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of Shores and Ships

18 Oct
Twice in my adult life, I have received a message on my phone from my Mother  that went like this, “Everybody is okay, but call me as soon as you can.”
Once I received that same message from my sister.
The first time, my family’s house had burnt to the ground, but my parents and all 8 of my siblings still at home had gotten out safely.  The next time, my sister’s house had burnt to the ground, but she and her 4 month old baby and my 3 little girls whom she had been watching that day all got out safely.  The last time I got that message, a tornado had taken the second story off my parent’s house, but the 9 people who were in it at the time were all okay.
That message on my phone that begins with “everybody is okay” is one that sends my heart racing with fear because I know something scary has happened.
But a message far worse would be a message missing that reassurance, “everybody is okay.”
A sweet relative of mine lost her mother to ovarian cancer 2 weeks ago.  She wrote a very touching blog about her mother and included this thought:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says,“There, she’s gone.”
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living weight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her; and just at that moment when someone at my side sighs: “There, she’s gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices to take the glad shout,“There, she’s coming!”
 I am sad for my sweet relative who has lost her closest friend and glad for her mother, who is gone to peace & rest, and many other feelings all at once which I cannot put into words that satisfy me.  Each day that we have is a miracle and a gift.

It’s a Reunion! Day 1

11 Jul

When my family gets together, you know there will be lots of kids.  Last night was the opening meal of my mom’s family reunion.  There were 37 adults,  48 children, and 1 lion (see above.)

I can tell you, it seemed like alot more children than that.  Especially 2- year-olds.  But then, it doesn’t take very many 2-year-olds to seem like alot–especially if half of them are crying!

 This is Owie Boy and he is a sweetie peach.
Sam is getting ready to jump on a fast moving merry-go-round.  No one else was brave/foolish enough to try it.

Hi, Birdie
Hank didn’t stop moving until he saw I had a camera.

Gwenny letting some healthy blood get to her brain.

Heath

Annie and Eva

Porter Frank the Tank!

Wyatt says, “My running! My climing! My Whinging!”

Maren is ready to be catapulted to the moon.

Renata and Julia.

   There’s more to come, it’s only Day 1!

Fathers’ Day

23 Jun
My daddy, he was somewhere between God and John Wayne.  ~Hank Williams, Jr.
Legend tells of a legendary warrior...

 ...whose skills were the stuff of legend.
 
That legendary guy is my dad.  I’ve blogged about him before once or twice.
He is 6 foot 6 and 3/4 inches  tall (that’s exactly 2 meters for those of you who understand metric) 
His hand can wrap around a basket ball the way a normal person’s hand wraps around a grapefruit.
He wears a size 14 quadruple wide shoe (same as Abraham Lincoln).
My brothers used to beg him to flex his muscles–his biceps were like large cantalopes.
He doesn’t even  excercise.

My Dad could eat a loaf of homemade bread and drink a gallon of milk in one sitting and not feel too full.
 
 My Dad was taller, bigger, stronger, and smarter than all the other kids’ dads.  

He could drive 19 hours without stopping across the country to take us out to the family reunion and recite all fifty states (in alphabetical order, size order, or population order, take your pick) with their capitals.  

He could quote poetry he had memorized for over 2 hours without stopping.

He had over 200 scriptures memorized and could find you anything you wanted in the scriptures or tell you which apostle said it and what year he said it in.  
Sometimes I felt sorry for those other kids whose dads weren’t actually the tallest, the smartest, and the strongest.
My dad used to say (when us kids were being crazy and wild or if we left his tools out laying around)
“Whaddo you think this is, a circus?”
Yes.  It was a circus.

 I’ve included this final quote because I think it’s funny and I’m pretty sure my dad will think it’s funny, too.

 ~Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper a baby, 1968 

Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat.  Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher’s mound.  Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together.  Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again. 

Trophy Days

8 Jun

Twelve years ago, I was a brand new mother, sitting at church, with my new baby boy in my arms. Somebody said gloomily from the pulpit, “They don’t give out trophies for being a mother.”

I think the gist of what they meant was that being a mom and raising children right is important, even though the world doesn’t recognize it as a prestigious job/occupation/career.

But as I sat there, I thought to myself, Maybe they don’t hand out trophies, but there will be some “trophy days.” The day my child turns 8 and is baptized a member of the church, that will be a trophy day. The day my son turns 12 and helps to pass the sacrament for the first time, that will be a trophy day.

I don’t mean trophy in the sense that everyone would recognize my “achievements” and heap praise on me as the winner of something. But trophy in the sense that the happiness I would feel on those days would be like the happiness you feel when you finish a race and you feel that all that hard work and sweat and days of running in the rain and running in the heat were all worth it. Or when you receive highest marks on your piano solo at Music Festival and all those hours of practicing until your back ached and your fingers were too stiff to move are *nearly* forgotten/forgiven in the glow of those highest marks.

As I decided what days my trophy days would be, I admitted to myself that they would be few and far between–an allowance for that person who thought there weren’t any trophies at all.

