it's never been mine. Since I started voraciously reading at age 12 (Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native--go figure), I was dreadful about going to bed. I lived in the upstairs of our house, up a steep flight of stairs without handrails (yes, we regularly fell, slid, tumbled down and gave my mother heart attacks and yet, never did get railings) with louver doors at the bottom and at the entrance to both the bedrooms upstairs. There was a third bedroom that was quartered off the large rectangle area outside the rooms by sheer green curtains (again, how this was a good break, I never even thought enough to ask) which was where my little sister Barbara slept. My mother rarely, if ever ventured up these stairs and so, once we said our family prayers and I headed up the flight, I was pretty much free to read for as many hours as I wanted, which, usually was nearly all the hours of the night.

Our town library was tiny and YA lit was something that really hadn't taken off yet. I read every Judy Blume, but the rest, the serious authors about people's sisters or mothers or brother's dying or leaving or other depressing books which the eighties bread held nearly no interest to me. I tried the adult section and those books bored me to tears. One day, while I walked out of the upstairs tiny bathroom, there was a tiny old man waiting with a big paper bag of books. I nodded and then, as all old men, he started up a conversation with me. He showed me the books he'd found in the pile of books in the big room over the library. Beautiful books with illustrations and illuminations and ancient publication dates.

"You can get yourself a whole bag for three dollars,"he told me. "It's a gold mine of books!" With that he teetered away and I tiptoed into the room which I was sure was off limits to a thirteen year old.

But half an hour later, when my mother came to round me up, I had packed a bag full to the brim of books. I paid the librarian the three dollars and walked, somehow awkwardly to my mother in the car. "What is this?" she asked. "Books," I said. "I just bought them." "That's nice," she said and off we went towards home.

Little did she know that was the beginning of my none sleeping or actually listening to her or doing any of my homeschooling. Have I mentioned that I was homeschooled from 1st to 10th grade? Well, I was. At least, I was until I got that massive bag of books, then homeschooling went out the window. Yes indeed, I developed this amazing talent to both read myself and be able to listen with half an ear so that if my mother ever asked if I were listening to her, I could always repeat the last three sentences she read. (You have no idea how handy this was during college and, come to think of it, being a mother of children--they never think you're listening . . . ). And as my mother saw me reading so much and was of the school of thought that you could learn/teach yourself everything through reading, well, more power to me.

Oh dear.

I say this because I'll tell you what those bags (because there were more bags . . . half my babysitting money to be exact in bags of books) were not filled with books that were making me smarter. No, no indeed. They were filled to the brim with Harlequin Romances.

Yes. And even some saucier romances.

Oh, how I loved those books. Those horrid horrid lovely addicting books.

I remember coming downstairs holding the faded white book with an oval painting on the front of some torn looking lovers asking my mother and brother what on earth the word "seduction" meant. I can still see my mother's face and my brothers blinking eyes.

"What exactly are you reading, Mary?" she asked.

I held up the book (not yet aware that romances are just lower than fantasy novels--which I love as much as a good romance) to show her. She shook her head and like then, like the good mother that she is, she explained (in detail) exactly what that word meant. I hurumphed and made gagging noises and went back upstairs determined that whenever I did come across that word, I would skip three pages. I did. Religiously. No one believes me, but I tell you, I had and still have NO interest who puts whose hands where or whatever else goes on in the bedroom. EEEeeeew. (WAIT there is one exception and that is that lovely, lovely, dangerously saucy Diana Gabaldon Outlander book--I read every delicious word). But the falling in love . . . oh, sigh and sigh again . . . I couldn't get enough of that.

You'd think this made me the sappiest girl alive.

It didn't.

I thought all boys were nasty. Icky things and even though I did have a boy or two like me, I had no interest at all in any of them. Well, until the summer after I turned 16 and that is a story for another day.
And if you're wondering how on earth I met boys while I was homeschooled, that is also another story for another day. Oh, I love boy stories. Perhaps my next post will be boy stories. But not today. Today is about sleep . . . or lack thereof.

So I obviously developed this horrid pattern of NOT sleeping much. This of course fed my love of sleep even more. Especially when I went back to public school and in true Mary (ahem, Malcarne) fashion didn't just go back to normal school, I took school by storm, joining every committee, sports group, musical production, and everything else I could. Plus taking honors classes and learning six years of stuff in months. I was insanely busy. I'd fall into bed at midnight and at 5:45am my alarm clock (a relic of my sister Jayne that was broken before she got it) would make it's fog horn shake the windows noise, I'd roll out of bed, slam down the turn off and grab the clothes I set out the night before, slide or trip down the bannister free stairs and take a three minute flat shower and fly out of the house by 5:55 to get to seminary by 6am.

On the weekends, the time to catch up, I'd spend my Friday nights reading until nearly dawn Saturday (making up for all the hours during the week I didn't read), go to my track meets, and then read again nearly all Saturday night and drag myself through Church and sleep the afternoon away. Then Monday began the schedule all over again. I never did get enough sleep.

But when I did sleep, oh my, how beautiful that sleep was. The sleep that truly knit up the cares of my world--which were none. I was untouchable durning those years. I know, it's horrid, but I've got to write it . . . Ah, youth . . . Youth!

Fast forward oh man, twenty years, and you have me, with a child nearly my age then and four more younger, four houses and five jobs, two degrees, and a whole lot of interesting life between then and now and sleep has taken on a whole new shape.

I know I've written this before, but I must write it again to bow my head in shame to Dr. Davision. I know now what she was talking about when I sassed her about reading all these tragedies of Shakespeare senior year. "You'll know someday why they're so important," she told me. "You'll know why the lines 'sleep that knits up the cares of the world' mean something when you're my age. It's the sleep you dream about but don't have."

