Productive Morning

One of the things I wish I could change about myself: I am not a morning person.  I really, really hate getting out of bed in the morning, so despite whatever goals I set for myself, it's fairly rare for me to actually get up very early. I'd like to change that about myself because those extra hours really do make a difference in how much I get accomplished in a day. This morning, Haley had to be at the church for an activity at 6:45, which meant I couldn't avoid the alarm clock. I'd intended on a run after I dropped her off, but Kendell had to be at work earlier than normal. Instead, I came home, made Kaleb his requested eggies for breakfast, and then went outside. It was startling to walk out into a still-cool world, startling and inspiring; I nearly ran for my clippers, since I've been dying to prune one of my rosebushes. By 8:30 I had the rosebush pruned, the weeds in the front yard pulled, the dishwasher loaded, and a goal for the day: do something with the little, neglected patch of earth on one side of my porch.

Really, I need to pull out most of my flowerbeds and start again. My trees have gotten so big that most of my front yard is patchy shade all day, and the sun-loving perennials I planted when the trees were Kendell's height are now not doing so well. This patch has been empty since I tugged out the dying greens from the spring bulbs, save for a few scraggly sunflowers and the browning edges of a foxglove (one of my favorite flowers except for the fact that it doesn't bloom very long). By 9:05 I was in the greenhouse, Nathan and Kaleb pulling their own rusty red wagons behind me as I filled mine with flowers. An added bonus: everything was on sale! With the help of some impatiens, coleus, a phlox hybrid and another plant whose name I cannot remember, I changed my little bit of front yard from this

to this

Working outside in the still-cool day, in the shade, Kaleb running his green truck up and down the sidewalk and a few birds chirping at me: this was a peaceful start to my day. Something much needed. Plus, it was only 10:30 by the time I'd finished. And it's exactly why I'd like to change my morning laziness into productivity every day.

Fear and (self-) Loathing in the Dressing Room

When I was growing up, there was only one Nordstrom in Utah. Every July, my mom would haul all four of us girls up there to shop for back-to-school clothes. I loved that day as a kid. Of course, I lived for it as a teenager (aside from the "why don't you buy some other color than black" arguments). Honestly, I used to love to shop, but as I've gotten older I've given it up. It seems like it's nearly impossible to find something I really like, and when I do, lately, it's generally too small anyway, or it looks cuter on the hanger than it does on me. I'm past feeling like I need to impress people with my clothes. Plus, there are all those money issues involved with shopping. So somewhere along the line, I've become the girl who always wears jeans and T-shirts. Fitted Ts, but Ts nonetheless.

But my sisters have continued the Nordstrom Sale Tradition. And this year Haley was really & truly dying to go, so I went. Last Friday, I hauled my butt out of bed and was ready to go at 6:15 in the morning. Seriously? For shopping? I couldn't believe they talked me into it. But we raced into the store with the five hundred other crazy ladies and started snatching up clothes. Just some things for Haley at first. Well, "some" translates into at least 75 items that she wanted to try on. After a good hour, at least, in the dressing room, she'd tried on every single item, approved or disapproved of clothing items with her cousin Madi, and narrowed the pile down to her budget. She was happy.

But my sister's other daughter, Jacqui, was still up to her eyeballs in clothes to try on, and since I hitched a ride with them, I was there for the duration. Which meant I found myself wandering around the only Nordstrom department I can navigate without freaking out at the price tags, Point of View. And I decided, you know, I really do need some new jeans. So I grabbed two pair of every single jean they had on sale. Two because I can't decide until I've tried them on if I like the bigger or the smaller size. And then I took over Jacqui's dressing room (because on the first day of the sale, you have to wait for hours to get into a dressing room) to try on my jeans.

