Before Haley and Jake graduated from high school and went off to college, I had a reoccurring dream. I’d be doing laundry and look up and realize there was a door hidden behind the spot where I hang clothes to dry. I’d part the damp clothes (a little bit Narnian, yes?), open the door, and discover a previously-unknown bedroom. A rush of relief would come over me: this new bedroom would mean no one would have to share a room, and that there’d be an easing in the space everyone used in our house, so fewer sibling tensions.

I always laughed a bit when I woke up from the dream, because it was such an obvious message from my psyche about the things I was worrying about—my kids being happy and having the space they need to explore their identities, as well as my frustration that I couldn’t find the answers I needed through the normal routes. Only magic or secret bedrooms would help, and as I didn’t have those, I continued being frustrated, wishing I could fix things but never finding the unknown door to answers.

I had that dream a few times after Haley moved out, but I haven’t had it at all since Jake moved out. We have plenty of space now, and while it is painful and diminishing in a very specific way, having your kids leave—I miss them quite a bit—it is also sort of…rewarding, I guess. To see them move forward and begin to figure out their lives on their own. To watch them form their own spaces, as it were.

Last night I had a sort-of similar dream that helped me recognize something I am feeling right now in my life.

In this dream, I was again standing by the just-remembered door in the laundry room. When I opened it, I discovered that the hidden room held a bunch of boxed-up treasures. All of the clothes I wore as a young mother, favorite sweaters that had been lost or worn out, my pink flowery capris I wore until they fell apart. My kids’ baby clothes, the tiny newborn gowns, their favorite toddler outfits and first-day-of-school T-shirts; Jakey’s “basket shoes,” a tiny pair of Michael Jordan’s that he loved more than anything, Nathan’s favorite belt, all of Haley’s spinny dresses, Kaleb’s beloved white blankey. Boxes of all the crafts I’ve ever intended to make but haven’t gotten around to, Christmas gifts and Mother’s Day gifts and birthday gifts now crafted and stacked next to appropriately-sized and themed gift bags. Quilts that I have imagined in my real life but never finished, entirely finished and obviously bound by me (I always have one wonky corner). Photo albums, with pictures neatly arranged in plastic sleeves—beautiful photos of all of my kids, alone and together, photos of them with their parents and friends and siblings and cousins, each one perfectly composed and crisply focused, with depth of field that made me weep. These were all photos I had never seen and didn’t remember taking, but they brought me to memories I cherish (in my waking world, I mean, not my dream one).  I also found a box with scrapbooks I had forgotten I had made, and these were all about how I felt through all of my various stages of motherhood, from my first pregnancy to our most recent vacation. There were kids in the layouts, but the pages themselves were about me, my joys and frustrations and treasured moments, a record not of their lives but of mine as their mother.

My own little Cave of Wonders, except not jewels and gold, but wealth of a different sort. A gathering of objects that, when touched or looked at, could remind me more clearly how it felt to be that person I used to be, when I wore or made the object, or when it was loved by the people I love.

I did laugh, a little, when I woke up. Those photos were so beautiful. But it was a teary sort of laughter, informed by self-realization. I remember once, when I was in the thick of mothering little kids, my mother told me that the happiest time in her life was when we were all little. Her comment both reminded me to savor those days, instead of complaining my way through them, and made me a little bit sad: is that really the only happiness we get? The sweetness of little children? Isn’t there sweetness as they grow and become adults?

I am discovering that yes, there is sweetness. But it is a complicated, layered sweetness, like an extra-dark chocolate filled with a rich salted caramel. It is delicious, but it is not simple anymore. I love my children so much, all of them. I love seeing them find their way in the world. But this phase of my life isn’t easy. Of our lives; life isn’t simple—for me, but especially for them. There have been injuries and bruises and lingering scars and we have all been changed. We will all continue to change.

So I curled in bed this morning, remembering my dream. Thinking about how clearly my psyche was saying take me back. And how hard I wish my waking self could remember exactly how that felt, to have the simple, uncomplicated love of young children surround me every day. I am not wishing away my right now, yearning for what used to be. There is only forward. But clearly, my dream told me, clearly I miss it. And I am afraid of losing those memories, afraid I haven’t written enough down, snapped enough photographs, saved enough used-up objects.

Clearly I would like to revisit it somehow, even though I know that room doesn’t exist. It’s just empty wall behind the drying laundry.

