The English Geek

"Shared Sorrow is Halved"

"Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow" is supposed to be a Swedish proverb. I'm not sure about the authenticity of the source, but it is an idea I have been thinking about lately.

Recently, my sister Becky has been experiencing something that, while the specifics aren't identical, is eerily similar to a trial I also went through a few years ago. "Went through," I write, as if it is finished; it isn't. In a sense it won't ever be. I'm being vague on the details because her story isn't mine to share, but the experience relates to grief. It is about the loss of possibility. About how hope can sometimes be a chain that holds you to something that is impossible to obtain through hope. About looking at things as they really are instead of how you so desperately want them to be. Accepting what is and letting go of the future you imagined: Hallmark doesn't make a card for that. 

For a few months, Becky didn't tell me what was happening, I think to spare me the resurfacing of my own heartache. (She has been properly chastised.) What she didn't know is that for me, revisiting the experience with the intent of helping her actually helped me. Being able to share someone else's sorrow because it so closely mirrors your own is a unique blessing of that sorrow. It gave something that was entirely about loss a sort of redemption, because at least I could share my process of mourning. At least I could tell her how I arrived at my hard-earned and sharp-edged peace. I could tell her honestly: this doesn't stop hurting, really, but your relationship to the hurt changes. You come to understand it; it becomes a presence in your life, hovering over your right shoulder until you wouldn't be yourself without it. What lingers continues to tie you to what you lost and become a sort of solace.

I want to give her what I know so that she doesn't have to travel the long pain of it—but I know I can't suffer for her. And I want her to learn different things, to let it make her more resilient and forgiving whereas it made me a little darker around the edges; more jaded and less trusting. I hope she can arrive at a place where she feels more dedicated to faith instead of slightly abandoned by it. And while I can't turn on the light or find a short cut through the darkness, I can give her the map I used. She will find her own trails and destinations, but perhaps knowing someone else has also walked in that strange country will strengthen her endurance.

I cannot fix it. I cannot give her what she wanted. All I can do is tell her yes. I felt that too. Here is what I understand now. In sharing grief, the sorrow isn't halved for anyone. But it is made easier to bear.

The Grandma Party

June 2008.

I had to look it up to make sure, but I gave Haley the right answer when she asked me this week when the last Grandparents Party was that included all four grandparents. Kaleb's third birthday party. The following autumn, we moved Dad into the care center where he lived for nearly two years, and Nathan's party in November, when he turned nine, was the first one with just three grandparents.

I started the tradition of the Grandparents Party the year Haley turned four—the year she got her little mermaid two-wheeler. I put into place a family dinner on the Sunday before each child's birthday when I realized that I am awful at doing birthday parties. All the little kids! and the planning! and the endless shopping! and the feeling of mediocrity in my abilities! I decided that I'd only do friend parties once every other year, but the Grandparents Party would be a way to still celebrate birthdays.

Things didn't always go as I planned. Sometimes we went out to dinner instead of me cooking. One year we had to reschedule because of the stomach flu; one of Jake's was postponed because of a heavy snowstorm. I usually made too much food and took too long in making it—I never finished cooking when I thought I would. But the tradition remained: the birthday child always chose his or her favorite dinner and dessert, and I always insisted on a photo of the child with each of the grandparents.

(I am so grateful to have those photos! They were inspired by one of the very few pictures I have of myself with both of my grandparents, on my twelfth birthday.)

 

(Grandpa died the following December)

 

 November 21, 2010 was the first Grandparents Party with just grandmas, but the last one when the two grandpas were still alive. Even though Kent was at home being cared for by hospice workers, Beth came to Nathan's party; not twenty minutes after she got home, Kent passed away holding her hand.

Nathan's next Grandparents Party, in 2011, was the first one after my dad died. If you had told me then that his next birthday would find us down to just one grandma, I would have never, ever believed you.

I still don't believe it, really. When we go to Beth's house to check on things, it still smells like her and it still feels like she's just in her bedroom and will come out at any second.

But time moves forward. Boys turn 13. And last Sunday, we had Nathan's Grandparents Party. With just my mom. We followed all the same traditions of course: he chose the meal he wanted (roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots with brown sugar & butter, my mom's Jello with raspberries and pretzels, and fresh dinner rolls, with carrot cake for dessert) and we took the photo with grandma. I worried about not having dinner ready on time and we ate too much and sang happy birthday and opened presents.

Beth wasn't there.

My dad wasn't there.

Kendell's dad wasn't there.

And we all tried to be happy but we all felt those absences.

When Beth passed away, one of the things that Kendell inherited was her pink flowery dishes. So to make sure she was included even though she wasn't there and they didn't match the tablecloth, we ate dinner using her plates.

Later, when Kendell and I were cleaning up, we discovered that each one of them had been numbered with a red label maker, one through twelve, with seven, nine, two, and four missing. I don't know what those numbers meant or why she numbered them. It was, for a brief moment, a sort of communique, a flash of thought passed on to us from beyond the grave, as if she still had something to say.

As if she knew we hadn't forgotten.

 

Related articles

Grief is a Conglomerate Stone

Blog your Heart

Following Stephanie's lead,
I am blogging my heart tonight—writing what I am really pondering, without much of an attempt at filtering my thoughts.

