• Thinking about the value of sisters. I've always had a specific grief over Haley not having a sister (even though she claims she's glad...more spoiling for her!). I can't imagine how life might feel for me now, as an adult, to not have sisters to call for support, shoulders, laughter, sarcasm, and advice. I hope my second-best alternative, the one I pray for now, will happen instead: that life will bring Haley some surrogate sisters.
• Also thinking about friends, and how much I love the ones I have. I've got to be honest: I'm not a person who makes friends easily. I think I probably come across as bitchy when really I'm just deeply uncomfortable in social situations. But the friends who have looked past that exterior and found the real me? I can't even say how grateful I am for you. Some of you are reading this right now! You know who you are! Haley has been teaching me this lesson, too, as she's gone through her recent friend break up. It has reminded me to cherish the friendships I have because the real ones? Well, they are priceless.
• Wishing my mom had been looking at the camera in this picture, and that my cheeks looked less like Lady Elaine Fairchilde's, and that I'd remembered to bring my big flash,  
   but still glad to have it: (she sewed aprons for all of us. How sweet was that?) On Thanksgiving, before we said the prayer and started eating, she talked about how she always wished for a big family (she only had one brother). There we were with thirty of us in one house! Seems her wish came true, yes? She also talked about how much her mom would have loved seeing this. Then I cried a little bit. Is it strange that my grandma's been gone for almost 20 years—25 if you could her last years, which were fogged by dementia—and I still miss her?
• Today I called in sick. Not to the library (it's hard to find someone to cover shifts on short notice, and I only had to work for three hours), but to mommyhood. I stayed in bed almost all day. I did nothingbut watch movies with Kaleb, sleep, and read books. I also drank a lot of orange juice. Honestly, my cold doesn't feel much better but I think my soul needed a mellow day. I feel rejuvenated and might even have some energy if I could, you know, breath without coughing.
• I am so enjoying how much Kaleb loves being read to. I mean, I've always read to him, but he loves it so much now. (He has been known to merely tolerate it in the past.) I checked out a few Thanksgiving storybooks this year and they brought a unique feel to the entire month. Every night, he finds which ever blanket he wants to use, we sit together on the couch, and read. Perhaps it feels so sweet because one day soon he'll be reading to me instead, the slow and stumbling and slightly frustrating learning of words, and then he'll be reading to himself and there'll be no one else to take his place next to me, with his toes hooked together in pleasure.
• Last night Kendell found our cordless phone. The one that we've been looking for for months. Months! When I took it off the charger this morning, I had to laugh: the last call on the caller ID was on July 7!

I know. Sort of a random list. Just a couple of things I wanted to remember right now, on the last November night of the year.

• A fierce cold that's got me wanting to do nothing more than lie in bed. (I did make it to work today. . . then worried about sharing my germs.)
• A headache that's likely tied right to that cold.
• A light exhaustion from too many late nights last week
• The unrelenting stress of worrying about Kendell's job (the company he works for, Novell, was sold last week)
• The in-betweenness of these last few days of November

Throw in grief, and thinking about death and how life changes, as well as a handful of surely teenagers, and yeah: I haven't been blogging much. Which bugs me because I have a lot to say. Instead I'm just going to share this link and crawl back in bed:

I love, love, love this post by my friend Karen. It is about getting YOURSELF into your pictures. I've blogged about this before but Karen does it much more eloquently. I love that she shares some strong ways to get over your I-hate-having-my-picture-taken objections. Even if you don't have make up on and your hair's in a messy pony—get in the photo!

(you're excused, though, if you have a cold. Wait till you feel better!)

"Turkeys have walked wild on this continent since the last ice age, whereas Old Europe was quite turkeyless. (That fact alone scored them nearly enough votes to become our national bird, but in the end, I guess, looks do matter.) Corn pudding may be the oldest New World comfort food; pumpkins and cranberries, too, are exclusively ours. It's all American, the right stuff at the right time. To this tasty assembly add a cohort of female relatives sharing work and gossip in the kitchen, kids flopped on the living room floor watching behemoth cartoon characters float down a New York thoroughfare on TV, and men out in the yard pretending they still have the upper-body strength for lateral passes, and this is a perfect American day. If we need a better excuse to focus a whole day on preparing one meal, eating it, then groaning about it with smiles on our faces, just add a dash of humility and hallelujah. Praise the harvest. We made it through one more turn of the seasons." ~Barbara Kingsolver, in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

No one in my family plays football on Thanksgiving. Nor do we tend to watch the parade, not even on TV. Still, this rings true to me, right now, on thisThanksgiving. My preparation cohort included boys, who I sent to fetch things mostly, and one teenaged girl at the end, home from a party just in time to watch me scootch raspberries onto just one side of the blue jellow (Kaleb wanted "plain blue jello, plain but with that white creamy stuff" but I guessed that some of the other kids might like berries), and a conversation with Becky over the fat for pie crust (I use salted butter; she is a margarine fan). I made enough dough for 9 dozen crescent rolls, plus two jello salads. I listened to Christmas music and enjoyed the candles flickering on the table while I worked. I savored the delicate scent of cranberries splitting their skins into sugar and the heady yeast of the rolls. I thought of my father-in-law, who loved my cranberry jello.

