Christmas Present

Mary, circa 1980

 One of my favorite Christmas traditions started inadvertently in my childhood and was picked up by my children without me directly influencing it. My four siblings and I used to fall fretfully to sleep on Christmas Eve. We didn't have visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads. Instead, we had butterflies of anticipation fluttering in our bellies, wondering what we would find under the tree the next morning. Typically, that next morning began for us as early as 1:00 a.m., and never later than 5:00 a.m. Our parents did not appreciate such an early morning following such a late night, and so they banned us from waking them before 6:00 a.m. But a ban on waking adults in the wee hours of the morning did not deter our own brains from rousing. Upon waking up in the middle of the night, we'd gather in one of our bedrooms. Sometimes the route to that bedroom meandered near the living room. We'd "unintentionally" steal glances through the French-door panes, seeing presents glowing beneath the warm, colorful lights of the tree. We never gawked, because we did want our stockings to be a surprise; but neither could we restrain ourselves from glimpsing. Once gathered in the bedroom, we would play board games and whisper guesses about what surprises might be waiting upstairs. We five had so much fun in those early Christmas mornings that you might think we'd lose track of the time. Fortunately, we all had powerful internal clocks, and we rarely missed the hour turning to six.

Another Christmas tradition.
I was always irritated to have to play Joseph.
My name should have guaranteed me the lead female role, right?

Kent's family never had problems sleeping in. Each year they celebrate a different country's Christmas on the Eve of the holiday, so the big party on the twenty-fourth kept them snoozing until late morning the next day. Apparently, though, my kids got my Christmas-clock gene. When Kassidy was in preschool and was, therefore, old enough to know what to look forward to, she and Madelyn were tapping on my shoulder at 4:00 a.m. to stir me from my "long" winter's nap. I told them they had to go back to bed until 6:00 a.m. Two hours later, we were all--myself included--disappointed to learn that Kent didn't plan to wake before eight. We compromised on seven. Then we shut our door on the children and locked it.

And so the tradition was passed on to the next generation.

Ignoring the bent knee that all elementary girls do in photos,
how can you tell this picture was posed?
Madelyn is SMILING while cleaning the playroom. ;-)

Rather than going back to bed, our preschoolers stayed up playing for three hours. In ensuing years, their younger siblings joined them. In those years, we had a loft that looked down on the front room. Our children loved to sleep there on Christmas Eve so they could peer through the railing to their presents and stockings below, trying to see what exactly was waiting for them. The loft doubled as a playroom, and the playroom doubled as a disaster zone. Toys, crayons, costumes, and remnants of contraband food were regularly strewn about creating a carpet of pain-inducing Legos and game pieces to cover the actual carpet. It literally took hours to sort and clean that room every time we attempted it. And so, that became part of the tradition, too. If the children wanted the privilege of sleeping in the playroom loft on Christmas Eve, said loft must be clean. And they did it! The nighttime hours of Christmas morning became a magical time when they rediscovered old toys and played board games by the rising light of the Christmas tree.

Eventually, the playroom became an actual bedroom, and a couple years ago, the loft was closed off for privacy. But our children have still not outgrown their childhood Christmas sleeping arrangements. Last year, we were traveling, so Cache didn't know that he had married into this strange tradition. He comes from a normal family that sleeps until 10:00 a.m. on holidays. He relented, though, when he realized how much Kassidy looked forward to having a slumber party with her siblings. When Kent and I went to bed this year, #5 had dragged the mattress from his bed all the way up the stairs to his sister's bedroom. When we parents went to bed at 11:00 p.m. the kids had not figured out sleeping arrangements beyond knowing they would all be in the former playroom. Madelyn had not even arrived yet. They worked it out sometime during the night, though, because on Christmas morning my children ages twelve through twenty-four (minus the 17-year-old in Colombia) padded down the stairs right on time at 7:00 a.m. They had all five slept in that tiny room on shared mattresses.

That was the start to a Christmas day that was unlike other years for me. We had a lovely and humble Christmas Eve meal with Kent's parents. Kent's mom had prepared copies of The Book of Mormon for each of her siblings, children, and grandchildren to use in family scripture study. The copies came complete with an explanation of each person's favorite scripture. It was a simple gift that we already treasure. Christmas morning, it was gratifying to see my children love their gifts, even though I had somewhat strayed from their Pinterest wish lists. Cache made a delicious blueberry French toast for our breakfast. As adult children left to be with others, we enjoyed a slow-paced afternoon, and then reunited in the evening at my parents' home where we held a devotional for our Savior, dinner, gifts, the annual family video, and games.



It took forty-two years, but I finally experienced my first Christmas without excited butterflies. This was also the first year that I honestly didn't care that Kent didn't have the perfect, thoughtful, romantic present for me. (In fairness to him, a gift is on its way...after it returns from being returned to sender for an incomplete address. But he tried!) I am grateful for the gifts I did receive this year, and grateful that others seemed to enjoy what I selected for them. But I am mostly grateful that I have let go of Christmas expectations. The holiday this year was two days to just enjoy being with my family. It was two days to slow down, eat, laugh, play, and share testimony. It was two days of living in the moment of Christmas present. And it was wonderful.

And Then There Were Two

Our family friends caught us as we were backing out of our driveway last night. Their 16-year-old had a little going-away gift for ours. Watching them pull away in their Honda Accord, it struck me as new and odd that both our households are evolving similarly. As we drove out of the neighborhood in our Toyota Camry, I texted my friend: "Wow! We've both downsized from minivans to sedans!" On the same day we each had children moving out, leaving just two youngest children at each home.