I can’t believe my mother was right—that all of my happiest days are behind me. I know there is joy in the future, too. There is joy right now. But, as we face yet another new school year starting, Nathan’s senior year and Kaleb’s first in junior high, I am feeling nostalgia for what-used-to-be. I am wishing I could revisit and maybe revise, maybe somehow get things right, ensure fewer bruises, fewer scars. Or even just scoop one of my children up again, in their chubby baby selves, and hold them close, and know that simple love again.

Even though I know that is a locked door that is lost forever.

Every once in a while, I log in to my Family Search account and follow my family line down one descendant or another. There are so many resources available there, including personal and family histories that people have typed and submitted, so other relatives can read them. Seeing photos, birth and death certificates, and gravestone portraits and reading stories about my ancestors makes me feel a complicated sort of joy. I look at their faces in grainy photographs, searching for a hint of my own; I savor the few details that are there but I wish desperately for more.

Last week, when I was writing this blog post, I wanted to make sure I had the genealogy correct, so I started clicking around on my family tree. I came across a link to a document I hadn’t ever read, called “The History of Charles Simmons and Mary Elizabeth Hughes,” who were my great-great grandparents. Usually it seems that most of the life histories are about men, and while I do enjoy those stories, too, I am much more interested in reading about my female ancestors. So I was fairly excited to click on the link and learn something of my great-great grandmother, who was my namesake’s mother-in-law. From this combined life sketch, I learned that my great-great grandfather came from an old Southern family which, according to county records, owned slaves. Most of his brothers died in the Civil War. He left Virginia to move west with his wife Mary, but they stopped in Salt Lake City and liked the Mormons enough to join the church and stay in Utah. The document also has a paragraph about the freed slave they brought with them to Utah, who, although he was free, didn’t want to leave them but also refused to live in the house with them.

About Mary Elizabeth Hughes, there are absolutely no details.

This frustrates me to no end.

I came to feminism partly by way of my English degree. (Also by way of my mother, who’s been a feminist for as long as I can remember.) For me, feminism is about equal rights and equal access to freedoms; it is about the right to be able to choose what to do with your life based on what you need and want, not based on stereotypical gender roles. But it is also about women’s stories, both in literature and in history. The woman in the text, if you will.

And so many of those stories are lost.

You discover this so quickly when you start digging in to family history. There are many, many of my female ancestors who are noted only as someone’s wife, without a name, and daughters listed just like that: daughter. Yet most of the sons’ names are noted. Women’s stories—all the way down to their names—are invisible.  

I want to know: what did Mary Elizabeth Hughes love about her childhood in Virginia? What experiences did she have during the Civil War? What experiences did she have traveling west? What did she think the first time she saw the mountains? Did she love or hate to cook? What was her favorite season? What were her daily struggles? What did she think about her son Nathan’s choice of a wife (my great-grandma Amy)? Did her Nathan have any similarities to my Nathan?

Unless some previously-unknown document was discovered, I will never know any of those details, about her or about any of my female ancestors.

And, sure: you could argue that if I did know those stories, my life wouldn’t change much. I would still live this life that I have. And I can’t really explain why I want to know these stories so badly—but I do. I can almost feel them, hovering around me, the women whose choices created my life. Like the angels in the Brian Kershisnik painting, except people with real experiences. If I just knew something more about them, something real, something unique—maybe if I knew I could see them in some way.

And this is one of the reasons that scrapbooking is so important to me.

Without a doubt, it’s a craft that can be viewed as kitschy. As something silly and childlike, as colored pencils and cut-out flowers, paint and frippery.

But it is so much more than it seems.

There is a long history (as long as human history, really) of women’s crafts being seen as less-than or secondary. There are artists, and there are female artists. There are writers, and then there are women writers. Poets, but poetesses. So part of feminism is claiming (not even reclaiming, as we haven’t ever been allowed to own) our art forms as being equally as important as men’s. Artists, writers, photographers, sculptors: creative people who happen to also be women are taking the stance that what they create is good not despite their gender, but because it is good.

Scrapbooking can have that same claim.

It is, in fact, a radical form of feminism: women telling their own stories. Women knowing that their stories matter (not only their children’s, not only their husband’s). Women ensuring that their voices—expressed in stories, yes, but also in the products we chose to use, and in the art we make—have a chance at being heard by future generations.

We lived. We breathed. We walked on this earth. Not all of us have extraordinary, history-changing lives. But all of us have been a part of human history. Almost exactly half of it. And the only way our voices, our stories will be remembered is if we tell them.

