WOTD 33 - DARK

Will someone leave a light on, even just a little one? A crack in the bathroom door, or a nightlight over by the desk? Maybe push the curtain aside just a teeny bit so the diffused light of a streetlamp can filter in? It worried me; troubled me to the point of fixation as I anticipated sending my quiet, tenderhearted daughter off to the Mission Training Center. She would spend nearly three months learning Cantonese. With Strangers. In a strange place. Without being able to talk to us. Without much of anything familiar and comforting. Except God. (Silly me to think God might not be enough ) Still, I worried about the dark, and I prayed that there would be a little light for her. Ironic, really.

Our beautiful timid girl endured…no triumphed…in the MTC, then in Hong Kong, and in every subsequent situation and locale she encountered: conversing in a strange musical tongue with people from a more blunt and spare culture. It was good preparation for the service she gives now, teaching underprivileged sixth graders how to read in Houston Texas. She pushed through the dark.

Dark is a relative term. It is, in the visual sense, dependant on the situation. At night, when Dave has gone to bed hours before me, coming into the study first and kissing me sweetly by the light of the computer screen, he slides the dimmer up on the table lamp on my side of the bed so I will be able to see when I come to bed. There’s a transom over our bedroom door, leading out to the hallway. The light from the hall generally spills into our bedroom and sometimes he forgets to turn on my lamp. When I tiptoe back to our bedroom after my nightly writing, and flip the light switch in the hall, it is pitch black in our room and my inferior feet cannot comfortably find their way through our space. I reach out my arms, my hands patting the lightless air, my feet shuffling painfully against the carpet. Lately I am comforted by knowing I can use the dim light of my iPhone when I go to bed. I don’t need a lot of light, just enough to indicate where not to step. I slide the dimmer higher on my lamp, just enough to reveal the words to the Guideposts or Readers Digest that ease me out of what I’ve been creating and into sleep. I don’t mind the dark when I’m sleeping, if I know my space.

Like just about everything, when dark approaches slowly and gradually, we adjust without realizing it. Leave it to a gentle God to make our earth spin evenly enough to allow for sunrises and sunsets, giving our eyes time to adjust, our feet energy enough to run home before dark. Imagine if He had decided to jerk the earth around, dropping us into darkness with no warning. Or just as bad, thrusting us into light so quickly our eyes feel like they’ll burst, unable to focus, unable to see anything really. I know the feeling well. Thick window blinds closed on a grey Pittsburgh day, a filmstrip mundanely clicks through a projector, a cassette recording reciting the geography of the Antarctic, or the scene of a Civil War battle, or the anatomy of a grasshopper; the recording methodically piercing my respite with a shrill ding indicating it’s time to advance the filmstrip. When the celluloid was rolled underneath the projector and the recording had ended, on went the fluorescent lights blanketing the ceiling of the classroom. Our eyebrows pushed the skin up to our hairlines, our heads instantly throbbing with the painful rush of light. Light, for all its divine attributes, sure can hurt.

Light can sting. Blind us even. But darkness is a long, dull ache. A frightening look into an abyss. Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend I am blind. I pretend so I can evaluate whether or not I think I have the internal strength to endure such a thing. I am always so, so grateful to open my eyes.

When I lost my sense of balance the Neurologist ran some tests, asking me to do some interesting things, or at lest attempt to do them. He asked me to stand on one foot, holding the other foot in the air beside it. I was able to do that with much effort. Then he asked me to close my eyes. As soon as I did, I fell over. He explained that when we lose one of our senses the others will compensate. But if we lose two, then our brains are confused and will not let us accomplish such a task as standing on one foot. “You cannot balance, having lost the sense of touch in your lower extremities, if you do not have visual contact with your feet or the space around you.” In this way he evaluated further evidence that I had indeed sustained damage to the sensory aspects of my legs. Blind people who cannot hear, like Helen Keller, are at a marked disadvantage to people whose only sensory loss is sight. We learn to compensate. So now I have to keep one eye slightly open when I’m standing and we bow our heads to pray, because I lose my balance in the darkness.

