WOTD 2 - PEDIGREE

On a Wintery Christmas morning when the snow layered itself like frosting along the roof line of our old house; when my kids were still kids, when their hearts still pumped with excitement as they stood at the top of the stairs all hunched together in their new PJs, waiting for permission to come down and see what Santa had delivered; on that particular Christmas morning my sister Libby carried her gift to our kids in a basket or a stocking or some-such delightful holiday wrapping. I don't exactly recall how it was delivered. I do recall my reaction to the gift itself; an interesting juxtaposition of emotions: the joyful thrill of watching my kids exult while at the same time dealing with the shock of how my own life was going to change from this moment forward.

Indeed the gift was a living breathing kind of treasure. Four little paws, a smirk of a mouth under a wet little snout, and a pair of long floppy ears like a shawl draped over her little head. Oh, and she had a pedigree. Her pedigree declared her as a purebred Basset Hound, and she certainly looked the part. The pedigree also said her name was Loretta Lynn, though the fellow who had owned her had called her Sally for a full year before he decided to sell her. Her sister showed better, he said, so he let this one go.

Libby had decided my kids needed a dog. She's like mother #2 to them, so it was not really out of place for her to decide that. It's just that I'm not such the dog person. I was bit in the eye by my brother's Afghan hound when I was seven, and ever since I've had a rather innate fear of dogs and other creatures. This aspect of my character has felt shameful to me my whole life. I try to fake that I like animals. Try to talk in that baby talk way people do when they meet a new creature: "Ohhh, what a cute puppy. Here darlin', let me scratch behind your ears. Good girl! Good girl!" I am confessing, since this is the holy season, that this is a lie and I am faking it as much as I faked respect for my son's 9th grade English teacher who decided spelling should be 1/4 of their English grade. (Seriously? In 9th grade? With spell check? I refuse to let my children get away with using easy safe words when they write just because they might not know how to spell the more appropriate word! But I digress...)

Libby's heart throbbed with the kids' when she delivered Sally. She loves animals, dogs especially. Cats make her itch. My heart really was softened watching her stroke the soft folds in Sally's ears. If you stretched them out on your legs, they looked like elephant ears. We shoulda named her Dumbo In Libby's defense, she was only replacing the Bassett we had rescued from the pound earlier that year. A mistake. That's what Burva was. Burva Dawn. Burv was an attempt to fill a place for our little Kate. Burva slept with Kate. But she left trails of dog-ness all over the house, and I'm not talking sweet little doggie toys. Burva had to go back from whence she came. I was perfectly content to have only four children to take care of. But the spark had been struck and Libby could not resist.

Loretta Lynn Sally was cute as could be, seriously! But it pretty much ended at looks. She had been kenneled as a show dog for her first year of life. It surprised me that she was a show dog because, at least from what I saw on Best of Show, show dogs could obey commands. Sal just looked at you with those droopy brown eyes when you called to her. Throw a stick and you simply had a stick out in the yard, and a cute little dog sitting staring at you. It was apparent that this darling little one was not going to sleep with Kate. We had to change her sheets the first two nights she tried that. Sally ended up in the yard. We got a dog house and a long chain because she liked to wander into the street and sort of flop down there, basking in the sun, oblivious to cars. But she was cute!

Sal made friends with Cheyenne, Bullard's dog next door. Cheyenne, a well trained but mischievous puppy, was not chained. So she'd come visit Sally. They'd giggle and roll in that puppy sort of way, then Cheyenne would take off and Sal would try to follow, until she ran out of chain. Then her stubby little legs would end up over her head, the folds of her abundant flesh gathered around her collar. She didn't even seem to mind any of that. She wasn't the sharpest tack in the cupboard. But she was cute!

We were in the process of building our current house when Sal arrived. My guilt over not being a dog person led us to build the world's most expensive dog world. We put a wrought iron fence around the perimeter of our yard, nearly an acre, so she would have room to run and run without a chain. We cut a hole in the back of the house and attached a dog house to our own house, even bricked it to match ours. The hole in the wall led directly into a large kennel where she could sleep and eat. We heated the floor of the garage so she would be warm in the winter. The kids would occasionally try to take Sally for a walk. Sarah attempted to take her running. Inevitably I'd have to get in the car and go searching for them. More often that not I found them, the back of one of my girls hunched over a lump on the side of the road, pulling on the leash, bawling or yelling: "Come ON, Sally! Get up! Let's go! Get up NOW Sally!" But once Sal decided to sit, that was it. You were where you were and that's where you were. I'd pull up in the van and attempt to diffuse the frustration. It took both of us to literally lift her stubborn bulk of doggedness into the car. As she aged she got heavier, (it happens to the best of us) and her bones more lumbering when she walked. Slow and stubborn did not begin to describe her. That is unless she found the door from the family room to the back deck open. Then she perked right up, shooting like a wound-up rubber band in through the french doors. She scurried about the house, her nails clicking against our Hickory wood floors, her ears flying like liquid pendulums as she ran, slobber whipping from her jowls onto the couch, the walls, the roman shades, the cupboards. I could hear her from my laundry room, or from the kitchen. A call to the forces rose up whenever anyone discovered she had "entered the realm." Like city slicker cowboys we rounded her up, shooing her back out through the French doors or into the garage where we could open the kennel door. She always had this sort of smirk as she ran. My little grand-daughter Ruby has that same smirk, come to think of it!

