A Rotten Day

(This was written sometime in the last month. NOT today. Today has been a pretty good day, actually. And by the way, please notice all of my new tags! Yes, you can look up all sorts of stuff on my blog now! AND I have officially begun an author's website. You can find the link over there if you look hard.)

Today was a rotten day. The problem was that I didn’t feel well. Whenever I have some odd thing wrong with my body, I get extremely emotional because I suddenly feel the weight of all the time I’ve spent feeling ill in the past few years and because I am terrified that the old strange sickness is returning, that the progress I believe I’ve made is all a dream . . . etc. etc. I know, I know. Bad habit. Lack of faith. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Ingratitude. Knowing all of this only too well means that in addition to feeling miserable and terrified, I also feel extremely guilty. (“This is just a tiny little thing! You’ve been so much better! You’ll be better soon! So many people are so much worse off! How dare you be depressed by this?”)

So it was a bad day. So I was an emotional nutcase already.

And then someone, a friend that I love dearly, gave me some advice about something that she doesn’t know all the facts about. And since she didn’t really know what she was talking about, her advice didn’t really apply and yet it still hurt to know that she saw me as being in need of such counsel. Of course, being a walking time-bomb, I let it completely devastate me.

Luckily, I didn’t let on. Because I could see then (and, of course, even more clearly now) that she was really trying to help, truly speaking out of love for me.

One of the things that hurts about it, though, is that I realized again how many times I do the same thing to other people. I’m an oldest child, a teacher, a permanent preacher, a know-it-all, a bossy-pants. I try to advise people. It’s got to be so annoying! Of course I do it out of love, out of a desire to help people avoid pain that I had to go through. But that doesn’t matter. Doing it implies that I don’t trust them to find their own way. Doing so implies that I think I know the whole story. Doing so is something I’ve got to quit!

I wonder how many people I have hurt deeply by this behavior. Occasionally someone will tell me I’ve been out of line. This, of course, hurts a lot, but I’ve been grateful for it because it has given me a chance to examine myself, apologize and repent.

However, I have never been able to do the same: to tell someone that they have hurt me deeply with something they’ve said.

I’ve been wondering why that is. Part of it is cowardice. I’m just not very assertive. I shake when there is confrontation. Part of it is that I know how much it hurts me when someone confronts me. I always mean well, and when someone confronts me it is obvious that they didn’t know I meant well, or that it didn’t matter to them that I meant well, or that they felt it was more important to teach me than to forgive me. Again, I’ve been grateful, actually, when people have done so but it has been very painful. I truly don’t want to cause that kind of pain for anyone. But does wanting to avoid that do them a disservice, or is it better to just forgive them, and assume they meant well?

When is it right to tell someone they’ve hurt you, and when is it better to just try to forgive and forget? How do you decide?

Tagged!

Someone finally tagged me! I love being tagged. Thanks, Melinda. It took me long enough to realize it (sorry, Mel, haven’t been reading blogs lately.) (Which is probably why no one tags me . . . )

6 random, abstract, weird things about me.

1. I can wiggle my nose three different ways, wiggle one ear, and raise my eyebrows independent of each other.

2. One of the biggest signs that I am aging is that I can hardly stand stress in movies anymore. As in, I can’t watch car chases or intense shoot-up scenes or pretty much anything violent. I am turning into a wussy old lady.

3. I like to eat roast beef gravy on cottage cheese.

4. In order to sleep, I can’t have any skin exposed to the air. All pajamas must have long sleeves, and I have to pull the covers up to my chin (with the sheet folded out over them).

5. I pretty much don’t like any beverage except water.

6. I feel a little guilt and a lot of relief that the lady at the screening desk when I was donating blood last time found something on my papers that excluded me. I’m assuming (possibly wrongly) that whatever it was (can’t remember), it was permanent and I can never donate blood again. I’m sorry, but that experience gave me such anxiety that I am very pleased not to have to do it again. (Wooziness about medical things is the reason I had all my babies without anesthesia—it wasn’t bravery. Oh, no. It was fear of a NEEDLE in my SPINE.)

And now I tag . . . let's see . . . Michelle L. and Zina.

Why I can't stop grinning today

Christmas at our house:

Well, we figured it was our patriotic duty to help the economy by buying a Wii this year. (I've probably mentioned my aversion to game systems here before, so some of you may be surprised. Justification: the wii, with four controllers, is a family game that encourages physical activity. You can't deny that last part when you watch this, can you?)

The game they're playing is Olympics and the event is "Swimming." Notice youngest's foot motion. I've got a gold medalist in the making . . .

What is Required

“At least I know what is required of me now, and that is something to be grateful for.” --said by Glory in Home by Marilynne Robinson.

I think one of the hardest things about being a woman, particularly a stay-home mother, in this generation, is not ever knowing what is required of me. Sure, I know the general things (put family first, serve others, be an example, seek knowledge and inspiration) and some specifics (hold family home evening and family prayer, read the scriptures, have family dinner together, try to get out of debt, be a good housekeeper). But when it gets down to filling the actual minutes, it is very hard to tell what is required of me. Because it’s impossible to judge what is necessary to get the results I want. If I choose to dust and vacuum today instead of reading a great book, does that affect eternity? Should I read to my kids or make bread? Does anyone really care? How can one choice, for one hour, make a difference?

It’s a problem of too much leisure, really. I choose to be home with my kids, but they don’t need or want me to be giving my whole attention to them for all the hours we are together. So what do I do? In my mother’s generation, and even more so in her mother’s, there was more work to be done. Women were home, but they were busy with the laundry, etc. When my father was a boy, there was no question of how much undivided attention he got from his mother. The answer was: hardly any. Eight kids and hardly any money meant a lot of work for her and a lot of kids running free through the neighborhood (which was a safe thing to do back then).

These days I crave to know what is required of me. I wouldn’t trade my life of ease and freedom with my predecessors, but I envy them their surety about how to fill the days.

Our Glamorous Vacation

Some people love Las Vegas.

They are foreign to me.

And when I say “Vegas,” I’m not talking about the nice, Mormon-filled suburbs (really, there are a lot of Mormons out there and, really, there are some nice suburbs). I’m talking about the Strip.

Hubby and I spent a few days there because we “won” some hotel nights and free tickets, blah, blah, blah, for listening to a time-share schpiel. And because we could visit Grandma and Grandpa on the way (and leave the kids there, too).

And somehow our time on the Strip didn't end up being like any of the commercials.

We stayed at the Tropicana. Dirty carpet. “Non-smoking” room that reeked of smoke (but they’ll happily come spray air-freshener if you complain). Sleazy-looking casino. Over-priced, tasteless food.

I’ve decided that there might be something cool about Vegas to people who have lots of money. (Then you could actually afford to shop at those gorgeous stores! And since you could afford show tickets, you’d have somewhere to wear the stuff you bought!) But for those of us who are cheap and don’t gamble, there’s nothing. But the thing is that while you’re there, you’re always excruciatingly aware of what there is to have. You know that there are very very rich people among you, somewhere (or else how could all those stores stay in business?). Everywhere there is evidence that STUFF must be worth having. Everything around is designed to breed dissatisfaction with yourself: you don’t have enough. You aren’t beautiful enough.

It’s a universe dedicated to materialism.

I find the contrast (between the kind of people who I see there, mostly, and between the kind of world that the casinos are designed to make you want to believe in) interesting. I was standing in line at the check-in counter and heard two women behind me discussing their clothes. Apparently one had just bought some designer boots for an outrageous amount of money that must have been a “good” deal. The other one was ooh-ing and aah-ing over them, and over the good deal her friend had gotten. The way they talked about their clothes and their shopping painted a picture for me: these must be some beautiful, rich-looking women! When I finally turned around, I saw two women who looked like people I see all the time at K-mart or Walmart. Greasy hairstyles stuck in the early 80’s (bangs to heaven) and all. And what I couldn’t believe is that they were so thrilled with some designer boots. Does anyone, anyone in their lives really care? (And what does this description say about me and my judgmentalism? Like they didn’t deserve the boots since they looked like typical middle-class America?)

But, really, what’s the point? Of any of it?

Is there really such thing as glamour? Does anyone ever feel it, or is it only something that other people have?

So here’s just an example of the lack of glamour in my Las Vegas vacation. Our activities on Tuesday:

Wake up. Eat cold cereal and milk in paper bowls (brought from home in a cooler—can’t stand spending $12 on a mediocre hotel breakfast).

Invite Grandpa to bring the kids to the hotel for a swim. Swim with them, then supervise the mass shower and cleanup in our room. Send Grandpa and kids off.

Head to Harrah’s where we have “free” tickets for the magic show. After parking in the boonies and walking a mile to the box office, we find out that the “free” tickets are only free if we pay for two alcoholic drinks during the show ($25). Decide we didn’t really want to see that particular show that much.

Walk a ways until we find Ghiradelli’s (we have a 20% off coupon, and I have never forgotten the heavenly chocolate milkshake we got at Ghiradelli’s in Hawaii) and order two hot fudge sundaes. Eat about six bites each because we haven’t had lunch and the sugar is too much on an empty stomach and because the hot fudge becomes impenetrable as soon as it cools. Feel stupid because that’s about $13 down the tube.

Walk a couple of miles down the strip to the Half Price Ticket kiosk to see if we can get Cirque du Soleil tickets for half price. Wait in line a long time. Find out that we can get them for $65 (regularly $70!). Hmmm. We could afford $35 or $40, but not $65.

