Dream Job

I have discovered today, after just a day and a half with my sister Susan, something that I could never have imagined.

My whole life has been dominated by the desire to be with horses: riding then, jumping them, showing them, brushing them, and loving them. My sister Susan has the job that—were I given the choice—I thought I would always want. She manages a horse stable and trains horses and teaches riding. After only thirty six-hours with her, though, I find that (were I given the opportunity to join Susan in her work) I would quickly become worn out and dissatisfied at the immense volume of effort, planning, self-discipline and sheer willpower that it takes to do what she does. In other words: I would hate it.

In living my life as I have, I have left myself with only the ability to pretend at doing what I love. I hear again my mom’s old complaint that I am good at lots of things, but master of none. What I really want is the life that I have—but with time and a horse to ride every day. I have become accustomed to being cosseted by Brent and protected by him from the grit needed to face the public and a real job.

At one time I think I could have worked as most people must, keeping to a time schedule, doing tasks that others have set for me to do, and being who my job needs me to be. I was ruthless in my approach to the “business” of running a family and keeping finances in order. Brent observed that in getting things done, I was unfeeling and aggressive. After almost twenty years of fighting the school system to get what my children needed, stomping down the feelings of others to get through the red tape, crashing through “established channels” to identify the person who could actually make the decision I wanted made, bullying the health insurance department manager into covering the surgery-meds-office visits-procedure-psychologist costs—after almost twenty years of this I was very good at it. But Brent asked me to please stop. I was becoming this “efficient” and “single minded” entity ALL the time—not just when on the phone or in the meetings. He wanted me to become me again. It was not worth the money I saved or the corporate compliance I achieved—my way of getting things done on schedule and under budget was turning me into something and someone that I was not.

So I stopped.

I do not think that I could go back to that “self” and ever come out again. I do not have the miraculous talent that Susan has to take care of business during business hours—and to take care of Susan during Susan hours. I have lost the ability to dichotomize. Brent can be at work and be an attorney and a manager—and still come home and be my husband and sweetheart. Both he and Susan can “leave the office at the office.” I have (if I ever really did have it) lost that ability. Everything I am is connected to everything that I do and think and feel and say and hear and ponder and read and desire. And at this moment of self-discovery, I don’t feel sad at the loss—only a great admiration for both my sister and my husband.

I am still smarting at Rob’s question of what I have that is worth putting on a blog. The only answer that I have, the only response that is genuine, is the contentment that consumes me as I put into physical form an approximation of the complex interchange necessary for my mind and heart to make sense of what my eyes and ears take in. I blog because I love to write . . .

. . . and because someday I hope I might make a difference with the words that I craft and send out into the wide expanse of the internet.

The Good Old Days

Vicories for today: first bloom from a cutting of my favorite flowering bush that died last winter AND a blossom from one of the potted camilla trees I started from cuttings two years ago.

It is strange to see myself now as I think others must see me. I see someone who ends to hunch over when I sit at the computer and the grey in my hair is artificially covered. I don't like loud music and I drive slower than most when it is raining really hard. I don't like being around noisy children and when I want to be alone, I have no problem letting others know.

I remember being cheerful and smart and flexible and energetic and thin--with smooth skin.

Of course, like "the good old days" that never were good or all that old, just as soon as I start to write about how I used to be, I remember dozens of things that have also been true of me during my life: pregnant and swollen and grumpy, stick thin without the ability to digest food and also in such a depressed state that I stayed in my bedroom (a huge place with 20-foot tall ceilings, a library, our computer desks and TV) for three months, just a year or so ago I was 30 pounds heavier than I am today, sick to my stomach with the flu, flat in bed with my right leg above my head so that a clot wouldn't block the blood to my foot or to my leg, sleeping by sitting sraight in an old recliner for two months after the first reconstruction of my right shoulder, left hand immobilized in a cast, in labour with Megan, in labour with Lauren, in labour with Nathan, in the hospital on continuous IV antibiotics to take down the infection in the left side of my face, walking across Ricks College campus in -20 degree weather, singing aloud as I walked home from a flubbed audition for a performing group that was visiting BYU, waiting in the airport after having missed two flights, driving--lost and frantic--around the back approach to the airport just an hour after dad had called and told me that mom was dieing, sitting in the back corner of the clothes closet sucking my thumb, hearing my children call Brent and telling him that I was curled up on the floor of the kitchen and couldn't stop crying, laying in the hospital in Ohio with food poisoning and infection raging in the skin of my right arm and side and face, missing Brent so badly when he has had to be away for work or church or with his family somewhere else, sitting on the floor by Megan's crib and patting her back while we both cried because we both had the stomach flu and I was too sick to pick her up, having to work on Thanksgiving Day at a grocery store in Texas while I was pregnant with Nathan because we needed the money, walking to teach an evening class at Drake and eating a peanutbutter sandwich and meeting one of my students who had just come from a really nice restaurant, listening to Meg call a classmate and asking if she could come to play and hearing her say "OK, well how about tomorrow? OK, well how about Saturday. OK. OK, good bye then," hanging up the phone from talking to Lauren and knowing that she was sick with mono and that she didn't want me to come and take care of her or bring her home to get better, sitting in a planning meeting with the administrators and counselors and teachers at Nathan's school and then beginning to yell very determinedly that THEY didn't know what my son needed THEY had not even known him or spoken to him more than an hour THEY were to teach math and history and english and NOT independence to a child who had been promised protection and help from school administrators and counselors and teachers and then abandoned after leaving the counselor a note on her door that said: I am having a VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY BAD DAY please come get me to talk.

