LIKE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH

"...if you can't be with the one you love, Honey,
love the one you're with."

If you're going to be stuck alone with somebody for an indeterminate period of time, it would be dandy if you liked them. Love matters, yes, but when you get down to the day-in, day-out of closeness, "like" is the word of choice. If you have to dig deep into the love department, it usually means they, or you, are not being particularly likeable. If you are reading this now, at the end of March 2020, you probably know exactly what I mean. I do not know a single human being who is not feeling whacked and gobsmacked by the current pandemic that has confined most of us to social isolation. We are hunkered down in our homes, or apartments, with the people who share the same address, whether or not they are family. We are all trying to keep ourselves functionally conscious while dealing with a massive overdose of closeness. 

Libby told me tonight about a teenage neighbor who decided, just for fun, that he was not going to shower until this thing was over. He thought it was funny. The rest of his family jumped him last night and dragged him into the shower.

Every time I think about certain people, like my friend with two autistic kids, or my widowed neighbors who live alone, or the multiple friends and family who have multiple kids they are now "home schooling", having to deal with multiple teachers’ online requirements for each of their kids, I pause and say a prayer with their specific names attached, because there's not much more I can do from my isolated space. I have so much respect for everybody, seriously, EVERYBODY who is enduring this.

My first personal friend was hospitalized today with Covid 19. His wife, my dear friend, also has it at home. It feels like the fog is creeping in through the cracks in the door and I can't stop it.

Dave was just talking a few minutes ago about something or other, saying: “when this whole thing is over and we are able to gather again….” 

I responded, "I wonder how much personal sorrow there will be for us between now and then?" 

We have a sincere general sorrow, for humankind, for specific areas and cultures. But I can't say, because I don’t know, how deep the personal tragedy may be for us. I try not to fixate on that, of course, because I do not have much power over it, besides following the rules set out to keep us safe. But I also allow myself to consider it occasionally, because it leads me to respect the parameters set around us, and sends me to an attitude of prayer and gratitude for what I do have... and what I do not have.

As this day winds to its close, I want to acknowledge that I am most blessed to actually LIKE the person I am stuck with. I love him, yes, but the fact that I like him, and he likes me, just makes this whole murky mess more bearable. Of course, there are moments. We are humans, after all, though there are times I think Dave may be one of the 3 Nephites who were granted their heart's desire to not taste of death but to continue to do good on the earth. Then again, I've seen, in 42 years of marriage, evidence to the contrary, even if it's rare.

Today my Covid Pal celebrates one more run around the sun. I'm grateful we are still running this race together. (Well, he is running. I'm hobbling. But he is really nice about waiting for me.)

Happy Birthday, Dave.

My favorite roomie.
With the German Chocolate cake I made today,
because I make it a habit to always have
40 extra pounds of butter in our fridge or freezer.
Seriously, I've done this for years. Stockpiled butter.
I cook a lot.
(#anditshows)
Everything's better with butter.

(coronavirus deaths to date: 37,830 -  totals taken from the website worldometer.com)

HER VOICE

I wish I knew her voice. I long to know her voice. But there is nothing to recall. 

I never knew my grandmother, at least not in this life. She died when my mom was fifteen years old. Mom told me once that she carried a big old wad of regret because when they were standing in a blizzard at her mother’s freshly dug grave, all she could think about was how the snow was ruining her new hat.

All I know of Grandma Parrish came to me in stories and black and white photographs. I was too young and disinterested, when my aunts and uncles were still telling stories, to ask for more about her. I wonder what I would have called her. I wonder if she was the type that would have earned or wanted an endearing name other than Grandmother. When someone calls me Gummy my heart automatically shifts to its happy place. It pinches at my heart to not know what I would call her.

George (center) and Lizzie (right)
and a bunch of other people I don't know

What is it that makes me think of her so often? It’s really quite curious to me, that I think of her so much. I wonder what portion of it is the kind of thing that rustles the fabric of the veil dividing this life from the next, and what portion is longing, and what part is just simple curiosity.
I want to know what part of my mother was dripped into her from her mother, either through DNA or experience. I want to know what kept her moving forward, and what sort of things stopped her in her tracks. We are told she sang at funerals often, and I know she played in the Blackfoot Grange Kitchen Band, so I believe she had a lovely voice, one prone to give comfort. And one prone to some portion of laughter, sprung from a healthy dose of good humor.

