what we still had to learn about opposable thumbs

Dear man in the fancy suit who walked in to the orthodontist's waiting room and sat down across from me,

You look very important in that fancy suit.  And very busy.  Your half-crazed eyes are fixed on that little phone in your hand, thumbs flying, and you're giggling like a pre-adolesent who just peeked at his first Playboy magazine.

You look a little demented, but'ya still got it. You're still charming.

Excuse me for bothering you, but did you notice that person sitting next to you?  No younger than eight, no older than ten?  Big soulful eyes and long brown ponytails, head turned away, arms wrapped around her long, thin legs, knees tucked under her chin, rocking back and forth?

Could that be your daughter?

Some people call that the fetal position.  Do you think she might need something?

(Oh wait, he's going to speak to the young girl....)

Now we all know that your pressing matter has a name...."Georgia."

This information doesn't seem to be quite as fascinating...or comforting to the young girl as it is to you,  but you insist upon elbowing her, because Georgia sent a picture, and your daughter must be eager to see it.

That's why she's pretending  to smile.  Head's turning away again.  Rocking again.  Now her thumb is moving too, right up to her mouth. But you don't seem to notice that.

She is young to be at the orthodontist-- and old to be sucking her thumb.

A little extra attention won't straighten teeth, or change a habit, but it would seem to be in order here.

Maybe you'll make the connection when the office woman comes to talk about the payments.  Maybe you will turn to her and hold her in your arms, and give her what she needs, or maybe you'll go back to your phone, and put braces on her teeth.

(Wait he's making physical contact...)

You lean your head against hers. Cheesy smile at the phone.

"Selfie at the orthodontist!"

(I can't believe that just happened.)

Georgia must have been impressed because she replies with a video.

Now you explain that she has a British accent....

because she is from England...

Oh. That's why.

We are all relieved.

Do you ever worry, man in the suit, where will she be when she finally gets your attention? What will your daughter need to do to fascinate you?

You let one hand leave the phone so you can reach up to the top of your head, and rub that yes-it-is- thinning spot, a gesture that is often endearing, but not really today.  Because you seem worried about losing something.

But other things, not so much.

commencement, consolement, chiropractory

In March, I started filling in for a massage therapist at a chiropractor's office in a little old house on Main Street. It was exactly the work environment that I had hoped for...low-key, flexible hours, interesting clients.  At first, I felt like an impostor, because it had been so long since I have worked for anyone else.  I felt self-conscious about my shaky hands, and unsure of my abilities.  But I cannot be faulted for any lack of earnestness or work ethic, so I had to build confidence from there, and pray that I could improve where needed.   By May, I had taken over most of the other therapist's hours.  There are still times when I wonder if I am doing any good. And there are other times when I feel incredibly humbled and grateful to be a part of someone else's healing.This is my walk to work..not from home, but from a nearby mall, since the chiropractor's lot is too small for my van.

 Needless to say, it has been a challenge to keep up with the kids' activities and the house..especially the house...and also recording life and the many things to be grateful for.

This was girls' night out in April, while the boys were with Granddad at the priesthood session.

Lovely, Caitlin.
The mall performance in May. We were all there from four in the afternoon until ten at night. I was busy with multiple costume changes and grateful that Grandma Martha was willing to watch the little ones at home. I know she would have loved to have seen the girls dance. Bethany is in the back.
 
 Bethany's competing dance team performed two numbers at a competition at Provo High and took first place for both. I never get tired of watching them do Funky Monkey.

We had another pet funeral.  Cocoa, the mama rabbit passed away in the spring.  We think she might have had uterine cancer, which is very common in rabbits.

The girls played "This Little Light of Mine" together. Thank goodness for bluegrass camp.

"Dear Cocoa...I love you as much as fried chicken..and other things like my mom and dad and blossoms."

I haven't mentioned much about the rabbits either. They have continued to be an after church attraction on Sunday mornings.  Olivia loves to put them out in their rabbit run in the yard for primary kids to play with on their way home from church, much to the kids' delight, and somewhat to the frustration of hungry parents.  Our little Smokey went out for an adventure, and sadly, never returned, but Wes and Hugo still manage to run about and return, though they are nearly impossible to catch.  They have fallen out of favor with me because they eat my hasta and petunias, which has prompted me to save money on annuals this year, and kept me from the IFAs, the Lindon nursery, and the garden sections of Lowes and Walmart, so I suppose I should thank them.
He looks so innocent.

