WOTD 5 - SURPLUS

Surplus. Now there’s a word for me! Just take a walk down our driveway through the gate. On your way glance on over into the garage.

Surplus!

Poor Dave. He’s not such a surplus kind of guy himself. He actually tries to throw things away. But he’s lived with me long enough to know I might call him in his chambers on some random Tuesday afternoon when he’s just putting on his robe after being called into court:

“Hey, do you know where we put that (insert random item)? You know, the one we used for (insert random event)?” He’ll pause for a minute, because he is considerate to pause for a minute even if he doesn’t really have one, then say “I’m not recalling at the moment, Love.”

A few weeks ago Merlynn texted me, asking if she could borrow the old silver angel-of-the-Lord horn for the school play. I searched upstairs in the Christmas cupboard (talk about surplus!) and couldn’t find it. I searched in the garage. Finally I trekked downstairs to the two large storage rooms and gave it a go.

I texted Merlyn:I looked again when Libby and I went down last week in search of the leather I had bought a few years back to recover chairs. Let me say here that I have the most perfect sister for someone like me. She does not make one single statement to shame me for the condition of the things in my life. She just digs in and looks with me. She listens to me complain cuz Dave rearranged the stuff and now I can’t find anything. (I know, can you believe it? Blame Dave!) We dive into the back room. Look under the Indian head dress, and the giant foil nickels, and the three sets of kitchen stools. We leave the room and look in the dark room that turned into storage behind the laundry room. Stand there in the doorway because…well, because you can’t really walk into that room any more. Stand there and scan with eagle eyes the vast expanse of surplus.

“So far I can’t find the horn. That doesn’t mean it isn’t here though. Will keep looking.”

“Let’s go back to the other room and look again.”

So we head on back, searching with new eyes, this time lifting the golden fur fabric I bought to make a camel costume for our family nativity. Opening boxes of books and other miscellaneous items.

“Keep your eye out for the angel-of-the-Lord horn,” I tell Lib, even though our primary purpose is to find the leather. We dig through wedding supplies; a dozen tablecloths and yards of extra muslin.

“Oooh, what’s this bolt of satin for?” Libby looks at the underside of the bolt of fabric resting against a pile of boxes.

“Oh, I got it for Annie’s wedding. Isn’t it pretty?”

We did not use it for Annie’s wedding. So it’s there in case anyone needs a beautiful light milk chocolate raw satin in bulk quantity.

We find the half hide of leather back in the corner at the top of the shelving. We have to move three fancy water dispensers, two boxes of tablecloths, and Lib crawls on top of a stack of boxed café umbrellas.

Meanwhile I am examining the room for the perfect reaching thingy, something she can hook the leather with and drag to a place where we can reach it. I hand Libby a microphone stand, which she extends toward the corner of the room, the leather caught on the mic clip. I pride myself in finding ways to accomplish things other people give up on. My mom taught me this. We can both figure out how to open a can of olives out on a fishing stream, without a can opener. It’s one of our talents. My sisters and brothers are pretty good at it, too.

I think my hankering for surplus is genetic. Like ingrown toenails. My Uncle Parks had 17 box cars lining the perimeter of his yard in Blackfoot, Idaho. Each one was filled to the gills with surplus. My Grandpa Parrish, though I never met him, had that collective spirit which often marries an entrepreneurial spirit and bears a passel of little surplus treasures. And we like bargains, too.

One day back in the butcher department at Smiths I was looking over the meats in the bargain bin. I actually prefer beef steaks from this spot. They’re aged perfectly. As I was bent over the chilled racks between the chicken and pork sections, I was startled by a little voice nearly whispering beside me.

“You like bargains?”

I looked up at a woman I had seen before. A familiar Farmington face I knew I knew but didn’t know how I knew.

“I’m Dan Cluff’s mom, Carol. Dan says you’re real down to earth even though you’re building that monster house on the hill. So when I saw you here at the bargain meats I though maybe you liked bargains like I do.”

