13. PANDEMIC MEMORIES I

As time and a shot of vaccine pulls me further from the profound experiences of this past year, I am compelled to force myself to recall a few of the little details so the experience is not lost. Not far from now I suspect this will be a hazy memory, just a translucent halo around the lives of we who lived it and lived through it. By recording details we preserve the memory.

The Covid 19 Pandemic hit the American shores roughly a year ago, though at this time last year I was naïve to what was ahead. By late March of last year we  in America were asked to shelter in place. I had never really known that term before. The virus was a huge unknown. We did not know exactly how it evolved, or how it was transmitted. We were asked to stay home, venturing out only for food and medicine. My performance gigs were all cancelled. My guitar classes ceased. Dave’s courthouse closed down. Our kids and grands’ schools closed, and eventually went online. We all went online. I knew then that if anyone wanted to paralyze humankind they would fry computers and cell phones, because they were our link to each other, and without each other we would wither and die.

I realize today that I have developed addictive habits around my devices. I think the weakness was easily and innocently nurtured when I started missing people. Human interaction. I see now, as we have the glimmer of hope that things will start to open up soon, that I need to step back from my constant desire to check in on social media. Good to know. But boy, am I grateful I had this inter-net to catch me during the pandemic. 

During the first portion of the pandemic we all panicked about “next week”. We rushed to buy daily needs, like soap and sanitizer and toilet paper. Toilet paper was a serious black market item. Even this past Christmas, nine months after the “rush”, we received toilet paper as holiday token gifts from half a dozen neighbors. If we did venture out to the store, we came home and piece by piece sanitized our purchases before bringing them into the house. I even wiped down my bananas and oranges. We all chose songs to hum in our heads to make sure we washed our hands long and hard enough, multiple times a day. At one point we even showered and put our clothing in the wash after venturing out. This was because we did not understand the nature of transmission, and people were getting so sick, in massive numbers, overcrowding the hospitals and morgues. It became impossible to find sanitizing wipes. We resorted to making out own, if you could find alcohol and aloe. In relief Society our presidency made our own concoction of rubbing alcohol, aloe vera and DoTerra essential oils, poured them in spray bottles into which we had inserted little clear tabs that read “Clean Hands & a Pure Heart”. We gave these as Birthday gifts, along with face masks. Masks and sanitizer were, at the time, hard to find.

Many people took to trying to pass the time at home by binge watching television, or putting together jigsaw puzzles. I joined many who started baking artisan bread. I ran out of flour, and it was hard to find on store shelves. I finally found someone on an online classifieds site that was closing his restaurant down because he could not afford to keep going during the shut down, so he was selling his supplied. We met in a parking lot in West Valley City and I bought 200 lbs of flour and 10 lbs of yeast from the back of his pickup truck.

I spent many, many hours in my garage making sacrament sets. I’ll write a separate post about that. I sewed masks on my sweet little Bernina sewing machine at the kitchen table. 

Many people organized their houses and cupboards. I just made more creative messes. We all have our own ways of dealing with stuff.

We all became users of internet group meeting apps like Zoom and Webex. Church was cancelled altogether at first. This is why I started making and giving away Sacrament sets. We performed holy ordinances in our own homes. Then eventually we began being able to attend church meetings virtually, later in the summer. We still have them online, almost one year later, though now they have opened the chapel to a maximum of around a hundred live participants, with families spaced at least six feet apart from each other. Everyone wears masks, and the chapel is  sanitized between meetings. The podium is sanitized between speakers, and they do not allow musical solos in our ward. I miss music in church. We sing hymns, without hymnbooks, through our masks, and it sounds like muffled prayers. The Deacons serve the sacrament to those in attendance with careful distancing and not passing the trays person to person. If you attend in person you lift your mask only to put the piece of bread in your mouth or to sip the cup. Before they pick up the sacrament trays each Deacon sanitizes his hands. We hold sacrament meeting and broadcast it over the web so those at home may participate, but the sacrament is done privately and not over the internet. So we usually have our own little sacrament service with my sisters Libby, Sherry and Ann Marie and AM’s husband, Michael at one of our houses We live within walking distance of each other and consider ourselves our safe cluster.

Kate came home for months during the pandemic, doing her doctoral work online. Ann Marie and Mike’s sons and their families both came and spent weeks with them, because they were able to work remotely. We visited our cottage this summer because everyone was able to work remotely, and we were able to isolate on our private beach. It was divine. 