Friday was an adventure. Kendell and I went on a 35-mile-long drive on a dirt road in the mountains, with views like this:

and it was such a perfect day. The weather, the drive, our conversation, the two tiny hikes we veered off on. Seeing the place where I grew up from an entirely different perspective, which made me feel like I'd found a lost piece of myself. When we got out of the mountains we stopped by my mom's so I could pick up the antique sewing machine that belonged to my great grandma Amy, whom I am named for but never met, and there is something, just something I can't name yet, about having it here in my house. (Even though I haven't found a permanent place for it yet.)

It was a perfect day.

But when I went to bed I found myself terrified. Terrified. Imagining over and over what bad things might happen in the morning. Jake & Nathan were both off on a scout camp out, which always makes me anxious anyway, so I was conjuring up horrible accidents for them both. Picturing Kaleb falling off his bike and Haley getting in a car accident and Kendell's heart valve crumbling away. And other, darker images. A montage of all my deepest fears kept me from sleeping. I was certain, certain that having such a perfect day was something I shouldn't have experienced because soon I'd have to pay for it with something as monstrously opposite as possible.

And I hate that I feel that way.

I think it shows some of my weaknesses. That deeply-rooted belief that the really good things are the providence of other people. A lack of faith. An inability to feel that I deserve perfect days. It reminds me, strangely enough, of my mom, who is almost 70 years old and still wants to lose a few pounds. When I hear her talking about dieting, it makes me sad. Isn't there ever a time when we are old enough to simply be happy with who we are? It makes me wonder. When we can relax and breathe and feel comfortable in our own skin? (Even if it is wrinkled.) The same goes for me: when will I be old enough to cast off the old belief that I am not good enough to deserve the bone-deep, blissed-out, surprisingly gentle happiness my day in the woods brought me? Or that I should hold on to what is hard, rub my tongue over it as if it were a sore tooth, savor its bitterness as a sort of protection against other, harder things?

When I woke up this morning, I took a deep breath. I remembered those two feelings: the certainty of doom, the brightness of joy. I held them both in my heart, and then I tried to let go of the fear that had troubled my sleep. I can't say I let it all go. I still worried my way through the day; I still exhaled hard when the boys got home from their camp out, dirty and smelly and full of stories; safe. But I tried to let the other wash in behind, the light in the trees, the sound of boots shushing through fallen leaves and tires over gravelly dirt, the new perspective. Tried hard to believe it would be OK.

And it was.

Mormon in America: My Version

One day, one of my good friends and I were talking about the gospel. She knows some of the sordid details of my past, and on this day when we were talking, she said something to me that filled me with a peace I rarely have concerning my faith. "It must seem so strange to you, the way we try to live as LDS believers," she said, "after all those years of knowing about it but not living it." I loved that she said that first and foremost because it reminded me why we are friends: she doesn’t just not judge me, but she tries to imagine things from my perspective. But her comment also validated the reasons behind my uneasy peace with being a Mormon. It does, quite often, feel strange. I don’t say this as a criticism of the church, exactly, but as one of my truths: some of the ways that the doctrines get interpreted bother me, and that comes straight out of my history.

I don’t blog a lot about my faith. Mostly this is because of my shortcomings as a writer: it is easy to drift into sentimentality when you’re writing about spiritual things, and I don’t always know how to put what I feel into words. But it’s also because of my shortcomings with my faith itself: I assume that almost anyone reading my words is rolling their eyes over my beliefs, or there is so much back story that to get to the point of my realization is just too much, or that those who are also LDS are much stronger than I am and so wouldn’t understand my ponderings. So I mostly write about it in my journal and keep it to myself.

But after this weekend’s NBC report about Mormonism in America, I have a few things to say. I’ve been surprised at how many of my LDS friends didn’t like the report; they thought they focused too much on people who are on the fringes instead of the steady, stalwart families. I thought, however, that they included a wider ranges of perspective to give—well, a wider perspective. Because despite what Juleen Jackson (the woman whose family was on the show) said in an interview after the program, 98% of Mormons don’t function like her family. I don’t have a statistic for how many do, but I don’t believe it’s almost all of the church.

Perspective and personal history do get wrapped up in how anyone lives the gospel. Someone like Juleen Jackson, who has lived the gospel her entire life and never even drank a Coke, has a different way of looking at the world than I do. Neither perspective is wrong, but I do have an issue with those who assume that every family works like their family. In my opinion, that is where the idea of the LDS homogenization comes from: good, strong, LDS families who do everything they should (scripture reading, family prayer, family home evening, pay tithing, never missing church, support scouting whole-heartedly, fast on every fast Sunday, go to the temple every week, never drink a Coke) quite often (but not always, as my friend taught me) assume that every other Mormon family also does everything they should. But let’s just be realistic here: they don’t.