So while I was working, the little kids went back to the daycare center that they attended during my massage therapy school days.  The administrators and teachers are like family to me now, and I am always grateful that they welcome the children back when needed.  I am a big proponent of socialized daycare for all incomes, like in Sweden. I loved my new job, but as the end of the school year approached I started to feel needed at home, and weary from the high cost of daycare.  I believe it was equal to what I was earning.
But this moment made it all worthwhile. The timing seemed perfect, blessed in fact.  I was grateful to be able to give the little ones a few months of preschool experience, and support Grant through his preschool graduation.  In June, I decided to ask for fewer hours at work to make time to be with the kids...and the laundry....



Kindergarten time. I'm proud of you Grant.

triumph and survival

I have cleaned my room.  I am forty-one years-old, and this is a moment of personal triumph.

 As I think I have mentioned before, I have had this arrangement with God; I get my house in order and He will give me the password to move out of crisis mode. We came up with this plan as long ago as May of 2012, perhaps it was longer. God is more patient than I am.

It got worse before it got better, as things so often do. Over the previous months I had worked to contain the majority of the disorder to the top floor, specifically my bedroom and the girls' room.  In December I took my eyes off the prize. I believe they were reasonable distractions.  First--Christmas.  Second--Christmas carols.  December annually means I take another stab at playing the Christmas hymns with some degree of adequacy, and that takes time away from laundry.  And so the piles in my room grew, and when the girls needed to find just the perfect pair of pink stretch pants, rather than diving in, and risk getting lost in the piles themselves, they flung and flung, this way and that way, and soon the floor became a less than lovely collage called what-to-wear. And that's how things stayed, even though, as you know, guests arrived.  That welcomed chemical messenger, who creates just the right balance of warm hospitality and defensive pride-- that makes the need to clean just before guests arrive feel particularly urgent, stepped out the moment I stepped in my room. It was as if God needed the mess to be there a little longer.

If it is any consolation to my guests, the whole scene gave me nausea on a daily basis as well. And the worst of it, the little pests that torment  me even now-- since even though the crisis has passed the family still refuses to go naked, or even just barefoot--were the socks.  There were hundreds of them, white with green toes, white with blue toes, black, off black, Christmas socks, Halloween socks, even Easter socks, mismatched and scattered all about. At one point I had them basketed and earnestly anticipating some kind of reconciliation with their long estranged partners.  Then, one day, Sophie discovered the joy of recreational flinging, and like confetti they flew.

I think it was conquering those little socks that gave me the courage to finally overcome the mess, that and the grace of God.  After months of just feeling too depressed about the mess to even face it, we cleared one path and then another... me and the angels, and the Elmer chocolates in the little heart shaped boxes stashed way back in the corner of the top shelve in my bedroom closet. It was as if God had decided the time had come.

So January was folding socks and surviving this. Cold.  

And there were other triumphs.  Sam and Ben, and their friend Steven produced a short film for the LDS Film Festival twenty-four hour film contest.  I was proud of them for working together so well and creating a film in such a short period of time.  Sam also went to drama camp and enjoyed watching several plays at Westminster college in Salt Lake.

 Olivia and her friend Emma, and Mary and her friend Joey entered the school science fair.

 I was grateful to spend two Saturdays with our dear friends from Beijing, the Carrillo family. They invited us up to their new home in Draper for lunch one week and the next week the little kids and I enjoyed celebrating Diego's birthday at Chuck E. Cheese.

love-loss-festivity-and ordinary days

And just when I think I might have opened a chapter called moving forward--I arrive again at Christmastime. The children's intense anticipation, the familiar music, the lights--blue and white against deep, dark, snowy nights, are at one moment a completely wonderful source of joy, and the next an almost unbearable source of melancholy. Here I am balancing and managing the magic with the to-do's as a single parent for the third year, hoping that I can keep that childlike love for this time of year alive in them, in spite of my inadequacies and exhaustion. 

Have you ever prayed so earnestly just to ask God, "If I can't have what I want now, could you please just let me know what You want."  

"And if that is too much to ask could you just please let me know that You are there?"

 Friday December 14, I took the little ones to preschool and started my Christmas shopping. By noon I had picked them up, returned home, and heard the first of the tragic news from Connecticut.  Prayer is long distance compassion, charity in thought and deed, opening up your heart in an attempt to share the burden of another person's pain that would be otherwise unbearable.  I saw the flags in mourning around town by evening, and they reminded me to pray.

 Saturday morning the children and I walked over to the church for the ward Christmas breakfast.

Little pumpkin.

 The primary children performed a few Christmas carols. Not hard to pick out Bethany.

Saturday was a busy day, so I was grateful that our friends from the ward brought over a mountainous pan of pancakes, and filled our kitchen counter with trays of leftover fruit and ham--which kept the kids fed all day as I shuttled the girls back and forth, through the snow--which I was grateful was atmospheric but light, to their dance dress rehearsals.  