When I was little I remember thinking, down there in the basement art room in Pleasant Hills Elementary School, that when I scribbled all the colors in my crayon box over a piece of soft pale yellow art paper, the page turned dark. Black, I thought, was the accumulation of all colors. It took me growing up, covering my body with the purity of white robes and veils, to learn that it is white which contains all the colors of the rainbow. White, the purest reflector of light, represents the presence of all color. Light, indeed, is the palette of the heavens, from which are painted powder blue summer skies and verdant spring meadows splashed with golden daffodils; deep tangerine sunsets across the lake to the west; the bright red crown on a bold chested rooster. We are reminded of those colors in light when it rains and the air is filled with speckles of water reflecting the colors in the shape of a rainbow. We are surrounded by color and we don’t really know it, though I am sure somehow our spirits do.

I respect the dark. I don’t love it, but I respect it enough to not toy with it any more than I have to. There is no dark that the flickering of a small flame can’t seize, warming my fears and setting them in a peaceful place of calm.

Dark. Thick, massive, frightening dark. It would do me in, but for my trust that just one small flame is enough.

WOTD 32- SINK

I was thinking about this yesterday, somewhere in the middle of nowhere Arizona, out in the endless desert on what felt like an endless drive home from Mexico…(Long drives are really good for random thinking. Everyone should take the wheel for a long drive on a regular basis, just to get the mind flushed out.)… I was thinking that when I got home I was going to have a day of regulars. That’s what I might call it. Maybe. Or I might call it “Ordinarily This....” and the object would be to make note of all the regular things in my ordinary days. I guess my head went in that direction because of the pictures on our digital cameras, the ones we were looking at on our drive home from our Mexico vacation. Sarah was wishing aloud that we had taken a picture of everyone together. So I got to thinking that we have these photo journals of our lives that we leave behind, and in them are all the exciting glamorous things- like trips and parties and birthdays and anniversaries; and the showy things like recitals and programs and games. We have all those things recorded well in our photo albums and in our journals. What is lacking is a reminder of the repeated, seemingly mundane motions of our daily lives. What the family car looks like. David sitting at the table studying legal briefs. Libby lifting Gram into her wheel chair. Jordon buttering a piece of bunny bread or sitting in the driver’s seat of an EJ Bartells truck. Johnny digging in the dirt with Parker. Kate, Annie, Ashley interacting with their students. Sarah using a stethoscope. Timo pounding his drumsticks on the headrest in the car. Sherry opening the back door for Pi. Jill sitting before her computer, her face bathed in the glow of a book in embryo.

I remember my mom standing at the kitchen sink. Regardless of where we were living; what job she had at the time; whether it was before or after Dad left. No matter what season, or how many people sat at her table for dinner…there was always the kitchen sink. It was a constant amid lots of changes. I can hear in my memory the clanking of dishes, the ringing of silverware being stacked into utensil drawers, the rushing sound of the water flowing through the tap. Sometimes she hummed, or whistled, but more often than not she was silent, unless there was something to be said. Mom almost always preferred quiet. I guess that happens when people have seven children and lots of noise all the time. Noise on the outside, mixed with the noise of a mind troubled with marriage woes. Things can get awfully loud in the quiet of a lonely bed. Something about the motion of working with the hands makes the sounds in the head line up a bit more quietly. She often folded laundry and washed dishes in silence.

I wish I had a real picture of my mom at the kitchen sink, not just the one conjured in my brain. I wish I had a picture of her at the wheel of the car; or of her pounding a real estate sign into the ground. I wish I had a photo of her hand patting my back, paced against the rhythm of her rocking in the old white rocker that used to be the old brown rocker before she re-covered it herself in that evening community continuing ed class she took on upholstering and refinishing furniture. I wish I had a picture of my sister Sherry holding me. I think we might have an old home movie of that. But not a still. She was a normal teenage girl, darling in her poodle skirt fashion and horn rimmed glasses. So beyond typical in the way she loved and cared for her little little sisters. I imagine her holding me, and when I think of it I can sense her love infusing into me. Wish I had a snapshot.

