Down the Hatch

Some of my favorite treats when I was a child (and after I was cleared for possible allergies):

• Most mornings before school when I was in the third grade and Mom was expecting my sister Linda, she would make me a giant pancake. I'd put butter and sugar on it and eat it while I watched reruns of Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver. When Linda was born, the pancake service pretty much dried up. But that was okay. I just learned how to make them for myself. And I knew my mom still loved me.
• Slicing up fresh tomatoes from the garden and sprinkling them with a little salt and pepper.
• Eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with chicken noodle soup, especially when I was on the mend after being sick.
• Snacking on dilly beans (whole green beans pickled and canned with dill) and cucumbers sliced up and marinated in vinegar. More garden treats.
• Putting chocolate milk the blender and frothing it at the highest setting so it was light and full of bubbles. I especially liked to drink it when I had my nose in a book. I'm sure it was my treat of choice all the way through Dr. Dolittle, and I'm guessing through Harriet the Spy and The Outsiders as well.

A Stark Realization

Yet another story in the news spotlighting racial tensions. I have hope that as a society we're generally moving in the right direction, but it's sure not a very straight path. For as long as I can remember, I've been pretty sensitive to issues of stereotyping, prejudice, and racial injustice. Why can't we all just get along?

I discovered one day that I am not immune from seeing the world through the lens of race.

In the mid-90s, Roger and I were driving through Alabama and spent the night in Mobile. Roger was wiped out, so he stayed in the hotel while I went out to find dinner. There was a mall near the hotel, so I thought I'd grab something at an eatery.

I parked, went into the mall through a bookstore and starting hunting for food. About halfway through my hike down the main hall, it dawned on me that I was the only white person around. Everyone else was black.

At first I didn't think much of it, but then I started to get self-conscious and I wondered if it was okay that I was there. I began to worry a bit that someone might not like the fact that I was there, might think that I'd invaded the wrong turf, and that I might be in some trouble.

My discomfort was based purely on my own imagination. Not a single person did anything to make me feel that way. In fact, I'm not sure if anyone noticed me at all. Yet in my mind, I went to that place of judgment and fear.

I confess I was a little relieved that I could not find a place to eat there. But I was also disappointed in myself for not stopping to ask anyone for information.

I went back to my car and drove to the other side of the highway where there was another mall. I walked in and discovered that all of the customers were white, which made me feel uncomfortable in another sort of way. It was far more upscale than the first mall, and there were plenty of restaurants to choose from. I found a nice place to get noodles.

And I confess I was relieved to chat for a while with the Filipino woman who owned it.

Turning Water into Whine

We're talking about elements of argument and what constitutes sound logic in my UVU classes this week.

The first argument I heard and recognized as illogical was at Camp Arcadia in Maine, where my parents were counselors the summers I turned 3, 4 and 5. I was too young to be a camper, so I was put into a group with other counselor's kids. We were called Cubs, and we did all sorts of activities while our parents were working. Mom was a sailing counselor and Dad taught waterskiing.

Every day we had rest time, and there was a strict rule that we weren't allowed to take a drink from the water fountain right before we rested. The rule didn't make sense to me, so one day I complained. I was told that we couldn't take a drink because then we'd have to use the bathroom when we were supposed to be resting.

Even as a little kid I knew that water didn't go through a person's system that fast.

Unexpected Blessings

Today my thoughts keep turning to some friends who lost their first grandbaby early this morning. To save their daughter-in-law's life, doctors had to induce labor at 21 weeks. My friend Gideon, baby Olive's grandpa, wrote a lovely and heartbreaking poem in remembrance (click here to read it).

My own experience with losing a child was not the same as theirs. My life was not in danger. My pregnancy was not far enough along to know whether we were having a boy or a girl. I'd never heard its heartbeat or felt it move in my womb. My baby did not yet have fingers and toes. But today my thoughts keep turning to that time as well. My memories are so clear and the emotions so fresh.

We found out we were expecting just before our first Christmas together in 1990, then I miscarried at about 12 weeks. Being pregnant was harder than I thought it would be on me. When I finally turned a corner, Roger and I went out to dinner. Shortly after we got home, my water broke and I started cramping and bleeding. The doctor advised me to stay as still as possible. We spent a long, tortuous night that ended with a trip to the emergency room in the morning.

I didn't know then that I would never get pregnant again. In the years since, and because I never did give birth to a child, my experience with that short-lived pregnancy became increasingly meaningful.

Because it made me more human.

I tasted the irony of throwing up every day for more than two months, then heading to the kitchen to put something in my stomach to alleviate the hollow feeling that remained. I tasted the uniquely female pain and rhythm of my body instinctively contracting and pushing. I tasted the anguish of fighting to hold on to something I could not keep and did not know what I would do without.

I also tasted the transcendent state of having new life growing inside of me. And because of our shared joy and our shared loss, the bond I had with Roger became stronger than I ever imagined it could be. That tasted so good and still does.

God bless you, my friends.

An Honor and a Privilege

One of the interesting women I was hoping to interview for the book I was thinking about writing a long time ago was the Honorable Judge Helen Nies (pictured here with one of her colleagues). During the summer of 1986, I worked for her in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where she later became the Chief Judge.

Judge Nies was a phenomenal example of a woman who broke barriers in her field--not just law, but patent law--despite the fact that she took nearly ten years off to stay home with her children. Seriously, she took all those years off and still made it to the tippy top.

All summer long, I basked in the light she cast on the path for other women.

She hired me to fill in for her secretary who was on maternity leave. At the end of the summer, her secretary decided to leave her position to stay home with her baby. I imagine the judge was sad to lose someone that competent, but she expressed only delight for her and told me stories about staying home with her kids.

Can't express how lucky I was to have someone like her help me imagine my own possibilities.

An Inadvertent Time Capsule

I'm avoiding grading a huge stack of papers, so I decided to dig into a filing cabinet full of old papers in Roger's closet. I spied a folder labeled "Ideas/Dreams" that I don't think I've touched in at least 15 years. I'm about to open it up and see what's in there. I'll report back soon . . .