Madelyn moved out less than two weeks ago. She found--on her own!--a private room to rent in a condo with two other roommates. In eleven days, it has been good to see the gradual changes that having her own place is affecting. She has signed up for a weekly LDS institute class, while also discovering that Tuesday evenings alone in an apartment are boring until that class starts. She hopes to borrow some of her siblings' creativity to decorate her space. I smiled last night when she removed the small stack of mail that has been accumulating for four months in her clipboard here at home. Suddenly, she is not only aware of mail, but is ready to tackle the reminder from the dentist to set an appointment, and the other bills and tasks that await. What makes me smile more is that when she does come home for a family gathering, she is talkative and affectionate and genuinely happy to be with us. The stresses of senior year let us see mostly her worn-out side, so I am grateful our home is no longer the place for her to just decompress and sleep. We like her and she likes us again too!

Two households each lose a new adult. We love these besties!

#3 moved out more recently. It's been about six hours since we watched her walk away with her luggage at the airport, and now I'm awake in the wee hours of the morning feeling just a little unsettled until I know she is settled.

Ticket in hand, the world is her school.

Last fall, #3 talked about possibly being a foreign exchange student. Being unwilling to do all the work for her, I gave her some websites to check out. She procrastinated, so I figured it was only a passing interest. Well, that interest came back last spring, at which point we learned that it was way too late to apply for a foreign exchange program or student visa for this school year. But we are out-of-the-box thinkers. #3 knew she wanted to learn Spanish, and, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have a lot of connections to Spanish-speaking countries. Most young men, and many young women, in our church serve proselyting missions wherever they are asked to go in the world. Additionally, Provo has a high concentration of Hispanic people. We reached out to our friends and family, asking them to reach out to their friends and family in Spanish-speaking countries to see if anyone would be willing to host our daughter for the school year. We figured we would have to cast our net wide to find someone willing and able. There were friends of friends in Spain, Argentina, and Chile who wished they could help us. And then, there were three families in Colombia who said they would open their homes to #3. Ironically, our contact to Colombia did not serve a mission there and is not Hispanic. Our friend, Samantha, works at ACHF with Kent. She is an adventurer like our #3. In her twenties, Sam similarly wanted to be immersed in a country where she could learn Spanish. She asked her past host family if they knew anyone with kids who might have room for one more, adding that we were hoping to do a true exchange if they had a teen who wanted to come to the USA. Two families volunteered to take #3, and we had some FaceTime with them. Then, Samantha's Colombian "dad" mentioned our request at a church leadership meeting. The LDS stake president in that meeting said that just a day or two prior, his own 17-year-old daughter (who has the same name as our #3!) had expressed her desire to go to America to learn English. This was an amazing connection, too perfect to be coincidence--God's hand is in it.

The more we have communicated with this family, the more I feel they are our Colombian dopplegangers. The first time we FaceTimed with them, I noticed the wall they sat in front of looked like the cedar-clad wall in our family room. When we spoke last week, we all laughed when the video came up and Kent and I were wearing essentially the same outfits as Andres and Tania. They have four daughters, similar in ages to ours, and one new son-in-law. They're just missing the surprise baby boy at the end. They hold family scripture study time, have dinners together as often as possible, and Tania takes a big role in her children's education, homeschooling for several years.

A few weeks into our friendship with this family, they told us that their daughter's twin didn't want to be without her sister for a school year, and they wondered if she could also come to the U.S. With two children moving out, we certainly had room to take both. However, it's been discouraging to see that our country is not nearly as welcoming of Colombia's travelers as they are of us. It's a complicated and long process to get these girls to our home, not to mention getting them an educational experience when they are finally allowed to come. It looks like we will have to wait a few months until they are 18 before they can travel here. Perhaps that is for the best. #3 will have peers in her new home to show her around and help her make friends. And when they come to Utah, they will already have a stronger connection to our family.

These Five + Dad = Awkward Photos
(I'm not sure who is grabbing what in this goodbye to #3)

It's good that Tania has homeschool experience, because she can help #3 stay on track with online learning. The administration and our school counselor at Provo High are supportive of #3's adventure, and have found a creative way to keep her enrolled as a student with online classes so she can stay on track for graduation. To pull this off, she'll need to buckle down and commit about four hours each day to Utah schooling. In Colombia, she will also study pretty much any performing arts that she wants to learn: a myriad of drawing, singing, dancing, instrumental, acting and other art classes are offered to community members free of charge. The only part that isn't heaven on earth for #3 is the likelihood that her LDS seminary class will only be offered in the early morning. As in 5:00 a.m. #3 is a night owl and routinely sleeps until 10:00 a.m. during the summer. There is a possibility that with enough interest, there will be a second class offered later. We're hoping #3 tips the teen population numbers in that direction, otherwise, 5:00 a.m. might spell her untimely end.

Getting an afternoon seminary class is not out of the realm of possibility for #3. The last two weeks of preparing her for this undertaking have reminded me again that she leads a charmed life. No matter how much she procrastinates, when she really wants something, it happens for her, against the odds. Finding our Colombian doppleganger family in a world of billions of people is the first piece of evidence. Getting a flight to Bogota that was completely covered by Kent's credit card rewards that are about to expire helped. Then came airline requirements. We had some tension as she packed yesterday and I made her count the articles of clothing she was taking. I recommended four Sunday outfits, 12 T-shirts, ten long-sleeved shirts/sweaters, and one thick jacket. The amounts she packed were 12, 30, 35, and six respectively. (She and I clearly have different thoughts about how often clothes can be re-worn.) She whittled it down some, but when we weighed her suitcase on the bathroom scale, it was still 15 lbs. too heavy. Her friends helped me convince her that 54 different tops were too many, and she grudgingly dropped those numbers to six, 22, 29, and five. (Can we say "clothes horse"?) She ditched the peanut butter I was sending as a gift, moved jeans into carry-on, and crossed her fingers. Of course, it cracked us up when at the airport last night she weighed her giant suitcase and hit the 50.0-lb. limit exactly to the tenth of a pound.