Oh, man, I think she sort of cursed me because DO I EVER know what she's talking about. I've just spent seven weeks of not sleeping. I have laid in bed and wished for even the tiniest bit of knitting to happen in my brain and body, but no such luck.

And then, thanks to some sort of miracle, I've had a week of sleep. Beautiful sleep that grabs me and holds me under so deep that I don't even wake until 10am. I've never slept that late in my life. Not even after prom nights where I stayed up until the sky was pink. I wake early. I stumbled out of the bedroom this morning, blurry eyed and dizzy and said, "What on earth is wrong with me? I can't get enough sleep."

Well, if there is something wrong with me, let it take me. Sleep. Precious sleep is something I no longer take for granted. It is a gift and not freely given. It is what I pray for when I know someone is sick or troubled. It is what I hope for when I wrap my arms around my shaking nightmare scared children and hush hush them. It is what I will when I hold John and stroke his hair when he lets down his guard and whispers his fears. It is God's greatest treasure that none of us truly understand the beauty of until it's taken from us. I know I will have trouble sleeping again, but not today. Oh, bed, here I come . . . please, please, please welcome me!

Top Ten of the Last Ten (ok, fourteen) Days

2011-04-10T21:17:00.000-06:00

1. Having the utter pleasure of having Bec and kids stay at our house--amazing food, lazy mornings, fun afternoons, and sleepy evenings

2. Birthday--got everything I wanted and more (the flowers Bec and family gave me are STILL blooming).

The Birthday Sign Phoebe made for me (staying up two hours past her bedtime!)--isn't it amazing?

My BIG birthday gift (the New Beast)--thanking Phoebe for the sign

The Cake and the kids (I made John promise he wouldn't spend the day slaving away in the kitchen making my cake--he didn't he bought it from Everything Bundt Cake--DELICIOUS). Can you believe how big Henry is getting?

Birthday Dancing (do we have the moves or what?)

Making a wish . . .

3. Breakfast with Emily at Kneaders. Forget how much a good conversation over good food and drink does for your whole being.

4. Lunch with Jen at the Blue Lemon--soup and salad to die for, but a whole hour to chat and eat without children interrupting--BLISS. How is it I'm so lucky in friends.

5. Skiing with Anne's whole family and almost all of mine (watching Celia fly down the bumpy, moguls in deep heavy snow, screaming and flailing, flying along behind her unable to control my own skiing, laughing so hard thinking I'd either pee my pants or die crashing--luckily didn't do either).

6. Sleeping for ten hours straight.

7. Having Finnegan curl up on my lap and gently stroke my cheeks and say, "I can't help it, I love you so much I have to be near you." And then doing it again five minutes later. And again two minutes after that. You just can't have enough love.

9. Piper and Finn's conversation about death. Finn: "Even Sea Creatures die, right? When I person dies, a sea creature dies?" Me: "Hum . . ." Piper: "Yes Finn, everwything has a weakness. Houses have fire, doors have scratches, water has ice, ice has fire, fire has . . . ice? water? air? And cake has healthiness." Finn: "No, cake has oldness." Piper: "No, no, Finn. Cake's weakness is HEALTHINESS."

10. Thrift shopping with Anne and having their family make my insanely happy for four whole days. How do we get so blessed to have so much family to love and be loved by?

10.1 The fort Asher and the kids made (which they are all sleeping in tonight--all five of my kids) and no one wants to take down now that the Campbell's are gone.

The Fort--inside and out (and NO there are no pillows, cushions, or blankets left in the house).

Driving with the Bean (Me)

2011-04-05T10:00:00.000-06:00

Henry is obsessed with driving our cars. He has this idea that because he's fourteen, only one year from fifteen when he'll get his learner's permit, he should be able to drive.

I am equally obsessed with him NOT driving.

And this is why--I remember how spacey I was when I first started driving (and I was sixteen and a half). I'd get distracted--Squirl!--and then I'd be halfway into the other lane. The only way I didn't die was because I grew up in a tiny town where there were usually miles between cars in front and behind and coming towards you. I hated that out of control feeling and how much focus you had to give the road. I didn't push driving--in fact I avoided it.

That summer I turned sixteen, I had that fateful trip with my mother (where she got so sick and neighboring members of the church came and took us into their house and I thanked them by having a standing up screaming my head off nightmare about snakes) down to Pennsylvania. On the way back, thanks to her sickness, I had to drive through New Jersey. Anyone who knows anything about these highways will understand why on earth I would never want to get my license--jersey barriers on all sides, lanes barely big enough for tiny cars, let alone the tractor trailers that traveled these roads at night. Terror is a mild word for what I felt. I refused to drive for two months after that trip. My mother forced me into the car to take my driving test.

I hadn't driven for two months, never parallel parked or parked at all (pretty much only highway dirivng), and had only logged seven hours (our trip to Pennsylvania) when I was supposed to drive twenty.

Pashaw! My mother said, You've driven with me long enough. You'll do fine.

Seriously, when I got into that car with the instructor, I prayed not that I'd get my license, but that we wouldn't die.

We didn't and thanks to the booklet that I read on the ride over to the DMV, I successfully parallel parked (the last time in history) and did all the other things right. Miracles, I kept mumbling to myself, DO exist!

They handed me a license.

It was terrifying. Me? With a license? What kind of place was this, handing out license to absentminded, distracted, under experienced teenagers?

I showed my mother the plastic covered photo of me and laughed.

My mother promptly sent me off to get my own shots at the doctors 20 miles from our house--on the highway. I survived. And so did everyone else on the road. Hallelujah.