. . . Here we go:

• A list of "habits I need to develop by 30th birthday" that includes things like flossing teeth daily, never going to bed without doing dishes, using lunch hours wisely, and waking up happy every morning.
• A quote by Erica Jong clipped from a magazine: "I don't personalize rejection anymore. I realized that the way people treat me often has more to do with them than with me. It's totally liberating."
• Another magazine clipping: "20 Indulgent Destination Spas."
• A list of questions I put together for a book I thought about writing once, telling the stories of women who've led interesting lives and how they balanced having a family and pursuing their dreams.
• A catalog for an MBA program.
• A 1995 Volkswagon brochure.

Oh, well. I've done lots of other things.

One of My Favorite Places

I don't think I have a single bad memory associated with going to the beach. This picture might have been taken on Cape Cod when I was 8 or 9. That smile on my face reflects pure contentment.

Pay Day

Jack is really little, a fairly new talker. I hold him in my arms, settling him in to go to sleep. He lays his head on my shoulder and pats my back a few times with his hand. "I love you," he sighs.

One of the best moments ever.

Brrrrra

Time for a little change of pace.

The night before heading to camp one year, us girls got together for a sleepover. Someone (I don't know who) managed to get hold of my bra during the night and run it up the flagpole across the street from the house we were staying in.

The morning was very chilly. So was my bra.

One Year

A nice longish post in memory of my brother, who passed away a year ago today. These are the remarks I made at his memorial service.

Rob was the oldest child in our family, and I am the sister who is just younger than him, so I am the sister who has known him the longest. Nearly 48 years! It doesn’t seem possible. Today I’d like to share some of the memories I have of Robbie.

As you might have gathered from Mark and Jim’s remarks, from the time Robbie was young, computers utterly intrigued him. One of my earliest memories is watching Robbie pace the house, talking excitedly about owning his own computer someday. Honestly, I thought he was completely nuts! When we were kids, the only computer I had ever really seen was at the Smithsonian, the one that took up a whole room.

I remember when I was a teenager he tried to explain to me what hardware and software were, and I just stared at him not understanding a word he said. I had no frame of reference. But fast forward to today, and it is because of people like my brother—you know, the ones who are absolutely obsessed—I was able to hang out in a comfortable chair, on a plane, and in a car, writing and rewriting this on a laptop.

I was envious of my brother’s single-mindedness. Because he loved computers, he always knew what he wanted to do with his life. However, he didn’t exactly follow a conventional path to get where he wanted to go. He quit high school once, then he went back and tried hard to put up with all of the social drama and the busy work that was, frankly, teaching him nothing he didn’t already know. He never did graduate from high school, but he was able to convince a computer company to let him work for free until he proved that he was capable of the work they needed him to do. He did prove himself, they hired him, and he was able to live his dream of being a software engineer for many years.

In the same way he carved his own unique career path, he didn’t particularly follow other sorts of conventions like, oh, say, giving gifts at Christmas or on birthdays. But when he was struck with an idea of a gift to give, it was often an unusually generous sweeping gesture. We have several things in our home—beautiful art books and so on—that he gave to us on a whim because he thought we’d like them (and we did). Last week Robbie’s good friends in Kenya, who considered him part of their family, emailed me with memories they had of Robbie, and the messages were full of stories about his kindness and generosity, treating them to things they had never experienced before and supporting them in their efforts to gain education.

Robbie loved to read, and it was stunning how quickly he’d go through books. He just inhaled them and was always hungry for the next. When we were in high school together, the one place he felt most at home was in the school library. Our librarian was very kind about letting him help out in the library whenever he was free (and, I suspect, at times when he was supposed to be in class). When one of my classmates read about his passing in the newspaper, she sent me a note, remembering my brother taking care of business at the circulation desk.

Robbie loved to laugh, and he loved to make other people laugh. As I was growing up, I thought his sense of humor was really unusual. When I was older I got a job in the computer industry, and, well, I met all sorts of people who had a sense of humor like his.

I will never forget the way he’d try so hard to suppress a grin when the punch line was coming. He struggled to contain himself when we performed plays with our cousins at Lake Geneva every summer, or when we’d sing his favorite rendition of “Row, Row, Row the Boat,” in which we’d sing the song over and over, dropping the last word each time until we got to the end and sang “row, row, row; row, row; row.”

Robbie loved to cook, especially if it was a dish he had mastered or when he had an opportunity to please the crowd. His adopted family in Kenya fondly remembers lining up for his famous grilled cheese sandwiches that he cooked, one sandwich at a time, in his small kitchen. Everyone loved them! Once he hosted a birthday party for one of the children--one of the “little monsters” as he called them—and when they were all completely stuffed with food, he asked, “who wants a grilled cheese sandwich?” They all looked at one another and burst out laughing at his joke.

For all of the things Robbie loved, he struggled with many things throughout his life, and, honestly, it was challenging at times to be his sister. He was the know-it-all older brother and I was the younger sister who just wanted a little respect. But I don’t think Rob always found it particularly easy to be my brother. The first vocabulary word I learned was provoke, as in “Margy, don’t provoke your brother!”

He was bigger than me, and he liked to believe that he was always smarter than me. Most of the time he was, but I’m really sure that at least once or twice I was the one who was right! At any rate, the only way I had any power in the relationship was to do things that bugged him. He hated it when I put lots of different color gumballs in my mouth and chewed up a big ‘ol gray wad of gum. So I did that whenever I had the chance. He didn’t like it when I sang songs and improvised the words or the music, especially when I embellished the ending. So I did that when I could. He had no absolutely no sense of humor when his little sister beat him at games like Monopoly, so, however rarely that happened, I flaunted my wins and it drove him crazy.

I was definitely a pesky little sister. Sometimes it came back to bite me. One time I found a huge icicle hanging from the roof of our house, and I thought it would be funny to put it in his bed. Despite his sense of humor, Robbie didn’t think it was funny. The next day I came home and he had taken an oscillating fan and a bag of flour and covered everything in my room with a fine white coating. He even opened all of my drawers for good measure. I spent days vacuuming my socks.

A memory that I will hold close for the rest of my life is that our whole family was able to spend time with Robbie at the end, and we were all together with him when he passed away. I hope that he knew we were there and that he could feel our love for him, love that I think often eluded him.

When Robbie was 17, my mom was expecting our youngest sister Maryann. She received a blessing in which she was told that the baby she was carrying would be a comfort to Robbie. I imagine that has been true many times since then, but I am left with a particularly striking image from the last moments we had with him. As he took his last breaths, his head was turned toward Maryann who was at his side. She leaned in, held his head, and spoke gently to him, providing him what I’m sure was immeasurable comfort.