I ache to know her. I guess there will be a long time, not too far off, when we can remedy that.

She is central, with drumsticks on an upended pot.
The Blckfoot Grange Kitchen Band.

When I stop myself, and stop the noise of the world around me, I can recall my mother’s voice. I can hear her in all sorts of moods, gentle and reassuring, firm with anger, confident in business transactions. I can hear her laughing, humming, singing, calling us in for supper. I know my mother’s voice.
But I long to know the tones of my grandmother.

Today, in my email, there was a message from the Family Search website, telling me when and where my Grandmother Elizabeth May Wood Parrish received her sacred temple endowments and where she was married. This photograph appeared:

Elizabeth May Wood Parrish
1883-1939

I had never seen it before. I stared at it, inhaling and exhaling, thinking on some illogical level that if I stared long enough I might beckon her here.

She is young. Her dress is pleated, with a tidy high collar accented with a pin or button under the chin. Her dark hair is pulled up in a soft bun. Her eyes are bright and focused. 

The website told me that she married at 19, like I did. In the temple, like I did. Was she as innocent and inexperienced as I was? Did she make similar mistakes? Her own mother had died when she was young. What could she have known of bearing children, of marriage? Where was her mother to show her how to bathe her baby, or how to help him attach at the breast? I hurt for her. I rejoice with her.

I look at this photograph, where her eyes seem to be looking straight into mine, and I wonder what she might think of me; the second-to-youngest daughter of her second-to-youngest daughter. Today she would have found me hunkered down in my bed, all cozy in my soft down pillow, sleeping the morning away. I wish I knew how she might respond to that. Would she urge me to rise, without judgement? Would she bang the cast iron griddle against the stove to subtly call me to arms in the kitchen? I cannot imagine her yanking me out of bed, but she might. She might! And perhaps she should, if she knew me. "So we're having a bit of a worldwide crisis, are we? Well, this world has had crises before. Sleeping through it is beneath you, don't you think?" She might say this, or she might tell me to sleep while I can, and then, by golly, get up and get to work!

Harvesting Idaho potatoes.

Wherever you are today, Grandmother, will you put your arms around my mother for me, and for my siblings, and my kids? We miss her somethin’ awful. Will you ask her about us, so that when we meet, you might know a bit of who we are? Meanwhile, I’ll try to make myself do what I imagine you might want me to do, because like it or not, our voices are linked in a large eternal family choir. I hope I sing next to you one day.

My grandmother, there on the right, her hands resting on
the shoulders of my mother, Afton. My Aunt Becky,
her eleventh child,  is still nestled in her womb.
She would be around 45 years old here.
I am tired for her.
Not ten years later she would fly up to Heaven.

TOUCH

The lucky ones live on the first floor. Down there at ground level, where the evidence of an impending bloom disturbs the winter worn soil of the flower beds under their windows. Their bodies are worn out and their souls are weary, but still they soldier on! For some of them, their brains have taken a left turn and they can’t seem to find their way home. Under the best of circumstances their lives are a daily struggle. 

There’s comfort in routine; sleep when it’s dark, dress when its light, eat when you’re fed. Their homes are in the past; their living room sets and their recipes and their shelves full of books. Decades of rich thick lives reduced to this: a single bed, perhaps an easy chair and a familiar quilt. And planted atop a single small dresser are silver framed photographs. I look around me now, here on the threshold of my own exit, and find comfort in the hope that, while I may lose all this “stuff” that swirls around me, what they cannot take away, when I am old, are the people I love.

In my almost weekly troubadour travels to retirement centers and nursing homes, I’ve repeatedly seen this scene unfold: We are singing songs of the past, and we are connected, happily reminiscing. But if someone comes to visit one of them, nothing else matters. The world around them melts away and the music stops and every molecule of their fragile being is magnetized to their visitor. Like a cotton dishcloth swept against a spill, they absorb the love that comes to visit, sucking it in with bright affection, looking around to see if everyone else notices that someone they love came to see THEM, and no one else. 