Tell them, somehow. In a blog or a journal or a blank screen in the word processor of your choice. Say them out loud while you record yourself. Or, yes, even: make a scrapbook. A layout or two or five or an entire album or ten albums. Your stories are important and no one else can tell them.

And this will never stop being important to me.

The thing that struck me hardest, over and over, as read Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, is the similarity in our responses to a variety of experiences. The book is her exploration of her body, the damage that was done to her that was the spark to her weight gain, a study in why she is overweight and how the weight influences her life. I loved it and I couldn’t stop reading it but I wanted to read it slowly and savor it. As I read I kept bumping into more ideas that made me wish I’d bought my own copy so I could underline and write “me too!” For example, this paragraph:

I start each day with the best of intentions for living a better, healthier life. Every morning, I wake up and have a few minutes where I am free from my body and my failings. During these moments, I think, Today, I will make good choices. I will work out. I will eat small portions. I will take the stairs when possible. . . But then I get out of bed. (pg 158)

I do that too. I promise myself that today will be the day I don’t eat any sugar, that I eat more vegetables, that I won’t sit writing at the computer but move more. And then I get up and I start making mistakes.

That wasn’t the only time my responses felt similar to Gay’s. I also resonated with the idea of dressing in dark colors as a form of self-protection.

The constant feeling that my body isn’t strong, slender, fast, firm, good enough.

The anxiety and frustration and downright sadness felt in dressing rooms.

The deep, abiding shame that I’ve failed to do the things I should’ve done with my body, that I’m not thin enough.

The thing is, though, is that I know I’m not fat.

I should apologize for saying that. I should clarify: I’m not fat, but I’m also not skinny. I don’t have that stereotypical runner’s body, with sculpted muscles and a thigh gap. I have disproportionately thick thighs, so my quads need one size of pants while my waist needs a size smaller. I have broad shoulders so women’s button-up shirts never fit right on me. I have tiny breasts but enormous side boobs. My belly is soft and bulges, my triceps skin is droopy, and my knees are starting to develop that middle-aged sag.

I hover close to the top of the BMI for my height, but I’m not overweight. My body is mostly socially acceptable in that I can wear average-sized clothes, but when you (I) start looking at different parts, their various faults (too big, too small, too droopy) add up to something almost good enough, but not quite, not really.

But the fact that my responses to Gay’s experiences feel so similar also make me feel a little bit shameful. Like I am conscripting her responses, like me finding myself in her experiences came from the same conceit that has created the need for intersectional feminism. Here I am, a woman who can wear off-the-rack clothing, thinking that my self-loathing can be similar to an overweight woman’s.

I haven’t ever struggled to fit into an airplane seat.

I haven’t ever worried about breaking a chair at a restaurant.

I haven’t ever been bruised by furniture.

I haven’t had to experience the things that Gay has experienced because of the size of her body.

But I still feel ashamed of my body.

I had this “me too!” response throughout the entire book. So, despite the rules of intersectional feminism telling me I am doing it wrong, despite being afraid that someone might think I am appropriating Roxane Gay’s feelings, what I am saying right now is I loved this book because it articulated my shame.

And that is why I love books anyway, or at least one of the reasons: because you can find something of yourself in the very best ones, even while you are learning about something other than yourself.

And because no one owns shame: no gender, no race. Fat people and skinny people. Everyone feels shame about something, and what I left Hunger with was the feeling that somehow it is shame we must stop. Not overeating or over-exercising, but shame. I mean: she’s Roxane freaking Gay. She is an amazing writer and thinker. She writes books that become bestsellers not because they appeal to the greatest common denominator but because they are discerning and intelligent and challenging. As a reader, I don’t care if she’s overweight. I wouldn’t care if she were anorexic, either—except I would want to read about those topics as issues, as I did in Hunger. What I care about is how her writing has influenced my life. She’s brought me to understandings I wouldn’t have grasped any other way. If I met her in real life, I would be awe-struck and probably wordless, but I wouldn't think "she's fat." I'd think "she's amazing."

My deepest wish, and the one I have not fulfilled for many reasons, one of which is shame, is to be a successful writer. Roxane Gay has done that—and yet, she still feels damaged, feels less-than, feels invisible in painfully visible ways. She still feels shame (which I can say of her only because she said it of herself). Even while she feels compassion and understanding for herself as well.

So what I left Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body with was, yes, a better understanding of how it feels to be overweight in a world that despises weight gain. I started to understand more clearly how weight is an emotional issue as much as it is a physical one. But I also gained an understanding of shame, of how it is working within my own psyche, how it is holding me back, how it makes it even more complex and complicated to feel happy or successful in our already complex and complicated world.