In all my life I have never met anyone like my brother Robbie. The beauty of being connected through family relationships is that we are bound together despite our differences. And, in fact, it is our differences that enable us to learn to love a Christ-like love as we move through this world.

I am thankful that I am bound by eternal family ties, but also by love, to my brother, Robbie, a fellow child of God.

Can Can, Maybe Still Can?

For three years in elementary school I took dance classes at the Phyllis Richards School of Dance in the basement of a church in West Acton. Ballet, tap, and jazz.

My second year our class performed the Can Can. In addition to our regular recital, we took our act on the road to the army hospital at Fort Devens. The Vietnam War was still going on then.

I think our performance went alright, but at some point I lost my garter. It slipped right off my leg, probably while I was kicking my heart out.

I didn't realize it was missing until we were leaving the stage, so I had to run back out to get it. Let's just say the wounded soldiers went a little nuts, hollering and whistling. And let's just say I played right along, flipping my little skirt up as I turned and ran back off stage.

I'll bet that girl is still inside me somewhere.

Is It Green Inside?

A few years before Roger and I got married, I decided to buy a house. It made very good financial sense to be putting money into mortgage payments rather than rent. And it made especially good financial sense when I sold the property a few years later for a tidy profit.

My favorite option was a house on the NW corner of 500 East and Center Street in Provo. Tons of character, hardwood floors, lots of windows, a studio apartment over the garage that I could rent out for extra income.

For some reason, Roger asked me if it was green inside. It was such an absurd question that I thought I'd dreamed it. But it seemed so real. So a few days later I asked him, "Did you really ask me if the house was green inside?" He just stared at me.

Every once in a while, I'd ask him if he'd asked me such a strange question. Seriously, is it green inside? He'd just laugh. Finally, like years later, he confessed to me that he had indeed asked me that question, but he didn't give me a straight answer because it was too entertaining to watch me try to sort out whether it was reality or a dream. Yes, he downright played with my head like that.

I decided not to buy that house because I loved it too much. I wasn't ready for that kind of commitment, far too young to settle down. I put a deposit on a townhouse in a new development in Orem, but construction was taking too long so they returned my money. I ended up settling on a cute old pioneer house (256 N. 300 W. in Provo) that had been turned into a duplex. It was a good choice.

My heart still skips a beat, though, when I drive past that house on Center Street. It wasn't green inside back then. I wonder if it's green inside now.

On Fire

We headed up to Salt Lake City tonight to cheer for Roger's sister Joan, who received an award for a piece of her artwork currently displayed in the exhibition of the Ninth International Art Competition at the LDS Church History museum. It was a pretty big deal in these parts. Congratulations, Joan!

Because this year's blog posts are all about my memories (sorry to overshadow you, Joan), I thought I'd write about the one and only time I got an award for my artwork. Fifth grade, fire prevention poster contest. Do yourself a favor . . . don't play with matches!!

Is That True?

In honor of our illustrious state legislature and our governor who will likely sign a bill tens of thousands of people have requested him to veto, I will share one of my most memorable educational moments.

I was in sixth grade. My mom and I were driving home one day, and for whatever reason, I decided it was a fine time to ask her if something I'd heard about the male anatomy was true. Without a word, she immediately pulled over to the side of the road.

"Where did you learn that?" she asked.

"J. and I read it in the encyclopedia," I said.

"It's true," she said, and then she pulled back out into traffic and drove home without saying another word about it.

Update: Well who could have guessed it based on his earlier comments? The governor vetoed the bill. Good on him!

Birthday Pi

Happy Pi Day! We celebrated by waiting for an entire hour for a table at Village Inn, then giving up and getting slices of pie to take home.

This is a picture of my sister Maryann on her first birthday and our family's traditional and very tasty birthday pie (cream cheese filling in a graham cracker crust with sliced peaches on top). For many years we had birthday pie instead of birthday cake because my brother was allergic to wheat.

Sometimes it was hard having a brother with so many allergies. Out of both a sense of caution and a sense of fairness, my parents often deprived me of foods that he couldn't eat. Thankfully I didn't develop any food allergies. And I think I've long since let go of any residual resentment. The hardest to get over was the annual confiscation of Halloween candy. Robbie was allergic to chocolate and Mom would buy other kinds of candy that she'd trade for our candy bars. That may be why I often don't have dessert unless chocolate is involved.

Except when it comes to pie. My top choice? When I can't have birthday pie, I choose cherry.

Such a Sacrifice

My family took a trip to Mexico when I was in grad school. We stayed in a small fishing village called Akumal on the Yucatan Peninsula. One day we drove down to the ruins at Tulum. The tour guide picked me to sacrifice on the altar. It's funny to think that I probably ended up in the vacation pictures of some of the strangers who were on the tour with us.

Favorite adventures on that trip involved scuba diving, which I highly recommend and which I haven't done enough. On one of the dives we went down about 80 feet. The ocean floor was a tangled mass of coral. All of a sudden there was a giant sea turtle right in front of me. I tried to swim after it, but I even with my flippers I was clearly no match for something so powerful and awesome. I didn't have a camera with me, but my memory of it is picture perfect.

Who's That Walking Over My Bridge?

Visiting the bridge that Gramps and his engineer friend built across the

Nashoba Brook for a trail he maintains on conservation land behind his house.

Winter 2007

We went on lots of hikes when I was growing up, and Dad always made it entertaining. Sometimes he'd get way ahead of us on the trail and hide behind a tree, then jump out and growl like a bear making us scream and laugh. Sometimes he'd hide under a bridge and pretend he was the troll and we were the billy goats. It never got old.

Dear Diary

Some friends and I were laughing about our old journals this afternoon, so I decided to pull mine out and look through them. The earliest one I kept starts halfway through 8th grade. And I actually began each entry with "Dear Diary."

Some random quotes:

Monday, March 21: "I wish Mr. C. [music theater] saw me in the road show because he thinks I'm an idiot with no spirit."

Monday, April 4: "Mr. H. [metal shop] is such a jerk. I did a perfectly good job of welding and he still won't grade me."