Or at least, my family fails. (Translation: I fail.) While we watched the program, Kendell and I both had moments of thinking out loud: what if our family was representing the church on national television? Our story is much different. Take, for example, our house every Sunday before church, when I find myself raising my voice and getting frustrated because once again I am arguing with one kid or another about the fact that yes, we are going to church, even though said kid hates it/thinks it’s boring/doesn’t feel like he or she belongs/doesn’t want to wear church clothes/is too tired/points out that we already went to church last week so really? again? And the thing that spurs my anger and frustration with this weekly debate is, deep down, me feeling like if I had lived the gospel better, or not had such a rough start, or been a stronger example, my kids wouldn’t feel like they do.

But there is also the truth that I am imperfect. And I know, that’s a dumb thing to say because everyone is imperfect. But I also know there are people who are much closer to perfection. I look at a family like the Jacksons on the NBC program and I think: I won’t ever have that level of perfection. My choices as well as my weaknesses, personality, and circumstances haven’t brought that sort of lifestyle to me. And if I let it, this knowledge would make me give up on living the gospel. If I believed, like Juleen Jackson, that the only good version of Mormondom is her version, there wouldn’t be any reason to try.

But I cannot believe that.

I have to believe that my very imperfect efforts are understood by the Lord. I have to believe that what other people might judge me for is seen differently by the Savior, who knows my past, my current issues, and my potential, too. I have to believe that for me it doesn’t matter what level of spirituality other families attain, just like it doesn’t matter to me if someone has a gay child or a rebellious one or even—gasp—a feminist in their midst. The only thing that matters is what we do as a family, and that we keep on trying, and that we make it to church even if I’m prickly for the first half and we’re nearly always late. I have to believe that my very imperfect version of being a Mormon in America is equally valid and not—as it sometimes feels—deeply shameful.

I confess: I still have that rebellious, questioning Amy inside of me. Sometimes I roll my eyes when I hear other members’ opinions, especially when they involve judging others. I struggle and I question and I don’t always agree. Sometimes I look at the things I feel so guilty over and realize that to most of the world they are downright silly as far as sinning goes; I go to church and try to follow Christ and I strive to also be myself, and if that isn’t enough, what is? Most of the time I am exactly like Joanna Brooks: bothered by the patriarchy. I don’t judge others by their faults but sometimes I struggle with judging them for their perfections. I listen to what is taught and sometimes I have to struggle to make it fit with what my heart tells me. Plenty of things I just simply don’t have a response for and have to, instead, have faith that I will one day understand.

But the other side of that coin, inexplicably intertwined, is the fact that I also know it is true. That is a vague statement and it’s one of the reasons I don’t blog about my faith much. "I know it is true" is based almost entirely on feeling. It is based on the strum of my soul responding to the truths (as opposed to the traditions) of the gospel: believe in Christ, live the golden rule, try to be like Christ. Help others, be loving and gentle, put aside yourself and go to work. The knowing is based on some concrete things, but mostly on the abstract, the inexplicable, the things in my heart that no one else can see. Despite my imperfections and failures and shortcomings, I still believe and I still keep trying, and that is how it feels for me, being a Mormon in America.

on Friendship

I felt like my soul had road rash.

Between the mean thing one of my kids said and the unappreciative drama another one was handing out was me, trying to keep my cool and completely failing. It was the financial pain of paying more than $500 in school fees today and still staring down paying yearbooks and school lunch and a trip to Target for school supplies and oh yeah: one kid still needs a new backpack and another needs a rucksack and a third really wants a new bag but doesn’t really need one and I haven’t even bought new socks and underwear for anyone yet. It didn’t help that my knee was feeling twingy and weird this morning so I skipped my run. Plus the never-abating fact that when you have three teenagers there is always someone mad at you and I didn’t handle anything well at all; I let anxiety crowd out my ability to stay cheerful or relaxed and I snapped far too often which really feels worse than the mean thing that one kid said.

Maybe not so much road rash as burned to a crisp.

So I asked my husband to help me feel better, but you know how that goes, right? He tried. He tried to make me laugh. He gave me a hug and patted my shoulder and listened to me complain awhile but what I really wanted was for him to say "go take a long bath and I’ll deal with reality" but do husbands really do that?

So I was still stinging.

But then Fate or the Universe or Someone intervened by bringing me to a calm, quite hour of talking to a friend. The kind of friend who you can talk to without having to tell all the back stories first because she already knows them and who will forgive you for telling the same story twice and who isn’t stingy with her own stories, so I felt like I was both listening and being listened to, and somewhere in the dark in my van while we talked and laughed and maybe I got a little teary the burns received a balm; my soul was bandaged and I could come home free of my previous ache.

Isn’t friendship a blessing?

Why I Run in Running Clothes

We Mormons have been accused of being a peculiar people. As I quite often feel more like a convert to my religion, as opposed to a person born into it, these oddities seem glaringly odd to me sometimes, too. (Like, honestly. Last week I found myself standing in front of the new Starbucks at our in-the-middle-of-a-remodel Target, sniffing deeply and snuffling longingly and thinking...really? Coffee? We can't drink coffee? And trust me: that's not the first time I've had that thought.) One of my LDS oddities that I've been thinking about lately is modesty.