“When you’re overweight,” Gay writes, “people project assumed narratives onto your body” (pg 120). This is also true when you are not overweight. And it is also true, I am beginning to understand, that sometimes the stories come from within ourselves, that we are all of us walking around assuming other people think something negative about us, while really everyone is wandering around constructing negative narratives about themselves. Feeling awash in shame.

It’s the shame we all need to lose, somehow. Not the fat.

(I meant to write and publish this on Independence Day, but I was hanging out with my family and never got to the computer!)

As July has arrived, I've found myself thinking about what it means to be patriotic in our current political climate. How can I say that I am proud to be an American when I am ashamed of almost everything our government officials are doing, saying, promoting? When disdain for anyone who isn't white, male, wealthy, able-bodied and cisgender runs rampant? When our government refuses to understand science and work to protect the world, when our national lands are up for sale to the highest-bidding oil drilling companies, when environmental restrictions are being overturned?

Our country where intelligence seems to have fled and stupidity rules the day?

Which brings me to another question: Can one round of really bad election results ruin America?

I hope not.

"Make American great again" as a rallying cry is problematic; it assumes America was, at some point in time, "great." 

And aren't we great?

We are proud of our history of rebellion and the quest for freedom and liberty.  We are a nation that helps other nations. We are a country that strives to spread freedom across the world.

I love America and I am glad to be an American. I am proud to be a descendant of people who came to America as immigrants looking for different types of freedom, from my most recently-emigrated great-great grandmother Annie who came from Sweden via a packet ship in 1863, all the way back to my great-something grandparents who came from England on the Mayflower.

But I can't say that without all of the problematic aspects of being an American nudging at me. I am not proud of what we did to Native Americans (and still, considering Bears' Ears and Standing Rock—what we are still, five centuries later, doing to Native Americans). I am not proud of our history of slavery. I am not proud of our history and ongoing relationship with racism and discrimination. I am not proud that all of the states have yet to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (and I'm ashamed that my state is on that list). I am not proud that in the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world (and in the history of humanity) there are homeless and hungry people. 

And yet, when I saw that row of American flags at an Independence Day celebration at a local park, I still got a lump in my throat out of pride for my country.

Patriotism appears to make zero emotional sense.

The day after Independence Day, I read this poem, "The Tent," by Naomi Shihab Nye and I can't stop thinking about it. I love how she frames the idea of patriotism as both individual and community stories. We create it when we tell our history, when we place ourselves on the map of humanity, when we form something communal. It's a story we create, and for everyone it is a little bit (or, likely, a lot different). 

A story was sewn, seed sown,
this was what patriotism meant to me—
to be at home inside my own head long enough
to accept its infinite freedom
and move forward anywhere, to mysteries coming.

to be at home inside my own head

Her poem somehow gave me the language to write about what I believe about America. I don't think we are great, not yet. I think we have had great moments. And I think we should continue to aspire to greatness; I think our potential for greatness is what makes my heart swell at the sight of the flag. 

It shouldn't be "make America great again." It should just be "make America great." 

​Looking at the current state of things can easily fill me with despair. So, the following list is perhaps more about fling out sparks into the darkness as it is about building anything. But this is a list, anyway, of the story I tell myself about the qualities that a great American should have:

• A deep understanding of what freedom means and a commitment to honor and uphold the positive qualities of our society.
• Active in both local and national politics. (In other words…every American should vote, after studying the candidates and issues.)
• Educated, and not narrowly. Art is as important as technology, literature is as important as math. All subjects do, in fact, feed each other, and a population that is eager to learn as much as possible about many things will, I believe, create a society that is more capable and nurturing. (I feel constantly embarrassed, these days, about what people don't actually know about the world they live in.)
• Committed to equal rights and equal access to opportunities, education, safety, and health care.
• The ability to look forward and focus on building a better future for more people, not just the wealthy.
• The ability to look backward, not to recreate "better days" from the past, but to learn from our mistakes and not make them again.
• The compassion to realize that one individual's happiness is not more important than another's.  (Both within our country and without.)
• A deep commitment to improving the world by using our knowledge to create green, non-polluting solutions and technologies.
• A global perspective—the realization that we are a part of the larger entity of the world, and that we should use our wealth to help other countries in non-destructive ways.
• An abhorrence for war.
• The valuing of creativity, perseverance, hard work, and intelligence.
• Accepting of "other" and recognizing that we are all different, but understanding that in our difference is our strength.
• The ability to realize that there is not just one norm, that we each live within our own perspectives and knowledge and to see that as a thing to improve on.  (I know, for example, that I come from a place of relative privilege, because I am white and will not ever likely experience discrimination based on the color of my skin, but racism is a topic I care about and want to understand better.)