No, on second thought, I am healthy, my children are all safe and well, Brent will be home soon from work, I get to go and spend a week with both of my sisters next week--there is money in savings, Brent has a good job, I am thin and tan and stable on my meds.

The internet is up, the thunderstorm that is over now has watered the yard, the lights are still on, all three cars work well, Nate has already taken the garbage out for collection tomorrow morning.

I have wrinkles underneath my eyes and on the back of my hands.

There has been no time better than right now. Today is the "good old days."

While I was in Utah last week, my daughter Lauren and I went to see the play area that my dad had built for the children in his neighborhood. We played on the teeter-totter. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to be weightless in the air.

Last week I was in Utah and got to visit with my oldest brother, Robbie, (43 this year) whom I hadn't seen in years and years. It was wonderful to catch up with him--new job, new home, new stuff his kids are doing. The conversation somehow began to center on blogs and blogging. When I told him that I had not only one, but two blog sites, he was so surprised that he blurted out "What do you have to blog about?" I couldn't believe how defensive I felt when he asked me--mainly because I didn't really have an answer to give him.
Since then, that question has had me thinking over and over about what I have written. My only scholarly publication was 20 years ago—about the need to have students practice writing skills: an example of a classroom lesson that I had used to allow the students to apply the principles of subjective assertions supported by objective statements. Another article was about my change in priorities from wife and student to mother. Even the book that I’m writing with Megan is just a simple story about family. I have written thousands and thousands of pages of personal essays—journal-type observations organized around distinct ideas or themes. They aren't based on scholarly research, but are peppered heavily with ideas and observations from other authors whose books I read. Usually I don’t even start an essay with an original thought of my own: I write out the reaction that I have had in response to something I’ve heard or something that I’ve read or something that Brent and I have talked about. I am not a Chaucer or DaVinci or Copernicus or Aristotle or Goethe or Einstein. I sing the songs that others write. I read the words that others have written. I write about things that I have heard or experienced in other places. I remember that Mom used to complain to me that I could do lots of things well, but I had mastered none of them.
I look at Brent’s resume and there is nothing I’ve done that can compete with that. I quit before I finished my PhD. I missed 6 weeks of my mission recuperating from operations. I have not even worked enough hours in my 50 years to qualify for social security when I turn 65. I suppose that I demonstrate a fair amount of chutzpa in leaking my thoughts onto paper or into my computer and offering them for others to read. I am self-centered enough to believe that what I think and how I present it is significant and interesting enough that others will find it worth reading.
I have not accomplished much in my 50 years that would be worth putting on a resume. I have created teaching methodologies specific to the ways that Megan and Nathan learn so that they have been able to comprehend math, composition, and science. I have learned through my own experience how to propagate (the few plants that flourish in my yard) from cuttings. I was once called a Master Teacher. I was voted Teacher of the Year at a junior college where I taught. When I was 19, a fellow ballet student told me that she loved to watch me dance. My children tell me that I have done the right things at the right times to allow them to grow up and do the things that they want to do and become the people that they wanted to be. I can play the piano and speak Spanish and sing and swim and ride horses and sew and cross-stitch and take pictures and raise rabbits and cook what needs to be cooked. Mom was right. I do lots of things—but I have not mastered any of them.
So what do I have to write about?
I guess I just write about the fact that I am still learning and doing and discovering things. I’m not an accomplished writer, but sharing what I think, try, hope, read, and believe is satisfying somehow. I suppose that I put stuff on my blogs for the purely selfish reason that I like doing it.