Then there was driver's ed. She got her learner's permit eleven months after she was eligible for it. She then discovered she loves driving, but she put off registering for the required driver's ed class. Her plan was to go with a private course this summer. But you know how summers go: quickly. Suddenly, she was 18 days away from her flight. She finally registered and put up the $350 tuition, only to discover their drive times were completely booked and there was no way she would get the requisite 12 hours of driving and observing before leaving the country. She talked them into giving her a refund, and found AAA Driving School with eleven days to go. They were happy to accommodate her, even opening an extra drive time. In last week's five business days, #3 got her 12 hours in, completed the bookwork and packet in ten hours (they told her it would take 30 hours), passed two written tests, and even passed her road test before the last two days of instructional driving. With one business day to spare, she got her license. And now, the six-month wait period before she can drive with friends in the car will pass while she is out of town.

I'm telling you, charmed life.

I often wonder what impact we have in our home communities. With #3's late-night internal clock, she's never had friends in our home to the degree that her older sisters did. More often, she would come home from school and fall asleep until dinnertime. It's been sweet to see, though, how many dear friends she has. Over the past week, they've been dropping by, and we've heard many hours of happy teenage chatter in the last three days especially. Friday, #3 spent the night at my sister's home to get some quality time with her same-age cousin. It makes me happy that she will be so missed. Missed enough, hopefully, that she'll follow through on her promise to keep a blog during her travels.

I've been so happy for her, in fact, that I didn't shed a tear at the airport. Truth be told, this last week has been a little rough for me, the preventionist, working with her, the charmed procrastinator. She has pushed our parental limits, expecting exceptions because she is leaving. It's been irritating. I've felt like I did at the end of pregnancy. The delivery time I looked at with some apprehension became a promise of relief as it drew nearer. And so, yesterday as she tried to drive away with my van without permission, I looked forward to having her hands away from my car keys for ten months. Still, as we slapped the tags on her luggage and posed for final photos, I did feel a little emotional. I held her to me to tell her how excited I am for her, and it was gratifying to see her red-rimmed eyes as we broke our departing hug. Gratifying too, after #4's expressionless hug with her sister, to see the two of them imitating each other's spontaneous, goofy dance across the TSA's empty stanchions and belts. (I was too late to capture it on video.)

I probably won't sleep soundly until I see a photo of her safely with her Colombian family. I am comforted, though, by the texts she's been sending through the night complaining about the $5 charge for headphones on the plane (which I won't pay for), and asking me to cover her airport meal, (which I will). She and Madelyn are rapidly learning the financial lessons and otherwise of being independent. I am proud of them, and I am looking forward to the changed dynamics of our smaller household. Offspring #s 4 and 5 are still carefree and I'm grateful for our chance to give them way more parental attention than they've probably ever had. The near future is full of new experiences for us all!

And then there were two

Great Basin National Park

A year ago, people said the 12-hour drive home from Idaho that normally takes two hours was totally worth viewing the solar eclipse. I don't agree with them--12 hours in a traffic jam will never speak to my soul--but now I get it.

In 2016, on our way home from Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks, we passed through a little town called Baker, Nevada. There we saw a sign pointing to Great Basin National Park, just a couple miles off our Google mapped road. We were feeling adventurous, so we took the detour and discovered a little gem of a park. It was evening, so the visitor center was closed, but we grabbed a brochure, meandered through camping loops, and took in the amazing views and pine-and-sagebrush scent from the top of a very high road. We vowed to come back.

On that drive home, I read in the brochure that Great Basin has been designated as an International Dark Sky Park, and one of the best places in the USA to view the night sky. That sentence took me back 22 years to the awe I felt when I first discovered the dark night sky. I worked with 20-something 20-somethings near the Grand Canyon that summer. One moonless night, we hiked on the unpaved side of the road's barrier to strike frozen poses for any car that passed. (Ah, the brains of young adults!) When headlights weren't blinding us, we walked with our eyes to the night sky. I had never realized how many stars there were! That memory fed another from the second summer in our home. Kent was traveling, so I took a queen-size air mattress to our deck and slept with my oldest three daughters under the August night sky to witness the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. It was magical to lay there, waking through the night, cuddled with my littles and watching the stars fall.

I knew Great Basin was meant to be for our family. I found the peak of the 2017 Perseid shower and reserved two campsites (we like camping with friends) as soon as the six-month-advance reservation window opened. A few weeks later, while meditating in the light of the very early morning's full moon, I realized I couldn't see any of the few stars I can normally see from my suburban balcony. I checked the moon phase calendar and discovered that our planned star-gazing trip coincided with the late summer's full moon. I canceled that reservation and tasked myself to set a new reservation in early 2018 for this August, when the Perseids would be at their peak during the same weekend as the new moon (ie. no moon). Other campers had clued into this weekend too, evidenced by the fact that only one reservable campsite remained when I paid for it in February. Sorry, friends.

That is a long introduction to explain that this trip has been over two years in the making. It was worth the wait, but not necessarily for the reasons I thought it would be.

