Life according to Angela – Page 77

8th year

What have you done for more than seven years? As I list the things that fall into this category, I find the big things in life, such as family roles, education, and teaching. This blog turned 7 last week while we were in Washington D.C. and like a family member, I remembered its birthday and thought, wow, I am grateful for that little blog. Then I rubbed my aching feet and kept walking.

Vintage isn’t automatically the best measure of importance, and I could never equate writing a blog with life roles. (It’s my father-in-law’s 80th birthday today. Now THAT is an actual accomplishment!) However, writing for an audience has been good for me. It’s kept my frustrations in check. (Do I really want people to read my complaints? Will I really be this upset in a few hours? No, I guess not.) It’s helped me to see my blessings. (Wow, those kids are pretty cute.) Writing has helped me form my ideas. (Do I really believe what I say I believe? How can I explain that better?) For a time, it took home schooling out of my head and to the screen where I could look at it more objectively. (Hey, I really AM educating these kids.) It has helped me to connect with people. Connection is very important to me.

Thank you for reading. You are true friends.

This song

https://youtu.be/GBvSCrRNA34

I lay awake the other night thinking about the kids. Thoughts ranging from worry to frustration and tenderness to sympathy had a carnival in my head. Dramatic catastrophic scenarios, too, came to my mind, a signal that late night thinking just kindles the crazy in me. I can’t physically pick up my children and carry them out of trouble and home to hugs like I used to. Instead, sometimes I lapse into worry. This phase of mothering is lonely and spiritually demanding. When my words of encouragement aren’t welcome, I tap into a reservoir of faith. I have a Heavenly Father who sees me as a daughter who is sometimes unaware of His acts of kindness. He is patient with me, so I can be patient with my children, too.

Better than worry is what I do each day, trying to be helpful. I shuffle down the hall early each morning and sit with the boys, to be met with unenthusiastic response. The secret to mothering teens is knowing that what I am doing is important, even if I am met with bristles and barbs. When they come home, I am where they left me that morning, but hundreds of objects in the house have been handled or cleaned since they walked out the door. Dinner is at 6. We eat together, but sometimes they are in such a hurry to get up from the table, I wonder if they tasted any of the food that went down. My kids always thank me for dinner, whether they taste it or not. They are good about that.

I think in the adolescent fog, I come across not really as a person, but a voice that reminds them to do their jobs. But I know I am more than that. I know that it takes real strength to build independent children. It takes quite an effort to keep a supply of poster board for last-minute school projects and know how to make alterations in clothing; to sit through years of baseball games and ballet rehearsals and years of schooling. It takes love to keep a light on late at night and wait for the garage door to rumble, signaling our child is home and safe. It takes two great commodities, time and self, to wait in parking lots while a child makes steps to get a new job, perform piano pieces behind closed doors, and clean up the trappings of a concert. I no longer walk them in and out of buildings, holding their hands. When they are old enough to drive themselves, I miss our talks in the car.

I know that mothering is important, and it’s a gift. However, the carrying and snuggling from the earlier years seems easier now that I have to be subtle in showing the same things: I am here, I am yours, I love you.

Easter Weekend

My new neighbor heard that we were musical so she gave us her tickets to Handel’s Messiah since she couldn’t go. This was a powerful experience. The music felt like heaven reaching out to me.

At the family Easter gathering on Saturday, my dad took the children on an Easter walk around the property. He set up simple objects and food for the children to handle and eat as he talked about the last week of the Savior’s life. He selected scriptures to be read at each stop. The small children were reverent and aware. I followed along and was touched by my dad’s testimony of Christ and his efforts to share it with his grandchildren. He has no pattern to follow in these acts from his own family experience, so one of my Easter lessons this year was how the gospel of Jesus Christ enhances the family dynamic and blesses generations.

Paige came home for a day. It was our eighth year attending the General Women’s meeting of the Church together and we took the traditional picture. We were called to action by our leaders, and that is a good thing.

Easter is changing for our family. Instead of the highlight being eggs and the traditional Easter scriptures in eggs, it was the Sunday meal. I don’t usually cook much on Sunday, but I prepared an Easter feast and enjoyed how the family lingered at the table for a change. Daniel filled the house with Easter music all day; Paige filled the house with art, photographing her work for her portfolio. Mark helped fill eggs with candy for his siblings. It was a good day.

Truths about the Savior I experienced this Easter week include feelings of gratitude for his grace lifting me and accepting me when I knew I could have done better. As I listened to Messiah music, I followed the Libretto, or text. The words were familiar even if the full musical score wasn’t. I realized how many of these scriptures about Christ are fundamental to me, their words framing my testimony. They are the lens by which I view many things, and a beloved guide for how to respond to challenges and try to help others. I feel my flaws in high relief, but Easter weekend reminded me that I can’t and will not fix them alone. Our precious Savior is the solution to everything.