There was a period of time when we started to get a bunch of mail for Sally Connors. I figure John had used her name when registering for something once when he was in high school. Colleges looking for Sally to apply. Banks wanting to give her a credit card. We considered posing Sally and snapping some pictures: Sal goes to college. Sal opens a savings account. Sally in her first investment seminar. If we could have lifted her and expected her to cooperate we might have done that. But that would also mean we would have to bathe her, which was not a pleasant task. She had a bi-annual visit to the groomer whether she needed it or not. Oh, poor Sal! Like I said, I am not a dog person. Shame, shame, shame.

A full dozen winters we spent with Sally the Slobber Dog. Our back yard is multi- dimensional, with cement curbing dividing terraced grass and outlining flower beds.Sally, even with her sore old hips from her low lying belly, would tunnel through the yard,balancing on that little balance beam of curbing all the way down to the lower forty and back up to her red brick house. We called it Sally's Luge. If you looked down on it from one of the upper bedrooms in the winter, it looked like a virgin ant farm below.  When the snow was extra deep she would disappear altogether, the only evidence of her position being the tiny crooked tip of a tail waving like a truce flag as she shimmied through the trail of snowy ditches.

One winter we noticed Sal drank an inordinate amount of water. “Maybe she’s getting diabetes,” I said, as I refilled her watering trough. The next day I went out onto the deck to retrieve the Christmas ham Dave’s law firm had given us. Our fridge was already full of holiday fare, so we had this habit of using the table on the back deck and calling it “God’s fridge”. Of course the ham was gone. Plain disappeared out of its box. We found the ham bone picked clean in the snow outside Sally’s red brick house.

Sal was a survivor. She lived to be a little more than 13 years old. I'm not sure what that is in dog years. I am not a dog person. Nonetheless I thought my chest would sink into my back, straight through my lungs, crushing my heart on the day we drove down to Doc White's. “I think she’s done living,” he told us gently. We took her for one last pretty grooming the day before her last trip to the Vet. She always looked so incongruous when they put a bow on her after her grooming. We stroked and purred and wept as they laid her down.

“I’m not sure what you did to her, or how you did it, but this is the oldest Basset I’ve ever seen. Must have been a happy little puppy for a long time. Took good care of her, didn’t you?”

Mmmm. Well, in our own sort of way. Loved, yes. David had hand fed her the special puppy chow the vet recommended for the last three years of her life. And we gave her a pretty spectacular dog run. She seemed happy enough. Never complained. And she thrived in spite of chomping down box after box of Cheez Nibs, tossed regularly from Gram’s car window through the fence. She was strengthened in suffering: having her tail shut in the car door and ingesting a whole roll of masking tape (Lib discovered that one and retrieved it a week later. I’ll spare you the details.) Sal lived life on her terms, mostly because she would not live it on ours. So we changed ours and lived peaceably together for well past the average Basset life span.

This past winter the snow laid undisturbed in our yard. The red brick dog house, which for years bore a December strand of colored Christmas lights on its roof, looking a lot like Snoopy’s dog house, stood cold and dark. The grass is starting to grow under the Hornbeam tree next to the fence. Evidence is gradually disappearing.

But we who lived it keep her tucked in our memories, chuckling when we think of her; aching a bit when we see someone trying to walk a Basset hound on some anonymous sidewalk.

Even up to the end, when her face was sagged beyond saggy, and her hair was beyond gray, she was cute. Cute, and funny, smelly and slobbery. She held a pedigree, for goodness sakes!

Sal the Slobber Dog. Rest in peace, dear old girl.

LENT BEGINS 2011 (WOTD 1)

Lent Begins. For those who may not know, here’s what Wikipedia says about Lent:

Lent in the Catholic tradition, is the period of the liturgical year leading up to Easter. Lent is a time of sacrifice for Jesus. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Conventionally, it is described as being forty days long, though different denominations calculate the forty days differently. The forty days represent the time that, according to the Bible, Jesus spent in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, where he endured temptation by Satan.[1][2]

This practice is common to much of Christendom, being celebrated by Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans.