As summer plans started to get set on the calendar, and my kids realized they would miss out on the Glauser week of boating at East Canyon, our Great Basin trip met some resistance. My description of camping in the desert with no running water and only a pit toilet, with the possible exciting outing to a ghost town, was not an easy sell. In fact, my kids said they weren't coming. I said they didn't have a choice. Madelyn weaseled out of the trip by accepting her boyfriend's family's invitation to go SCUBA diving for nine days at the Boy Scouts' Florida Sea Base, all expenses paid. She's an adult. I can't force her to the desert when the fish are calling. And I'll admit, there aren't many vacations that would outdo her Florida experience. (Maybe I can get her to do a write-up of that trip on this blog.) I was encouraged that Kassidy and Cache's skepticism turned into mild enthusiasm when I told them about the cave tour and hiking. It's nice having a son-in-law who likes camping possibly more than we do.

Following are highlights and lowlights of our trip.

We got #4 back! She was wrapping up a couple weeks at a service ranch in central Utah, and Cachidy picked her up on the way to Great Basin. We were all amazed at how tan she had become. I guess backpacking each weekend and working and playing hard outside all day will do that for you.

Our campsite was the perfect size, near some small but beautiful cliffs and a stream. The pit toilet was the cleanest, best-smelling pit toilet I've ever experienced. (Madelyn, our connoisseur of restrooms, missed out!) On the second day, the only improvement I could wish for was for the toilet's dozen flies to shoo...and then half an hour later a ranger came and hung fly paper in the facility! The campsite's smell of sage was amazing and we were allowed to have a campfire, which is a no-no in most of the rest of the West this year. Cachidy set up their many hammocks, the kids pitched our tent, and we enjoyed some delicious grilled salmon, strawberry-rhubarb crisp (gluten-free, of course), brats, and other camp recipes. I loved that all my kids (plus one--#3 brought a friend at the last minute to substitute for Madelyn) wanted to gather in the tent at night to play games and just be together.  My usual "Never Have I Ever" had a parking ticket or moving vehicle violation citation did not win with this crowd of non-drivers. (It's true: though I like to speed a little, I've never been caught!) Instead, #4 took all but #5 down with "never have I ever had a passport".

Our star-gazing schedule was supposed to commence on the first night with a Saturday astronomy show at the visitor center. The rangers have a handful of powerful telescopes that they bring out three nights each week. After dinner, glimpsing the stars coming into the night sky, we took our camp chairs and arrived partly into the "show" which turned out to be a presentation by a professor whose grad students use the Great Basin observatory. He had a projector and screen set up to show us a graduate-level presentation of graphs and charts and lingo that was way above the understanding of the population of young children--and adults--in attendance. I thought the blue light glaring off the screen was interfering with my ability to see any stars in the sky as his presentation progressed. Not so. When he finished, the 300-person audience clapped politely, hoping for the telescopes to come out. He shared a few words with a ranger and then announced that there were too many clouds to see the stars well. He turned the knife by describing the fabulous views of Mars and the Milky Way they'd had just the night before. The audience bled away pretty quickly. We sat watching the shadowy bats zoom above us and hoping he would turn off his monitor so we might see something. Eventually, we went back to camp, and the clouds blew away 30 minutes later to reveal a lovely, starry sky. Sunday night the rangers announced a Persied-viewing party, so we went back for round two of cloud cover and no telescopes. Each night, the clouds would clear away once all were asleep and I'd see the middle-of-the-night sky through the window of my tent. But I wanted my family to experience it.

On our third and last night, most of the family said I could wake them at 3:00 a.m. for star gazing. It was gratifying that the kids anticipated the night as if it were Christmas. They woke on their own and we spilled out of the tent with our blankets and excited whispers. Even with clouds covering two-thirds of the heavenly dome above us, we saw at least a dozen shooting stars. There were three burning meteors like nothing I've seen before. Their long tails continued to burn in an arc all the way across the sky as the rocketing rock leading the arc disappeared at the mountainous horizon. That night has become a stunning new favorite memory for us.

Sunday was special there too. We got a small amount of complaining from the kids when they learned that church was still on the schedule, but a reminder that they would have WiFi at the building appeased them. Our family has never visited an LDS branch before. A branch is a small congregation with fewer leaders in its organization. We are accustomed to attending our ward, which has about 500 people in the congregation. (About 300 of those show up on Sundays.) Walking into the tiny church building across the border in Utah (one hour earlier than Nevada time meant waking up an hour earlier than anticipated), we realized that our group increased their numbers by 26% percent that day. From the time we sat down, the kids felt very conspicuous and begged in whispers to leave after the first meeting. Kent said if everyone kept their cell phones tucked away for the whole of Sacrament Meeting, they wouldn't have to go to Sunday School or the youth meeting. The pull of Wifi proved too strong for them, so we stayed for the entire block. We added four teenagers to their one, so Cache attended the youth meetings to show solidarity with #5. Kassidy and I made up one-fourth of the women's meeting. It turned out to be a sweet experience for all of us. With fewer people and opinions to hear, every meeting was shorter than the hours we are used to, and we shaved 30 minutes off church that day. The people were great too. We had only one speaker in Sacrament Meeting, visiting from a ward in Ely, Nevada. He was a great storyteller and kept us all riveted as he tied faith into his experience of being a local when Mt. St. Helens erupted. The people were interesting, coming from different backgrounds and lifestyles than we are used to. It was delightful to be welcomed into their atmosphere of love, and I found myself comforting others who shared their difficult experiences in our Relief Society (women's) meeting. One woman shared that her daughter had committed suicide a year earlier, and she felt it was an answer to her prayers that on this day she could witness me and my daughter, Kassidy, sitting together. She said it renewed her hope that through Jesus' atonement, she will be with her daughter again in the resurrection.

