PECULIAR

April 5 2009 peculiar

Last Sunday, after returning from our trip to Kansas City and Nauvoo, followed by a two day Mormon Arts Retreat, followed by the Young Women's General Conference, I made myself wake up and get myself to church Sunday morning, pretty hammered with exhaustion. After our Young Women's opening exercises (I am YW president, by the way, a fairly new church calling) I went to sit down and listen to the lesson. While I was gone they had released one of our Laurel advisors, who had been scheduled to teach. I had spoken briefly with one of our teachers and had thought another advisor was covering the lesson, so when she said "You are teaching, aren't you?" I replied, "You are kidding, aren't you?"
She wasn't.
Ali suggested we spend the next 45 minutes just gabbing about nothing important (in her own words), and many of the girls, ages 16-18, were tired from Prom the night before. The lesson manual said the lesson that should have been prepared was on families working together, or something like that. Instead I felt to teach them something about the Holy Week which began today with Palm Sunday. For the next little chunk of time I reviewed aloud the gift and beauty of the events of this week we celebrate, the week before the Savior took the steps that empowered all mankind, which ends with the most important of all holidays, Easter. I started by talking about Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, and Lent. A lot of this was newly arranged information to many of these girls, as we do not have formal religious services that celebrate these events in our church, though we do believe in the importance of the events themselves. When I told them about Lent I mentioned this little "personal sacrifice" I selected for myself during Lent: my word of the day writing. This exercise is demanding for me (this shows my general lack of discipline) and many days I wish I had not made this commitment. "But", I said, "I have seen some interesting and insightful things about myself through this exercise. First of all, I have proven to myself that I can actually do something uncomfortable. Repeatedly. Even on vacation and when I'm sick." That was a big thing for me, and really quite empowering. "Secondly, looking back through what I have written the last thirty something days, I have discovered that I am...odd." They giggled, and I tried not to be too offended at their nods. "Maybe a better word would be 'peculiar'", I pondered aloud. We Latter-day Saints are a peculiar lot. If I did not believe in earnest I would not be this way. But I do.
"I find", I told them, "that often what I write about is my faith, or my struggles with faith, or my gut feelings which involve by nature religious beliefs. Or I write about peculiarities having to do with the organization of the church, because that is so much a part of my daily life. And besides, simple things turn spiritual to me. Things are symbolic to me. They always have been. Ask my poor sisters, who could never watch a late-night-movie in peace because I had to note what things were symbolic." I wonder if they got what I was saying.
Part of me wants to be world-wise-normal, to think those thoughts that make it possible for men and women to live together before marriage, which make it ok to have a glass of wine or to have a beer at the ball park. Things that are completely expected these days, so much so that one becomes "odd" when they behave or think otherwise. Peculiar. Yuh, it is different, and those who would shake all persons through a homogenous mixer would attempt to criticize. The irony is that so many people think of Mormons as over-homogenous. I just tend to think that things like the ten commandments are commandments, not suggestions. And if I have peculiar beliefs about other things I think the Lord asks of me, that should be ok. I still like to listen to the radio. I like to shop in normal stores and see normal movies and cheer for normal ball teams. I laugh at most normal jokes, if they are not degrading to humans or animals. I read with interest most of the newspaper and watch Oprah when I have an afternoon at home. I cry at Hallmark commercials and think Jack Bauer is indestructible. So excuse please, what you might consider odd.
Please, call it peculiar.

CONSCIENCE

April 4, 2009 conscience
Like a lucky penny, polished to an orange-copper sheen by the constancy of rubbing, I carry my conscience with me. Even when I would rather lose it, when the weight of my humanness sinks completely to the bottoms of my feet and my few but blessed good habits fall like unzipped trousers around my ankles, my conscience is still there. It was planted years ago, like a micro-chip under the skin, and I imagine my best angel (BA) keeping tabs on me through it. I sometimes think it is more like a walkie talkie though, with BA manning the base unit. Our conversation goes something like this:
"Human Girl (HG), this is BA making initial contact. Are you alert as you drive? Over."
I respond:
"Copy that, Good Buddy. Just ate three Swedish Fish, one chunk of beef jerky and drank a 12 oz Diet Pepsi. Should get me to downtown Farmington. Over."
I lose consciousness of any caloric content when I am driving. It is a matter of life and death and that situation makes indulging a necessity. I believe I have something like 50 pounds of stay awake on me.
I'm driving along and decide to enter Kohls Department Store, armed with a 30% off coupon. A voice enters my brain:
"HG, careful now. Remember how crowded the perimeter of your bedroom is getting. You already have 12 wedding gifts stashed there, and three boxes of clothes, not to mention the after-Christmas sale items you have not yet found a place for. Over."
"Uh, thanks for the reminder. Really. I needed that. Over."
So I continue, weaving through the aisles of the store like the grid on a schematic. I find my Kohls cart has two books, one pair of shoes, a picture frame on Clearance, of course, and a pair of size 8 pajamas. I notice a little static in my left ear, then a bit of a shout:
"Excuse me HG, who in your circle of love wears size 8 pajamas? Are you sure you need those? I repeat...are you sure you need those? Over."
"Oh my Heck, BA (this equates to swearing at an angel). Can't you see these are SPIDERMAN pajamas? On SALE! Timothy is already into a size 5 and he will be so happy in three years to find these in the drawer when he visits! O-VER!"
Now here's the thing about consciences. They are relentless. They have that same gene Heavenly Father has; the one that makes it possible for Him to watch us suffer, to observe our idiotic actions and thoughts and still love us. It's that little thing in their make-up that sees the big picture that we, little centipedes that we are, only see from the surface of the mosaic. It is the same amazing gift that allowed an all powerful God to watch His Son suffer unmentionable grief and not interfere. I cannot fathom it as a part of my potential, though I know it is. I got to practice that behavior on my kids. Now, as a grandmother, a crying child rips my heart out of my chest and causes me to leave my place in the grocery line to see who needs rescue. So I guess it’s a good thing I have a relentless conscience or I would be a 100% wimp instead of only a 98.9% wimp!
I put the pajamas back on the rack, even though they are on sale for $7 PLUS that additional 30% off. In fact, as a comment to the angel, which is a comment to myself I guess, I actually leave the whole dang cart with all my finds in it right there by the doors to the store. Walk out. Walk right on out and leave the mess for some poor clerk to return to the racks.
"Satisfied?" I huff as I exit, but by the time I start the car I feel a sort of relief that has a little radiant edge like the one that glows around euphoria.
"Yup."
"K. Me too, I guess. Over."