Being raised Mormon, I didn’t practice Lent. I was aware of it, however, because on Ash Wednesday some of the kids at school had smudges on their foreheads. The morning of Ash Wednesday began for my faithful Catholic friends with a visit to their churches. During Mass the priest would dip his thumb in Holy Water then in the ashes of the previous year’s Palm Sunday palms, which had been collected and burnt. He would then pronounce a blessing in Latin as he placed the ashes on the forehead of the faithful with the side of his thumb, in the shape of a cross. It was not appropriate to wash the ashes off on Ash Wednesday, though the regular wear and tear of the day smudged and weakened them until it looked like a mascara smudge up above the eyebrows.

Looking back I nod my head at myself, reminding that life gives me lessons every day. Sometimes I am aware I am learning; sometimes not. Lately I’ve lived by the mantra: You can’t not grow. Similarly; You can’t not learn.

For years, unaware of the Catholic ritual, I judged those kids in school as untidy. Sloppy in their facial hygiene. It wasn’t until high school that I found out these were devoted and faithful people, who had risen early and altered their schedules to attend Mass, and whose youthful pride did not overshadow their devotion. I remember passing one of the cheerleaders in the hall at Thomas Jefferson High, her beautiful hair flouncing, her arms crossed in front of her as she held her books, talking comfortably with her friends as she walked. I noticed the smudge under her bangs. I felt an immediate pang of admiration for her that revisits me at this very moment as I remember it.

Ash Wednesday in the lunchroom was a bit more frenetic, in pace and sound; people talking about what they were giving up for Lent. Usually it was something like soda pop, or chocolate. Some gave up things like dancing, or sleeping-in. I heard of one kid trying to give up smoking even though his parents supposedly didn’t know he smoked. Mostly it was food they gave up, which made it notable in the lunch room.

Near that time my best friend Betsy would be observing the Passover season. We would nibble on Matzoh bread spread with peanut butter for lunch then, as she wouldn’t eat leavened bread in that season.

I remember wishing I could wear a smudge on my forehead to show my faithfulness. Or a Yamulka like my Jewish friends when I attended their B’Nai Mitzvah. (that’s plural for Bar/bat Mitzvah.) Once I asked my Bishop why we didn’t wear crosses. I had determined that I was different. I allowed myself to be set apart from the others in my school who practiced the casual comforts of the 1970’s. I was a devoted Christian wasn’t I? But there was nothing that would evidence to the general public that I was a believer.

“We don’t wear the cross because we cherish the atonement more than we celebrate the death of our Savior.” The Bishop tried to explain in simple terms for a teenage girl. “We focus on the fact that He rose again, not that He died. It’s not that His death means any less to us, but that his resurrection means more.” He looked down at me and smiled. “Let the light in your eyes be your symbol.”

I am a Mormon girl, with deep faith in Jesus Christ as my Redeemer. And while I do not practice the religion of my husband’s Catholic family, I respect it deeply, knowing that the Savior on whom they lean is also the Savior upon whom I lean. I am a believer in restored ordinances. I look forward to the invitation that remembering the meaning of Easter gives me, and everyone: to find Him and worship Him as the only means by which we can return Home safely and completely. So while I don’t feel compelled by my religion to practice the sacrifices required in the Lenten season; I have chosen to sacrifice in my own way.

For three years now I have chosen to make one of those personal sacrifices a token of commission rather than omission. I commit to sacrifice my leisure in an effort to dig deeper in myself. One of those ways of digging deeper is through personal writing.

For the next 40+ days I’ll be using the online Random Word Generator to give me a jumping off place for this writing. I call it Word Of The Day (WOTD). I allow myself to look at three words, usually nouns, then I must choose one of them and use it to trigger ideas in my writing. I try to incorporate my senses and use of metaphor, honing my writing skills as I do it. More often than not it ends up I go to a place in my memory, so in a way my WOTD becomes a sort of personal history, though the chronology is askew.

I publish these writings here in my Blog for two reasons: the first being that it makes me accountable. If it’s being published, even just to my family and closest friends, I feel accountable to get it done every day. Secondly, it gives the people I love a chance to see into my hidden places, and at the same time seek those hidden places within themselves.

I invite everyone to join me in the WOTD exercise. Here’s the link to the Random Word Generator I use: http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx

Fat Tuesday is over. Happy Ash Wednesday.

See you tomorrow.

"MY MISTAKE"

I could hear them coming before they reached the front door, their treble clef voices trying to out-rank each other, the three of them chattering all at once. The door swung open and a waft of winter-weary air pushed out from the house, allowing Sophie, Parker and their friend Henry to enter with a crisp hint of Spring at their feet. Little Parker, four years old and desperately wanting to be seven, raised his voice. I listened from the kitchen.
"I broke this. Hey guys...I broke this! My mistake."
Before I could make my way out to see what he was talking about, they retrieved whatever they had come for and the door thumped shut behind them. I watched the reflection of their skipping forms gallop across the kitchen window.

