When I went to London, one of the places I most wanted to visit was the British Library. It was less than a mile from our hotel, so on the second day it was the first place we visited.

I actually was fairly giddy to step onto the grounds. As a librarian, I always love passing by other cities’ libraries, but to have the time to explore this one was a really good moment for me.

The library has an exhibition space, with exhibits that change often. I had no idea what might be there, so I was surprised & excited to discover it was a display about the history of punk rock. (Me: former goth girl, lover of books, and current librarian, in the British Library, wandering through a punk rock display: I might have clicked my heels together. “Excited” is hardly the word.) There was a wall of 45s and display cases full of fanzines, catalogs, concert flyers and tickets. Handwritten notes from the Sex Pistols and other punk rock icons…album sleeves…photographs.

That might just have been the highlight of my days in London.

Except after the security guard got miffed at Haley for taking pictures of the album display, we wandered into the library’s Treasures gallery, where they have their rare books on display. And yes—that punk rock exhibition struck a chord. But those old books…they were so moving to me. It is the old thing I have tried to write about many times, how an old object can be a sort of time-travelling device. The world’s oldest known book, which was found preserved in a grave…A Gutenberg Bible…the Magna Carta…a handwritten version of Beowulf. These are the famous pieces, and it was incredible to see these ancient pieces of world-changing documents. DaVinci’s notebooks, some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, a letter by King Henry VIII. (There is something so intimately real about another person’s handwriting, especially someone historically famous; it makes you realize that they didn’t just live in history books but in this very world.) There are also newer cool things to see, like Jane Austen’s writing desk, handwritten lyrics by the Beatles, and Orwell’s revisions.

But the best, for me, was the display of prayer books. They were my favorite because they felt personal, and because they seemed like they would be owned by women. (Both Lady Anne Grey’s and Anne Boleyn’s were in the case.) They are beautiful in their own right, but when I thought of them being used, of the thumbing-through and the reading and the comfort they might have brought, well. I embarrassed Haley again by crying right there on the display case. For me, the prayer books are achingly sad, little bits of flotsam left in time, a place where the owner’s sorrows and hopes gathered between pages.

(There is no photography allowed in the British Library Treasures Collection, but I loved this one huge wall of old books that was also at the library.)

I confess: I had desperately hoped that the gift shop would have a tiny replica of one of the prayer books, made into a piece of jewelry. I probably wouldn’t have cared how expensive it was. Alas, they did not, but the gift shop did not disappoint me. I bought a T-shirt (with a quote from one of the punk rock fanzines, an illustration drawn by one of the Sex Pistols), a book (The Beautiful Librarians by Sean O’Brien) (go on—click through and read that poem and then tell me it isn’t gorgeous and amazing and heartbreaking), and a few postcards. Also stamps, and then Haley and I stood at one of the tables and wrote our postcards, stuck our stamps on, and found the post box (it’s on the wall in the basement near the cloak check).

We really only had a couple of hours to spend here; I would have liked two more to explore everything, but as our time was limited we hurried. But I think it is the first place I will go to when I get back to London.

The British Library is definitely a mecca for book and history nerds.

In the LDS church (of which I am a member), each year we have two conferences where our leaders speak to us. These happen during the first week of April and October, and the week before the general conference is the women’s conference.

What’s that? A conference for women?

It seems like a thing I should love. But every year when it rolls around, I find myself in a little bit of agony. In theory, I should adore a night with talks by women (mostly) about what women might need to know.

But every year—at the end of September, at the end of March—I get a little bit sad, and frustrated, and annoyed, and sad again.

I confess: I do not go to the Women’s Conference. I don’t go to the meal beforehand that is sometimes held, I don’t listen to it on the radio or watch it on TV. I usually read the talks when they are published a month later. But attending the actual conference is untenable to me. Tonight, as I was discussing this with Kendell over a bowl of pumpkin curry at our favorite Thai place (after he’d noticed that the tables were mostly full of dads and sons), I felt like it was a thing I should write about. (Perhaps in the hopes that I am not the only one.)