Thursday, May 5: "I think P.T. has a crush on G.J., but I think he sort of likes me. I don't mean to sound conceited and I could be totally wrong, but it's the way he looks at me. I hope he doesn't ask me to the dance. I mean I hope he asks me, but I can't go."

Wednesday, May 18: "I found out G. asked P. a week ago. What about me?"

Friday, May 27: "We didn't get our tests back in math so I have to suffer until Tuesday, I skipped lunch, and J. said my pants were too short."

Monday, June 27: "Why me? I'm only 13 years old. Why am I going through this? I never act right. I never know what to say. Nobody has invited me anywhere for who knows how long. I'm stuck with a brother who embarrasses me to death, a mother and father who say I'm lazy and I never do anything for other people so they want me to wash windows. How pathetic can you get? I even have a best friend who hates my guts (I think). I'll show everybody. By the way, I went to see The Sting and it was excellent."

I'm so glad we don't have to live through junior high twice.

The Flirt

My first real job was working at the Great Road Pharmacy for Bob. I happened to ask him for a job the same day he happened to be hiring. Mostly I worked the register, inventoried magazines and cigarettes, that sort of thing.

One day I was using the restroom in the back of the store and I heard a whistle, the you're-a-pretty-girl kind of whistle. I heard it again and again. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and I was beginning to feel very self conscious.

Then I remembered the pet store next door. When I got off work, I stopped in. Sure enough there was a parrot in a cage, right through the wall from the pharmacy's restroom. It whistled when it saw me.

No Where To Go

An anatomy class I took in college involved a weekly lab with three cadavers. More advanced classes actually dissected them. We just studied them and took quizzes that required us to identify various parts of them.

I handled it pretty well until the day the lab instructor had us crowd around one of the bodies, and I ended up trapped in the middle of a bunch of students, our backs up against the wall. It was a tight fit. I was directly in front of the cadaver's abdominal cavity and the instructor started scooping up the intestines and plopping them on the cadaver's rib cage so he could show us something underneath. Waves of formaldehyde assaulted me. I suddenly felt a little woozy, and I realized that if I were to pass out, the only way I could fall was directly into the abdominal cavity.

"Mind over matter, mind over matter," I chanted silently to myself. Thankfully, I made it through without incident. But I wasn't very hungry for lunch afterward.

Equality

In honor of International Women's Day, I will now share some of my memories about the Equal Rights Amendment. Apparently I've hit on a theme. And sorry, this is a long one. I've been in bed sick for three days with time on my hands. I'm actually surrounded by the books I refer to below, which I've been meaning to revisit for awhile. I'm curious how my position on the ERA might have evolved differently if I'd been older and more aware at the time it was an issue.

By the time I really knew about the ERA, it had already passed in Massachusetts (1972), so I never had the opportunity to vote on it myself. Frankly, I didn't really think much about it. A few years later, the LDS church came out against it. I have no idea how my mom voted in 1972, but I do remember her carefully studying up on the church's position and expressing some concerns about the amendment long after the Massachusetts vote.

In 1981, when I was 17, I visited my aunt and uncle, and while we were sitting around the kitchen table, the subject of the ERA came up. I think that my uncle asked me my position, and I hesitated because I had no idea what my position was. Seriously, I hadn't really thought about it at all. It had already passed in Massachusetts. I wouldn't be voting on it. He slammed his fist down on the table, loudly recited the language of the amendment, and then demanded to know what on earth was wrong with it.

Of course I believed in equal rights for women, but even though the ERA seemed straightforward enough, I didn't know what I thought about it. I stared my uncle down (which was, in retrospect, extraordinarily brave because he was a Very Intimidating Person) and said, "All I know is that if my mother has concerns about it and my church is against it, I need to learn more about it before I decide what my opinion is."

That experience stayed with me, but it was a while before I really took the time to learn more.

The next memory I have is when our new LDS chapel was built in Littleton and reporters were at the open house. One stopped me in the hall and asked me whether I thought it was fair that I couldn't go fight in a war because I was female. I confess I was fairly oblivious to the larger context of her question. I have no idea how I answered her, but I know I wasn't particularly keen on the idea of going to war whether I was male or female.

At some point in college at BYU, I was asked to give a lesson on the ERA in church (this was before I developed my aversion to political discussions at church). Remembering my earlier exchange with my uncle, I dug into the research with zeal. And because I believed in equal rights and didn't understand what on earth was wrong with the ERA, I figured I needed to focus that research on why the LDS church was against it.

So I read these books, all by members of the LDS church:

• A Lawyer Looks at the Equal Rights Amendment by Rex E. Lee
• The Equal Rights Amendment: Myths and Realities by Orrin Hatch
• From Adam's Rib to Women's Lib by Maureen Ward

Despite the fact that I was a college student, it never even occurred to me to read opposing views. Of course, my job was to teach a class that represented the church's view. That view was primarily based on concern about unintended consequences that could negatively impact families. The basic protection of equality for all already existed in the 14th amendment, the LDS authors argued. Ongoing issues should be decided on a case-by-case basis with scalpel-like precision.

After being steeped in all of the anti-ERA arguments, I don't remember having any issues teaching the anti-ERA class. Funny how looking at only one perspective does that to a person. But here's the irony (I don't think this is at all where the anti-ERA voices intended for me to go): after all that reading, I was concerned that without being privileged, women could find their reproductive choices restricted and they might end up with even less support as mothers in the workplace. This was all back in a day when the idea of widespread paid paternity leave was an even more elusive dream than paid maternity leave. At the end of it, I don't remember feeling much one way or the other when the ERA was ultimately defeated. I just assumed we'd continue to move forward, tackling the outstanding issues case by case.

All through those years, I was pretty darn clueless about why people were agitating so fiercely for women's rights, even though I was an avid reader of the Exponent II. I think this was because I had personally never felt held back because I was a girl. I give my parents great credit for that, as well as all of the people who had already broken down so many barriers by the time I came of age. At the most, I remember being irritated that boys at church got to do cool outdoor activities and the girls always seemed to be doing sort of lame things. But I pushed back, and as a result we girls got to do cool activities, too, sometimes right along side the boys. Rappelling, camping, canoe trips.