As I finished the dishes, my eyes scanned the floor full of little kid treasures scattered across the playroom. Parker's home-made zoo of upside down wire baskets scotch-taped together with his menagerie of stuffed animals tucked into each cage; Little Ruby's princess dresses and pale pink heels strewn out from the dress-up box; Sophie's crayons scattered (at Ruby's hands) across the carpet, her thick magenta jump rope nesting among them like a sun-bathing snake: these were evidence of childhood pleasures.
One day a week I have the privilege of caring for my Connors grandkids the whole live-long day. I get to pour milk on their cereal, draw pictures and strap little dollies into pretend strollers. I kiss boo-boos and change diapers and wipe little noses when they're sick. I get to make up stories; get to read stories; get to live stories that can be told at the dinner table on Sunday evenings when we recount the charming moments of our week.
When John and Ashley decided that Ash would take the job teaching at Knowlton Elementary School this year, we all agreed to do what we could to make it work without too much disruption. Sophie is in first grade and loves having her mom right there with her. This morning she scratched her leg and wanted a band-aid. The box in the cupboard was empty.

"Soph, I have one in my desk at school. I'll get you one there." Ash asked if that was OK and Sophie nodded her head. They climbed into the van and drove off together. This will be a sweet story Sophie can one day tell her own children: how she went to school with the Fourth Grade teacher who was also her mom.
I offered to take Thursdays as my tending day. After a few weeks of tending at my own house I decided I needed to re-think things. When I'm at home I hear my home-work screaming at me. Things I have to write, create, fix, cook, mend and clean. They are very loud and obnoxious voices there at my house. And since Ruby will consider napping if she has her own crib, I decided to let go of my own tasks and completely give Thursdays (and occasional Fridays) to my little ones.
The tiny angel who sits on my shoulder whispered reassurance to me, telling me this is a good thing, everything at home can wait. I knew from the start that the Lord had led me to this decision. Because I decided to let this day be a gift my grandkids and I give each other, I can feel the seams of our family fabric cinching together, tightening our sense of devotion, comfort, mutual respect and pure love. I'm not just tending. I am building a family.
I remember driving one of my Young Women home one night after Mutual. "You have anything fun planned this week?" I asked.
"Ugh. Not really. We have to go to our grandparents."
"Isn't that fun?" I asked, somewhat surprised by her negativity.
She shrugged her shoulders and gazed out the window. "They never have liked us. We were always a bother when we were little. So now that we're teenagers they want us to have this warm fuzzy relationship with them and it just isn't there."
I hear that conversation over and over in my head.
I heard it at 3 am last night when I was just not sleeping well and I knew I’d be handling little ones for eight hours as soon as the sun rose. Its a different stewardship when you're not the actual mom.
It re-sets my brain to the starting place, reminding me what matters most in this old world. I am grateful for such voices in my head.
Right now I look around at these scattered toys while I tell myself to finish writing so I can clean up before Ash gets home... but what I hear in my head is that little interaction at the front door a few minutes ago. I hear Parker stretching his four year old voice to be heard over the first graders he's playing with. I hear him call out,
"I broke this. My mistake!"
It's kind of funny to hear a pipsqueak say "My mistake."
Funny and beautiful. It tells me that someone in his life has said it enough times for him to imitate. It makes me sort of weepy, sitting here on a typical sort of day, doing the sort of stuff I had done for decades in my own home.
I pause and close my eyes, thanking the Lord that these children have people in their lives who will acknowledge their mistakes; who will stop long enough to even notice them, who will admit them but not wallow in them. You can tell a lot about a kid's regular environment when you spend real chunks of time with them.
I glance at the colorful pleasures gifted to these little ones, spread across the floor beside me, bestowed on them by people who love them. And I am assured that the truest treasures are uncollectable. One nestles safely inside that little boy who can comfortably acknowledge: “My mistake,” and then happily go off to play.


