Monday, March 18, 2024

2024/29 OUR DREAMER BOY



Ariel was walking through the kitchen when I was on the phone with someone, probably one of my kids, talking about the ACT college admissions test. I’m not a fan of tests but also understand there probably has to be some way to sift and sway with all the anonymous information handed to college admissions people. I asked Ariel if he had been required to take the ACT in Houston, before he went to college in Maryland. He nodded his head. 

“What’d ya get?” I asked, though I don’t know what made me think I had the right to ask such a personal question. Such artificial measurements can be the source of unearned shame or glory, and by asking I was buying-in to what I was against in the first place. Nonetheless, he answered, almost embarrassed.

“Thirty-five."

My eyebrows jutted up into my forehead and my jaw dropped. 

“Are you serious? That’s amazing!” Thirty-five is one point away from a perfect score. It puts him 99% above everyone who takes the ACT test. He’s in the rare 1%. 

“Wow, Bud, that’s amazing!”

A score like that, coupled with his stellar performance in high school should have given him the pick of scholarships and schools. Indeed, he did have offers from many colleges, ones most American kids would die for. But Ariel is a Dreamer. He came to America as a child of an illegal immigrant. Someone told him he needed to settle for less than his dream school. I’m not sure why. I suspect it had to do with money. Instead, he ended up graduating from college with considerable debt, even after working through college and living as a dorm resident so he could afford housing. He couldn’t get a federal loan because he isn’t an American citizen, so he inches his way through paying off what could have been so freely given to him had he not been dropped to the earth the way he was. I don’t understand all of it and it hurts my head to try to figure it out. Mostly, it hurts my heart.

Ariel came to us during Covid. Our family had decided that summer of isolation that we would go to our cottage on the shores of Lake Huron and have some isolated time together without risk. We could let the kids splash in unsalted water to their heart’s content. We all drove from Utah to Michigan, then drove back. While we were gone our daughter, Kate said she had heard from one of her former students. Before she moved to New York Kate had taught in Houston for a number of years, mostly students from underprivileged backgrounds. Ariel had graduated from college and landed a job with Morgan Stanley in Salt Lake City. He didn’t know a soul in Utah, except he knew Ms Connors was from there. We told Kate to have him go stay at our house while we were gone. We would help him find a place to live when we got back. My sisters Libby and Sherry picked him up at the airport and acclimated him. Poor kid, getting picked up by two old ladies in a strange town during a pandemic. What a way to start your future!

Ariel was born in Honduras, to a teenage mother and an absent father. His story is his to tell, and he owns it with what appears to me to be ownership in places that he cannot and should not own. He did not choose to be born under these circumstances, and his path as a child was directed by those who had stewardship over him, however unfortunate their decisions may have been. His mother followed his stepfather to Texas, unofficially, bringing her two boys with her. Ariel was around 8 years old. He spoke not a word of English and was thrust into a situation where everything was unfamiliar. He adjusted, he kept his head low and learned quickly. When, in the second or third grade, his teacher touched his back and he winced, the school discovered whipping stripes on the tender skin of his back. By law they were obligated to report it. That’s when this timid child was forced to present his flesh as evidence against his stepfather, who was arrested, imprisoned and deported back to Honduras, where he was subsequently murdered.

Ariel was given the ungodly burden of responsibility for this circumstance and has suffered under the weight of it ever since. He learned early on to keep his head down and not make waves. This went against all he had learned to do and put him in a terrible situation emotionally. 

Given his personality, intelligence, moral compass and placement in his family, he became the responsible one, tending the additional three young brothers that came when he was a teenager. He loved them, and they adored him. He was the sounding board for his young mother, for good and for bad. Leaving his home to go to college, he could not have known he would be severed from all he knew so completely and painfully. The rest of his past is his to tell, but it includes considerable mistreatment, poverty, shame, and a blessed but small portion of love and tenderness. Ariel did not choose the unbending path he is set upon. He is evidence that the scales of moral judgement are skewed and imbalanced. I love him dearly, and my insides want to scream at the ridiculously hard circumstance his presence here creates for him. It has already been made known to him that his life is in peril if he returns to Honduras, because of his relation to other people there.