“Oh, Hi! My name’s Cori. We just love Dan Cluff. He is amazing!”

Dan worked for our builder, Jerry Preston. He was 16 years old and worked every day after school lending a construction hand and cleaning up the site. Our house was seriously broom swept every day during construction, before there were even walls, before there was a floor. Just nice clean plywood. It was very wise of Jerry to make sure the site was clean every day. It reinforced my confidence in the work he was doing, and it made it so much easier for me to stand by where the kitchen table would be and look at the fireplace and pretend there was a Christmas tree in the corner and kids on the stairs that weren’t there yet either; that there was a nice dancing fire in the rock fireplace and this beautiful place was the keeper of our future memories. I loved Dan Cluff! I remember thinking that he was an anomaly among teenagers; so hard working and very, very pleasant. So when Carol introduced herself as Dan’s mom I instantly liked her.

“So…” Carol said, a little hesitantly…”If you like bargains I’m wondering if you want me to show you some of my favorite bargain stores.”

“Would I?” I knew we were kindred spirits!

You know how some people, myself included, say things like “one day I’ll have to show you my favorite stores?” only we never really do it? Well Carol did.

A week later she picked me up and drove me to Salt Lake City where I was initiated into three surplus bargain stores: Clem’s on Redwood Road in North Salt Lake; The Lynn Wilson Mexican foods surplus outlet in SLC (now closed), and NPS market Square on Empire Blvd. in west SLC.

After our amazing adventure Carol dropped me off at home with my bags and boxes of treasures. Mom and Libby came over to see what I had found. When they walked in I declared:

“I have found the perfect store! It’s a Five Hour Store!”

Indeed it would take you 5 hours to go through everything they had there. Such a beautiful mixture of miscellanies! Tennis shoes next to cowboy boots next to bed linens, across from kiosks of jewelry and knick knacks and bric a brac of all sorts. Hand knit Irish sweaters mixed in with cheap tee shirts made two sizes too small in China. Collectibles and antiques in one room. Fine art in another. Ethnic foods and Easter candy for half off and fresh flowers for a fraction of the florist’s price. Electronics and crafts and toys and office supplies. Luggage and fabric and sea salt & cracked pepper potato chips. Greeting cards and vitamins. All blended in a mysterious arrangement some person with serious ADHD likely designed. A store full of surplus from lost shipments, dropped shipments, overstocks and retired products.

My family and friends began to frequent the 5 Hour Store. Neighbors quietly searched the Yellow Pages under “5” looking for its location, having seen the cool pitcher I’d bought there, or the neat lamp at Libby’s, or Cindy’s groovy bowl in the middle of her island. Friends started answering their own questions when they came to visit:

“Where did you find that?...Wait…don’t tell me…the 5 Hour store.”

It’s not really called the 5 Hour Store, of course. Its called NPS. And it’s not nearly as groovy as it used to be, though I still manage to spend way too much when I stop in just to see if they have blank postcards in the office products aisle. My Aunt Becky tried to write a check to the 5 Hour Store when she checked out the first time. The clerk took her check and stared at her. “Um…that’s not the name of our store.”

I think they should consider changing the name because it’s much more memorable than NPS, National Product Sales. But what do I know?

When I have gigs in Salt Lake City my car sort of turns itself toward Redwood Road, over the rail road tracks onto Empire Boulevard. Dave will call to see what I’m up to because he comes home from work and I’m not home yet. I wince a little and pause, knowing I shouldn’t lie. “I stopped at the 5 Hour Store for bananas.” What I don’t tell him is that I stopped three hours ago.

For a few years NPS had a satellite store in Kaysville, so close to home. It only had clothing and shoes and jewelry and a few other things. Still it did it’s emotional job for us. It’s where my brother John got his high end cowboy boots for something like $24. We called it the 45 Minute Store. It closed after a year or two.

So there you go. True confessions in a random blog. If you know me at all you already know all of this. I have a hefty level of shame about it. Like a druggie with an addiction, only I’m better than I used to be.