The First Graders- Sophie & Henry

Park and Rubes



Parker, Sophie & Ruby



WOTD- RUSHING

The randomly generated word today is RUSHING (trying to get my brain muscles toned for Lent Writing starting on March 9)

RUSHING

We stood in the middle of the river, my old PF Flyer tenny runners clinging to my sockless feet, the laces knotted together where they had broken from overuse, the chilly water of the Snake rushing around my little girl ankles as I stood atop a water-worn rock in the shallows. Mom was slightly downstream. I watched as she raised her right arm and flicked her spinning rod like a sassy wave to a flirty boy. The weighted line squealed through the Idaho air. She instinctively drew the pole back when she felt the sinkers approaching the spot where she wanted the bait to land. The pitch of the plunk, when the metal hit the water, indicated the depth or stillness of the pool and the potential for a nice deep hole. I tried to imitate my mother. Tried to wave my arm with the same grace, to command the direction of the line, and stop it where I wanted. More often than not Mom ended up having to wade on out to the willows hanging over the water at the river bend and try to retrieve my line, searching the weave of willow limbs for the squirm of a worm. When she found it she followed the translucent thread out of the mess I’d put it in, and when it was finally free she tossed it out into the water. I could feel the jiggle of freedom tugging at my line and for a second I imagined it was a fish making my pole dance rather than my newly freed sinkers making their way over the rocks on the river bottom.

Before sunrise Mom and I had ventured out to the river while the others slept, the slick bottoms of last year’s gym shoes slipping in the dewy grasses that led to the bend between campgrounds F and G near Island Park, Idaho. My whole childhood, and even half of my adulthood, I lived under the impression that that particular fishing spot was known as Effergee. It wasn’t until I was teaching my own children to fish that I realized they were saying: “Let’s meet at F or G” when Mom and her sisters were making their fishing plans.

Once in the river Mom and I stood in silence, the only sounds being the rushing water, the rustling of a deep summer Idaho breeze in the willows near the river, and the hawks and owls nested in the tall pines deeper into the dry spaces. Occasionally a crisp new sound rang out when a critter made itself known, or when the sun finally rose and hit a certain spot in its traverse across the cerulean sky calling the fish to the surface for a fresh hatch of flies. Then the fish would start jumping, proving their existence despite their mysterious neglect of our juicy worms underwater, their entrances and exits making an earthy sort of Xylophonic song in the bass cleff range. That’s when the fly fishermen came out and invaded our quiet spot.

But in those wee tiny hours before the grass blades dried in the Idaho heat, the place was all ours. We traveled up and down stream, finding an accommodating trunk of a fallen tree on which we could rest, our threaded bait strategically planted in a mysterious bottom spot while we waited. Once situated we could cock our reels and sit a spell. That’s when we’d reach into our pockets for a refresher. My pocket usually bore one of two treasures, available in my childhood only in the summer on our trips to Idaho: Big Hunk or Chick-O-Stix. To this day both of those treats make me want to go fishing. Maybe my successes on the stream were due to a tinge of sweetness lacing my worms in those days. Whatever the cause may have been, the fish generally responded and through the morning we would call back and forth to each other with our Indian whoops and hollers: “wooo – wooo - wooo” . If I could write out music I could show you the pitches of the call, the last “wooo” rising in pitch a third above the fist two calls. Like the birds that wake me on bright summer mornings from the woody hollow outside my bedroom window now, the call was co

nsistent and melodic and it meant one thing. We’d hooked and landed a fish. This was the language of the river: Silence carrying the fullest portion of the serenade, with the rhythm section of nature keeping a soft frenetic beat behind the melody of silence, with an occasional natural whistle coming from the trees or the fishing lines as we cast them, our feet suctioning out of the water as we shifted our places on the river, and the native American calls of our forefathers eeking out of our bellies as we voiced guttural gratitude for the food accented with the pride of the catch.

By mid afternoon I was sleepy and hungry. We took our harvest, strung through the gills onto two flexible willow branches which had been looped and knotted and planted under a rock on the riverside, so the fish could remain cool in the water until we were done. I hooked the loop of fish over two bent fingers , carrying them like a purse to market. We rose up over the lip of the river bed, water from the river sloshing in my shoes, sucking in and out like an air pump as I walked, the water trapped in the canvas seeping out over the tops of and out across my sun tanned ankles.

Mom fried up the fish for dinner in the old black cast iron griddle, speckled trout drenched in flour with salt and pepper. Fried up in three large spoonfuls of Crisco. Evidence of our feat remained speckled all over the circle of rocks in the fire pit or on the lid of the Coleman stove. The aroma of pine and water and earth swirled through my nostrils as my happy belly relaxed in a full bodied sigh and I settled under an accommodating tree for a little respite. Never was rest so perfect.

In the depth of winter, back in Pittsburgh; far from the meandering Snake River and high country pines and Big Hunks, I yearned for the moment. I could only find it in my imagination, back in the place that usually comes when my eyes are wide open but I see nothing…those magic picture moments when we stare into space and go somewhere else. I did discover once, when I was on the outside of adolescence that if I held a knee-high stocking just so; where the toe was in the water of my mother’s washing machine but the knee was in my hand; if I held it just so at the right time in the washing cycle, the agitator would jerk back and forth in such a way that if I closed my eyes completely I could swear there was a fish on the end of my line…that I was standing in the middle of the Snake River in the deep of the summer when the water was low and rushing over my feet, when the sun was warm and throbbed against my skin like a maternal heartbeat…that even though logic told me I was standing against the cold metal washing machine in the basement laundry room of my childhood…in my heart I was planted upstream from my beautiful graceful dependable mother in our spot out at Effergee.