Where does a child like this go?

I want to take a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and polish the scales off the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….”

Ariel has lived with us, off and on, for the past three years. I am stunned by the irreverence and the seeming disregard we Americans seem to have when it comes to helping those who cannot help themselves. I’m frustrated with our legal system. And I am married to an attorney and judge! Can’t someone… anyone… give this young man a helping hand to find a place to call home? The legal vortex he is required to swirl in reminds me of Toto swimming through that tornado in Wizard of Oz. He’s required to pedal hard to get nowhere fast.

Ariel grew up here, he acclimated as he was told, he follows laws and pays taxes and knows the political system better than I. Political science was one of his best subjects in college. I am disheartened and angry that he was robbed of the chance to follow correct steps toward citizenship simply because he was a child brought here by his mother. Had she left him he could have grown up and taken his own legal path. But a mother won’t leave her child, and she shouldn’t. These poor kids are caught in a mess not of their own making and it seems no one is offering a hand to help them out of it. Oh, America!

Cuncle Ariel

Ariel is solidly tucked under our wings. He is ours, heart and soul, as much as he is willing to give himself. Our grandkids call him Cuncle Ariel. Half cousin/ half uncle. He is the most nurturing and loving cuncle there ever was. 

Our kids hold him like a brother. Dave and I love him like a son. Early on, Dave taught him how to drive. We celebrated the day he got his license.

He and I share cooking secrets and trade recipes. He has stayed up through the night making and bottling raspberry jam with me. He reads from the New Testament with us each night. When it’s his turn to read be speaks the word of scripture he has never before read in English, and he does it with grace and faith. He is willing and able and adaptable. Last month he and Libby came to help us finish up a project at Johnny’s warehouse. He lets us boss him around like one of our own kids. And he knows my love language, tidying up my ridiculous messes when he can and setting the tables for Sunday dinner. Ariel understands my warped lifestyle and accepts it and loves me in spite of it. And I love him. I love all of him. 

Passed the driver's test! 
He's good at tests!


I currently live with three wonderful men: My Dave, who is my steady and the one who will laugh at my jokes and cheer for my messy projects. My Timo, who is giving his life in service for two years as a missionary and gracing our home with his spirit. And my Ariel, whose pure heart, brilliant mind, and incredible tolerance and patience keep him dreaming. They are in the 99th

I dream with my Dreamer boy: I dream of the day I will be able to travel across the borders of this country with him and show him the magic of our world. I dream of the day we can go together to the voting booth. He knows more about how to cast a vote in our current campaigns than most politically well seeded people I know, but he can’t vote. I’ll celebrate with him the absence of ridiculous amounts of paperwork, loop jumping, and expense that comes with allowing him to live here and contribute to our economic and emotional well-being even though it allows him few privileges. Seriously, unless you’re a dreamer or love a dreamer, you have no idea what they have to go through just to exist. I dream of the day he won’t have to walk on tippy toes through his life journey. He is a strong, intelligent, incredibly capable, creative, hard-working man trying to squeeze his way out from under the unforgiving thumb of Uncle Sam. And that’s me, and my family, trying to lift the hat away from Uncle Sam’s ear and whisper, “Ease up, will ya?

His arm permanently belongs around us.


He has a permanent seat at our large family table.


He reports on the service he gave as our Christmas gift,
like his adopted siblings do.






