WOTD 26- WHISTLE

From our apartment on East Bruceton Road to Cinema World we only had to walk along the sidewalk until we got to Route 51. We’d press the button at the steel pole by the cross walk then cross the street at the light, heading up through the strip of shops at Southland Shopping Center. In no time we were at the corner of the vast asphalt parking lot, heading up to the front entrance of that dome shaped edifice. Cinema World became a dollar theatre when I was maybe 15 years old, which would make Lib 14 and Ann Marie 16 or 17, depending on the month of the year. One dollar was the equivalent of four hours babysitting when we were twelve, but by the time we were official teenagers we could get that in one hour. Or if I folded laundry for the lady in apartment 718; or made one meal for the Sobaslays on the third floor. If I hadn’t been saving for a pair of skis I’d have had many dollars to spare. Still, we had enough that when Sound of Music came to the dollar theatre that year Lib and I went probably 8 or 10 times. Once we stopped at the steak house restaurant on the strip mall and got ourselves rib eye steaks and baked potatoes before the show. $5 for the whole dinner, including a drink. Looking back on that it makes me giggle. I think we felt very mature and indulgent in that decision. We never ever bought drinks or popcorn at the movie house. We always felt just fortunate to be able to see the show. To this day I get all giddy thinking about being “allowed” to get popcorn if I want now at the movie show, and I’m always a little sad if we go to dinner before the show cuz I love that feeling of the holy trinity: Popcorn – pop – AND the movie…and I’m bummed if there’s just not enough room for it after having had dinner.

One summer afternoon, when Lib and I were walking over to Cinema World for the show, I asked Libby to teach me how to whistle with my fingers. I’m a fair to midland whistler of tunes with my lips, but I never could do the Boy Scout whistle thing, either with four fingers and two hands, or two fingers on one hand. Lib was a master. She could stop the whole gym full of people at Rec. Night if the teacher couldn’t find her metal whistle and needed to get peoples’ attention. At Girl’s Camp she took the place of the dinner bell. She’s really good. I guess I wanted that kind of power, to call people to attention in an instant without harming the energy in a space by yelling. So she showed me how to hold my fingers, thumb tip to fingertip, nail touching nail. Make a ring out of the fingers, then set the ring on the tip of your tongue like this…she showed me how. I imitated her, watching very carefully while we waited for the stop light to change.

“Now push the tip of your tongue back into your mouth and blow,” she produced the high pitched whistle on demand, just as the light changed. I tried it as we crossed, producing only air that sounded like it was being squeezed through a pile of cotton balls. Over at Southland we stopped in front of the candy store and inhaled as she explained in more detail, watching me as I made the attempt, analyzing the style and technique.

“Looks to me like you’re doing it right,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. I sighed, hung my head and complained, as I am wont to do. “I just don’t have the gift. You have the gift. Forget it!”

Lib takes words like that as a signal to intensify the encouragement: “Wait. Try using two hands.” She took the pinky fingers on both her hands and pushed on her tongue. People stopped walking and talking and turned to us. We smiled and ducked into the candy store; pretended we were looking for something to buy, then stepped out onto the sidewalk again, calling “Thank You” behind us the way our mom taught us to do. I blew and blew, using two fingers, then the finger and thumb, then the two pinkies. By the time we got to the Cinema World parking lot my lungs were saturated with Pittsburgh smog, my brain spinning in a descending vortex. I had to sit on the hot asphalt and put my head between my knees. We almost missed Maria throwing her arms out on that Austrian mountain top singing “The hills are alive with the sound of mu….sic.”

Every year at Girl’s Camp I give it a go till I get light headed and just yell instead. Last week, trying to get the kids attention to say an opening prayer in our joint Young Men’s – Young Women’s activity, I tried it once. I guess I think that by some divine intervention one of these days it will just come to me the way I’ve heard language comes to some missionaries. No such luck. Even now, as I’ve typed this little essay, I have attempted no less than three times to whistle like this. Now my head hurts.

I guess if I had to pick the kind of whistle I would prefer, in general, I’m glad I can do the one that can carry a melody. My dad used to lip whistle little ditties, at least I think he did. Songs like “There’s a Pawn Shop on the Corner of Pittsburgh Penn-syl-van-ee-uh” or “How Much is That Doggie in the Window”, the first note in the song rising up to the second note in the melody; cutting off sharply, much like the whistle of a boy when he’s calling his dog. Maybe I dreamed that. I do know for a fact my mom used to help me find the right pitch in the songs I whistled as a kid. There’s something peaceful and joyful in the sound of someone whistling at a workbench or the laundry counter, out on the coke batteries in the steel mill or in front of an open window at the kitchen sink.

I remember, not all that long ago I guess, catching myself whistling one day after I had been struggling emotionally for some time. I remember smiling, thinking to myself, “Well, hello there. Welcome back my whistling friend!”

WOTD 25 - CHARM

There are certain moments in a person’s life when it’s sort of expected that something special happen. Special in the sense that people put forth an effort to make note of the occasion. Of course tradition and culture and social settings affect the equation, but in general, certain “thresholds” are crossed with an extra hug, or a little curly Q at the end of the signature on a card, or a bit of creative flair in decorating or even a big splash of a party.

A few years ago I dipped my big toe into the fifth decade of my mortal life. I know, it may shock you that I am actually this old ;) First of all, I am really glad to have lived this long. I’m not one to bemoan my aging condition too much, though there are aspects that are surely less desirable. And it would be dandy to feel young in my flesh again. Yesterday, in a public restroom, after I had washed my hands, I placed them under one of those new fangled drying machines where the air pounces out of a faucet-like nozzle with supersonic force. The hands are dry in like 6 seconds. As I listened to what sounded like the exhale of a vortex, I watched my skin ripple, as if it were liquid. I made an audible comment about my poor old hands, their abundant flesh flopping under that powerful tunnel of wind. Oye Ve.