And yes, I know. Those are sparks: idealistic concepts that might not be achieved by humanity in decades. Centuries, even. Certainly not in the current political climate, which feels like a darkness we must suffer through. But despite our flaws, despite our failures, I still get a flutter at the sight of an American flag: We changed things. We can continue to change for the better—we can make America "great"—but only if we are willing to look at ourselves critically. Only if we as citizens can see that the greatness doesn't come from our leaders but from us, standing up and striving for greatness.

What qualities do you think a great American possesses?

Usually, when I’m reading a book, part of my thought process is “how will I write about this when I am finished?” Quite often I take notes (or write them right inside the book if it’s mine) or stick little scraps of paper to hold the pages with interesting writing or thoughts. Sometimes I am really, really excited to write what I thought of a book.

But it’s rare that a book inspires so many thoughts that I put it down in order to write a blog post.

I’m doing that tonight, though, while I’m reading the book Hunger: A Memoir of (my) Body by Roxane Gay. I think I might end up writing about this book often, as it has sparked so many different thoughts for me. But right now I want to write about something that happened to me a few years ago that still stings.

If you follow me on Instagram (amylsorensen if you don’t! come follow me!), you’ll find out that one of the things I love is cute exercise clothes. I logically understand this is a little bit silly, and it’s also an indulgence (even if I shop carefully and always buy on sale). I don’t need all of the workout clothes I own. But sometimes, shallow as this seems, the thought of putting on something cute helps get me out the door to whatever form of exercise I’m doing that day.

I’m especially fond of my running skirts. These are made by Skirt Sports, and it’s a product and a company I love for many reasons: it’s owned by women, and their focus is on real bodies (not super-thin, tiny, athletic bodies) and on the idea that everyone can move their bodies if they want. Mostly, though, I love my skirts for a selfish reason: I can put one on and look cute, but at the same time it is extremely functional, with a pocket that holds my cell phone and shorties under the skirt that do not budge.

I am a woman without a thigh gap, so a product that protects me from chafing, and is cute, and has pockets that hold more than a dime and half a jelly bean? That is my ideal product, my friends.

But, even though I am an ambassador for Skirt Sports (which means I get to be excited to talk about it and also pass out discount codes, not that I’ve joined some crazy MLM and will be hosting Skirt Sport parties, as has been suggested by a few people I know), this isn’t a commercial for Skirt Sports, but a story about something that happened to me once while I was wearing one.

I used to go to a sculpting class at my local rec center. And, as I do when I go to exercise, I wore a skirt. It was a skirt with capris, and it made me happy (I still, in fact, own and wear it). I went to the class, I sweated and lifted and sculpted, and then, after it was over, I walked out into the foyer by the dance room and sat down behind a chair to stretch some more. A couple of the women who had been in the class were talking, and I overheard them say “I mean, she just looks so stupid in that skirt. Who wears a skirt to work out?”

They walked right past me, and most of them didn’t notice me sitting there, stretching and hearing them talk about me, but the last girl did. She looked back at me and just…shrugged. Not in an apologetic way, but in a “I don’t really care that you heard us” way.

At first I was hurt. Why would grown women act that way? Why would they care what I wore? How would it have hurt those four women, who came to the gym together and were obviously old friends, to extend a hand of friendship instead of cruel words?

But then I was pissed. Then I thought, whatever, you’re all working out in cotton t-shirts and sweats, screw you.

Then I did not let their mean-girl tactics stop me from going to the class, but I dug in. I wore a skirt to every single class I went to. I wore my brightest colored skirts with flowered tank tops. I wore flouncy skirts, and short skirts, and longer skirts with prints. I looked cute in my workout clothes and I worked hard and I never said a word to them. I would’ve been happy to be friendly before I heard their comments, but after?

Whether they’d said it about me or about someone else, I have no use for that kind of people in my life.

I thought about that experience as I read a chapter in Gay’s book. The book is about her struggles with weight, and the reasons why she overeats, and how it feels to be an overweight person in contemporary America. In the chapter, she writes about going to the gym and being tormented but a group of thin blonde women exercising on the bikes. No words were exchanged, but there was a sort of stare-down, one skinny woman challenging one overweight woman, doubting she’d keep going on her machine.