Cave shields

We spent much of the afternoon reading, playing, and otherwise relaxing back at our campsite, biding our time until our scheduled cave tour. Lehman Caves is one long cavern in the marble and limestone of the Snake Range. We bought tickets to the 90-minute tour, and were lucky to have a ranger who was so enchanted with the cave that he spent an extra 30 minutes with us in the hollow. This was the second cave we've visited as a family, and the sixth of my lifetime. Each cave has a different feeling, and I had the impression in this cave of being in the guts of Mother Earth. There were formations, called shields, that I've not seen in any other cave. There were rooms where settlers and early visitors held dances and other parties, leaving graffiti colored by the smoke of candles on the ceiling. We were quiet to not disturb the hundreds of bats that use the cave as a rest stop in their migration. Outside the cave, I asked our guide about something I had read in the preserved cabin near the cave entrance. It said the rancher who "discovered" the cave, Absalom Lehman, found bodies of Native Americans resting on its high stone shelves. The ranger thanked me for not asking the question earlier. He explained that we have access to the cave in agreement with local Native Americans, and part of the agreement is to not talk about things they consider to be sacred while in the cave. He said the tribes still come to the cave for ceremonies each year. The leader stands at the entrance to the cave and asks the cave's permission to enter her depths. And then they wait to enter until they feel permission is given. They have a relationship to the Earth that I don't understand very well, but I did sense a reverent connection there. It was a good Sunday.

If you take your kids places where it's cold,
they will become affectionate toward each other.

A century-old building on the ranch

Monday was a day for exploring. In the park, we hiked the Alpine Lakes Loop trail, connecting into the Bristlecone trail. Hiking above 10,000 feet, my head ached a bit, but it was wonderful to breathe the clean air. We drank from a sparkling spring coming out of the rock, which fed a tiny lake, which, of course, the boys couldn't resist swimming into. So cold! At the highest point of our hike, we wandered through a bristlecone pine grove. These are the oldest trees on the planet, and placards told us we were hugging a speciman that is 3,500 years old; it still has a good 1,500 years of life left in it! The trunk smelled, surprisingly, like honey. We all stood around with our noses in its beautiful grain. These trees were truly something to behold.

Our plan for the afternoon was to explore Ely, Nevada, about an hour from the park, and maybe find some ghost towns on the way. Having received a few separate invitations at church, we decided to stop at the branch president's ranch on the way to town. We spent a good hour there talking to him and touring the ranch with his wife and children. It rained off and on as we toured the grounds, and they told us that in the springtime, the ground is soggy with water. The desert is certainly surprising! They were kind to invite us to dinner, but we didn't feel great about doubling their meal prep and inflicting our dietary restrictions on them, so we declined and continued to town. #5 was feeling increasingly nauseated, and when we sat down at the restaurant, we could only convince him to order fries. He said salty food sounded good. He grew more and more pale and eventually left the table to go lie down at the city park where we had parked our van. Kent ate quickly and joined him, and 20 minutes later they returned. #5 felt much better after vomiting his undigested breakfast in the park's lawn. Lesson learned: eat something salty when you're trying to stay hydrated on a hike. We think he was waterlogged from drinking all day in the desert, but not stopping to eat because the glacier lakes had called to him. 

One of the things I like about Ely is its murals. There are large paintings on the sides of old buildings all over town. We posed with a couple of the murals until it became too dark for pictures, and we returned to camp.

Tuesday we broke camp. Kassidy and Cache took #3 and friend in the early departure vehicle so they could get to Cache's dad's birthday party that afternoon. The rest of us took another hour to pack the van and then make several stops along the way home. We took some time at the Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah. This museum memorializes the internment of 11,212 Americans of Japanese descent during the final three years of World War II. We walked through a restored wooden barrack with it's thin plywood walls that did not provide insulation from cold Utah winters and hot summers. We learned about the homes, businesses and other property that were lost when these people from the West Coast were rounded up and sent to 14 camps in remote areas of the United States. What I found most sadly ironic was that our government did not trust these Americans, these 110,000 potential spies, to live freely on American soil, but their young men were welcome to leave if they would fight for this same government in an all-Japanese American combat unit. I understand it was a tough time for our country and that fear of Japanese spies was real. When fear is so strong, it's hard to choose love. I've raised my children to stand up for those who are bullied and to be kind to all. It's important that they know the history of our own racist government, and see how people have handled fearful situations so we can decide how to better cope with them in our day and the future.

The rest of the drive home through the tiny towns of western Utah was charming. We enjoyed lunch and treats on the road, but as with all good trips, it was also good to be home...and to get the kids ready for school starting the next day! Thank you, Great Basin, for an enriching and rejuvenating four days for our family to be together to wrap up summer.

Worlds Collide

Prologue

If I had kept up on this blog, I would have already recorded that we've temporarily added other people to our household over the years. I think it's pretty significant for a blog about the goings-on of our family to at least mention those who have part-time been part of our family.

There was Edwin, who was a former mission companion of Kent's back in 1996. He lived with us for six months in 2011 so he could learn English. Poor Edwin had to sleep in the playroom all summer, where the temperatures easily reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit because the only ventilation was the loft railing, which basically meant that all the hot air from the downstairs settled there. Two of my best memories with Edwin were convincing him to make tamales--my favorite Mexican food--and taking him along for our annual trip with the Glauser side of the family to East Canyon. Edwin got to try knee boarding!

Part I

In 2014, the Higa family lived with us for about two months. Mark was Kent's best friend from childhood, and I knew him from from the last years of high school when our friend group consisted of the Provo Guys and Draper Girls. Mark and his wife, Bri, and their toddler daughter LL (minors don't get named on this blog) came to Provo to care for his aging, widowed mother. They thought they had a place set up, but when that fell through, we set them up in a downstairs bedroom and packed a few of our girls into the converted playroom. By then, it had windows and was more livable. LL took a Pack'N'Play under the stairs in the closet of her parents' bedroom. Adding three people to our home was not as difficult as you might think, though I'm sure Mark and Bri were happy to move into their own place eight weeks later. However, we continued to have family dinners with the Higas each week for the next almost-four years until they moved across the country this past spring.

