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!