Every time I catch myself feeling sort of sorry for being on this side of prime, I remember the day I stood in the shower, weeping, wondering what was happening as my limbs began to lose feeling and my face froze with paralysis. There was no diagnosis, and the paralysis was quickly advancing. I lifted my face into the falling water over my head, my saline tears flowing down with the soft water weeping from the spout of my shower, and prayed. “Is this going to take my life, God?” My heart throbbed as I held my breath, the way I tend to do when I am overcome with emotion, as if breathing will move time along too quickly and I need it to stop. You know…that kind of cry where you think you won’t be able to inhale ever again, you just keep pushing air out past your vocal cords and just before you pass out your mouth opens like the doors on the spook house ride at the amusement park and you suck in oxygen like your lungs were deflated balloons. That particular moment in my life It was one of the most lonely, desperate moments I can recall. The unknown is so powerful.

Miraculously, the illness did not take my life, and I healed, mostly, with just enough residual effects to keep me humble and grateful.

Dave and I walked through Libby and Gram’s kitchen door on that day in early March and a warm, friendly, energetic cheer went up as all sorts of voices I cherish united in a massive chorus of HAPPY BIRTHDAY! What a great night that was! My brothers. My sisters. My friends. My children and grandchildren. My beautiful ageless mother. So fun! Hours later, When the crowd had cleared, the people closest to me huddled around in Gram’s family room and handed me their presents. Tiny boxes, wrapped in dainty little papers with neatly tied bows.

I have always looked admiringly at the silver charm bracelets girls wore when I was young. I saw someone with one a few years back and those old feelings stirred to the surface again. It got me to thinking. And with the thoughts evolved a plan. Since I have been teased mercilessly all my life for thinking everything is “symbolic”, I allowed myself to imagine having a bracelet singing on my wrist the songs of all the people I love. And so came my request.

One by one I untied those little boxes and smiled, wept and cheered for the little silver and gold symbols that would fit on the silver bracelet Dave also bought for me. Each person had thought of something that would represent them to me, so that I could in some way carry them with me always.

Every now and then, on a Sunday morning when I think enough to include jewelry in my wardrobe, I snap the hinge on my silver charm bracelet and shake my wrist down, letting the charms fall into places.

During Sacrament Meeting I I roll the little charms through my fingers, or show them to a child who has found a spot on my lap: a little silver pony from Annie, for whom I wrote the lullaby, Ride a Blue Pony; a Chinese symbol for Mother from my Hong Kong Kate; a painter’s palette from Sarah; ball bat from Johnny; the number 5 for my 5 sisters and the 5 Hour store; so many other deeply meaningful things: a writer’s pen made of pure gold, as well as a golden Grand Hotel from Mackinac Island where we honeymooned. The Washington DC Temple, a little silver mixer from my baking pal grandkids, as well as a silver Christmas bell and a rocking chair; a British sixpence, Mickey Mouse ears reminding me of our birthday trip to Disneyland that year. So many more. So many more my arm jingles and rings when I reach for my Young Women’s bag at Church, or lift my hand to write on the chalkboard. When my wrist plays its music I remember my 50th birthday.  I'm old enough to have such fabulous memories distilled into symbolic tokens. How cool is that!? And when I remember, I feel the love going deeper…deeper…deeper into the place where only love can go. It may also be noted that I do not have to find a place to store so many sentimental things as I have in my basement. I have instead a small charmed cluster of memories dangling happily from my aging, fleshy wrist.

So I am not a Jr High maiden. Maybe a charm bracelet is a weird thing to want at my age. I don’t care if it is. I love having it, because I love those who gave it to me.

WOTD 24 - COMMANDMENT

Testing. Testing.

I’m doing this little test on myself. You can try it too, if you want.

Here goes:

Recite the 10 Commandments.

Ready? Set? Go….

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

If you’re like me you are at this moment hearing the voice of Charlton Heston, covering dual roles as both Moses and the voice of God, pronouncing each commandment as a flaming finger shoots from the heavens and burns symbols onto stone tablets, roaring sound effects swooshing and retreating behind the booming vocal track.

As I am preparing Easter dinner at our house or at Gram’s, inevitably someone is watching The Ten Commandments. After this many years I should have this memorized. I can see it, and feel it, and hear the “Thou Shalt’s”…but I have to admit when I wrote out the basics of the ones I recalled off the top of my head, I earned probably a C. Maybe a C- even. Seriously, Cori? We are talking the basics here!

So here, in full disclosure of my frailties as a C average Christian who prays to God every day and attends church every Sabbath, asks a blessing on every meal and who partakes with regular soberness of the Holy Sacrament…here is what I wrote in my one minute see-what-you-can-spit-out-of-your-brain self test. Before you read on, I challenge you (if anyone is reading this besides my sisters – and I’ll bet they get all of them)… test yourself and see if you know all ten. One minute. And no peeking! Go back up to that blank list of 10. Ready…set…go!

******************

Here’s my scribbled list:

Love God

Love Neighbor

No Idols (graven images)

Not kill

Not covet

Not steal

Not bear false witness

No adultery

Here’s what I missed:

Sabbath day

Honor parents

Lord’s name in vain

Let me say here that according to a United Press International article "Only 68 of 200 Anglican priests polled could name all Ten Commandments, but half said they believed in space aliens.” I’m just sayin’.