Apparently, we are still experiencing the effects of having them in our home.

One of LL's rituals when she came each week was to head straight to one of my girls' rooms. She liked to request a makeup makeover, and often came to the dinner table covered in eye shadow, lipstick, and plastic jewelry. If the girls weren't around, she would visit their rooms anyway and begin collecting treasures. LL loved her purses, and we learned to check them for contraband before she left each week. When she realized that her clutch was not a safe place for cache, she began hiding her finds throughout the house. It was somewhat annoying to have things disappear, but I always smiled whenever I found a stash.

[I have a great photo of one such stash that I came across in our wood stove. I'll add it when I find it.]

Part II

Yesterday I was reminded that my children don't want to interact with their teachers--even their favorite teachers--outside the school setting. This shouldn't have been a surprise. I remember a classmate onetime describing to me an experience he had of accidentally running into a teacher at her house. It bears repeating.

Mrs. W. was one of my best teachers. I don't know if I would say she was a favorite, but maybe. I definitely respected her. She was one of those teachers who stood ramrod straight and could control the behavior in her classroom with a silent glance. She had high expectations of our sophomore English class, and we knew her expectations were attainable if we would just buckle down and work. Her classroom was a formal place where we learned the intricacies of diagramming sentences. It was a place of discovery when she unveiled the beauty of Shakespeare. It was a place of creativity where she helped us transfer the stories inside us onto paper. In my experience, strict teachers are the ones who teach the most, and we all learned a lot from Mrs. W.

This classmate of mine was canvassing a neighborhood in our city for a political or charitable campaign. (I don't really remember why he was knocking on strangers' doors, but he was.) He knocked on one lovely door, and Mrs. W. answered. She invited him in and went into another room to retrieve something for which he was soliciting. This left him in the entryway staring at a large piece of art. In fact, it was life size. It was a life-size painting...of Mrs. W...in the nude. That is an image that I'm sure he will never unsee. I've never forgotten it, and I never even saw it!

The memory of the Mrs. W. painting helps me understand #3's reaction yesterday when a minivan pulled up to our home at 9:40 a.m. Now, I had planned on waiting for the surprise to unveil itself when he rang the doorbell, but I revealed it about 90 seconds earlier than that when #5 asked whose van that was.

"That's Mr. W." I answered.

"What?" #3 replied, not sure that she heard correctly. Mr. W. is the high school choir teacher. (It's just coincidence that both teachers in this story have last names that start with the same initial.) He has taught all three of my oldest children.  #3 had heard correctly.

"Mr. W. is here to tune our piano." My piano has been causing increasingly more cringing when I've practiced the last several months. Earlier this month, when Madelyn and #3 were singing a duet in church, we headed across the street to practice on the chapel's piano because none of us were confident that our home piano wasn't flat. Mr. W. confirmed that it was. I had remembered that Mr. W. offered to tune pianos and donate a portion of the fee to choir tour savings when #1 and her comrades were saving for tour five or six years ago. He still tunes pianos, and still had time to do so during the summer.

(Back to the present.) #3, who was lazily eating a bowl of cereal, and who was wearing only a short T-shirt and her underpants, and who could also see Mr. W.'s minivan through our large dining-room window jumped up and gave us the following instructions: "If he asks about me, tell him I'm in the shower. I'll be upstairs in my room."

"Okay, but he says this typically takes two-and-a-half-hours." I thought she might like to know how long she would remain in hiding. She was planning on leaving with a friend to go swimsuit shopping that morning, so I thought she would psyche herself up for greeting Mr. W. in our home when she had to answer the door for her friend. Instead, she postponed the shopping trip. Wow. Kids really don't like to see their teachers in their homes. I find this ironic because as far as I know, the teaching profession began with in-home tutors.

#3 darted upstairs. Mr. W. set off our Beethoven's-5th doorbell. #5 almost beat me to answering the door. He was impressed when Mr. W. opened the top of our little spinet and showed #5 the hammers and strings.

Then Mr. W. flipped down the music stand to get better access to the strings. Something white and something pink were sitting behind the stand.

When I noticed Mr. W. glance at the objects and then look purposefully away, I took a closer look.

I grabbed the dispensed tampon and, stuffing it into my pocket, explained, "When you have a household of girls, these things are sometimes lying around."

Mr. W., who has young daughters of his own, chuckled and said, "I'm sure I'll find out for myself in a few years." He really was casual about the whole thing.

Epilogue

When I told this story to the family at dinner last night, I kept the identity of the piano tuner secret, directing those who knew who he was to not say a word until I was done. At the end of my story, which drew a few chuckles, I said, "Guess who the piano tuner was." Madelyn, who had had eight year-long classes with Mr. W., went out on a limb and guessed, "Mr. W.?" When she heard that she was right, she laughed and clapped her hands.

I then set about to discover who was leaving dispensed tampons around the house. After a round of denials, we all realized this treasure was probably a leftover cache from LL. I can't wait to see what else she has left for us to find, and who will experience the finding with us!

