42. TWIN

I always wanted a twin.  At least since the Johnson's moved into our ward in elementary school. Steve and Scott were identical twins and they had all sorts of fun with it. I'm sure they have stories to tell even still, all these years later.  Trading ties, trading homework, giving two and a half minute talks in church for each other.  Fooling even their own mother, at times.  Their sister Andi and I used to try to pretend to be sisters.  We thought if we wore the same outfit that people would think we were twins.  It didn't matter that I was a blond blue eyed  Dane with plenty of squish and Andi was a long and lean, brown eyed, dark haired half Hawaiian girl. 

Libby and I pretended to be twins, too.  Pioneer twins, with matching horses.  Hers was the left banister on the basement stairs, and mine was the right.  If we both parted our hair in the middle and wore braids then there was no question we were identical twins. If Ann Marie was playing with us we were triplets.

If Libby and I weren't twins by birth, at least we were twins by bed.  Our twin beds were symmetrically situated in our bedroom.  Mom liked symmetry.  The aisle between the two beds had a small rug on the hardwood floor.  The rug was the magic carpet between two ships sailing into the misty harbor of some never-land on a Saturday afternoon. Lib and I played ship for hours on end.  An upside down waste basket was our stove top.  Towels were our hammocks.  Our pillows became sails, then cradles for our babies.  If your feet touched the ground on a sailing adventure then you were dead.  This was rarely a problem.  We would jump from twin bed to twin bed, the safety of the rug being a small cushion under us.  If we could find a two by four in the garage then there would be a plank between the two ships, which always added great dimension to our adventures.  

We often pretended to be royalty aboard ship.  I was always the prince.  I danced the boy part as well when we learned to waltz in a church activity.  To add realism to the royalty aspect we stretched wire hangers over our heads, the hook poking out from the crown of the head, the loop fitting tight under the chin.  If we both wanted to be princesses, then we would add Mom's silk scarves, which flowed gently down our backs.  

Lib and I grew up and we lived very far apart for a lot of years.  But now we are super lucky cuz we  have houses right by each other.  The Madson's house is like a nightstand between our twin beds.  We get to play all the time. Not long ago I went up to visit Libby with a crown on my head.  Anyone else would have thought me crazy.  But not my sister, my twin…she went straight to the closet, grabbed a wire hanger, and stretched it over her own head.

Yay for twins!

OUT OF THE BLUE

OUT OF THE BLUE

Anybody who knows me well also knows my sister Libby. And anyone who knows Lib knows this: EVERYBODY NEEDS A LIBBY! Libby has been my pretending partner, my confidant, my fellow mischief maker, my tender-care giver for all my mortal life. All but one year. She was born 16 months after me. She is my kids’ other-mother and my husband’s fishing buddy. We spend some portion of just about every day together and if I don’t see or talk to her I go to bed feeling like something is missing.

Growing up, Libby and I, along with our older sister Ann Marie, pretended all sorts of things. We whispered our hopes and dreams between the scenes. I recall one humid night in Pittsburgh, when we were young teenagers. We each had a swing at the park by the Pleasant Hills Municipal Building. We pumped the soles of our feet up toward the stars as we pondered our futures, each of us announcing the description of our husbands-to-be and what we would name our children. Lib was going to have 12 children. Or maybe that was me. Could have been either at the time. Libby was going to name one of her sons Levi George, the middle name after the grandfather we never met (and our brother, of course). We had our futures roughly defined.

And then the future came.

I was going to be a psychologist or an advertising mogul and I was not going to get married until I was at least 26.
At 26 I was pregnant with my 4th child. I had happened, by the fates of Heaven, to marry the man of my dreams a few months after my 19th birthday and everything shifted.

Libby was going to be mother to a passel of kids. She might do something like teach History, but mostly she would snuggle those babies.
Instead, by the time she was 26 she was the youngest regional sales manager TWA had ever had and she won the Alfred E Packer award for “eating the competition alive.” (Alfred E Packer cannibalized traveling companions in a blizzard…another story). And she was still single. Being single and an un-interruptedly faithful Latter-day Saint, she also had no children. But mine. She snuggled mine like they were her own. No wonder they love her so.

Anyway, while I changed diapers, Libby climbed the corporate ladder. She ended up moving to Boston as Director of Marketing and Reservations for Sheraton International. She oversaw 17 regional offices all over the world. She had the world, quite literally, in the palm of her hand. Then they transferred her to Chicago. She had the dream job, and a free pass to anywhere in the world. What she longed for…was home.

With the help of the Lord and to the delight of her family, Libby left the clutches of the corporate world and came home. “They’ll grow up with or without me,” she determined. “I would rather them do it with me.” So she left the daily life of Dana Buchman suits and Sesto Meucci shoes; of Hors D’oeuvres and unlimited room service and came home to baseball games and chicken noodle soup. She found, again, the girl who sat in the swing next to me on a long ago summer night.

OUT OF THE BLUE was written for Libby, and for everyone who prioritizes and sacrifices for the sake of family.

Again, this song is autobiographical in principal but not in detail.