Exhausted and hungry, I can’t make it the long way back to Harrah’s and then the other long way through Harrah’s to the parking space, so Rog runs off to get the car while I wait on a bench. And wait, and wait, because the map Roger has isn’t clear enough about the road that seems to go to the Strip but instead goes under it for a few blocks.

Tired and desperately hungry now, we drive around away from the strip for some normal food. Eat at Taco Time. Stop at the grocery store to stock up for supper: baguette, spinach dip and raspberries. Watch dvds on our portable player the rest of the evening, stopping for card games and crossword puzzles. Enjoy being together.

There. How’s that for a glamorous vacation? See why I adore Las Vegas?

On the way out, the people in the elevator asked, “Win anything?” (We never even pulled a slot machine.) When we shook our heads, they said, “Neither did we,” glumly. Guess their vacation was glamorous, too.

[I do have to mention, by the way, that our time with the parents was very nice. And just hanging out with my sweetheart, wherever we are, is always nice. It's just humorous to me how much we fail at having a Vegas experience . . . Wonder if anyone's Vegas trips turn out like the commercials.]

Addendum

(Don't read THIS until you read the previous post, below.)

I forgot to talk about how maybe my problem is not AGE per se, but a generation gap. I'm remembering watching Camelot with Vanessa Redgrave during the 80's and thinking that Redgrave wasn't particularly good-looking at all. I was so much a child of the 80's culturally that someone considered beautiful in the late 60's and 70's wasn't beautiful to me. And I'm not just talking about Redgrave's lack of bangs (unforgiveable) and princess waistlines (unthinkable!) but also her actual looks, and the concept of beauty itself. As in, she had no top lip.

I had the same reaction when I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the first time, and didn't find the leading lady (Katherine Ross) beautiful at all. (Hmm. She doesn't have much of an upper lip, either. Neither do I, for that matter. Let's psychoanalyze this . . . )

The cool thing about movies like this, though, is that they manage to communicate how beautiful these ladies are, in context, even when I disagree. I found it easy to believe that the other characters had no doubt that these women were gorgeous. Twilight, on the other hand, failed in this respect for me. Why? Because Edward is a guy and I have higher standards here, since he my opposite gender? Maybe. More, I think it's because of that RIDICULOUS HAIR AND MAKEUP! It's like they were trying way, way too hard. I don't know.

Anyway, Zina put this link in my comments and I thought it was too terrific to let lie languishing down there in the comments so here it is for everyone's pleasure (thanks, Zina!):

http://www.ericdsnider.com/snide/my-rejected-twilight-screenplay/

That's Eric Snider doing it again. (If you didn't read his Titanic screenplay, look that one up, too.)

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Does taste mature?

When I was young, I remember being shocked when my mother told me that Han Solo was much better looking, and sexier, than Luke Skywalker. It wasn’t so much my mother's talking about the relative sexiness of celebrities that shocked me. I was already used to her common expressions about Richard Chamberlain and Neil Diamond, whom she declared were some of the sexiest men alive. I thought it quirky and humorous that an old lady like my mother would even think about someone being sexy, but I was used to it. But I couldn’t figure out how anyone could pay attention to Han, the slightly naughty guy, instead of Luke, the obvious protagonist (and also cute).

But I grew up. And now I can’t even watch Mark Hamill without practically wretching. Did I ever think he was cute??? (Because obviously “handsome” doesn’t, and didn’t, apply and neither did “sexy.”) Ew. But Harrison Ford . . . ah, that’s something else. Yes, Mom, you were right. (Although I still won’t agree with you about Neil Diamond. Double ew.)

So I guess I grew up in taste.

So I’m wondering whether it’s that I’m an old (“mature”) lady now, or whether there is an actual change in what is considered handsome between generations. Because I cannot find anything attractive whatsoever about the actor who plays Edward in Twilight and who also played Cedric in Harry Potter. In both of these movies, the characters played by this guy were, according to the books, supposed to be devastatingly attractive with such heights of attractiveness that said attractiveness could not be denied by anyone who saw them. But I find nothing at all attractive about this guy. What’s wrong with me? And furthermore, I can’t find anything attractive about the actors who play Jasper and Emmett either. And all of these guys are supposed to be supernaturally good-looking.

Is it just me? Are there other women out there who are my age who find these actors completely unattractive? Is it an age thing, a maturity thing, or a matter of personal taste?

Probably an age thing. Because I found the actors who played Charlie and Billy much more attractive than the vampires—and of course, Charlie and Billy are “adults.”

When I went to see Twilight, I had already braced myself for being disappointed in the casting. I actually didn’t mind that the vampires weren’t anything I'd ever consider attractive. And although I can’t believe anyone finds that Edward actor attractive, that didn’t bother me all that much either. The chick who played Bella did fine—being appropriately pouty and lacking a personality, just as the one in the book does (is it that hard to actually smile at anyone? ever?). And Billy and Charlie were good, and Bella’s mom. I really liked Bella’s classmates (oops, I almost said “friends,” but that would imply that she was capable of friendship). So, in general, I was tolerating things OK . . .

Until I saw the person they had cast as Jacob.

Sorry, unforgiveable.

There is NO WAY that that baby-faced, Donny-Osmond-grinning kid could be Jacob. As soon as I saw him, I knew I would never see another Twilight movie, or watch this one again. Jacob, as I’ve mentioned, has always been my favorite, for several reasons. Not the least of which is that he is just sexier. The whole Quilute thing is sexy to me, the wolf in him, the mystery.

And there is NO mystery, no maturity, nothing interesting about this Jacob. He looks like what he was probably meant to be in this movie: a teenage pin-up, meant to be cute but not distract too much from the Main Couple.

If they make a movie out of New Moon, which is hugely about Jacob, and keep this same actor I’m going to wretch. A whole movie out of this cutie-pie? Gag, gag, gag.

Sigh. So the movie wasn’t meant for me. (And was I expecting it would be?) It was meant for someone with 13-year-old taste and, from what I hear, it has succeeded in hitting that market. Good for them. But, sigh.

TO A YOUNG MOTHER, or WHAT I WISH SOMEONE HAD SAID TO ME

I went visiting teaching. My partner is a young mother—just had her second child and the first is two. When I’m with her, hearing about her life, all I feel is overwhelming pity. I really doubt I’ll ever be one of those old ladies who says, “Cherish those moments—they are the best part!” Because they’re not, for some of us. For some of us, those days were just plain old hard. Physically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. Especially emotionally. I know there are women out there who don’t feel the same, who revel in life with young children, who seem to have been born to mother little souls. But so many of us are crippled with guilt because we find it, frankly, BORING! Is that so wrong? The benefit of being someone more like me is that you find that parenthood keeps getting easier, more interesting and more fun the older the kids get. (Hopefully that will continue into teenager-hood, but we’ll see.) I have no understanding of the sense of doom that other women feel when they think of their kids going off to school. For me it’s a celebration, mostly. Not just because now I have time to myself but also because I am so excited for them to have new adventures, and to start turning into the people they will be. They just get so much more interesting to me as time goes on.

So here’s what I wish I could say to all young mothers who struggle the way I did, or what I wish I could have heard someone say to me in those very dark days.

1. It’s OK to feel sad and depressed post-partum. If it’s really severe, get some medication to help. Forgive yourself for it because it isn’t your fault—it’s your screwy hormones. And lack of sleep.

2. If your baby is a screamer, you’re not evil if sometimes you reach the end of your patience and think about shaking the baby or throwing him out the window. You won’t do that—you’ll carefully put him down and leave the room, or hand him off. But don’t beat yourself up for feeling that way—it’s the effect of your crazy hormones and lack of sleep and feeling of helplessness. Forgive yourself.

3. Having little kids is hard. Hard, hard, hard. You’ll meet people who don’t think so, serene mothers who truly love all aspects of the job and are angelic at it. But they are the exception. And there’s nothing wrong with you if you are tired, frazzled, bored, bored, bored most of the time. Don’t feel guilty because you are not a natural at it. Especially don’t feel guilty when the little old ladies with the misty memories tell you that this it the sweetest time of your life and you’d better enjoy it because it’ll be gone soon and you’ll wish it back. Most of us DON’T wish them back. Many of us find that parenting gets easier when the kids are a little older, and many of us are having more and more fun as time goes on.

4. You’ll do your best to have consistent rules and high expectations. You’ll do your best to be a good example. But in the end, how your child turns out will have much more to do with their own choices and ways of learning—things that you have no control over—than with how successful of a parent you are. Be the best you can, and then trust the atonement and your own child’s heavenly nature to pull through on the rest. It may take longer than you want to see results (maybe even longer than this life). But you can’t judge your own success by how your kids turn out. Really.

5. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll be painfully aware of them, too. Trust that the atonement will make it so that your kids don’t pay any eternal price for things that are your fault (although there might be a temporal consequence). God sent them to you knowing what you are. He’ll help them find a way to Him in spite of you, but you’re probably doing much better than you think.

6. You can’t help judging other people’s parenting styles. It’s part of caring so much about what you do—you are constantly looking for new things to try, evaluating what you see to see if it will work for you. As long as you don’t gossip with others about what you do and don’t approve of that someone else is doing, you’re OK. Notice how others parent and whether it seems to work, then ponder it in your heart and adjust yourself according to what your heart and the Spirit say.

7. Learn to be grateful for the little nudgings of the Spirit that tell you where you need to correct yourself. Repent and move on. If guilt does anything other than cause you to stop sinning, it is not from God.