Schools shut down, went virtual, tried to open, ended up with outbreaks and shut down again. This pattern continues to repeat. Suicides have risen many-fold. Mental health issues are rising to the surface. It’s a good thing winter is winding down in our spot on earth because we need to break out and get some sunshine! 

Coronavirus deaths to date: 2,572,193

12. THUMPERS UNITE

If you had a mom like mine, you heard Thumper quoted regularly throughout childhood. 

“If you can’t say sumpin’ nice, then don’t say nothin’ at all.”

Thumper is actually reciting what his own mom taught him. It’s a gentile way of thinking.

And it’s disappearing.

The current political and social climate, of late, seems to have authorized people to muzzle that cute little bunny and his altruistic attitude. 

I propose we form a counter attack. Call ourselves Thumpers. The Thumper Squad.

Last week, in one of the online groups I belong to, someone posted a scathing rant about a local dentist who recently set up a practice near us. DON’T USE DOCTOR SO-&-SO, he wrote, in all caps. That was just the beginning. I read it and was surprised to see it was the very dentist who had just pulled my molar and gave me a root canal. Seriously guys, he was the nicest fellow, and very capable, and extremely professional. I jumped in the conversation and commented that I had nothing but good experiences with him. Others chimed in that dentists in general were out to rob folks. By the end of the week that particular post was the top post in that group, so an email went out with the leader: DON’T USE DR. SO-&-SO….

Yesterday, in the comment section of that post, the writer… to his belated credit… said he just found out that he had the wrong name of the dentist. Sorry. It was another guy.

Meanwhile…poor Dr. SO-&-SO! What happened to fact checking?

Man, we live in a cruel world!

Seriously people, we are all just down here trying!

My beautiful, brilliant daughter is a doctor. She was trained at the U of U Med School, and then further trained in her residency in the Midwest. Without going into particulars that are hers to share, I speak of the profession in general. It seems to be a tough balancing act to be a doctor with gentle pacing and compassion in a machine that is determined to get ‘em in then get ‘em out. I remember the oath she took the day she got her White Coat. Particularly this part:

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

The Hippocratic Oath

This part gets in the way of business, I guess. I often call her at night, after her work hours, and she will still be in the office doing her charts, well into the dark after everyone else is long gone, because her soul interprets her job a little differently than her bosses, and she needs to satisfy both. I am her self-assigned Designated Thumper. I cheer for her because I think she is doing the right thing, listening to words as much as she listens to heart beats.

Yesterday she forwarded this text to me:

Just got this thank you from a mom of one of my teen patients I saw last week whose father has been abusing him and who is suffering from anxiety:

“If you’re ever wondering if what you’re doing matters, or if your staff wonders about that too, I hope you’ll think of today.  You made such a difference for [my son] today. I can’t express how it helped him, just getting all of that off his chest to another adult.  Someone who’s not me.  And being heard, and validated.  He is happier, more confident, more content this evening than I’ve seen him in a long time.  I am in your debt.”

I would like to invite that grateful mother to be an honorary member of the Thumper Squad. 

Now, in defense of other grateful mothers who I know are out there but just don’t send the words, I know that life gets crazy and we think we can’t add even one more thing like a thank you to our lives. But then, in defense of the better part of ourselves that seems to get underused, I call on myself, and the rest of us, to expect a little more than Thumper’s suggestion to keep quiet if you don’t have anything nice to say. I suggest we speak up when good things happen. We have simply got to begin creating a counter culture to the cynics and the grumps.

Most doctors' truth.
Most peoples' truth, sadly.

I’m going to try an experiment. I am going to give one day to absolutely no criticisms or negative comments. Zero, including self-criticism. 

I’ll return and report.

11. EMOJI'S TO GOD

Beth is in first grade. She has a sweet toothless grin and a kind, tender heart. I love her.

Her mom, my Annie, must have given her some sort of communication device, because a few days ago I got this text:

I was actually pretty impressed that she began her emoji spill with an introduction, so I would know who she was. It made me giggle, of course. When you are just in the process of learning to read, and write, those little emojis are such an easy fix! 

I imagined her little thumbs working their way across every single picture on her device, analyzing its value, and sending the worthy ones along.

Don’t you just love little kids?

I got to thinking this morning, as I laid in my bed, savoring the beauty of a day when nothing in particular pulled me off my pillow. I laid and prayed. I got thinking about how I tend to toss emojis up to God. Little snippets of emotion, with names attached. I insert little gratitude signs in regular portions, praying hands and thumbs up’s. I scroll past the fiery anger signs, and the clown faces that freak me out. And I tend to overuse the single dropping tear over the downturned line of a mouth, and occasionally the rivers of tears flowing from circle eyes. Oh, and I also overuse the hearts. Lots of hearts. Like Bethy’s.