At the end of every gig, when the people I am singing to are healthy, I tuck my guitar into its case and one by one touch the skin of every person there. There is incredible power in touch, a magnetic force that awakens sleepy corners of our spirits. We need to touch. We crave connection, even if we are shy or introverted or scared. Tender touch, like oxygen breathed into yearning lungs.

So, when this wicked Coronavirus reared its head last month, sneaking across the ocean like the foggy Angel of Death that floated into households in the Ten Commandments movie, we took heed to protect our ancient treasures. Since the elderly are the most vulnerable, we decided we need to tuck them away. Like grandmother’s silverware, locked into a wooden box. All for love.

Her children come to see her through the window in her first-floor room, standing in their coats and gloves out in the cold. They unfold their lawn chairs and dial their phones, staring past their own reflections into their mother’s eyes. She raises her wrinkled hand to the window, pressing the palm flat on the glassy surface. Her daughter’s hand does the same, then her son, and her grandchildren try to sing as loud as they can, but the glass will not let it in loud enough for her murky ears to hear them. It helps, sure it helps, to try. It helps a lot. But still, when so much has been taken away, bit by bit at first, then in one fell swoop, it seems so unkind to rob them also of the one thing they could still afford to keep: touch.

Like the vaccination that makes the baby cry, we understand the why. But we hate the how. So, we pray, from our far-off places on the other side of the bedroom door and the hard glass window pane, that she will survive this, that she will sleep soundly until that day when she can once again press her heart against ours.

CELEBRATE

We humans like to celebrate, at least the ones I know. Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, holidays. The first day of school, the last day of work. We bake cakes and light candles and make noise, clicking our glasses together, singing songs and twirling each other across dance floors.

Every time we drive down to Herriman UT, to see our grandkids in band and choir concerts, or plays, or ball games, four-year-old Gracie throws her arms around my neck and puts her lips against my ear: “Are we going to celebrate?” Which basically means, “After we are done, are we going to get some frozen yogurt, or Cold Stone ice cream, or late dinner at Olive Garden?” Traditionally the celebrations in our clan include spending extra time together around some sort of table.

Today, smack in the middle of a united world-wide crisis, I think we forgot to celebrate. At least I did. The clock has struck twelve and the date on my computer has rolled ahead, but since I am still dressed, it doesn’t count. I have to get in my PJ’s and at least lie down and attempt to sleep before it counts as a new day, regardless of what the clock, the sun, the moon or the calendar indicate.

As unexpected as the earthquake last week, or the pandemic today, 200 years ago a young American boy saw God. It’s worth noting because not a lot of people have actually seen God. It’s not a small thing. Not only did he see God, the Father, but he also saw God the Son, whom we call Jesus. Seems pretty spectacular. If I hadn’t wrestled with the thought myself, more than once in the zig-zag journey of my life, I would not think it worth noting, let alone celebrating. It’s ok with me that not everyone thinks it worth celebrating, either. That’s part of the gig, that people get to choose. That’s why we’re alive in the first place. But I remind myself, as part of my sense of placement, that this particular event is important to me.

When that boy, Joseph, wrote about his experience there in the grove of trees in upstate New York, 200 years ago today, he included these words, that always strike me:

“I had seen a vision. I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it.”

That’s a big heavy for a kid, seeing not just an angel, but God himself. In all seriousness, no one through their own logic was going to believe him. It would have been a lot easier to have seen anything or anyone else. And for sure if you’re fourteen years old, you probably would rather just do the regular teenager stuff than have to face what he faced. But if you believe in an omnipotent and omniscient God, truly believe in Him, and you get a visit from him, and he knows you’ve seen him, well you’d have a hard time running away from that. If you know he knows, then the weight of having to act upon that knowledge had to have been incredible. I mean, who can hide from God? People, all the way back to Adam, have tried, and it just plain doesn’t work.

So, here’s to Joseph Smith; surely not the first fourteen-year-old who prayed to know where he should lay his spiritual allegiance. Nonetheless, the first to have received this kind of answer. Here’s to his courage, his fortitude, his grace, his mistakes, his efforts, and his sacrifices, which included life itself. Here’s to any of us who feel to believe, as he did, that the God who visited Adam and Moses, face to face, still has an interest in this earth and the souls who inhabit it. It’s surely not an easy thing to own, in these days of rampant disbelief.

If faith is hope in things unseen, which are true, then here is where I plant my seeds of faith. 