Somewhere in all that, my sister Becky joined us, and she had money to spend, too. So we shared the dressing room. I don't think Becky and I have shared a dressing room at the Nordstrom sale since I was 11 or 12. We talked and laughed, of course, but eventually you have to try on the jeans. Which is when a comment Kendell made a few days before came flooding back to me: "How come you're not skinny like Becky is?" Because I realized: she really is skinny. But the thing that impresses me about her skinny-ness is that she's not obsessive about it at all. Like, I know so many other people who are skinny, but they're always talking about what they do and don't eat, how long they spent at the gym that morning, the newest way to lose five pounds, and why that spaghetti is really bad for you. Nope---Becky is just normal. She eats normally, she drinks Dr. Pepper, she runs a bit. Skinny just comes effortlessly to her, I guess.

And apparently chubby comes effortlessly to me these days. As I tried on my jeans I warned her: I'm fat now, be prepared. But somewhere in between hating the way I looked in most of the jeans and all my self-deprecating comments I had this little insight. Yeah, I'm not the girl obsessing about staying skinny and making sure everyone knows it. I'm the girl obsessing about her muffin top and Mary-Lou-Retton-style thighs and making sure everyone knows it. I'm probably just as obnoxious with my fat-girl comments as the skinny girls are with their skinny comments. Sometimes this chubby body of mine feels like looking down at your white shirt and realizing you smeared ketchup on it at lunch; you want to tell everyone you meet "I know I spilled" before they point it out. My fat-girl comments are the same---if I point it out, if I acknowledge that I am fully aware I need to lose a few (well, quite a few) pounds, then no one else will point it out---which would of course be far worse.

I went home that afternoon with something extra in my shopping bag (because, miracle of miracles and wonder of wonders, I managed to find a pair of jeans I actually didn't mind): a resolution to drop the fat-girl comments. Not because I've somehow managed to magically drop my chubbiness. But because everyone who loves me will continue to do so, I think, whether or not I give up my jeans-and-fitted-T uniform or manage to lose thirty pounds. Plus, how much more self-loathing can they stand? And maybe if I give up the comments, the loathing itself might be easier to lose, too.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (one spoiler)

Last week, while my kids and I were getting ready for a visit from my friend Sophia, Haley asked me if Sophia was as anxious as I was for the release date of the new Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows. She was astounded when I told her that Sophia's neither read the books nor seen any of the movies. I explained that not everyone likes fantasy novels, but she couldn't understand the idea of a life without Harry Potter. Since that first movie came out back in 2001---I'd not read the books yet when I saw the movie---we've all been hooked. I bought a boxed set of the first four books that following January and read them all to my kids, sitting together in the front room or on my bed. We talked about the characters, who we loved and hated, what we thought would happen next. We've gone to see each movie on its opening weekend, we've bought the subsequent books on the first day of their release, we've discussed and laughed and even cried a bit (I've never gotten over Dumbeldore's death, or Sirius's).

So we've all been a bit anxious, waiting for the last novel. Haley reread book five and six, then took to the internet, researching theories about the Deathly Hallows. (She firmly believed one specific theory, which I firmly did not believe, but I now know she was right.) Jake started reading book five, while I reread five and six in a week and then, after reading a few other theories, the first book too, for good measure, on Thursday. I bought The Deathly Hallows yesterday at Costco; I had to wait all the way till 11:00 because Costco's on the way to Haley's work and I didn't want to make two trips. Silly, but that effort of waiting seems Herculean! Once I got home, milk and cheese and butter and toilet paper all safely put away and Kaleb down for a nap, I started reading.

Here's the spoiler: in the very beginning, in the first battle, Hedwig is killed. And when Harry lost his owl, I literally stopped reading, put my head down on the kitchen counter (as I was reading as I ate my lunch, leftovers from Bajio), and bawled my eyes out. I was nearly hysterical. I finally had to stop myself and ask: why so many tears? And I realized that it's not because of the death of the owl, really. Instead, I was crying for what Hedgwig's death meant: the end of these books. The tying up of everyone's story, and yes---by the end you know what happens to everyone. Wanting to know how things are tied up was what kept me up until 2:15 this morning, finishing the book. But actually knowing how things are tied up was what kept me crying. And what made me cry this morning, too. Because now I know how it all turns out, there's no more story to look forward to. The characters we'd loved and hated and discussed and even dreamed about are finished, drawn out fully in words.

