I missed a recent Austin reunion with friends because I had some car problems. How disappointed I was to miss some of my favorite people who had come to town.
I’m in the middle of painting the craft room. It’s not good blogging material. It’s lonely work, but Elphaba and Glinda have been singing to keep me company. I’ve thought a lot about Texas lately… the memories, the friends, the family.
Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
Last year Sparky chose to spend every day in his kennel, pouting because the kids were away at school. He’s not pouting in his kennel this year. He’s moved on to the living room where he curls up in a ball and waits for his kids to come home.
After my great aunt’s death, I visited her apartment with my mom and sisters. Her husband told us something like, “We lived the best life. It was ideal, really,” and listed some of the things they did that made it so.
I’ve thought about that comment many times over the last few months. His list of things that defined the “best life” were so different from my own and honestly, that is ok with me. Our different definitions about the “best life” have initiated some thoughts for me about contentment.
I think that our hearts search for common things, such as comfort, meaning, growth, and acceptance, but we all choose to find these things in different ways. So many factors influence and hinder our efforts, but I think there are common themes among happy and content people. I think they are grateful and they are hopeful.
I am most happy when I have a balance between contentment and yearning, and that takes work. More than any other quality, gratitude keeps me content, but not complacent. The quality of hope keeps my yearning focused on eternal things, not worldly things.
There’s that part in Plato’s Republic where the people sit in the cave, perceiving only the shadow of reality on the wall in front of them and only a few enlightened people see a higher truth. Most horrifying to me in that scene is the idea that people are missing the really important things, but compelled to watch shadows, they become totally absorbed in the act of looking at imitations so they come to believe that “this is all there is”. Unlike Plato, I think enlightenment about important things isn’t saved just for a choice few. The best lives always include family, good pursuits, and faith and a lot of us are living well. These things are not shadows, they are some of the only real things we have.
If someone were to ask me today if I think that I live the best life, I would say YES, despite some worry and heartache today. These are shadows and will pass. The realities are clear and life is good.
This morning I am finishing my conference notebook. I got this idea from a religion course my mom took at BYU. The idea is to find the quotes that are meaningful to you from the words of the prophets and compile them by topic into a document.
This summer I read the General Conference addresses from the May Ensign and marked the passages that meant something to me. Next, I went through the marked passages and placed a post-it note at the top of the page with a topic written on it. I color coded these post-it notes, pink for motherhood, yellow for revelation, etc.
Using an electronic version of the Conference addresses, I am copying and pasting the quotes by topic into a Word document.
Through this exercise I have discovered that these are the topics that were important to me this year:
Today I may have unpacked the last box from last year’s move. It is another one of those unsung triumphs in my work.
Such as…
a sink with no dirty dishes,
a well-stocked bathroom cabinet with clean towels and plenty of t.p.,
an organized storage room with labeled boxes,
a room with a year’s supply of basic food items, well monitored,
clean baseboards,
functional light bulbs in each fixture,
a child’s closet with neatly folded hand-me-downs ready for use in a couple of years,
bills paid and checks deposited,
freezers full of meat, bread, and vegetables,
a carefully curated gallery of artwork by the children,
family photo albums intact and up to date,
rotating decorations on the mantel to celebrate holidays and changes in season,
magazines prominently displayed for use and old editions filed away,
jackets on hooks and shoes in baskets, laundry carefully folded (and unfortunately never ironed!),
the dog fed,
the humidifier cleaned,
the awards, programs, report cards, assignments, and papers are sorted and saved,
sugar and flour bins stocked,
seeing that the bookmarks in the children’s scriptures move steadily forward,
and so on.
My quiet life feels even more quiet this week with the kids away at school, but I know that this collection of small tasks that I do each day makes our lives better. What a blessing to be the one who gets to have so much time to reflect and ponder, to work and develop talents in the quiet of the house, all the time looking forward to the hour when they all come back through the doors and begin pounding on that piano, ringing on that cello, running through the yard, and crashing within the bins of Legos.
Someday when the kids are grown and out of the house, I’m quite sure that after the piano music I will miss the sound of crashing Legos in their bins. Echoes of this sound will always remind me of my boys.
I said goodbye to the kids this week and I am a little sad. Someone gave me an unexpected discount at the store and I sobbed for 5 minutes in my car about it. I hyperventilate when I hear a song on the radio that matches my mood. Every emotion is ready to jump out with any provocation, especially when I am alone.
Who knows how many hours I agonized over the decision about schools this summer, but peace eventually settled in my heart. I’m not sad about the decision. I am sad because I miss the kids.