This is a pivotal day, this time in late March when the sap runs through the trees of upstate New York, and the sun begins to warm the frozen dirt in the fields. The world changed on this day, whether or not you choose to believe it. Two full centuries ago, on Palm Sunday that year, our maker showed his face, and spoke, and reclaimed us as His. In a quiet cluster of trees, with a moldable boy, the trajectory of our planet shifted just enough to aim us straight back home.

Tonight, in the comfort of my chair, in the quiet of this room, in the stillness of our peaceful town, I bow my head and close my eyes and speak His name, and in the humility and the soberness of the situation in which this earth currently finds itself, I let my heart celebrate.

Tap HERE to watch a short video about Joseph Smith's first vision.

IS IT NAP TIME YET?

It was 3 pm, on a typical Wednesday during a worldwide pandemic. After a grueling day of self isolating, under the drone of the heating vent whispering sweet nothings into the still of the day, my regular episode of Lazy-Eyelids began to fall upon me. I should add here that I have had this afternoon ailment all of my adult life, pandemic or not. Right before the kids got home from school I was ready for a nap. Just about the same time I had to drive them to their various extra-curricular activities. I carry roughly 35 “stay awake while driving” pounds on me. That’s why you’ll always find some sort of chewables in the console of my car.

But I digress.

Today, at 3:07, to be exact, I forced my lazy bones up out of my chair to answer the door. This is what I found on the porch:

My friend and one of my Girls with Guitars students, Al Morgan, had sent this text:

Al and her husband are owners of a number of FIIZ businesses here in Utah. She’s also a nurse. And a mom. And a snowboarding instructor. Obviously, Al has lots of time on her hands, because she has nothing else to do. (insert sarcasm emoji here) So she brings FIIZ sodas around to sleepy sluggish shut-in’s.

Coke. Straight up. None of the other doo dads added in. With a nice scoop of that crunchy ice.

Woke me right up.

Thanks, Al.

My first Fiiz. Hand delivered.
(oh, what a relief it is)

When they let me loose and I'm out performing my normal avoidance behaviors, where do you think I might stop for a drink?

I THINK GOD MAY BE TEASING US

I watched with disbelief as my friend Sherrie took a four pack of petunias from the bed of her pick-up truck. She held out the palm of her left hand, and with her right she upended the flowers, squeezing the thin black plastic holding the roots, and dropping the blossom side of the flowers into her other hand. She tossed the flowers onto divots she had dug in the freshly turned dirt of her flower beds. Within minutes she had emptied one of sixteen full flats. When she had filled one of her flower beds like this, she knelt to set the roots in the dirt. I noticed right away that her methods seemed brutal. She worked with wicked speed. I watched her rip the very bottoms of the roots away, disrupting the peaceful root ball of each flower, then she plunked each one down into the hole. Her two hands scooped the loose dirt over the roots as she leaned in, pressing the dirt around the stem. Then, as if that whole cruel process were not enough, she pinched the lovely blossoms off the top. 

I, on the other hand, thought I would be more gentle with the single flat I bought for the narrow flower bed in our front yard. I dug tight little holes and gently lifted each flower from its plug tray, placed it in the hole and trickled some fresh potting soil on top, not disturbing the roots or the lovely blooming flower heads. Mine looked great right after I planted them.

Two months later Sherrie’s flower beds looked like fairies had sprinkled magic dust over them. Pink and white blooms cascaded like waterfalls. Mine looked like little green spindly vines with one or two blossoms each. It was pitiful.

I’ve learned a bit since then.

What I thought was plant brutality began with what is called teasing the roots. The nice full starter plants purchased at the nursery have generally, by the time we buy them, sent down too many roots for the tad of dirt provided in their little growing packs. The roots intertwine, knotting themselves into themselves. Leave them like that and it will choke itself to death.

What I thought was flora cruelty, pinching off the blooms, is actually doing the plant a favor. The nourishment and energy needed to keep that blossom looking pretty can instead be used to send up new healthy shoots, with more flower heads.

This is not new news. They’ve been telling us, in ancient writings all the way back to Adam, that we need to prune and graft and nourish and plow under. Lots of plant analogies are found in scripture and philosophy.