8. Remember that your own parents are still learning how to parent you. Forgive them for what they did back then and for what they do now, too.

9. Ask God to help you notice the things that you do right throughout the day. He will help you. He’ll send you occasional warm fuzzies. Enjoy them—you deserve them.

10. Do whatever you can to preserve your relationship with your husband, even when you’re not feeling great physically. If you sometimes don’t feel much love for him, remember that you like him. If you sometimes don’t like him much, remember that you love him. The feelings always come back!

A couple of poems from me

Just because I haven't posted one of my own in a while, here's "Inheritance," which is in the book that just came out. (Which I'm sure you've all bought by now, right?) And "Shepherds," one of my two big attempts at Christmas poetry. (The other one is terrible, I tell you.)

Inheritance
by Darlene Young

I got your jewelry, a couple of scarves and an old dress
I claimed just because it looked like you.

But familiar though the earrings are, the scarf, the dress,
the emerald pin, no matter how I squint into the past
I can't make out your face and now I fear
I never really saw it. Being a mother too,
this worries me.

But also when you died I got your books
and, reading them, I find you after all.
Your voice, your voice, with sweetest clarity,
rings through the words you chose to share with me.

And so in fear of leaving my kids motherless--
and as a feeble recompense for all the times
I sneak into their rooms at night
to beg forgiveness from their twitching eyelids
for the petty strictness of my ways--
the one thing I make sure of all my days
is that they get my voice.

Stories they will build their worlds on, stories
teaching how to yearn, tales that break
their hearts apart then knit them back
a little softer—all the words I got from you.

Your voice in mine will carry on
in their bright dreams after I'm gone.


Shepherds
by Darlene Young

Don't tell me about rose-cheeked Arcadian youth
gathering daisies on a hillside
piping tunes to their cloud-fluffy sheep
under the stars.

No, these were foul-smelling, lusty
men with dirty necks, greasy hands,
snorting, arguing, joke-telling, nose-picking
men--one wearing stolen
sandals (although I admit he felt
guilty about it)--gambling on who
had the best aim as they chucked rocks
at a nearby lizard.

You talk about salt of the earth—
these men were salty, alright
downright ornery, some of them,
fighting sometimes and yelling
at their wives when they were home,
which wasn't often.

Yeah, I'll grant you Dan
was an innocent
and Dave had some noble moments
and none of them was really evil
but they all had dirty fingernails
of one kind or another
when the light came--

yes, it came.
But don't take away that moment just before--
flies whining over the sheep dung
and Jake and Zeke having a
spitting contest--
that's the key moment, you see,
in all their grimy glory;
it has to be

because the light came to me, too.
Allelujah.

Book Report

I’ve read a lot lately, mostly because I have committed to a philosophy of not writing at all unless I really, really feel like it. (Don’t know how long that will last.)

Besides a handful of mediocre things, I read An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken. (And could someone please tell me why her name is so familiar to me? She’s written other things, none of which I’ve read, and yet I feel like I’m familiar with something about her . . . ) This book pretty much took my breath away. It is a memoir about the experience of losing her first child, who was still-born. I find myself wanting to buy copies for everyone I know who has experienced the death of a child—or, really, of anyone close. There are some really poignant and profound observations. Mostly, it’s just the details and truthfulness of the observations that kicks me in the solar plexus. Here’s an excerpt:

When I called my friend Ann the first time after Pudding died, she immediately asked what she could do, and then did everything, and then kept asking, and she sent out an e-mail to tell people I hadn’t told that was so beautiful—though I have never read it—that I got the most beautiful condolence notes in response. Wendy burst into hysterical tears at the sound of my voice and asked me questions until I’d told the whole story. “Was he a beautiful baby?” she wanted to know, and I wondered how she knew to ask: she was the only one who did. Margi said, “Oh, Elizabeth, please know that if any of us could absorb your pain for you, we would,” and then laughed at all my dark jokes. Bruce, remembering something just as terrible that had happened to him decades before, wrote, “There is no way for such an event to leave you who you are.” Patti, who has seen as much sorrow as anyone I know, was an extraordinary combination of complete sympathy and complete comprehension. My brother said, at the end of a long conversation, “Well, I guess as a family we’ve been pretty lucky that we haven’t had something awful happen before.” My sister-in-law Catherine texted, Poor, poor darling you.

Somehow every one of these things happened at exactly the right time for me. This is why you need everyone you know after a disaster, because there is not one right response. It’s what paralyzes people around the grief-stricken, of course, the idea that there are right things to say and wrong things and it’s better to say nothing than something clumsy.

One of the reasons I read (and I’m sure it’s the same for you) is to find out how it feels to be someone else. And for me, one of the most fascinating and impossible things to imagine is what it feels like to go through something MAJOR like losing a child. We all struggle with imagining this kind of thing, which is why we bumble when it comes time to say something to the person who is grieving. This book does an amazing job of making me feel I’ve been in the mind of a grieving person, and experienced what I can of the taste of her grief.

Right now I know too many people who are hurting very deeply and I am at a complete loss of what to say. As I bumble through it, I pray that someday these friends will look back and be glad I at least tried.

The Trouble With Poetry

I just finished reading 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women, which I enjoyed immensely. (Hmmmm. I see that I am drawing more and more towards poetry and less and less towards fiction. Could that little itch be telling me something?) It was a fantastic sampler for someone like me who is sadly, pitifully, underexposed to poetry. (Which is another blog topic in itself [everyone's underexposure to poetry], but I’m saving that up for the Red Brick Store blog, I think.)

Anyway, one thing that has been very unsettling to me as I have read about some prominent female poets is how really screwed up or unhappy so many of them are/were. It seems like some 80% or more of them had abusive upbringings, or lovers who killed themselves, or nervous breakdowns. What is UP with that? Which comes first—the poetry or the misery? And could I possibly be a decent poet, someday, without having a miserable life? Please?

Here’s an interesting quote from May Swenson who seems to have had a relatively happy life but who also happened to leave the church. As in the Mormon church. She says, “It is not for me—religion. It seems like redundancy for a poet” (p. 100). What? So the holy calling of poetry stands in the place of any organized worship? OK, I know that’s not what she was really saying. But it bugs. It bugs. (And of course I know that some of the best poetry ever written was written by very, very religious people. Like, say, Isaiah, Joseph Smith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne and some of our own LDS poets, many of whom can be read in my favorite poetry book, Discoveries.)

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Politics, Again

It occurred to me in conversation with Angela yesterday that the problem I have with politics is that I can’t understand how people can be so sure about things. I know people who are without a doubt more intelligent than I and who are very committed to living a Christian life and following the direction of the Spirit who are absolutely convinced that the Democrat platform is the more moral and responsible one. And, of course, I know other people who are without a doubt more intelligent than I and equally committed to living a Christian life and following the Spirit who are completely sure that the Republican platform is the more moral and responsible one.

And then there are the individual issues. How can two people pray about gun control or immigration or how to help the unemployed and come away with opposite views? And how can they be so convinced of the rightness of their views that they are willing to proclaim them and argue them everywhere—even on other people’s blogs and facebook walls?

I just wonder where all of this absolute conviction comes from. I would like to have it, but it makes me squirm. Especially, especially, it makes me squirm when I hear it from politicians themselves. How can they lead when they are so very sure? How can they not consider the other side of things, about which so many intelligent and honest people are equally sure?

(Again, I love comments, but I don’t want a political discussion here. You could, however, talk about ways of knowing, without being specific . . . )

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Election (do I really dare go there?)

OK, I am absolutely unqualified in every way to address the subject of racism, because I am white, I grew up in a white neighborhood, attended almost completely white schools, and know hardly any non-white people at all. Having said that, I just cannot understand why a person would vote for someone based on his skin color. It’s almost as bad (but not quite, I admit) to vote for someone because he is black as it is to not vote for him because he is black. (The reason I say it’s almost as bad is because of the historical aspect of it. There’s something to wanting to see the course of history changed.) And whether or not I voted for Obama (and you’ll never know, will you?), I have to say that I’m very very glad that we finally have our first black president, mostly for the fact that hopefully from now on it won’t be an issue! We’ll have gotten all that out of the way and it won’t interfere with what really matters—right?

Similarly, I didn’t like feeling that the people who chose Palin to run with McCain did so because they thought people would vote for him BECAUSE of the gender of his running-mate. (And I’m sure that some people did just that, so the logic of choosing her was sound, much as I dislike it.) I don’t think gender should matter.

(I also don’t think that whether or not someone is a parent should matter—UNLESS that person is using his/her parenthood as a reason I should vote for him/her, emphasizing the effect that parenthood will have on his/her decisions. IN THAT CASE I think it is not unfair to examine what KIND of parent he/she is and whether I approve of that kind of parenting. In other words, if someone is thinking that I, as a mother, am more likely to vote for another mother, they are underestimating my intelligence—unless she’s the kind of mother I believe people should be has made it part of her campaign to include issues that affect that kind of mothers. But that’s another kettle of fish that I will keep [mostly] closed on this blog.)

And just because my friend had a horrible experience with people commenting on her own Facebook Wall when she expressed a political opinion, I’m going to ask you to comment only if you agree with me or want to tell me how smart I am (or beautiful). (Also you could compliment my children. Or my poetry.) So there!

A delightful little tidbit . . .

I read this thoughtful little poem this week. It speaks to me. Can you tell why?

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

. . .

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniquer,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet . . .

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
liek it better than being loved.

Excerpts from "For the Young Who Want To" by Marge Piercy, quoted in 100 Essential Modern Poems By Women.

Charity, a miracle drug

I recently read a book called Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. Its thesis is that the root of a lot of unhappiness and most, if not all, unhealthiness in our lives is negative feelings that we have refused to acknowledge and deal with.

I don’t believe it completely, but I’m convinced there is at least some truth to it. I am humbled enough, and tired enough, to really explore what role anxiety and other mysterious and buried emotions might have played in the illness I have suffered with for a few years now. I have been pondering a lot, praying a lot, studying the scriptures a lot, and I am seeing more clearly now that I really have had some bad habits in my life of being too judgmental of myself and others, and having too great a need to be in control. (Yes, I remember my rant about the woman in my ward who was convinced I’m sick because of perfectionism. You don’t have to remind me.)

I can’t say that my illness was caused by anxiety, but I can say that anxiety has played a role in my life and very possibly exacerbated things if it didn’t bring them on. I see that this illness came on at a time when things were just starting to look up for me, really. My kids had moved to a stage of being much more enjoyable to me, needing me less but interesting me more. I found myself with more leisure to pursue things I’d always wanted to. I had some success with my writing and in other areas of my life. All of these things were reasons I used as to why anxiety and other emotional issues could not possibly be affecting my health. Things were better than ever . . . why be sick now? But I see now, especially after the whole novel thing (and then the huge decision to abandon it) that I had been putting a lot of pressure on myself, JUST BECAUSE MY LIFE WAS SO EASY, to prove myself, to find something to succeed at, to have something to show for the fact that life was good and I was so blessed.

I was trying to pay for my blessings, either by becoming God’s gift to the world as a poet or novelist . . .

. . . or by becoming sick.

Screwy, I know.

Anyway, since realizing this, I have begun a quest for serenity in my life, the serenity that comes from accepting myself as I am (imperfect) and refusing to judge anymore, both myself and others. I’m trying abandon my quest for control in my life. And it feels very, very good, and very right. I am learning trust (“cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm”) in God instead of in myself to solve everything, achieve everything.

It’s amazing to me to discover the connection between charity and peace. “And above all things, clothe yourselves with the bond of charity, as with a mantle, which is the bond of perfectness and peace (D&C 88:125).” If I have true charity for myself and others, I accept them, and all the world, as it is, and feel no need to change it, no need to be anxious for it, no need to take over control of things. Charity is the key to feeling that all is well, both in your mind and body. As it says in my favorite section (D&C 121), “Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men . . . then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God.”

So I am praying for charity, grace to forgive everyone and refrain from judging. And it feels so good! I’ll pray for it for you, too.

It's all about the hair

I really like President Uchtdorf. But I did not like him at first. I wasn’t sure why—it was something to do with his appearance. Maybe he looked too “big business-ish,” too suave, too “upper management” for my taste. (And no, I’m not saying that if he HAD had a big business background he couldn’t be a wonderful GA. I’m not saying that at all. Just that it’s harder for me to sense humility through that kind of background.) Anyway, after I heard about his upbringing and heard his talks, I realized that I had sadly, sadly misjudged him, and I started to look for what it was that led to my wrong impressions of him. After all, he didn’t dress any differently from any of the other General Authorities, and I hadn’t been turned off of them by their business suits. What was it?

Finally I realized what it was: it was the back-comb.

I’ve never liked a back-comb. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been suspicious of them. Which explains some of my early dislike of Mitt Romney, back in the Olympics days. Granted, he IS a big businessman. But I’d like him a lot more with a different haircut!

It took a lot of personal psychoanalysis and deep foraging in my past to find out where I picked up my aversion for back-combs. But I found it. And here it is: Blowdry Brad. Blowdry Brad was my first experience with having my peers hold leadership callings. Brad was a fellow freshman living in Deseret Towers, and he was the Gospel Doctrine teacher, partner of my roommate Jennifer. I don’t remember anything about the lessons they taught together (but I’m sure your parts were great, Jen) except that Brad was my first exposure to the very earnest, very emotionally-manipulative, very seemingly-phony-righteous kind of preaching that has always left a bad taste in my mouth (like saccharine).

(ALERT: I KNOW I am not being charitable here. Who was I to judge how honest and humble this guy was? He was 18, for crying out loud! He was probably a really nice, earnest, intelligent guy. I am just showing you what my own immature 18-year-old mind was doing.)

But the thing I couldn’t forgive him for was his hair. It looked like he spent more time on that blow-dried back-comb than I ever spent on mine. And somehow that hairdo became associated in my mind with people whose lives have been easy, wealthy, and full of absolute surety that they have all the answers.

But President Uchtdorf has taught me I was wrong in my judgment, and now I need to repent. So forgive me, Brad, Mitt, and President Uchtdorf. Though I don’t like your hair, I no longer believe it necessarily describes the kind of person you are. And, heaven forbid anyone ever judge me by my hair, which in NO WAY EVER looks the way I wish it would, let alone providing an accurate reflection of who I am (I really, really hope).

(I guess this means I should quit judging women, especially General Relief Society leadership, by their hair, too.)

Book Report

Last year I read The Know-it-all by A. J. Jacobs, about a guy’s quest to read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica in a year. It was surprisingly entertaining, and so I gladly picked up Jacobs’s second offering, The Year of Living Biblically, which documents the year he spent supposedly trying to live by the bible.

What a disappointment.

I guess a big part of it was that this time the subject was much closer to my heart. (Who cares what anyone thinks about the Encyclopaedia Brittanica?)

It seems as if Jacobs really meant to try, sort of. But the thing is, I don’t believe you can just try out a worldview. You either adopt it or you don’t. (“There is no try,” as Yoda says.) I don’t believe that Jacobs has made an authentic attempt to understand the Christian mindset at all. What he might call living a Christian life turns out to be nothing but following a few hand-picked, quirky behavioral codes (chosen more for their colorfulness than out of any sense of hierarchy or importance).

Jacobs makes a (very long) list of all of the “rules” and “suggestions” from the bible (Old and New Testament) and then tries to live a lot of them, including bizarre ones like not wearing clothing with mixed fibers and getting a chicken sacrificially killed for him. Reading the book is slow, slow going at first because the first two-thirds of the book are focused only on the Old Testament, which to me is such a very little part of the gospel. (But then, Jacobs is a [non-practicing] Jew.) But I waded through the first part out of eagerness to see what he would make of the last (and most important) part. The coming of Christ can, after all, fulfill, enrich, explain, and/or magnify what came before. Would Jacobs see this? Would he feel it? Would he honestly explore Christianity, actually ask the big questions, open up his heart to the possibility of conversion?

Of course not. Sigh.

Here’s his explanation for not even trying: “I could adopt the cognitive-dissonance strategy: If I act like Jesus is God, eventually maybe I will start to believe that Jesus is God. That’s been my tactic with the God of the Hebrew Bible, and it’s actually started to work. But there’s a difference. When I do it with the Hebrew God, I feel like I’m trying on my forefathers’ robes and sandals. There’s a family connection. Doing it with Jesus would feel uncomfortable. I’ve come to value my heritage enough that it’d feel disloyal to convert.” [Ack. Far be it for him to actually go so far as to make himself uncomfortable during this year. Perish the thought that he actually open his mind to something.] “Which naturally leads to this quandary: If I don’t accept Christ, can I get anything out of the New Testament at all? What if I follow the moral teachings of Jesus but don’t worship him as God? Or is that just a fool’s errand? Again, depends whom you ask” (p. 256). And then, of course, he goes on to highlight various philosophies on how literally one out to interpret the bible, which is all this book really is anyhow: one friendly, all-American non-practicing Jewish guy with a sense of humor appearing to give religion the old American go because that’s the kind of guy he is, but really copping out by highlighting the most extreme and oddball interpretations, holding all the contradictions up against each other, and coming out at the end a little more thankful, a little more moral, a little more appreciative of his religious buddies.

Later he says, “It comes back to the idea of surrendering. I still haven’t been able to fully surrender my spirit or emotions, but I have at least surrendered some of my bank account.” Which really sums up the book, to me. “Hey, I donated a little time, a little study, a little money to trying out this religion thing. Didn’t do anything for me. Yeah, yeah, so I didn’t invest my heart in it or anything—but you gotta admit it was a trip, right? Can’t we be friends and call it good?”

Bleh, what a let-down. And this time it wasn’t even funny.

Kathy's Cake

Sometimes you make a friend and you say, "We should get together with our husbands," or "We should get our kids together." And then you try it and things just don't work out. The kids don't hit it off. The husbands don't hit it off. The kids hit it off too well and they are so hyper you don't want to do it again.

It's pretty rare that hubby and I find families that we both like that click well with our kids. I don't know why that is--are we especially difficult people to get along with? Maybe. It makes it harder because lots of the friends I make are writer people and R, although extremely supportive of my writing and of my socializing with them, and very cheerful about hanging with them, doesn't always see them as the most enjoyable social partners for him. So he'll go along willingly, but I know he's being a trooper, and I long for a different scene in which he is as eager as I and enjoying himself as much.

So--lucky us, we hit paydirt last night. Turns out my writer-friend Melinda happens to be married to a guy who went to Roger's same mission! Ka-ching! Also, they have the sweetest, out-reaching kids that my kids really, really liked. All this, and they have a family bluegrass band (I love bluegrass!) and they performed for us last night. (What a cool thing for my boys to see--kids having fun playing instruments!) Anyway, here's hoping that Melinda's family liked us at least a little bit . . .