In the evening...the long awaited performance. The girls were in several numbers. Bethany's ballet class danced to Ave Maria.

Saturday I went to bed with a great sense of accomplishment, having survived the dance recital super Saturday.  I am sure the girls did as well. I don't know why that mood has to be so fleeting...might have had something to do with the Sunday morning rush to church, for which I was no match that day. William and I arrived after my Sunday school class was due to start and the kids had already been separated in to other classes, and I remembered that prayer.

"Are You there?"

"Are You watching this?"

"Could You please give me a little insight into just where this is headed?"

Sunday evening I was playing Christmas carols on the piano and the bishop stopped by with an envelope. Said someone had given it to him to pass to me.  I remembered that prayer again.

"Just let me know that You are there."

We have been blessed every Christmas of our life as parents by huge generosity from others. One year, when we were just students with two little boys, a whole clan adopted us and filled our home with decorations, and food, and gifts. I was pregnant that Christmas, but in January I miscarried.  I was devastated, but one thing stayed in the back of my mind. It was the love that I knew God had for us, because he had sent that family to us in December. I knew that He was there.  Sunday I was overwhelmed again. And humbled that I had wondered to begin with.

 It snowed again last week. 

 Grant was proud of his work, as he should be. I was too weather wimpy to go out and help.

Wednesday was the last day of school for the week, a half day.  I went to the elementary school in the morning to help out with the Christmas festivities in Caitlin's class.  Ava's mom brought Rudolph Sandwiches. I passed out pretzels, and wiped up peanut butter, and snitched M&Ms. As I walked through the halls I could hear the buzz of excitement from the classrooms, and felt humbled by a huge sense of gratitude for peace and safety in our school that morning.  For some reason, it brought to mind my this clip of concentration camp survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein...and her words 

"I am no better... than those who never lived to know the magic of a boring evening at home," 

and I thought what a blessing it is to have another day to celebrate... holidays and ordinary days. 

so many santas

Sunday evening we opened the seven or eight tubs of Christmas decorations. Some Chinese friends gave us these Santa costumes in Guangzhou, about eight years ago, but I think this is the first year the kids have discovered them before I could tuck them away. I am not sure why I had them in some kind of safe keeping. Sentimental reasons, I guess.

 Guangzhou is the world's crappy stuff market, and at Christmastime, communism takes a backseat to capitalism and a somewhat gawdy sort of Christiany. While we were there the trees frosted in disco colors and garish plastic Santas were a bit nauseating, however after the fact I've looked upon these thinly woven crimson costumes with nostalgic affection.

 But even I have a letting go point where the tangible, and fragile, can no longer keep a memory hostage, preventing it from taking life. And at some point our attachment to distant and romantic far away adventures, whether they be in deep distracted thought, or in the form of a treasured keepsake, must become less important and less compelling than the life that is right in front of us, demanding our love and attention, and needing our appreciation

 My Christmas decorations don't seem to be staying where they are put, and will probably end up broken, but at least I have a William


So in Guangzhou there is a place called HaiZhu square where we spent many afternoons browsing the hundreds of stalls. The smell was cigarettes and street food, the scent of which wafted from the carts owned by little men outside the square selling roasted sweet potatoes and fried noodles. And in one section, there was the overwhelming unmistakable acrid odor of urine, and it was essential to ex-pat life in China that it become loveable, that let you know right where to find the bathroom.

 In the fall, the square was filled with the most ghorry and horrifying take on Halloween costumes and decorations you can imagine. At Chnese New Year it was decked in red laterns and stuffed monkeys, or roosters, or tigers, depending on the year. It was always a great place to shop for take-home-to America trinkets, for birthday party favors, or for cheap toys that you only wanted to last the afternoon.  But if you winded yourself past the endless booths of  hair accesories, and office supplies, into the center of the square you would come to my favorite place, which actually had it's own door and looked like a real shop: the cookie jar vendor.  I fantasized about having a cookie jar for every season.  My mother-in-law bought me a glass ginger bread house that comes out at Chistmas, and I returned to the states with a pumpkin head scarecrow too.  I think he appeared in a post a few weeks ago...but he has since lost his head to King William, and has been sent the way of letting go.

Sunday night I was hit by a bad case of mean grumpy stressed out mom. Maybe it was too many consecutive days of eating pie, or too much Christmas clutter, or the realization that tomorrow was not a sleep in day, or just the single parent at the holidays blues.... Stated that way it would seem almost justified. I promise it had nothing to do with the broken cookie jar.

Monday was better. I am intensely grateful for warm days in late November. The little kids were too tired Monday to wake up for preschool. William had been awake most of the night with a cough and had finally fallen in to a comfortable sleep, so I let the morning stay quiet, as I finished arranging the nativity sets on the mantel, and boxed up the remaining ornaments that I hide away for that year when we have more space, more time, less need to keep things simple.