(She did.)

Women’s capacity for cruelness to each other will never stop surprising me.

But I do wonder.

I mean, really: why did that group of women in my sculpting class have to be so rude? How did it hurt them that I wore something cute and different from what they were wearing? Did I threaten them?

Did I threaten them?

Maybe I did. Maybe I came off as showing off. (Despite the fact that really: I’m not dressing for anyone other than myself.) Maybe I made them feel insecure or insignificant.

But here’s the thing: I feel insecure and insignificant. Maybe my gym clothes help me look like I have…something together, but really: I don’t. I have to talk myself into going to every gym class I try. I stand on the stairs waiting for the class start, wishing I knew how to talk to the women around me who are talking to each other. I wish I had a group of friends to work out with, but so far in my life that hasn’t been a reality.

So there we all are: women. Fat women, thin women, medium women like me. Trying to make our bodies healthy, but unable to create healthy relationships with each other. To see each other in healthy ways, to believe something good about the person sweating next to us. We think they’re too fat to be there, too skinny, too pretty, too blonde, too sloppy, too cute, too something.

We project onto the bodies around us how we are insecure about ourselves.

We want to say that the world or social expectations or something external drives us to feel shame about our bodies, to do everything we can to make them “perfect.”

But women—and I am a staunch feminist, I have every faith in women’s strength, wisdom, creativity, and all-out amazingness—women also have a meanness to them. We are as hard to each other as the world is to us as a group.

If we want the world to treat us with kindness and respect, we have to overcome our cruelty to each other.

We have to see that all women, all shapes, all colors, all outfits, are just doing the best we each can.

We didn’t always get along.

Maybe in a house full of four sisters no one gets along because we all wanted to be the most important and we all had to spilt the attention. Maybe because she and I were just a little bit too far apart in age—just a bit over three years. Maybe because we were the same in so many ways, but different in our essential approaches to life. (When I realized, as a middle-aged woman, that my sister is an extrovert I was stunned.)

When we were little she drove me nuts because I wanted so badly to be seen as grown up, so anything that seemed “little” or “young” was something I avoided. Later, when I was a rebellious and angry teenager, I was mad at everyone, even her, even though she would’ve been my ally in a second if I’d just been kind. We did everything together, trips to Lake Powell, gymnastics, dancing, but we did it all separately, with different friends and different dances. We both like to read but I don’t remember ever talking about books or even being willing to share books with each other.

One of the few times we got along was on our trips to Las Vegas. Every summer, we’d go for a week, and Becky and I would spend most of the trip swimming in the pool at the Landmark Hotel. Our older sisters were far too old for swimming and just wanted to suntan. But Becky and I swam together for hours, laughing and doing underwater somersaults and having hold-your-breath contests.

I wish I had a picture of that—us in our 70s bikinis by the pool with the waterfalls and bridges. Like I wish I had a picture of us in our gymnastics leotards together, even if we were on different teams. One of us at Lake Powell together, even if I were glaring at her. More of us in our matching outfits (which I hated) and our matching ringlets (which I detested), even if I were scowling in every single one.

I wish there was a photo of me holding her when she was a baby.

Our games were shaped around competition and ownership: there was the “he’s mine” game, wherein we put dubs on the celebrities we each could like, or “I’m her and you’re not,” which entailed lists of famous women we aspired to be like, but they had to be mutually exclusive. And, of course, “that’s mine,” which revolved around the songs I would allow her to sing along to when they came on the radio. It drove me nuts when she had the gall to sing along to anything.

I think I owned all of the good songs.

But somewhere along the line, as adolescence ended and I lost some of my anger and meanness and as life started teaching me what is important, we became closer. She moved to Virginia and I got married and we started emailing each other—that physical distance made all the difference.

Now I’m glad she’s forgiven me for being her mean big sister, because seriously: I can’t imagine my life without her.

When we’re together we talk. We’re comfortable in silence, but we never run out of things to say. We worry about each other and pray for each other. Sometimes we run together, or hike. She taught me how to snow shoe. We are each other’s sounding board, the person who loves the other enough to say “No, you’re wrong” as often as “yes, I know exactly what you mean.”

We talk about books and we share our books and we even write in each other’s books. Sometimes I’ll start telling her about this awesome book I just started and she’ll just be finishing it.

