Bests

The best evenings are Utah summer evenings, and after hot, smoky days, the sunsets burn ribbons of orange and red across the horizon. Just as we have adjusted to a slower pace after the frenzied weeks of travel, missionary preparations, and goodbyes, this week ushers in busy school life. I feel nothing about the school year. It just is. Today as we drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon to piano lessons, there were leaves on the hill which have lost some of their verdure. We wonder, will the autumn colors be more or less brilliant after this dry summer?

Today is Paige’s twenty-second birthday, and I am on my second attempt at a three-layer cake. The first three layers sit in the trash. I remember the effort for her first cake and my skills are still shaky for her twenty-second cake. My best girl. She is here for a few weeks as she shuffles her plans for housing.

We accomplished a lot this summer, and by we, I mean the kids. There was Paige’s internship in New York and Daniel’s mission, but here’s a shout-out for Timothy who finished drivers ed and Mark who learned to swim properly. Here’s a shout-out for the books we read, the conservative documentaries Timothy and Richard viewed, and all the water in which we have dipped our toes. Our necks craned to see the tops of Redwood trees and skyscrapers. We stopped on the sides of streams to throw rocks and sketch. We boated, biked, hiked, climbed, drove, and swam through this summer. We entered holy temples more often than usual. Summer of 2018 has been one of our best. It’s like we lived the lyrics of This Land is Your Land.

 

 

Unthinkable resilience

Unthinkable resilience! Why should I want to feel better? Is it okay to miss Daniel even though he is doing good things?

“Time will make it better,” they say, but what is time? It’s usually the enemy. Wasn’t it time that got us to the place that time must now heal? I think time is neither enemy nor healer. Relative, temporary, illusive, speeding, slowing, stalled: time is our least dependable marker. To God, time is not as we experience it here. So why is time a cornerstone for us? Perhaps time is just a name for something we can’t name, but surely makes us change.

For almost nineteen years, I set my clock by many of Daniel’s sounds. Lately, I slept after the ratcheting of the lock on the door at night and woke to the close of his basement bathroom door. I timed my days for dinner at 6:30 and the late night talks. And then time seemed to leave as I watched him move away from his youth, not just at obvious milestones, but late one night, sitting in silence with him in the dark after he said a final goodbye to someone. I felt it as he made requests for the care of keepsakes and friends and siblings. Time was not there in these moments, but there was something else. Reality? Presence? Arrival?

It’s always been a balance beam, this relationship. Don’t cling, let him fly, stay centered, don’t react, but never, until recently, be perfectly still. Be still, and realize that it was always God who was holding us up, (not I!) and that this support will continue. For God deals in the realities of people and relationships. How inconsequential is time compared to love!

I begin to understand that my Father in Heaven, not time, is the source of a resilience I can accept.

Consolation

Kindness is the most difficult thing to take right now because it brings out emotions I think I have already dealt with, but kindness also reminds me that I am understood. I may not be answering the door, but I am doing well. I am out each day doing Relief Society work. I have taken the kids to the mall and Costco and up the canyon for driving practice. I am preparing meals and cleaning the house. I am not crying all the time, but I am not yet myself. I am thankful for friends, whose gestures cannot all be pictured here. From eighty-five year-old neighbor Stanford called to check on me, to sixteen-year-old friend Lillie who decorated a cake for us, they represent many ages. Another special friend has left a succession of packages throughout the week. We were invited to dinner and received many flower deliveries. We have felt love from many states. There are friends from Texas and Arizona and high school who have taken time to write words of excitement for us. These gifts of consolation add up to quite a celebration, which is appropriate, considering we have a son who is worthy and willing to be a light.

D&C 31:3

We sent our missionary out today with a mass of other young elders at the airport. The empathy tears for other mothers and my own calm were surprises to me. I felt God was there, too. That was no surprise.

Payson temple

We decided to attend the temple as a family, all six of us at the same time. My parents came with us and we did ordinances for some particularly dear family members who are deceased. Some spent time in the baptistry. Mark had names he had discovered himself at the family history library plus one other special name we have been waiting for permission to do. Others spent time in a session. Daniel and Richard carried names Daniel found when he was twelve years old. It was an especially sweet day at the Payson temple. The name cards had been well-traveled, with some ordinances in Arizona, others in Draper, and now Payson. I was really affected by the experience and I was glad that I still had tissues in my pocket from a different day in the temple. I wish we had taken a picture, but we got separated and things were a little hectic getting there. My mom figured we had some challenges getting to the temple because it was the right thing to do. Amen.

New lenses

At 2:15 on Monday, I captured the kids doing these things and asked them to pretend I wasn’t taking pictures.

Richard dreads the idea of having to wear glasses, but I have worn them since I was nine or ten years old and know how great it is to have vision restored. Like Richard, though, I sometimes fight the different lenses I need to take on with time: the lens of experience in saying goodbye at college or a mission, the lens of what it’s like to sit with someone who is in pain, and the lens to look outward when my own troubles want to dominate my view. The lenses of experience with disappointment, repentance, and wisdom after stupidity are particularly difficult to assume sometimes.

I think the most difficult thing I ever did was say goodbye to my friends who went on missions. Three best friends left within a year and I was shaken emotionally and physically. For this reason, I worried what it would be like to send Daniel, who is more dear to me, on a mission. I have my moments, of course, but I have something I didn’t have when I said goodbye to my friends when I was 18 and 19 years old. The lenses I have acquired over time teach me that a mission is not just a goodbye. It is everything good. I have seen it again and again. I am really as peaceful about this as I have ever felt over a big transition. I felt it when he read his call to me. I feel it now, even though we have less than a week left together. It is peace not earned by personal experience, since I have never sent a son before, but it’s evidence of a generous God.

Sunday Breakfast & Friends

Paige came home from New York last night and Daniel spoke in sacrament meeting today. We had a lot of family join us for the meeting, so we gathered for breakfast before church at our house. Daniel’s friends ate breakfast leftovers after church on our back patio. We didn’t get photos of everyone who came, but we are thankful for those who showed their support. It was a good day.