Did this make me a good driver? Absolutely not. I discovered that if you went fast around corners or over steep hills you're belly would swing and flip. I discovered that two huge eternal puddles on our half mile strip of Bahr Rd could make the car float and slide if I went sixty. In short, I loved driving--fast and rather wildly (John will tell you I still do--he just doesn't know how much I've calmed down). Small town equals only three police men and about seven hundred miles of back roads. My father, a race car driver as a teenager, never lost his love of the speed and fast turns and driving for years with him . . . well, lets just say he was a good teacher.

Being nearly the youngest, I usually drove by myself so I didn't really worry about my wild driving. My mother would tell me, be careful, driving with people can be distracting. It was, but my reflexes were even faster. Swerving was something I also became amazingly good at--not one mailbox to my name (though there were some extremely close calls).

I realized that some people liked my wild driving, and some . . . well, they never road with me twice. My favorite memory of terrorizing someone was driving my little sister Barbara and her date to a dance at the high school. He was very prim and proper and had even brought Barbara a flower. I was meeting my date (no idea who that was--maybe I didn't even have a date) at the school.

I was a senior by now and even more confident (wild) than I had been the year before. I yelled for them to get into our ancient Subaru and pressed the start button (a story for another day) and off we went.

Did I mention that I lived on a super steep hill? Some parents wouldn't even attempt to drive up it because it was so twisty and turny and steep. They'd have there kids come down and meet them at the bottom of the hill when it was time for them to go home (and sometimes, they couldn't come back--but that's another story too). And if they did go down the hill, which was covered on all sides with tall, majestic oak and maple trees and great big boulders, they would ride their smoking breaks down the whole way, fearing for their lives and the blind corner of even bigger rocks and trees.

This was not my style.

I honked twice (our warning to anyone coming up that we were coming down) and shifted into first, second, third, forth within the first five feet and let gravity take over. Bouncing over the bumps and jerking the steering wheel left then right (causing Babs and her date to fly from one side of the car to the other), I flew down the hill.

"You're INSANE!" Babs date yelled.

I laughed.

It had rained that day so the puddles on the road were nearly small ponds covering a good fifty feet of road. I gunned it and we flew down the road--I was trying to hydroplane the whole fifty feet.

I did.

The date screamed like a girl and kept grabbing the back of my seat yelling, "Let me out! Let me out! You're going to get us all KILLED!"

I laughed even louder.

Babs just sat there shaking her head.

We made it to the high school, the date slammed out of the car and grabbed Babs and yanked her away from me.

"You are NOT driving us home! I"m calling my parents and they'll drive us! You're MENTAL!"

I nearly peed my pants laughing.

And so, when Henry asks about driving--do you think I'm going to let him?

NO. No, no no no no noooooooooooooo!

Except that for the last few weeks, he's seriously been an angel. He constantly asks me if he can help me and whatever I gratefully say I need done, he does (on his own timetable, mind you). He's doing great in school, he's working his fanny off at soccer, and he's not terrorizing the girls. So when he asked me if he could drive after I got two texts from my friends who were listening to the Youth give their testimonies about how great Henry's was and how amazing he is, I relented.

Yes, I said, you can drive. It's late. No children are on the roads and it's only a quarter mile to our house.

His face seriously lit up like a thousand watt bulb.

Really? He asked.

Really, I said, but Henry, you have to go slow, you can't park in the garage, and you can't tell dad!

Got it, Mom.

So I put the car in park and we switch seats.

Ok, I said, Drive slow.

Uh, Mom, so which is the break and which is the gas?

What? I yelled. I thought you told me dad let you drive.

Well, he said, he did. ONly I was still sitting in the passenger seat. I just held the wheel.

Regret is a small word for how I was feeling at that moment.

Ok, I said, taking a deep breath. The big peddle in the middle is the break. Press it hard. The thinner one on the right is the gas.

Got it, Mom, now how do I make the car drive?

Ee gads. So I explained with him saying, Ok, got it! to everything and nodding confidently.

He put the car in drive and off we went, actually pretty good . . . for the first twenty feet. Then in his worry about going into the other lane, he kept almost sending us up and over the eight inch curb.

Henry! More in the middle! More in the middle! I yelled, hearing in my mind my mother shouting the same thing.

I reached up to open the garage door and said, Stop so I can . . .

But he just cranked the wheel and sent the van flying up the drive way and with me yelling the whole time into the garage, just barely missing the still rolling up garage door.

STOP STOP STOP STOOOPPPPP! I yelled, bracing myself for impact as we headed straight for the shoe self and wall of the garage.

Just before impact, he pressed the break enough to bring us almost to a stop.

THat was great! He yelled, beaming up at me, while the car still inched forward.

HENRY PRESSED THE FREAKING BREAK! HARD! NOW! I screamed.

Oh, ok, he said and we came to a full stop.

Clutching my chest, I said, Now, put the car in park.

He slammed the car into park and without turning the car off or making sure it really was in gear, he threw opened his door and jumped out, laughing like a mad man.

"Do not tell Dad!" I yelled at him.

"Too late!" he said laughing hysterically, "Dad, did you see my driving? Did you see me park?"

I looked right and there was John getting out of our little car, shaking his head, his eyes a little big and his face a little pale.

"I was amazing! It was awesome! I LOVE driving!" Henry yelled as he skipped inside.

"Oh my heavens," I said as I shakily got out of the car. "He's never going to drive again."

"At least," John said, "maybe we shouldn't let him park."

Oh man, and so it starts. I thank heavens I have a year to prepare myself--though, I'm not sure a decade will be enough. No wonder my mother didn't do the full twenty hours with me. Her heart probably couldn't take it.

Mending: Lessons from a Grandmother

2011-03-29T18:27:00.002-06:00

I do not sew (at least if i can help it).