We are not the same, even though we like many of the same things. Even though people often say “you two look so much alike.” (I don’t think so—I think she looks more like our niece Lyndsay than me.) She is much more social than I am, able to carry on conversations without feeling awkward, able to assume that people from the past will remember her. She’s much more quick to laugh. She’s brave and strong and clear-headed.

I love her quite a bit.

I think God knew I’d need her. He knew I’d be awkward and moody and that my shyness would come off as bitchiness, so it’d be hard for me to make friends. He knew I would need sisters—all of my sisters, who each add something immeasurable to my life. But he knew I’d need her, coming after me, younger, someone I could try to teach some things to but mostly someone who would teach me: grace, forgiveness, happiness, goodness. So similar to me, so different. Without her I would be so lonely. Without her I wouldn’t feel understood, or like I had someone always on my side. Without her I would be a meaner, colder, narrower spirit.

Today is her birthday, and she’s turning 42. When I was 42, I told everyone that it was my year to be The Answer (because, you know: the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42, right?). Now it’s her turn, but really: she’s been one of my answers all along.

To be a good reference librarian, you have to know a lot of things about a lot of different topics, but I've found that understanding human nature is the most important knowledge. That's a broad pool of knowledge—but the job itself is constantly teaching me. Today I had an experience with a patron that humbled me and helped me remember what matters most.

There is an older woman who calls about once a week and asks us to pull 7-10 books for her. She has a hard time getting around, so she'll ask one of us to pull her books and put them upstairs on the hold shelf, and then her husband comes and picks them up for her. Generally she has a list of titles, but she also will usually ask for a few "good, clean, honest" books of our choice to be put in her stack.

I've had a little bit of success in introducing her to gentle authors outside the realm of her usual LDS-writers-only lists: Francine Rivers, Karen Kingsbury, Lynn Austin. I've also tried to branch out a little, to non-religious writers: Elizabeth Berg, Maeve Binchy, Rosamund Pilcher, Ann Hood. But almost every time she calls and talks to me, she wants the same type of book she usually requests.

Occasionally I get frustrated by her calls, partly because it takes a while to work through her lists. Partly it's because I keep hoping she'll branch out a little bit. I know it's none of my business, and people can read whatever they want, and there's a book for every reader. But she just clearly loves reading so much—she must go through a book a day—and I wish she could experience the freedom of reading new stories outside of her usual comfort zone.

But I never let my frustration show because: professional librarian.

Today, I was working at the fiction desk, and I heard her familiar voice—but not on the phone! She was feeling well enough to get out and come to the library. She gets around with a walker, so I still went through the stacks for her, grabbing her books. I got her requests, and then I tried a few others I thought she might like, but she rejected them on the basis of the cover images. I ran upstairs to get her a book out of the large print section and then helped her check out and get all of her books into a bag that she hooked on to her walker.

Ready to go, she said "Now, what's your name?" and I said "Amy" and she said "Oh yes! I've talked to you before."

Then she leaned in toward me and said, "Listen, Amy. You should thank the good Lord Jesus every day of your life that you have a strong body that you can walk and run with."

I patted her on the shoulder and said "Oh, I do." Because, really: I do. I work hard to make sure my body stays healthy, flexible, and strong—but I also know that it could be taken away at any moment. Disease, accident, earthquake, terrorists, aliens: who knows what tomorrow will bring? And this is really why, librarian professionalism aside, I really actually love helping her, even with her limited reading choices: because one day I could be in her shoes. And I hope that if I am, there will be someone in a younger body than mine who will bring me books.

"Well, that's good," she said. "I can't really walk much anymore, and I definitely can't hike like I used to. So I just read all the time. And I thank the good Lord Jesus for books, too." I hugged her shoulders and told her I was glad that she could get outside and come to the library today. And I felt thoroughly ashamed of my previous frustration. She's just a person stuck at home who loves to read, and who am I to judge her choices? Books bring her company, adventure, escape. They give her something to do with her mind, since her body can't cooperate much anymore.

And I remembered, once again, that even though there are frustrations with my work, and even though I sometimes feel underpaid and undervalued, there are greater things than appreciation. It is an honor to be able to help people through books, and I am grateful to do it.

(And now, knowing she used to like hiking, I might just stick a copy of Wild into her next pile. It might be too, well, wild for her—there are condoms involved, after all—but who knows? Maybe not!)