LABEL

April 3, 2009 label
Tonight was one of those nights a grandma dreams of on quiet winter mornings, when all she has to look forward to is the piles of disorganization staring her in the face, along with perhaps a batch of laundry and unloading the dishwasher. Sarah and Dave arrived with Timo and Anna Bella., having driven all 18 hours straight from Kansas City. It happened to be our great fortune that John and Ashley were given a pair of Jazz basketball tickets by the generous Casey and Keisha Hill, so we also got to have Sophie, Parker and baby Ruby with us as well. I should have turned on a recorder just to preserve the noise. When a house like this gets that kind of noise again, its walls sort of shiver and stretch and wake up. If they could talk they would speak like the tree in the book The Giving Tree, saying “Come boy, come play in my hallways and bounce on my couches and I will shelter you and be your friend.” That’s what I think these walls would say.
As the night wore on we loaded Horton Hears a Who into the DVD player and laid a row of pillows and blankets on the family room floor. I popped some popcorn and they attempted to lie still for about 13 minutes. Parker finally jumped up and came over to me where I was sitting in the old Pennsylvania rocking chair. He was wiggling in his baseball pajamas, reaching up behind his back and trying to grab at something near his neck. “Take it off, Gummy”, he said through his Binky. I reached in and felt two layers of labels at the neck of his PJ’s. One was satiny and soft, but the one underneath was stiff and irritating, so I grabbed it with my fingers and gave it a good tug, making sure I did not damage the fabric when I removed it. “Fank oo Gummy”, he said, and went back to his bowl of popcorn. Why do they put those kind of labels in clothing? I mean, seriously, what normal feeling kind of person wants that there? Parker’s daddy was really a label maniac. He had to have every label taken off his clothes, and I am not talking at the age of 12. I mean, when he was one year old, and on. His favorite shirt was that thin green 7 UP shirt of Libby’s, which came down to his knees when he first started wearing it. It was soft, thin and had no labels. I think it is perfectly correct that John was opposed to labels from the womb. The philosopher in him still hates them.
For three years I was blessed to serve the women in the Davis County Jail as a friend and teacher, every Sunday and Wednesday night. I served with Carol Cluff, a sister-heart to this day; and Val Darnell, the same; and Ruth Barker of the poet’s heart. Then when Carol was released as Relief Society President they called me to fill her position and Mary Silver joined us. Those were cherished years. It is likely the only time I will serve as Relief Society president effectively. We did not have Visiting Teaching. We didn’t have Compassionate Service Committees, nor Enrichment nights. We were not even allowed to take stapled papers into the jail because the inmates would remove the staples from the paper, sharpen them on the cement in their small recreation room, then mix toothpaste and pencil lead together so they could tattoo their knuckles and ankles. It was a unique sisterhood I served, and I loved it. One Valentines Day I got special permission from our Deputy to bring in some markers and Valentines cards and candy hearts. The ladies were so excited, you’d have thought we were in third grade on Valentines Day! We dragged the tables to the middle of the room and set up a Valentines Bingo game. As I stood at the end of the table and looked at these women, I asked them to pause for just a moment and look at the door to the media room, where we held our meetings. Taped to the window on that door was a black plastic garbage bag, put there to keep the male inmates in the Delta Echo pod from gawking at the women when they filed past as they went to the courtyard to play basketball. They were gross, crude and lude, and it broke my heart just feeling the bad energy they gave off trying to get a look at a piece of flesh draped in stiff orange uniforms and cheap slip-on tennis shoes. So that black garbage bag got taped up a few years back. I walked over to the door and announced, “Sisters, we are not garbage!” I tore the garbage bag off the door and the women all stood and whooped and clapped. Some of them stood on their chairs union style. I drew from my bag a piece of lace, sewn to the size of that window, and we ceremoniously hung it on the door. We tore that ugly black label off the door of that prison of a place. Softened the fiber of their temporary existence, and whispered to them that in spite of the ugliness of that environment, and the starkness of the situation, we could make of it something more than society tries to impose. One of the sisters sat in her seat and wept, likely tired from fighting, though I want to think it was because she saw a hint of gentleness in a harsh circumstance. I loved those women. I still pray for them. I pray they will have to courage to remove their own labels from their lives, and that they will replace the ugly with a swath of gentleness.

TRAILING

April 2, 2009 trailing

“….Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:….”

(Ode: Intimations of Mortality by W. Wordsworth)

This is the gospel according to my mother. And gratefully, it is the gospel as I understand it, according to my Creator. I am blessed to have the two be comfortably reconciled, so that I did not have to abandon one to be at peace with the other. My mother taught the gospel in whispers. In touch, both tender and disciplinary. She taught it in the way she worked, in the middle of a fishing stream, in the front seat of the car. One of the most beautiful things she has taught me is how to grow; regardless of age, in spite of past mistakes, without reservations that result from pride. I have watched her and learned. She knew, as I know, that the little ones who emerged all wet and quivering, attached to the motherland, came with heaven in their wings. Their infant silence was a gradual forgetting, but I could always see it in their eyes, a far off gaze as if there were something brighter beyond their mother’s face. I see it in our little Ruby, though with her emerging laughter I have noticed her eyes connecting with ours more and more, so that soon the scene of heaven behind all of us will be dark, though no more distant. It has an element of sadness, knowing her heaven home was so recently left; and yet it is also quite lovely to know that she is given to us wholly and without reservation from her first creator. Such an amazing trust!
When our kids were young my mother taught her grandchildren to love well patterned words. Not just the patterns, I suppose, but also the messages in them. Mom understood, and still understands, the natural usefulness of bribery. So she made a deal with her dozen or so kids, and any of their friends who also called her Gram. She paid them to memorize poetry. There were rules, and you better darn well follow them to the tee! These were the rules:
1. You must stand with your shoulders straight and look Gram in the eye.
2. You must accurately recite the name of the poet and title of the poem.
3. You must recite without flaw at least eight lines of an epic poem, for the youngest ones, and as you got older that number increased.
4. You must be able to express your feelings about the poem with sincerity.
If you were able to do that, then Gram gave you five dollars. That’s a goodly sum of money for a six year old. (Heck, that’s a goodly sum for a fifty year old these days!) Thereafter, each time you recited the poem, following all the same rules, you were entitled to a quarter.

Now on Memorial Day we will gather around the graves and Johnny will be able to recite In Flanders Fields for us. Sarah can finish these words: “Between the dark and the daylight, when the light is beginning to lower….” Walk up to any of Gram’s grandchildren and ask them to recite a poem, and surely one will come up like bubbles in Ginger Ale newly opened. It will come rushing to their minds and their hearts at once, and I can almost guarantee you they will, somewhere in the back of their thoughts, be remembering their old Gram. They’ll recall her handing them a crisp five dollar bill, then placing her weathered hands on their cheeks and pulling them into her, kissing their pink lips with hers and saying, finally… “Do you know how much I love you?” and following that, always, with the words “Who’s your best friend?”
If any of my children are perhaps reading this blog, would you mind answering that question? I just want to make sure you know it.
Thank you, mother of my heart and my body, for teaching me to love words. I will hear for eternity your voice speaking the first poetry I ever wrote. You made it sound so much sweeter than it ever really was. Thank you for giving me strong arms to nestle in, with hands that gathered heaven's trailings and tucked them into my blanket. I feel them with me still.

POCKET

April 1, 2009 pocket
I wonder how many people have pondered the eternal nature of a pocket? Think about it, nothing lies as close to our skin as our clothing, and no place is as intimate and secret as a pocket. The other day Parker was trying to talk to Gumpa while they were working in the driveway, but his Binky interfered with their communication. His words were garbled as he tried to talk around the rubber bulb in his mouth and he got a little frustrated. So I suggested maybe he could take his Binky out of his mouth so Gumpa could understand him. Park is pleasantness personified, and he immediately took it out and asked Gump for a hammer. So here's this painfully handsome two year old builder boy pounding away with his little hand trying to hold a piece of wood and a binky at the same time, the other hand swinging away with his grandpa's hammer. In anyone else's garage he would probably just lay the pacifier down and pick it up later, but in our garage it would be a little worrisome to think you would be able to find anything you laid down. Sad, but true. Seeing this, I told Park to stand up and put his Binky in his pocket. He looked at me like I'd just told him to write a check or start the car, and I realized he had not yet discovered the magic in his little blue jeans. A pocket! Seriously, I would pay good money to preserve his expression when I showed him the secret place that moved with him wherever he went. Pockets in little kids' jeans...I have visited many of them. Checked them for decades on laundry day; coming up with rocks and pinecones, screws and acorns. Matchbox cars and marbles and Barbie doll heads. Now days I check Dave's jeans and only come up with Kleenex tissues. I am always so happy I checked before the wash cycle when I find those! But it kind of makes me yearn for the objects of discovery in the pockets of a pair of size 2 jeans.
I have a song called Pontiac Rocket, which is reminiscent of our travels in our blue Pontiac station wagon between Pittsburgh PA and Blackfoot ID. My friend El McMeen sent a note when he first heard it, saying this was a fine study in words that rhyme with "rocket". Think about it, (like you have nothing better to think about) how many words do you know in every day conversation that rhyme with rocket? I mean, who set up THAT pattern? Yeah...I did use the word pocket. Even moms in crisis find their pockets useful.