We are encouraged to dress modestly. In general my take on me dressing modestly involves the length of my skirts and shorts, the cut of my shirts (including both the bust and the sleeve width), and the general, over all feel of my outfit. My interpretation of "modest" revolves mostly around the concept of elegance. I don't want to dress too young, or too skimpy or too...what's the opposite of elegant? I do, however, believe that I can dress modestly without wearing a sack. Maybe it is shallow of me—and honestly, I'm not afraid to leave my house in sweats and a t-shirt and a slumpy long sweater—but I do take pleasure from what I wear. My inner rebellious self somethings thinks really? sleeveless? No one can see our shoulders? but in general I stay firmly on The Plan. I like pretty, I like black, I like the style I've developed. Sweats included.

Except, I still wear running clothes when I go running. I don't wear those tiny running shorts that other girls can get away with. (Partly this is because my thighs rub together too fiercly to wear them, but it's mostly because I wouldn't feel comfortable with my butt nearly hanging out.) I don't hit the road without covering up my sports bra. But, I do wear singlets. I wear shorts that are shorter than my knees. I wear tank tops and running skirts.

And this bothers some people.

(I know it bothers some people because they have told me it bothers them. "You shouldn't run in that shirt" or "I think your running shorts are immodest" are actual real live words people have said to me.)

This topic has been on my mind since last week, when I was leaving my house for a run. It was a glorious afternoon—just warm enough for a running tank and one of my favorite running skirts. I left the house, ready to sweat and maybe get a little dusty and certainly come back red-faced as I am not one of those graceful runners who finish their workouts looking like they've just finished getting a facial, feeling pretty. Just as I turned the corner to leave my neighborhood, a neighbor turned his vehicle onto my street—and he gave me that look. The one I am completely familiar with. The one that means you are dressed immodestly.

And let me tell you: I argued with that neighbor (someone I consider to be a friend) in my head for all of my five (very hilly!) miles. I told him about my right to choose. I told him that my running outfit was just that, running clothes purchased from the workout-clothes section. I argued that running in pants and a T when it's scorching outside is absolutely miserable. I pointed out that swimmers exercise in swim suits (even the Mormon ones!) so it stands that runners can wear running clothes. He argued back (in my head) that there are running clothes and then there are running clothes. 

So then I got personal. I pointed out (in my head) that there are some things in my life that make me completely unhappy and stressed out in ways he has no concept of. And that I am prone to letting my little black raincloud sluice away my attempts at being happy or hopeful or optimistic. And that I am starting to have anxiety attacks on a regular basis. But running? Running helps me keep those things at bay. Running helps me keep the unhappinesses in perspective and the little black raincloud from turning into a hurricane and the anxiety from needing medication.

But I can also be honest: physical and mental health aren't the only reasons I like running. I like wearing cute running clothes. They make me happy. They make me excited to get out the door. Without cute running clothes I would be far less motivated to run. Call me selfish if you need to, or vain, or even just downright lame. That's OK. I know myself and my life and my reactions to it well enough: if I ran in Mormon-modest running clothes I wouldn't want to run as much. If I didn't run as much I would eventually find myself rocking on the floor in a dark closet somewhere, contemplating slitting my wrists.

"If you had enough faith to be obedient," my neighbor volleyed back (in my head), "it could overcome all of those things."

A point I cannot refute.

Despite this imaginary discussion with my neighbor (for whom I hold no hard feelings as this whole idea was discussed in my head), and my knowledge that it's my weakness that's the problem here, I'm not going to abandon my favorite running clothes. Because imaginary arguments aside, I need to keep myself sane and strong for my kids. And for myself. Plus there's the fact that I still get to chose, and my choice is that I am OK. My shorts aren't tiny. My belly isn't exposed. My tank tops have thick straps.

Perhaps my idea of modesty is different from the rest of my neighbors'. After all, I also buy and wear tankinis instead of one-piece swimsuits. When Haley was little I let her wear sundresses without a shirt underneath. I am also pretty firm in telling my sons that they are responsible for the contents of their thoughts, not the girl in skinny jeans. (Because saying "girls should dress modest so that boys can control their thoughts" seems like an inch away from saying "it's your fault I raped you because you wore that short skirt.")  I talk to Haley, too, about modesty. We don't always agree, quite frankly. Sometimes my ideas feel too prescriptive too her. I just keep trying but deep down I know: the style of clothes she settles on in her adult world might be sort-of influenced by me, but in the end she gets to choose. Just like I get to choose.

Besides. What does "modest" mean, anyway? It's very first dictionary definition has nothing to do with clothes, but with decorum: "freedom from conceit or vanity." Modesty, in the end, shouldn't be about hem lengths or exposed shoulders. It should be about humility. I don't run in running clothes out of conceit—I don't love my running skirts because of what I think they might make someone else think about me. I run in them because they (ultimately) help me to be happy. Or happier than I would be otherwise. Self-importance and showing off have nothing to do with my running-clothes choices. Comfort, functionality, and cuteness do. (As well as pockets, but that's an entirely other rant.) Flaunting my knees and elbows might be immodest, but so is flaunting your apparent superior righteousness.