DEAR JESSE

Dear Jesse,

Don’t look back.

Set your eye and keep the pace as you bound up there to your heaven place.

I imagine you running, with 4 good legs, down the wooded hill and out across the sand toward the lake, never breaking stride as you leap into the air above the water, intent on a piece of driftwood tossed out past the sandbar. Somewhere mid-air the angels take you up.

Chelle stands there alone, looking eastward over the water, small waves lapping at her feet until the tide goes out and you are gone.

That’s what I imagine.

Thank you, Jesse.

Thank you for those loving eyes; liquid brown and full of trust. It takes a long, long time for humans to get that kind of eyes. You had them from birth. Little round mirrors of the one you love. Very few people get to look into another’s eyes and just breathe - no words, no motion, just a gaze that sings and whispers words we do not quite know how to speak. We see her best reflected in your eyes.

And your warmth. A steady throbbing warmth beside the sister we love but cannot hold. Distance is a demon! Knowing you could keep her warm; that by the end of the movie or the book or the dream, your breathing would somehow have aligned with hers, your heat infused into each other; this was peace to the ones who cherish her.

Thank you for waking her in the morning, and for fluttering about when she came home. For sensing when she was sad, or sick, or happy or tired. And for… I know this sounds strange… for being naughty now and then: just enough naughty that she had to set boundaries and keep you in them. It’s a healthy thing for us to help each other be good, even when it’s hard. It ties knots in the strings that bind the heart. It allowed our sister to use her innate gifts to nurture and tend someone who could not wholly do it for herself. It reminded her of her stewardship over you; not in any egotistical way, but in the sacred way of true servants and masters. You allowed her to give; and in the giving she received.

Dear Jesse, if you have any pull up there where you are, could you please exhale a deep warm breath and place it over our sister’s bed, so she will sense your presence in her dreams? Make her aching brief; her memories charmed enough to comfort rather than pierce. And if by chance you find yourself curled up beside Mom and Dad, would you pound your tail against heaven’s floor and tell us you are all just fine?

Snuggle with the ones we love and rest a while. Then run.

Run, Jesse!

Use your brand new freedom with no tumor and no pain. Run and leap and shake this earthy weight like water from your golden hair. Go explore the vast expanse of that place we try to imagine.

Run until you are happy-tired.

Find a cozy spot to make your bed,

and wait till she comes Home.



WOTD - LAVENDER

The random word of the day is LAVENDER:

My friend Carla has a lavender bush in her front yard. A large, hearty cluster of green which shoots, sparkler-like stems of purple-blue flowers now and then. Since I don’t live there, I don’t know its blooming cycle. I really must get a start from her so I can have some of my own. Her whole yard is a sight to see. It appears to civilized suburbanites that they have left their yard to run wild. They have received letters from the city about it. But to them it is beautiful. Xeriscaping with indigenous Utah plants, left to grow according to their own consciences and untrained by the human hand. It’s a water saving practice, and also a difference in philosophy about our stewardship over living things. We tend to prune; to keep things tight and cooperative. Carla likes to let things be and see where their own spirits want to take them. It is not unrighteous, and we should not judge her.

Carla feels inadequate. Her emotions juxtapose in her; one minute she wants to belong to the sisterhood of average-but-classy women who have their dignified Stampin’ Up type hobbies and tidy houses – the next she is dying a strip of her hair cerulean blue. The strip of blue makes her happy. So does Stampin’ Up. Our friend Larry put it perfectly one day. He said to her: “Carla, you want to remain anonymous while wearing Christmas lights.” Indeed.

Carla suffers from some illnesses, invisible to the naked eye. She talks lately about having only so many “spoons” on any given day; far less than the average person. The spoons represent things she can do, and when they are spent she is done. She is at the mercy of her invisible illnesses, the most painful of which is Fibromyalgia. Its hard to have something be so terribly painful and no one can see it. I think someone should sell bruise tattoos that we can apply on days when we just don’t want to deal with people judging us. I have a sense for how she feels.

I’ve known Carla a long time. We first shared the stage probably two decades ago. That’s when I first saw her. Actually, it was a wagon bed. A fundraiser for Farmington’s Clark Lane Historic District. She and Dave played their instruments and sang just before I did. They had the stage set up in the back of a wagon. I remember arriving, setting my guitar down and beginning to open it so I could tune. I reached for the neck of my instrument as they started to play. I paused, struck by the fullness and stunning beauty of their sound. I stood rather awestruck, wondering to myself who these people were and why didn’t I know about them? Were they from Farmington? If they were from Farmington, and they wrote their own music, why in the world did I not know them? What a cocky attitude, come to think of it.