SPAGHETTI

March 31, 2009 spaghetti

Basketti. That’s what Libby called it when we were little. Ba-sketti. And Kepich. That’s ketchup to the rest of us. I remember playing school in the basement, pretending the side of a cardboard box was a chalkboard and a crayon was chalk. I, of course, was the teacher and Libby was the student. “Now watch”, I would say in my old lady teacher voice: “ketch…say ketch” (and she would repeat exactly what I had said) “…now say up” (and she would repeat again.) “Now say ketchup” (“Kepuch”, she would say with all confidence). And then there was maz-a- geen instead of magazine. We tried it repeatedly for maybe fifteen minutes, which is a long time in first grade, and eventually decided to play Barbies instead. Somewhere along the way Libby learned to say it correctly and for years I have never noticed any hesitation when she talks.
Four-year-old Sophie had the same gift. Last Christmas I wrote a song about the Nativity we had done as a family, where she was Mary and Timo was Joseph and Anna Bella was a darling little curly haired angel. Parker was supposed to be a shepherd but he did NOT want to wear that shepherd costume! Gumpa read, and the Daddies and Uncle Jordon were wise men and the Mommies and Aunties were shepherds and angels, too. It was a beautiful moment, one to keep in the front window of the memory banks, so I put it in a song. When I write a new song I am always a bit timid about it, and I am always nervous to sing it to anyone. So usually I sing it to one of the little ones and see how they respond. Sometimes they don’t really respond, which is fine, too. At least I sang it to someone and broke the seal on it. In years past my best listeners have been Libby (she likes everything I do) and Annie (she was always the littlest and around me all the time when I was writing a lot, and besides she is so positive about almost everything except broken down cars). So when I was done with Mary Holds Him and was yearning to share it, the safest person around at the time was Sophie. She was coloring or something when I sang it to her. But I know she was listening because a while later, when I was loading her in the car to take her home, she said, “Gummy, when Timo comes to visit can we do that activity again?”
“What activity, Sophie?” I was trying to figure out if she meant Play Dough or making Chocolate Drop Cookies or maybe that game I bought at the 5 Hour Store where you fling fabric meatballs with strings of yarn that were supposed to look like spaghetti off of a plastic fork toward a chef who spun around on a motorized plate.
“You know, the Ac-Ti-Vi-Teeee!” She said it really slowly and purposefully, like I was hard of hearing or something.
“Golly Soph, I’m not sure which one you are talking about”
She took my face in her hands and repeated “Ac….Ti…Vi…Teee. You know, where I am Mary and my Cinderella doll is Baby Jesus! And Timo is Jesus’ Daddy.”
“Oh, you mean the Nativity! Of course. We can do that when Timo comes.”
Yup, I thought, we’ll act out the Activity and then whip up some Hot Chot-lick.

COLLAR

March 30, 2009 collar

Being the middle of three little girls (we lost the “little” a while ago), and one of five sisters; and being that our dad left never-to-return when I was 13 years old, I am somewhat familiar with the workings of the female world. Our brother George was still at home when Dad left, but soon he also left for college, then a mission, so there was very little in our lives that spoke of the masculine. I considered myself the “man of the house” in some regards, when we needed one. I was the designated spider killer, and I made myself the guardian of open windows and unlocked doors, though no one ever asked me to be. Pretty much you could hang a bra to dry in the bathroom in our in our apartment and no one would say Boo. So when Dave Connors kissed me on that autumn evening, when we went hiking up Mount Timp in Provo, my feminine world shifted gears in one fell swoon. Three months later he asked me to marry him. Dave and I were engaged for 7 months. During that time I dreamt of being his wife; dreamt not just at night but while the sun was shining as well. He was working at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, teaching Italian, and going to law school. I offered to do his laundry, thinking it would be good practice. The truth was that I cherished handling his clothes. I recall ironing one of his white shirts. I had learned somewhere the correct order of ironing: collar first…out flat… then the yoke, then the cuffs and sleeves with a nice crease down the arm, then the body, then back to the collar for a stiff crease where it folds down. I remember holding that collar up to my face, warm and fresh scented with Niagara Spray Starch. I pressed it to my cheek, laying my head slightly to the side as I imagined his flesh against the cloth. I loved the image of him in his crisp collared white shirts, standing before young missionary boys, speaking in that romantic Italian language, his hair dark and trim, his French-Canadian olive skin contrasting the whiteness of the shirt, his Grandpa Roy’s full lips moving to the rhythm of the words he spoke. Oh he was so beautiful. And such a man. So wonderfully different from the gauzy Jessica McClintock dresses of our household. To this day, his birthday in fact, I think he is beautiful in his white shirts. Now days the collars peek out over the top of his Judicial Robes. And his hair is turning silver. But his lips are still as full and soft and beautiful to me as they were the day they first met mine, there in the amphitheatre at the base of Mount Timpanogos.
Happy Birthday, Love of my Life!

THREE WORDS

March 29, 2009 Three Words
Tonight as I sat on the couch at Gram and Libby’s house, I borrowed Lib's laptop to Google the Random Word Generator I use for my word of the day writing ( http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWord.aspx). I allow myself to look at three words and then I choose one of them for my exercise. Lib suggested I try writing something using all three words tonight, and I thought that was a pretty novel suggestion, so here goes (don’t look for any profound meaning in this, folks!):
KINGDOM – SHELF – SYNTHESIZER
There is a synthesizer on the shelf in the auditorium of the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall. It was donated by Carlos before he was disfellowshipped for repeated overt drunkenness. When Carlos was fully active he used to plug it in every Tuesday and Saturday night and stroke the keyboard with songs of praise. Everyone loved it. Young people attended meeting, and even brought their friends, so that the chairs ended up filled and the regular chill in the humid air warmed with the quantity of human furnaces singing full voiced in the large square space. By the end of the night that auditorium sort of smelled like the Jr High after their spring dance, stuffy and warm with the combined aroma of excessive perfume and aftershave mixed with adolescent sweat. There was a lot of joy on those evenings. They opened the windows and turned on the big commercial fan in the back of the room. The air flowed down the aisle and up the short two steps of the stage and blew through Carlos’ jet black hair, giving him the model rock star look that kept the kids coming back. Carlos fired up his synthesizer before the Bible reading began. RayAnn conducted the hymns, interspersed between the readings, her flap of an underarm swinging to the beat as she traced a triangle in the air. The words and the meanings and the music combined to create the rapture all good saints aim for. Carlos was a gift. So was his synthesizer.
When Charlene Dickson saw Carlos outside of Lucky’s Pub for the fifth time, stumbling as he crossed the street to his car, she could no longer hold her tongue and she made it known to the congregation. Broke their hearts to hear of it. They begged him to stop. Then they begged him to get help. Finally they told him to leave, which he did. But he left there, gathering dust in its silence, that slender black and white synthesizer, all potential and nothing more. Potential and remembrance, I suppose. A silent synthesizer on a lonely shelf in the Kingdom Hall.

CHALK

March 28, 2009
When the tips of the thinnest branches on the trees start to bulge with the faintest hint of green; when the morning dawns with an inch of snow, but the kids pouring out of the afternoon school bus have their jackets tied around their waists; when crocus breaks through the hard surface of a snow packed flower bed, then I know it is time. Time to open the last drawer in the locker room by the red family door and pull out the cleats and the compression shorts. Time for memories of a time, when our boy was still a boy, and his buddies were boys as well; when they woke early on Saturday morning and met at the dugout to groom the field. Wheelbarrows of fresh red dirt scattered one shovel at a time on the infield, raked over in one direction and then the opposite, bases measured and set, then a crisp new line of chalk dropped onto the deep umber of the field. There are few sights more beautiful than a newborn infield with its first chalk of the season, laid down in good straight lines. I am drawn to the busy hectic days of my younger motherhood, when all things waited until the game was over. When Dad found a way to get home before the end of the work day, when little sisters first wore out the big toy, their brown skin deepening in the afternoon sun, their own mitts softening with the tossing of balls back and forth. When the bleachers were filled with friends who were once only the parents of the other boys, friends I cherish as much as the boys. Cheering for Hot Socks and Hendu and Bucky, JK ..."Here we go now #7"...we knew them all by heart, like they were each our own. Indeed they were. Our boys. Our boys from little league through Senior year. Our boys in a sea of sleeping bags in the basement; in matching uniforms along the chalk line; in brand new suits at Ryan's funeral. In matching ties of various hues, at various wedding receptions with alternating grooms and stunning brides.
That day, when Fall ball was over and Saturdays were once again fair game for other things, when the first snow had fallen and our boys were here in the basement scheming, I heard Ryan pounce up the basement stairs two at a time. Saw him rush out the garage door and into his car. I could not have known this would be the last time I saw him. I would have grabbed him and squished him against my mother heart and told him to take care and that I loved him. I would have pursed my eyebrows at him and reminded him to behave! Instead I saw him next in a casket, fallen from grace when he had driven up Farmington Canyon in search of good sledding snow. The coming down did him in. Did us all in. Jason, Right Field, bore the casket beside his team mates, his school mates, his soul mates. He wore his brand new suit and a crisp white shirt, his shoulders straight and strong. Broke it in with a heart break. The hearse drove off and Jason turned to his mates one last time and bid them farewell. Two hours later he pinned a name tag to the lapel of that suit: Elder Jason Gardner, there with the name of his new team: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He continued, as the rest of them did, one by one, the whole team, running along good straight lines.