The past few years my inner feminist has reawakened. I'm having a hard time, for example, with the way my community has reached a relentless fevered pitch on the issue of modesty that is objectifying women and girls. The latest image that keeps niggling at me is the recent Congressional hearing on contraception and religious freedom that consisted entirely of men. Lots of people were bothered by the fact that women were not included in a discussion that involved contraception. But what especially bothered me was that all of the religious leaders in that hearing were men. Seriously, where were the women of faith? I know, I know, I belong to a church that excludes women from the priesthood. The world is complicated, isn't it?

So there you have it. This is what happens when I've been cooped up at home for three days without much energy to get anything else done. I'll get back to work and post something short and sweet tomorrow.

Is This the Tail End of an Era?

In honor of the upcoming Republican caucuses here in Utah next week, I will now share one of my favorite memories about Senator Orrin Hatch.

In 1984, I did an internship in Washington, D.C., and every week our group of interns met with various dignitaries around town. One week we headed up to Capitol Hill for some time with Orrin Hatch.

Toward the end of our meeting, he took us on a tour of his office. He stopped in front of a rocking chair that held a couple of Cabbage Patch dolls, picked one up, pulled down its bloomers and gleefully pointed to an inscription that read "Cabbage Hatch" on the doll's little behind. Yes, he did.

Also, I don't know what cologne he was wearing but he smelled very nice.

Is it Over Yet?

In honor of super Tuesday and the Republican primaries, I will now share one of my favorite memories about Mitt Romney.

It was during the 2002 Olympics and Romney had gotten into a bit of hot water with a volunteer who had apparently followed the security rules a bit too carefully and prevented some VIPs from getting where they needed to go. The volunteer accused Romney of yelling at him and using vulgar language.

On the evening news, Romney laughed at the accusation and said something like, "I haven't even said h-e-double hockey sticks since junior high!"

I sure wish someone would dig up that clip.

Steamy

Everyone in our family enjoys a good shower with plenty of water pressure. All three of us are prone to getting hypnotized under a steamy stream of water. Maybe not the most responsible habit here in our Wasatch Front steppe, but lovely nonetheless.

My parents' house had practically non-existent water pressure when I lived there growing up. It's much better now, but I remember taking showers and washing my long hair early in the morning before school, wondering if I'd have time to rinse out all of the shampoo with the tiny trickle.

I come by my guilty pleasure honestly.

Life and Death by Committee

I taught a class for the teenage girls at church today about supporting family members, and I shared a little bit of the story about how difficult it was to love my brother and a little bit about his death nearly a year (!) ago.

Robbie's death was not a simple death. He struggled for months with a debilitating condition. In the end he could not move, he could not breathe on his own, he didn't open his eyes and he wasn't really conscious, he required heavy dosages of pain medication, and after months in a hospital, antibiotics could no longer help him fight off one infection after another without serious ramifications. The last one in the arsenal was shutting down his kidneys.

We sat in a conference room twice with his team of doctors, nurses, a social worker. At the second meeting it was decided. Technology was prolonging an untenable life. We would take him off his respirator. The decision was heart wrenching and unanimous. I consoled myself with the thought that if he was meant to live, he'd begin breathing on his own.

Sitting in the conference room having those discussions was surreal. I couldn't help but remember the last time I sat in a conference room discussing a matter as weighty as the end of Robbie's life:

The beginning of Jack's.

When Jack's birth mom was seven months pregnant, we were summoned to the agency to meet her and her parents. Both of our caseworkers were there to facilitate the meeting. It was simultaneously the most natural and the most unnatural experience I've ever had. Good, but totally surreal.

While I watched Jack's birth mom talk, I kept seeing members of my family in her face and her mannerisms. My cousin in the set of her jaw. My grandfather around the eyes.

On the way home I said to Roger, "Between her childhood allergies and the allergies in my family, this kid doesn't stand a chance." Of course that was absurd, but it made me realize that Jack had already become a part of us on a deep, subconscious level.

My only immediate experience with bringing life into the world and letting life go involved meetings in conference rooms. Surreal, yes, but the only actual real for me.

Cookies and Brownies

Got the word that our Girl Scout cookies are on their way. Mmm mmm.

I never was a Girl Scout, but I did join the Brownies for about a month. We met on the second floor of the Acton Women's Club in the center of town.

Remembering the 10 cent dues I was supposed to bring every week was a problem. And even though we probably did only one activity that involved picking and arranging flowers, it seemed like that's what we did every time. It awakened my general angst about crafting in public. The uniform was cool though. And I liked singing that song about the smile in my pocket.

Frankly, I just don't think I'm a joiner.

Big B Little b

Because today is a very special day, I'm dipping back into the file for another paper from my school days.

Apparently the effort I put into the cover of a paper about Dr. Seuss my sophomore year didn't save me from a B minus. Topic sentences didn't always tie into my thesis or were missing altogether. I lacked examples from his books to prove my points. And my teacher felt that I'd digressed for several paragraphs after my introduction.

I closed the paper with this quote from an eight-year-old fan of Seuss who wrote the following in a letter: "You sure thunk up a lot of funny books. You sure thunk up a million funny animals. Now this I want to know. Who thunk you up, Dr. Seuss?"

I'd cite my source for this quote, but I neglected to cite it in my paper. I have no idea where it came from.

Yeah, a B minus was probably about right.

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Double-Edged Sword

Yesterday's post generated some discussion about religion in public schools. It would be nice to have a healthier balance in our current approach. Learning about religions and what people of different faiths believe is critical to understanding one another and understanding human civilization. What I don't believe we should do, however, is practice religion in public schools. Separation of church and state is key to living peaceably together in a pluralistic society, each of us enjoying our own freedom of conscience.

That said, learning about religions in school--like just about anything in our world--can be a double-edged sword.

When I took U.S. history in high school and we discussed westward expansion, my teacher talked about Mormons in an extraordinarily derogatory way. The guy sitting next to me raised his hand and said, "Miss S___, did you know that Margy is a Mormon?" Let's just say it was not the most comfortable moment for me or my teacher.

So while I'd like students across the country to learn about various faiths, I'm not so sure every teacher across the country would teach the basics with appropriate objectivity and an eye toward increased understanding. The backlash from the faithful wouldn't be pretty. People within religions tend to share positive, faith-promoting stories among themselves and anything that smacks of criticism begets entrenchment.

As it turned out, it was a valuable reality check for me to hear my history teacher present such a negative view of Mormons. I began to understand that persecution of the early saints did not happen in a vacuum.