I think it’s kind of ironic they play the Ten Commandments on network TV at Easter time. Jesus isn’t anywhere to be seen, except maybe in that finger of God. A long time after Moses lived, Christ came to change that old Law. He came to thank Moses, and then to override some of the misproportioned rules that had evolved through generations. It’s said He brought a new law. A change; however hard change may be for us underlings. He came to give us, to some degree, autonomy. He came to advance us to a higher standard. The deeper the understanding, and the more mature the participant, the less “law” is needed. If I love God as I should love Him, which first requires me to know Him on a deep and personal level; and I love my neighbor – my family – my friends and my enemies, with that same level of love as the first commandment; then all else should basically fall into place and I don’t need those more specific rules. They’re still rules, I just don’t need them written out for me. I will naturally respect the right to life; cherish my covenant relationships; speak and act with honesty and integrity; be grateful for what I have and don’t have and not crave what is not mine. I will understand the value of a day “set apart” from my worldly existence, and I will choose naturally to make that a day to renew my focus on the divine. I will be grateful for and represent my heritage with dignity, understanding the divine nature of the family unit. And I will revere the name of my maker, using it appropriately and with honor and use it only in addressing Him or speaking respectfully about Him.

(In that regard, I’ve always been a little shocked that good Christian people will casually take the Lord’s name in vain, even in conversation on the steps of the church after Mass. It’s one of the 10 most basic commandments, isn’t it? Kind of shocks me. But I shock myself with some of the stuff I do, so we’re all good company for each other, no?)

The sounds and images of the movie The Ten Commandments are now a fixture of Easter tradition for me. That’s fine. But what I see at Easter time, not on the TV screen but in the quiet places of my heart, is a scene in that upper chamber in an anonymous building miles and millennia away from here, where a cluster of men have gathered for Passover Seder. The air is scented with fragrant oil mixed with the aroma of suckling lamb roasted on a spit in the open fireplace downstairs. There is the rumbling chatter of men coming together in a common cause, embracing and exclaiming as they recognize each other, reunited from their various travels. Into this gathering a single man rises, and as he rises a hush falls over the room. He smiles, moves to a small table in the corner by the doorway, lifts a clay pitcher of water and tips it above the basin set on the floor at the threshold. A sense of surprise buzzes over the heads of the guests as they look at each other, querying with their lifted eyebrows. He tucks a linen towel into the sash around his waist and bends before Peter.

You know the rest. Things were turned upside down. The master washed the feet of the servants. The sacrificial lamb eaten in remembrance of the past became instead a foreshadowing of events to soon follow. The creator submitted to the created. So much that was traditional and sacred was turned upside down. And a new commandment was given.

When I made my list of commandments I made the mistake of putting the New Commandment second on the list, which of course threw my numbers off and made for 11 instead of 10.

Rules are good things. It’s good for a child to know she should not lie. Good to know precisely what we should and should not do as we are learning.

But I have put away my childish things. Not that I am always happy about this…happy in the giddy pleasurable sense of the word. I have willingly put up the part of me that needs to always be told what to do and what not to do. Without cap and gown, or perhaps, in a deeply symbolic sense, fully dressed in cap and gown: I have graduated. My Jesus spoke at commencement. I may have expected a long and brilliant intellectual academic rendering of philosophy and wisdom. What I got…what we got…was simple enough for a child to understand:

A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.                                           John 13: 34, 35

WOTD 23 - SEW

Sew…Ape rill is hear. Maze jest a round duh coroner. Eye mist trussed peep hole awn ape rill first. Day tees us, dew wing whiled Trix, braking trussed, jest fur a muse meant.

Eye wood knot dew anything sew rued! Eye jest right tails from won plane whirred – hear inn this vary silly blog. Win eye started know won tolled me howl hard it wood bee. Two bee on nest, eye wood pre-fur two halve given up chalk lit fur LENT.

O will.

Eye well paws fur a wile end tink sum moor….

Never mind - Eye halve uh soar brain. This peace is threw!

Buy!

(Eye bet yew whirr thinking eye wood rite a bout duh old sing her so wing machine, huh? Knot sew!)

~Eh prill fulls!~



WOTD 22 - CARD TABLE

Tucked into the edge of the closet, hiding like a shy schoolgirl behind her mother’s long woolen coat, the old card table lays in waiting. A product of the 50’s, vintage now; almost antique even, it was once the master of Friday nights and occasional Sunday afternoons; taking center stage in the living room after the couches had been slid back against the wall and the coffee table moved to the bedroom. Now we pull it out as our third option, behind the new Costco plastic tables, for the massive gathering at our Thanksgiving feast.

That poor old table is glad to see us. Four metal legs tucked in the edges for storage, a little rusty at the hinges. The slender legs click as they are pulled into place, the square table top rolling like a caveman’s wheel over the carpet as each leg is released, one at a time. Because the top is made of compressed cardboard, it’s very light and I flip it handily once the legs are out; lean on it to make sure its stable, then swipe a damp kitchen dishtowel over the top, clearing the dust from the vinyl covering, brownish-beige and speckled with gold glitter. I carefully cross the tiny tear in the right hand corner. The tear has been there for almost a whole generation. I remind myself to find the Elmer’s glue and fix that, but instead reach into the drawer of our long black hutch and pull out a tablecloth. Taking it by the corners I flick it through the air and carefully guide it as it falls to the table, like those plastic camouflage parachute soldiers we tossed into the air when we were kids. I push my forearms over the fabric, like opposing windshield wipers, pressing the wrinkles out to the edges. The scent of fabric softener rises to my nostrils as I lean closer to the table. From under the kitchen sink I retrieve a plastic spray bottle, filled with water. Pumping it over the cloth I let the mist sink to the table top, set for a minute, then call Dave over to take the other two corners and pull out the creases. Here in this desert place it dries in a minute and the creases are gone, almost like I had used an iron. The tablecloths unify the variety of tables in the kitchen and adjoining family room. They are all ageless and rank-less once they’re dressed for Thanksgiving Dinner.