THERE

March 27, 2009 there
There could not be there without here. There would only be T, if not for here. I sit in the here and peer out of the tiny window on the side of the coach. Strain my neck to see if there are any better angles from which I might view the horizon, but the slit of an opening is so narrow I cannot even tell where the sun is, I can only see the light. The light or the not light. I sit in my here and rub my cold left knee, rub it to awaken it. My feet have fallen fast asleep so that if I were to stand, as if the carriage would allow me, I would surely topple over. It's not all that bad, this here-space. It is warm and safe and comfortable enough. Comfortable to a fault. I hear the laughter of the neighbor girls as they raise their dresses up over their heads and move naked and free to the water. I hear them, and I taste the salt in the air and I know the ocean must be so close, only I cannot see it. It is over there. And I am here.
I sat tonight in one large room with one magnificent flock of artists at the Mormon Arts Retreat. I sat in the back and handled the lights, flipping them off and on to match each performer. I sat in utter amazement at the gifts that floated out of their hands, their mouths, their brains and throbbing chests. It seemed impossible that the mere mortals with whom we share this here had created THAT, those "theres" which seem so unobtainable, almost unreal in their perfection. I imagine myself in their there, in their studios and dens, before their easels and pianos and computers and notepads. I feel myself turning the brush as I pull it through a wad of paint, twisting the red and the blue together to make the perfect lavender for that woman's gown. I feel the music in my belly rising up and floating out like Tammy's, sense the energy rising up through my shoulders and then down to my fingertips as they dance across the piano keys. I am sculptor and dancer and poet and actor. I can show you what I meant when I am done, instead of having to explain what I thought I could maybe possibly oh never mind do. I am here and they are there and there is so far away. So far, though he sits beside me in this room. I smile when he returns to his seat, patting his back and telling him how amazing he is, how I admire his work. I turn my head forward to partake of the next piece, wondering the while how long it has been since he was here.

ELEPHANT

March 26, 2009 elephant

Big is beautiful. Big, at a distance, is beautiful. I suspect a herd of elephants running toward me might not look too beautiful. Or one of those big giant elephant feet (do you call them feet?) hovering over your head as you lie helpless on the ground; that might not be beautiful either.

Our Katie of Elliott's true love, she introduced us to beautiful elephants. Actually, Katie's sister Heather; she is the keeper of the elephants when the Ringling Bros Circus comes to town. It is tradition now that on the last day of the circus we jump into our cars and make our way south

to the Gateway in SLC. We plant ourselves on the side of the street at the given hour, knowing that at 9:43 there will be elephants on parade. We peer into the darkness to the east until we see the large shadows lumbering from side to side in the

middle of the road, Heather's hand at the neck of the leader, headed west to the railway where the train cars lay in waiting. Our little ones are scooped onto our shoulders, cameras are cocked and ready. Soon, in apparent slow motion, a string of huge leathery beasts files one in front of the other past us, their snouts wrapped around the tail of the pachyderm in front of them, the littlest ones double timing it with their relatively short legs, their long hoses of noses reaching up to their mama's tails, the same way Anna Bella holds my hand when we cross the street. They are remarkably silent as they move, oblivious to our watchful eyes, unaffected by our curiosity. Perhaps the circus has made them this way. Our grandchildren call out, "Hi Dumbo" to the baby beast. It pulls at a tender place in me. Leave it to Disney to make these creatures take over one's heart. Sweet little Dumbo, underdog of the three ring circus. Tender unassuming Dumbo who was so loved my his mama.

I beg Kate, when I get to see her, to sing to me just one song. Just one, that's all. I would take endless portions of her gift if she would give it, but I have learned to be happy with one, because the sweetness of it hovers like a firefly on a warm summer night, and I can imagine it over and over in my mind and make it last. The other day she sang "Baby Mine", from Dumbo

, while everyone else had gone to bed and I was doing my word of the day writing. Her fingers paced themselves across the strings of the guitar and her voice wrapped the melody through the cool spring night there in Nauvoo, like the thick blue ribbon the bluebirds on Snow White tie in a bow on screen. I sat at the computer, trying to think, trying to write, and my tears dropped onto the keyboard as she sang. How I love that girl. When she sings she is at once a fully grown angel and my little two-year old who sang before she talked. She is tender and stubborn and strong and beautiful and to me she is absolutely complete when music is flowing out of her. Blessed will be the child who sleeps in her arms under the canopy of her song.

SHOPPED

March 25, 2009 shopped

December 1969, I am a kid. Straight blonde hair in a tee shirt with a training bra and a pair of Keds. I have 35 cents in my pocket. I follow Mom up the steps outside Daniel’s Hardware Store in Broughton PA, take hold of the metal handle on the door and hear the bell clank against the glass as it swings shut behind us. I inhale an infusion of hardware shavings, petroleum and fresh cut pine from the Christmas boughs at the end of the counter; shuffle through the maze of aisles in the back, where the nuts and bolts and endless bins of nails are lined up like cots in a barracks. I thrust my hands into the blue plastic bins and seek the muse, imagining what this bolt might look like with this nut against this plate with that paint. To my thinking this was a feast of ingredients for the creative mind…so many possibilities. It would be so much more wonderful if I could weld, or if I even had a soldering iron. If I had those I could make figurines out of these metal parts. Instead I move over toward the laundry soaps and buy a pack of clothes pins and some model paint. Up front I drop my coins onto the rubberized ad on the counter and watch them spin to a stop. That Christmas Eve I lay my little wrapped presents of clothes pin dolls under the tree.
I am a shopper. I shop for things…and I shop things. I shop for bargains mostly. Emotion evokers at a deal of a price, that’s basically what I shop for. That and chicken bullion, which never goes on sale. I shop almost every weekday when we go on our outings with Gram. Don’t always buy, but we do look. For years I woke early every Saturday morning so I could shop the garage sales. I scoured the classifieds on Friday night, circling and numbering the path I would follow. Those were the days my heart raced with the thought of escaping into my own private space with no kids in tow. Dave stayed home and handled Saturday mornings. Everyone ran out to see what finds I had in my van when I got home. I had to put a limit on myself eventually, something like $20, and when that was gone I found my way home. Cheap thrills.
Those were also the days I shopped songs. Shopping songs is basically presenting them to a publisher, who would possibly offer a contract to represent the song, eventually getting it to some big name artist who would want to sing it on their multi-platinum selling album and put it in the next Brad Pitt movie. I shopped songs in Nashville once or twice a year, or in LA. Had some success. Had some rejection. Eventually lost either the nerve or the interest or the confidence or the trust. Don’t shop my songs much any more.
I suppose you could sum up my life in short little snips: She loved. She sang. She shopped.

STIFF

March 24, 2009 stiff
Ah, now there's a word I know! Stiff. One might think that someone so squishy would be more familiar with a word like "pliable". Nay, not so. Under these layers of semi malleable flesh are some rather stiff old bones. When I was young, and might I add foolishly naive, I swore I would never no never ever waddle when I walked like my beloved Aunt Mary did. I loved her, no question, but I was not ever going to make my way down the sidewalk shifting from side to side like the robot in Lost In Space on Krispy Kreme Steroids. Alas.
The last month or so I have had issues with the pinky finger on my left hand. It started on a Thursday night when John and I were teaching barre chords in our guitar class. I do not like barre chords, and they do not like me. I avoid them as often as I can, which is partly why I write songs because I have complete control over what voicings I want in my songs. But in fairness to our fabulous intermediate/advanced students we had to play the neck and teach them about transposing, etc...so out came the barre chords sliding up and down the neck of our guitars. Of course the teacher has to make her strings ring as clear as possible, so I was really yelling at my fingers that night, insisting they suck it up and deal with behaving maturely. So my pinky finger on my chording hand, sweet thing that she is, kept trying and trying in spite of the fact that she is double jointed and really not happy stretching forth and reaching outside her comfort zone. By the end of the night I had to put her under hot running water just to comfort her. That poor finger has been in pain ever since. I thought it was just a result of the strain, but its been long enough and I am thinking that my whip snapping pushed her over the edge and Arthur took over. Arthur Itis. He always comes to visit people in our family. He's that greasy haired yellow toothed uncle with an obnoxious sense of humor and bad breath. He comes in and sits on the good furniture and turns on the TV and never leaves. Blasted old Uncle Arthur.
I think it ironic that they call someone who has died "stiff". Of course it sounds logical, since their bodies really are stiff. But the reality is that the timeless spirit that took shelter in that body all those years before is finally free to move without one iota of pain. We should really rejoice in that! I am for sure going to do a back flip when I am done with my old Stiff! The back flip I kept daring myself to do off the diving board when I was a kid. The one I never did have the courage to try. If I die guys, just imagine me doing that!