Back in the early days of last December, I gave some serious thought to picking a word for 2017. I don’t do this religiously, every year, as some people do. But with all that happened in 2016—Kendell’s near-death experience, and a nose surgery, and then another heart surgery, and my short trip to Europe which was fun but also incredibly stressful, and finding out that Kaleb’s heart is getting worse (and the accompanying extra cardiologist appointments and non-stress tests and worrying every single day that today could be the day), and Nathan’s basketball injuries and rock-climbing concussion, and Haley’s Hood Incident, and Jake moving out, and my two ankle sprains, and the stabbing at Nathan’s school, and the damned election, and holy cow am I forgetting any other calamity?—I thought to myself, you know. I’ve gone through a lot of stuff in 2016. Surely the universe is done with me for a while.

Surely I deserve a break.

But the universe and I go way back. And I never quite trust that it’s finished chewing me up. So I wanted to find a word for 2017 that would encapsulate that idea: hope that things would be better but acknowledgement that I just probably couldn’t imagine yet what shape the universe’s teeth would take. I chose the word intrepid: fearless; undaunted; daring; brave. I like the word for its structure, in meaning not, + trepid from the French trepidus which suggests “alarmed.” So, as I read some dictionary and word histories, intrepid started to suggest to me the concept of being “not alarmed.” Able to calmly deal with whatever. Which seemed like exactly what I needed to be. Not really brave or daring, and not dauntless, definitely not dauntless. But brave in a non-alarmed kind of way.

So I chose my word. And then the universe started shaping its teeth. Let’s see how undaunted you can be, the universe laughed.  Let’s see if you are brave.

One of the things that has made the first half of this year so difficult is that the difficulties aren’t really mine. The choices and stories belong to someone else, someone who I love, and this person’s difficulties are making me mourn and choices are making me grieve. But I can only write about the experience in private ways (which has taught me that blogging itself is a unique form of therapy; not just writing, but publishing what I wrote; it gives me both the catharsis of having written and the relief of having been heard in some way). And there is a duality in the experience: feeling sorrow for this person who I love, but also feeling pain as a result of this person’s actions.

All of which is to say: I have not been intrepid. Neither in the dictionary sense of being fearless and undaunted, and not in the more personal connotation I’ve developed. Not calmly unalarmed. I have wept. I have tossed and turned, sleepless for hours after midnight. I have slept too much, that nearly-frenzied exhaustion that comes when you cannot think of a single possible way that any of this can turn out right and the only way you can cope is to escape. I have anguished in ways and methods I have not for decades.

I have felt all the tools I use for coping fall, one after the other, out of my hands; I have been unable to cope.

I’ve been down in the blackness of my black place.

But I have also started to heal. I have started to learn some truths that are sharp and painful but true, nevertheless. I have started to wonder: what if I didn’t have to use my tools to cope but to build? What if I could make instead of repairing? What if I could put down hoping for the life I imagined and pick up (and embrace) the life I have?

They are large lessons, mostly submerged and unknown, an Artic ocean’s worth of icebergs with surfaces I have only begun to explore.

But I am exploring.

Am I an intrepid explorer? I’m not really sure anymore. This is an internal journey, an intimate one in which I can only succeed if I look at my failures, mistakes, and stumbles with both honesty (acknowledging them not in a spirit of self-flagellation) and compassion (somehow realizing that while I have made many mistakes I have also only been able to make the choices I made using the knowledge I had). In my favorite thesaurus, Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, there is this sentence: “An audacious individual is bold to the point of recklessness, which brings it very close in meaning to intrepid, suggesting fearlessness in the face of the unknown.”

I am very much facing the unknown. I’m not doing it without fear, but I am trying to continue to explore, to understand myself better, to know the things that I can do to help the people who I love (and also what I cannot do). But maybe the intrepid explorers of the past—Amelia Earhart, Captain Cook, Louise Arner Boyd, Amerigo Vespucci, Sacagawea, Ernest Shackleton—maybe they were only intrepid because they kept going. The fact that they didn’t turn around, didn’t give up, doesn’t prove that they weren’t afraid but that they were determined.

And maybe that is what I am learning about being intrepid: that it is about not giving up. That holding on to loving someone is sometimes painful and difficult and cold and very lonely—but that I have to hold on to loving them anyway. I am learning that traversing this rough terrain isn’t always about calmness, or about courage, but about continuing to move forward in the landscape. It’s about being prepared to accept that I have no idea what lurks around the next curve—maybe a meadow, maybe a desert—and so all I can do is set my feet on the trail in front of me. Being intrepid means not giving up on the people who are traveling with me, even if we don’t always follow the same path. Not giving up on myself, either (which is much, much harder).

Maybe I did pick the right word.