We never did find that angel-of-the-Lord horn for Merlyn. It actually makes me sad. I had retrieved that horn from the trash bin at Pleasant Hills Middle School when I was in 8th grade. We had completed our Christmas Choral Concert. The horn had been used as a prop. It was bent and a little rusted where it had been dinged. But it seemed mighty fine to me, so I carried it home after the concert. Our Christmas child Kate, born on December 21st, used it each Christmas Eve when she was a child, puffing out her cheeks and blowing air into it, sounding the trumpet of he angel at the birth of a plastic baby Jesus in a small laundry basket under our Christmas tree. We cannot lose that horn! It has history! It has sentiment! I will make it a matter of prayer.

I wonder how the Lord feels about this surplus? I beat myself up about it.

Then again, last week someone from the 8th Ward called wondering if I had that large Salt Lake Temple wall hanging Sarah had made for our Young Women’s Evening of Excellence something like 7 years ago. They wanted to borrow it for their New Beginnings.

“Let me look. I can’t imagine I threw it away.” Indeed, I once retrieved some cardboard waves, the height of a short man, from a neighbors trash can after a stake Road Show. I stored those waves for years in my basement. They were used for every luau and nautical themed party in North Farmington Stake for a dozen years. Someone finally borrowed them and never returned them. That was a sad loss.

I searched for the temple, tied up in a large roll which when unrolled rose to the top of the wall in the church cultural hall. I tried Dave at work. No go.

Finally I called Libby.

“Oh yeah, I have it downstairs,” she said.

Atta girl, Lib! My kinda gal!



WOTD 4 - BUGGY

I think I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit; always thought there must be something I can do that is worth something to someone. Poor Libby and Ann Marie had to live with me thinking everything I created could be sold to someone somewhere, if only we had some way to tell them about it. Seriously, who wouldn’t want a button made of swirled string arranged in a Mason Jar lid which had been filled with Elmer’s glue? As the glue dried clear, I added a safety pin, making…(TaDa!)…a button!

When I grew up and had a nice husband who was willing to foot the bill for capital investment, my first business cards read “Cori’s Unforgettable Edibles.” The investment money went to a cart full of Halloween candies, marked 50% off after the holiday. With it I designed and crafted gingerbread houses. We lived in New York at the time. I was 21 years old, pregnant with my second child, and my husband was at the mercy of a hard working judge in the 2nd Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, working eternal hours not unlike poor Bob Cratchet in A Christmas Carol. I lived in a rented home in a strange town with babies; and built gingerbread houses. I marketed them, rather successfully I might add, to Real Estate agents. They’d order them from a fine selection of Victorian shingled houses (Necco Wafers make fine shingles); traditional brick houses with Bit-O-Honey bricks; or Tootsie Roll log cabins with yummy Junior Mint roofs. (I ingested every mistake, which was the beginning of my demise.) I delivered the confectionery edifices to families to whom the agents had sold houses. I continued that side-job when we moved back to Pittsburgh.

A few years later we moved to Utah. We brought a large truck full of antique furniture to sell. I designed little parchment business cards with the words: Pineapple Enterprises- Antiques and Interiors. The pineapple was the colonial symbol of warmth and hospitality, which I thought represented what antique furnishings can do to a home. Eventually I sold off all the antiques and bought music equipment with the profits: guitars and microphones and mixers and speakers and multi-track recording devices. Now my business card reads: Seven Roses Music – Performing Songwriter Cori Connors.

I suppose it is the sentimentalist in me that leans toward a home filled with antiques. I like to imagine who may have owned that table before I did. Who might have ordered that walnut bedroom set from the Wells Fargo catalogue before the turn of the last century. Or who pulled the blade of their planer over that small table in the basement, the one with the uneven top and the hand hewn joints. Or who had the patience and the eyesight to chisel those dainty dove tailed drawers in my high boy, in a place no public eyes would ever see. These days the backs of our drawers are stapled together on an assembly line where they pay school boys minimum wage with one 15 minute break in the afternoon.