That old table has held a lot of our family history on her thin metal legs. Early on she saw the underside of bridge cards, way back in the arid air of Shelly, Idaho. The cards fanned out face-down on her shiny new top. I picture my aunts situated across from each other, their high heeled shoes tucked against the foot rests of their folding chairs, their wrists leaning on the table edges, infusing traces of rose scented toilet water into the vinyl. If I close my eyes I can hear their voices; low pitched and glottal with that familiarly comforting nasal quality and crisply enunciated Idaho accent. Very few sounds are as comforting to me as the voices of the women who nurtured and raised me. I recall the sweet calm of falling asleep as I waited to ask my mom a question when she was on the phone. I’d sit there on the side of her bed, waiting dutifully for her to finish. Eventually I’d plop over onto the pillows, drifting peacefully off to rest, lulled to the music of my mother’s voice simply talking. Didn’t matter if it was business or pleasure.

I'm thinkin' table must know an awful lot of secrets, sitting silently all those years as my mom and her sisters gathered around her. When we moved to Pittsburgh the games ceased. The table was relegated to the basement, where we kids took over. At Christmastime we glumped our miscellany on top, pieces of this and that used to make something or other; the stuff imaginative kids will use to create treasures. One year I spread wood shavings on her, gluing and clamping with potato chip bag clips, making ornaments for my Christmas gifts. Another year I made clothespin dolls. I recall cutting into pieces of lace found in mom’s sewing box, tacking collars onto those clothespin dolls. I found out later that the lace I had snipped was a precious piece of heirloom tatting made by Grandma Jenson. It’s to my mother’s credit that she did not reprimand me for that.

Later on, the table held balsa wood ornaments we cut and painted to hang on our tree. When mom finally moved in with Dave and me, after we were married and had bought our home in Pittsburgh, the table joined our limited collection of furniture. I stored gingerbread houses on her, lined up assembly-line fashion, waiting to be delivered to clients of Cori’s Unforgettable Edibles. Christmas Eve we slapped rolls of wrapping paper atop her, cutting and taping and ribboning till the wee hours of Christmas morning. It became the base of Lemonade stands, of bake sales, of garage sale cash boxes and concert CD sales. It held utensils and plates and bottles of pop at open houses; root beer floats at youth activities and brightly wrapped packages at birthday parties. Thinking about it, she was so much a part of the family she could have joined us in family prayer if her legs had been able to bend.

It’s a sweet thing to have a portable table on hand. It means there is enough room in our home to shift things a bit and welcome more people in. More chairs at more tables. Bounty beyond what our foremothers could have dreamed. So much, so easily obtained, and so gratefully spread on our large wooden dining table, two long Costco banquet tables, and one beautifully dependable well worn card table.

WOTD 21 - FLIP FLOP

The flip flop flings against the flesh of my feet. Left says flip; right says flop. Flip-flop-Flip-flop: alternating pitches, a third apart, like the bouncing bass notes on a Hawaiian ukulele song. When you hear a sound repeat often enough, like walking in flip flops, you end up not noticing it at all; like the chiming of the clock in our family room; like the lady sitting next to you in church breathing heavy through a whistling nostril. She’s used to it. You’re not. Or the guy two rows back from us in the movie theatre last month who snored through the show. Kind of an expensive nap. And really irritating for the rest of us. Don’t you think snoring on certain levels should wake the snorer up? I know I wake up sometimes and think to myself, “Golly, it’s awfully quiet in here.” I think it’s really weird that the people we are closest to know certain things about us that we just don’t know ourselves; such as how we sleep. I’ve listened to our kids talk so much about our sleeping habits that I once asked them to record me sleeping so I would know what they were talking about. None of them ever did. I think they were embarrassed for me. I think they still are.

When they were making sleeping assignments for Stake Girls Camp two years ago I had to be candid with Kathy Wood, our Stake Camp Director. The cabins sleep 16, which is really great. Right?

“Uh…” I was a new Young Womens president and was trying to find my definition with the girls, trying to make myself fit somewhere respectably between mature and deeply spiritual and fun with a little pinch of crazy.

“Uh, I have a little problem Kathy.” I know Kathy pretty well, which is a blessing. I know she fits really soundly in the ideal and hard to achieve “fun and really spiritual” category, and I know she knows and likes me.

“I’m afraid I’ll keep the girls awake with my snoring. I’m afraid I’ll take a dive in the coolness department when I keep them awake with my snoring. Either that or I won’t get any sleep cuz I’m afraid I’ll keep them awake with my snoring. I keep my own kids awake. Dang this deviated septum of mine! I think we need a separate cabin for snorers. We can call it the Snoratorium.”

So Kathy, much to her credit, and maybe because some of her counselors have the same problem, did just that: she created the Snoratorium in the sleeping rooms behind the kitchen. She arranged for our campsite to be close by. So every night after we made our Smores and did our figurative jigs around the campfire, I sat in my canvas camp chair in the middle of the cabin where most of our girls slept. While they situated their worn out bodies on their blow up air mattresses I sang them songs, plucking the strings of my guitar like a ticking clock, like a pendulum swinging back and forth, back and forth…you are getting sleeeeeepy.

After I could hear the rhythmic pulse of 16 girls sound asleep I would slip on over to the Snoratorium and get some rest.

