This is the photo I just uploaded on Nat Geo's web site. Cool place. Even cooler picture.A very wonderful person named Ellen found me through Facebook and regaled me with compliments and a sweet review of our shared past. It was as if we never left for BYU or got married--or that I was pregnant or in Iowa. I just successfully posted one of my photographs on the National Geo web site. I have been taking a photography class--but they make you start with a black and white SLR camera. On the bright side, I have learned to develop my own film here at home. Brent has suggested that we get the materials for me to go from negative to photograph. I don't know that I want to invest in the stuff I'd need. One of the fellows in the class has a father who already has a dark room for printing up photos. Maybe a bunch of us could get together and all put in for the chemicals. Anyway.
Back to Ellen--as she has done, I have also home schooled. I began with Nathan after his break down in 5th grade. Extreme bullying by a classmate and even more egregious idiocy by his teacher and the school administration pushed him over the edge. His efforts to forgive others and defend others and not to get in trouble for disrupting class just quashed his spirit and his heart. It took him years to heal. He will always bear the scars of that cruelty.
He is taking classes at the local college--preparing to graduate in Engineering. Now he's in chemistry classes that will help him decide what field of Engineering he'll pursue. He has Asperger's and panic attacks and . . . and so he won't be able to go on a full time mission. The Bishop and Stake President are working with the Stake Genealogy program to see if he can serve on a full-time-part-time basis; called to be a full-time missionary for at least 6 months.
I am quietly pleased with the parallel lines that both Ellen and my lives have taken. I cannot help but see our children who are bright and kind and observant and careful of those around them. The music that is an integral part of our children's lives came from our own hearts. In fact, I will be using the "Dear Friends, Dear Friends" song, that Ellen taught me, in a workshop for the Stake Primary Stake Training meeting next month. We're talking about using music in the classroom. Neither the President or the First Counselor have much affinity for music, which is not to say that they do not both sing with much energy! They are dear women with family challenges beyond my keen. I love them and love to be involved with them in providing a resource for the Primary leadership in the Wards and Branches in our Stake. I still use at least 2 toothbrushes. I have also begun to string them throughout the house and leave them in all of the cars. If I am running late, I just put a bit of toothpaste on a toothbrush (a new one if I can't find one of my existing ones) and rush out to the car with keys and bag in one hand, books and notes in the other, and toothbrush firmly held between my jaws. I know that it looks ludicrous--but there have been times when I sucked my thumb as I drove through town doing my errands (bad mental/emotional days)--so a toothbrush doesn't turn either Nathan or Brent's heads. I did feel kind of silly a few months ago when I found myself picking out bread in the bakery--while unconsciously, yet energetically, chewing on the head of a toothbrush. Just as wearing pink bunny slippers beyond the driveway is a vividly ridiculous act; chewing on a toothbrush in the bakery department of the grocery store is a thoughtlessly gross thing to be doing around people who are buying rolls and French bread and bagels--all comestibles out in the open exactly where I have been walking about and fiercely masticating a toothbrush between my teeth. That was an extremely long sentence--which means that I am up past my composition bedtime. I love you. People who are meeting me for the first time ask what I do--I answer that the last time I was paid for my time, I taught College composition and literature classes. Since then, I have jumped horses, roofed houses, watched three children grow from infants into incredibly useful adults, had my right shoulder repaired three times and my lower left thumb joint replaced twice. I propagate plants and swim and play with my three dwarf rabbits . . . and try to look good for Brent when he comes home in the evenings. Right now I am also taking an advanced Algebra class and a photography class. What I need to tell them is that I am someone who loves you.
That would say it all.
Love always, Carolyn