Mama's Hips

I've been struggling with Half Pigeon pose in my yoga practice all summer. I've probably struggled with tight hips long before June, but I didn't notice it so much until I began yoga with the fabulous Beth Williams. She is building her new yoga business, Geneva Yoga, and I was lucky enough to join a free weekly class. Beth explains how to get into the various poses really well, and now that I'm setting up Half Pigeon correctly, I'm discovering a lot of tension that I didn't know I had. I find that as I lay over my left leg, trying to sink into my right hip, each breath brings a spasm to the muscle. This isn't my chakra vibration manifesting; rather, I think it's my hip fighting to keep holding the emotion it's been storing there for years.

Photo from nancynelsonyoga.com

Our bodies reveal a lot of what is going on in our hearts and minds. I haven't studied body language in depth, but I've learned that emotions and burdens show up in our muscles and how we carry ourselves. Like many moms, I carry my world on my shoulders, and my muscles become tense in response. Sometimes my shoulders sag under the weight, and then I'll remember to straighten up and bear it with strength. My shoulder blades will take on some of that burden, which eventually settles in the hips. Our hips are where we carry our emotional junk. It is the body's way of trying to protect us, by holding those emotions for us. (If body language fascinates you, you might enjoy this blog post about muscle tension and this one about tight hips.)

"Woman Carrying the World on Her Shoulder" by John Labbe
www.gettyimages.ae

For the first decade of motherhood, I carried my five babies on my hip. Yoga is revealing that, at least emotionally, I haven't put those children down on their own two feet. 

Four years ago, we began teaching our children about managing money. We dropped the bomb on them that they are expected to move out by September 1 after they turn 18. The 16-year-old in the family always finds this prospect  exciting! From inside the walls of our home--where they don't have to think about bills, and groceries magically fill the shelves each week--they envision their own stylish apartment where the chore list and curfew are nonexistent. Subconsciously, they also correctly understand that we, Mom and Dad, trust our children to be smart and to make good decisions. We want them to know that the wide, unknown world is theirs to explore and conquer.

As the high school years fall away, however, the realities of adulting rush in. Two years ago, Kassidy chose a somewhat easy transition, as her path went on to college paid by scholarship and subsidized honors student housing. Madelyn has taken a more difficult, but still admirable, start to adulthood. Her choice is to work full-time until she can serve an LDS mission. The jobs that are available for her young age and lack of experience don't pay a lot, so even when her budget is managed wisely, it will be stretched to its limits. Add the complication of finding affordable housing in a town with two universities and lots of competition for good housing, and you may understand why I worry over her. That worry sits heavy on my maternal hips.

My head knows that moving into their own place is a necessary step in my children's adult journey. Yet, as I push them out of our nest, my heart empathizes with their struggles. I doubt there has ever been a baby bird that thanked its parents as it fell toward the ground, trying to spread its wings. Instead, parents often become the receiving end of complaint and blame for being the source of their children's struggle. As I watch my babies in that unresolved space falling toward earth, hoping and praying that they fly rather than splat, my instinct is to swoop in and carry them to safety. With that internal conflict, my hips come to the rescue, trying to support and protect me from the pain and uncertainty of being a parent.

My prayers of late have earnestly asked that Madelyn will find a good living situation for the next 12 months. I prayed that she finds a clean apartment she can afford so the rent doesn't break her. I prayed that she finds a place with roommates close to her own age who will be supportive friends. I add in that maybe they could also be poor so they don't encourage her to blow her budget. And perhaps her new place could have a pool or a gym so she can stick with her workout goals. Most importantly, I prayed that she could stay on track with her goals to save and prepare for her mission.

One morning as I offered up these requests, I got an answer.

"I've got this."

And I remembered: her Heavenly Father knows her better and loves her...even more than I do. He's watched over billions of His children, helping them to progress. He's watching over her, too. He knows better than I which people and experiences will best help her continue to grow.

So my prayers in recent days have changed. I simply ask that she will know the right place to live when she finds it. I add in hope that she will recognize God's hand in the process. For myself, I ask that I will have courage to refrain from giving her all the answers. My role is to stop searching online housing listings for her. I don't need to go to every apartment tour with her. She's seen me ask about rental deposits and application processes. Now I need to pull back and trust that she can ask the right questions for herself.

In this morning's yoga practice, as I rested my forehead on the ground, seeking to open my hips, I found myself silently crying. Beth guided us to thank our hips for working so hard to care for us. As we breathed deeply into the pose, she encouraged us to give our hips permission to let go of the burdens they were carrying. For the first time in months, my hips stopped shaking and I melted toward Mother Earth, tears of gratitude and relief washing through me and carrying those emotions away.

Photo from www.melissawest.com

Just as years ago I had to set down my baby to let her learn to toddle...just as I am watching her take her first steps into adulthood now, her Heavenly Parents--and mine--are watching all of us walk through this life. They support and guide us, Their children, along our difficult paths. They know when to carry us and when to let us toddle along, because those steps we are taking are for our growth.

But Who's Counting?

Two weeks ago, Kent and I began the X3 12-Week Program. The program is centered around a relatively new type of resistance-training equipment known as the X3 Bar. Each week comes with a set of videos that teach us to improve our form on eight basic exercises plus one thing to improve about our nutrition habits each week. Kent has done so much research about sugar, supplementing, fasting, etc., that we've so far learned nothing new about the eating side of the program. Because we already have pretty good habits in place there, we're hoping to see some serious gains in muscle weight over the next few months. The workout itself is surprisingly difficult. It takes about ten minutes each day, and I finish with exhausted and shaky muscles! (If you're in the market for a quick strength-training system that takes very little storage space, feel free to come try ours out.)