Maybe we don't just need to learn about one another's beliefs. Maybe we also need to learn about why people fear/distrust/misunderstand/overgeneralize/and even hate one other because of their beliefs (or lack of belief). And maybe we (and we includes me) could all then humbly self-reflect.

Oh, wait. That might lead to world peace, thus disrupting the path to armageddon. Never mind.

Simultaneous and Contradictory

There's been a firestorm in the LDS world today. A BYU professor made some truly unfortunate remarks in a Washington Post article about the fact that black men were not allowed to hold the priesthood from the time of Brigham Young until 1978 (by the way, black men were ordained into the priesthood before Brigham Young became president of the church). Click here for a good concise summary of the recent controversy, including the swift renunciation of the professor's comments by the LDS church.

I don't want to dwell on his comments in this post, but I do want to write about some of my experience with the issue.

My parents joined the LDS church when I was five, so I was essentially raised Mormon. When I was in the sixth grade, we were assigned to write a report about a religion, our own if we chose. It made sense for me to write about our family's faith.

For part of my report I interviewed my mother. After I asked her whether she was "bored reading alot [sic] of scriptures at one time" (biased questioning much?), I asked her if there was anything about the LDS church that she didn't like. Part of her answer addressed her dislike of the policy regarding blacks and the priesthood. I learned an early and valuable lesson about the possibility (and probability) of being ambivalent even if you believe the leaders of a faith are generally inspired. This lesson has sustained me in many areas of my life.

I was 14 in 1978 when the LDS church changed the policy and black men were welcomed into the priesthood. I remember my mother whooping through the house when she heard it about it on the national news. What a joyful turn of events!

I also remember my Sunday school teacher at the time. He was a black man. I remember being impressed at his capacity for faith given the circumstances of his restricted status. And I remember feeling truly happy that things would change for him.

I can still picture his face.

Go Figure

I'm helping Jack study for a math test tomorrow. Solving for variables. Very satisfying. Wish Jack could feel that way, too. Maybe one day.

I read something the other day that made it sound like geometry students (at least in Utah) no longer do proofs. Remember these?

Not that I really know much about math education, but it seems like learning how to do proofs is extremely valuable because they teach students how to use logic across all sorts of disciplines.

Even though I outwardly professed to hate math in school, I actually really liked it. Especially doing proofs in geometry. And I liked balancing equations in chemistry.

While He Was Sleeping

When I turned seven, I got a turtle as a pet and named him Max, though technically I don't think I actually knew whether he was a he or a she.

One day I came home from school and my mother told me gravely that Max had died and she had buried him.

A while after that we learned that turtles like Max are prone to hibernate. He may well have been dead when Mom buried him, but it's more likely he was just sleeping.

Sorry, Max.

Night Noises

The wind is howling outside tonight.

When I was five, my family moved to the house my parents still live in. Our best estimate is that the house was built in the 1730s, an old center chimney colonial on a stone foundation.

For the first few years before we added on, my room was in the old part of the house. Once in a while I could hear scratching and scampering coming from inside the wall, most likely little critters who had snuck in through the cracks.

I can't remember if I especially loved books like The Littles and The Borrowers because of the critters in the wall, or if I embraced (rather than feared) the idea of critters in the wall because of the books.

Either way, I'm thankful for feeling cozy inside then and now.

In Which I Discover Han Solo

Roger and Jack have gone off to see Star Wars in 3D. Big fans are they.

I saw the first (um, fourth) Star Wars when it was first released with my Uncle John, who often took me out to see movies when we visited my grandparents in Connecticut. It was one of my favorite traditions. We saw some true classics together, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.

Uncle John is still a little mortified, though, that he took me to see Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I. Hee hee.

On the Fringe

I drove up to Salt Lake today to do some research on issues related to helping inmates and ex-offenders obtain the trifecta of personal identification required to participate in society (birth certificate, state ID card, and social security card) and to meet with a state senator about putting together legislation to eliminate some of the unique obstacles many of them they face as they try to get this documentation. It's just the beginning of a new adventure which will likely consume much of my mental energy over the coming year, but it was a very successful beginning.

While I was driving on I-15, I was listening to someone talk about the 1992 election and his involvement with far right politics, including interning with Gayle Ruzicka and the Utah Eagle Forum, meeting Cleon Skousen, and supporting the Bo Gritz presidential campaign.

I flashed back to 1992. Roger and I lived in Highland at the time, and our neighbor was Bo Gritz's Utah County campaign chair. She was really very nice, and she was happy to help me out the time I locked myself out of my car about half an hour north of town and our other car was in the shop. She lent Roger her van, he drove up to rescue me, then he suggested I drive her van back.

When I dropped the van off at her house and started walking home, I caught a glimpse of all of the bumper stickers on the back that I'd never noticed before, like "God, Guns, and Gritz" and "No New World Order." It was an odd sensation to realize that as far as other drivers were concerned, I'd owned those political views while I was behind the wheel. How did I look out there on the fringe?

We were sad when armed IRS agents came to repossess our neighbor's house. She and her husband hadn't paid taxes for 15 years as a political statement, and they had to move away. She was really very nice.

First Hand

Today I attended a conference on addiction at Utah Valley University to get a better sense of what many of the inmates I work with at the jail are dealing with and to get a better sense of the resources available to help them in our community. I'm encouraged by recent research that was presented. It was well worth my time.

Conferences seem to be a part of my life no matter what I'm involved with. Except for the reminder that it can be hard to keep the energy up when I sit through too many presentations in a row, I love the opportunity to learn and to interact with people who have varied interests in and relationships with the topic at hand.

The first professional conference I attended was when I was in graduate school in the mid-1980s. I was studying political science and writing a thesis on how Utah prosecuting attorneys could go about implementing a recent statute that would allow children in abuse cases to testify via videotape or closed-circuit television. The purpose of the law was to protect children in a justice system that is designed for adults. It's one thing to pass a law; it's a whole other thing to figure out the policy for implementing it, especially when it walked a precarious constitutional line in relation to the rights of the accused to be faced by their accusers.

During that time, academics and professionals in many fields were grappling with the newly emerging range and scope of child abuse issues. So when the opportunity arose to hop in my car and drive to Reno to hear some of the most prominent voices speak in person and engage in immediate conversation with one another, I couldn't pass it up. My research, my writing, and my understanding of real-world problem solving took on a whole new dimension after that.