It's way too exact and precise and hard. You have to be careful. You have to pay attention and you CAN'T do it fast. That just doesn't describe my personality at all. My grandmother decided that she wanted to pass on her sewing skills to me and so invited me to buy material and a basic pattern and she'd help me sew something.

With my dress pattern and dark blue with tiny white flowers cotton material, my grandmother taught me how to read a pattern, cut out the pieces and pin and then sew. We sat in her upstairs sewing/all purpose room, about as big as a middles sized closet. Her house was tiny. Her entire upstairs consisted of: a bedroom with two twin beds--one for her and one for grandpa; the all purpose tiny sewing/all purpose room; and a tiny bathroom with a claw footed tub, miniature sink and a tiny window right beside the toilet looking out onto the back yard with white curtains with cherries (I think . . . anyone else remember?). I remember using said toilet on many occasions and leaning out and yelling to my cousin Brian when he came home from school and having quite a cherry conversation while sitting on that plastic soft seat.

The windows were small in her rooms, rectangles of wood and slightly ripply glass, but let in tons of light. There was a huge wooden bureau in one corner where she kept letters, old material, her pinking sheers (sp?) still in their 1940s box which she only let me use if I promised to be very very careful and NEVER drop, and other mysterious things. When she passed away, four years ago, and I heard that everyone was going through her house and dividing up her worldly possessions, I felt so sad that I couldn't be there--not that I wanted anything. I was at the bottom of a long line of cousins and knew the pickings would be slim, but man was I sad that I wasn't there to go through those drawers of that bureau. I can still smell it--old wood and paper--and tugging at the slightly loose metal handles trying to get the drawer to slight open, but they always stuck. Then the drawer would give and there were the old letters, buttons, receipts, recipes and sewing supplies. She would shoo me away, but always in her kind, gentle, slightly teasing voice.

That was how she taught me--with that same kindness and patience and teasing. I remember asking her as I was plodding along sewing, if this darn machine could go any faster. Oh, did she ever laugh. She threw her head back and laughed and laughed until she had to take off her glasses and wipe her eyes.

That's when she showed me the speed button on the peddle. The one that if you flicked would turn the plodding pace into an all out race. Whew weee, did I have fun, with Grandma laughing and telling me half heartedly to slow down, slow down the lines wouldn't be straight, I'd . . . and sure enough I did make wild lines and I accidentally sewed the bottom of the skirt to the top. That's when I learned about what the seam ripper is for and what a great glory of a pain it is. Still, that didn't stop me from sewing like a maniac--bent almost double over the machine, pulling on both ends trying to make the line as straight as possible without slowing down a bit. And that's when it happened. My grandmother leaned over and said, Well, looks like you've got the hang of it . . . it's all yours and stood up and left. Left me alone to finish up sewing with the promise that she wasn't far away if I had any questions.

I never was very good at sewing. I always broke all the sewing speed limits and my seams were never straight and my necklines were puckery and my zippers--well, I did only one and it didn't quite work--were nothing to brag about, but I finished. I knew something about sewing. There was something to taking a straight bolt of cloth and cutting and sewing it into something you could wear over and over again. There was something to creating something basically out of nothing.

Years later, I realized in many ways that's what my grandmother did with me. She saw the raw materials of me and saw that I could learn something (even if I didn't learn it very well) and not just with sewing, but with a thousand and one things--walking, gardening, eating well, being responsible for our consumption and trash, how to treat others, and most of all, how to laugh and any and everything--especially ourselves. And I know I wasn't the only one she changed, I was just one of the lucky thousand people she touched.

This morning as I was mending up Piper and Finn's special blankets, breaking the sewing speed limits and making bumps were they shouldn't be and missing half the fabric, I felt so keenly the influences of my grandmother. She knew I sewed too fast and carelessly, but she didn't stop me (gave me advice, yes). She just let me pound away on that poor sewing machine and hammer out dresses and other things--all slightly uneven--and laughed with me and maybe just a tiny bit at me (with all the love in her heart). Love and laughter were the gospels of her life and we all learned from her.

This afternoon when Celia pulled out the piles of the ugly doll stuff and chopped away at fuzzy material and filled the room with yellow fuzz and white puffy stuffing, I didn't scream. I sat my fanny down and sewed with her. I laughed at her crazy design and warned her that it might not work--she didn't care but created the little guy and shesh, it is sort of cute.

And then Piper and Finn's reaction to their blankets being mended (and I'm saying mended in a really loose, puckered, uneven, lopsided way) was beautiful. Hugs and oohs and ahhs. Magic, I tell you. Magic.

Piper's mended blanket

Finn's mended blanket

Here's to grandmothers and mothers and fathers and husbands and friends everywhere who sat down next to a child and sewed and created with them. There is magic in creation--all types of creations. Magic, I tell you. Maybe I didn't have many things money could buy, but thanks to my grandmother, I had magic.

A Note on Mormon Blogs

2011-03-28T12:52:00.000-06:00

First off, I guess, reading the articles that pepper the web and people tell me about, that Mormon Mommy Bloggers are the rage these days (and not just with Mormon Mommies). I read said blogs and bow to them in respect and honor and I can see why they are so addicting and also somewhat criticized. Their lives do seem slightly too good, smooth, easy, and dreamy and their babies/children do seem just too cute and talented and amazing to be real.

Here's the deal--first off, I think Mormon's lives, thanks to the lifestyle of health--mental and physical--and commitment and hard work, really do create amazingly talented and happy individuals. I know families like these families and couples who are that in love. These women's lives ARE real. They do turn out four amazingly good looking, kind, talented, dressed well, well fed, educated and well balanced children. And they are generally in love with their husbands and happy on most days. Which is why, if you ask me, they get read. We are all attracted and fascinated with happiness--we all want it and when we see it, we can't tear our eyes from it and it gives us warm fuzzies. Which is why everyone has fallen in love with happy, affirming blogs that give the jaded in the world hope that there really is happiness out there--in marriage and parenting and life. It's their guilty pleasure.