I wonder how God feels about the emojis we send him. Do you think he tires of it? I mean, it’s OK when a first-grader sends up little wordless notes. But every once in a while don’t you think he’d like a nice, deep, well thought-out conversation?

It’s healthy to ponder. Long, uncomfortable ponderings that have no destination. We humans like endings. We like to know that when we start something there will be a conclusion and we can tie a bow on it and set it aside and move on. The concept of eternity is just so weird in this world where things don’t last. But I think its time for me to outgrow that, to move down into the keypad with letters in it and use words instead of quick pictures.

I know God loves me. I feel it. Otherwise I wouldn’t send him those cute little pictures. But I can’t help thinking he craves adult interaction, because so many of us will not get past the cuteness of spiritual emojis. 

As I ponder what to pray today, my figurative text with God, I’m thinking he might be surprised by my actual use of words, even the misspelled ones, the ones that are maybe even too big for me. I press send and wait for the reply. He’ll send it, of this I am sure, in his own good time. And because he knows my love language, he might even seal it with a kiss.

10. A SHOT IN THE ARM

We went fully armed, my sisters and I. Libby drove her trusty white steed, with all of us aboard, over to the Legacy Events Center, where they normally held rodeos and the county fair. That was before the world shut down.

Earlier that week my friend and fellow Relief Society leader, Erin Ashby, had called and suggested we check with the senior women in our church congregation to see if they needed any help registering for the Covid 19 vaccine. It was an inspired suggestion, and we hopped right on it, calling about 50 women in our ward, a number of whom have disabilities or live alone. I had called the county health department numerous times, trying to work out a way to register and accommodate our eligible people receiving the vaccine. In the process I found that every single person I spoke with in the Davis County Health Department, all of them women, by chance, was not only capable and willing, they were also kind, compassionate, and determined to help us as we helped our neighbors. One worker, the person overseeing senior citizens in the health department, was especially informed and diligent. She suggested we come at the end of the day and meet her at the vaccination site. 

And so we did. Ann Marie had baked a dozen loaves of bread. I had mashed raspberries into freezer jam. We took what we had to share with the workers and volunteers. What we saw was beautiful.

Because Kristy was busy with work matters, we waited in the stands, just the four of us. We sat there, four perfectly flabby aging women, bundled in our winter coats, one seat apart from each other in the otherwise empty rodeo stands. We sat in echoey silence and watched. Down there, where horses typically twisted and turned and rodeo clowns rolled into plastic barrels, there was instead a meticulously choreographed dance of love. Serious love. The kind of love that fits all mankind, regardless of station or creed or any other divisive factor. From a silent, metal thread of automobiles that strung along the fence line all the way out across the soccer fields, back by the jail and the courthouse and the DMV, cars entered the massive building in complete cooperation. Led by volunteers, who didn’t even have to speak, just motion with their long red flashlights, each vehicle pulled into an area, two cars deep, where medical personnel waited. I’m guessing they were able to service about forty vehicles at a time. Masked drivers rolled down their windows, then passengers, and one by one sharp and silent needles delivered saving juices to the bodies of our sacred and honored generation. We sat there, moved to tears, inhaling the relative silence that hovered over all these good works. I recognized the sacred irony of it, all these people who had come together to save the bodies of a generation of souls, and it felt almost not human, but wholly spiritual and divine. 

Everyone waited patiently in line.

The order, fluidity, and cooperation were awesome.

No-one even had to get out of their car.

Eventually Kristy came to meet us. When she did, she told us they had six vaccines left over. Each vial has enough material to vaccinate a certain number of people, and once a vial has been opened it has to be used or lost. So, at the end of the day, they were willing to take any arm. Davis County has not wasted one single vaccine since this started in early January. As I mentioned, my sisters and I were fully armed. They were flabby, fleshy arms, but they were willing. I asked Kristy if she wanted me to call people in our church who I knew were at risk, and she said yes. So our neighbors and fellow worshipers, one with a heart condition and one with asthma, drove at lightening speed to get there and also received the vaccine. 

Nurse Tina arms my sister Ann Marie
with life-saving weaponry.