In all the Harry Potter books, Harry learns something that's important. In this one, he learns about death; he really learns what Voldemort never suspected, which is that death after a well-lived life (however long) isn't a terrible thing. Being the last book, it's all about endings. And somehow that just seems so sad to me---like the ending of this series of books is the ending of part of my children's childhoods. (Haley, just now, crawled out of bed and said "Mom! Did you finish it yet?" and when I said yes, she did a little squeally jump and ran upstairs to find it.) Of course, we'll probably all read them again eventually. We'll talk about them. There are still two movies to look forward to. But it won't ever be the same.

The Haircuts Always Break My Heart

When Nathan was Kaleb's age, he had the whitest, softest hair I've ever experienced. It felt just like corn silk and was white as blond hair can get. I loved rocking him and rubbing his hair; I can still just remember how it felt to have that silky little head tucked under my chin. I refused to have his hair cut, until it was so long that he had to walk around with his chin up to see underneath his hair. Then Kendell insisted---and buzzed his head. During the haircut, I curled into the fetal position on my bed and sobbed. Cutting his hair was symbolic; he shed his babiness with those soft, white locks.

I've not been quite so attached to Kaleb's hair, but when Kendell once again had to put his foot down to get me to let him cut Kaleb's hair this weekend, there were still sobs on my part. I held his hands while Kendell ran the clippers, dripping tears off my nose and onto his shorn head. That rasp of clippers is a sound synonymous, to me, with the ending of babyhood. Once that first buzz happens, it's all over; they turn into boys. I swear something cognitive changes once the hair comes off, because since he went from this:

To this:

(please, if you can, ignore the watermelon-stained cheeks and the always-present-until-those-last-molars-finally-cut-through boogies), he's grown up. Now he doesn't just talk, he communicates. Now if you ask him to go get something, he'll go get it. Now his whole demeanor has changed. Now he crawls out of his crib. (Which is, of course, the harbinger to The End of Naps, aka Mommy Loses A Bit of Sanity.)

See, I told you. The buzz does make them grow up.

The Scent of Memory

Someone emailed me a few days ago to ask how my dad is doing, and I realized I've not written much about him on my blog lately. This is because his illness has been uncovering some deeply-buried fault lines in our family, and while I think about Dad a lot, as well as how things are shaking out, I've just not been able to write much about it. I once said that going through the experience of someone you loving suffering from Alzheimer's is like looking at your life with a magnifying glass. Another metaphor that seems appropriate, lately, is that Dad's disease has been like a spark dropped into a field of dry grass; suddenly we see how weak we are, just before we all go up in flames. What I can only hope for is the restorative power that fire can have, and that when it is over, we will be lush again, and stronger.

But that is how the Alzheimer's is affecting me; how it is affecting Dad is to make him even more silent. His standard answer to anything is "OK" (a trait he shares with Kaleb, oddly enough), followed by a confused silence and then sometimes a different answer. What surprises me most is how child-like he has become. A few weeks ago, we were swimming at my sister's pool, and Dad got a hold of a water gun. He was shooting people and grinning and he reminded me, in the innocent way he tracked his target and the happiness he got from hitting them, of my boys. And then there was the moment, when Becky and I took him to lunch at Carl's Jr., when she was telling a funny story about passing out when she's hurt, and he laughed along with us. He didn't seem to be laughing just because we were, but because he thought the story was funny. It was a bright moment.

Which is good to have, because there are dark ones, too, like last week when I went to spend the day at his house (our trees were being sprayed for Japanese beetles which our city is trying to eradicate---I'm not a big fan of pesticides but as this was mandatory...). At first he seemed OK; he asked me why Haley wasn't there, and whether Kendell had fun on his trip. He thanked me for bringing him lunch. But when I proceeded to stay after lunch, something made him uncomfortable. "I need to go outside while you're here," he said, and then he went outside to weed the vegetable garden and refused to come inside. Once I was ready to leave, he said "good, so I can come back in now." I don't expect any logical reason for how he was acting, and of course I'm not angry. But this was, I think, a small taste of how it will feel when he doesn't know who I am anymore, and all I can do is try to lift up those bright memories to hold the darkness away.