The star of the evening, though, was Kathy's Cinnamon Bundt Cake recipe. I got this from Kathy C., a childhood friend of mine who also happens to be married to a guy my husband really likes and enjoys. So I guess it was appropriate refreshments for our evening last night. Here's the recipe:

1 yellow cake mix
1 small pkg vanilla pudding mix
3/4 c. veg. oil
3/4 c. water
4 eggs
2 t. vanilla
Cinnamon/sugar mixture for filling (sugar mixed with cinnamon to taste)

Mix cake and pudding mixes dry. Add oil and water, mix well. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each. Add vanilla. Beat high 6-8 minutes (I never last that long--which explains why my rolls never turn out, eh, Melinda?).

Grease bundt pan. Then, instead of flouring it, coat with cinnamon/sugar mixture. Pour in 1/3 batter, then sprinkle liberally with cinn/sugar. Repeat twice.

Bake 40 minutes at 350. (I like it a tiny bit on the raw side.) Cool 8 minutes and remove from pan.

Blast for Nie Nie

Well, I had a fantastic time yesterday at our book-release/fundraiser for Nie Nie. Knowing her (well, knowing her sister, anyway), I'm sure she would be happy that we had so dang much fun. I don't have pictures yet, but here's a link to the KSL news story about us and here's one to the Deseret News article.

I need to say thanks to so many people! Thanks to Barbara, who gave me the idea (and the template) for a press release to get the news people there. Thanks to Kristi and Melinda, my writing compadres who came a long way to support me! Thanks to Stephen, who is really trying to make a bridge in the LDS writing community. (And here's hoping we'll hear from Noelle soon . . . ) Thanks to my mother-in-law, who commissioned me to buy a book for her. Thanks to the hundreds of other people who came! And thanks to my Segullah sisters who are so very much fun to hang out with and who gave me my first chance to be in HARDBACK!!!!!

This just in . . .

"Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era."

. . . from "Poetry Bailout Will Restore Confidence of Readers"
By Charles Bernstein of Harper's Magazine. Check it out!

My Twin

I have Google set up to let me know when my name appears on the internet. In the last week, I’ve been getting daily reports about my namesake who has been on trial this week for murder in Canada. Apparently, she killed her husband who she says has been very abusive to her.

I don’t really know what to think about this. I feel for her. I worry for myself (is she a criminal? Will I ever get mixed up with her somehow? Is she the one who has been hogging the darleneyoung.com domain?). I think about how different our lives have been.

There’s no doubt about it that I am a golden child. Happy childhood, relatively wealthy and highly satisfying adult life. Does it do any good if I feel guilty about this? No, no, says the Spirit. Not guilt—just gratitude. And, from that gratitude, good will for others.

So here come my prayers in your behalf, Darlene Young. I hope that you can find some hope and some comfort in all of this.

Oooooh, I am so clever.

I moved some of our family board games from the dusty shelves in the deepest dungeon of the basement up to the open shelves in the sitting room off of the kitchen. Suddenly my children have discovered games! They are actually sitting on the floor for a couple of hours at a time, playing with each other! Without plugs!!!!!!!

GENCON

Sometimes I even get homesick for it. I love it. I always love it, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

I'm speaking, of course, about General Conference.

This year I almost missed part of it. Well, I wouldn’t have missed it because I would have listened to it in the car, but it’s not the same. But when I was sitting there, surrounded by my kids and the legos and the snacks and the cuddles and the calming, familiar voices of leaders who want only to help me I was so glad that I wasn’t anywhere else.

I always enjoy Saturday morning the most, probably because that’s when I’m fresh. By Sunday afternoon I feel as if I’ve been drinking out of a firehose, and I wonder if the talks from that session would affect me more had I heard them earlier on. I still love the feeling, though, and look forward to hearing all the talks again later when I download them to my MP3 player.

So I don’t have anything specific to say about any of the talks, but I just wanted to say how sweet it is to have such a warm, safe place in my life as General Conference. I feel centered now and ready to take a deep breath and try again.

(A friend once said to me, “If guilt does anything more to you than make you stop sinning, it’s not from God.” I agree completely. But there’s a different kind of guilt that is not negative but is really a sweet nudging that is always accompanied by a bright splash of hope that I really can do better and, what’s more, I really want to—an excited feeling of anticipation, really. That’s the RIGHT kind of correction from the Holy Ghost, and that’s the kind I get when I listen to conference with the Spirit. Ahhhh.)

Anne Patchett

Last night I went to listen to Anne Patchett. It was a sort of victory for me because I hate crowds, hate parking downtown, and hate being a “fan.” In spite of all that I drove myself downtown, parked, and attended a very interesting lecture by the author of Bel Canto and Truth and Beauty, among others. I’m very glad I did.

It’s always encouraging to hear from a writer who was determined to write and eventually succeeded. So just that was worthwhile. But she said some interesting things, which I’ll quote here just for you.

How odd is it that people pat you on the hand when you are a writer and say, “I hope you keep on writing, dear.” Can you imagine anyone patting their doctor on the way out of the exam room and saying, “I hope you keep on with what you’re doing”?

From a book she loves called Buddhism Without Beliefs: The creative process (for anything—writing, cooking, running, playing the cello) consists of three steps. 1) Commitment, 2) Technical Accomplishment, and 3) Imagination. In that order. With writing, people sometimes get those steps backwards, or think that #3 is all.

Imagination is a muscle. Do you use it?

Imagination is what makes us empathetic creatures.

“I am a professional imaginer.” I bring my emotional life to the book, not facts from my life (emotional truth, not true events).

Fiction can be true in the way that non-fiction cannot. You are God, you tell the truth of that action. Be true to the action, the narrative. You have to let the train get to where it’s going.

When asked, “Where do your images come from?” Commitment and practice. “It’s the way you train your brain to see the world.”

She talked a little bit about how her life seems to be imitating her life. At least twice after she has published a book, real people whose lives are surprisingly similar to characters she’s created have shown up in her life. For example, an opera singer just like the one she created in Bel Canto contacted her because she had read the book after all of her acquaintances had told her to read it “because that’s you!” Turns out that yes, the character and the real opera singer were surprisingly similar. And now Anne and the real singer are best friends. It happened again with another character from another book.

So here’s the weird thing. I just read Patchett’s memoir, Truth and Beauty, this year. It had been on my list for a year or two because my friend Kathy had recommended it. Shortly after I met Kathy, when I was first starting to get sick and no one knew what was wrong and I was convinced it was cancer (because of the family history), Kathy was reading this book, and she said, “Isn’t this weird? I am a memoirist and you are a poet. And I am reading this memoir about the friendship between a memoirist and a poet. And in this book, the poet is sick.” (She, kindly, didn’t tell me that the poet eventually dies of a drug OD.) But the point was that it was odd that the book mirrored our own friendship.

Anne Patchett said, “I guess I just imagine the kinds of people I want to know, write a book about them, and then they fall into my life.”

I didn’t get a chance to ask a question, but if I had, I would have asked, “Are you one of those writers who is haunted by characters, full-fledged, or do you construct characters?” It seems to me that it is odd how writers are one or the other type. (There are so many books on constructing character!) My problem is that I am neither. I am not haunted by some interesting characters who want me to tell their stories. But I hate the thought of sitting down and just sort of building a character like out of Legos. Which, I suppose, is why I am pretty much the author of nothing worth mentioning. Sigh.

.

More on, well, me.

I love it when AMV interviews me because for a little while I can imagine that there are people out there who are actually following my "career"! A girl can dream!

Meme: 13 irrational fears

1. Biggest fear by far: that while we are happily driving along, the car will spontaneously combust. And this one intensifies greatly when I am pregnant or post-partum.

2. That I have some very obscure but easily-cured disease that requires a very certain medication. I don’t mind so much (well, actually I do) having a disease that’s NOT curable, as long as we all know for sure that’s what it is. The big fear is that I could have been feeling well all this time with a simple pill or maybe a really easy surgery, if only we had found the right test to confirm it.

3. Wasted time.

4. Staying up past my natural prime bedtime so that I miss the wave.

5. Crowds. Hate ‘em, hate ‘em, hate ‘em.

6. Parking downtown.

7. Making phonecalls, especially visiting teaching calls but also just plain old chatty calls. Also, discovering somehow that I am considered the “problem child” in the ward that no one wants for a visiting teaching companion.

8. Running into an ex-boyfriend on a bad hair day. Or, even worse, someone I knew peripherally in high school.

9. Dogs not on leashes. (OK, this is more of extreme annoyance than fear.)

10. Having a check bounce.

11. Discovering (who knows how?) that I could have written an amazing book if I had just tried.

12. Finding out someone is angry at me. Much worse: being confronted by that person. Agggggh! Angry confrontation!!!!!!

13. Finding out I have deeply hurt someone’s feelings.

20th High School Reunion

(Yes, that's me in 1988.)

So I went to the reunion.

I really was pitifully excited about it. I’ve always been a hanger-on, trying to keep people in my life long after they should probably be let go. I don’t know why. Even worse, I try to collect people after the fact—writing notes or letters to people I hardly knew saying that I regret not knowing them better (and I really MEAN it when I say it!). So after last month when hubby dragged me around his wealthy, eastside reunion of his wealthy eastside high school, I had visions of my own reunion and looked forward to it anxiously.