Indeed, they were from Farmington. Her fluttering resonant voice, like butter heated to the prefect golden brown, had been warbling just across town all along while I scurried around in my own little space up north here, totally unaware. It reminds me that there is magic going on everywhere, we just don’t know about it. Dave’s music was no less shimmering, and their writing was so full of fresh inviting images I was stunned! I felt almost ashamed to take the stage after them.

When I was done we introduced ourselves.

“Hey,” Carla said, “a group of us get together in a song circle every month. Would you consider joining us?”

I was at the time heavily involved with the Utah Songwriters Association. As vice-president I oversaw seminars and workshops and hosted a monthly writers night in Salt Lake City. Still, the night I drove down Main Street and over to Eskelsen’s I was so nervous. I sat in a corner, trying to be invisible, and listened to the finest folk writers and musicians in Utah. They were skilled and friendly and I was shaking with nerves when it came my turn to sing a song. No one emitted any judgment. I only judged myself. I was a country song writer. A sell out, in my own evaluation. They wrote for the song itself, as opposed to the audience. It took me many years to not feel inferior in that group. But they are some of my closest and dearest musical friends now, and I cherish them.

Carla also hosted a small circle of women writers in a daytime gathering now and again. There were just a tiny handful of us. We’d gather at her house on a weekday morning and write. Sometimes with guitars, more often without.

One morning, after the girls had left and it was just Carla and me, she walked me out to the car. We stood beside her blooming lavender bush, the warm Farmington sun awakening the oils in the flowers. A gentle May breeze swept down the mountains to the east of us and crossed the foothills, whispering on down through the flatlands and out to us there in her yard. It brought the scent of Lavender to our nostrils and we both inhaled long and deep. “Oh my!” I exhaled, “you must keep your windows and doors open for that!” She bent over and snipped a couple stalks off, handing them to me. We stood there, amid the swirling aroma as she wept. Her mother had called, about what I don’t remember. Carla had forgotten to do something, and we had just spent the hours of that morning on writing instead of “accomplishing”. The weight of her neglect was heavy and she spilled out her feelings of inadequacy. Five children came through her, each of them as unique and free as the wild plants growing in her yard. I think they were sent to her because she understood that some things need to grow in their own way, even if the neighbors all have sterile trimmed green grass in their yards. Still, she beats herself up about it.

All my words of reassurance were not enough, and I left her still in tears, standing there beside her Lavender bush. I placed the stalks she had given me on the ash tray then aimed the air conditioner vent to pass over them. As I drove home I breathed the beauty of the moment and began the words to this song, Lavender Morning.

It may take Carla being released from her achy self-battered humanness to see herself clearly. She is good and kind and loving. Gifted voice. Genius mind. Tender heart. Capable hands. She awakens the senses; shakes the jar of daily life and enlivens the scenery, like sparklies in a water globe. She is a long loose braid swung over the shoulder; a worn pair of pale green bib overalls, the cuffs caked with horse manure and hay. She is a well loved piece of wood strung with steel wires. She is a carefully measured drop of this added to a few drops of that, all scented with fragrant earthy hand picked lavender.

Lavender Morning

Twas a Lavender morning

You opened the door and

You called to your sisters

Come gather and play

We turned from the dishes

We folded our aprons

Then danced with the breeze

On this Lavender day

CHORUS: Look how the garden

Bends to the sunlight

Delicate stems

Laden with Blue

No sweeter smell than

A lavender morning

No dearer soul than

Lavender you

Your mother may tell you

The children will suffer

They’ll watch as you’re wasting

The hours away

But look, they are smiling

And soon we’ll make supper

But first we must dance

On this Lavender day

Look how the garden

Bends to the sunlight

Delicate stems

Laden with Blue

No sweeter smell than

A Lavender morning

No dearer soul than

Lavender you


(Here are some pictures of our Saltwerks Circle friends circa 2003-2005)

The Eskeltones (Dave and Carla)

Nancy Hanson Wood and Dave Wood

Tom Shults

Doug Wintch



Weston Cann



John Connors



Karla Pattis (sans Larry?)



Tom & Gael Shults



Dave Edwards & Joey Dempster





 

Anke Summerhill



Kyle Wulle



Kate MacLeod

Our circle expands and contracts, with a few at the core who were here from the start.  Still, the music rings regardless of who creates it.