When we lived in Rochester I acquired a few treasures I hoped would accompany me through life. We bought some at auction on a Saturday night out in that auction barn in a neighboring town near Pittsford, NY. One of those purchases was a wicker baby buggy. It was in pristine condition, nearly 100 years old, and the wheels were still round and the rubber had not disintegrated. I used to stroll my baby Sarah through the streets of Pittsford, the canopy shifting forward and back depending on the direction I was walking in relation to the sun. Little Johnny trailed behind us, or helped push as we walked, his chubby little hands reaching way up to the wooden handle. The buggy bounced as we walked, riding on tension bars bent like scrolls meeting each other above the sidewalk. We walked up to the raspberry patch and picked two pints of berries; one for eating on the walk home and one for dinner; or we strolled down to the corn stand, picking out half a dozen beautiful chartreuse ear of bread-n-butter corn, their golden tassels hanging out of the bag we set in the corner of the buggy like a squad of Barbie Doll cheerleaders with bouncy pony tails. We tucked a fragrant ripe cantaloupe in the other corner of the buggy, down by where Sarah’s feet would be if she had been any older than a few months. I imagined walking all my future babies in that dandy old wicker buggy.

When August came and David’s clerkship ended, we packed up our few belongings and prepared to move back to Pittsburgh, where Dave had taken a job with Kirkpatrick, Lockhart, Johnson and Hutchison. We rented a Ryder truck and loaded it up ourselves. The truck was hardly full. We didn’t have that much. A few boxes, a crib, a small dresser and the buggy. I miss that way of life.

We took off around midnight, thinking we would drive through the night while the kids slept.

Dave crawled into the cab of the rented Ryder truck, with 18 month old Johnny in a car seat beside him. It was normal to put a kid in the front seat in those days. I strapped Sarah into her car seat beside me in our old green Toyota Corolla. Through the night we drove south on I79, generally in tandem, sometimes breaking stride and passing each other just to keep the journey interesting. We reached Zelienople PA as the sun was starting to rise. There wasn’t much traffic at that point. I was hunkered down, in the driver’s groove, chipping away the miles in the left lane of the two lane divided highway, when suddenly the hood to my car flung up and slapped against my windshield. Stunned, I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and instinctively hit the brake, only for a moment though, as I recognized the danger in a sudden stop in the middle of the freeway. I could see nothing but hood through the windshield. It must have come loose from the latch in front of the engine, though for the last 300 miles it had shown no sign of instability. I checked the rear view mirror and started to pull over to the left, but heard the monotonous voice of my high school driver’s ed. teacher Bap Manzini reminding me in my head: “Never, never, never pull off to the left. The shoulder is not made for cars to pull off there. Besides, it’s against the law.” So I again checked my mirror and started to make my way to the right hand shoulder. David had seen what had happened and was travelling behind me at the time. I saw him moving with me. All of a sudden he banked his truck to the right, sharply. I could see nothing but the lines on the side of the road, and his truck in my rear view mirror. As I approached the right hand shoulder, the Ryder truck came shooting past me, squeezing between my car and the guardrail, scraping its side against the metal rail.

“What the….!” Stopped straddling the line on the shoulder, I sat in my car, my heart throbbing violently in my chest. I reached over to check on the baby, waiting for David to come back and explain himself. Why had he done this foolish thing? Was he moving too fast to stop reasonably?

“Where IS he?” I thought, starting to fume at the whole ordeal; frustrated at our old car betraying us; wondering why Dave had put himself and Johnny in danger by stopping the truck like that.