Well, we’re not wealthy or east side. I guess it shows. (You’d think we’d at least have a sweet spirit.)

The first question was whether there would even BE a reunion. I couldn’t remember who my senior class officers were, but whoever they were, they certainly weren’t sending stuff around, asking for addresses, telling us to save dates or anything.

Then one day, on a total fluke, I stumbled across something on the internet about a reunion for my high school. I guess one of the officers decided to push up her sleeves and pull something off all by herself! Good for her! But there’s only so much one person can do, you know?

First, it was very, very poorly attended (probably because it was poorly publicized. I don’t even know whether anyone made any attempt to contact anyone other than by asking people to spread the word. No effort at physical address-contacting, for example).

When I go to a reunion, I go for three reasons: 1) to see my old friends again, 2) to see the people that were friendly acquaintances that I wish now that I had made better friends with, and 3) to see how the rest of the school turned out.

Well, I got some of each of those things, so I guess I shouldn’t gripe too much. But my biggest disappointment was with group #2. THEY’RE the ones I went to see, and they’re the ones I saw least of. Sigh.

I know other schools must be like this but it seems like my school was unnaturally divided into two groups: the boozers and the non. The boozers had a really good turnout at the reunion. We heard that the party went on very late into the night after all of us at the seminary table went home to our kids. So I guess the reunion turned out to be everything that SOMEONE hoped. Just not me. Blah.

Yeah, I admit that it WAS nice to see my friends again (although I keep in touch with most of them anyway) and to remember WHY they were my friends (hey, it was either them or the boozers).

Anyway, I had a pretty good time my senior year in 1988. But I wouldn't go back. For anything. My life is lightyears better now. Here's one of the reasons:

(Taken the night of my 20th high school reunion. Hey, at least I got to go home with the best-looking one there, and he was even sober.)

I Just Met a Girl Named Maria

Well, last week I met Maria, the woman who has been assigned yours truly as an ESL tutor. Becoming an ESL tutor has been a dream of mine ever since my early college days when a guy brought me along with him as a date to a fraternity “exchange” with a bunch of kids who didn’t speak English. I LOVED mingling with these kids, laughing as we tried to understand each other. (Didn’t love my date, though.)

So I knew I wanted to tutor ESL. I went through a rigorous (about 30 hours) training that also required me to shell out money in order to become one, and then I waited several months for a “match.” (Don’t know what the delay was—apparently the people who want help sit on that waiting list for years sometimes.) As you know, I've been trying to teach myself Spanish because I have always been particularly drawn to Hispanic people. So naturally I hoped for a Hispanic student. I was very happy when I went to my match-meeting and met Maria.

Maria is from Mexico—some city that I can’t pronounce or figure out. She has been in America for four years and knows almost no English. It’s amazing how insulated some of the areas of the city are—she can pretty much do whatever she wants because so many places in West Valley speak Spanish. (I wonder if she’s one of my husband’s patients . . . ? He practices in West Valley and has many Latino patients. I’ll have to find out.) But her kids are in the school system and doing well in English and I guess she’s eager to assimilate as well.

I can’t express the admiration I feel for someone being brave enough to step out of her comfort zone and learn a new language like this. She really could go her whole life without English, but she won’t. Statistics say it will take her at least four years, if not more, to really be speaking and understanding well, especially if she continues to speak Spanish at home and around the community. So this will be a long, slow process for her. But she's determined enough to get herself to the ESL center and go through the testing and sit on the waiting list. And determined enough to get to the library twice a week to meet me.

As with my fears regarding homeschooling, I am mostly afraid of failing her by leaving loopholes. But, also as with homeschooling, I think that she will be OK anyway. She’s got enough interest and drive that when she encounters something I might have left out, she’ll ask. I think my job is just to be patient and positive and show up and talk with her. (I do, however, prepare a curriculum each time.)

Maria brings her two-year-old son with her to our meetings. And I got a fantastic idea over the weekend: I will bring children’s books (Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?) and have Maria read them to her son for part of our time together. Ha ha! That way she doesn’t feel like I’m treating her like a child with baby books but she’ll get the same benefits that any child gets from such repetitive picture books. I may even give her the books to keep. (We have so many that P. has outgrown.) Ooooh, and I’ll bring along the alphabet puzzle, too. And the number puzzle. Ahh, I’m a genius.

This whole thing just delights me. I am so happy to be able to do it.

A great September

Still haven’t been writing lately.

Scary thing is, I haven’t missed it.

I’ve just been having such a great autumn, enjoying and living to the hilt. I’ve loved church, loved watching football, loved playing games with my kids. Loved visiting the cabin a couple of weeks ago. I’ve enjoyed jogging, practicing guitar, learning Spanish. I met the woman I will be tutoring English to (Maria) and I’m excited about that.

The kids are off track and I’ve been taking them to parks and throwing a ball around. I started up with my women’s choir again. I’ve been filling in as poetry editor for Segullah, and brainstorming ways to get more poetry submissions.

I’m bored with writing picture books and sick of my novel. I think I want to try another novel soon, but I’m putting it off because life is so nice right now! Why throw myself into something that will haunt me?

So I’m having a season of Just Being. And it feels fantastic. (And yes, by the way, I HAVE been feeling better physically lately. Thanks for your prayers.)

Some tidbits from Stephen King's "On Writing"

"Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic."

"Use the first word that comes to mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. . . If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with another word--of course you will, there's always another word--but it probably won't be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean."

"I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing."

Such the athlete

This morning I ran for 40 minutes. Well, jogged. Kinda slowly. Still, this is a HUGE accomplishment for me. I have NEVER run this long before in my life. I have passed through periods in which I have jogged regularly, but I never got beyond 30 minutes, and somehow I had always seen that as some kind of a limit for me. But no more!

I’ve always thought of myself as a weakling and challenged physically. I was the brunt of some major teasing in elementary school and junior high school for my inability to hit a volleyball, catch a baseball or connect with a soccer ball. And some of the worst teasing actually came from my junior high gym teacher (her nickname for me: “bird arms.” Talk about a teacher having a lifetime effect on a kid!). So it has only been since adulthood that I have made goals physically and actually reached some of them.

So this is a big deal for me. I know it’s really a little thing, especially since it was ON THE TREADMILL and not on real ground at all. Still, several months ago I was jogging five minutes at a time, so it has been a long, slow process.

And where to go from here? A marathon? No, no! I’m trying to extend life and its quality, not shorten it! (Although a half-marathon sounds interesting . . . maybe next year?) My goal is to get to 45 minutes and then hold there and try to increase my speed—also to start cross-training at that point. (I realized the need for this when I climbed the 250 steps of the Bunker Hill monument last month and about died.)

Reading Flannery

I'm having a blast reading the letters of Flannery O'Connor in The Habit of Being. It is so good that, only 1/4 through it, I declared to hubby that I was sick of copying down my favorite quotes and needed to own this book. (I do not buy many books.) Being the amazingly sweet and supportive person that he is, he ordered it from amazon that very evening.

I predict that I will be sharing a lot of nuggets with you here. And now I present today's thought-provoking observation:

"I think it must be easier on the nerves to publish poetry because it is not generally misunderstood as it is not generally read."

Tee-hee!

School fund-raisers

Can I just say that I think there is something absolutely immoral about using children to raise funds for anything? I’m talking particularly about the obscene School Fundraiser. You know, the ones where the kids attend an assembly (parents not invited) at which professional “motivational” people show them slides and videos of all the cool STUFF they could earn—slide after slide, visual after visual, blatantly appealing to the kids’ GREED for stuffstuffstuffstuffstuff—and then spend ninety seconds explaining how they hit people up to order STUFF in order to earn these rewards. Disgusting!

I happened to sit in on the assembly this year because of a mistake in scheduling for my classroom volunteer time. You would not believe the cheers and screaming from these kids when they saw what they could earn. Of course, the presenters show the smallest prize first (a glow-in-the-dark necklace! For just five orders!) and then they move gradually up to the biggest (an i-pod! For just 250 orders!). These kids practically took the roof off the gymn with their screams when they saw that. And of course, here they came at the end of the day with their precious catalogs and PRIZE BROCHURES clutched under their arms, ready to hit up the parents, the neighbors, grandma and grandpa and dad’s coworkers so they could get their precious i-pods.

(And I won’t even get into the amazing rip-off that these catalogs are full of. $9.00 for 7 ounces of chocolate-covered almonds?????)

What a very clear refresher course in some of the reasons I do NOT like capitalism. I’m sorry if that is offensive to your “this country was established by God on the godly principle of greed--oops I mean capitalism” philosophy. But I do NOT believe it is healthy to bombard people constantly with visions of stuff they don’t need—especially when these people are young children. It’s hard enough to try to limit the materialism in my children’s world without their SCHOOL CRAMMING IT DOWN THEIR THROATS!!!! It sends mixed signals when a child’s school (a major force of authority in his life) appears to “assign” him to go out and sell stuff. No, I’m wrong. It is NOT a mixed signal. It is a very clear signal about society—-but one I HATE, and one that has NO BUSINESS being in the schools.

If you need money, ask me for it, please. None of this child prostitution.

(Wait a minute. They DO keep asking us to write checks in the form of higher taxes for education. And I am absolutely willing to pay them. But there are many, many people unwilling to do so. Capitalists, all of them. [Insert winking smiley here because I want you to still like me even though you are a gun-totin' patriot].)

It's here!

Voila our book!