So here it is, my list of the reasons why I don’t go to the Women’s Conference:

1. I liked the old system better. When Haley was still a teenager, the church handled the conferences in a different way. In March, the focus was on the young women (ages 12-18); in October, the focus was on the Relief Society (women older than 18). Right after she graduated, the system was changed. I feel very grateful that this change didn’t happen until after she finished with the Young Women program, as the times we went to Salt Lake for the Young Women’s Conference were some of my favorite outings of her adolescence.

Now, however, each Women’s Conference is for all girls ages eight and up. And while I partly understand this change—to be welcoming and inclusive to the younger generations I suppose—it takes away my ability to feel like the talks can focus on my needs. Does that sound selfish? It probably is. But such an age span means the talks must be both more broadly applicable and less oriented to specifics, so as to appeal to so many different ages, needs, life experiences, and knowledge. I have found less personally-relevant talks since this new system was put into place.

2. I dislike being spoken to like I am a child. Some of the speakers, maybe knowing that the audience includes younger girls, modulate their voices in a way that makes me—well, quite frankly, it drives me bonkers. It is the way kindergarten teachers speak to their charges, the tone of smiling women speaking encouraging, kind, simple words very, very gently. Maybe they speak that way all the time, maybe I am old and crotchety and bitter and harsh (actually, strike that “maybe"); maybe I will never be one of those women who think all women need mothers and so step in to mother them. I’d like to write “I don’t need a mother” except I sort of do, as my relationship with my mother feels so fractured and troubled right now. Really what I don’t need is someone talking to me in a high, sing-songy, kind voice. Whatever they are saying gets lost for me in how they say it.
3. It isn’t really a women’s conference. Much as I usually like what the male leaders happen to say during the women’s conference (at least they don’t say it in that treacly tone of voice), their very presence “presiding” at a women’s conference frustrates me. Until women do the whole damn thing—or, shockingly, until women are invited to speak at the male priesthood session of conference—calling it a “women’s conference” isn’t quite right. In fact, it is a symbol of what frustrates me most about the church right now.
4. It is too painful. Much of the social context of the conference is about women going with their tribe of women and, as pathetic as it sounds, I don’t have one of those. I have one daughter who isn’t interested in the church right now. I have a mom who would likely go with me if I asked, but remember that fractured/troubled thing? As much as I love her, asking her to go with me hurts more than going by myself. I have a sister who lives only two miles away from me, but she doesn’t need to go with me—she has daughters to go with, or a bunch of women friends. Ditto my sister-in-law. I have friends, of course—but they already have their tribes of friends or sisters or big family groups they go with. Would they invite me to come along? Of course. Would I feel awkward and on the outside? Yes; in the words of Luna Lovegood, “It's like having friends.” No one wants to get a sympathy invite. And sure, I could go by myself and sit by myself, I could even go and sit with someone friendly in my ward who I sort-of know. But watching all of those women in their tribes while I am tribeless only reminds me of the complicated relationships I have. It reminds me of what I don’t have, of what I messed up, of what I don’t know how to fix.

And it’s not just during the meeting. It’s after the meeting, too, when the Thai restaurant and every other eating establishment will have filled up with women. Moms, daughters, grandmas, granddaughters, aunts, cousins, sisters, friends. Keeping their tribes strong while I walk home by myself. And then it’s the Facebook posts, the photos of generations together, of old friends hanging out in their church clothes.

In fact I have to avoid Facebook altogether.

Likely there is someone reading this who is thinking “you just have to try harder. Go and find some friends.” Or “why don’t you fix things in your family then?” Or “stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Or even “socializing isn’t the point, learning is.”

And maybe one day in my life things will change and be better. Maybe the church will come to understand what equality really means. Maybe I will find a tribe. (I think the former is more likely to happen than the latter; I’m almost 45 years old. What tribe will have me now?)

But the truth is that, for now, the women’s conference is just too much. If not going makes me a bad Mormon….well, as much as I love the church, we all know that is not the first thing that’s made me a bad Mormon.