Epilogue: The US Supreme Court handed down a decision in an unrelated case shortly after I defended and passed my thesis that essentially nullified the Utah statute before any prosecutors took the chance to test it. Was my work wasted? Not in my mind. What I learned was priceless.

Electives

During the last period of school today, Jack and I attended an assembly about class registration for eighth grade. His elective choices included band, chorus and exploring technology. The counselors also had the students write down careers they've been thinking about. Jack wrote jazz musician (a lovely idea, but maybe not too practical).

One of my favorite electives in junior high was mechanical drawing, and I dreamed about becoming an architect one day. I designed a triangular house for the class (a creative idea, but maybe not too practical) and wrote a report about Frank Lloyd Wright.

I didn't grow up to be an architect, but I do spend a good deal of mental energy thinking about how spaces work (or don't work) for people. I believe good architectural design can change the world.

This One Dates Me

So here's how old I am. Diet Coke was not launched until 1982, after I graduated from high school

My drink of choice when I was a teenager was Tab, which I still enjoy from time to time. Every time I buy it, someone says, "I didn't know they made that anymore!"

I once heard a deejay on the radio speculate that they haven't actually made Tab since 1972, they're just still trying to empty the warehouse.

My friend Janine was my best Tab drinking buddy. We worked together at the Great Road Pharmacy when I was in high school. One of our favorite things to do was drive to the Burlington Mall and hang out drinking Tab while we people watched. Living in style, we were.

Not as Suspicious as It Seems

We met some friends at the BYU library today to do a photo shoot for an upcoming Friends of the Library newsletter Roger is working on.

My second most dramatic memory of the BYU library is the night that I got locked in with my boyfriend. They used to play the theme song of Hawaii 5-0 at closing time and somehow we missed it. I'm sure we were just studying really hard. Can't say it wasn't an adventure being alone together in the library with all the lights out.

My most dramatic memory was the time I passed out while I was waiting in line to take a physical science test in the testing center, which used to be in the library. I was so sick, but I had a deadline. The line was so long, it went out of the building and down the sidewalk.

It seemed to take hours, but I finally made it to the head of the line. Just as I got up to the counter to get my test, I felt really horrible and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor and someone behind me in line was saying, "I know her! She lives in Helaman Halls!"

I couldn't just leave when I came to. Oh, no. I had to be escorted by campus security to the health center to get checked out. So there I was with my No. 2 pencil in hand and an officer at my elbow guiding me past the long line of students on the sidewalk to the waiting patrol car. Can't say at least some of them weren't thinking the worst.

Relatively Speaking

Once upon a time, many years ago--I think I might have been home on a break from college--I was listening to an elderly woman speak in church.

I can't remember what she was talking about, but all of a sudden she paused mid-sentence, looked out sort of above the congregation, and said that she felt especially close to her mother. Then she went stiff and keeled over backward, dead.

Nothing like that happened at church today.

Accent

My uncle sent us a link to this regional accent quiz. Only 13 questions and the answer was dead on. A bit freaky if you ask me.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston   You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.
The West	 
The Midland	 
North Central	 
Philadelphia	 
The Northeast	 
The Inland North	 
The South	 
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

When I was a growing up, we spent part of each summer with my dad's family at our lake house in Wisconsin. My cousins from Illinois used to tease me about my accent. They made me say certain things over and over while they laughed and laughed.

"Let's go in the wahtah!"

I love them anyway.

Changing Gears

When I was 16 and learning to drive with my permit, our family owned one car with an automatic transmission (a giant gray station wagon that we dubbed the Elephant) and one car with a stick shift (a bright yellow Pinto hatchback).

First I learned how to drive the automatic. Of course.

Then on New Year's Eve, I asked my dad if he would take me to a party at a friend's house. He said he would, but only if I drove and we took the Pinto. Way to throw me in the deep end.

I did pretty well until we got to the center of Chelmsford, where I needed to pull out of an intersection on a slight incline. It took a few tries, but then the whole clutch/accelerator thing suddenly clicked for me, and I connected with driving on a whole new level.

From that day forward, I've chosen stick whenever I can.

Continuous Loop

We haven't had much snow around here this winter, so here is a happy memory of winter past. I love the way the camera caught the giant flakes still falling.

Gracie and Jack, January 2005

I'm most likely past the point of safely writing about Jack in the same breath with girls, but I'm going to do it anyway. Sorry, Jack!

My fantasy about Gracie and Jack ending up together isn't about them actually ending up together. I promise I'm not a schemer like that (click here for a little more backstory).

No, my fantasy about Gracie and Jack ending up together is about compiling the video of photographs that would run in a loop at their wedding reception. Can you imagine? They've grown up knowing each other. We could make the entire video showing the span of their lives comprised only of pictures of the two of them together.

How romantic would that be?

Putting It Off

A marathon day of teaching at the jail in the morning and at UVU in the evening with jam-packed hours and hours of grading in between. Truly, I brought it on myself by procrastinating.

When I was in college, I realized that the bathroom was never cleaner and my things were never more organized than in the days leading up to finals week. Anything but study! My roommate and I dubbed it constructive avoidance behavior.

Now I still procrastinate, but I no longer feel guilty enough to use the time productively. I'm much more inclined to hang out and read instead. Or catch up on all of the CSI episodes that have built up on the DVR. I like to think of it as "learning."

Is it too much of a stretch to call that instructive avoidance behavior?

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I should probably write a memory of love since it's Valentine's Day, but I've been under the weather and working all day, including grading a big stack of papers. So the romance will have to wait until the mood strikes.

Instead I'll tell a story I shared with my class at the jail this morning about getting my job at Novell. We were discussing resumes and job applications and how important presentation is. One of the recommendations on the handout I use is to avoid wrinkling or folding applications before turning them in.

In the early 90s, I started doing some freelance work writing customer success stories for Novell corporate communications. One day Mike, the manager of the team I worked with, asked if I'd be interested in meeting right that minute with someone named Darrell about a full-time job.

"Sure," I said. "But I don't have a copy of my resume."

"I think I might have one somewhere," said Mike as he disappeared into his office. He emerged with a copy of my resume all wrinkled. "I think I must have sat on it. Sorry."

So I carried my wrinkled resume to the education department and carefully presented it to Darrell. We had a good laugh, he interviewed me, and then he hired me.