It felt like minutes passed, though I’m sure it was only seconds, before I opened my car door and looked beyond the upended hood. There were broken tail lights on the truck, and then I noticed a large flatbed semi-truck loaded with cement pulled over up the road. It took a few breaths for me to realize the back of the truck had been creased and crinkled. I ran to the cab and found David frantically trying to get our screaming boy out of his car seat. Windshield glass was shattered and scattered everywhere. Dave pulled Johnny into his lap, cupped his hand over his little head and spoke comfort to him, telling him they were ok, we’re ok, everything’s ok Johnny. The driver side door was jammed shut and he could not get out until he removed Johnny’s car seat and crawled out the passenger side. He stepped from the truck onto the guardrail, overlooking a small cliff, and shimmied back around the truck to me. He placed Johnny in my arms. As I scanned the setting once again I began to realize what had happened, the realization illuminating my mind like the rising sun to the east of us. The semi had hit him! With the speed that we were already travelling, multiplied by the force of the heavy truck’s impact, David had miraculously steered the truck in the minimal space between my car and the guardrail.

“You couldn’t see him.” Dave pulled me into his chest, our boy sandwiched between us, our little girl still sleeping in the car behind us.

“I could see you couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see… that you couldn’t see.” He spoke with the breathless stammer familiar to athletes and laborers.

I had been decelerating unaware that the heavy laden semi was moving at freeway speed in the right hand lane. I was moving directly into his path.

“I knew I could take a hit better than you could.” So David purposely moved himself between the semi and our little Toyota, knowing he was likely to be hit.

And he was hit, with such force that it totaled the truck he was driving.

The buggy was crushed, with the rest of our belongings in the back of the truck.

A tow truck took the Ryder away, and I believe Dave drove us the rest of the way home to Pittsburgh after tying down the hood with some rope or wire. I really don’t remember those details.

I do remember, though, the feeling that overcame me in what felt like a wash of love…a full immersion, baptism of love for the man who calls me his wife. I remember holding my baby, tears rolling uncontrollably down my cheeks and into the collar of my shirt. I remember looking at her daddy and thinking how beautiful he was, how strong and worthy and manly and brilliant and beautiful he was. He had literally risked his life to protect us, willing in an instant to put himself directly in the path of danger as it hurled itself at me. All these years later, if I close my eyes, I can hear the scraping of metal on metal, hear the crying of my little boy , feel the crunch of broken glass under my shoes, smell the strange combination of pale green morning dew mixed with the nasal sting of the steel mill in the distance and the burning distinct smell of hot brakes and burnt rubber. I feel the warm arms of my young husband pull me to the safety of his strong shoulders, where I bury my head and cry. His scent is divine, in my memory. So beautiful and dear. So beloved. There are mornings, even now, when he has gone to work or is downstairs working out on the treadmill, when I roll over and bury my head in his pillow to inhale that scent. He is a man among men, better than I ever dreamed I could have. Proven in the fire. Willing to give anything…literally anything…for the people he loves.

I never did stroll the next two babies who came to us in that buggy. It went to the buggy graveyard. But I remember it. And in the remembering I am awe struck once again by the selfless, godly gift I have in the man I call my husband.

WOTD 3 - FLIGHT

When Kate was in high school but not old enough to drive yet, we used to make the trip to Viewmont High down I15 every day, waiting at the freeway entrance to jump into the steady stream of traffic like little girls waiting for the jump rope to come around. Each morning as I approached the overpass at the Centerville exit I paused, mentally, altering whatever was running through my brain for a moment; remembering.

That winter there had been a heavy snowfall. So heavy that the snow plows had nowhere to push the snow and it piled up on the sides of the overpass, all the way up the guardrail, so that the road looked like a ditch; like a new carton of vanilla bean ice cream into which the scoop had dug a straight strip; like a snowy luge where the sides had been air brushed gray by the chugging exhaust of traffic rumbling across the bridge. A Jr. High girl was walking over that bridge late one night after the snowfall. They’re not sure what happened - if it was intentional, or accidental - but she slipped over the edge and landed on the freeway below. Cars didn’t know what they had hit. News of it spread like stomach flu among the kids at school the next day. Parents drew their daughters into their chests and told them to call if they needed rides home; whispered I love you’s when they dropped their kids off at school that next morning; they drove away vowing to never let arguments escalate to where their kids stomped off angry; they turned on their car radios to try and overpower the images haunting their brains as they drove away. I did the same.