Moderna. That’s what it was called. It sounds like it could flow from the mouth of a priest. It went it smoothly and quietly and, except for Libby, who had an allergic reaction to it, we all took it fine. Even Lib, all swollen and filled with Epinephrine that they injected with her reaction, was grateful to have it.

We delivered Ann Marie’s fresh baked bread and raspberry freezer jam, thanked them, and drove home with our little cards of evidence. I imagined my blood accepting that fluid. I imagined tiny cells flowing like those various cars at the Legacy Center, the host blood cells looking over their shoulders as they swam through my veins, nodding a welcome to the newbies that would serve to protect me from a deadly virus. I gave my body permission to integrate everything in my bloodstream. 

I found out later that there is poly glycol in the vaccine. I am deathly allergic to poly glycol. I don’t know why I had literally no allergic reaction to this shot. I don’t want to think I deserve, any more than anyone else, some sort of divine intervention. But it kinda feels like it. That’s another story for another time.

Right now, I am celebrating with the rest of humankind, that scientists have worked around the clock to find a way to mitigate this disease, faster than ever has been done before. And I am grateful that my arm received it, one month ago, and then again, today.

God bless us, every one.

Crises are good for humankind. 
We unite when we face a common enemy.

9. APPLE PIE FOR BREAKFAST

Perfect blend of tart & sweet
in a Bennion pie plate

My buddy Kelly became a grandfather this week. It’s a big deal. That first time someone you have loved and nurtured has a baby, it’s a big deal, whether you are related by blood or by heart.

Because Kel and Shel were born into grandparenthood, and also because Kel has had other things that tug at the mind and the heart lately, I decided to push aside other stuff and pull out the apple peeler, two pounds of cold hard butter, a cup of freshly rendered lard and my non-GMO flour. MmmHmmm, yesterday became, among other things, pie day. Kelly loves apple pie. Good apple pie, to be exact. 

The thing is, when I make pie, I can’t just make one. I don’t think I have ever in my life made just one pie at a time. That explains the poundages of animal fats. (And that also explains why this doesn’t happen all too often at my house.) When I make pie crust I use 10 cups of flour. That will make roughly 10-12 pies. Usually half those pies end up being chicken pot pies, because my sisters love it (and so do I) and there is always someone who can use that kind of comfort food dinner in my neighborhood.

I also figured out that I can line my oven racks
with foil when cookie sheets wont fit two pies.
The best pies always bubble over their juices.

As a side note, can I just say that I am so grateful that I have been able to live this long? I am thankful that I did not die before I realized how cold and hard the ingredients need to be in pie crust. And really, if I had left this earthly realm even last year, I would not have figured out how grating my cold hard butter into my dry ingredients would more beautifully distribute that fat in my pastry. I love that I get to live long enough to learn new stuff, and even if I died tomorrow, I would be grateful for yesterday.

So we ended up with pie enough to make dinner AND dessert! AND I got to take a couple pies to Kelly, who was playing in the orchestra pit for the musical in the high school where he teaches. Two pies, because one would not really be enough to make it feel indulgent, and this was a time for celebratory indulgence.

Early on in my culinary history, I determined to include my family in my cooking endeavors. Most often, when I am cooking for other households, which is quite frankly most days around here, since three of my sisters live in my neighborhood, and I am ward Relief Society president, I commit to make enough to feed at least my good husband. So yes, I did keep a pie for us. Gave away 8 pies and kept one. And, oh, that one! The fats were perfectly incorporated in the flour for the crust, so it flaked beautifully and tasted just right. And whatever collection of apples I used, (I usually use half Granny Smith and half a blend of other slightly more sweet apples) it was spot on. 

So when I woke up this morning and went out to make my traditional morning protein shake, I glanced over at the counter and saw that pie patiently waiting. It called to me, like Delilah on the rooftop. It called, and I answered. And I feel no shame. None whatsoever. When you are fortunate enough to have fresh apple pie left over on your kitchen counter, it would be sacrilege to let it just sit there until it gets soggy and stale. No, take it. Take it while it is young and fresh and oh so delicious. Take it, even on an empty stomach, and savor it.

Apple pie for breakfast. It’s bound to be a good day.

It's usually a protein shake
for breakfast.
Not today!

8. DISORDER IN THE COURT

One day, decades from now, we will need someone’s words to remind us we survived a worldwide pandemic. In its eternal spin cycle, the earth will drain us off, one by one, and all that will remain will be stories people told, remembered “telephone game” fashion, or recorded somewhere in some digital newspaper or on an obsolete blog.