Other than that familiar look, I have no idea what my neighbor really thinks of my running attire. Most of me doesn't care. Most of me thinks about stones and glass houses and judging not. If you don't like what I'm wearing, I almost said to my in-my-head neighbor, then don't look at me. Instead I said don't judge me for sinning differently than you sin to his silent smugness (in my head). And that made his smugness slide away. In fact, he was at last, blessedly, gone. Out of my head  He left me to run in peace—even in my tank top and skirt.

(For more ideas about Mormons and modestly, check out these  posts written by people whom I've never met but whose opinions struck me as, well, interesting.)

My Father's Daffodils

For as long as I have been an aunt, my family has had the tradition of an Easter egg hunt in my mom's backyard on Easter Sunday. Because we tend to enjoy food, we also eat dinner together. As my oldest niece was born when I was 15 or 16, we've been doing this for a long, long time. Certain groupings of experiences have come and gone: the times when the amount of girls vastly outnumbered the boys, the year when we had three babies (this was Haley's first Easter), the times when the amount of boys vastly outnumbered the girls, the year we added cute little baskets to the hunt. Snowy Easters or bright, perfect ones; plenty of new spring outfits admired and photos snapped and strawberry-based desserts devoured

Since Kayci (the oldest niece) got married the year Ben and Kaleb (the youngest grandsons) were born, we didn't have an Easter with every one of my parents' grandchildren before the in-laws started being added. But every year, part of our tradition has been to get all the kids together for an Easter photo. We did some with Grandma and Grandpa and some without. Sometimes we took them in the front yard, sometimes in the back; sometimes, on snowy Easters, on the porch or inside, on the couch.

And for so many of those Easter Sundays, my dad was there, smiling, telling his slightly off-color jokes to Kendell, helping to hide the eggs full of candy. He and I would always talk about spring flowers, which ones were blooming, how the lilac bush was coming along, what the name of those tiny little purple flowers blooming by his antique wagon wheel might be. (He never seemed to remember exactly.) One Easter he played baseball with Nathan, who was just 18 months old. He was quite but still an essential part of the experience. Until he couldn't be any longer. Until silence took him away.

This year, for a variety of reasons, we had our Easter Sunday party on Palm Sunday instead. Some family drama meant that some of the nieces and nephews didn't come. We only had five kids to hunt eggs: my grand-niece Oakley, who is almost one; my two youngest and Becky's two boys. It was cold today, grey and blustery, and none of my father's daffodils were blooming yet. I felt heartsore, missing him, missing the years when all the grandkids were still little, the days when my knowledge was not yet so deeply felt and I thought that things would stay the way they were forever.

"Maybe this will be the last Easter party," my mom, who would like to sell her house and move into something smaller, said to me, while we were waiting for the men to hide the eggs. (It's tradition.) It felt like the last to me. Or maybe the one after the one that should have been the last. I don't know. When do you acknowledge that the family you have might be too large and diverse to continue insisting on pliability and similarity? When do you find that your own small family is enough? When do the edges snap away?

I went out to the front porch of my childhood home, scene of myriad memorable events. I looked up at the trees that were my height when Dad planted them, and then down at his flowerbeds, which were littered with little purple grape hyacinths. I talked to my sisters; I laughed. I went to the backyard and watched the small group hunt for their candy-filled eggs, revisiting the same hiding places the older generation had long ago discovered. When there were only a few eggs left, I walked with Kaleb, trying to help him find just one more treasure.

But it was me who found a treasure, just for a whisper of a moment. I thought of the blooming purple flowers, of the tulips with their green hands still shut tight and the lilac bush just barely covered in pale green leaves. I thought of all that has passed away. And I felt him there, my daddy, in the backyard that he loved and nurtured. Even though it's weedy now, and the swing set is knocked down and rusting. Even though the daffodils weren't blooming yet. He was there with me, just for a moment. He was there because he made it. He's gone but his grandkids still race around the beautiful space he made. He's gone but his grape hyacinths are still spattering the soil with lavender quiet. He's gone, but the trees he planted rustled in the wind and the flowers he planted worked their way towards blooming and somehow all the changes, the edges slowly breaking off, felt OK. Felt like how things just naturally progress. And they felt OK because of that moment. Because he made it OK.

Something moved away from me then. Perhaps it was the expectation that things will ever be the same. Maybe it won't be the last Easter party. But it will be the last time I expect it to bring me the same bright joy. It will have its own sadness, no matter where we have the party. And next Sunday, when it is Easter, I will only have my own children around me. Make it good, the wind whispered to me in my father's voice. Make it your own.

I will, Dad. I will.

a Night of Omens and (possibly) Answers

Since the events that transpired to create this post happened, I have been in a dark place in my soul. I have doubted my decisions, my relationships, my faith. I had a dark moment on a dark night sitting alone on a cold bench in a park, so late at night that the lights had gone out.

I want to believe what I have believed. I want to believe what others have said about my choices. I want to believe, again, that I am forging a good life. But I don’t know how to do that, here in the dark alone. And I don’t know how to convey what I believe to the people who need to believe it too.

So. I’m in this dark spot.

I can’t really talk about it, because talking induces hysteria. The kind of tears that feel like a heart attack. Putting it into spoken words, the kind with sound waves, makes it feel even more real.

So I’ve written a lot in my journal. I’ve fasted for myself (not something I ever do). I’ve thought and relived and tried to see things from an objective perspective.