In my last blog post, I wrote about how hard it has been for me to scrapbook lately. But, about a month ago, I got invited to go to a crop. That was the impetus for me to decide it was time to try again, so I gathered up some supplies and went to the crop.

Just a few days before Kendell’s cardiac arrest, I had been working on a layout with this quote from Frederick Buechner, which I first discovered from Marie Taylor via her sister Katherine:

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

I love it, and I decided it would be perfect for a baby layout. I had a lovely vision in my head of the quote written out in a brush script, in bright blue and green—but as is well-known around these parts, I’m fairly dismal with anything that requires a brush. Then I had an idea: I’d watercolor a piece of cardstock with the colors I’d imagined, and then cut it out with my Silhouette using a brush font.

I had printed the photo, written and printed the journaling, and cut out the title, but then Kendell was in the hospital, and that half-done layout sat on my scrapbooking desk for months.

It was the first thing I worked on at the crop I went to last month.

And when it was done, I absolutely hated how it turned out.

The skin tone in photo was too red, I didn’t love the title font or the letter stickers, and those pink puffy hearts just did not work. I used them because the photo was so warm, I felt like I needed something to balance the color with, but they just emphasized the red skin tone. The light-blue background felt wrong, and the stupid little strip on the left felt like exactly what it was, a misplaced afterthought.

The layout was nothing like I imagined and I didn’t love it one bit.

Now, I am not one to redo layouts very often. I have a few of them that I absolutely just do not love, but usually I will shrug my shoulders and move on to the next one, with the idea that done is better than perfect.

But I love that quote so much.

And the photo.

And the idea for the title design.

And my thoughts in the journaling.

I wanted to love the layout as much as I'd loved the idea.

And really, that first layout? It was like...a warm up. It was just me getting back into the scrapbooking groove.

So I redid the layout. I stuck with the same concepts, but I made some significant changes. First was to change the photo to black and white, with only the tiniest bit of color left. For the title, I used a different font, Lolly Script instead of Manhattan Darling, and an alphabet stamp instead of the alphabet stickers.

Instead of watercoloring on cardstock, I used watercolor paper. I had to laugh when I finished the piece, because it felt so obviously influenced by my recent trip to Europe and all of the Van Gogh works I saw:

(Not that I am comparing myself to Van Gogh of course! But the lines are much more swirly and defined on this piece than they were on the original one.)

This was a little bit tricky for the Silhouette to cut. I did a test cut of some plain labels to make sure the setting I chose (textured cardstock) would work. The labels cut out beautifully (I am looking forward to painting them and using them on other layouts!), but the painted piece did not. The words on the blue section cut just fine, but the words in the green section? Well...not so much. (How weird is that, that the color would influence how it cut? Maybe the paint pigment affects the paper in different ways?) I had to cut most of it away from the background with an exacto knife, and some of the words I had tried to cut turned out totally useless. But, I think I made it work OK with the stamping.

Finally, I used some of the same puffy stickers from the original layout, except only the blue ones. They peeled right off, which made me wonder about the future sticking power of puffy stickers. (I glued down the ones I reused). (And I kept the pink ones for a different layout.) The remodeled scrapbook layout still isn’t perfect (I’m not 100% certain that cluster of tags & hearts at the bottom isn’t, in fact, a sticker sneeze) but I love it so much more:

While I probably won’t make a habit of remaking scrapbook layouts, I learned that it’s just fine to do it once in awhile, for layouts that have extra meaning or even a technique you want to get just right. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get the results you envision. Done is always better than perfect (which is why I’m leaving that cluster alone), but one of the points of creativity is loving what you create, and knowing when something didn’t work is a way of learning what does work.

When I was finished, Kaleb saw both of the layouts on my desk. He asked why there were two, and I told him I didn’t like the first one I’d made, and asked him which one he liked better. (He didn’t know which was the new one.) He only took about one second to decide that the second one was better. “It’s just...it makes more sense to my eyes,” he said, “and the colors are better.”

He thought for a second and then he said “plus, I was a pretty cute baby, wasn’t I?” and then I could only hug him because he’s exactly right!