Here’s one:

In March 2020 the virus that had infested mankind, now given the name of Covid 19, had stormed the shores of the United States and shut down life as we knew it. Public facilities locked their doors. Only essential businesses were allowed to remain open; places like grocery stores, pharmacies and hospitals. There was a panicked rush on items like bottled water, sanitizer, bleach and toilet paper. If you could find any of these, there was a stern limit on how many one person could buy. People were asked to not purchase n95 masks so they would remain available for health care workers. We wore plastic gloves if we went out, and whatever kind of mask we could find. I pulled out my sewing machine and fashioned my own, but elastic was hard to find for the ear pieces, so I eventually resorted to using shoelaces. When we came home from the outside world, we removed our clothing, placed it in the washing machine, and showered with soap. There was so little we knew about how the virus spread, so we took every caution as we watched people dying alone, intubated and breathless in sterile hospital rooms. We had reason to fear.

When we did venture out to the grocery store we brought our items home and sterilized them with bleach or alcohol, or let them sit in the garage or on the porch for three days before using them. We were told that the virus would not survive after three days in the air.

Slight disorder in the court.

Government buildings, including courthouses, shut down in March. As my husband, Dave, was presiding judge in the Second District Court for the State of Utah, he spent quite frankly most of his waking hours that world. They closed the doors of the courtrooms, but the processes of the court needed to continue as much as possible. With a very steep learning curve, they figured out how to arrange arraignments, trials and hearings to be held virtually. We are fortunate to have a fairly quiet household, with our kids all grown and gone, so we set up our study with three computer monitors. Well, to be honest, we had to shuffle a few things to make it appear a little more orderly than it really is. We brought the old American flag I bought in Plymouth MA and set it against the bookcase for a backdrop. Dave removed his framed law school diploma and hung his black judicial robes on the hook instead. During each day, before I would run the blender or clang around in the kitchen, I would peek through the glass doors from the entry hall to see if he was in his robes. If he was, then it was quiet time out here.

Dave's robes hang on the wall in
our study, with his face mask.

On Wednesdays I held  Zoom (virtual) church Relief Society presidency meetings in the family room while Dave held court in the den. On Thursdays I taught guitar, trying to situate my instrument to show the sound hole and the neck in the same camera shot. I had to keep it to finger picking so it didn’t sound like Musak was playing in the courthouse. Such strange choreography was going on in our house! We had to fight disorder in the court.

One night, as I sat at the desk in our study, addressing labels for CD orders, I glanced up and noticed that Dave’s laptop was situated on top of a book, probably to set the camera at the proper level. Peeking under it, I noticed it was a large book from the bookshelf.

Dave's court computer sits on a
large copy of the New Testament.

And there you have it. The New Testament. A true and firm foundation, underlying all the craziness that became our lives in the springtime of the year 2020. So much was shifted, and frankly pretty unsteady. But the simple, solid truths, upon which all change rests, remained, thankfully, unchanged. 

7. TWO OLD ROCKERS

Every so often Dave gets it in his head to try and dig us out of my messes. Fortunately this doesn’t happen all too often, but when it does, things get a little shaky around here. You probably don’t want to be around, if you catch my drift. By the end of the day he has resigned himself to accepting the positives that come with a sentimental spouse, and I have resigned myself to letting go of one or maybe two things.

These days, because of the pandemic, you can’t just take a load of donations to Deseret Industries. You have to make a reservation, something like three weeks in advance. Dave made a reservation, unbeknownst to me, and the week before it he got the bug to dig out. UGH! 

Now, in my defense, I realize I have a problem with “stuff”. I like my stuff. And I like that, when someone needs a couple soldier costumes, or a spare guitar, or a rice cooker and 500 chopsticks, I happen to have it. For over a decade neighbors regularly borrowed that large set of cardboard waves that were once used in a Roadshow play and tossed in our neighbors garbage. I was the one who saw value in those waves. And I was the one who dug them out of the garbage. And yet everyone else used them for their Luau parties until one day someone did not return them. And then there is that heavy full sized Golden Plates replica I found in someone’s garbage in Bountiful. It’s like the Holy Spirit led me to them. I’m serious. We have used them for years. Literally years, in Primary. They are awesome! I finally donated them to the Library in church. I know where to find them.

So people generally understand my slogan STUFF IS US.

Only, occasionally Dave, after suppressing it 99% of the time, bursts that bubble and wants to go minimalist on me.

We are currently in the process of getting a new deck. Not only are we getting a new deck, but we are not building it ourselves. This is kind of new to us, and a little exciting. However, it has relieved Dave of the challenge of actual construction and he has moved into destruction mode. As in “destroying my collection of stuff!”