Last week, the newspaper published an article about how problems with detecting scents can signal the early stages of cognitive memory problems (like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases). This idea has haunted me, because for me, scents are the strongest memory triggers I have. Some scents are so strongly connected to an event that it's not just the scent reminding me, but that the scent is the way that memory feels. So it makes perfect sense that the disease goes for the sense of smell first; take away smell and the memories themselves start to wither.

I don't have any idea what my dad's favorite scent might have been. I don't know what memories he had attached to scents. Or if he ever knew that every time I smell a petunia, I return to the age of ten, in our backyard flower garden, posing for a picture on a rock island in a sea of magenta petunias, their warm velvet petals swirling us with a fragrance so strong and sweet it is heartbreaking. So, I have a challenge for you. Right now, write down a catalog of scents that are strongly attached to a memory. Keep it on your computer so you can add to it as more things occur or are remembered. And ask someone you love, too. Don't forget. Don't let it be lost.

It's All About the Previews

So, yesterday was Harry Potter Day 2. If you're off to see it soon, pay attention to Ginny. (She's always been one of my very favorite characters, btw.) It's certain that they are doing a little bit of visual foreshadowing for the sixth movie (which I've heard will be released in November of 08, not that I'm counting or anything). Watching it again made me more impressed with the actors, especially Imelda Staunton, the woman who played Umbridge. She did a fabulous job at making saccharine-sweet seem evil, and it wasn't only my kids proclaiming their dislike for her when we left the theater. And Gary Oldman (who plays Sirius) is so good. I've had a crush on him since he appeared in the third book and haven't been disappointed by his movie persona. I will miss him.

But honestly, what I was most excited about this second time around were the previews. I always like previews anyway, but these got me excited about future movies like I've not been for a long time. Since it's a kids' movie, the previews were also kids' movies (except for the Bourne Ultimatum, which seemed an odd choice for a theater full of kids). Movies that Jake, Haley, Nathan and I can't wait to see:

• Stardust. I've been a fan of Claire Danes since My So Called Life. Throw in Michelle Pfeiffer and some creepy witches and you've got me hooked.
• The Dark is Rising. By a happy coincidence, we are already reading this book at our house. From the previews I think it will be modernized quite a bit---but it still looks fabulous!
• Enchanted. OK, it's from Disney. But hello? Patrick Dempsey. You definitely had me at Patrick.
• The Golden Compass. Are you seeing a theme here? It's all fantasy, lots of it inspired by books. I've had this series in my Amazon cart forever---I think it's time to buy them!

Yesterday, while the trailers were playing, Jake whispered for every movie "I've got to read that book first!" Even though only two, I think, are based on books. But I love that he's inherited my insistence that you have to read the book first; the movie is always supplementary. At any rate, we've all got some good family movies to look forward to!

Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix: Prescreening

(Warning: a few spoilers here!)

Kendell called me on Monday. He knows I've been dying to see this movie---I think I'm more excited than my kids are, but Kendell? So not interested in Harry Potter. "We've got two tickets to see the movie on Tuesday at 3:00," he said, and I (being an apparently hopeless H.P. geek, I've known the movie release date and the release date of the seventh book for months now) corrected him. "Nope, you've got the date wrong, it doesn't come out until Wednesday, the 11th."

"Nope, you've got it wrong," he said. Because his friend's company had organized a private prescreening of the movie, one day before it's officially released, and he got us tickets. Since we already have three tickets to see it on Wednesday (they came from Kendell's job), and Haley couldn't go on tomorrow, and Kendell didn't want to go at all, it was an easy choice: I'd take Haley to the prescreening and the boys on Wednesday.

For a long time, the fifth book was my least favorite. Harry's just so grumpy in it, and I seriously wept at the end---not just when Sirius vanished through the arch, but also when Luna talks to Harry while she's trying to find her things, and then again when Harry talks to Nearly-Headless Nick. But, in preparation for this July---movie and book---I decided to re-read books four, five and six. And I decided I really do like The Order of the Phoenix. It's OK that he's grumpy; it's just normal teenage boy stuff, right?