SPOONERISM

March 23, 2009 Spoonerism

Oonerspism-
It is hairy vard to ite route ooner-spisms. It is uch measier soo tay them. Hi av ad ha fing thor ooner-spisms more fenny years. Thunny fings tome-simes um cout en why thoo dem. (Moo yust theak spese ords lout woud goo tet ut why sam aying.) Met lee owe niff coo yan stunder-and stiss thuff!)
And...kee bareful choo toose spore yoonerisms CAREFULLY... or finstance, noo DOT ooze yit on ruh thesteraunt FUDRUCKERS!
Bood Guy.


(spoonerism--google it)

PUNCTUATION

March 22, 2009 WOTD- punctuation

Call it the effects of a lengthy Sunday afternoon nap, where dreams go askew with the abnormality of sleeping soundly while the sun is high, but when the word of the day popped up as "punctuation" I started asking questions. Stuff like:
If someone has surgery to remove part of their colon are they left with a semi-colon?
and
Why do the lives of women have so many blasted periods?
and
Does a dash have rules in its usage or is it the thing everyone uses when they know there is supposed to be some sort of shift - only they are not quite sure which punctuation mark is appropriate - so...you know...sort of like the dot-dot-dot.
Kate's room mate, Tiffany, also works for Teach for America in Houston. They both teach in low income Title 1 schools, both teach ESL students. Kate's in Jr High and Tiffany teaches Fourth Graders. Both Kate and Tiffany are in the cultural minorities in their schools. Tiffany is sort of accustomed to it, as she is half Navajo. Kate is still learning to deal, she being in the 1% of her school which is "white or other". Last summer they practiced their teaching with non-ESL students for a few weeks in summer schools in Houston. Tiffany taught first graders with her friend Simona. One day Simona was trying to teach punctuation, talking to the kids about those dots and lines and squiggles at the end of sentences. When she got to the exclamation mark she explained what it meant and asked if anyone could tell her something which might use an exclamation mark in it. One little seven-year-old raised her hand and hit it dead on. She stood up, lifted her hand and pointed her finger to the sky, waving it back and forth in front of her face while she cocked her hip to the side and leaned her head on her shoulder, practically singing the words: "Oooo, Girl, you KNOW you ain't pregnant!"
She got an A.
When I first started studying songwriting in earnest I discovered that a typed lyric generally does not use punctuation marks. This was a great discovery! Come to think of it, I probably sub-consciously turned to songwriting as a form of expression, not because I am particularly musical. I don't read music, and I don't play guitar particularly well. Seriously, I can't even jam with musicians very well, sad to say. And why in the world would anyone put such constraints as rhythm, rhyme, melody,harmony, counterpoint, limited length, chorus repetition, bridges and hook lines and singability on their literary checklist? Why? Because we do not have to punctuate! (This is probably obvious to anyone reading this and analyzing the punctuation usage...-:;!)

CROSSROADS

March 21, 2009 crossroads

Heaven blessed us with crossroads. Meeting places; where strangers become friends, where future meets past, where fortunes come and depart. The thing about it, though, is that in order for one to reach a crossroad she must be moving. Motion. You think a crossroad is a place, but really it is a communion.
Yesterday we walked from this lovely house on the corner of Mulholland and Wells in Nauvoo IL, across the street and past the glistening temple, down the hill to old Nauvoo where we visited the blacksmith shop and the wheelwright; the printer and the post office and the general mercantile shops. For a couple hours we pretended we lived here, over 150 years ago. I was lean and able and devoted, sweating and smiling as I went about my chores, singing the hymns of the saints as I punched down the dough in the dough box and beat the rugs on the back porch. I knew the postmaster, I knew the newspaper editor, I knew each neighbor and they knew me. And we all knew our prophet. So in my mind, when that fateful day came that found him lifeless and twisted under the broken window at the jail in Carthage, I sensed the crossing of the road we were on. We shifted our weight on our unsteady legs, then made ourselves move. Tables were slid against the wall and we began shaving wood in the dining room, doing our part toward the building of 3000 wagons. Heads bowed in the labor, we prepared to leave this heaven of a place we had finally established after years of wandering.
I have no problem pretending. In this regard I suppose I never grew up. So it was natural that we pretended as we walked, arm in arm, down Parleys Street toward the Mississippi and beyond. Pretended we had left our cherished earth-things. Our tokens of memory and tenderness. Our dolls and our china and our instruments and books. We met where the road crossed the river and wept together for a moment. Then someone started up a song and soon we were all singing, united in our suffering and comforted in our sorrow.
Crossroads. Where one path, one road, one vein meets another. I am reminded of another crossing, the place where horizontal arms met vertical body. Where lungs were pressed flat from the weight of hanging. Where blood spilt and agony was laid finally to rest with these words..."It is finished." The crossroads for all mankind, there where His heart was stilled.

IDENTITY

We all of us wear words upon our sleeves. Like editors in the printer's shop down the road here in Old Nauvoo, we set the the type according to importance. Headlines in bold uppercase, shouting our identity to be seen at a distance. Captions under pictures in tiny fonts almost indecipherable without a looking glass, little phrases used in passing that describe moments in time. Dingbats filling the spaces where nothing, really, is happening. Even if the words do not come easily, the spaces say enough. They all add up to our stories.
Identity.
I have felt my hand lift the letters to a word I would rather avoid, and others I thought I might try to get away with. But truth ekes out there on the heart sleeve and whatever we are reveals itself sooner or later. Once I chose to make the headline say BEAUTIFUL and the letters jammed the press. We had to change it to NICE. That's OK I suppose, though I had to fill the room left over with empty spacers and it threw off the design balance. Interestingly, however, there was much more to write about NICE than BEAUTIFUL. I have edited this paper for so long now it is getting a bit stale. I think I'll bring back the comic section. And though it breaks my heart to increase the columns for obituaries, I am finding I have to cut some of the neighborhood happenings to accommodate the increasing death notices. Nonetheless, I believe these are the most meaningful words of the issue. I enjoy the travel section, and the news from the field; the almanac and personal interest stories. There is also a small sports section, used for little league or high school ball games and occasional Superbowl Sundays, but it is relatively small and would disappoint my husband. I would apologize maybe, except that this is my paper, my identity, and if I only have one anecdotal article covering Sophie's Blue Unicorns soccer game and nothing about the NCAA tournament he will just have to forgive me. He probably will, because in general I am....extra -extra-read-all-about-it... NICE. (usually)

In response to Ashley and Charmaine's questions in yesterdays post:

Yup, a promise is a promise. I am writing on vacation with a crowd of people and little kid noises and temptations like ice cream in the freezer instead of focusing on writing. I am so sorry for the disjointedness and the incomplete thought processes. To answer Charmaine and Ash, I allow myself to look at three words in the Random Word Generator and then I select one. As you can see I rarely remain focused on the word. Sometimes one would have to search needle-in-a-haystack style for the word to appear at all in what I write. As you can see, the word is mostly a jumping off spot. And Ash, this Blog is usually the place where I simply journalize, and it will return to that after my 40 days. For now the pattern is to write knowing I will publish (at least to my closest friends and family) SOMETHING based on that word. It applies a pressure to my writing that I think in the long run will have been a healthy exercise. As you can see in some pieces, however, what I do each day often creeps into that random word space.

SHAME

March 19, 2009 shame
She stood before the mirror and stretched her neck to see above the crack in the glass. Pulled her fine toothed comb through the knots that kept returning, tug-tug-tugging until the hair either gave way or broke. Stretched her dark curly strands until they cooperated, then bound them in a black elastic band. Tight against her skull, revealing the crooked widow's peak near the center of her forehead. The comb was thick with unrepentant hair, so she pecked at it with her fingers until the black gathered in a wad in her hands, then she tossed it in the garbage. When all this was done she opened the drawer on top of the dresser and pulled out the crimson scarf her father had left for her, the one with frayed edges and permanent creases where the knot was tied day after day. She laid her shame atop her coal black hair, folded in the front, just behind the point of her widow's peak. Pressed it down against her hair and knotted it at the back of her neck. With all her wishing she wished it gone, and yet she could not imagine herself without it, this deep red scarf that covered her head. Silk, woven tightly with the sin she did not choose, with the pain she learned to swallow, with the smile she learned to paste on her face. Red, sorrowful, achingly sorrowful scarf of silken shame.