And so I am thinking we should all take our cameras, or cell phones with cameras, and snap a picture of ourselves or someone we love at the kitchen sink.

Go ahead. I dare ya.

Blogs have been a blessing in this regard. They allow for photos to be added to the journals of our daily living. Hooray for blogs! Go write in yours, people! (And I want to see your kitchen sink pictures.)

WOTD 31 - COOKBOOK

On a rusting metal shelf, perforated and warped with paper-weight, I imagine my blue and white checkered cookbook waiting. Sealed edges of vinyl covered cardboard cracking with age, like the wrinkled halo around the lips of the woman in the chair next to me at the beauty parlor last week. I imagine it there, waiting on some ignored shelf in some thrift store, waiting to be selected. Who but me would want such a thing? Hand written recipes in no particular order, evidence of hardcore usage splattered on its pages, chocolate and tomato and Crisco casting their votes for most congenial if not most beautiful.

I cannot say how it got there, my very best most personal cookbook. Someone must have wanted a recipe and one of the kids probably just lent out the book. No one would know that those stories were compiled from our lives; recipes born in distant places, brought home and refined in the trenches; proven through hot summer evenings over the cooktop, and chilly December afternoons when the kids were home from school and the house smelled of gingerbread; when little fingers were sticky with sugar squeezed from raisins planted in thick layers of buttercream frosting on flat little men lined up like soldiers on my cookie sheets. The most proven recipes sealed their rank with pocks on their dog-eared index cards. These were coiffed to our taste, refined and redefined for our lips and the outer edges of our tongues, custom tailored to my little family. I can see that old cookbook spread open on the cold tile of my kitchen countertop, adjusted by wide inked X’s with hand written scribblings added to the side: a quarter cup less milk, or a teaspoon more vanilla; two tablespoons of flour when we moved from Pennsylvania to Utah. I searched every DI store in the Wasatch Front for nearly a year, hoping to retrieve it. Aching in the same way I yearn for the lost photographs of my children when the photo lab closed with my film still inside.

If you find yourself in some second hand store that sells cookbooks, and you happen to see one about 7 inches wide and maybe 10 inches tall with thin blue lines; grab it for me.  You can tell if its mine by looking for Gramma Roys Michigan Baked Beans somewhere inside. I'll love you forever...and I'll indeed make you one of those pots of beans (and maybe even a garbage cake, too!)



WOTD 30 - WARP

In order to weave any kind of textile, the weaver needs to start with the warp threads. Warp threads tend to be stronger and more coarse, because they must be able to withstand tight stretching. They also provide a core of support for the finished piece, giving the textile body and form. The warp is stretched onto a loom before weaving begins, and it may be coiled onto a spool for very long or large projects. This spool is unwound as needed, while the finished weaving on the other side is rolled up to get it out of the way.

You know how you know some things, but you’re not sure how you know them, and you’re pretty sure that what you know is probably a little off base but still it makes you sound like you know what you’re talking about (unless you’re talking to somebody who really knows what you’re talking about)? MmmHmmmm.

I don’t know much about weaving. I do own a rather dandy antique spinning wheel. Two in fact. One of them won the blue ribbon for antique furniture in the Idaho State Fair one year. It was displayed in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building one summer, right in the middle of that big round table in the center of the massive marble lobby. It has a nice skein of flax on it, with a little leader twisted onto the spindle and bobbin. I’ve used the wheel once or twice, just to remind myself that I know how it works. I probably couldn’t work it right now without really thinking about it, and probably Googling it. But if we had to we could spin wool and flax at our house, I guess.