So, onto the movie. Like all the other movies, they cut out a good portion of the plot from the book. But the things the director cut---there is zero quidditch in this movie, Fred and George's swamp never grows, you don't know anything about Creature's involvement in the lure-Harry-out-of-Hogwarts plot; you never see Neville visiting his parents in St. Mungo's, the bits with the centaur taking over the Divination classes, or any of Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures classes---are hardly missed. All the best and necessary parts are there. Harry is sufficiently grumpy, there's that great romantic tension between him and Cho, the part with the snake biting Mr. Weasley, and, well, all the things that really make book five book five. The only thing I think they really should have included was more detail to Harry's inside-Voldemort's-head dreams. Oh, and Ron and Hermoine becoming prefects.

Now that I've thought about it, there are things in the movie that are even better than in the book. Harry and Cho's relationship is much less annoyingly bumpy and awkward. Luna is excellent, appropriately dreamy but also prettier than I expected her to be. But the best part is what Harry realizes about Voldemort. This happens at the end of the movie, and I'll let you see it. But he has a few big "ah ha" moments that make all the grumpiness worth it.

I think the truly die-hard H.P. fan (Becky, I'm talking to you!) might still find some annoyances in the movie. But for me---geeky, but not obsessed---it was good. And I get to see it again tomorrow!

Wildfire Solace

Lately I've been thinking about the topic of landscape, of how when you live for awhile in the same place, whatever landscape you are in becomes part of your concept of home. One of Kendell's old friends from high school came and stayed with us last week, and I found myself looking at my familiar, well-loved landscape from his eyes. I wondered if my lovely dusty-green Timp seemed like an ugly brown rock through his eyes, since he doesn't know its summit nor any of its secrets, and certainly the beryl-green Utah Lake barely grabbed his attention. And yet, to me, this desert valley where I live is a moving landscape. Perhaps because it really isn't what anyone considers truly beautiful nature. We don't get enough water here to have lush, green mountains. But the very sere-ness, the fact that you have to look to see the beauty---that makes it even better, in my eyes.

But that dryness has its price. A few weeks ago, there were two wildfires in the mountains that make the valley, and on Sunday a lightning spark started a gigantic fire about 100 miles south of us. This new fire is huge, 300,000 acres at last newscast, the largest in the state's history. And it's burning up an equally Utah-ish landscape, not obviously beautiful but still gorgeous. Once again, our air is full of smoke, which gives me a strange melange of emotion. Primary is anxiety; in my mind, wildfire---touched off, in Utah, by our stubborn drought---is a symptom of global warming, an outward expression that seems impossible to misdiagnose. But that woodsmoke smell, especially in the summer evenings when a breeze comes through from the canyon and puffs away some of the heat, sparks a memory from the summer I was sixteen. Sitting on the front porch with The Boy (you know...the one who was destined to break your heart but you didn't care because it was summer and you were sixteen and he was with you right then and just him sitting by you---his left thigh against your right---made your teeth hurt it was all just so good---The Boy) in my favorite denim mini skirt, having been summoned outside by a spattering of pebbles on my window and the scent of wildfire. Looking at the orange moon in a sky too hazy to let us see the meteor shower. Feeling like, whatever happened in the future, this moment right now was the most perfect thing life would ever give me.

Of course, I eventually had to go inside. Of course, he moved on and broke my heart. Of course, I grew up and discovered many more of those perfect moments. But when, in the presence of wildfire smoke, that emotion comes rushing back, I still have to pause for a second, feeling that flash of happiness so strong it makes my teeth hurt. Memory is a familiar landscape, too, one it is often comforting to revisit. Remembering that night makes me feel even more grateful for the so-good-you-get-aches-in-weird-places moments, and that I have many of them to count, looking back. That is the only solace I can find during wildfire season.