NOTE: Well, I am half way through my 40 days of Lent Word of the Day Writing. I have to say I don't always love doing this! Sometimes, actually most of the time, I just don't feel like doing it. But I made a commitment to sacrifice something for 40 days, and that something ends up being my comfort. Tonight I am sitting in this lovely old house across from the Nauvoo Temple. Kate is keeping her promise to sing to me before she leaves. I am weeping as she plays her beautiful guitar and her angel voice floats out the front door and over the Mississippi River. My writing tonight does not reflect the beauty of this day, sitting between two of my daughters in the Temple, walking where prophets walked and died, watching little grandchildren run across the greening hillside between the temple and the river. My "words" for each day are given to me from a Random Word Generator via the Internet. Shame is one of my least favorite things. It makes me sad, and mad at the same time. I think it is arrogant for people to say"shame on you", and it is sad when we say it to ourselves.
That's all I have to say tonight, since it is 1:30 am.

CROWD

March 18, 2009 crowd
In the morning, when I am allowed a lazy awakening, I let myself drift in and out of the crowd. Dave will lean over the large kingness of our bed and reach to kiss my hand. "Bye Love", he'll whisper, and I'll lay my hand against his cheek for just a moment, then let him go. Re-adjusting my pillow I will hunker down in the down of my comforter, pulling my knees into my chest and digging my head into my down pillow like my sister Sherry's puppy does when she decides she'll have a nap on Gram's soft pile of a blanket. Eyelids stretched like the awning over a window, I dance back into my dreams. There I walk with the crowds, angels or demons or whomever they be. It used to be when I tired of the crowds in my dreams I would, almost uncontrollably, lift off the ground and begin to fly. It would be wonderful, if only I had any control over it. I suppose most things are that way. I can even now, if I imagine I am asleep, feel myself weightless, my body tilted and aimless, whisking over Kansas with Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West weaving in and out of my path, my velocity changing for no reason at all. It is against all logic and completely natural feeling at the same time. I say to myself, as I hover over the crowd, that I should really try to enjoy this view. But too much of my heart-brain space is taken up by fear.
One time I went para-sailing with friends at Lake Powell. We one-by-one attached ourselves to a para-sail on our backs and a rope on our bellies.(Actually, I don't really remember the logistics of the attachments, but it was something like that.) The rope in front was attached to one of our friends' speed boats. Everyone took a turn. Because I was heavy, I thought I should start further back on the rocks when it came to my turn. I thought it would take more wind to lift me. I hadn't considered that a few of the men were as heavy, just a little taller than I. Nonetheless, I started back on the solid rock that bordered the water of Lake Powell and they revved the engine. The wind caught the sail sooner than expected, so when the natural dip came, which was usually over the water, before the big rise to the heavens, I was still over rock. The sail thrust me forward and dragged my legs across the sandstone. As I rose up above the boat; above the reservoir and the crowd of friends, I kept repeating to myself, "Wow, this is beautiful...Oww...Owww... Owwww." I remember telling myself I had better enjoy this because I would never in my life be doing this again! So I looked at the red rock, and the shimmering water, and my blood dripping into it. When I finally hit the water the coolness of it against my wounds was rather therapeutic.
I have never been para-sailing again. And, come to think of it, I really don't fly much in my dreams any more either.
Sad.

CATHEDRAL

March 17, 2009
Roman cathedrals do not bow to God. Instead they raise both hands to meet above the ground, rattling their bones with bells on them every day at noon and midnight. Whispers echo through their veins, traveling down narrow hallways with arched ceilings and marble floors. I shuffle my feet slowly through them, seeking the warmth I know in my heart the King of Kings would seek as well. He visits this place, surely. But I am not sure how long he stays.
Today, standing in the warmth of newborn sunlight, fresh off the wagon of a long winter, the breezes of Adam Ondi Ahmen ran their nurturing fingers through my hair. I stretched my shoulders out to greet the view, inhaling extra long. A shadowy spanse of fields wrapped around the place we stood, the thick thread of the Grand River lining the perimeter like the binding on a patchwork quilt. The choir of this cathedral echoed against the hills, a throbbing trill of thousands on thousands of frogs hidden in the trees and shadows. No marble floors; nor pointed steeples needling the sky; no wimpled women or thick robed men, nor organs nor candles nor wine. Only this cool Spring breeze, and a cluster of faithful saints gathered near an altar place. Armed with the word and a prayer under the arms of wakening trees.

NOTE

March 16, 2009 note
The other day, when I sifted through a pile of junk on my desk, I found an old note to Sarah from Jenny. They were probably in Jr High when the note passed under the desk from one hand to the other. There are little stick figures and hearts drawn around the perimeter of the words. I let my head drift for just a moment to what a note between the two of them might say if it were written today. First of all, it would need a stamp, and the post office would reject it because it was not rectangular nor was it flat. It was instead folded into itself in the shape of a triangle. Last week I taught a couple girls how to fold paper like that, then hold it with one point on the table and another under the fingertip. I showed them, rather unsuccessfully, how to flick the middle finger on the other hand and send the "football" flying. These are the things I learned in Detention when I was a kid. Jenny's note to Sarah would still sound like Jenny, so kind and positive and flattering. She'd probably write something like; "Hey there Mama Doctor! How cute did you look today in your pony tail and white coat?" She'd use her chunky curly handwriting in the salutation, but by the end when she is running out of time because the baby is screaming to be fed so she will resort to cursive. I have no doubt that if Jenny and Sarah meet up again there will still be the same sweetness between them.
When I served in the Davis County Jail notes were not called notes. They were known as "kites" and they were illegal. Inmates could get time added for passing kites, but they did anyway. Sometimes I just looked away when I saw one being passed while I stood in the front of the room, flipping through the pages of a book. Every Wednesday night and Sunday morning for three years I walked through the series of thick metal doors into that sterile facility so I could talk about Jesus to the women inmates. It was such a great gig! It was so great partly because every Wed night and Sunday morning I also got to walk back out those doors into the fresh Farmington air and drive home. I understood that there, but for the grace of God, went I and every one of us, and I loved those ladies. In the three years I served there I saw ladies come in and go out of that facility multiple times. "Welcome to Relief Society, Sister. My name is Cori...oh, hey there Tanya, good to see you again." At 6:45 a Sherriff's deputy would tap on the window at the guard station in the Charlie/Delta/Echo pod and ask if anyone wanted to go to Relief Society. The women would line up in their bright orange "outfits", some of them pushing in front of others with their shoulders, their eyes avoiding direct contact. Someone would curse and a guard would grunt and the cluster that had formed would shift back into a line. Seventeen women were allowed to attend at once, since we met in the small Jail Library. Some of them came only because we met near the men's pod. Inevitably by 7:00 the small window at Alpha/Bravo was steamed over with testosterone and whiskers, the males of the species preening and gawking through the thick tempered glass. Sometimes our new arrivals would come in shaking from withdrawal. The more seasoned inmates would have their blue paper books of scripture with them. It was a random recipe of people gathered there, and I learned to love all of them. I know of one, out of all those women who passed through the door to the library, who successfully pulled her life out of the shackles around her legs and bound herself to goodness. Not the best record. She makes my heart swell when I see her, or get a funny email message from her. If we were in Jr High I would pass her a note. It would be written in pink ink and it would say this:
"Dear Jan- I heart you! "