One night, it must have been around 1 am, the whole campground was sawing logs. I was down to the really quiet songs from my repertoire. I tried to finish every night by singing a hymn, feeling like it left a kind of musical blessing on my girls before I tiptoed out. So I am halfway through the second chorus of How Great Thou Art… “Then sings my soul – My Savior God to Thee – How great thou….” Suddenly one of the girls, who’s name shall go unmentioned, a girl not in our ward but who was visiting, threw her blanket off the top bunk she was sleeping on. She let out a triple-nasty word, which shall also go unmentioned but which began with the letter between e and g in the alphabet, followed by a grumbled… “Why is it so *@#%! hot in here?!” I sprang from my seat, banging my guitar on the table in front of me, stung and startled and feeling really responsible for the protection of the other girls’ soft skinned ears. I immediately called the name of the unmentioned, moving toward her as she started climbing off her top bunk. It didn’t take long for me to realize she was still asleep. I gently helped her return to her bunk, opened the window a little wider beside her, and asked her to sleep gently and softly and gracefully. And quietly. Actually, she didn’t hear me. I asked God to help her do that.

I felt like I needed to open the door and let the nasty out, (like these girls didn’t hear this kind of stuff every day at school). I actually tried to apply my powers of energy to shoo the bad out the door and beckon the good fresh mountain air in with a wave of my hands; to cleanse the space where my young innocents were situated in a mode of sweet repose. After enough time had passed and the girls who had stirred were back to their steadily paced breathing, I picked up my guitar and sang I Am a Child of God, feeling like we needed another blessing on the place. When I was done I tucked my instrument in its canvas pouch and ever-so-slowly zzzzipped it shut. You know how long it takes to silently zip a guitar gig bag? I placed it in its corner in the cabin; walked to each set of beds and whispered a little prayer for each of my girls, then slipped out the door. Outside, walking along the gravelly path under the shifting light of the moon through the trees, I got to thinking.

Maybe next time, I thought, we should suggest they create another isolated cabin.

We’ll call it the Swearatorium.

WOTD 20 - BELIEF

“What happened to this orange!”

“What do you mean?” Lib replied as she backed the car out of the garage.

I had dipped my hand into the box of small mandarin oranges sitting outside the kitchen door as we made our way out to the car. A seasonal treasure sent by our California sisters, we waited all year for the harvest, anticipating the juicy sweetness of those bite sized segments dripping with California sunshine. I pulled the thin layer of skin from the fruit, picking tiny threads off as we talked. Popped a one inch segment into my mouth and cringed.

“It tastes like salt!”

“Huh?” Lib was focused on backing out; raised her arm and pushed the garage remote to close the door; shifted the car into drive and headed up the hill from their condo.

“It tastes like salt. Taste it! “

I handed her a segment.

“Tastes fine to me.”

I tried another piece and, again, it tasted like that salt lick I tried that one summer out in Uncle Archie’s corral. I wrapped a paper towel around the rest of it and set it on the seat, trying to figure it out, imagining that maybe the orange had accidentally been set on a pile of rock salt and the stuff infused into a portion of it.

The next morning I sliced a grapefruit at home. Slipped a serrated knife carefully around the rim and dipped my spoon into a section, the juice seeping up and over the lip and into my bowl. When the spoon touched my lips, once again the taste of salt attacked my taste buds. I threw the grapefruit away and headed off to school. That week I spent each day substitute teaching at Viewmont High; History and Guitar classes. We spent the evenings that week watching Annie perform in the high school musical version of Les Miserables, volunteering as concession sellers and ushers. Thursday my hands started to tingle. I thought the strap of the guitar hanging around my neck for hours had perhaps pinched a nerve. Friday my feet kept falling asleep. I remember standing in the back of the auditorium, watching the show, and kicking the toes of my sandaled feet on the floor, trying to wake them up. By Saturday both legs were electrically numb, that hyper alive zingy kind of numb you feel when you bonk your crazy bone, like my body was in a vice and little electric worms were wiggling through thick rubber flesh under my skin. My arms were the same. And portions of my face. I remember shuffling on my stinging, burning, electric feet to the study at 3 am, tears streaming down my numb cheeks, Googling my symptoms. The next day, frightened, I sat on the table at my doctor’s office as he spoke.

“I can’t tell, without diagnostic tests, what is causing this, but it is neurological and it is fast moving. Let’s get some steroids in you and send you to the U for testing.”

Thus began the long, painful, wearisome journey with Guillain Barre Syndrome. Without going into a long detailed explanation of the variety of tests they performed on me the following week, I will say, in the end, that a diagnosis of Guillain Barre Syndrome was the best of the options I found on the internet that night I entered my symptoms in a Google search. In the end, while the recovery was long and painful, I was comforted by the stack of papers with test results that indicated hundreds of maladies I did NOT have. Looking at the possibilities they tested for, I marveled that any of us are functioning, healthy individuals when there are so many things that could go wrong with our bodies!

I saw seven different Neurological Specialists that week. Lib pushed me in a wheel chair from room to room, clinic to clinic. I asked each doctor, at some point, about that salty citrus, wondering if this malady was at all related. Six of them said no.

Our daughter Sarah was at the time a student at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Ironically, they were studying neurology at the time. Even more amazingly, they specifically studied Guillain Barre Syndrome, taught by Dr. Renner. After class Sarah made her way down to the professor.

“My mom has Guillain Barre Syndrome,” she said.

“Really? Was she diagnosed by an M.D?”

“Yes. Right here at the U of U.”

That afternoon his office called and asked if I would come in. GBS is a rare syndrome, only diagnosed after many tests including EMG and spinal tap, and he was intrigued to hear of one of his students here knowing someone with that definite diagnosis. Dr. Renner had done a medical fellowship in Guillain Barre Syndrome. Sarah went with me to his office, where he taught her as he examined me. I got all weepy watching him tutor my daughter as he ministered to me, meticulously administering test after test, evaluating my condition, asking me to close my eyes and stand on one leg (impossible); pounding and poking and scraping and gently bending, all the while softly instructing my daughter as she sat in the corner of the exam room, a notebook in her lap, pen in her hand.