Because X3 is confident in its customers getting into great shape when they follow the prescribed routines, I decided to track my progress. Each week, I measure my weight and waist size. I'm already pretty happy with the way my body looks, so I'm mostly interested to see weight gain as a representation of building muscle. Last week, my scale said I weighed 132 lbs. That was a little lighter than I usually see, but I was measuring after a day of fasting and before eating breakfast. I figured it was probably right. Today, the scale said 142 lbs. What? Ten pounds gained in a week? Even accounting for my normal weight range, that's six to eight pounds of gain. That has to be impossible, right? I called #3 in to check her weight. She has been participating in a research study at the local university, so I could sort of compare our scale to theirs. It put her only one pound off from the university's measure. I weighed myself again: 142. When I came past the bathroom a few hours later, I weighed myself again again: 142. This was freaky! Was this even possible?! If I had put on ten pounds of muscle, where was it all hiding?!?!

I love Jim Gaffigan's bit about whales. Poor whales. 

"It's mostly water weight."

When Kent returned from work, I told him what had happened and asked him to weigh himself. He doesn't use the scale weekly like I do, but for the past decades his weight is fairly consistent. Before his enlightenment about sugar, he used to measure dramatic weight changes with his trips to Mexico. It was always entertaining to see him put on seven pounds of tacos and soda in a week, and then lose half of that in his first week home as he stopped drinking sugar and retaining water. By the next trip, he would be back to his regular weight and ready to watch it swing again. Today, the scale showed within a couple pounds of his norm. He started telling me what I already believed: eight pounds of muscle gain in a week is physically impossible. He assured me that I must be retaining a lot of water and grilled me on what I'd been eating lately. Two days ago was my 24-hour fast day, and I'd had no sugar or highly salted foods for several days...though Kent's insistence that this couldn't be muscle gain was pushing me toward some chocolate in that moment. He then wanted to know whether my clothes were fitting tightly, as proof that it must be water weight. I had treated myself to my annual clothes shopping over the weekend, so the clothes were new and I had no way to compare on that basis. (Budget and sanity tip: I like to wear my new clothes right away so I can see them in natural light and determine whether I still like them outside the store. This little test resulted in a top and a skirt being placed in my return bag and $30 coming back to my bank account.)

We both were dumbfounded about my weight gain, so I stepped on the scale again: 120 lbs. As impossible as a ten-pound increase in a week sounded, we both knew losing 22 lbs. in half a day was truly ridiculous. After 21 years of use, our spring scale has finally lost its ability to weigh and measure.

You may think it odd that I know how old this scale is. Even if it were still under warranty, I wouldn't know where to return it because we received it as a wedding gift, and today also happens to be our 21-year wedding anniversary.

Despite it being our anniversary, I wasn't feeling particularly happy about the day. I woke before my alarm--my writer's brain likes to do that often--so I was somewhat short on sleep and temper. When Kent woke a couple hours later, one of our first exchanges brought me to the verge of tears. Granted, I asked him a question as he was headed downstairs in the middle of his morning supplement routine. But still, he cut me off and gave a terse answer before hearing my question out. This was on the heels of a frustrating marriage meeting (our weekly couple council) last night, which had also brought me to the brink of tears. When Kent saw that his quick response this morning had hurt me, he asked, "Are you going to cry?" I nodded and he offered a short, defeated apology followed by a hasty explanation. I believed he hadn't meant to hurt me, so I referenced our running joke, "Well at least you met your daily quota for making me cry early on, and now we're done for the day." While I felt frustrated that he had once again interrupted and plugged in advice without hearing me out, I'm sure he was likewise discouraged that I had once again chosen to interrupt his flow to subject him to a conversation that turned out to be high stakes. Both of us felt disheartened that the years of work we have put into communicating better don't seem to make a difference.

Before he left for the day, we both wished each other a happy anniversary, signaling that we were willing to forgive, and trying to not let hopelessness settle in for the day. To put him at ease, I added that I had no expectations for celebrating the day. Kent's improv class meets on Tuesdays, so I had made other plans for the evening, which still stood after he learned yesterday that class was canceled for the holiday. We've both grown less interested in gift giving on holidays and birthdays, so I figured our anniversary would be no different and wanted him to know he was off the hook. A decade ago, I still wished that each anniversary would come with a romantic date and a bouquet of roses. Two decades in, we've run out of romantic surprises. As we made plans this year, we just agreed to do something this weekend, which probably means we will simply go to a nicer restaurant than usual. And that will be fine. I'm happier to have a good marriage overall than to be upset if one day per year to celebrate our marriage fails to meet expectations.

I thought all day about our 21 years. How we've each changed as individuals, and we still like each other better than when we fell in love. How there has been a lot of joy on the flip side of the hurts. I thought about our adventure in parenting and the time we'll have to watch our family grow into generations. About the fun we have dating and traveling and supporting each other. About the growth, and discoveries that await us. I decided that ebbs and flows in our relationship are good. They ensure that our marriage doesn't go stagnant. We are each still committed to coming back to kindness and love, again and again.

I spent half an hour writing these sentiments in a card for Kent. When I returned late at night, I found a card waiting for me too, holding a poem. Over the two-plus decades that he has been writing them, Kent's somewhat infrequent poems have become my favorite gifts.

Perhaps our broken scale is the perfect anniversary gift, too. In our 21 years of marriage, we have learned that measuring each other and keeping a tally are great ways to feed bitterness and chase away love. When I seek a fair balance by keeping score of my contributions and subductions in comparison to his, we find that each person's requisite 50% plus the other's 50% never makes a whole. It always goes negative and we end up with hurt.

And so, we work to not keep score. We each pull our weight in the marriage, and practice patience and forgiveness when the other person has less to give. We are not perfect in loving this way, but practice does make progress. When there is nothing to be weighed in the balance, the love flows more easily and we truly do have happiness in our eternal enterprise of marriage.