COMPOSER

March 15, 2009 composer

The Bishop's counselor sat back in the settee and thought a minute. "Really? I guess I can go ask him if you want. I've just never done that before."
"Well," I said, " I just don't want to outright say no, and I have never said no to a calling before, but I just think he didn't have all the information when he thought of this one."
The conversation had started on a Sunday afternoon, when Dave Snow knocked on the door and said he needed to talk to me. We Mormons know what that means, when our neighbors show up on a Sunday afternoon in their suits and ties and say they wonder if we can chat for a minute. It means we are about to be invited to lay ourselves on the assembly line of a well organized church. I actually quite love that our church has a lay ministry, and that all of us take turns participating in what we know as "callings". Our bishop and his counselors ponder and pray over who should serve where when, and I generally trust their inspiration. But when Dave Snow told me the Bishop wanted to call me to be Ward Choir Director I told him he had to be crazy. It's a good thing Dave Snow knows me as well as he does, or he might have been offended.
"Don't you think a choir director aught to be able to read music?" I asked.
"Well, Ummm, I don't know. Maybe? But you do read music.", Dave said.
"Nope."
"But you are a composer. You write music." He said this as his left eyebrow scrunched up toward his hairline, shifting in his seat as he talked.
"Yes, I write songs, but not on paper. You don't have to read to talk do you?"
He shifted his book in his lap and thought for a minute. I'm sure he had never pondered this question before, and he probably didn't particularly care to ponder it that Sunday afternoon. All he wanted to do was get his callings made and get home to the dinner Margene had prepared. There was an awkward moment of silence. I waited for him to say something like "never mind", but he didn't. He just sat there. So I spoke up.
"Maybe you could go give this information the Bishop and ask him to pray again."
I was sure he would see the light and call someone who had at least stuck with more than three piano lessons when they were 12. Someone who could tell if the altos were coming in at the right time. Someone who could tell the altos what their part should even sound like. Someone who was ...not me!
So Dave did that. He went back to Bishop Simmons and told him the truth. I was sure the Lord would back me up on this.
The next week Dave came back and tapped on the door. "I told him what you said."
"Oh, good," I replied, grateful to have reasonable people as my neighbors and leaders. "Did he pray again?"
"He did."
"OK, so now what would you like me to do?" I'm thinking I might teach the five-year-olds on Sunday mornings in Primary. I'm thinking I could be on the Compassionate Service committee because I like to make chicken soup and take it to people. I'm ready to hear what my new calling might be.
"We think you should still be choir director."
So I became our Ward Choir Director for two very long and troubling years. Every rehearsal I stood before the choir and bawled. "Sheesh, I am so sorry you guys." There were people in that choir who could read music with their eyes closed. They tried very hard to be diplomatic in telling me how to do what I couldn't do. A number of very dear friends sang in that choir out of pity-love for me. Reed Gardner, and my sister Libby; they came to every rehearsal not because they loved choir singing but because they knew I needed the emotional support. I am still touched by that.
Eventually Dave Snow came to my door again and offered another calling and things set themselves right in the world again. Nowadays I am most happy to sit among the small group of sopranos in our Ward Choir and follow the fabulous imaginary baton of Dave Thomas. Now there's a guy who can read music! And he's a composer to boot.

FLOUR

March 14, 2009 flour
On good, good days there is flour on my counter top. Flour and some sprinkles of sugar and the aroma of gingerbread. Flour with little hand prints angled like angel wings, the swirl of deep green granite underneath: Joy taking flight. There will be one big apron and two…or if I am REALLY lucky: four… little aprons hanging from the hook on the back of the pantry door when we are done. The little dancing ginger fellows we frost and anoint with raisins taste so yummy, but the most delicious of all life’s delicacies is the moment with my little ones. One generation down from the last batch I made.
My great- grandmother, a number of greats ago, was named Rebecca Rhodes. “Sister Rhodes” to the Brethren who had come to visit that night in their home near the water of the Mississippi. A hard, cold Nauvoo winter had left her cupboards nearly bare. No more bare than her neighbors, though. So when she heard that the children down the road were crying with hunger she threw her cloak around her shoulders and excused herself while the Priesthood huddled with her husband, discussing matters of survival in a hostile environment. She lowered her head as she approached the door, preparing for the wind that hurled itself against the house. Joseph stood and walked to her, leaving his conversation mid sentence. “Sister Rebecca, what do you carry under your coat tonight?” She kept her eyes fixed on the floor, her hands crossed around her belly, and paused just a moment. He had asked her a simple question, but the suddenness of it and the secrecy of her act caused the emotions in her to bump against each other and she needed a moment to think.
“Just a bit of flour, Brother Joseph.”
She unfolded her woolen wrap to reveal the last of their measure of grain. Her eyes scanned the floor, rose to the cluster of men gathered near the fire, then met straight-on the eyes of her prophet. He smiled when he saw it, and her cheeks flushed with heat. He opened the door for her and watched her push her way through the deep winter to the neighbor’s place. When she returned, Joseph Smith asked if he might pronounce a blessing on Sister Rhodes. Family records give the gist of that blessing as this; that the Lord was aware of the goodness and selflessness of Sister Rebecca Rhodes, and He cherished her as His daughter. It was promised that as long as Rebecca, and her posterity, remained faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they would not want for the necessities of the earth.
That same blessing was pronounced again to my mother’s generation when Uncle Fred was called on his mission to the Eastern United States in the first half of the last century. From what I can tell this is truth. I feel it in my own life. Not that the Lord thinks any more of me or my family than he does any other of His children. It’s just this little promise helps my faith reign over fear. I feel the goodness of Rebecca Rhodes coursing through my veins, like I feel similar traits of other ancestors alive in me and my family: the dedication of Henry Strong Parrish; the poetry of Elizabeth Mae Wood; the entrepreneurial spirit of George Parrish.
I lay the side of my hand in a scoop shape against the cold granite of my counter top. I sweep it across the layer of flour left over from our cookie making afternoon. I lift a paper bag to the edge and drop the dry dregs of our festivities into the garbage and realize I am tossing away more than she gave; a handful of flour on a winter night, so small, yet large enough to fill the bellies of her children, and her grandchildren and grandchildren’s grandchildren. I am the product of many good decisions made through the years by people whose names I share. I embrace the gospel, as they did, not because I want the prizes some people attribute to “being good”, but because it feels right to me; it makes me feel like I am being true to the me of many eons ago. I am the grand daughter of Rebecca Rhodes. How could I live otherwise?

POUND

March 13, 2009 pound
A pound of flesh. An ounce of wisdom. A pinch of salt. A ton of stuff. We sift and chip and weigh and measure. We lay our portion of life on the scale and ask the fates to put weights on the other side to tell us what its worth. Like a playground see-saw we watch the arrow bounce from one side to the other as the scale finds its balance. This earthly existence, with its weights and measures, is likely new to our very old souls. Relatively new, at least. Measuring usually involves comparisons, and that for sure is a thing of this realm. Not that this is evil. I know from the Word that we are to have darkness so we can know the light, and we have sorrow so we can appreciate joy. Contrast came with the separation of darkness and light on Day 2, after the gathering of Matter Unorganized. Way back When, before there was Adam and then Eve, before there was anyone with a body, we dreamt of today. I don’t remember of course. No one does, and we’re not supposed to. But I think a few things were across the board for all of us before we were born. We knew nothing about “time”, we had great hope in our potential when we did get bodies, and we likely did not even look at ourselves up there in our heaven space. It wasn’t until Eve looked into a glassy pond on the Western edge of Eden that she discovered she was delightful to look upon. People think it was the apple that was her downfall. No, it was that pond. Her reflection made her aware of herself (OK, I know this is random thinking, just go with it). She made note of which flower looked prettiest tucked behind her ear. It was the beginning of the fall. I have a theory about reflections. I think mirrors are actually tools of the devil (stay with me). Let’s say I am walking down the sidewalk, perfectly happy with my existence, when I happen to turn my head and see my reflection in a store window. “Eee Gad!” I say to myself, “Who is THAT?!” And I suddenly stop thinking about how I am planning to go to Ethiopia and build a school and start thinking about how pretty or not pretty I may look in the glass. When darkness is on the other side of glass, I see myself and what surrounds me in my little space. But if there is light on the other side of glass, say in a window, then what I see is the world beyond. To take the analogy further, if there is silver on the other side of glass, as in a mirror (silver representing worldliness) then we more clearly and completely see only ourselves. Light keeps all vision clear and pure. Darkness, with its shadows and reflections, makes us compare and measure. I vote for light. I feel so much prettier with light. And pounds don’t even matter.

MOD

March 12, 2009 mod
I'm not sure when the word mod found its way into the dictionary. Modernizing has been going on since Eve first discovered fire and decided to cook the squash she pulled from the garden. To me though, mod was the hip word of the early 1970's. Maybe a little before then, it's all sort of a blur, not for reasons the 1960's and 70's were a blur for most young Americans, however. I was a clean and sober Christian girl. But I did know who Peter Maxx was, the artist who created colorful psychedelic posters that the coolest kids had taped to the inside of their lockers. And I had a midi-coat and a pair of red paisley fabric covered platform shoes that hid under the cuffs of my bell bottom pants. Our dad, in a moment of uncommon fatherly normalcy, took us to one of the big Pittsburgh Department stores like Hornes or Kaufmanns or Gimbles and not only bought us those beige midi-trench coats, he also got me a pair of black and white saddle shoes, just like the cheerleaders wore. Man, I loved those shoes, too. If I wanted to look cute I put my hair in a pony tail and wore my saddle shoes with a mini skirt. But if I was feeling mod, it was hip-hugger bell bottoms with my platform shoes, my midi-coat floating around my calves when I walked; my hair in a pair of braids hanging gently in front of my shoulders and my brother's flat brimmed boy scout hat pressing my bangs against my forehead. By 8th grade I had reached the height of my mod-ness. I think the last time I felt really hip was in the halls of Pleasant Hills Middle School, sitting on the floor near the choir room with Betsy Gerson, our backs leaning against the wall and our knees holding the weight of our guitars as we practiced Dust in the Wind and every Gordon Lightfoot song in Betsy's songbook. It's been downhill from there for me, in terms of coolness. But hey, I had my moment.
During that time we knew if we were hip by watching Mod Squad on TV. They were like the Peter, Paul and Mary of crime solving. One white guy, one black guy with a super afro and big dark sunglasses, and that laid back chick with long blonde hair that flowed in slow motion when she ran across the dark asphalt between the two guys. I secretly thought I was particularly blessed because my hair was naturally blonde and straight like that, though in the Pennsylvania humidity it got a bit frizzy and did not flow quite like that girl-whose-name-I-do-not-remember did. But I could pretend on Tuesday nights that I looked just like her, or at least I would when I got older. The hippest of the cool hip cats was Lincoln, though. The black dude. He was totally mod.