Sunday, March 17, 2024

2024/28 CHARMED MYSTERY

We’ve lost it. 
I'm not sure we really wanted to.
We’ve lost a lot, that’s for sure, in the name of progress. I sense it’s starting to hit us, how much we’ve given up in the quest for instant everything.
I’m allowing myself a moment to grieve the death of charmed mystery. Here’s what I’ve known and lost. Here’s what my grandkids, the littles at least, won’t know:
  • The anticipation and mystery of childbirth: No one knew what they were going to get. Our nurseries were decorated in yellow and white. Baby showers included games about guessing the gender and birthdate. Delivering a baby was like Christmas morning on steroids.
  • The ringing of the telephone: not knowing who was calling and having to get up to answer it. There was mystery behind all of it: who were they calling for, would you have to accept of decline long distance charges, how long you were allowed to talk to your boyfriend or girlfriend and keep the only phone line tied up? And you had to actually talk, using vocal cords, to share information. There was no such thing as ghosting someone. You either answered the phone or you didn’t, and unless you hung up on the caller, you answered questions in real time
  • The oven that had to pre-heat while you made dinner: there was no such thing as an Insta-pot. In fact there was no insta-anything. The coffee percolated in the kitchen, the aroma and the sound creating a rhythm section to the morning. There were no microwaves. We delayed getting a microwave at our house for a few years until they were tested enough to believe the waves would not harm humans. It was major progress when TV dinners were created and people could put store bought pre-prepared meals all at the same time in the oven, plop down in front of the TV and watch Lawrence Welk. People forgot that you could mix a cake with flour and sugar, butter and eggs rather than dumping a box of mix in a bowl and beating it up. Everything has become so instant!
  • And speaking of TV, we don’t even have to use a TV Guide anymore. We can watch what we want when we want and never have to leave our chair to even turn the TV on and off. And there is no longer that final minute when all TV stations played the national anthem before they signed off for the night. There was no such thing as a lighted screen to keep us up all night.
  • Getting dressed and going out: We used to go to the bank to deposit money, and hand checks and cash to humans, and get a current statement. We used to have to get dressed and put on our shoes and go outside to either walk of drive to the bank, or the store, or the doctor even. Now we bank from our phones. We don't even need to go to the grocery store. Instead we click little boxes and someone delivers whatever we want to our door. We speak our woes to doctors from our couches and Zoom,  they prescribe the remedy.
  • The doorbell ringing was exciting. No one knew, until you answered it, who was there. This was in the era before the doorbell was most often the delivery person.

  • We didn't have to show everyone where we were and what we were doing. We used to enjoy what we did, and then maybe took a picture of everyone afterwards if someone brought a camera. Film wasn't cheap, and developing it wasn't't either. So we picked and chose what it was we wanted to take a photo of. It was always a charmed mystery when you picked up your photo orders. Concerts were things we kept in our memories and not in Chatbooks. We felt what we felt all by ourselves, without thinking what everyone else might be thinking of it.
  • Music wasn't free: If you wanted to hear a certain song, you had to invest in it and something to play it on, or call and request it from the deejay on the radio. Then there was the charm of picking your radio station to fit your style. It was always a good morning if the clock radio clicked on and Me and Mrs. Jones was playing. It would have lost its charm if we knew what song would wake us up in the morning.

Then, as if our need for instant everything wasn’t enough, our relatively recent worldwide pandemic sealed the deal on isolation for all of us. Really, no one had to go anywhere. And at a certain point we were not allowed to even if we wanted. Though the pandemic is over, businesses have closed offices and let employees work from home. We sit in our houses with fake cyber backgrounds and meet with each other waist up with no energy exchange but the buzz of electricity. 
Pretty soon we will take the shape of our easy chairs and fix our eyes on our screens and the world could stop spinning and we might not know.
And we call it progress.
I am not passing judgement. I personally enjoy all these insta-everythings. I guess I sense a need to pause and analyze it for a minute. Maybe not jump into all the upgrades so quickly. Maybe I'm sending a message to myself.
I’m sorry, my little ones, to have robbed you of charmed mystery. All we have left you  is the great unknown of mankind, and what that has given you and all of us, in return, is a massive dose of anxiety.
Please, don’t anyone start fooling with Easter Egg Hunts! We need something that requires a little mystery in our lives!

 

Friday, March 15, 2024

2024/27 IDES (every month has one)


It began with a curious thought. Most problems do. And so do most solutions.

I lay in my bed trying to awaken my legs when it hit me that today, March 15th, is the Ides of March.

“Beware, the Ides of March”. That’s the phrase that always spills from my mind, though for most of my life I knew little about it except that it involved Julius Caesar and Brutus and a knife in the back. Now, thanks to my daily Lenten writing exercise, I know more. Because of the internet rabbit holes are deeper and brighter.