OUT OF THE BLUE
Growing up green in the hills of Kentucky
She thought she’d be lucky to leave there one day
So fresh out of school she moved on to the city
Cut from her past like the tractor cuts hay
But her roots held the ground and they’re there to this day

Life in the fast lane was driving her crazy
Caught on a fast train that fought with the wind
There’s a little old house where the sunsets are blazing
And sunflowers are growing, they’re gold and they bend
That’s where she’s going to find her again

CHORUS:
Out of the blue gray haze
That covered her nights and days
Out of the steel blue walls of Fifth Avenue
She took her spring bouquet out of that cobalt vase
Tossed to the wind
She found her again
Out of the Blue

There’s a closet of blue two-piece suits she is leaving
Deposits and blue chips she sold at a loss
Yes there are tears, but the reason she’s grieving
She just now discovered what fortune had cost
And she cannot recover the time that was lost

REPEAT CHORUS

On another summer night, under an Idaho sky, with her nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters and her beloved mother circled around her, we gave Libby a cobalt blue vase full of Idaho wildflowers. She was with us at our annual Sun Valley Bar Meetings trip. We stood at the side of a hill, where she lifted the flowers out of their vase and tossed them into the Idaho Wind. She was home.

To hear OUT OF THE BLUE Scroll down to the entry called THE BUILDER and look for OUT OF THE BLUE on the red music player.

LIBBY - LIBBY - LIBBY

What are the odds?

What are the odds that when you put your penny in the gumball machine (yes, young-'uns...they used to cost a penny) you are going to get the EXACT gumball you want AND the tiny cracker jack toy that you were wishing for at the same time? What are the odds that on your first cast of the day you catch a sweet little Brookie with a nice sharp upper fin that hasn't been worn down by swimming his whole life on a fish farm; one that has perfect fight and leaps into the air in front of the rising sun? Who gets so lucky to actually be assigned to the absolute favorite fifth grade teacher? Or win that puppy in the penny auction down at the middle school?

Not that I am one to keep track of these things; but I am a pretty lucky gal. I should bet on me, really! I find money lieing in the road when three people in front of me have missed it. I found a dime right in front of my shoe just yesterday. I won the class election by something like three votes my junior year. Goodness...DAVE CONNORS married me!! Talk about LUCK! (that was 32 years ago yesterday, by the way. Happy Anniversary, Love!)

Luck in its purest form came drifting down from heaven and charmed me 50 years ago today. It remains with me still. I was just teeny, barely walking and still getting used to having a body. My Mom brought Luck home in a blanket, swaddled around her like a papoose. Her orange red hair made her swaddled body look like she was an early summer carrot. They named her Elizabeth, after our grandmothers, but I didn't know that for many years. To me she was just LIBBY.

She was the perfect playmate! And I mean PERFECT! She was always happy to play whatever I wanted to play. Pioneers and cowboys riding horses on the basement banisters. Dressing Barbies for a play on the Camelot stage in the basement. Rocking back and forth in the attic in pretend rocking chairs, our matching Madame Alexander Pussycat dolls snuggled in our arms. If I wanted to experiment with Elmer's Glue and string, she thought it was a brilliant idea. If I wanted to pretend the crab apple tree was a space ship she was co-pilot. If it was a rainy day and we couldn't play outside she spent six straight hours on top of our twin beds with me, never once setting foot on the ground because that was the ocean and our beds were boats and we were lost at sea but at least we had each other. At least we had each other.

A few years ago when Guillain Barre smacked me upside the head and knocked me over, Libby picked me up and set me in a wheel chair. Pushed me through the corridors of the hospitals, taking notes; researching on the Internet in the wee hours of the night, arming herself with questions for the doctors the next day. Even still she is sensitive to how I might feel, years after most people forgot how sick I was. Almost two years ago she and I sat side by side while the doctors told us not to expect our mother to live through some emergency surgery. We clung to each other, shaking our heads, looking into each others eyes for long long moments, unable to process the possibility. We waited for our other sisters to arrive. They drove through the night from California. Our brothers came, too. We clustered there in Mom's hospital room for two weeks, all through the night and all through the day, taking turns playing songs and telling stories. Everyone rotated going home for rest now and again. But Libby never left. She is devotion personified. She is faith and tenderness and determination. She is gentleness and sincerity. And she is laughter. Tell me if there is a finer recipe for a human being?

Libby considers herself lucky, too. She reminds me of that when I watch her bend her knees and lift our mother into her wheel chair. "I am so lucky" she will say, then she will look in our mother's eyes and whisper; "And you are so beautiful!" She will say these words to our 85 year-old mother as she kisses her on the forehead. Every time she lifts her she kisses Mom's snowy-white hair. Her back hurts. She has muscles where 50 year old women who don't work out at the gym usually don't have muscles. They are earned by daily repetitions in love.

She is a nurturer extraordinaire! When we were young and whispering our dreams to each other across the pathway between our beds, we never could have imagined that she would not bear children of her own, with a husband who was strong like the ones on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Never ever would have imagined it. And yet.

So instead of becoming bitter; instead of withering in self pity or wondering why God doesn't seem to love her as much as other women; she throws her arms open and pulls all our children into her heart. Holds them there when their own parents can hardly stand them. Loves them and adores them and is not afraid to let them have it if they need that, too. She is the soul of goodness and virtue and I cannot believe I am so LUCKY...so gosh darn lucky to have her for my sister!

What are the odds?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LIB!