Letters from Home

As Paige is graduating this week, I thought I’d share one of my essays about her from my memoir project.

Quiet Paige is Formidable

When Paige was four or five years old, she was part of a class of children in church with two darling teachers, Katrina Kuriplach and Lisa Stott. One day during the lesson the children were challenged to pick up a penny without using their thumbs. This task was designed to be impossible, perhaps to point out the amazing design of our bodies. Children took turns coming to the front of the room and tried to pick up the penny with only their fingers, but each failed. Quiet, hesitant Paige surprised them all when she walked up to the penny, brushed it off the book without using her thumbs, and caught it with her other hand when it fell.

When Paige was three, she dressed up for Halloween as Mary Poppins. Our neighbors’ daughter Kaitlyn was her best friend. We went trick-or-treating together as families and watched our little girls run ahead of us to the next house. Kaitlyn’s mother took the opportunity to tell me that Kaitlyn had tried to get Paige to dress in a coordinating costume. Kaitlyn was a blue dog, and she wanted Paige to be the pink dog. (Blue and Magenta from the show, Blues Clues) However, Kaitlyn’s mother said that Paige would have nothing to do with the idea. “Paige is independent and strong-willed,” she told me. I had worried that Paige’s silent nature might mean a life of getting pushed around by others, and this was a welcome insight!

I have learned from having a quiet child and being quiet myself that it’s possible to have strength, resilience, and ingenuity while being quiet. It is an important day when someone will acknowledge that.

At age eight when Paige was interviewed by our bishop for baptism, I received a call from the bishop telling me that he had been impressed by Paige’s answers to his questions about the gospel. He told me that it was a “Charlie Brown” moment in his life. He had become the adult whose words were muddled and unimportant as Paige’s clear and profound answers became the focus and highlight of the conversation. Many years later when we were living in Arizona, this bishop wrote to me,

Paige remains the most amazing baptism interview of my Bishop career…she left an indelible impression of goodness and purpose… Her light reflects her intrinsic beauty, value and a maturity far beyond her mortal years… Her understanding of and her insight into our Father’s Plan of Happiness leaves her untroubled with the ‘Do’s and Don’t’s’ of the commandments… While I may no longer recognize her in a crowd, I will love her forever.