They are going to have a good year. They have friends, they have goals, they are great students.
Wedding gifts put me in a quandary and I’m not good at them, but I have decided to fix that. I think it’s a good idea to have a stash of gifts handy for weddings. Certainly family wedding gifts require a little more thought and love.
Over the years I have been slowly typing up my recipes and putting them in a binder so they are all accessible in one place. When the kids move out I can print out the recipes that they want and send them off with their own recipe books. It occurred to me that I could share these recipes with my niece who is getting married next month.
I bought a small binder and small sheet protectors from an office supply store and some pretty scrapbook paper on clearance. I have used a normal sized binder for recipes for years, but it is bulky and wastes counter space, so I think the smaller binder is better. I printed out each recipe on a half sheet of paper and assembled the binder with lots of pretty paper dividers. I took pictures because I will miss it when I give it away. I still need to make one for myself.
What is it about recipes and memories? Every time I use a recipe from a friend from Texas or Arizona, memories of them surround me as I cook. My aunt compiled family recipes a few years ago into small binders and I experience the same thing when I use them. Suddenly I’m back in Grandma’s kitchen.
I know the recipes won’t mean much to my niece for sentimental reasons, but hopefully she can make some great memories of her own as she prepares these. I wasn’t much of a cook when I got married, so cook books were some of my favorite wedding gifts.
My most requested recipes over the years have been our whole wheat bread, decadent brownies, chocolate chip cookies, butternut bisque, Mexicali pie, and black bean salsa.
“The real problem of Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I think of this quote all of the time. It haunts me when I jump out of bed in a rush to do a hundred different things. Richard’s van pool picks him up EARLY, so if I get up when he does, I have one or two hours before the kids are up each morning. I usually read. If I am feeling sloggy, I will exercise. This pillow of time helps me do the important things and better differentiate the Urgent from the Important, the Pressing from the Essential.
While at the Church garden last night the boys discovered this tomato. We think it looks a like a profile of Piglet from Winnie the Pooh.
Our theme is fun this week. We ate shaved ice from a stand down the street. I took the younger boys to shop for Legos. They saved a lot of money over the summer and were itching to spend it. To commemorate their new love of Hobbit-lore, Timothy bought the Lego set of Bilbo Baggins’s home which includes a round door, maps, a garden, lots of food, Gandalf, and several dwarves. Mark bought a Ninjago Lego set with a front-end drill that works by a gear mechanism. He loves gears. Left on our bucket list of summer is a trip to the pool and completion of a reading goal for Timothy.
I’m going to throw a back to school party this year. I’ve never done it before, but I think we could all use a pep rally and some homemade ice cream.
I feel a bit burned out. It’s the last week of summer and I am so glad that we canceled our trip to Yellowstone this week. We need a chance to breathe before school begins.
I’ve been thinking about all we have done since school got out in June. We sent Paige to EFY, Girls’ Camp, and Youth Conference to paint a house and spend time in the mountains on canoes and a ropes course. I went with her to Youth Conference. We sent Daniel to Scout Camp and Richard went along for part of the week. We traveled to St George and sped around on wave runners. We went to Fish Creek and rode motorcycles. We camped in our backyard, read The Hobbit aloud, and made about 20 trips to the library. We spent several days at Spring Lake, celebrating with family and working on projects with concrete. Richard overhauled two motorcycles and fixed up the tent trailer. I painted doors and baseboards. Daniel painted the walls of his bedroom. Richard and I got new callings at church (ward missionary and YW secretary) and spent many late nights editing my book. We sent Timothy to Cub Scout camp and Richard went with him. We spent about a week in the mountains at the family cabin with 20-40 people, depending on the day. We saw moose and a bear. Mark started piano lessons, so piano music is almost always in the background with four piano students practicing each day. I finished my first quilt. We watched the neighbors’ quadruplets. We read a lot of books. Daniel joined an orchestra and mowed the lawn each week. Timothy tended the garden. Mark and Timothy hunted almost daily for wasps. We have had a steady queue of guests stay in our home and we have learned that Salt Lake City truly is the Crossroads of the West. This is where our energy has gone this summer.
Perhaps I have earned the lethargy that I feel this morning.
I wrote, nurtured, and edited 120 pages about my grandmother. I wrote 14 posts about my experiences as a Mormon and why I love my church. Perhaps these were all of the words I had to give this summer.
It’s been a good time and I get emotional when I think of school taking the kids away each day. We’ve been in Utah a year now (as of this weekend) and one of my favorite things about Utah is that there are distinct seasons and something special to look forward to in each. My task today is to find something to look forward to about school beginning. It might take me all week to do it.