Group project

Continue reading Group project

When the boys are away

When the boys and Richard go skiing, I take the day to buy groceries, clean, and watch BBC dramas. Last weekend I sewed a doll face and hair. The weekend before that I went to IFA to see the chicks and bunnies.

Mark was with me on the IFA trip and we giggled together as we followed the cheep-cheep-cheeping sounds to find the chicks.

This weekend the boys will ski again. I have plans to decorate fancy sugar cookies and watch the annual Easter egg hunt in my parents’ garden at Spring Lake.

Magnifying time

This is sand, magnified something like 300 times. Days and minutes can seem pretty uniform if we aren’t trying to magnify them. These past few years I have been working on how I use the minutes in my days. I don’t have the luxury of hours to spend on projects, but I have minutes and half hour segments here and there all day long. The big events of the day, such as teaching school, cooking, cleaning, and errands can make me feel too busy to try other things. But I think successful people are those who maximize the minutes between the big events. And by this I don’t mean that I try to pile on more activities. Sometimes the best use of my time is to take a quick nap. Sometimes I sit down and look out the window or make a phone call that I know will be short. I can sew a few seams for a quilt or read a few pages of my book about the New Testament. The goal is to never waste my time. I am enjoying how many different things I can do in a day. The minutes add up over time, and I find that I am making quilts, increasing my knowledge, keeping a family history, making music, reaching out to friends, and enjoying walks outside. Probably the best magnification of time is in my relationships. I can talk to the kids as I drive them. I can choose to put down a book and be available to talk. If I could choose whether I am successful in my relationships or in my hobbies, I would say relationships. Now, do my choices reflect that?

Sister Carole Stephens said, “Your choices reflect your priorities.” How true. And I have more work to do on that.

The Thank You Book

When we receive thank you notes and birthday cards I place them in a photo album. When I am having a bad day or wonder what I am doing with my life, I read through the notes. This fat book restores my hope and reminds me to keep trying. Every kindness matters, whether it is acknowledged or not. I am thankful for every friendship these notes represent.

Three February Favorites

Richard and I tried the Vid Angel app this month to watch some movies. It’s a streaming service that will edit your movies. You buy the movie, choose the filters you want, such as profanity and vulgarity, and the edited movie streams to your device. Then you sell the movie back for $1 less than you paid for it. They have a pretty good selection of new and older movies and we love not hearing the bad language in the films. We aren’t big TV watchers, but this month we binged a little on movies on the weekends.

One of my favorites was Bridge of Spies. We heard that the Russian spy in the movie won the Oscar for best supporting actor. He really was amazing, and who doesn’t love Tom Hanks?

My friend and counselor in the Relief Society handed me this book and said I must read it. It was delightful. Not my usual genre, but very fun and it made me want to have pen pals who like to talk about books.

Bridge of Spies, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and Vid Angel are my favorites of the month.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

2006-2012

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

In 2005 the realtor who listed our home in Austin recommended that we try the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum once we moved to Tucson. This was great advice. Going to the Desert Museum became a pattern in our lives while we lived in Arizona. It was the place we tried to take all of our guests; it was fun for kids and parents. It was one of my go-to home school field trip destinations. We went there several times a year.

A trip to the Desert Museum was a sensory feast. After driving 20 minutes on the freeway and other busy roads, we turned onto a narrow, winding road. Rock shops appeared along the road as other signs of civilization dwindled. We drove another 15 minutes among cliffs and ancient saguaros, tall and haunting. Not only was the road winding and narrow, it had great dips and inclines, making it feel like a roller coaster if we took the curves and dips with some acceleration. The van would fill with squeals of laughter as stomachs dropped with the dips and turns. The smell of sunblock floated in the air as the kids prepared for the day in the sun. I could look back and see children’s eyes wide with excitement. Sometimes they would raise their hands high above their heads for the declines and quick ascents. I’d turn up the music.

We always started the day early, arriving at the Desert Museum as it opened. I loaded our green stroller with water bottles, snacks, hats, the camera bag, sunblock, and notebooks. It was quite a production, setting out for a day in this mostly outdoor museum. It grew hot quickly, so we followed a path where we knew we could find shade at the hottest parts of the day. The “museum” felt mostly like a walk in the desert with occasional docents along the way holding birds, skulls, or other desert animals. There were enclosures for animals, but only a few structures that provided shade.

Our favorite attractions were in the summer, when the butterfly gardens were teeming with caterpillars and butterflies and the monsoon rains had awakened the flowers. We avoided school field trip days by going in the summer, too. Sometimes we would stop to sketch the hummingbirds or linger and watch the desert tortoises in the early part of the day. By 10:00, we were usually very warm and we would make our way to the pavilions with air conditioning and then the ice cream parlor built out on the trail. The ice cream cones always seemed like manna, and I didn’t care that it was only 10 am because it made the grumpiness disappear.