I'm really excited about this. It's just the kind of book that would have helped me a ton when I was a new mother. None of that vague "motherhood is the highest, holiest calling" stuff--this is real, not-ignoring-the-struggles stuff--and yet it manages to instill hope and remind me why I made the choice to become a mother. I'm enjoying these essays for the first time because I wouldn't let myself read them in draft form before publication. (There are no essays by me--just five or so poems.) And these are amazing essays! I'm so proud to be association with these girls.

My only (teeny, tiny) complaint is that for the price they're charging ($19.95), I wish that they had worked a little harder on getting the resolution right on the gorgeous photos that Maralise took. I saw the photos in their digital version and they are breathtaking. But someone screwed up somewhere in the production and several of them are grainy or smudgy-looking. That's too bad for such a beautiful book.
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Breaking Dawn

Well, I read it.

Non-spoiler response: it was pretty good. There were some things I didn’t like (see Spoilered Response, below), but I kept reading it and was glad to spend a little more time with these characters. As I’ve said before, I think that if the story and characters don’t grip you enough to make it worth reading even when you see little things that bother you (needs tightening, too much growling, hissing, wincing, brow-lifting, sensuality, etc.), then you’re not a natural member of her audience anyway. I think there’s a place for beach reading in this world, and I’m not embarrassed to say that I kept reading. Also, I am all-out jealous of Meyer for her imagination and ability to pull it all off.

I do want to discuss one thing here that has bothered me since the beginning. Meyer has said in an interview (I’m too lazy to look it up now but you could probably find it with a google search) that one of the LDS elements she sees in her books is a great belief in free agency.

I strongly, strongly disagree.

It is the lack of free agency in the main romantic relationship that makes it unbelievable to me and highly unsatisfying. Think about it: why are Edward and Bella drawn toward each other? He: can’t read her thoughts and likes how she smells. Nothing else on his part to show why he is enchanted by her, why he would wait hundreds of years for her (and remember how much older he is!). She: finds him very, very attractive physically. Oh, and likes his superhero powers.

Are these things the basis of a long relationship?

I’ve never been a believer in the soul mate theory. I think that love is a choice and that in order for a relationship to last past the honeymoon it must continue to be a choice, and that the partners must always remember that they made this choice freely. We make the choice based on the Spirit and also on the things we observe about the person we want to love. (And remember that infatuation and love are not the same thing.) Bella’s and Edward’s romance has seemed so opposite of everything I find romantic because they are both so PASSIVE in the whole thing. The infatuation HAPPENS to them, having nothing to do with actually knowing each other and being together.

Which is why I have always rooted for Jacob. I am a sucker for relationships that begin as best friends, anyway. But when we see Bella and Jacob interact, we can believe in the relationship. It’s obvious they like each other, have a good feeling together, are seeing each other realistically. THAT’s the kind of relationship that a marriage should be built on.

And this whole imprinting thing. DUH—can you get any FURTHER AWAY FROM FREEDOM OF CHOICE? SHEESH!!!!

OK, now for the Spoiler response:





























































First, I have to say that I predicted Jacob’s subject of imprinting way before it happened, and I was a little disappointed to be right. I hate it when my predictions are right.
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Second, and as a continuation of my argument that Edward’s love for Bella is not believable and certainly not something to base a marriage on: the whole thing about Edward not being able to read Bella’s thoughts and thus being drawn to her leads to trouble when we see that he might, eventually, read all of her thoughts someday. So there goes any sense of mystery or otherness in the relationship. I can’t believe a relationship would work in that situation. Really. I think people need some otherness in their marriages—otherwise, why marry at all? Who wants to be married to themselves?

Speaking of thought-reading, why didn’t Aro see Charlie when he read all of Edward’s thoughts? Wouldn’t he have used that as an excuse to attack? (They are not keeping the secret.) I mean, sure, Charlie doesn’t know EXACTLY, but I doubt Aro would be picky about that.

And what about Jasper’s giving away the secret to the lawyer guy?

Here are some other loose threads that bugged me. If Bella is allowed to let him read her thoughts when he gets inside her shield, why couldn’t he read them when she was protecting everyone within her shield during the showdown?

And what happened with Leah? There was so much plot time on her that I thought we’d see some resolution there, but that whole subplot just dropped off.

I felt dissatisfied with the explanations about why Alice had Bella get the ID cards and all. I think that ought to have been fleshed out a little more.

Some of the story was a little too much for me, stomach-wise. I did not like the whole baby-eats-its-way-out stuff. It was a very clever way of getting us through the whole Bella becomes vampire thing, though. But if I hadn’t already been so involved with these characters (over all the books), I may have been done at that point.

I did enjoy all of the pack/werewolf stuff. (I just love Jacob, I guess.) And I kept reading, which is really the mark of a success IMO. I’m glad I read them all.

More Stake Conference

Our General Authority was Elder Bruce Porter, and he gave two fantastic talks that were very nourishing to me. (I also really enjoyed his wife’s talks.) He said just the kinds of things I always pray to hear at stake conference. Here are some of my favorites:

We spend too much time in the church talking about lesser things. Too much time as individuals sq1ueezing every minute to get stuff done. We view ourselves as machines. His father wrote to him while he was on his mission, “Dear son, are you paying enough attention to rest, exercise, good food, prayer and scriptures? If you don’t, you will simply spin your wheels. You will be relying on your OWN mind.”

The song, “I Did It My Way” will be sung by those in the Telestial Kingdom.

This is not a gospel of guilt. Sometimes no matter what choice you make (like whether to go to stake temple night or back to school night or help your ailing mother) you feel guilty. DON’T. “If one of your kids needs you and the Holy Ghost tells you you should miss temple night to spend time with him, you would OFFEND THE LORD by going to temple night.” “We need never feel guilty for not doing things that are good so long as we are doing other things that are good that we feel prompted to do.”

They were both great talks. So keep the little suggestion I’m going to make here in perspective.

He was talking about how women in particular struggle with too much guilt. As an illustration, he told about a woman he knows who has ten children and who “keeps an impeccable household” (at this point I nudged Rog) who was discouraged because she felt she fell so short of what she should be. He, of course, reassured her that she was doing fine and needed to lighten up on herself. I told Rog, “That story would be so much more powerful if he would mention that her house WASN’T impeccable.”

And another comment was that he believed that “all mothers who try should get a free pass into heaven.” Probably that’s true, because everyone who tries should get to heaven, because the act of trying shows which way their hearts yearn. But NOT just because she is a mother. I buck at the age-old angel-mother stereotype that just because we’re mothers (or women) we are naturally more spiritual. This kind of rhetoric doesn’t help those of us who are hungry to be told HOW to measure (the Lord’s way) how we are doing, and how to know when and how we need to improve. The hardest thing about parenting is that there is no way to tell how you’re doing, no discernible relationship (at least at first) between effort/intention and results. Obviously, there must be a way to be doing things wrong and a way to be doing them right, but it’s so hard to tell what that way is.

The answer, of course, is that the only judgment anyone should make of themselves is just to assess how we are doing in our efforts at discipleship. Nothing else really matters.

Steak Conference

So I’m sitting in stake conference, feeling rather smug that our kids are behaving so well. They are allowed to bring notebooks and pens to stake conference (but not to regular Sunday meetings) and they were doodling away very quietly. An hour or so into the meeting, 7-year-old passes me his notebook so that I can appreciate his artwork.

The page is titled “Steak in a Circle,” and pictures a large circle with, yes, a piece of raw-looking marbled meat in it.

So can you tell me what this particular piece of art says about the psyche of my child? Couldn’t he draw something nice, like a flower? Or even the typical violent jedi pictures that abound at our house? What’s with the slab of flesh?

(By the way, he followed it up with “Flower in an oval,” at my request. But the next one was a croquet mallet pounding a lectern and microphone. Psychotherapists here we come.)

Writing Seminar 101 (glorified book report)

Well, I told you I’m not writing these days. But I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Particularly, reading about writing—at least, that’s what I read a lot of before I decided to break up with my novel. So I thought I'd share some of the stuff I've been learning lately. This is really not a book report but just some of the notes I took. Hope you enjoy them.

The following notes are from Fiction First Aid: Instant Remedies for Novels, Stories and Scripts by Raymond Obstfeld. This was a pretty interesting book about the nuts and bolts of constructing (well, fixing) a novel. There was a TON of info in this book, but I wrote down only the things that I felt were most interesting to ME, so that’s what you’ll get here.

3 Areas of Character Development for Major and Minor Characters:

1. Background. For minors, it’s not necessary to give much info, if any about their past unless: a) the past is somehow linked with the protagonist or the plot, or b) you can provide one event that defines who they are (defines the kind of person he is, explains his motivation, or foreshadows a choice he may make later in the story).

2. Internal conflict.

3. Personality.

Protagonists must be at least one: likeable, compelling, redeemable.

Making a character likeable:

1. Give her a sense of humor.
2. Give her a seemingly impossible task to perform.
3. Give her an emotional motive for her actions.
4. Give her intelligence that promises insight.

It’s endearing to make her vulnerable but make sure she is not whiny about her flaws. The less she TALKS about it, the better.

Idea for getting to know your character: in your character’s voice, complete the following: “My mother always . . . “ and “My father never . . .”

Types of protagonists:

1. Boss: someone with control over main character (MC)’s life
2. Family: someone with control over mc’s emotional life
3. Criminal: someone who can be overcome by force
4. Land: SETTING embodies what MC must face within herself.

To improve antagonist and characterization:

1. unique personality
2. unpredictable actions (avoid clichéd evil acts)
3. empathetic motivation.