For instance, he started a pile in the garage: stuff from the covered portion of the deck that we never use. He moved his car out of the garage and started piling things in there, so he could load them in the trailer and run them to DI at his appointed time.

I happened to walk out in the garage and noticed all this furniture lined up.

“So, what’s with that?”

“I figured,” he said, ”that since we have never yet in the 26 years we have lived here, sat in those two rocking chairs, we should probably give them away.”

“Wait up, here Mister!” I replied, more than a little irritated.

“Just because we have not yet had the luxury of sitting in those rockers on our back deck and watching the sun set, it does not mean that there will not come a day when we sit in them on our NEW DECK!”

So, yeah, the chairs are still in our garage, squished against the wall, waiting for the new deck and pergola. They have roughly 26 years of dust on them. But they represent the hope for that day when we pause on a summers evening, right at the perfect hour, and rock like typical old people, watching the sun set over the lake.

I’ll take a picture if that ever happens.

6. THE BOURDON BELL

The Bourdon Bell being installed
 in the National Cathedral

The Bourdon Bell is the largest bell in a Carillon, known to the commoner as the bell tower of a church. In the Washington National Cathedral that particular bell weighs 5 ½  tons. That‘s 11000 pounds. Yesterday, as the sun set on the capitol of our nation, that bell in the National Cathedral rang repeatedly. 500 times, representing one thousand deaths with each reverberating ring.  I listened, over National Public Radio, through the speakers in my car. It was sobering. Repeat, repeat, repeat. One ring for every 1000 American deaths from Covid 19. I even took out my phone and clicked on my guitar tuning app so I could decipher the dominant pitch. It appeared to be Ab. 

In A History of Key Characteristics in the 18^thand Early 19^thCenturies, the Key of Ab major is the key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, and eternity lie in its radius.The Key of Ab minor represents the Grumbler, the heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty. 

The part of me that delights in symbolism felt this before I knew it. We all know it, on some level…that music creates moods. The interesting thing is, as I was driving along the interstate listening to that tolling bell, I glanced down to notice I was going just under the speed limit. This is against my nature. My instinct, I suppose, told me to slow down. (I should listen to tolling bells in the key of Ab more often.)

With each reverberating tone I Imagined faces scrolling before me, like the rapid fire shooting in television commercials. There was no way, in the time each note was played, that one thousand faces could pass in any recognizable fashion. So I imagined them passing by, each particular life lost to Covid 19, like the broken lines on the road keeping us in our lanes. And I thought, out of reverence, I should stop, pause by one single dotted line, and say a prayer for those who loved them. But instead I plodded ahead, on the edge of mournful. And the bell tolled on.

Last year, during the season of Lent when I force myself to think, and write, every single day, Covid 19 had just been named. We here in America watched it emerge, out of its Asian womb, and flutter down to our friends in Italy, and Spain, then eventually to our own shores. Each day, at the end of my writing, I posted the number of Covid 19 deaths in the world. When I started posting those numbers, on Dave’s birthday last year (March 30) the number of deaths worldwide was 37,830. Today that number is roughly 2,480,000, and rising by the minute.

What a year its been.

On the same website where I got that number, I also noticed that today in America, there are 502,000 deaths. The harmonic tones of those ringing bells go on and on, maybe going away from our earshot but never fully disappearing.

There is just so much to make us sad. So much.

Then again, in that same book, from a century ago, Key Characteristics, there is this. Right next to Ab, the key of the Bourdon bell,  one half tone up, is the key of A.

A major: This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one’s state of affairs; hope of seeing one’s beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.

Maybe it’s time to step up.