There were mammals, reptiles, insects, spiders, monkeys, and birds to see. Our favorite animal was probably the mountain lion that had a cave where it would sleep, its face sometimes pressed up against the window for the kids to admire closely.

The mountain lion was always at the end of our ability to cope with the heat, so we would head up the hill toward the cave for the rest of the day. The cave was man-made, and you entered on a paved path. Inside there were exhibits about space and volcanoes, rocks, and minerals. Best of all, there were tunnels going off the main path for the kids to explore. These cave-like tunnels were narrow, smooth with wear, and a little smelly with mildew and stale people smells. Those who braved these narrow passageways were rewarded with a view of cave formations, great stalactites and stalagmites illuminated in golden light. I would sit at the base of these tunnels on a rock and let the kids wander and play for about an hour, hearing their happy voices echo through the corridors.

The final leg of our journey took us out of the cave past a “mine tailings” exhibit where kids could search the gravel for shiny, colored rocks. Each guest was allowed to keep one or two rocks. Serious thought went into these choices. Pockets were emptied on flat surfaces and the rocks were admired, but in the end, only a few would become ours. We stored our treasure rocks in the small compartment in our stroller. One last stop before the big hill to the parking area was the excavation area where kids would put on goggles and chip off plaster from around “fossils” of ancient animals.

The snake and insect houses were either first or last, as they were located at the entrance. I don’t know if the kids remember these exhibits as much, but there were Gila monsters, scorpions that glowed under a black light, and rattlesnakes.

The end of a trip to the Desert Museum always felt like a triumph, having conquered the elements with every device we had. The drive home often included a trip to the McDonald’s drive up window on the fringe of civilization. It was hard work being desert explorers, but we loved it. If I could go back to Tucson for a few days, I would take the kids back to this magical place. Their longer, lankier bodies may not fit so easily in the cave, and some of that wonder of childhood would be gone, but I know that they would have fun. It was ALWAYS a good day at the Desert Museum. How many things in life are like that?

The Jeep

2004, 2009

One night when Paige was seven I was driving home from a Relief Society appointment and saw that someone had placed a yellow child-sized Jeep next to their trash can on the curb. I had always thought that child-sized cars were adorable and I began to have visions of our kids riding around in this little yellow jeep. Oh, I wanted this piece of trash!

I went home and asked Richard to go and get the jeep for our kids. He walked up the street and wheeled it home while I hid in the house, hoping our neighbors wouldn’t notice that we were going through their trash. When we inspected it, we learned that it didn’t have a battery and it had some electrical problems. Richard worked on the electrical parts and bought a new battery. Eventually he got it moving. The wheels were brittle and cracked from years of sitting in the sun and the plastic was old and faded, but it could go!

Paige and Daniel loved that jeep. The motor sounded like it was screaming when they pushed the pedal, and the cracking plastic wheels sounded brittle as they scraped along the sidewalk. I chuckled at Paige who made gutsy 3-point turns, shifted gears quickly, and pushed the jeep to its maximum speed. This quiet little girl was born to race! With Paige driving, she and Daniel would raise their hands high above their heads whenever they crossed a driveway and let out a loud squeal.

Our neighbor Natalie, who was 4-years-old like Daniel, joined the derby in the evenings with her own pink and white Barbie jeep. Paige and Daniel would take turns driving our jeep. All of the neighborhood friends came out in the evenings that summer. Tien, Sadaf, Natalie, and Daniel raced past the house with a clatter, screams, and laughter. Sometimes they raced bikes, scooters, and a tricycle along with the jeeps on the sidewalk in front of our house as the sun went down.

The yellow jeep was loaded into the moving truck when we went to Arizona, but it was damaged in the move and the kids drove it a couple times around the yard before it gave out. We parked it on our back patio and the kids would sit in it, imaginations turned on high, pretending to drive.

In 2009 we bought a child-sized truck so Timothy and Mark could have the driving experience. This truck was new and didn’t have the condition issues of the first jeep. It even had a working radio. Our favorite place to let the kids drive the truck was in the grassy field a couple of blocks west of our house. There we let them drive across the grass, around the paved path, and up and down the grassy hills. Timothy and Mark were excellent drivers, but Mark seemed to like to drive it the fastest. He would also turn the radio dial until he found a hard rock station, turn up the volume, and go tearing up the hills and down.

The children, each around age nine, grew out of the toy cars. Their legs were too long and buckled up to their chests when they sat at the wheel. Jeep and Truck memories only make me smile.