FINGER

My son John and I teach guitar classes in the lower level of the Farmington Arts Center: Thursday evenings; Beginner, Intermed and Advanced. Many of our advanced students have been with us nearly three years. I think I’ve taught them everything I know, so I have to learn new things every week to pass on to them. For instance this week I taught about modulating keys, and in the process had to do a little studying up on the circle of 5th’s. Johnny really knows more than I do; but we both have a rather distorted bank of knowledge in the guitar area since neither of us ever took lessons ourselves. Sort of reminds me of faith, or more accurately, testimony. We learn bits and pieces out of order, so the building blocks sit all skiwampusy, and sometimes they topple over and we have to start over again trying to figure out what we believe and why we believe it and how to work logic into emotion and such. Dave, having learned the gospel as an adult, line upon line in intelligent order, has the simplest most beautiful testimony I know. And he’s the brightest man I know, smarts-wise. And he’s the happiest man I know. He’s just not weighed down with too much logic in one area and not enough in another.

Johnny and I, at least in regard to guitar if not testimony, know quite a bit in some areas and not enough in others. But by teaching, we are learning. He’s a better learner than I, and it’s rather lovely I think, to be able to learn from one’s son like I am learning from John.

This week one of our beginner students, an adult woman playing a youth size Wal-Mart guitar, moaned aloud: “Is it possible to have fingers that are just too fat to play guitar?” I let her use my guitar for the lesson, since hers kept going out of tune. So I was trying to help teach with this youth size guitar, out of tune I might add, and I kept looking at my own hands. Short, stocky fingers with tell-tale age spots like so many Parrish women have. My fingernails are suffering from a long and demanding Christmas performance season. My sad paper-thin nails disintegrate from over-plucking guitar strings and I end up needing artificial nails on the picking hand when I play night after night. Those poor petite women in the nail shop were so distressed that I only wanted artificial nails on my right hand.

“No, you need nail on left hand to match.”

“Actually, I don’t”

“Sure you do! Here, let me just do little nails…to match!”

Drove ‘em crazy!

In the process of analyzing my most unattractive chubby age spotted hands Thursday night, I was struck in an instant with gratitude. It seriously hit so abruptly that my eyes welled up and I had to shake my head and focus on what Johnny was teaching so I wouldn’t go down into the well of emotion that is so hard for me to pull myself out of.

First I remembered this:

The Monday of Thanksgiving week, after a most spectacular evening performing in Libby Gardner Hall at the University of Utah, with my favorite musician friends playing and harmonizing beside me and a string quartet on the other side; with a 170 voice choir singing back-up (seriously…how amazing can reality get?) I chopped my finger at 1 am while trimming the flowers they had given me.

 We spent the remainder of that night in the ER getting 5 stitches in the index finger of my chording hand.

You’d have to be…or pretend to be…a guitar player to understand the gravity of that situation. I had booked almost two dozen performances for the coming month, and I had two concerts (both sold out) in less than one week. On the left hand the job of the finger tip is to smash that skinny little string against the neck of the guitar so hard that it rings clear with the note you want to play. Add to that the fact that I do quite a bit of hammering on and pulling off in my arrangements.

So Dave of the mighty faith gave me a blessing.

And I prayed.

And I played every gig, including both concerts, through December.

Thanks to God and LuLu’s Special Blend (my friend Carla’s blend of special oils- she really should sell that stuff!) and the Bone-Skin-Cartilage pills my friend Linda brought over, I watched my finger heal before my eyes.

By Christmas this is what that finger looked like, even with the stress of playing.

In fact, looking back on it, I believe the whole thing was a gift from the Lord to remind me that He is blessing me. Constantly. Without me noticing, usually. Only I noticed this time because I needed that finger to testify. When I sing; when I play; I testify. Even if only to myself.

I was reminded again that He has healed me often. My stiff electric rubber feet remind me. Sometimes the peripheral neuropathy I live with makes me sad. The sad usually only lasts a moment though, because I realize that in spite of the pain, I can walk! I can walk on my feet which once were paralyzed by Guillain Barre Syndrome. And I can move my once useless arms. And my hands, even with their age spots and chubby fingers, can move along the neck of my guitars and make music without hardly thinking. There was a time I thought I would never again be able to use my hands, let alone play guitar. Look at me now: I am strong enough to lift my little Ruby and swing her onto my hip! I can even sort of try to dance with Sophie, and semi-shoot a basketball with Timo (though I will never again in this life be able to do a jump shot. My whole basketball balance is gone.)

I know first hand (excuse the pun) that my Lord can heal me. Not that He always will. I trust that He is aware, because He has shown me inside in my center buzzy space and outside in places like the tip of my finger and the tips of new born nerve endings in my extremities. The day He decides not to heal me I will also trust Him. I pray to have the strength to take whatever comes whenever it comes, because even if God doesn’t intervene or rescue or heal; it is enough to know He can.