The National Cathedral
in Washington CD

5. HONEYMOON COTTAGE

Grandma & Grandpa Roy's
Cottage

Newly baptized in the waters of marriage, my skin still wrinkly and funny feeling, I sat next to Dave as he threw his old green Toyota Corolla into fifth gear. We rode west, then north, stopping only for gas until we parked, after dark, at the docks in St. Ignace, Michigan. A small motor boat bounced us across choppy waters to the docks of Mackinac Island. There, for a remarkable week, we warmed ourselves in the rays of the Michigan sun as it sifted its light through mist that rose from morning dew. White gauzy curtains, lining the windowed walls in the George Washington room of his grandparents cottage, whispered “good morning” against the rhythm of waves slapping themselves into the West Bluff. The only other sound was the clip clop of horse hooves from the delivery wagon making its way leisurely up the hill from the Grand Hotel. This divine orchestration, along with the streaming sunlight, softly lifted me from my dreams each morning. It was surreal, and divine, and everything a girl who loves Jane Austen and Louisa Alcott could have only imagined and never dared to think real. The cottage itself was nothing like the cottages I’d seen in fairy tales; little quaint houses with thatched roofs and tiny rooms. No, this was one of the grand ones, one of the renowned eight that stood in stately glory overlooking the Straits of Mackinac, just up the road from the glorious Grand Hotel. Nowadays, over four decades later, they call it the Honeymoon Cottage, which makes me feel proud and forsaken all at once. It was sacredly ours that one week in June, 1977. Now they sell little wooden replicas of it in the shops in town, and it’s no longer just ours.

But once upon that time, when it belonged to David’s Grandma and Grandpa Roy, it was given to us for our honeymoon. They packed their bags and left the island to spend the week at their other cottage in Tawas, so we could have the magic to ourselves. Grandma left the kitchen stocked, and the phone number of the grocer in town, with instructions to put whatever we needed on their bill. It was a gift indicative of the goodness of the people who bore and raised David’s mother.

Even with the filter of Michigan humidity and plentiful shade, I ended up with a dandy sunburn on my shoulders and the back of my legs. I should have known. I had spent my summer days, prior to the wedding, with every inch of flesh covered in fire resistant gear. My days, and nights, depending on my swinging shift, were spent on the hot, dark coke ovens of the Clairton Steel Works. The work was so exhausting, coupled with the preparations for a wedding, that I slept the rest of the time. My snow white skin was not ready for so much sun.

Now, so many wrinkles later, I can muster the sting on my skin, hot and blistered. I can hear the waves, and see the floating shadow of curtains in the breeze. And smell the green, and the blue, mixed with the new scent of aftershave on the pillow beside me. I know it is far away now, those days when so much was new, but I swear… I swear… it was just barely on the other side of last night’s dream.   

The Grand Hotel

4. ALL THE COLORS IN WHITE

"Where is the gray?"

The woman seated behind me asked, without raising her hand.

“I need there to be gray. I’m losing my children in the black and white.”

I don’t even recall the specific topic of discussion, though I do know it was religious.

We sat there, a collection of diverse artists, tied in one knotted weekend by a baptismal thread, discussing how it works and doesn’t work to be an artist with faith; more specifically, Latter-day faith.

I felt the heat of her breath as it floated from behind and settled on my shoulders. There was a mournful tone of desperation mixed with resignation in her voice. I eased my head to the side, trying not to be obvious, and watched her in my periphery. Her hair was dark, and graying at the roots, with wistful silver whisps framing her face. 

This was years ago. I can’t recall what answers might have come of it, though I know that there was peace in the end, so at least there’s that. But the question keeps bouncing around in my head, even now. The irony was not lost to me, such a black and white question in a room where color was so prominent, with movers of paint and weavers of words and makers of songs and tellers of colorful stories all gathered. The question rises up like gas from a newly fed baby, bubbling out of my brain at unexpected places in unlikely times.

Where is the gray?When I was a teen my sister and I travelled to the Carnegie Museum of Art every Saturday to learn how to make art from Mr. Fitzpatrick. He taught us more than I remember. I hope one day it will come back to me. But one thing I do recall is how to gray down the color in my paint. “Take the complement, and add just a bit.”  By that, he meant that by applying a touch of the opposite to my color of choice, I could tone down the hue and the intensity. 

The complementary color is found on the classic color wheel. Complementary tones make for beautiful, loud statements in painting. The complement of red is green. Green beside red makes it pop. (Think Christmas.) But if you want to gray down the green, don’t just add black, add some red. Try it next time you’re playing with paint, or dying Easter eggs. 

Truth is, there’s plenty of gray in the church. It comes not from the black and the white, but from the mix of colors. Plenty of chartreuse and cayenne red and flamboyant yellow, we just forgot to see it somewhere along the road. We thought, mistakenly, that color might be a bit too irreverent. So we tried to tone it down. We put on our dark navy dress jackets and our black dresses with just a pop of turquoise in the necklace so as to not overwhelm the spirit.

But we were mistaken. There is plenty of room in the chapel for color: bright or muted or mixed, and lots of grays. 