Now 12 years have passed. I am mother of not 1 but 6 children. I have a new baby. My little baby that was is now a 12 year old boy and will be ordained a deacon on Sunday. In another month a daughter will turn 8 and be baptized.

Those trophy days aren’t few and far between at all.

And there have been many more trophy days that I never dreamed of twelve years ago.

Days of finding little scraps of wrinkled paper love notes on my pillow.

Days when a child comes home from school with a poem they had to write about the color brown, and they wrote about brown hair waving in the wind.

Days when I ask the kids to clean up and they actually do it without complaining or fighting.

Days when I’m sick and my 3 year old curls up in the bed next to me and pats my neck with her little hand because that is the best kind of comfort she knows how to give.

Days like last Sunday, when the DH was gone to guard drill and I had an early morning church meeting. I set breakfast on the table, woke up the children, and asked them to eat and dress themselves for church, promising to be back in one hour. When I returned home, they were dressed with shoes on and even hair brushed, ready to get in the van. (p.s. I did take the baby with me)

On Sunday, when I shared these thoughts, I said at the end, “Every day is a trophy day when you are a mom.” That was just nerves, realizing I’d said what I’d thought and didn’t know quite how to end and get away from the microphone… and maybe a bit of the emotion of the moment making me feel like that if I were a perfect human, I would find those trophy moments every day. I know that every day isn’t a trophy day.
But they are there, generously sprinkled in, and they are what remind me to be happy when the struggle of life has made me forget.

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry

4 May

This person took care of my 6 children while I went to the hospital fearing appendicitis.

When I came home without appendicitis, just a really bad kidney infection, she stayed and took care of me.

If everyone had a helper like Cegan, everyone would be overjoyed to be sick.

Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City

30 Apr

A little over a week ago, we took a family trip up to Kansas City, MO, to see our new temple. It was a lovely trip, the temple was beautiful, and the spirit we felt was wonderful.

I delayed posting about our trip because I didn’t know what to say about how special it felt to be together with our children in that beautiful, beautiful House of God. I still don’t know what to say. The only words which come to mind are these:

And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, … and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time …..(3Nephi 17:17)

Only, if know that if you have been there, you do know that joy.

Golly! I love my family so much.

Family Home Evening

28 Feb

This is how I pictured it going:

It went more like this:

and this:

Sorry to our guest. I hope you still want to have kids someday.

DAD

28 Feb

Mothering aint for the faint of heart

3 Feb

Something I haven’t told you about yet because it is one of those things that feels so shameful–even though my brain knows it can happen to anybody. We had our first go-round with head lice this past month.

The day after I got home from the hospital with Baby Dumpling, I discovered lice in one of the kiddie pie’s hair. I had one moment of sinking feeling and then started issuing orders like a drill sergeant. The Man of the House was sent to purchase the highly expensive shampoo. The kiddies were sent to strip beds of bedding and the mudroom of all hats, coats, gloves, scarves, etc. I checked more heads. Even though I only found lice on one girl, I treated everyone including me. (we’ll chalk that up to the freaking out, first-timer.)

While I treated heads, the Man of the House vacuumed the floors, the couches, and the now bare mattresses. Then I sent him out to vacuum the car. I considered how lucky I was to not be having to do all that vacuuming a mere 4 days after giving birth. I sent Blueberry Pie to bag up all the stuffed animals and dress-ups. These were banished to the balcony for 4 weeks. (it was just too much laundry to face.) I hoped freezing temperatures at night would help kill anything–though according to my research, just isolating them for 4 weeks ensured there would be nothing living.

Here is what I learned in case you are unlucky enough to have to deal with these nasty pests yourself:

1. You’ll be afraid that you can’t tell nits from dandruff-but it’s easy, once you’ve seen one nit.

2. Dandruff shampoo is handy in reducing “clutter” so your eyes don’t get distracted from the real hunt.

3. You really have to saturate their heads with that %$@# expensive shampoo, or you are wasting your time.

3.5 Coconut oil doesn’t kill lice, and you’ll have to use Dawn Dish soap to wash it out of the hair. But combing oil through hair catches more lice than combing water through hair does.

4. The only way to get rid of the lice is to comb through your child’s hair every day for a week, searching for any eggs (nits) you may have missed. I would have her wash her hair. I combed through it 1″ sections at a time. Then I used a hair dryer to dry it. The heat from the hair dryer is good, plus, the air blows the hair around in random ways that helped me find nits I had missed during combing.

When I didn’t find any new eggs, four days in a row, I felt confident we had rid our home of vermin.

Two weeks later, a new infestation occurred.

More laundry

More vacuuming

More expensive shampoo. (Next time, I’m using kerosene, like my mom did on me years ago.)

It’s not so much the housework that I mind, it’s the feeling like everything is contaminated that bothers me.

And the way I’m suspicious of people who absentmindedly scratch their heads.

Baby Dumpling

15 Dec

It’s love at first sight.

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