He verified the diagnosis, suggesting plasmapheresis. Just before he left the room I stopped him:

“Can you tell me, maybe I’m crazy…but can you tell me if any of this would make an orange taste salty?”

“Indeed, it could. The ninth nerve goes down the side of your face, in the vicinity of the jaw, and interprets sweet, sour, bitter and salty. If that nerve was stripped in the GBS process then it could absolutely misinterpret, making sour citrus seem salty.”

Things got worse before they got better, though they never did get completely better for me. But considering where I was, and what other options I may have had to deal with, I am feeling profoundly blessed. I can play my guitar, can chop celery in tiny little pieces, can caress the soft hair of my grandchildren when I hold them. I can walk. Not without pain, but I can absolutely walk and that is a miracle. And oranges and grapefruit taste like oranges and grapefruit once again.

I wonder, in moments of reflection, how often we misinterpret things without knowing it. Had I never eaten a fresh ripe mandarin orange from the orchard in Roseville would it have surprised me that this particular one tasted salty that day? Or would I have simply believed mandarin oranges were supposed to be salty?

Belief, it is said, is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. I guess you could say it is not necessary for something to actually be true in order for someone to believe it. Thank goodness much of the mundane in our lives has consistent evidence; humans have heads; lungs need air; sound travels without being seen; the sun provides light by day and the moon and stars reflect that light by night…stuff like that. Easy to believe. We all know it because the evidence consistently proves it.

The older we get, the more we struggle with belief. Newborn babies have no need for belief, I suppose. Their minds don’t search for testaments. They only know what their bellies and their pain mechanisms tell them and it wouldn’t matter if they believe someone will feed them or not, they’re just hungry. You couldn’t even say they trust someone to feed them. They’re just hungry. And if they die hungry, they just die. No anger, no questions. This is before they form attachment. Things change when we become more intelligent and attached. It takes the gently dissipating innocence rising from them as they age, their loss of naïveté, to form the questions which open the window to belief. We do not baptize our babies because they simply have no need for baptism at such an innocent age. We wait until they are old enough, tried enough, challenged barely enough…to believe, or at least to want to believe.

When the great maker of all good things molded us and breathed mortality into us, I imagine him setting us, figuratively speaking, on the chess board of life. He places us in our little first squares, and sits back in his chair. I don’t know how we move, whether we shift ourselves, or whether he lifts his hand and moves us himself, or whether he lets the board rise and fall, sliding us to and fro haphazardly. However we move; we move. Even if we don’t feel like playing; we play. I choose that candid chess scene as a picture in my head, not as fact, though I do believe in a great majestic hand overseeing me. It simply represents how little I know about why things happen.

What I believe and what I know are categories separated by one simple thing. Some call it the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit. Inspiration. Spiritual Instinct. That thing which causes the hairs on my arms to stand on end, springing out of little goose bumps when someone says something particularly stirring. That trigger in the back of my head which switches the tear ducts during certain tender moments. That soundless bell of validation I feel ringing in my chest when someone speaks something I consider to be true. It’s as real to me as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Because someone else does not perceive it the same does not diminish the evidence I have accumulated through the years: that this mechanism serves as a form of revelation to me, just like the test tubes and glass slides and microscopes served in my high school Biology class. Without it I would be wingless – unable to rise from the starkness of earth life. I’m not talking fairy wings, I mean figurative functional flight wings with power and purpose. Without it I think I might be able to feel happiness, but I would be devoid of hope; and without hope I cannot imagine being who I am.

Without that one little measure of Heaven our maker sent down with us, to emulsify our earthly mixture of ingredients, I would be resigned to basing what I “know” on pure hard evidence. And had I only eaten one mandarin orange in my life, and it tasted salty, I might never know that oranges are sweetly sour and delicious to the taste. I would presume them to be only what I personally knew them to be. But something in us is gifted to us, to tell us the true nature of an orange…of a child…of human hearts.

Belief does not need truth.

There would be no war, no classes on comparative religions, if we were unable to believe in something un-true. That’s a risk we were willing to take when we took on our human condition from our pre-mortal state.

But I think somehow truth needs belief.

In a metaphysical sort of way. Divine truth, the less obvious truth that requires something not seen through the lens of science, compels us to resign and surrender, having received enough visible evidence, coupled with that powerful ingredient of the Holy Spirit. That surrender is the umbilical cord to hope. We are nourished and grow, strange as it may seem, because we know something we cannot completely nor immediately prove; and because we cannot prove it we must hope it is true. Just hoping something is true does not mean it is true. But it also does not mean it is not true. When “I believe” grows to maturity, having been nourished by hope; it receives a new name. We stand at the pulpit, our hearts pumping, our minds focused, our arms covered in goose bumps, and we speak these words:

I know.

I like to think when I say those words; in my heart, with my voice, in song or in action; that it is the beautiful union of truth and my God given right… exercised in wisdom…to believe.



WOTD 19 - SOCKS

He sheared the muddy wool in long thick strips, fallen onto the floor of their small thatched shed, the musky earthy glandular smell of sheep filling his nostrils. She gathered the wool in her wicker basket, swung onto her hip, and walked out to the sunshine; crouched onto a small wooden stool, set the basket beside her, and drew the oily wool through two wooden paddles embedded with metal tines, carding it into cooperative units, cleaned of burrs and mud and thistle leaves. She cards, and washes and dyes and spins; knits and weaves and stitches. Stretches the newly knitted, newly washed stockings onto wooden forms to dry in the radiant warmth of the kitchen fire. I see them only in my dreams, my great-great-greats, working the land and their animals, pushing their way through their earthly existence. I only imagine how they do it, composing the scenario from casual scenes found in PBS documentaries and from one particular book purchased in that musty bookstore in Hay on Wye, England; The Downlander Shepherd. No department stores for them. No racks of shoes or drawers of socks, all neatly stitched and seamless. Just an early spring lamb fed from the land, grown till its back and belly grew thick with wool, harvested and spun and knitted and worn under hand cobbled leather boots with button latches.