The curse of writing on my computer rather than with pen and ink is that I have far too easy access to “further information” when I’m writing. I can keep one figurative finger in the original page and turn to another, which requires me to save that page and turn to yet another page, until I end up with ten tabs open on my computer and I’ve forgotten what I was writing about in the first place.

The blessing of writing on my computer is that I can open ten tabs at once and dive into a figurative butterfly chamber, dancing in a fluttering sea of newness and beauty.

Ides, if you didn’t know, is based on a Latin term. It means the halfway point in each month, relative to the Gregorian calendar. In the Roman calendar it was the date against which other dates were determined. So basically, they start with the Ides and count backwards and forwards. Its more involved than I care to write about right now, but that’s the basic idea. There are a couple other monthly dates involved in those calculations. 

Replica of an ancient Roman wall calendar.

A simplified look at dates on the Roman calendar.

Further Wikipedia research reiterated an old tidbit of knowledge I suppose I’d forgotten; that the month of March is actually the first month in the Roman calendar. This is why September (sept meaning seventh) and December (deca meaning tenth) feel misnamed in our current calendar. They were christened with their names in the Roman calendar. If the pivotal date in March is that middle date against which all others are set, then New Year’s celebrations would be at the Ides of March. Indeed, there were all sorts of religious rituals and pagan celebrations around that time of year, including the pagan observance of Eastertide in relation to Spring Equinox. A couple that come to mind are the ritualistic leading of a lamb through the streets, ending at a sacrificial altar. Another is the public beating of a man dressed in animal skins and driving him from the city, representing the tossing out of the old year and welcoming the new. I can’t help but pause and ponder the symbolism in leading a lamb to slaughter and the public beating and removal of an innocent around the new year, Spring Equinox, Eastertide. 

Ramadan, Easter, Spring, New Year, they are just a sampling of the fact that there is more that unites us as a species than divides us. Old things end, new ones begin. The old sorcerer may have whispered to Caesar to beware the Ides of March as a forewarning of impending death. But the angels in Heaven lifted their trumpets in celebration of a season of new beginnings, when life is renewed and restored. Cold soil is the place from which new beginnings spring.

Happy new year, everyone.

 


Thursday, March 14, 2024

2024/26 FOOTHILLS


Dave drove us in a passenger van from Austria to Italy. I remember it well. It was Dave and his harem: his mother-in-law, his sisters-in-law, and his wife. He’s a trooper, not only for being able to handle a relatively high-profile vehicle going at insane autobahn speeds, but for handling the relatives in general.

As we passed the magnificent Alp mountain range I was charmed by the little villages tucked into the foothills. “I wonder what it would be like to live in such a place,” I thought aloud.

Then we came home to our house set against the foothills of the Wasatch mountains and realized I already know. We live a charmed existence. Just the physicality of this place we call home is rare and beautiful.

Flag Rock, a short hike into our foothills.

 At Eastertime especially I find myself imagining the day these mountains rose up. I pretend I am watching from our heavenly perch as this place unfolds, spinning into existence, morphing as it rotates, great waters and dry land coming out of molten earth. Then I imagine the earth groaning, centuries later, at the cruel death of its maker, the curtain of His temple rent in twain. The mountains against which our home rests testify of Him. The winds come whistling down them and I can hear in frequencies beyond mortal recognition; “I'm here! I'm here!”

It feels fitting to me that we live in the foothills. This is the spot where I can safely maintain. They remind me of my limits. I have only so much power to handle this little spot at the base of magnificence. It’s going to take some training and pacing and consistent effort to get to the top. I’m frankly pretty satisfied to hang down here for a while. This is where most of my people are. This is what feels familiar to our feet.

Most of my children and neighbors are hikers. They visit the upper places in our foothills. They celebrate the immense beauty and the challenge. They hike and they bike and they ski, weaving their way through the whiskered hillsides, working up a sweat and filling their lungs with mountain air. My friend Lonnie, when his wife Ardene died young and unexpectedly, threw himself against our mountains, up past the foothills, pressing his pain out of his pores in his own Gethsemane. He worked his grief into the earth’s own grief. These juts of rock and soil offer resistance if we need it.