Before lunch we drove Bethany's cello to school, then went to our park to play without jackets. They thought it was a unique dynamic to drive to our park across the street and park in the parking lot. Sophie wanted to roll down the hill, which was sparkling with the melted frost... Not quite as idyllic as the weeks before when the grass was warm and dry.

 "Your turn Momma" she insisted.



 I hate pictures with my shadow in them. But I have that parental need to excessively archive perfect moments with the kids on the swings.

Tuesday morning we got a new faucet in the kitchen, and I made some progress with the laundry piles on my bed and bedroom floor. The afternoon was busy with dentist appointments, dance, sewing which turned out to be cancelled, drove to get a hair cut for Sam which we postponed when we saw the crowd, grocery shopping, shoe shopping, back for dance pick up, home for a quick dinner, and then to an appointment with Kyle. I was grateful that Judith brought us her delicious meatloaf, which made things easier.

Meanwhile our sweet friends from the ward brought us an enormous load of clothing they had outgrown.They were beautiful, designer dresses and shoes, and their mom had ironed them and put them on hangers, so they looked brand new. William claimed a little grey jacket that he insisted said Green Lantern, because there was a G and the letters were green.

There were even things for me. When I looked at the size I thought I wouldn't even be able to stick my arms in. Caitlin insisted I try on a pretty red dress that she had been wearing herself. The girls stood in undisguised disapproval as I presented myself in the dress, which fit, but greatly accentuated my need to find a personal trainer. Fertlilty Goddess Abs. The white cotton socks, and white legs were reportedly awkward as well.

"Maybe with stockings..." They said.

"So I guess I won't wear it dancing just yet," I said.

At which Caitlin brightened and said "Yes! Wear it. Noone will ask you to dance."

To which Bethany sagely added," But if they do, you'll know they really love you for you."

"How about we keep in in the closet for dieting inspiration," I said.

Everyone pledged to monitor my food intake.

Wednesday the school portait people were at the preschool.  William reported that he smiled for "his camera teacher."  The little boys wore their new shoes, and as we arrived home they dashed out of the van, and ran to front door to show me how fast their shoes can run. Sophie ran after them before I could realize that I have no baby anymore.

In the evening, hair cut for Sam, shopping with Olivia, Young Mens.  Caitlin asked me how many pounds I had lost that day.

"Zero," I reported.

  

 

 

pumpkin lights 2012

William was very gracious with big October born brother Grant all through the month. Whenever he saw carved pumpkins, dangling skeletons, or plastic, inflatable, life-sized front yard ghosts, he said to Grant, "Everyone is decorating for your birthday!" 

Monday the kids were excited to go back to Grandma Martha's house after preschool. Grandma planned a Halloween celebration for the kids. I think Grant was trying to do crossed eyes. He is in to that lately.

Grandma Martha had been in California visiting my dear, spunky, sarcastic, sincere, flirtatious, never a burnt bridge, always a door open Aunt Lois who was in the hospital. We are all grateful that Aunt Lois's health is improving now.  Auntie Lois is the world's expert on Los Angeles culture, and gives a remarkable tour of homes of the famous--many of which she and her family sandblasted during the eighties and nineties. I miss the days when we drove down to her house on Easter Sunday and we helped her make grape leaves and clam dip that she always served with Honey Baked Ham and Marie Calendar pies.  I remember watching her front door with admiration as guests streamed in and out--people of all ages, and of various connections...so-and-so's ex, that guy's cousin, what's-her-name's new boyfriend. Everyone was welcomed.  Her home was always a lively, loving place.

Monday evening we had music lessons going on inside, while the kids ran in and out of the house and carved pumpkins on the front porch.



 Nice, Sam.Ben helped Grant.

 Tuesday is one of my favorite days. I love driving down to Miss Jenny's house to pick up Caitlin and her friend Ava from sewing lessons.  Miss Jenny lives in Maeser, a small, historic section of  South Provo. The orange and brown leaves falling from the heavy branches of overgrown trees, and old pioneer era homes were in the perfect mood to celebrate Halloween.   My favorite yard is filled with gravestones.  We tried that last year with some gravestones made of Styrofoam, but the younger boys kept pulling them out of our little decorative cemetery and using them as shields and weapons and flying saucers--so disrespectful really.

I am a huge fan of Miss Jenny's sewing school Thimbles and Threads.  I have mentioned that before, but it is worth writing again. She is wonderful. 

Tuesday night we lit the pumpkins. That is noteworthy because some years I actually forget to do that.  When they were all lit and we stepped back to admire their work. I felt so happy.  Peaceful. I think we are growing up, a little.