Here’s a link to the opening scene of the Mod Squad show. Coolness relived! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0-XrZoHj2k

PHONE

March 11, 2009 phone

You will know I am old one when I tell you that the phone of my childhood had a round dialer with 10 little holes around the perimeter of the dial. There was a number, along with some letters, assigned to each. You’d stick your finger into one of the holes and roll it toward the silver half moon next to number “1…abc”. It took a bit of time to dial a number, especially a long distance one, and any numbers that had excessive “0’s” took extra long. This is how we were taught patience in our generation. Some of us learned. Some didn’t. The sound of the phone ringing was the clanking of a metal hammer against a real metal bell somewhere buried inside the hard plastic casing. Phone cords hung like shriveled up Slinkies down the wall in the kitchen, stretched and twirled into themselves, so when you answered the phone and had to take it over to Mom who was at the stove, it yanked you back to the wall until you uncurled it with your fingers. We were taught phone etiquette as kids; things like: always answer pleasantly, but when the person on the other end asks for your parents reply with “Whom, may I ask, is calling?” And if someone asks for you, then you were to reply “This is she.” It was also against the law to call anyone before 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning., Even if you knew Sherry Payne was up and watching the Monkees on TV, it was illegal to call the Payne’s house before 10, or anyone else’s house. Certain hours of the day are sacred in their privacy.
Phone numbers sometimes had letters to help you remember them. You’d have to look at the dial and figure out what letter coordinated with what number, so that was always a pain. But you did tend to remember the numbers. There is a musicality to telephone numbers. They sort of sing when you say them, probably because of the rhythm of the pattern. I can still hear in my head the commercial from my early childhood…Eight Oh Oh… three two five….three five three five. Just for fun I just now dialed that number and lo and behold, it is still the number for Sheraton Hotels! I can’t believe it!!! I’ll bet Libby knew this, since she was over Sheraton's Reservations Training for seventeen international offices before she decided corporate life was going to eat away her heartstrings. So she quit and came home to us! Yay for Libby!
I’ll bet you Libby and George and AM can tell you the phone number of our childhood. Quick, do you remember your own childhood phone number? 412-655-4547. Before that I think it was 653-1864. I’m not sure why I remember that number, but I know it is a Pleasant Hills prefix. Now that is diving back. My kids could sing you their childhood phone number…ready kids…do you hear the music? Four five one two eight three one…repeated four times, following the song “I know my number, my te-lephone number….”
It seems the fate of the land line is currently in jeopardy. We live our lives in cells these days. Last night I was at John and Ashley’s and John mentioned that he saw on Facebook that it was Tom Shults’ Birthday. I picked up their phone and dialed Tom’s number to wish him a happy one. Some robotic voice on the phone told me that I could not dial long distance on this telephone without an access code. What the???? “We don’t have long distance on our land lines, Mom,” John said. We use our cells for those. See what I mean? Pretty soon every aspect of our lives will be so portable we will no longer need homes. We can pitch one of those tents outside of Sacramento and live with the homeless without skipping a beat. I can hear it now, out there in the community of a large tent city. No electricity, port-a-potties, campfires, and cell phones ringing through the wild night air.

PROGRAM

March 10, 2009 program

We Mormons are a people of order. When Latter-day Saints in the British Isles were called by their prophet to gather in western America, they sold their belongings in order to purchase passage aboard tall ships. Lots and lots of them. Nearly 95,000, as a matter of fact. When a British newspaper set out to expose the "evilness" of Mormons they sent Charles Dickens to observe a group of them as they set up aboard their sailing ship. Dickens slipped through the crowds on the dock at Liverpool and made note of what he saw. Instead of decadence and chaos he saw a people who were clean and friendly and had established order even before they set sail. He wrote that they were, in truth, “…the very pick and the flower of England.” Yes, order is us. It comes to reason then, that we Mormons like programs. We like to create them, we like to follow them, we even perform them once a year with Primary kids in Sacrament meeting.
I knew for sure I would never be called to be Young Women’s President because I am not fully converted to the Personal Progress Program. Strike me dead perhaps, but I am one of those people who does not do particularly well when someone tells me I need to set a goal, in details defined on paper. I have goal issues. The second I say I am on a diet I am SO eating everything in sight! If my angels tell me it would be a good idea to do something, I keep it to myself and charge ahead. But when someone else is keeping track, some little demon on my left shoulder takes over and I run the other way. I am not proud of this. But I also don’t believe I am a bad person because of it. So I thought that, because I am not a big believer in requesting that all Young Women define their success by the award they get and a little gold pendant around their necks, I would not have to worry about getting called to lead the YW organization.

Wrong.

I do, I might add, have a Young Womanhood Medallion that I earned, by my own choice. But I am still not completely sure about the PPP (personal progress program) and how it fits for every girl. Nonetheless, I am LOVING these girls! Loving to the point of heart swells. Loving so much that I ache for Lisa Harris, the former YW Pres who left some gigantic shoes in the YW room for me. I ache because I know what she felt, and still feels, for these gems of wonderfulness. They make me laugh, they make me weep, they tug at my heart and keep me up at night worrying. I hear their voices and see their faces at all hours and in all places. If the PP program works for them, I’ll cheer them on! If not, I’ll cheer anyway.

FIND

March 9, 2009 find

I am a finder. Since I was small I have been known as the family shoe finder. Sunday morning, late for church, can’t find someone’s shoes…they called my name. It’s not like the shoes speak to me. I do not possess super psychic powers, though I did manage to make my teenage kids believe I did, which was quite the coup! I suppose I am able to think like a shoe. I simply say to myself, “If I were a shoe where would I be at this moment?” And more often than not the shoe and I agree in our thought processes.
I am also a finder of other things. There are legends in our family, at least among Ann Marie, Libby and me, that involve finding money in unexpected places. I am always finding coins in parking lots. I sense which coin returns have change in them. Heck, once I got almost two dollars in coins out of a single phone in Cheyenne. One wicked cold winter day we were walking to Pleasant Hills Elementary school and I glanced down at a mound of cinder pitted snow-ice and saw the corner of an envelope. The rest of it was imbedded in the ice, but when I tugged at it, it pulled loose to reveal a rectangular Seasons Greetings! I opened it up and there was George Washington smirking up at me. His face was framed with an ornate oval opening in a bank sleeve. There were two dollars in that frozen envelope, no name and no one to claim them, so we went to DiStefano’s Drug store after school. Another afternoon, on a windy summer day, we were playing up by the Presbyterian Church when I noticed a piece of paper fluttering in the breeze. I chased it down the hillside and in the bushes we found something like seven dollars strewn here and there in the weeds. I don’t know why I have this gift. I am not complaining! Unfortunately it seems to have lain dormant lately.
I find other things, too. Great finds! I have a garage and basement and closets full of finds! So many, in fact, that when I remember I have something cool I can’t seem to find it! Sometimes I’ll get a call from an acquaintance who has heard about my stache of finds. Then I find myself searching for that Indian head dress I know I bought at a Garage Sale. In the process of searching for it I find stuff all over again. It’s like a fabulous treasure hunt right in my very own basement! Sometimes, when I am in a grumpy and much-too-adult mood I get a little irritated by the multitude of finds in our house. I swear I am going to get rid of them next Saturday. I wake up and have a talk with myself about how we are going to sort through that stuff in the garage and make at least one trip to DI before the sun sets. But then Libby calls and tells me she is taking Mom for a ride to Bukoos or the 5 Hour Store and…oh…ummmm….well, I was going to clean the garage, but…maybe I’ll go with you. (You never know what you might find!)