They also offer respite. It still amazes me how quickly we can leave civilization behind and set our weary souls beside a campfire. Feeling the sacredness of the earth, and the warmth of a flame, and the calming aroma of woodsmoke and pine trees. I can see why the exclamation “Holy Smoke” came into being. The early incense of worship fits a campfire as well as a tabernacle.

Personally, even before my legs stopped me, I never was much of a hiker. There was simply too much to stop and see along the way. I was more of a “take a few steps then sit and ponder” kind of person. I like what Join Muir wrote:

Hiking – I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mouintains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike through them.’

Thanks John Muir. I feel seen and validated as I saunter my way back Home. 

 


2024/25 SACRED OIL & BUFFALO HATS

My hand knitted buffalo wool hat.

Our poor mother. She skipped back and forth across that jagged line between encouraging her kids to be artistic and creative and being overwhelmed by the mess creativity makes.  I adore her for feeling compelled in any way to nurture our creativity. I know many parents who are driven by a need for order. I don’t blame them for this. I am, however, grateful Mom was invested and intrigued enough to let us experiment. Or maybe she was just too exhausted to stop us. 

I am grateful for my own personal inclination to make creative messes, especially if it includes making them with people I like. Not that I love the messes.  Oye Ve, the messes! I might add that I was blessed with the most magical surprise in that the guy I married, before I really knew all that much about him, is willing to put up with my messes. Don’t you think this is amazing?

When Dave asked my mother for permission to marry me, her response was:
“Well, Dave, you’ll never be bored. But you’re going to have to hire a housekeeper.”

I was frankly stunned at that response. I quite seriously had no idea I was a mess. I now know what my mother knew all along. I am a mess, in every sense of the word. And no, we do not have a housekeeper. We just live in the mess. I don’t want to have to clean up for a housekeeper.

The seven of us.
Family Reunions bring out the weird in everyone.

I consider myself doubly blessed because I had sisters on either side of me who celebrated, and still celebrate, my creativity. And I have a ridiculously creative brother. A couple of them, in fact. Their originality comes out in different ways.

Those of us in our family with major doses of creativity get to deal with ADHD, that blurse (blessing and curse) we love and hate.  George and I got unusually hefty doses. We can both hyper focus with the best of them. And skip through our days in such disjointed ways that when we lie down at night, just before we get up again cuz we can’t sleep, we can’t even recount just exactly what it was we did that day.


One of the many creative things I enjoy is figuring out what we will give our neighbors for Epiphany gifts each year. I’ve dipped beeswax candles, whipped gallons of cream into butter, boiled carrot pudding in muslin using Paul Revere’s original recipe, ordered turkey feathers for quill pens, steeped vanilla beans in Vodka for a year to make vanilla extract… stuff like that. This past Spring I got it into my head to try to make Balm of Gilead Oil. I got curious one day, reading scriptures, about what they meant when in Jeremiah it was written: “Is there no balm in Gilead.”

I feel particularly blessed to live in a time when we can so easily look up things and get an exorbitant amount of information within seconds. We don’t have to wait until the Library opens and hope they have updated Encyclopedias. I spent one sleepless night reading up on what Balm of Gilead Oil is, its benefits, and how it’s made. By morning I had it in my craw to make some myself. It’s made from the bulging buds of Cottonwood Trees, soaked in oil until their resin seeps into the carrier oil. It is useful for pain and inflammation, among other things. It has a beautiful and unique fragrance. My Native American ancestors would have known about it. My Great-Great-Great Grandmother was Cherokee. 

By the time I decided to make the oil I had missed the sweet spot for gathering the buds. I drove up into the canyons searching trees that might not have bloomed yet like they had down here in the valley, but they were already blooming up in those colder spots as well. So the next spring, before the snow was melted, I told George I had this idea and wondered if trees up his way might not have bloomed yet. The next thing I knew he texted me a picture of Balm of Gilead oil he had made during his sleepless night. He had found some felled branches behind his house in Midway UT, researched processes, used his obsessive understanding of science and figured out how to expedite the process with heat and chemicals. The next time I saw him he gave me Balm of Gilead Oil and Balm, hardened with beeswax.
The lengths we go to for a few tree buds. George and Dave.