My cousin was a weaver, if I recall correctly. She had a large loom right in the middle of her living room. She showed us one day how she did it; stretching strands of tightly spun wool across the loom, left to right, creating the warp. Once the warp was set she used a variety of colored threads to weave in and out of the warp, pressing a pedal with her foot, raking a comb with her hands in a rhythmic pattern that involved multiple pulls toward her chest. The loom clicked and groaned as she worked the fibers in and out of the warp. Her work was meticulous and beautiful. Mom bought some place mats from her, and I purchased a nice neutral colored shawl made of linen and silk.

Anyone who really knows about weaving will think me silly to write about weaving; but I have this image of my family that involves a loom and even though I’m probably off base in what it represents in symbolic terms, I’ve had this picture in my mind for a long time; and since the word for today was “warp” I decided to go with it.

The thing about a warp that means something to me is that someone sets it, with their own hands. Someone selects a particularly strong fiber, tightly spun to give it additional strength. Someone uses their muscle to stretch the threads across the loom tightly. A loose warp makes for weak fabric. The character of the warp fibers are usually pretty universal. It’s the waft, the more delicate fibers woven through the warp, that provide variety and color and pattern. Waft is interesting, and gets a lot of credit in the Ooo and Ahhh department. But it’s the warp that does the labor, that takes the beating - flipping up and down as the waft is woven in and out of it. It’s the warp that bears the tension, and it’s the tension that facilitates strong fabric.

Tonight we shared dinner at a restaurant here in Puerto Penasco, Mexico; a fine Italian restaurant overlooking the ocean, situated on a bend in the beach where the sunset can be seen through the west wall of windows. Our friend Neal introduced us to the owner, a man named Julio, who is the District President in the Mormon Church here in this area. He was gracious and friendly, shaking our hands and looking into our eyes with that familiar warmth of one who loves God and his fellow man. David paused as they met, then asked if they had met before. “Were you at Jared Parker’s house in Salt lake City, grilling shrimp last year…during General Conference?”

“Yes. Yes, yes! Were you there?” The pitch in his voice raised slightly with the excitement of recognition.

“Our son John is married to Jared’s daughter, Ashley! We met you at the Parker’s.”

Julio took David’s hand with both of his, shaking it in that warm and meaningful way, like when you have a deeper respect for someone.

“Ah, you are the parents of John? Oh, that John is a hard worker. A fine hard worker. Very good man, John Connors. I knew when Neal said Connors there was something strong in that.”

Julio nodded his head, as if to add an exclamation point to his words.

John and Ashley come with the Parkers and dozens of other people, sometimes a couple times a year, to help build houses for underprivileged Mexican families. Their non-profit organization, Families Helping Families, facilitates those who want to work for a better life, not by handing them what they want, but by working alongside them. They give up their vacations, even pay their way to come, pay for materials, and sweat their hearts out for two weeks, leaving grateful families with solid walls and doors and windows around them.

When John was 16 he helped our neighbor Ron lay sod. A volunteer service project. Ron came over to tell us how much he respected our son for the hard work he did, without complaint, and longer than most other teenagers were willing to work. This only represents one aspect of who he is, but it represents the same dependable selfless intensity evident in the whole of his life.

John is warp in my weave.

Libby spent yesterday driving our mom and sister to Provo to be with our brother and his family. Our sister in law Cyndy was diagnosed with lung cancer, though she has never in her life inhaled anything but the residual smoke of a campfire. Libby understands there are times we just need to be by each other, not to fix things, just to “be.” Our mom is wheelchair bound. Libby lifts her, dresses her, takes care of her personal needs, showers her. She makes her food, and cleans up afterwards; manages her medicines and makes sure her feet are covered when she finally settles in her easy chair. All this while she takes care of the rest of us; making sure we are all ok, making us feel important and loved. Today she spent the time between caring for Mom reading to a neighbor rendered speechless from brain cancer. She listened and talked to our friend’s husband, who is struggling to accept the inevitable. I have six siblings and she talks to every one of us at least once a day. No one understands me like Libby does; and she loves me in a way no one else can love me.