Ironing Board Cheese Sandwiches

In some cultures a man is defined by his relationship to cheese.
Sam, "Benny and Joon"

Mashing potatoes with a tennis racquet.

Ironing board toasted cheese sandwiches.

A cat who wants to be cuddled but can't bear to be touched and won't let my hand go.

I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more to be the man who walks 5000 miles to fall down at your door. "5oo Miles," Paul Loco

Michael Jackson died of a heart attack today. He was 50. I am 50.

Nathan has trained Peter rabbit to hop up onto his lap and get a treat, then hop back down to the floor and back up again for another treat.

I think that Pater is very satisfied with Nathan's progress.

I know that I am.

It is good to be alive and to be me.

The poem is one that I originally wrote while my mom was still alive. It was for a Mother's Day talk on 17 May 1987. I was 28. Only two of my three children born: Meg, 3 1/2 and Lauren, 2, and Brent and I had been married almost 5 years.
I revised and read this version of the poem in Church for Mother's Day. My children are all grown: Meg will be 26 in October, BA in Fine Arts, married with a baby of her own; La is 24, BA in English, married and has her own on-line craft store; Nathan is 20, in college with an unofficial major in Engineering. Brent is a managing attorney for Florida Power and Light, keeping the house in one piece, our cars running smoothly and me happy.
I am 50 this year. I won't list the things that my body has been able to experience--but I am now in one piece, back to my normal weight, and free of pain. I could never have imagined being able to feel this content and excited about living my life.
And I know that my parents had a great deal to do with making that possible. Happy Mother's Day and Happy Father's Day. It is a good time to have a mother and father who love me and to be a mother who loves her children.
When my phone turns on, there is a phrase that appears on the screen: And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness. (2 Nephi 5:27)

It Doesn't Matter

It Doesn't Matter

Canto I 1987

She nurtured me through cradle time, I babbled -- she replied.
She held me in her arms and rocked to soothe me when I cried.
She fed and bathed and dressed me warm; she watched me stand in fall;
And as I learned to say her name, she came when I would call.

It doesn't matter who she was -- queen or president.
What matters is my memory of the mother Heaven sent.

He held me nights when I was sick, and blessed me to be strong.
As audience, he listened to my simple, piano songs.
He led us in a family prayer both morning and at night --
And when I made mistakes, he helped me see with keener sight.

It doesn't matter who he is -- king or president.
What matters is my memory of the father Heaven sent.

She drove me to activities. She taught in Primary.
She helped me to love books and took me to the library.
She sewed my costumes for the plays she came to sit and watch.
She gave me time when she had none -- I'll never know how much.

It doesn't matter who she was -- queen or president.
What matters is my memory of the mother Heaven sent.

From carpet tubes, he made lights for a dance he chaperoned.
I learned to shun the practices that he did not condone.
He wrote me letters when I left to try a college life.
He sent me love and courage and he helped me love the light.

It doesn't matter who he is -- king or president.
What matters is my memory of the father Heaven sent.

She came to see me graduate. She sewed my wedding dress.
When Meg was born, she came to love and clean a baby's mess.
She sang with me. We played our flutes. We talked of future fears.
She brought me gifts and tender care and comforts, still, my tears.

It doesn't matter who she was -- queen or president.
What matters is my memory of the mother Heaven sent.

He offers timely, sound advice and gives a father's blessing.
And he listens calmly, when his patience I am testing.
He brags about my children and about the things I do.
He loves me lots, I hope he knows how much I love him, too.

It doesn't matter who he is -- king or president.
What matters is my memory of the father Heaven sent.

Canto II 2009

Today I think about the children Heaven sent to me --
How we read books and cared for pets and climbed up tall, tall trees.
Do they recall the walks, we took? And scriptures that we read?
And how each night I heard them talk as they were tucked in bed?

It doesn't matter who I am, queen or president.
What matters are the memories of the children Heaven sent.

When they stand before the Lord, and all their lives review --
Will I, as mother, be revealed as one who loved them true?
Will they be glad they knew me? Did they want to be near me --
Because within my eyes they saw their own divinity?

It doesn't matter who I am, queen or president.
What matters are the memories of the children Heaven sent.