That weekend Dave and I drove up to Midway with loppers and gloves and saws. George, whose neuropathy makes walking a problem, led us in his truck as far as the wheels would allow, then pushed through the field, back across the stream and into a cove of cottonwoods pregnant with impending leaves. It took some reaching and snipping to get enough twigs with buds. Our research had indicated that our best chances of gathering enough buds was to go out after a windstorm, so we went back to the truck and drove through that magnificent mountain valley in search of felled trees. Fortunately Mother Nature had left us a sweet treasure trove in clusters of fallen branches lining old roads and riverbeds. We filled the truck to overflowing. The lucky cars that followed us received the sweet fragrance of those buds as it wafted from the bed of George’s truck.

A truckload of cottonwood twigs.

It took me two days to pinch the buds from those twigs and branches. The bucket of little brown nibs looked puny compared to the truckload we had labored to find.
It’s actually pretty amazing to have a crazy creative brother. Last month I was changing the strings on one of my guitars and I noticed one of the bridge pins was missing its opal. See, my guitars have custom bridge pins with brilliant blue opals on them because of my crazy brother. He’s kind of the King of Opals. That’s a whole story in itself. Opals and fossils and all things rock. So I called him and asked him if he wanted to make me a new one and it’s sitting on my kitchen counter right now waiting to be put on with the new strings for my guitar. 

Those buds are still sitting in my garage now. My ADHD and crazy RS President schedule kept me from that project. Even though I still have ADHD, I have been released as RS president, so maybe I’ll get to it this year!

Not only is George's house built of rock,
it's filled with rock.

For Christmas George gave each of us hand knitted buffalo hats. Hats made from the fur of the buffalo he raises in his front yard. I picture in my mind my brother walking out on his neuro-pathetic feet, gathering fur from his shedding bison. He finds a gal somewhere around there who cards the down (the soft fur on the bison) and spins it to yarn. Then he finds someone else who knits that homegrown buffalo yarn into warm and very hip hats. Mind you, there are seven siblings in our family, all of us still alive and kicking, and spouses, and children and such. Out of curiosity I Googled “Buffalo Yarn” and it turns out a skein of it would set you back between $70 and $130. One skein. Bison down goes for about $50 an ounce. Who knew? (George knew) And another thing, it is soft as cashmere. Who else do you know who has a bison hat?

My brother George's front yard. (3 bison this year)

Tonight, I am raising my eyes heavenward with a whisper of thanks to our Lord and to our mother, who did not get in the way of what the Lord might have had in mind for George Hansen, and Cori Hansen for that matter. I’m sorry for the messes we left in our wake. I’m sorry we have not outgrown the messes we still make. We sure appreciate the endless source of creative materials this earth affords us. Lord knows, we certainly are not bored down here.

Walter loves Uncle George's buffalo hat!


Tuesday, March 12, 2024

2024/24 HUG

Last week I visited a couple ballet classes in the Clytie Adams School of Ballet. I had written the song to which they will be dancing in recital this year. We wanted to explain the lyric so they could own it when they dance. The whole recital is based on a “toybox” theme. This particular song is called Madame Alexander Doll. A divine collection of thirteen-year-old dancers clustered around me and my guitar as I showed them my old Madame A doll and explained the lyric of the song. I told them there may come a day for them when they are nurturing their own babies and what they do will feel comfortable and familiar because they had once loved their dolls. One of the classes showed me what they had learned so far of the choreography of their teacher, Leslie. They stepped in and out of a pattern on the dance floor, scooping their arms up and then down as if they were holding babies. It stirred old feelings in me.


I mastered the art of hugging with my Madam A Pussycat doll. She was scented with that divine aroma of rubber and plastic. To me, that’s the smell of Christmas morning: pine trees, dust from the early morning heating vent and fresh-from-the-box baby doll. You would only know that recipe for nostalgia if you have tucked your lips into the neck of a baby doll. Some people love the new car smell. I love new baby doll smell.