I understand this. I think it's replacing women's obsession with Romances and such--it's real life romance and happily ever after. Sigh.

And oh, how I wish I could be one of them. I read them and wonder if I ever wrote things so happy and light.

But I can't help and doubt it.

I'm a deep girl--in words and feelings and I can't help but writing it out. I can still see John's very serious and thoughtful face looking at me when I was telling him, a week after I met him, that I was jealous (something I was not proud of). He nodded his head and said in a slightly worried voice, "You love hard, Mary." I didn't like that response or the fact that he was scared, but the truth of it is, I do. Is it my Italian blood? That's what I blame it on, but maybe it's just me. I love hard (as anyone whose felt my regard will attest) and I don't take things lightly. I dive a mile deep into everything and I'll tell you exactly how I feel.

So, on days like today, when the snow is falling, wind howling and no jobs in sight, I can feel just fine writing a cranky blog about my discontent and feel nothing but gladness that I'm getting it out of my heavy heart onto the world wide web.

In one of my moments of deep fear over my nursing breast (which they were worried was a bit too lumpy and possibly cancerous--it wasn't but it freaked me out), I went to a medicine woman in our old Highland neighborhood. She'd told me before that she was given the gift of healing (I do not doubt her). She was tall, thin, and had a face like the Madonna's in the medieval paintings.

How do I heal this perpetually aching breast, I asked her. She smiled her sad Madonna smile and said, Anyone can heal you--they just have to love you. Then she stretched out her hand and holding it about an inch away from my breast, she focused and pulled the pain away into her hand. You'll feel heat, she told me. And darned if I didn't. Then she pulled her hand away and gathered her fingers in and flicked them out. I'm getting rid of the negative energy, she told me. She did this a few more times and each time her hand hovered over my right breast, I felt the heat. Each time she shook out her fingers, I felt the absence of it.

I know it sounds crazy, but my breast got better. When I was leaving she said, You can do it to yourself as well. Just hold your hand over the place that needs healing and focus on pulling out the pain or hurt or infection. You'll feel it gather in your fingers--they'll get stiff--and when that happens, shake it out. Just flick them out and send the bad energy away.

I've done this. I've held my own hand over the parts of me that hurt or ache or are sick and I envision all the badness moving from inside my body and leaping through my skin onto my out stretched hand. I fist my fingers and flick them away, as hard as I can, all the negative energy. I don't know for sure if it works, but I feel the heat transfer from my aching parts to my hand. I feel powerful as I flick my fingers and thinking of all the wrong flying away--far away--from me.

I'm sorry to admit this, but each time I write out my fears and worries on a blog and press the "publish post" button, I feel the same power. I'm sending my problems as far from me as possible.

I think it works too. I already feel better and I haven't even pressed send.

But here I go . . . off with you negative energy and snowy day . . . scat!

Dreaming . . .

2011-03-24T12:40:00.001-06:00

Wow, I have to say that when I wrote the last blog entry, I really was feeling good . . . upbeat and level. But as I read the comments and the post again, I see that I was a bit, ahem, worse for wear than I thought. And really, with snow/sleet pouring down and my toes STILL frozen from winter, I'm probably not much better. However, I'm moving forward with my dreams.

I didn't walk yesterday, but I spent an hour outside jumping on the tramp with Finn and Piper, chatting with neighbors, and watching John and the kids rake and mow (the blessing of getting kids big enough to be able to do it themselves--and a mower the pushes itself). The sun was warm even if the wind was cool.

My sister-in-law sent me a delicious chewy bread recipe (that my mother-in-law swears is some of the best bread she's ever tasted) and I bought the dutch oven to cook it in.

This morning I went to a yoga class at the studio down the street. Man, it was amazing. I did a headstand and Crow (not for long, but still . . . I got into those poses). I sweat--big tears of sweat running down my arms. I panted and I breathed deep in and out. And then, I paid to have the privilege of going there whenever I want.

I'm getting out the paints to have the kids paint and I'm pulling out my sketch book from high school and using the girls water colors to paint again with them. I'm going to put on good music, turn the heat up (and put on sweaters) and let those creative juices flow.

As I was reading last night, the third book in Carrie Ryan's zombie books (yes, I went back to them . .. they're addicting!), I had a thought. The world as they know it is nearly gone. Almost everyone on earth has turned living-dead and only a few people survive on Alcatraz Island. There is pretty much no hope left. The two main characters are talking to each other and one is ready to give up, wondering how on earth they can go on, but the other, the main character Annah says, No, you can't give up. Just be glad for every moment you have and then when it comes to the end, FIGHT.

Man, I loved that line. Hallelujah that life is not even close to that bleak, but really, we should be thankful for what we have and when something challenges us--our happiness, our jobs, our future, and even our lives, we need to remember to FIGHT. Fight for peace, a good job, a sense of place and our health.

Do not go down easy. Stand and fight. Work it harder. Run faster. Fight.

And of course, dream . . .

Dare I Dream?

2011-03-22T21:31:00.000-06:00

Here's the kicker about unemployment--you don't own the future.

I know, like who really does, right?

But at least most of us have at least the illusion that we'll be here tomorrow. That a will lead to b. That our children have a chance at being at the same school next year. That I'll see my friends kids graduate from high school. That these friends I'm making will be with me through the thick and thin of the future.

I know, maybe some of you don't want that . . . that all you want is to leave your boring life. Well, think long and hard about that because right now, I don't have a boring, predictable life and it leaves a hollow place in my chest and a metallic taste in my mouth.