I made note of that spot every time I traveled southbound on the freeway, just as I passed under that bridge. I made note and whispered wordless prayers. Daily offerings, reminding God that we are feeble and weak, as if He didn’t know. Asking blessings on that girl’s family. As I prayed, eyes wide open, I pictured this in my mind: a girl, on the cusp of womanhood, whose name I cannot recall, moves through the chill of air on an anonymous January night. Her eyes look down at her feet, as much to protect her face from the icy wind as to watch where she is stepping. She quickly moves over to the edge of the bridge when a car passes. She loses her balance and cannot regain it. I imagine it is innocent and accidental. I know this is wishful thinking, but I let myself think it anyway. As she descends to the frozen road below I see two images separating, one hurling downward and one taking flight, rising wingless and weightless before the empty body reaches the earth. I imagine the quick and steady arms of an angel whisping in, scooping her up and rising heavenward, the only evidence a brittle winter wind hinting the scent from the collar of her jacket, familiar only to her mother and the boy to whom she gave her first kisses. It’s the same smell her father inhales as he buries his head in the cold pillow on his daughter’s empty bed.

One day a few years back Dave and I were having lunch with Del and Lynette Parson. Del had been commissioned by the church to paint a portrait of Jesus Christ wearing a red robe. A copy of it hangs in most of our LDS churches today. Del told about creating that painting, about the progression of the piece, and what he went through trying to represent the Savior as best he could. Del was invited often to speak about it, and about peoples’ reactions to the piece when it was first released.

I heard that Del was speaking in a Fireside one Sunday evening when a young woman in the congregation announced through her tears; “That’s him! That’s him!” The story goes that she had been a small girl when her mother’s boyfriend entered their apartment stoned and violently angry. The mother gathered her daughter into the closet and told her to stay there no matter what. From her dark small chamber she heard things no child should ever hear, witnessed the murder of her mother in darkness. Frightened and shaking, she felt the embrace of good strong arms come around her as she crouched there listening. The arms drew her into a firm strong chest, and she looked up into the eyes of someone vaguely familiar to her. He gently laid his hand over her ear and held her against his chest. She said she felt an uncommon calm in spite of the emotional chaos surrounding her. She does not recall words; only that the warmth of the person who had comforted her remained until a neighbor came into the silent aftermath of the crime and discovered the child alone in the closet. She told the neighbor that the man helped her not to cry. But of course no one saw him. Even the girl eventually decided she had imagined it.

Until that day when she saw the gentle eyes in the portrait Del had painted.

It may be an urban legend. I will ask Del next time I see him if there was such a woman with such a tale. It doesn’t really matter though, because if it’s the reality or if it isn’t, it doesn’t change the fact that it is a possibility. I have no doubt that it could have happened. I deal, in general, with lots of doubts. I am not a doubtless kind of believer. I fight doubt demons on a regular basis. It keeps my testimony alive.

But I do not doubt that angels exist, that we lived and will again live beyond this realm, and that Jesus Christ has the capacity to do miraculous things that defy our human logic. I believe He could in fact, have visited a child whose life was altering in unfathomable ways. And He could have dispatched one of his heavenly hosts to swoop down to earth on a snowy winter night and reclaim a daughter before she experienced an agony with which He was all too familiar. He can transform our falls into flights. I can’t say for sure that He did. But knowing He can is enough.

WOTD 2 - PEDIGREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LENT BEGINS 2011 (WOTD 1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fat Tuesday is over. Happy Ash Wednesday.

See you tomorrow.

"MY MISTAKE"

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

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

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


The First Graders- Sophie & Henry

Park and Rubes



Parker, Sophie & Ruby



WOTD- RUSHING

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

RUSHING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEAR JESSE

Dear Jesse,

Don’t look back.

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

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

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

That’s what I imagine.

Thank you, Jesse.

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

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

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

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

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

Run, Jesse!

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

Run until you are happy-tired.

Find a cozy spot to make your bed,

and wait till she comes Home.