I’ve also written a song for six-year-old dancers called Raggedy Ann & Andy. My own little Tess will be dancing to that one. She shows me the new moves they learn each week after her ballet class. “Gummy,” she announced as she got in the car after class last week, “next year I get to wear ballet shoes!” Her enthusiasm for the smallest things totally melts me.

I slept with my Raggedy Ann doll clear up until the day I got married. I recall the conversation I had with myself when packing for my honeymoon. I worked through the feelings of betrayal at leaving her sitting on the pillow of my bed at Mom’s house. (I think I must still be working through that.)

I am grateful that my Grands have had snuggles to help them acclimate to earth life. Everyone needs the unconditional love of something to snuggle. My mind enters that memory vortex where I swirl through the years trying to recall the most treasured ones for each of them. Parker, who will be graduating in a couple months, had his stuffed puppy dog, like Calvin did. His parents found an identical one for “just in case”. He loved them both. One was called Old Dog and the other New Dog. Old Dog always had an advantage of course. Cal had Puppy and Blankie. Blankie was hand quilted by my sister Sue when he was born. That blanket got him through so many years and so many tears! It ended up just a wad of threads, he loved it so much. Once, after a family reunion at our friend’s cabin in Idaho, we came home to find Ruby’s Ellie the Elephant missing. We called our friends who had a neighboring cabin. They went over and searched the whole place, finally finding Ruby’s stuffy under a bed. They drove into town and sent it to Ruby via overnight mail. (Thanks Sharon and Hal, for understanding the panic in Ruby’s household for those two days without Ellie.) Our grown children have impressed me with their ingenuity in helping their kids through letting go. Sophie’s binky was sewn in her matted stuffy rabbit. There are pacifiers imbedded in all sorts of things in our family. 

Last week, while the Littles were sleeping over at our house for First Friday, I gently lifted Beth’s arm and retrieved BoBo the bear. I did the same with Snuzzle, the swaddle blanket Tess adopted as her security blanket years ago. They were both ridiculously dirty because they are passionately loved. I ran them through the washing machine with soap and a couple glugs of Clorox. Before I put my weary bones in bed around 3 am I tossed them in the dryer. Thank goodness I did that, because around 6 am I was yanked from a dream to Tessie’s face about six inches from mine: “Gummy, I have Gummy Snuzzle (that’s the back-up swaddle blanket I keep here) but I don’t know where Snuzzle is.” 


I lugged by tired bones to the dryer and pulled Real Snuz out. She snuggled back down into her pillow, tucked Snuzzle into her chin and fell back to sleep. At the same time, I slipped a nice clean Bobo Bear back into Beth’s arms.

Making my grown daughter’s bed one time at her own house, I found her old blankey tucked under her pillow. It cinched my heart tighter to hers, as if that were possible. Then there’s that time my friend Annick and I were walking and I was directed by the Holy Spirit of Motherhood to open the door of a school bus parked in the church parking lot. It turns out my Annie’s purple blankie, which had been missing over a year, was in a lost and found box on that bus. 

All these comforts have one thing in common: they are something to hug. I’m grateful my treasures feel a need to hug.  When we hug there is an exchange… a give and a receive. That feels like divine balance.

That's Beth with Bobo on the left, quite a few years ago.

My oldest grandchild, Timothy, is living with us for two years while he serves his Lord as a missionary. When he first came, I told him I was going to hug him every night because there is something healthy in hugging. “I read somewhere we need to do it for at least eight seconds for the endorphins to release.” Then I sang the chorus to I Am A Child of God while we embraced. We have repeated that every night for the last 18 months. We both sing or hum and pat each other’s backs while we hug. It’s perfect because he’s a percussionist and I think we both need that rhythmic beat on the other sides of our hearts. The other day I recorded me singing it on my cell phone so I can pull it up and remember when he is done with his mission and no longer tucked against my heart every night.

At some point, deep into the pandemic, our daughter Kate, who lives across the country from us while she is working on her doctoral degree, called:

“I think I need to come home.”Her voice started to shake, that familiar shake I have known since she was tiny and crying on my shoulder.

“I think I need a hug.”