Protagonist overcomes antagonist by:

1. Direct confrontation
2. Overcoming need to defeat antagonist at all.

The Defining Scene: scene that defines the antagonist, both sympathetically and unsympathetically. Usually this is the scene that introduces him to the reader.

Ask about antagonist:
What do I want most out of life?
What do I most fear losing?
Where’s my moral line; what would I stop short of doing?
Why am I like this?
Am I comfortable with who I am?

Theme:
Plot is what happens. Character is to whom it happens. Theme is why the plot happens.

Symbols come in five varieties:
title, homage plot, character names, objects, settings

How to revise:
Do it chapter by chapter or scene by scene. Do it five times (for each scene/chapter, then move on), in this order:
1. Structure. Goal is a compelling plot. Look for too passive/talking heads, no build-up/anticlimactic.
2. Texture. Goal is to sharpen descriptive passages to make characters, setting and action more vivid. Look for too much/little description, clichéd word choices, too many adjectives, info dump, info in wrong places.
3. Dialogue. Goal is to elicit character personality through conversation. Look for too many/few tag lines or tag lines in wrong places, bland or melodramatic dialogue.
4. Editing. Goal is to tighten pace and continuity. Look for repetition, both outright and through implication, and for slow passages.
5. Blending. Look for soft spots, unclear character motivations, actions that seem contrived. (You can fix these by adding scenes earlier to show motivation or stakes.)

I thought this was definitely a worthwhile read, especially for someone who has tried a novel and wants to learn how to fix it.

Boston

Yes, I've been ignoring you.

Because I was out of town. I'd like to tell you about my week, but first we need to get some business out of the way. My friend Courtney is helping her sister's family because of the tragic accident that happened to them. You probably know Courtney's blog, but if you haven't been there lately, trot on over and see what happened and what you can do to help.

And now, for a travelogue . . .

Nope. Not going to do it. Travelogues are pretty boring to read, don't you think? I'm not a fan of them, nor of the family-report types of blogs either. (Not to imply that I don't adore YOURS, though.) And, admit it, the only reason you still read mine is that I rarely report on my kids or my trips (well, excepting Panama, I admit). So I won't give you a travelogue.

But I will say that I never realized how barren and dry this place was until I saw the northeast. Gorgeous, lush, woodsy suburbs with colonial houses tucked into them like cabins. Why would people go camping when their back yards look like the woodsy Utah canyons? I saw some beautiful, beautiful land. And then we flew west and I watched the brown get closer and closer and then we landed in it and now I'm home. Sigh.

But I always, always love coming home. And the World's Best Husband had the house SPOTLESS for me. And it was so nice to see and touch and smell all my boys again. I've got a great life. Just need to get over the jet lag now.

Anyone want squash? The garden took over the back yard while I was gone. It's the ongoing curse of the over-fertile garden plot and the vegetable-reluctant family.

Not writing.

Well, I’m not. I mean, I DID make the deadline for revising my poem for Irreantum (whew!), but other than that I’ve done a Fat Lot of Nothing. And I feel just fine about that.

After my breakup with my novel, I guess I’m just taking a general break. Part of it, though, is a result of reading The Artist’s Way, by Julie Cameron. I’m going to report on this book more later, but what I’ll tell about now is her suggestion that we take a week off of reading. (What? Yes, you heard me.) Her point is that some of us (not mentioning any names) use reading like a drug, filling up all of our empty moments with words so that we are not hearing our true selves and our own thoughts much.

GUILTY.

So she suggests we stop reading for a week. I haven’t done that, but I’m considering it. I’m also considering taking a LONG break from writing, for the same reason: to be able to hear more clearly my true self, to learn what I want to be doing and how and why. I’ve been putting so much pressure on myself to produce, especially since I have now reached the time of life when I had planned to Get Serious about writing. And it has become like a job, something I dread, something I’m in a hurry to do and to see results from. I’m not playing anymore, and so I have squelched my creativity and lost the joy.

I plan to get it back. I have faith that it will come back. I’ve never been able to quit writing for long. I believe God wants me to be writing and approves of my joy in it. I just need to get back to that faithful place where I accept it, relish it, enjoy it without expecting anything to come of it (agents, contracts, fame and fortune). I like me better when I don’t care so much whether my stuff is getting approval. So I’m taking a break to get all that gunk out of my system. I’ll start again fresh sometime.

That Phase

Well, I made it. I’m there.

My baby went to kindergarten this week.

I have been anticipating this stage for a long, long time (about twelve years, seven months, to be exact—ever since Mr. Colic entered my life and I realized that my life wouldn’t be my own for a very, very long time). I’m not ashamed to admit that I have looked forward to this. It would be much more socially-acceptable to say that I am devastated because I love spending time with my kids so much. But I’m not. I do enjoy my kids, sometimes. But I really, really like having some discretionary time with no one nearby to whine at me. I’m not embarrassed about this.

So what did I do with my first day? I’ll tell you. I walked the Big Guy to school, and cried the teeniest, tiniest little bit—-not because I was sad, but because I’m a big boob at those times when I’m supposed to be nostalgic. The whole “this would be an important scene in the movie of my life” thing gets to me. It WAS touching to see those little guys, feeling so big, march off into the school. Here’s a poem I wrote about the experience when his older brother went:

To Jon, On The First Day of Kindergarten

So eager to get there, you were, as was I--
both of us waiting so long for this day--
skipping along, with your big backpack flapping
(the Star Wars one from your big brother, too big)
and your new "big boy" haircut,
you catch sight of the door.

That's it. You are gone now,
breaking away to join up behind
all the kids facing forward in shiny new shoes.

I've been facing forward myself—but not now!
I stand and I stare at the back of your head
(there! you turn and wave shyly and blow me a kiss)
and wonder, and wonder, do I even know you?
Can I even say that I ever have known you?

One line of little souls, facing the doors,
A parallel line of camera-strapped moms.

I give up the care of your body by inches.
But what of your soul? Have I touched it at all?

I won't panic, I tell myself, still there is time--
The mornings are gone but there are the afternoons.
Tightly I'll cling to them, not looking forward,
so tightly, I'll cling, to the very last inch.

(Only this time I wasn't so regretful. That kid is ready. I'm ready. Bring it on.)

Anyway, then I walked home and I did Lesson 1 in my Power-Glide Spanish course. Then I took a long nap and read something for fun. Finally, I practiced guitar, which I haven’t done for years. It was FANTASTIC.

I was smiling when they got home.

Why does it always happen . . .

. . . that one kid brings home some junky dollar-toy from a birthday party favor bag like, oh, say a kazoo, for example, and plays with it for a few minutes and then for the next two weeks it turns up in all sorts of places around the house and finally I lay down the law and it ends up in the bottom of the toybox never to be played with again and so when I finally get around to cleaning out the toybox I throw it in the garbage [take a huge breath here] and then the very, very next day the boy’s brother brings home a duplicate of that very kazoo from another birthday party and suddenly kazoos are in fashion--in great demand, even--and boy #1 tears his room apart looking for the kazoo that is now sitting under banana peels in the dumpster and then there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth when he finds out the truth and the whining goes on for longer than the child every played with the thing in the first place? Huh? Huh? Yes, I’m talking to you. Tell me, why does that always happen?

Filling the bucket

I’ve had some great opportunities to fill my artistic and emotional bucket lately. Here are a few:

1. Hubby and I took advantage of the consolation prize we got after complaining to the Anniversary Inn about our horrible experience there last time (which was another free night there). This one was much better—partially because we chose a room in the basement hoping to decrease the chance of noise from drunk neighbors and partially because we brought earplugs! But my favorite part of the outing was a long walk we took past the houses in the avenues. I love to walk at dusk when people’s lights are on but they haven’t pulled the drapes yet (yes, I’ve told you before that I’m a peeping tom) and I love to imagine what it would be like to live in one of those tall old houses in the avenues. R is happy to let me walk around and fantasize in the hopes that my fantasies will satisfy me enough and I’ll never ask to actually buy a house there. (We would be horrible owners of an old house since we don’t know how to do anything as far as repairs go.) I can’t figure out why these tall old houses fascinate me so—maybe it’s because my favorite cousins lived in one when I was growing up, and it was the location of many happy hidde-and-seek games with it’s tall closets and back stairway and (best of all) inset bookshelves and huge porch. Anyway, I couldn’t keep from grinning as we walked around buying all the houses we passed. I was just so happy to be alive, and healthy enough to take a walk with my love.

2. Last night we saw Prince Caspian (finally at the dollar theater). C. S. Lewis always does it to me. My favorite scene was when Susan and Peter took a walk with Aslan. Lewis doesn’t let us into that scene (nor did the filmmakers let us hear what Aslan said to them), but we hear afterward that Aslan was explaining why Susan and Peter won’t be able to come back to Narnia. Peter says to Edmund and Lucy later, “It’s not like how I thought it would be. But it’s alright.” I like to imagine that walk, like to imagine the Lord talking to me, telling me I’m headed for something hard (like, oh, say, being sick for a while) but that He will be there with me, and it won’t be like I thought it would but I’ll be alright.



3. Just saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on dvd and feel like my soul had been dethatched. Rent it if you can, or check it out of the library as I did (it’s in French). It’s everything that art should be. Oh, and it’s a true story. I’d read the book, but the movie is better. The movie is more artistic and therefore more true. You know what I mean, don’t you?

What have you seen lately that has filled you?