Libby is warp in my weave.

My ever faithful mother, pilot of the Pontiac Rocket and keeper of the tenderest places in the yearning heart of my youth; she is warp.

And David; and Sherry and all my sisters. My tender, strong and brilliant brothers. Each one of my capable, loving, inventive and intelligent daughters, their spouses, their children. These are the strands that are stretched over the loom, steady and strong and dependable. All of them strong enough to handle the tension necessary for a good weave. I lay myself beside them, allowing myself to be stretched as well, hoping I am strong enough to bear the tension, too.

The daily grind, the talents and trials and trips and treasures all color the delicate fabric that weaves through the warp; the waft. This trip to Mexico. Our time in Michigan. Our Sunday dinners around Gram’s table. Our Saturday afternoons in ball fields. Our moments on stage and in front of the stage. Dull and repetitive hours spent at the kitchen sink.  Irritating tense moments trying to figure out how to make our kids , ourselves, do things we don't want to do. These make the story of our lives colorful and interesting. But they are all held together by the warp. And as warp, we understand the need for tension. Not that we love it. But we understand the need for it. Without tension our guitars would not sing; our vocal cords would not give us pitch, and the fabric of our lives would give way with the slightest tug.

Great Weaver of all things good, use us well. Spin us into good sturdy thread, strong enough for the most meaningful looms. Stretch us tightly beside each other; then weave.

WOTD 29 - DON

Don, Dave’s dad, was a warm and brilliant man. Dave is much like him. What was good in Don is also good in Dave. He taught his son how to use every tool in his tool box. He dissected every moving part on an automobile out there in the garage on Rolling Green drive, the sound of his voice bouncing off the inside of the hood while their heads hung over the engine. Don even shared the table in the dining room at night, where the kids did their homework. While Dave was learning the basics of Algebra and Geometry, Don was taking night classes to earn his Juris Doctorate degree from Duquesne University. He had already earned a doctoral degree in Nuclear Physics at Notre Dame, but thought it might be interesting to see what it was like to be a lawyer, too.

I first met Don on a snowy night in mid December. Dave had left for BYU Law School the previous August; an unattached single student. By Thanksgiving we had fallen in love and become engaged. I flew home that Christmas to meet the parents.

Dave drove over to my mom’s place to pick me up that evening. I dressed in my grey pant suit, spent extra time on my hair and make-up. The whole way over to their house in Bethel from my apartment in Pleasant Hills I sat with my knees tense, my hands nervously twisting in my lap. Dave reassured me they would love me. I had my doubts. I already knew I was in the painful position of being a faithful Mormon girl marrying a beloved son in a devoted Catholic family. Bad start, I thought.

I have a photograph in my head of me standing in the doorway of the kitchen, all eyes on me, comforted beyond words by the presence of ten year old Chelle who was…well, ten years old. She wasn’t weighed down with adult worries. Dave’s mom, Helen, was cautiously friendly. Rightfully so. I remember seeing Don from the corner of my eye, looking over at me as Dave slipped his arm around my waist. He smiled his irresistible smile, his eyes reflecting the light from the kitchen window. Looking back I realize I should not have worried so, but that friendly compassionate look from Dad Connors was so meaningful to me. I don’t think I ever told him that.

Helen and Don could be pretty funny together. Subtly humorous is probably more accurate. For instance, when the cottage in Michigan was finally completed and Mom and Dad Connors were arranging and furnishing, Mom brought home a kit for a wooden end table from the shop in Iosco. It was packed in a tight rectangular brick, wrapped and stapled with cardboard. ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, it said. So Helen handed it off to Don. She sat in the red gingham rocker in the family room while Dad unpacked the thing, laying the pieces out like it was the living room on Christmas Eve. He methodically stacked each screw and nut and bolt, washer and Made-in-China Allen wrench in specific order. Helen worked on various projects through the afternoon, occasionally returning to the rocker. Each time she listened as Don cursed under his breath.