A few days ago, I planted the pansies I had bought out at J and J Nursery, before this pandemic reared its head. They’ve been sitting in their plastic flats for two weeks, out by the swing set. Because I have planters with nice loose topsoil in them, they would be super easy to plant. I just put it off, for no good reason whatsoever. I’ve done this so many times I’ve had to replace whole flats that have withered in the waiting. Sheesh!

Anyway, as I was teasing the roots on those pansies, before I set them in the soil, I got to thinking about God. He often enters my thoughts when I’m planting. I think He’s in his element there. I’m wondering if we, his children, have become a little root bound lately. We are happy in our tidy little plant plugs, where we were born and nourished daily and watered with regularity in a nice sunny greenhouse. I’m wondering if he said it was time to tease us and get us ready to really grow. Between pandemics and earthquakes and schools closing and businesses closing and economies crashing and people going stir crazy not being able to get near each other, it sure does feel like maybe the universe or God or whatever powers may be are teasing us!

I’m serious. I think, if I encourage myself to see what we are going through as a ripping of our roots, so we can refocus our energies; and a pinching of our blooms, requiring us to double our strength, then I will surrender and let it happen. The surrender opens the virtual capillaries and allows the growth to work to our own good. I can’t make anyone else see it that way. But I can choose to see it that way.

The thought brings a strange sense of calm. Like… this is supposed to hurt! It is not supposed to be easy! It is hard. And we can handle hard. In effect, we are modern day pioneers and this rocky precipice we are crossing will take some effort and some sacrifice and some faith.

Welcome back, our Christian Soldiers:
Elder Shill, Elder Davis and Elder Yerman the Younger.
(Elder Yerman the Elder comes home tomorrow.)

Today we "gathered" in our familial clusters, six feet apart from each other, outside of our church. We cheered as the first wave of a sweet young devoted army of missionaries came home from their missions in Brazil and Thailand. More will follow, from Honduras and Chile and Arizona. These are the kids we taught in Primary not long ago. They are devoted, righteous, hard-working and pure hearted souls who had set aside this portion of their lives to pay an emotional, physical and spiritual tithe to their Lord. Ten percent of their lives so far. And they were happy doing it. But now they are called to let go, like they let go of the familiar to serve in the first place. Bless their tender young hearts! They came home by chartered planes from their far-off places, to the safety of their mothers’ arms and their fathers’ shelter while this disease spreads its tentacles worldwide. Full battalions marching home together. They will quarantine in their rooms for 14 days. I cannot imagine! Prayers for their emotional, physical and spiritual well-being!

Elder Shill enjoys his first home cooked meal.

For whatever reason God has decided to tease our roots, I have to believe He knows what he is doing. So, while it may pinch, and it doesn’t look so pretty right now, and all we can really see is a big ole painful mess of dirt, I trust in the end He knows how to make us bloom.

THE CHURCH BELLS IN LECCO

Somewhere in the digital library of a thousand virtual photos are reminders of the last time we were in Italy. I was younger then, we all were, all four of us: my husband David, Christine, Fab and I.  But I guess that didn't matter. Italy took no thought for how old or young we were, she just sat comfortably on the Earth's veranda, intoxicatingly lovely but calm and coy. She flirted with our senses relentlessly. I suck on my tongue, beckoning back the luscious flavors of the fruits of the Mediterranean vine. I inhale the decadent aroma of cheeses and salamis and olives bedded down together in neighborhood gastronomia; close my eyes and feel the air rush by as we drive through rolling fields basking in the Tuscan sun. Of all the places I have visited, Italy is perhaps the most aesthetic, appealing to every sense, sentiment and taste.

Fab and Christine, who lived in Milan at the time, took us up to Lecco, where they were in the process of completing the rebuild of a wonderful old building. Their condominium, almost finished at that point, was situated on beautiful Lake Como. The sea birds landed on their windowsills. Colorful boats rolled peacefully on the water, tied to wooden posts along the promenade. I have, somewhere, photographs of the layers of terracotta roofs that could be seen from their kitchen window. Beautiful architectural patterns that blushed in the sunlight, their vertical lines broken by an occasional horizontal strand of laundry flapping in the clean Lecco air. Fab and Christine call that charming place home now, and have for many years. We have been remiss in returning.