I’ve spent a lot of time crying in the bathtub.

Two weeks ago, my mom asked me to come to her church’s birthday dinner. Some sort of writers or artists were coming to speak—she was vague on the details—and she thought it would be fun if I came because, you know, my writerly ambitions. And while I usually feel guilty about doing things in the evening on nights when I’m not working, something told me I should go.

So I did, despite the fact that I argued with Kendell about it and I argued with Haley about it and there was a big meltdown just before I left and I left late and then I had to speed down the freeway (which is a brave thing to do in Utah right now, considering all the freeway construction). I went, taking my darkness with me and my hope that the something telling me to go was right.

When I got off the freeway and turned east towards Springville where my mom lives, I gasped. The moon was rising, very close to full, right in the valley between two mountains. A sheet of clouds hung in the lower part of the valley, so it looked like the bottom quarter of the moon had been torn off. The rest of it, though, looked enormous—you know how it looks when it first rises?

If I wasn’t late and the road wasn’t so congested, I would have stopped and taken a photo of it, even though I’m certain that my camera phone couldn’t begin to capture how that moon made me feel. A little bit of light.

I rushed to my mom’s, picked her up, and drove to the church. She was still a little bit vague on the details of who was speaking, but as I listened to the conversations around me, I picked it up: the painter Liz Lemon Swindle, who does religious paintings, and Susan Easton Black, who is a church historian and a professor at BYU. She also writes the books that tell the story behind Swindle’s paintings.

And it just so happened that my mom and I ended up sitting at the very same table as these two women.

As I tend to do when I am around successful people, I clammed up. I wanted to talk to them both, gush my admiration and ask them for advice and learn their secrets, but mostly I just listened and ate chicken salad.

I loved listening to Liz Lemon Swindle speak about her art. As art is something I am immensely fond of—partly because my grandpa, Curtis Allman, was an artist—but not anything I can do with any resemblance to actual art, I find artists to be amazing people. The translation between the idea and the finished painting—it is a source of magic I think.

But the talk I needed to hear, the one I didn’t know I came to the meeting for, was Susan Easton Black’s. She spoke of a time in her life when she found herself in bed, having given up trying to live any sort of real life, and how a sort-of acquaintance helped her get out of bed, wash her sheets, and move forward. "You just have to find your talents and then do something with them," the friend told her, and so that is what she did. She took her talent of being able to remember the details of anything she read, and she became a teacher of church history. She wrote books with her knowledge, and shared what she knew. She made a life for herself by building up her talent.

Talent.

That word came up several times in these two talks. Over and over, in fact. By the end it was almost the only word I could hear: talent. Find your talent. Build upon it. Move forward by using your talent. Build a life based on your talent.

What is my talent? I thought. And what I want the answer to be is this: writing.

What have I done with my talent? I asked myself. Focused all of my education around it. Taught it to high school students. Used it to share my kids’ stories. Taught courses on it to scrapbookers around the world. Put down my thoughts about books so that other people could discover the good ones, too.

But never what I really, really wanted to use it for, ever since I was 16 and listened to a popular girl in my sophomore English class read her poems out loud and knew: my poems were better than hers even if every boy in the school adored her. Writing books that other people might read: that is what I have wanted to use my talent for.

But I got married young. And then I had things like a mortgage and health insurance to pay for. I had babies. I finished school. I tried to be a good wife and mom. I suffered through Kendell’s unemployment, went back to school, became a teacher. Became a librarian. And throughout most of those years I kept my writing ambitions a sort of secret. I kept my Madeline L’Engle moment in my head: once my kids were all in school, it would be my time to write.

And here I am: all my kids are in school. It is the time my writing has been waiting for. But here I am: in the dark. Unsure. Maybe all those years were simply my way of laying in bed, ignoring the world and trying to sleep through my life? Maybe my Madeline L’Engle moment was only an excuse for me to not try? Because trying? Trying means failing. If I never try to be a writer, if I only talk about it, then I will still have the dream in front of me. By not starting I don’t have to ever confront failing.

Because that is the hitch that all my darkness spins around: is writing really my talent? Am I good and strong and determined enough to take the road I want to take? Is it selfish of me to even try, when my kids still need so much from me, both emotionally, yes, but also financially.

I thought, and I listened to Susan Easton Black’s story, and I thought some more, and soon the only word I heard was that one: talent.

A fragment of a Mary Oliver poem skipped into my thoughts:

little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

(I am a mother and a wife and a friend and an employee. But I am also myself, and no one else can save my life but me.)

And of course the scripture from Matthew:

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

(Have I waited too long? Did I bury instead of build upon? That unprofitable servant who buried his talent didn’t just go away. He was cast into outer darkness, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Did I only once have the ability to write?)

And an idea from Borges:

"like every writer, he measured other men’s virtues by what they had accomplished, yet asked that other men measure him by what he planned someday to do."

(Can I only talk and dream about it?)

And that word:

talent
talent
talent.