“Who wrote these instructions? These things do not fit where they are supposed to!”

She returned to her tasks; unloading glasses into the kitchen cupboards; washing new sheets and pillowcases and stretching them onto new mattresses.

And again she returned to the family room, checking on the progress of the end table.

“Can’t they count in China?” Don pulled his tool box over toward his knees, searching for a screw in his own collection, none of which matched the size he needed.

After a few hours Helen walked through the family room.

“Aren’t you done yet? She asked, her arms full of folded towels.

Don was exasperated!

“Who in the world could understand these instructions! They’re beyond me!”

Helen put the towels in the linen closet, shut the door, and returned to the rocker.

“Gee, Don,” she said as she sank into the soft cushioned rocker, “I wonder what people who do NOT have their doctorates in nuclear physics do.”

Not two years later Helen was killed in a car accident down the road from the cottage. She had dropped us at the airport in Saginaw and was headed home to that place she loved. We feel her when we sit in those rockers. For the next decade our time at the cottage in Michigan and Pittsburgh was spent with Don. His warmth and kindness, his gentle nature and generosity underlined all he did. Parkinson’s Disease eventually robbed him of some of his independence, but his good nature remained.

Dave’s sister Jill called finally, beckoning Dave home to Pennsylvania. He was able to be with his dad as he walked to the valley of death, reassuring him that we knew he would be ok, that he would still have us, that we would still have him in the end. Dave stood at the head of his father’s hospital bed and laid his worthy hands on the silken head of the man who taught him just about everything, bowing his own head and whispering a prayer of gratitude and comfort. He eased the journey with a blessing, his brother and sisters encircling their father in that small space.

That following year we returned to Pittsburgh to help prepare the house on Rolling Green Drive for sale. We stripped the old blue carpet from the living room, exposing beautiful hardwood floors that were so “not cool” in the 1960’s. Took the mural wallpaper off the wall in the study. Painted the walls with fresh neutral paint. I remember taping off the trim in the dining room one afternoon, looking out the window into South Park, down over the grassy space where the pool used to be. The awning over the porch by the pool was attached to the house.  You looked over the top of it when you looked out the dining room window. In the winter Helen used to toss birdseed out the windows onto that awning, feeding the winter worn cardinals that harbored in the woods.  She loved seeing the flash of their scarlet feathers against the white snow and green pine trees out in the yard.

When we moved to Utah from Pittsburgh, I was conscious of the fact that we were taking the only grandchildren away from Helen and Don. I was saddened that the winter scenes of my kid’s childhoods would look markedly different from the scenes of my childhood, and David’s, too. So I wrote a little song to remind them… to remind me. It’s called Is it Snowing Tonight Where You Are. There’s a line in that song that tickles my funny bone every time I sing it:

Do the red birds still come for the food

You toss from the window at dawn…

The song takes me to the scenes of their home at Christmas time. I think of Dave’s dad. And I think of Helen. And though I didn't originally write a double entendre' into the song, I discovered one in a light moment once. I imagined that the word “dawn” was replaced with the word “Don.” I imagined Helen being a little irritated at Don about something. And I imagined that humorous delivery of sustenance. You won’t see it necessarily on my face when I sing it on stage, but I am thinking it you can be sure: Helen tossing food from the window at Don. It's dry Connors wit, probably not funny to anyone else and way too irreverent. But I find it helps take away some of the sting of loss. And I also find the lightness of that image takes me back to that beautiful, warm smile of the man who gratefully let me also call him Dad.



WOTD 28 - MESS

Four year old Anna sat in her car seat in the back of the van, her waist-length sable red hair woven into a rippling French braid, a pink bow the size of a sand dollar clipped to the side of her head. I sat in the front next to Gumpa as he turned onto Revolution Road. Instinctively I started singing the Beatles tune… “You say you want a re-vo-lu-shu-u-un, well you kno-o-ow….” Sarah immediately jumped in with perfectly aligned harmony as we bounced over the semi paved Puerto Penasco roads. From her seat in the back, Anna called out: “Hey! Hey! You’re messin’ wif my song!”