This morning I emailed Christine to check in, knowing from the news that Italy is suffering immensely with the ravages of the corona virus pandemic that has paralyzed the world. We see reports of makeshift hospitals being set up in historic landmark places. The streets are empty otherwise. It looks devastatingly tragic.

Here, in part, is what Christine wrote back to us this afternoon:

"The past days have been extremely difficult for doctors, hospital staff, ambulance staff. Hospitals are overflowing. Patients everywhere. Our 3 doctors who are living in our small condominium are fine, but exhausted and not coming home more than a few hours. Fabrizio and I have been closed in for a month now. I just go out once every other 10 days for food and drugstore. As of Friday, we are not allowed to go out of our village border at all, once a week for supermarket or drugstore.

The silence is spectral, even birds stopped singing. We hear only ambulances, helicopters, bells every time a soul is flying away,

Fabrizio, all considered, is quite ok, not driving me crazy, only a small half, but he gets very tired extremely quickly, I am fine, but like everybody, quite stunned." 

The thought of church bells echoing over those terracotta roofs, marking the passing of neighbors and friends, leads my hand to clutch my heart. I am reminded to remain vigilant in our quest to keep the demon at bay. If we can do something here in America, then we should. Let the evidence of our Italian brothers and sisters serve us with soberness. We have control over where we go and what we do. This is a test of our tolerance, and our patience, of course, but it is not impossible. We are not weaklings! We can, and we should, be vigilant. 

We do not have church bells in our sleepy little town here in the foothills of the Wasatch mountains of Utah, though there are plenty of steeples. But if we did, I pray they would be silent. 

THANK YOU, GOD, FOR CAROL BURNETT

The last time my dad left he didn’t come back. He took his clothes and his razor and his beer out of the fridge, but the thing that sealed the deal was that he took the TV. I was too young and naïve to understand that he also took 100% of his income, but that’s another sorry story.

It really only smarted on Saturday mornings, the TV part. 

That spring, just after President’s Day, a miracle happened right before our very eyes. Mom had taken us with her to JC Penney down at Southland Shopping Center on Rt. 51 to get our brother George a new Sunday shirt. While she shopped, Ann Marie, Libby and I hung out in the front of the store where they had set up a President’s Day display, honoring George Washington. A sprawling artificial cherry tree filled the display window, it’s hovering branches laden with plastic cherries. 

“Guess the number of cherries and win a prize!” 

My sisters and I read the sign and immediately started counting. Something must have distracted me, because by the time mom came and gathered us up, I was sitting on the floor leaning my back against the cold cement wall. My younger sister Libby had faithfully counted those cherries, one by one. I kept track of the hundreds for her. Our older sister, Ann Marie, used some sort of mathematical equation and came up with a number way past what I thought would ever be there. We took a handful of paper entry forms and put our names, phone number, and our guesses on them, stuffing them into a fancy box with George Washington’s wood- toothed smile on top.

That next week, while Mom, George and Ann Marie were at their church youth group activity, the phone rang. I have a vivid memory of picking up the phone that hung on our kitchen wall. They asked for Corinne Hansen, I replied that I was she (Mom taught us to always answer “This is she”, though that always felt strangely stiff to me. I did it anyway.) That’s when they informed me that I had won the second prize in the JC Penny Cherry Tree contest. A brand spankin’ new TV! (I KNOW! It was a miracle!)

Mom took me down to JC Penney’s a few days later. I wore my best skirt and fresh new knee high socks with my saddle shoes cuz they said they’d have a newspaper photographer there.

Mom let me put the TV in our bedroom. It was a black and white portable with a handle on top and a ten-inch screen. We set it on the sewing stool against the wall in the room Libby and I shared. There were rules about when we could watch it, and we were generally rule keepers. When your father is a big rule breaker, and you love your mom, you try to be a rule keeper. 

Without blubbering all the detail, you should maybe know that there were some pretty sad things that happened to the twelve-year-old girl who was me, back then. Things that make a girl grow up sooner than she should have to. Things that still make me cry. I carried a big ole’ sad beneath my budding chest. This I kept to myself, only sharing tidbits with my confidant and playmate, Libby. I only shared enough to let the steam out of the valve, wanting to keep her from the boiling water.