Integrity

I taught a lesson in church today, on the topic of integrity. One of my favorite LDS blogs, the Exponent II blog, always has some good ideas for the lessons we teach, and I found this quote there:

"Literally, integrity means wholeness--being one person in public and private, living in faithfulness to one set of principles whether or not anyone is watching. Integrity is to a person as homogenization is to milk--a single consistency throughout." ~Dr. Edwin Delatrre, in an essay about Atticus Finch's (of To Kill A Mockingbird) integrity

One of the ideas I think and write about a lot is the concepts of masks or of personas. (The word persona comes from the Greek word for the stylized masks worn by actors on stage.) We all, I think, tend to put on different masks, the mask we wear at work, or when we're grocery shopping, or at church, or with friends. In my experience, there are even different masks for different friends. The mask is our way of making sure that our own set of personality traits will mesh with the group we find ourselves in. I think they are necessary---but they also make me more than a little sad.

I discussed this concept of masks during my lesson today---how sometimes we put on our "church mask," we do the things we think we are supposed to do, but the actions themselves don't always reflect our inner selves. Does it make my integrity weaker that sometimes I do certain things relating to the gospel only because I'm supposed to do them, not because my inner self wants to do them? Integrity is a sort of ruler, measuring the differences between our real self and the masks we wear---an outward expression of the inward self. So what happens when my outward expressions are more noble than my inward self? What happens when the religious principles I believe in also, simultaneously, feel like a mask instead of my real self?

I've decided that integrity isn't a thing that you can either have or not have; instead, I think it is a spectrum. If you think of integrity as how close you get to making your inward and outward characters mesh, then obviously your integrity is always going to be somewhere around the very best you can be---but never quite as strong as it could be, since no one is perfect. I don't know---does that make sense? Does this insight really even matter? I joked with Kendell that my lesson was about being a good person, and maybe someone else should be teaching it. Am I a good enough person? That, too, might be a spectrum. Some days I'm closer to the good side, other days---not so much.

I think what I am writing around, rather than writing about, is this: the desire to be maskless. The ability to always be who I am, no matter who I find myself with, to feel like my real inward self isn't someone to keep hidden away, protected---masked. In my mind, having that ability, no matter what your religious beliefs, would be true integrity. I'm just not there yet.

Written Picture: Fourth of July

In my My Word! class that I teach at Big Picture Scrapbooking, one of the assignments is to write a picture---describe, in words, a photo that you couldn't or didn't take, for whatever reason, as if it existed. This is a great assignment to get you thinking beyond the expected for your journaling. I use this quite a bit on layouts without any photos at all. It's creatively freeing; you can describe a photo that you couldn't take (maybe a religious ceremony where it's against custom to take pictures, for example), or one you don't have the technical skills to capture (as in today's written picture), or even one that is impossible to take now (like a picture of the cat you had, growing up, who's been dead for fifteen years). And it releases you from the obligation of always taking pictures and the tension or stress that might cause.

Lately I've been trying to leave my camera at home more often. That sounds weird, I know, but I feel like quite often, I'm The Event Photographer instead of just a person at the event, and being behind the lens sometimes makes me feel less involved. Instead of always taking pictures, I'm trying to just be there, be a part of the experience, and then write about it later. Last night, as I was in one of those moments when, if I'd had it with me, I would have gone running for my camera, I thought to myself, "self, you should start writing some of your written pictures in your blog." So I'm going to.

In the photo I didn't take this Fourth of July, I am sitting in a camping chair on a tiny spot of grass in a grocery store parking lot with Jake, all long legs and spindly elbows, sprawled uncomfortably in my lap. Kaleb and Nathan are sitting in front of me, in tiny camping chairs; Nathan has his arm around Kaleb and Kaleb has tried to put his head on Nathan's shoulder, but instead their ears are pressing together. You can only see our backs in this picture, dark silhouettes, and in front of us, in the top left corner, the fireworks are exploding, golden candelabras. If you look carefully in the top right corner, you can see Haley, hanging out on a blanket with the older cousins; the rest of the photo is black.

It seems to me that no matter how cool of a camera you have, words are an equally cool tool for preserving images.