I go to bed and wonder if tomorrow we'll get the call for about a job that we can't refuse and I'll be uprooted and the kids will have to start all over again and . . . I usually can't sleep.

Meditation does help. Exercise is essential and eating really well is imperative for my sanity. Travel puts off the anxiety at least partially and severance helps to numb the pain. But they're all stop gaps. At the end of the day when I lay in my bed, the sick belly, the dark fears come up and rest beside my on my pillow.

I did the first unemployment poorly with lots of focus on me.

I did the second better, stronger, more realistically and more gratefully, but really, it took about everything out of me. I was a husk, a shell, an emotionally empty bag of flesh by the end of that year (a big more flesh than I wanted but hey, there is a price tag to maintaining sanity).

This time?

Well darn it, it came too soon. I wasn't ready. I'm not ready. I can't get myself ready. So what I've done is live in the land of denial. My game plan is ignore everything. Or at least I'm trying. So far, I'm rocking at ignoring. It's only in the moments before sleep that I see the true face of my terror and then thankfully sleep comes (at least for a little while) and I've made it through another day.

I sat at my computer today, trying to write, wondering why I couldn't when I had hours at my leisure and two books mapped out to create.

So I made myself sit down and write and this is what came out: A woman lying in bed dying as her 12 year old son looks on and tells her that he can no longer create.

Whaaaaatttt?

Oh, yeah, baby, I'm dying in bed, killing off my children's creativity--or maybe it's my own. Who knows, but the one thing I know is that I am MESSED in the head.

I pushed away from the computer and thought, Hum, maybe I should just wait until I'm in a little bit better place before I write . . . who knows what will come out. At least, CREATIVE writing.

Now emotional writing, I'm getting way back into that. For years I was a faithful journal writer, but over the years and thanks to blogging, my journaling has gone down hill fast. I think I've written six times in the last two years. But seeing as there is a pandora's box of trouble under my brain lid, I'm getting back into it and MOSES, the stuff that comes out. Dark and deep and rather poetic and Please Lord, don't let anyone read it until I'm dead and gone.

When I was putting Finn and Piper to bed tonight, reading them books and snuggling with them (albeit slightly irritatedly because we were LATE going to bed and I was TIRED), Finn reaches up his sweet little hand and starts rubbing my cheek, then my chin and then a huge blemish which had grown there overnight.

"Mommy," he says, "what is this bump you have on your face?"

"Uh, that's called a zit, Finn."

"Oh," says he continuing to rub it. "Well, it's big."

"Yes," says I, "I'm aware of that."

"Hum," says he, rubbing away. "You know . . . you look like a . . . a . . . witch . . . they have them on their faces too."

And right then and there I laughed so hard I nearly choked and I remembered with a vividness that comes only at moments like these being a child. Feeling and knowing that there were endless possibilities out there and that good was coming and joy was just around the corner and bed was a sweet safe place. Hope, joy, wonder. Childhood filled with dreams.

That's what is missing in my life . . . DREAMS. I'm so darn focused on just getting through the day, the week, the month without FREAKING out that I'm dying inside. I mean that. I'm literally dying. Shesh, I think I'd rather be a self-centered mess than a dead person inside.

So tonight, I'm dreaming . . . I'm making plans . . . I 'm thinking big thoughts (though I still will probably wait on the creative writing--don't want more deaths).

Here are my dreams:

I'd like to take a yoga class once a week from the studio down the road
I'd like to do our yard so I can have a garden to put my fingers in and green things to tend
I'd like to take a dance class
I'd like to paint one picture every day (every other day a finger painting)
I'd like to learn how to bake chewy bread
I'd like to have a good night's sleep where I don't have disquiet sleeping beside me
I'd like to walk everyday, no matter what the weather, around our block like the Indians (from India) in our neighborhood.

That's it. At least for tonight. My I feel better (even with a zit the size of a witch's wart). I feel freer. I'm going to dream more . . . maybe everyday. And I'm inviting everyone to dream with me. It's free and rather easy and more fun than you'd think.

Sacred and Profane

2011-03-20T21:05:00.001-06:00

I love visual art.

I don't claim to understand it or know much about it, but if there is a museum close to me, I'm usually there. If there is a local artist, I want to know about them.

Before 11th grade, an artist moved into the town next to us, Leif Nelson. He was tall and blond and lithe and like everyone who met him, I fell a little bit in love with him. It was the first time I'd ever paid much attention to painting, and his paintings especially spoke to me because they were of things I knew--places, buildings, houses, I'd grown up seeing everyday. But through his paint strokes and choice of colors, he made them new to me.

While we were in San Francisco, we got a card that gave us free admissions into select museums and places of interest (well, after you paid a large sum for the card). While we were biking around the Golden Gate Park, we stopped on top of a beautiful hill to rest (seriously, a MILE or more straight up the hill). Across from us was the San Francisco Legion of Honor. We had no idea what it was, but as it was free with our card, we walked towards the entrance. And there, in all his bronze glory, sat a copy of Rodin's "Thinker." We walked around the sculpture feeling very impressed that someone had copied Rodin's handiwork so well.

Once we got into the museum and started walking around the Legion of Honor we quickly learned that it was in fact a renowned Art Museum with the largest collection of Rodin works outside of Europe. Lucky us. There were rooms filled with art work spanning the last few centuries (and beyond). We spent two hours staring into the faces of old and young styles of paintings and sculptures. Several times, I felt this tightening in my chest and a stinging in my eyes . . .. There was something so powerful about the lighting and the effort of these painters to render life as they saw it and knew it that made me feel . . . better about life and humanity.

Fast forward a day, rainy and cold, JOhn and I hit another museum. This time the SFMOMA (modern art). The building itself is a piece of art and I was struck by the splashes of color and the mixing of mediums.