We watched Petticoat Junction and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and I Dream of Jeanie, and of course Saturday morning cartoons on our new TV. In those days, if you wanted to watch a show, you had to be planted in place when it aired. There was no On Demand; not even a Pause or Rewind. The TV Guide that came with the Sunday paper was your friend.

One night we sat on the floor at the end of my bed, about two feet from the 10” screen, watching Carol Burnett. We got to laughing, so hard that I almost wet my pants, which of course made us laugh more. I pulled my knees up under my chin, feeling my heart pumping against my chest with throbbing laughter. At some point, I noticed a warm tear running down my cheek. I’ve always had an unusual ability to see myself, sometimes, as if I was outside of myself, looking in. That tear put me in that spot, and I wondered on some sub-terrainian, level why I should be crying. This was not a tear of laughter. I know those, too. This was something else.

I watched Carol and Harvey and Tim singing their songs and acting out their sketches and this thing rose up in me that felt like sorrow. It felt like sorrow that was hunkered down in there, underneath my belly, finally felt safe enough to come up. So it flowed on out of my eyes, I guess. 

You may not believe it, but I said a prayer there, in front of my portable television. With my legs cinched between my heart and my folded arms I lowered my head, wiping my eyes against the skin of my knees so Lib wouldn’t see me crying. I buried my face in my knees and I thanked my Lord for Carol Burnett. For making me laugh. (Mom had also taught us that we could pray any time. We didn’t have to be kneeling by our beds, we could just plain talk to God whenever we felt like it.) That night I felt a love for Carol Burnett so deep that I thanked God for her, and I asked Him to bless her. 

Even now, when I see a sketch with Carol Burnett in it, I want to cry. Not because she makes me sad, not at all. It felt, to me, like Carol saw my little life, right through that television screen, and she nodded and smiled and said, “it’s ok, you’ll be ok, let’s just find something to laugh about for a minute and give your heart a rest.”

There is a piece of divinity in good clean comedy. I wish more comedians would access it. When part of someone’s wound is also the fodder for the raw caustic comedians of today, the laughter swirls in its own swill. But Carol, and Tim, and Harvey, Lyle and Vicki – whether they knew it or not – they were healing balm to a young girl’s heart. I pray for them still.

I’m so glad we had this time together

Just to have a laugh or sing a song

Seems we just get started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say, so long.

Goodnight everybody.

JOSEPH SMITH and his MAGIC FLUTE

1. Pleasant Hills, PA 1972

The Pleasant Hills Middle School Choir Concert had just finished the Spring Concert. The masses of parents and siblings had scurried out of the gym, leaving a jumble of chairs and crumpled programs behind. The eighth-grade Mini Singers had been assigned clean up duty. The boys handled the chairs. They kicked them with their shoes so the seats banged closed, then they lined them up on big wheeled dollies while we girls gathered up the garbage. We bent at the knees instead of our waists, on account of our mini-skirts being so short, and boys being in the room and all. We were that age when we still believed it was cool to be picked to clean up. We were the oldest in the student body, and for sure the coolest, since only sixteen of us were chosen to be Mini Singers and we got to wear matching dresses and real true panty hose and high-ish heels. When you’re that cool you start thinking you have privileges and rights, so you just grab the knob on the janitors closet and saunter on in, checking out the stacks of supplies while you look for a broom. You run in and out of the choir room and down the empty halls, laughing and singing full voiced harmony with your best friend. There is a sort of liberating freedom that comes around that age anyway, if you’re lucky and loved, which I was, in general. 

Libby had stayed to help me clean up, and by the time we got to the last garbage can we were the only ones left in the gym. I picked up one last printed program and aimed for the garbage can, but of course, I missed. So when I ran over to pick it up and drop it in, I noticed a shiny metal pipe sticking up out of the garbage. I pulled at it, and out came a long silver horn, with a slender leadpipe and a simple wide bell at the end. It was slightly bent, with a little dent in the side that had rusted a little. I wondered to myself why someone would throw something so groovy away. I leaned over to put it back in the garbage, then paused, looked around and walked right out the door with it in my hands. Lib and I walked home that night, under the early Spring moonlight, and pursed our lips in all sorts of maneuvers, wriggling what few tones that old horn had to offer adolescent girls with no embouchure.
Besides my siblings and my memory, that horn is one of the few portions of my youth I still carry with me. I keep it stored up with the Christmas stuff. We bring it out every Christmas Eve for the Angel of the Lord to blow in our family nativity. Kate, except for her very first Christmas Eve, when she was required to play the role of baby Jesus, was always our Angel of the Lord, seeing as she was our Christmas child, and also partly because Sarah always wanted to be Mary.
Now the job of Angel of the Lord / Horn Blower rotates between the grands.