When she is home I remind myself that my girl needs more hugs than we logically allow ourselves to give. A daily hug, heart to heart, for at least eight seconds.

She’s back in New York now, alone. I think I will send her my Raggedy Ann. There are lots of old hugs stored in her.


I am grateful that some things, like some people, allow themselves to get completely used up and worn out by giving unconditional love.

New love.
Old love.
Very old love.














Monday, March 11, 2024

2024/23 THAT LITTLE TV I WON WHEN I WAS TEN


The phone hanging on the kitchen wall rang repeatedly. In those days there was no such thing as voice messaging, or even answering machines. The phone just rang and rang until someone picked up or the caller gave up. I eventually ran into the kitchen and answered. 

When you’re ten years old the phone’s almost never for you, but this time it was! 

“Is Corinne Hansen there?”

I paused, because first it was an adult calling and second, no one we knew called me by my full name. Responding the way Mom insisted we answer, I replied:

“This is she.”

That’s how I found out I had won a brand spankin’ new portable black and white television. 

Yup, I had won second place in the JC Penney “Guess the Number of Cherries on the Presidents Day Cherry Tree” contest.  A week earlier we had all gone to Penney’s, as I recall because George needed new underwear. While Mom and George were shopping we little girls stayed in the lobby counting tiny plastic cherries hanging from an artificial George Washington cherry tree. I sat comfortably and kept track of the hundreds while Libby stood under the tree and counted the cherries. I suspect we filled out handfuls of guesses and stuffed them into the cardboard box under the tree. I must have thought you had to use your whole legal name on such important official endeavors. One of my little-sister-informed guesses must have been pretty close. Close enough to find me back at JC Penney for a photo for the local paper. We walked out carrying a ten-inch television with a carry handle on top.

At that time, we had no TV in the house. Dad had skipped town and taken the TV he kept in the smoky corner of the basement with him. He left his full ash trays and empty beer bottles though.

Mom let us keep the prize in our bedroom, with rules limiting the watching of it of course. Golly, we loved having that TV. Libby used to come home and watch The Big Valley as she decompressed from the pressures of fourth grade. We suddenly had great interest in the Pittsburgh Press Sunday Edition because it included the weekly TV Guide. My go-to shows were Gilligan’s Island, Carol Burnett, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, I Dream of Jeanie and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And Saturday morning cartoons! Oh man, remember Saturday morning cartoons? Followed by Saturday chores. Good times.

One Saturday afternoon, after cleaning our bedroom, Libby and I crouched in front of the TV for the Saturday Matinee Movie. The TV was so small we literally had to sit inches away, our folded knees bonking into each other. We had anticipated this particular movie ever since it showed up in last Sunday’s TV Guide. 

“Joy in the Morning” was scheduled to play at 2 pm. We had heard the movie had a love scene in it, with people kissing! These were the days when Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke slept in twin beds on TV. Lib and I were stoked to secretly watch the movie and see what grown-ups actually did when they were in love. 

I really don’t even remember the show or anything about the plotline. What I do remember was that, as it was building to the pivotal scene, our adolescent hearts throbbing in our flat chests, the TV went on the blitz. The screen started flipping out, with chevron stripes rotating up and down. I leaned over and changed the rabbit ear antennae, checking the screen as I shifted the thin metal rods poking out of the top of the box. We could hear the conversation becoming quietly romantic, passion heating up, but dang it, there was no picture! So, we started CPR, pounding on the TV, whacking it first on the top and then slapping it on both sides. This was how our dad had always fixed things. As the script moved into heavy breathing, I gave the thing a mighty smack with my fist and poof, it was gone. I had killed our TV. In the name of sex. Yes, sinful, passionate kissing on a blanket in a meadow. I was not just naughty, I was evil. And now our TV was broken.

I frankly don’t recall if we ever got it working again. We probably went back to playing Barbies or climbing trees. 

A quick internet search of “hitting a TV to fix it” indicates there is actually some science behind percussive maintenance on old machines. Something about placement of components and what heat does to shift things, etc. I don’t understand any of it. The internet also says that kind of therapy is no longer effective in newer technology. (It’s not effective in fixing people either. Someone should have explained that to our dad.)