These are a few of my favorite pieces.

Course I forgot to take a photo of the name of the pictures or who they're by, but I loved this one because of the simplicity and the roughness of it--the splashes of white paint down the neat lines of the red. Yes, I did think, this is something Celia would paint.

Groovy. Wires strung and hung in a way that makes it beautiful. Ingenious.

I loved this mixed medium photo of a tree--colored and faded. It made me think of my sister in law Karin and her love of trees (and the fact that she will probably be here one day--only it will be much cooler).

This HUGE collage was AMAZING. This is for Biddy. She'll be here too.

The collage head on (AMAZING, yes?)

This one made me laugh my head off. Blue on the wall in a little arch. Yep, MODERN ART at it's best.

This one is for Anne--who makes these better in my mind (grape vine hearts).

Love this one--no one can seem to get a handle on love--but this artist can!

This was my favorite one--in fact, I took photos of it so I can try and find a print like it. The simplicity. The lines and symmetry. It's peace in a painting.

This is the art I understand (don't always like, but understand).

I moved on into an exhibit I was rather excited to see--the photo collection. The exhibits's title was Voyeur which should have raised a red flag right away, but I thought, I'm no green horn, I can see a bit of something--it's art right? I'll understand it.

And at first I did. Photos from the turn of the century, the 20s, the 30s and so on. Some were funny, many sad, most were beautiful in their ability to capture the essence of humanity.

Then I moved into the current photos.

I can't even describe them.

I wish I could forget almost all of them. At first they were interesting--photos of civil war battle fields, but quickly, TOO quickly they became photos of other battle fields, ones in my life time and in color. I found it hard to breath. But I couldn't tear my eyes away. One image was so disturbing, I know I'll take it to my grave. I turned and left--looking for John, for something alive and breathing. I stumbled into another room, these images were large, plastered on walls and were the opposite of death but just as troubling to me. I shook my head. I shut my eyes. These were not snap shots of people who were unaware--they were something planned and blatant.

And wrong.

I found John and he wore and expression matching mine. Confusion and disquiet.

We went on to another section--the section that brought us to the museum in the first place. Another exhibit of photos--these of San Francisco in it's infancy and of the first stop action photos taken at the turn of the century. Again I was mesmerized, but I carried with me the disquiet of the other exhibit.

We left and finished up our day walking back to our hotel through the maze of heart pounding steep hills and quaint neighborhoods. We found the most delicious croissant we ever had in a store with peeling paint and no name but locals crowded around. We caught sight of blue sky through the thick and twirling clouds. We stumbled into China town and marveled at the endless array of shops that sold things at ridiculously low prices. Neither of us mentioned what we saw in the museum.

But I think we were both trying to come to some sort of peace about it. We're both pretty open minded. We know what we like or dislike may not be the norm. We're good with that. But why would it trouble us . . . especially me so much?

It wasn't until late at night, walking back from a delicious dinner with one of my oldest friends that I began to unravel the knots in my thought process.

I was thinking about writing and about how for months I haven't been able to write. Not because I don't have things to say, but the things I have to say are about people I love and who are close to me. It isn't my right to use their lives in my essays. Their lives and their feelings and our relationships are not for common knowledge.

They are sacred to me.

That's when I realized what bothered me so much about those images. The sacred had been obliterated. Yes, yes, I see that that's the point--the shock value and so on. But some things, they shouldn't be filmed or photographed or stuck on a wall.

I think of the angle Gabriel coming to Mary and telling her that she was going to carry the son of God. Her response? "But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart."

I think of the difference between those photos and those beautiful illuminations and sculptures from the Legion of Honor--in each (and there were lots of nudies), there is a sense of reverence about the human form and humanity in general. Even in the abstract paintings and sculptures, I felt a sense of reverence--for color, for texture, for the medium of choice. But in those photos, in those images, there was no sanctity. It gave nothing and took too much.

It was the first time in my life when I realized that to each side, there really is a dark and light.

I will not tread so lightly into the dark again.

Sacred in Nature: Muir Wood Style

These clover carpeted the floor of the forest and were nearly as big as our fists. John would say, "This is the original Green."

After hiking for two hours, we summated, and here on top of the hills was a huge amphitheater that could literally seat thousands. THe show--the Bay and rolling hills (barley visible in the distance)

Feeling the youth and tininess of me.

Just a bit of sap (and maybe a smile or two)

The Golden Gate and crashing waves

Eight Days

2011-03-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's that time of year again when I got on my annual Sisters Reunion down to Florida.

Only this year, thanks to unemployment of the Johnny and insane ticket prices for a weekend stay, I got to stay eight days in Florida.

Eight days without kids and husband.

I counted and the longest I've ever been away before is six days.

There have been years when I would have done almost anything to have that break. To have days on end where I could sleep and read and just recover and heal from the rush and pull and perpetual needs of everyone. This was not one of those years. John home all the time has given me those breaks, that breathing room and time to just be.

And really, except for Barbara, all of us sisters were in the same boat. We came, for the first time, pretty rested and relaxed. The days flowed, not grabbed and squeezed for every tiny moment of me time. We moved slowly, talked slowly, didn't worry about how many hours we stayed at one place or another. Shopping was an off handed idea. Rain and clouds and cold weather didn't cause us all to moan and lament. We all went to bed early and woke late.

I kept thinking, We've grown up. We've grown up.

But I think what we've done more of is grow together. We're not just sisters anymore, we really are best friends.

We don't just have this yearly little window to be together. We all fly or drive to each other's houses multiple times a year. We meet up in the fall and spend another five days together. We call each other weekly (if not a heck of a lot more). What happens to one of us, happens to all of us.