2. Salt Lake City, UT 1982

We had just moved from Pittsburgh to Salt Lake City. We were driving through the city, checking out the sights in our yellow Toyota Corona. Four-year-old John sat in his booster seat next to his little sister, Sarah. The Utah Capitol seemed to float over us on top of that hill, a halo of light glowing over its dome. Down in the valley, behind a rock wall, the Salt Lake Temple glistened, massive spotlights sending out rays that reflected sparkles in the granite. 

“See that Johnny? Do you know what that is?”

“It’s da temple,” he answered. Then he gasped and squealed: “And there’s Joseph Smith with his magic flute!”  

He referred to the golden angel perched atop the highest spire. Angel Moroni, blowing his golden trumpet, proclaiming the restored gospel of Christ to all the world. Most of our temples have this iconic symbol.

“No Johnny, that’s Moroni and his trumpet.”

3. March 20, 2020

Two days ago, the earth under Salt Lake City rattled and rolled. We’ve known for years that we have built this metropolis on a fault line. An earthquake is inevitable, and overdue. We’ve been reminded yearly to be prepared, this might be the year… this might be the year. But it never was. Until now.

The world has gone so crazy lately, what with plagues, pestilences and famines. I suppose it should be expected that Mother Earth would shudder. In the wake of the quake the temple shook, too. When it was over, poor Moroni had lost his horn. It dropped clean out of his hand and ended up all bent out of shape in the apron of the steeple. I saw a picture of it on the news and texted Johnny: “Guess what? Joseph Smith has lost his magic flute!”

No worries, Moroni, we have a spare up in the attic. 

SIX

It's called "social distancing"

Six.

Six feet. Either practice fix feet apart or find yourself six feet under.

That's what they say, whomever "they" are.

Actually, "they" are pretty much everybody who knows anything about this Covid 19 corona virus that is weilding its ugly sword at our WHOLE WORLD!

Today all of California was ordered to stay in place, in an attempt to keep this virus from spreading. For now, for the rest of us, we are allowed out, but the rule of thumb (or, not thumb) is that we keep ourselves six feet from other humans. At least other humans not in our home.

It's a hard rule to keep, if you're a hugger like me. A hugger and a kisser. I think I'm Italian at heart, but it was announced today that Italy has just surpassed China in the number of coronavirus deaths, so maybe the bow beats the kiss in terms of social greeting, I don't know. 

I've taken to blowing kisses.

The brilliant Emily King created the artwork
for my album Blowing Kisses.

Six.

Six years.

Six years ago tonight I met this boy. His tiny little hand reached up out of his swaddle blanket and put a firm grip around my heart, claiming it as his own. He's never given it back. It still amazes me how the heart can multiply so easily. My first-born's last-born: Walter David Connors. The absolutely perfect spirit came at the absolutely perfect time. He brought light and hope and laughter and delight just when life started feeling a little overwhelming.

My boy and his boys.

Walter boy, our Walter joy, is six years old today.

Gumpa and I wrapped up a Star Wars Lego set and a Star Wars book and a Star Wars costume and drove over to his house. We sang Happy Birthday through the front room window. We resisted, painfully, reaching through the glass. He jumped up and down with that little boy joy, and thanked us, and told us he loved us, and we didn't even cry because the happy was just too thick. To be honest, it's a good thing there was glass between us, and a layer of brick, because I might not have been able to resist smashing him against my heart.

Love has the ability to move through glass.

Happy Birthday, Dear Walter....!

Power gear.

Walter spent Christmas with us last year,
while the rest of his family spent their holiday
helping people in Mexico build houses.
I went to nine different McDonalds' to get a
complete set of these Happy Meal Star Wars guys.

A most joyful Christmas morning with this 5 year old,
who is now 6!

Walter, may you live a good long and healthy life and cherish every hug you get from here on out!

Happy Birthday, my friend.