"Jesus Said Love Everyone"
by my friend, J Kirk Richards
(as inclusive a soul as ever there was)

Once or twice, when I was very young and my father was still part of our family portrait, Dad came to church with us. I remember the feeling of my hand reaching up to his as we walked through the glass doors of that teeny church in Pittsburgh. It’s as close to pride as I felt at that young age. I was just so pleased to have a dad, to fill a pew with the traditional recipe. I never noticed the scent of stale cigarette smoke that enveloped him, like dust around Pig Pen in the Peanuts cartoons. I suppose I was just used to it. Thinking back on it, I wonder what the glances of the “faithful” may have done to him. All I could see was how handsome he was, and that he was ours, and for one sweet Sunday it wasn’t just poor Afton and her brood of kids. 

And now I’m getting old. And gray. I feel the change. I feel the light peeking through our cracked surfaces, and it is warm and welcome. Light, with all its glorious colors!

I hear you, my colorful friends whose stifled screams have finally burst out. I feel your frustration and disappointment, your anger and your angst and resentment, as if someone tricked you into being good. And I hear, too, the whimper of those who weep at the loss of something they once thought they loved. I take my tiny bottle of pray sanitizer and wash away the mud we created when me forgot to set the colors beside each other rather than smearing them up in one dark glob. I remain, even with my own doubts and question, armed and willing to clean the chapel.

Here’s a thing: Before Mr. Fitzpatrick taught me about color, I thought black was the presence of all color, the way we make mud of mixing paint, the way I made the bark of a tree in second grade art, when there was no brown crayon available. Smash all that pigment together. 

And likewise, I once thought white was the absence of color, like the blank piece of canvas stretched tight across a frame. 

Not so. 

Black, true black, is the absence of color and the absence of light.

And white? It’s the presence of all color. All color, with the proper amount of light. All color, with all light. That’s white.

That’s what shines in the dark night sky when I’m driving home on I-15. Brilliant white, filled with light, piercing the night sky on the hillside of Bountiful. I’ve visited there, even with my questions and doubts, worthy  - with my questions and doubts, wearing nothing but white, and the colorful light my first Father gave me.

All the colors in white.

There is room for all of it in the seat beside me. And there is room beside you as well.

The Relief Society pin I wear in church.

3. LOST

Lost

 

The dentist pulled my molar out -

He took it bit by bit.

Half of it had broken so

He yanked the rest of it.

 

I could not shake the feeling

That I lost a part of me,

And I can’t keep my tongue away

From where it used to be.

 

That night I got a visitor

Who wore a toothless grin

Our Beth had lost two teeth

And there were new ones coming in

 

Wow, I said, it’s magic

When a thing like this occurs

Her Gummy lost a tooth 

The very day that she lost hers

 

Now take good care, I told her

So your grown-up teeth don’t crack

There comes a point, when what you lose

Is never coming back.

 

She looked at me, and smiled

Her toothless smile, and then she said 

“The tooth fairy is coming 

To leave treasure on my bed!”

 

For me, there is no fairy, 

I don’t even have my tooth

My molar’s gone, and won’t return

And neither will my youth.

2. The Prayer-Before-The-Prayer of a Relief Society President

 

Dear God,

When that sparrow fell,

you know the one,

why didn’t I notice? 

I’d like to think I was

simmering soup for the neighbor in need,

or laboring in the field of unfolded laundry,

or, at the very least,

distracted by fluttering light on autumn leaves.

But you,

and I,

know 

that it is more likely

I was pouring myself a Coke in the garage. 

 

You give me now, this little flock

and ask me to watch.

They are so busy,

and so small,

and so 

many,

and dear.

And here I am,

unable to see them all at once.

My arms flail trying to find them.

 

I take these flapping arms

and draw them in,

tuck them tightly under my breast

and pray the prayer-before-the-prayer,

the one where I beg to know

the words I should say

 

My thoughts stray 

and I tug them back,

pondering here in the morning light

how to word my requests.

Is it healing she needs - or peace in the journey?

Shall I pray for courage 

to reach deep in the woods 

and pull her out,

or whisper hope that she finds her own way?

Wouldn’t it just be easier to say, 

you know, something like…

oh, I don’t know…

something like,

“You’ve got this God!”

 

I feel like that girl I was

in eighth grade pre-algebra,

trying to understand why in the world

I should have to figure out an equation

I would likely never use again.

My brain hurt from the trying,

and my heart would not own it.

 

But this,

this flock of sparrows -

my heart knows them,

and loves them.

Give me, please

the words to say,

those words to pray,

so you,

and I

can join our arms

in a circle 

true enough 

to hold them in.