And then the talks were over. I told them both how much I appreciated their words, my own syllables hollow. Neither one of them could know the story behind my appreciation. Because it felt like there was an answer here, somehow. An answer I still don’t know how to make be the answer. Because I have to believe in the answer so much that the other people who don’t believe in this answer are converted to it. And I have to be good enough to make it the answer. And I don’t know how to move from what I planned to someday do to actually doing it.

But it still felt like an answer somehow.

After I dropped my mom back at home and started the rush for home (Haley needed the car), I thought. I thought out loud—a sort of a prayer. I drove the long way home (despite Haley needing the car). And when I was out on the road that runs between towns, a road tucked right up against the foothills, I looked across the lake and I saw a shooting star.

Then I stopped my talking. I didn’t think, really. I just drove, to the end of my night which was book-ended by celestial lights, a sort of punctuation to the message I still don’t properly understand but know, somehow, is the one I needed to hear.

I confess: I am still in the dark. I am subsisting on shaky faith, doubt, and self-flagellation. But the dark is not so dark, quite. It is that word—talent—which is a light I can almost, almost see. And perhaps if I keep moving forward I will catch up to it.

God is in the Trees.

I read Mark Twain's The Diaries of Adam & Evewith my SDBBE girls. The cover is this one:

and we've discussed who's face that is in the tree. Since when the book opens, Eve has Adam up a tree—he's trying to get away from her because he thinks she talks too much—one of the suggestions was that it was Adam's face.

But the more I think about the story, the more I think it is God's face, watching Adam and Eve as they begin to figure out the world. I think His gaze is compassionate and, perhaps, he is also trying to keep his laughter hidden, because they are pretty funny.

Twain intended it to be a humorous book, but I confess: I don't always appreciate humor. This personality trait has occasioned more than one person to look sideways at me when I'm just sort of, you know, sitting through a funny movie, not really laughing much while said person is guffawing his head off. I've been accused of being a stick in the mud. I don't really know what is wrong with me—it's not that I don't like to laugh. Humor just isn't my favorite genre.

Despite that, I did enjoy this book and it did make me laugh, especially Eve's observations about language. Sometimes the humor made me roll my eyes. Sometimes it annoyed me. And as the end neared, I felt like the humor lessened the story somehow. I wanted to get deeper inside the characters than ridiculosity was allowing me. As the story progresses, Eve learns things, and she has a sort of wisdom born of her innocence, but she's still childlike.

Even though, when she and Adam eat the apple, they are cast out from the garden and death enters the world (the tigers, which were previously strawberry eaters, start eating the horses), Adam and Eve's knowledge doesn't come as a flood. They still learn slowly and by experiments they don't exactly understand. Eve especially loves figuring things out. She believes she was made "to search out the secrets of this wonderful world. . . . I think think there are many things to learn yet—I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast, I think they will last weeks and weeks." Despite her childlike innocence, she loves learning.

But when death enters their intimate part of the world—when Abel dies at Cain's hand—this is when she learns the bitter part of knowledge. Until Abel dies—until days after his death, when Eve finally realizes that this, this cold sleeping body that won't awaken is death—she is trying to gain knowledge. After she knows death, she has obtained knowledge, wisdom, and the sorrow that comes from both.

I think of her character in the story, explaining what she knows about a thing as basic as air:

By a series of experiments we had long ago arrived at the conclusion that atmospheric air consisted of water in invisible suspension; also that the components of water were hydrogen and oxygen, the proportion of two parts of the former to one of the latter and expressible by the symbol H₂O. My discovery revealed the fact that there was still another ingredient: milk. We enlarged the symbol to H₂OM.

(On the same page we are told that Adam has figured out that 6 times 9 are 27, and that cows make milk by condensing it from the air through their skin.)

They almost  have things figured out. They have the right pieces, hydrogen and oxygen, 6 and 9. They just don't know how to fit their pieces of knowledge together. They draw completely wrong assumptions from their experiences.

Contrast that to the Eve we meet after Abel's death. She doesn't say this, but I realized it: she didn't only lose Abel. She lost Cain, too. That wide variance of bitterness that knowledge brings us! This knowledge changes her; she is no longer innocent because her knowledge is no longer theoretical. It is personal.

And she cannot understand it.

She has these pieces of knowledge she has gained from her experiences. Death has entered the world. Her first son killed her second son. God does not stop bad things from happening. Sorrow doesn't go away. But she doesn't know how to understand the pieces, what they mean, how they fit together. What is being made.

They drove us from the garden with their swords of flame, the fierce cherubim. And what had we done? . . . We did not know right from wrong—how should we know? We could not, without the Moral Sense? . . . But to say to us poor ignorant children words which we could not understand and then punish us because we did not do as we were told—ah, how can that be justified? We knew no more then than this littlest child of mine knows now with its four years—oh, not so much, I think. Would I say to it, "If thou touchest this bread I will overwhelm thee with unimaginable disaster, even to the dissolution of thy corporeal elements," and when it took the bread and smiled up in my face, thinking no harm, not understanding those strange words, would I take advantage of its innocence and strike it down with the mother-hand it trusted? Whoso knoweth the mother-heart, let him judge if I would do that thing.