Yesterday I drove to Kohls, walked back to the Customer Service desk and returned the pair of boots I had bought for Sarah at Christmas, which she decided not to keep. Even though it’s been three months they happily traded the boots for in-store credit, electronically registered on a small plastic card. I traded the card for six pair of socks, three tightly woven running socks with special wicking to pull the sweat away from the soles of the feet - and three pair of argyles, all purchased for David's birthday this coming week. The socks were uniform in size, nicely arranged on thin colored cardboard, a chunk of thin black lines nested under the price on the upper right hand corner. The sign in the Men's department said buy one get one 50% off. The extent of personal labor in obtaining socks for David begins with turning the key in my Honda van and ends with pulling the zipper on my pocketbook. We hardly break a sweat.

For those of us who live in places with seasons, socks are a common denominator. The homeless fellow under the viaduct on 4th South wears them just like the Governor in the mansion on South Temple Street. They may not smell the same, but they both wear them.

When the kids were little and I was busy being PTA president and writing songs and recording albums, we had a laundry room between the kitchen and the garage. There was just a thin path in front of the washer and dryer. The rest of the floor was covered with a bulging mound of laundry. I am not proud of this. Every once in a while, when the mountain began to rumble like a volcano about to burst, I gathered that laundry into big black garbage bags and loaded the van, adding a stack of empty laundry baskets, a box of Tide, a gallon of Clorox and a jug of Downy fabric softener; drove up Main Street through Kaysville past Gentile Street in Layton, to Faye's Laundr-o Mat. I sorted the bags into washing machines, their tops lifted like the beaks of hungry baby birds. Dark's, whites, pastels, reds, sheets and towels,...they each had their own machine. Each fiber, each color, sorted into the bellies of those extra large commercial machines. I left the knits and hand washables at home for another day.

I learned to pace myself, starting the white's on hot while I prepared the colors, adding the Clorox after I pushed my strip of quarters into the batch of towels. The first batch was ready for fabric softener as I sorted the last batch. I worked my way back and forth along the row of washing machines like a suburban Kansas housewife on a trip to Las Vegas, drumming a row of slot machines, stuffing them with quarters and pushing and pulling handles.

Out of the washers, my arms embraced cool wet fibers stinging my nostrils with a waft of bleach or the scent of springtime “for clothes you love to live in!” I loaded the wet clothing into a large wire basket on wheels, my hand leading it along by the rod that rose from the base and bent to a rack for hangers at the top. Rolled the squeaky wheels over to the large bank of dryers, their round glass faces glowing in the reflected sunlight of a Saturday afternoon. It took me most of the day to complete my task. Various people came and went, their small batches washed, dried and folded in the wink of an eye. This was no ordinary laundry day; it was the ultimate test of a woman’s ability to multi task and achieve an end. The closest I come to it on a regular basis is cooking dinner on Sunday evening for a couple dozen people.

Finally…finally…I am finished. Those little demons of guilt get pushed aside when I am done. I feel rather satisfied as I load my piles of crisply folded clothing into laundry baskets, ready for the trip back home. Ah, those beautiful stacks of clean fragrant clothing, anxious to fill my children’s drawers. I swear to myself as I roll basket after basket out to the car that I am going to get a handle on this aspect of my life and have this taken care of on a regular basis, because it feels just dandy to be organized. But the thrill of it never lasts for me and I cannot sustain the desire no matter how often I yell at myself or shake my figurative finger and whisper, “See, doesn’t that feel better? Told you so.” The sense of satisfaction over tidy things and places never matches the thrill of other things for me: a new song, a deep and spontaneous conversation; a nicely rendered meal; a well placed afternoon nap from which you awake at the well resolved conclusion of a dream, a piece of life preserved in word. I wish a clean tidy laundry room made me feel so good for so long. Alas.

When I am finished with my laundry day I load one last basket into the back to the van. The leftovers. A deep plastic rectangular weave filled with miscellany: a pair of shorts little Annie’s outgrown; a tee shirt with the hem coming unstitched; the belt to Johnny’s ball pants. On top of the basket of miscellaneous clothes I plunk a Smiths grocery bag stuffed with un-matched socks. I harbor hope of finding their mates, even though I know they were likely sucked into the big vat under the laundry mat floor where the sock monster hunkers; his belly groaning and gurgling every morning; his big green arm rising up from underneath the washing machines and dryers, the crook of his fingernail snagging poor unsuspecting socks. I gather the mateless matchless misfits in my grocery bag. I don’t know why I keep the widows of gobbled socks. I guess I live in denial that there is a sock monster, hoping that instead there are corners of closets and pockets in sports bags where long lost mates are imprisoned. I keep thinking I will find them and free them and reunite them with their mates.

Years down the road I finally toss them, first taking the best 100% cotton ones out to be used for washing my bathroom mirrors or polishing my guitars. I talk to myself, giving me permission to let them go, telling myself they have filled the measure of their creation.

I think of my Great grandparents, going to so much effort for a single pair of socks. I feel ashamed that I have so many. So many that I only need to wash them in my nifty difty electric washing machine once every few weeks. How fortune smiled upon us to bring our feet to this time and place.