I think back twelve years ago when I was heart sick about miscarraiges and not being able to get pregnant with a second child. I sat down on our rickety kitchen chairs in our graduate school married housing, sobbing to my mother about how hopeless I felt.

"You need sun. You need warmth and the beach. Come to Florida, it will make everything better."

Three weeks later Henry and I were flying away from the cold and snow of Utah in February on our way to the sun and sea. And along with me my sisters Anne and Jayne were flying down too. When they heard I was coming, they both bought tickets. "We need sun and beach too!" they'd protested.

While we were there our other two sisters, irate at the nerve of us not inviting them, vowed that next year we all needed to come down together.

So began our sister's reunions and so began the knitting of five hearts together.

Hallelujah for that heartbreak.

Hasn't this been my theme this year? Thank heavens for misfortune because it seems to bring about beauty in the end? I'm not sure it's always true, but in this case it has been.

Here's a taste of my eight days:

My parents home in Stuart, Fl (look at all the green)

Back Porch

Pool

Porch were we ate all our meals--yes, it smells like heaven in Florida

The flowers and treats my mom bought for us

The insane amount of delicious food my mom and sister stock piled so we'd be sure to return home fat and happy (and it worked!)

Gift Giving: Years ago when we realized that we always had our sister's reunions in Feb or March, the sisters started bringing Barbara and me birthday gifts. One year one sister (can't remember who) brought gifts for everyone. Since then . . . we all bring gifts for each other. The gifts are usually the best thing we found that year. For me, it was long necklaces.

This is all of us wearing/holding all our gifts (and posing in ridiculous poses):

So, the sun shone while we were there, but the wind was relentless and cold. Our solution--sunbathing on the beach deck shielded by the bushes.

Mama Reading

Jayne

Babs

The Twins--Anne and Doreen (favorite photo)

Our camp

Our dinner

Anne Loves to have us take photos of her food (and it does look yummy)

What happens to my hair when I am east coasted.

Jayne and Anne trying to spread the sheets our second beach day (look at that sea and sky . . . )

Why we didn't swim: Blue Bottles--Ick

Me--love the colors

Because I love the sky

My view--didn't get tired of it . . . still wish I were looking at it.

Annual run with my dad (good looking girls, yes?)

Our futile attempt to all jump at once:

Attempt #1

Attempt #2

Attempt #3

(Everyone try ballet poses)

Attempt #4

more ballet

Attempt #5

Attempt #6

(Just do whatever)

And we gave up . . .

Dinner at Carrabas

With Mom and Dad

Loving on Babs kids (Jack and Ella)

Just me and MOm day (the day after everyone left)

It was a perfect day . . .

The ocean was the clearest I've ever seen it and the sky . . . a perfect blue. Beautiful, lovely trip all around.

Blessed beyond measure. That's how I feel.

Chills, The Good Kind

2011-02-22T20:20:00.001-07:00

So my brother-in-law, Matt, is making a movie with his high school teens that he teaches. He did this last year and it was AMAZING. Like I was sitting in my seat thinking . . . well, actually I WASN'T thinking, I was totally gripped and forgot that it was a high school movie. It was THAT good.

This year, they're doing HAMLET, and it promises to be even better. Here is a clip.

Seriously, watch it . . . it's amazing.

But it won't get made unless . . . they raise another $2500 in the next nine days. It's super easy to give. Just go to the site and click on the big green button and it's cake. Just think . . . for the cost of one night eating out, you could get a copy of the movie (once they make it, they send you one as a thank you if you give generously) AND the knowledge that you were part of making a movie (your name appears on the credits).

Even if you don't give . . . watch the clip and give yourself some good old chills.

Now

2011-02-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is the third time John's job has stopped before we've found another one.

Driving through Oceanside and past our old house and neighborhood, I felt an echo of the sorrow and fear and confusion I felt seven and a half years ago when we drove away from that life.

I remembered so clearly the weeks leading up to our moving--knowing that this life that I'd carved out for myself was going to have to be abandoned. And the future that I'd planned for and planned on was nothing . . . there was no future. There was no money in the bank, a house we needed to sell in four weeks and a pregnancy that wasn't planned. I'd drive around staring at people in their cars, talking on their cell phones, laughing and talking to the people next to them, or just looking tired and wish I were them. Wish so badly I was someone other than me . . . someone scared and broken hearted.

Seven years later, four miscarriages, three jobs, three houses, two more children, a thousand new wrinkles, 10 pounds, and a momentary fat bank account, I have to smile.

Smile at that girl who thought those people who were driving by had no troubles. Smile at myself for believing that what I was going through at that moment was so huge and important and monumental in the scheme of things, when really it was just the beginning . . .

Of pain and loss and ill health and all sorts devilry.

But it was also the beginning of miracles and understanding and love.

Funny that.

I walked with Emily in the stormy skied, cool winded evening yesterday and we talked and laughed and spoke our dreams and I thought, I wouldn't miss this for the world. If John never lost his job in California, we wouldn't have moved then in time to move into our old Highland house and I wouldn't have met Emily or Jen or Kristi or the hundred other people I met and loved and who loved me.

I didn't know what was in store for me.

And if we didn't go to Calgary, I wouldn't have met Nancy and Lisa and fallen love with everyone in our Calgary 1st ward and learned how an amazing elementary school was run. I wouldn't have had three years with my sister-in-law Bec where we spent every day talking and every week soaking in time together. I wouldn't have had three years to love up my nieces and nephews. I wouldn't have know Calgary or Canada and gotten it in my blood.

And if Rockwell didn't fail, I wouldn't have come back to be here with Emily.

So . . . this all leads to maybe figuring out that I don't know anything. It not easy, all this change, but it's my life . . . and looking back, I feel this amazing gratitude that I don't control the ship because I'd never steer my life this way . . . and oh, OH what things I would miss.