This is the Eve I wanted to know. I wanted to know her suffering, not because I want her to suffer but because everyone suffers. What do we do with the suffering? How do we put the pieces of our knowledge into a meaning we can grasp? Eve can't see the meaning within her sorrows. She questions God and His motivations, and this makes me feel better about my own questions, my own doubts and failures at understanding. Her conclusion, unspoken but suggested in her words, is that God is unfair to do what He did.

It is just the same as her conclusion about the milk in the atmosphere. She has knowledge but cannot see from God's perspective. She can only see from her own and so arriving at the real conclusion is difficult. Eve is not sitting with God in the tree. None of us are. We only have our pieces of knowledge gained from our experiences, and we stumble. We puzzle and recalculate and leave the box of pieces in dark corners when they seem impossible to assemble. We cannot always make sense of them.

This, I believe, is universal to all of us, not just Eve. This world, the one with death and sorrow and betrayal and unemployment and poverty and medical emergencies, tries to teach us. It gives us the pieces. But since we're all down on the ground, living our lives instead of looking at them, we can't always comprehend the knowledge we are gaining. It comes slowly. We don't always understand.

But neither did Eve. and I think God, looking down from his tree, was not offended by her questions. I think he knew she just didn't understand yet. At least, that is what I hope, both for Eve and for myself. Because it is so easy for me to make the wrong assumptions. To assume that my sorrows happen only as punishments, for example, and that if I were a better person I would have fewer. I don't quite have God's perspective yet. But, like Eve, I am doing what I can while I live to figure things out.

Bookended by Hope

A few years ago, we added the tradition of reading the nativity story to our Christmas Eve festivities. We read Luke 2:1-19, because the sentence "And Mary kept these things, and pondered them in her heart" seems like a good stopping point. Plus that's usually all the sitting-still-for-scriptures my excited children can handle.

But when I read the Christmas story on my own, I like to start with Zacharias and Elisabeth in chapter 1 and finish with Simeon at chapter 2 verse 35. That is because these two stories neatly bookend the nativity story with hope. The scriptures don't say specifically that Elisabeth hoped for a child. But I think her response when she discovers her miraculous pregnancy—"the Lord has taken away my reproach"—speaks something of her heart. So much can be pinned on that word reproach. Not having a child felt like a punishment, and would only feel that way if she desired that baby. It speaks to years, I imagine, of Elisabeth hoping and praying and hoping more, of watching other women have baby after baby, and wondering why not me? That looking around and wanting what others seem to have effortlessly: this is a hard, troublesome thing that can chip away at faith. And yet, they were both (because I think Zacharias's questioning of the angel how this miracle might come to pass is just as telling of his desires as Elisabeth's use of "reproach" is) righteous and blameless.

And then, in the temple with the infant Christ, there is Simeon. He was a righteous man who was promised he would see Christ in the flesh before he died—and then waited nearly all his life until this promise happened. And, again, I think his words speak louder than their syllables, because when he comes to the temple that day, and sees the infant Christ, he says "now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." He doesn't want to depart in joy (although he obviously felt it) or in humility (although he must have felt humbled by this great experience) or even in thanksgiving (because think! think how thankful he must have felt). No—now, having seen Christ, he is given the thing he has waited and hoped for for so many decades, and at that moment what he feels, at last, is peace. I imagine Simeon as someone similar to Zacharias and Elisabeth. Living his life, trying to do good and make the right choices, but always wondering: when? why do I have to wait? will it ever happen? was I only imagining? or perhaps I am not righteous enough? Those are not always peaceful emotions. Waiting in hope is a bittersweet thing. And yet, he managed it, because his faith was sure enough that he was able to be in the temple at the right time.

As the scripture continues---this is a sword that pierces my own soul. I love the example that Simeon, Elisabeth, and Zacharais set. They were human and imperfect and yet they also held on to their hope long enough to receive the fulfillment of those hopes. They did not let bitterness overcome sweetness. They went forward without understanding why their hopes were not yet fulfilled. And then the great miracle happened, and I will not say that it is solely the birth of Christ. The fulfillment of their hopes and the receipt of understanding is a great miracle, too, just on the small, intimate level.

This pierces my soul because it is so easy for me to slip into the pool of my own bitterness, where I sink into blackness with all the weight that hope brings. (I am not always sure that Emily D. was right; hope isn't a thing, always, with feathers but with chains that keep you from letting go of the unattainable.) It is easy for me to grow jaded, to be filled with the certainty that the unfulfilled hopes I carry have gone unfulfilled because I am not worthy of their fulfillment. To get lost in comparison—if only I were as good as this person I would be granted this hope. As if the world were one great round of sibling rivalry.

And it pierces me because it reminds me not to give up hoping. And it reminds me that perhaps the hope can be pinned not to the unfulfilled desire itself, but to an understanding. Elisabeth and Simeon, after all their long years of hoping, were each given their desire. I don't think that will happen with all of my own long-longed for wishes. But they were also given understanding. This is the sword that lifts up as it pierces, letting me move forward in faith toward my own future understanding.

Those stories of long-endured hope finally fulfilled? They move me and mean as much as the one of Christ's birth. They help me hold on when hope feels like a burden. And, as bookends to the nativity, they bring me to the remembrance that it all hinges on faith in Christ.