WOTD 18 - NICKNAME

I was sixteen years old, long blonde hair, hip hugger jeans, my absent father’s old letter jacket and hand knit red wool sweater with two deer facing each other on the front, a pair of tan suede square toed Wallabies keeping my feet warm.

My hair smelled of Clairol Herbal Essence. When the chilly winter air blew through it, I inhaled a little deeper, searching for that scent of artificial springtime. There was a single ski tacked to my bedroom wall, a reminder that every babysitting quarter I earned was getting me closer to a real pair of my own. There was a candle holder and a half spent bayberry candle beside my bed; a clock radio set to wake me to the music of John Denver, Joni Mitchell, or Three Dog Night; a well-loved well-worn Raggedy Ann, positioned like a contortionist, smashed between the wall and my pillow. I was Junior Class President at TJ High. Sang in the 10th grade choir. Shot hoops at the community center almost every day after school. I played guitar in church and sometimes in school. I knew who I was and it all seemed fine to me.

Poor girl. I look at her through the rearview mirror of memory and feel a wash of overwhelming sadness, knowing that very soon her little bubble of self would morph and twist and burst, like a blister on the heel, the watery defenses of a teenage soul seeping out over the floor.

We didn’t know what it was in those days. Now we raise our shields and draw our medicinal swords and attack depression with full force and no apology. But then, we didn’t know what it was, or that it was following me through the halls of school, on the long bus ride home, and straight to my bedroom. Didn’t see it until it snatched me in it’s steel hinged jaws.

Eventually it squeezed itself between my sister Libby and me, staring me in the eyes and flailing it’s big hairy blue arms like a defender in a full court press. Color drained out of the picture of my daily life, eventually going from black and white of full on gray. The color left, and the laughter, and the music. My grades plummeted, friendships sort of diffused into thin air. I came home from school and curled up in Mom’s old white upholstered rocker and glazed my eyes with Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street on our recently acquired second hand colored TV. Looking back, I want to stretch my arms around that girl who probably just wanted to be little again. Stretch my mothering arms around her and draw her in.

When someone is depressed people quit doing certain things around them. Probably in self defense. Or maybe because some things don’t seem fitting. They start to tiptoe in stocking feet. Speak in whispered tones. Sometimes walk down the aisles in the grocery store thinking “What would make her happy?” They shimmy around silently until something bursts from them, or until they can no longer contain the frustration. Then cluttered emotion spews like that fountain of bronze beasts in downtown Kansas City. Tensions spurt and explode into anger, then tears, until finally arms rise up to the heavens in resignation. They breathe deeply, hold their breath, bow their heads, then …once again… fall into silence.

We tend to lose the sweet slushy yumminess of terms of endearment when loved ones are depressed. Maybe because they don’t feel dear, and they make cynical faces at such terms in order to make us stop. “I am not dear. Not dear to you or me or anyone else, so quit trying to make me think I am.” That’s the logic of depression. And out of love we stop. Our self definition, once boldly dimensional and vibrant, thins to a steel blue shaft, almost unseen. We feel invisible. Nameless. It’s stunningly frightening to think of oneself without even a name. Pretty soon we just want to disappear. Pretty soon we do.

Cork MaLork. That was the nickname my mother gave me when I was little. Sometimes she called me Corinna, if she was feeling a little more nurturing. But when she was freely happy, I was Cork MaLork. My father had called me Sport. Dad took my name with him when he left. No one has ever called me that since. And mom, not knowing what to say or do with me that dreary winter of my discontent, stopped using my nickname. She may have tried once or twice, but I likely never responded. It’s a risky thing to tease someone bound in the shroud of depression.

Christmas morning that year, in the mid 1970’s, there was a gift for me under the tree. There were many gifts, I suspect, but right now I am remembering this one. A silver gift box, about the size of a loaf of bread. It was bound by a single red bow, drawn tight and tidy with my mother’s hand. Attached to the bow was a teeny little gift card, about one inch square. The card had a picture Flopsy Bunny on front; the soft gray bunny brother of Peter Rabbit. Inside the card, in the blessedly graceful handwriting of my mother, was this message:

“Merry Christmas, to Flopsy Cork”

Inside the box was a stuffed Flopsy Bunny, purchased from the Toy Shoppe in Williamsburg, VA. We had visited Williamsburg often, and at some point I must have said something admiringly about that stuffed animal. And at some point my mom must have returned to the store and purchased it for me.

I don’t know why I even think of this right now; why I even chose to write about depression triggered by the word of the day: Nickname. Don’t know why I remember that little card or that gift. I’d like to say that there was some magic that rose from the silver gift box under our tree that year; I’d like to say that the depression lifted and I got my old self back and the demons never returned again. But such things are almost never the real truth. The truth is I don’t know why that particular gift mattered to me or why I even remember it.

Maybe it was just that there was a tiny thin blue thread of hope in the ink scripted across that little gift card. Maybe I awoke for a moment, long enough to discover my old nickname written on that little card, in the handwriting of the woman who loved me more and knew me better than anyone else on earth. Perhaps I saw the shadow of that little girl that used to be me and I shifted the light to make her come into view.

Not very many people even know that was my nick name. It was sort of my mother’s alone. Maybe that’s why I cherish it so much.

My friend Susan and I play this game on our iPhones now days. A Scrabble game. I usually give it one shot at 2 am before I go to bed. I like to play it because it keeps me connected with Susan. She is very patient with me. Our friend Fran has joined us and now I feel connected to her, too. And once in a while my very busy daughter Sarah plays a game or two. We got to pick our game names when we started. Susan’s name is Mavin. I’m not sure why. Fran’s is Frannie B. Sarah is SarabellaC. And mine is Cork Malork.