We kept on singing.

“You guys, did you hear me? You are messing wif my SONG!”

I turned in my passenger seat, trying to throw my voice back to her even if I couldn’t see her face. “You can sing with us, Bella!” I invited her to join in. She replied, rather irritated; “Not THAT song! You’re messing wif duh song in my head!”

Timo, sitting next to her with his iPod Nano headphones in his ears, remarked:

“It’s not in your head, Anna – I can hear it!”

Anna totally ignored Timo, and the rest of us for that matter, since we had ceased the harmonies. She continued with the little ditty she was making up at the time. Something about shopping in Mexico and Tuesday being Amy’s day.

Anna Bella is the ultimate pretender. She can seriously be in your space and totally not there, if you know what I mean. This afternoon I was chopping garlic and browning pork for marinara sauce. She sat at the counter beside me as I worked, probably a good 90 minutes. The whole time she had her lips moving. Half the time there was a pretend conversation going on between a small bobble head penguin wearing a cowboy hat and a little wooden bobble head turtle. She encircled them with the spent glow sticks from last night’s night games. She hid them under the rim of her cereal bowl, and slid them to the next stool as she shifted closer to the pineapple sitting on the granite counter top. Half the time she speaks for her imaginary cast of characters. The other half she sings a sort of narration. Writes little songs, some of them amazingly good, changing the lyric as her story progresses, but often coming back to her make believe chorus. She sings to herself alone, not caring a whit about who might be listening. This afternoon she sat in the sand in front of us as Gumpa worked on some legal cases and Gummy dozed off between paragraphs in her book. I listened as she told her story, the one about the princesses and the sand castle and the little boy and whatever else she wanted to add to her story. She sat in her yellow swim suit, her chest bent over against her knobby little knees, her feet looking like cute little emery boards with the sand collected on her wet skin. Her hands moved, and her legs, and her feet and her arms, all responding to the story line in her lyrics; the music in her head drifting out like the music that wafted over the porch in the condo down the beach.

Anna has her own little world, sweet and pure and friendly. There are interesting stories in the neighborhoods of her world; and behind them all is Anna’s soundtrack. It’s in her head all the time. If you try singing your own songs while her show is playing she will let you know it! “You’re messin’ wif my song!” she’ll say. As soon as you’re quiet she gets back to business, like nothing ever happened. Her high pitched falsetto four year old girl voice dancing up and down a storyline of her own making. Everyone in our family is welcome to write their own songs. That’s cool. Just be careful if Anna’s in the room, cuz you won’t want to mess with Anna!

WOTD 27 - INDIGO

Under the indigo sky, punched like tinware with the light of a million stars peeking through, the shrimp boats line up on the horizon, out past the sand bar; the lights on their small masts twinkling against the water appearing like a string of café lights hanging in the distance. John has labored over the fire in the fire pit, up on the top of the ridge where the grass ends and the sand begins. The smoke refuses to float out toward the sea, insisting instead on coming back to the crowd of friends clustered under the porch; Kirt lying on the lawn couch, paperback in hand, his leg hanging casually over Linda’s golden brown knee. Children run across the sand, across the cropped green token of grass, across tiled floors, their arms and ankles bejeweled with glow stick bracelets and necklaces Sue Ann had spread across the dining table when dinner was done. The kids scampered to the table like crabs on the shore, scurrying and grabbing and twisting the plastic bands, releasing neon yellow, violet , pink, chrystalline, and chartreuse strips that bounced across the dark night as we watched them run off, giggling, shouting rules for night games as they ran, their energetic voices trailing off, buried under the throbbing pulse of the waves and the chatter of friendships old and new. The Smiths have taken the baby home to bed. We paused and wished them well from our various places. Christian sits on a lounge chair out by the fire, his face glowing in the reflected light of his iPod. Neal has just finished telling us about his risky encounter with that man who stole Sue Ann’s iPhone last year. We take turns looking over the ID card Neal convinced the man to give him in the store.