Rarely have I gotten a job without breaking at least one cardinal rule. It makes it a little ironic that I teach a class on how to get hired.

Logos

I just took a survey to give input on the three finalists for Provo's new logo design. (I know, I don't even live there, but doing the survey was the only way to see the designs. I'm a bit of a design junky.)

One of finalists reminded me a bit of this Novell logo that was unveiled the same day I gave the company notice in the mid 90s.

Leaving Novell marked the end of a nearly 10-year stint in the computer software industry. I had never meant to work in that industry. It just sort of happened. While I wouldn't have traded the experiences I had and all of the valuable things I learned, I never looked back when I left.

Novell's new logo was meant to revitalize the company, which had been struggling to find its way after buying WordPerfect. I took one look at how that expensive new logo fell totally flat in a full-page, black-and-white newspaper spread, and I knew I'd made the right choice.

I Can Laugh About It Now

When I was a teenager, I was asked to play the piano for someone who was going to sing in church. I practiced and practiced and practiced. But I didn't really have a chance to practice with the singer. We had about ten minutes to run through the song the day of the performance.

Turned out he was an improvisor. And I was totally inexperienced with accompanying anyone, never mind an improvisor.

In front of everyone and somewhere in the middle of the song, I completely lost track of what I was supposed to be playing in relation to what he was singing. Luckily, he was an experienced musician and he simply carried on without me. I think I managed to get back on track during the last verse (or maybe I just wished I did that). What a long, long song it was.

We sang it in church today.

Blue

My dad built an addition onto our house in 1972, the year my sister Linda was born. I turned nine that summer, and one of the new bedrooms would be mine. I got to pick the paint color.

Blue.

So it would feel like I was swimming in a pool.

On My Father's Shoulders

So as you can imagine, I don't actually have any memories of the moment captured in this photo. But tonight is Dad's last night here, and I thought it would be fun to post the earliest picture I have of the two of us together.

The picture was taken at our house on Mt. Hope Terrace in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, in late 1963. Dad was 26, and he worked for Texas Instruments while we lived there (if you look closely, you can see his ID badge). Above our heads is a little sailboat mobile with hulls made from walnut shells, which I do remember because we had it for years.

Dad looks pretty engaged here (and handsome, no?). Not sure what's on my mind.

Tumbling After

Jack was born a few months after we opened our bookstore. He was a darn cute baby, but it turned out that he and the store weren't always a good match, especially at nap time.

Roger and I decided that we'd trade off shifts at the store and at home with Jack. We hired our first employee to help us out with the transitions.

I love that her name was Jill.

Sheep in a Jeep

Story time at The Read Leaf Bookstore, May 2003

We had many visitors for story time over the years at our bookstore, including several dogs, baby chicks, and even a one-day-old calf that the kids got to name.

The morning the lambs were scheduled to come, their owner called and said he couldn't make it. But we were welcome to come pick the lambs up ourselves. Roger took the call, and because he didn't want to sound like a city boy, he said he would be right over.

Heh heh. With a little help, he managed to get them into their crate, get the crate in the back of the Jeep, and get back to the store in time. Then we let the lambs out of the crate, and things got a bit crazy. It was immediately clear that we lacked the necessary lamb wrangling skills.

At one point the lambs were running freely through the non-fiction section, pooping as they went. We had to shift into high gear, wrangling the lambs and wrangling kids to keep them from stepping on the lamb poop (which, thankfully, consists of easy to clean up pellets).

And then, somehow, we managed to get the lambs back in the crate, back in the Jeep, and back to where they came from.

The end.

Truth in Advertising?

While I was looking for the Mick Jagger photo for yesterday's post, I came across these two fine Parisian images that still make me smile.

Having done a bit of urban parallel parking myself, I was impressed with this parking job. The emblem on the car on the left that reads "elegant" sums it up beautifully (especially when you read it with a French accent).

This billboard made me worry a bit for customers who might be disappointed when they get to New York and don't find the wild west there.

This Close!

On the way home from class tonight, I was flipping radio stations, stopped on an old J. Geils Band song, and cranked it up. When I was in high school, J. Geils lived in the town next to ours. He used to bring his film into the pharmacy I worked at for processing.

I never saw the band perform in Massachusetts. But I did get to see them when I was a college student studying abroad in Paris during the summer of 1982. They were part of an all day outdoor music festival headlined by the Rolling Stones.

Yeah, yeah, it was fun seeing J. Geils, but I was this close to Mick Jagger!

The Calling

Substitute teaching Jack's Primary (Sunday School class) 8 or 9 years ago

I got a new job at church today. In the LDS church most of us have jobs--known as callings--that we're asked to do. We usually get swapped around to different callings every year or two. It's often a bit of an adventure, a stretch outside our comfort zones.

Over the years, I've done all sorts of things. Teaching adults, teaching teenagers, teaching kids, hanging out with the really young kids in nursery, putting together monthly newsletters and typing up the Sunday bulletins, organizing ward activities, being in charge of girls camp, and so on.

Today I found out I'll be working with the teenage girls as the secretary in our Young Women's organization. I think it might be the best job yet: I get to hang out with truly awesome people and I will be the adult leader with the very least responsibility.

La Dolce Vita

Jack pouring a Limonata at La Dolce Vita, age 5

We took advantage of Dad being in town to go out to dinner at one of our old (as in college days) favorites, La Dolce Vita. And we were very happy that our niece Sarah and her husband Jason, who are in town for the weekend, were able to meet us there.

Now our hearts are happily full with a new family memory and our bellies are happily full with our long-time family tradition of gnocchi and Limonata. Sì, la dolce vita!

Roads Not Taken

Jack got to go with Roger to work today as part of the 7th grade take your kid to work day. Lucky for Jack, one of the items on Roger's to do list was to deliver fliers to bookstores all over the Salt Lake Valley for the upcoming annual book collecting conference hosted by the BYU library. No surprise they came home with a stack of books!

I never had the chance to get a day off of school to go to work with my dad (which would have been ironic as he was a high school teacher), but I did get to go on a few field trips to explore various careers options. We also took a comprehensive career assessment test my junior or senior year. The top two jobs it recommended for me:

(1) funeral director

(2) being in charge of evacuating cities

Helping people meet death or helping them escape it. Does my destiny still await?