Ash stands at the kitchen sink washing off his grilling tools, a granite countertop between us, telling us he’s a blend of Fijian, Irish, Welsh and something else. He tugs at his shirt to prove he burns like the rest of us, even though he was raised on a hot tropical Fijian island. Someone walks by with a stack of plates, the residue of barbeque and fresh fruit falling into the trash bin, forks clanking in the sink. Annie, sore and swollen from her sun rash and weary with her pregnancy, decides to head back to the beach house two doors away. We kiss her cheek and tell her we’ll soon follow.

Out by the ridge we stab long sticks with soft white marshmallows, poking them into the radiant glow of the logs winking in the fire pit, exclaiming when they accidentally hit the wood and burst into flame, lifting them to our faces and blowing in a fervent attempt to save what we can. We take our charred sweets over to the hot tub and lay them atop chocolate bars placed on graham crackers, lay another cracker on top and pull the sticks out like swords out of the mouths of circus fire eaters.

Our bellies full; the flames reduced to embers; we shift to the porch, sliding our chairs into the circle. I listen to the music of conversation. Someone picks up a guitar and the soft gulf breeze carries the notes in and out of our conversations, the sweet soft music like the breath of a newborn against our necks. The sound invites us unconsciously to find a place to be still, to rest a minute, to slow the pace of the evening winding down. The descending tide down on the beach lulls the tired ones to settle in, the stinging of the day’s sunshine on their cheeks coming gradually to their consciousness, the cool night air against sun tinged skin causing goose bumps to rise on their arms and legs. Little Anna crawls into my lap and asks for a blanket. Timothy leans his weepy head over on his mama’s soft legs, overcome with the impending sadness that always comes when he realizes his cousins have to go home tomorrow.

We convince John to sing us his car song. Little Ruby walks around shouting Hi to everyone as her daddy sings, finally crying that she needs her blankie. We all search the piles of beach towels and blankets strewn over the place. Finally we spy a corner of it on the Bailey couch. McKay shifts his weight, stands up from his spot smashed between his mom and his little sister, and produces not only her blankie but Ellie, her ragged old beloved pink stuffed elephant. Mama Ashley thanks him for keeping them warm! The Robinsons come through the screen door, carrying their empty plates from the potluck dinner. We call out to them, wishing them a good night, thanking Ash for grilling all that shrimp and chicken and hamburger. Maddi, tired out from night games, finds Sue Ann’s lap. We examine her toe, relieved to see her scrape healing over. Ruby’s mommy and daddy gather their children and thank the Harris’ for a great evening. Dave lifts Anna from my lap and does the same. We hug and kiss and whisper good nights to our friends. Sophie takes my hand and we walk through the starry night across the short cool grass, over the slate porches, carefully through the sandy spots, unsuccessfully attempting to keep the sand out of our sandals. Finally we come to the porch at our own home-for-a-week. The kids shake their sandy hair on the porch, take off their clothes and get into their jammies. Parker is so tired he cannot reason, sobbing that he simply cannot leave tomorrow, he really, really needs to stay two more days. He collapses on the couch in his parent’s bedroom. Even Ruby’s insistent cries will not stir him. I sink into the soft fabric couch and three little ones curl into me. We read two books. By the second one Bella has slid from my lap and bunched her legs under her belly, face down on the floor, sound asleep. Her daddy carries her to her bunk bed. My daughter and my son retrieve their oldest children from beside me, leaving me exposed and chilled in the cool night air. We whisper good nights. I move to the computer. Find a word.

All is still, the only motion is my fingers tripping across the keys of this computer, the light of the screen casting an eerie glow in this dark room; the only sound the rhythm of the fountain outside the front door, the clicking of the ceiling fans as they rotate above me, and the gentle, pulsing lapping of the ocean under an indigo sky.

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!~