I indeed feel grateful to have made it through the turning of this season. Grateful for life and beauty and heartache and words and good friends—you know who you are.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year, when my mom asks me what I want for Christmas, I know exactly what I'm going to say: divinity. I've tried to make it before and it turned out dismally. But it tastes like Christmas to me, and she makes it well.

The gift I really want from my mother, though, is something impossible. I'd like an old, yellowed sheet of notepaper, torn from a notebook so the edges still dangle a bit. On it: the details of my birth, written the day I was born. I'd like to know both the story of the delivery and the way she felt, welcoming a third girl. Something my dad said, or my sisters, or my grandma.

This is an impossible gift because she didn't write that note. I'm not criticizing her—she's not a wordy kind of person, and I don't think people did that back then anyway. But I still wish she could give it to me.

Those kinds of desires are the motivation behind my Gift of Words Class at Big Picture Classes. I think that more people than you know wish for words—your words—and the class does that. It helps you write the things that might go unsaid (because, let's face it, it's easier to write some things than say them).

Check it out! It starts tomorrow!

because a few of you have asked how Kendell's dad is doing:

After that Thursday morning last week, when Kendell rushed out to help, Kent didn't improve. They were able to have hospice come in to help him be as comfortable as possible (hospice workers, I am convinced, are angels among us), but he didn't want any heroic measures.

He passed away last night at about 8:30.

Is it odd that as this has happened, I have been able to see the blessings within the heartache? I am so grateful that he was able to stay home and to leave from home. Each of the family members was able to see him and to say goodbye, even though he couldn't respond much. He was surrounded by his family when he passed. He didn't have to linger long in pain.

On Saturday, I joined Kendell at his parents' house, where family members were coming and going. There was finally a quiet moment where Haley and I could sit with him and say goodbye. He wasn't responding much by then, but I held his hand anyway, and Haley and I talked about all kinds of things. We were blessed with a moment—perhaps 15 or 20 seconds—when Kent looked right at me, and made a sound that Haley swore was laughter, and we said our goodbyes. That moment is one I am so grateful for. You never get the chance to say everything you need to, or perhaps I just don't take the chance often enough. But I think he knew at that moment that he was loved and appreciated, and things would be OK.

When I woke this morning (with an 8-Advil headache), it was with a thought in my head that keeps repeating itself: people die. Hardly earth-shattering news and yet it is hitting me in a way it hasn't before. How strange is it: we leave. We come, and we live for awhile, and then we leave. We are frail and fragile, open to mutations and diseases and accidents, and yet we are strong, too. We get to endure through the people who stay and remember us; we linger because of memory. People die. One day it will be my turn, and a last blessing of Kent's passing is this feeling in me: get up. Do better. Experience more. Stop wasting time. Live.

Way back when I was pregnant with Haley (that's been sixteen years ago, mind you!), I was working at WordPerfect. My friend and coworker, Teresa, invited me to a party she was hosting and since I was all about being supportive, I went. It was a Creative Memories party, and from the second the consultant started showing us layouts, I was hooked on the idea of scrapbooking. I didn't buy anything that night—the expense of getting started seemed overwhelming—but I did start planning how I would write about and photograph this new baby of mine.

It grew from that moment, my delight with scrapbooking. I went through the binder stage, and then the CM stage, and now I use CTMH albums. I went through design stages: figuring out how to make cool letters, reading books about visual triangles and balance, trying every. single. technique discussed in Creating Keepsakes magazine; realizing I could do it my own way. I went through the I-must-get-published craziness, collecting CK's silent rejections but finding my niche at Simple Scrapbooks and then at Big Picture. I recognized my shortcoming: my layouts aren't really about scrapbooking, per se. They're not about paper and ribbon and stamping and punching and all the stuff, even though I buy and use and love the stuff. They are, in the end, only about the story, and no one can sell anything based on that. (Translation: I am comfortable with my limited publications and confident in knowing I continue to stay true to my own vision.)

But whatever the phase, here is the truth: I am still, sixteen years later, deeply and thoroughly in love with scrapbooking. My sisters and my mom all think I'm weird. You shouldn't get me started on how Kendell feels about it, and I'm pretty sure even my very own daughter thinks I'm overly obsessed. My friends who used to scrapbook with me no longer scrap at all; my scrapping-and-emailing friends of newer vintage don't, either. In fact, I'm the only person I know in person who still does it on a regular basis. Part of this is simple stubbornness: I've bought all this stuff! I can't give up my hobby because what would I do with all the stuff? But it's more than just the stuff; I keep on loving scrapbooking because it is a space for telling stories, for pushing my children's experiences into the future so they will remember and so that someone in the future will know.

Yesterday, I visited my dad for the annual Thanksgiving dinner at his care center. My mom and niece and sister were there, and later (because he forgot), my uncle Monte also came. Becky told him that she would like to sit down with him and ask him about our grandpa Curtis (his and my dad's dad), because Dad never talked about his childhood. Monte told us a bit about our grandpa's funeral, and Becky asked if he had any pictures. He sighed, and shook his head, and a small sorrow welled up in me for all those lost photographs. For all the stories that are lost with them, too. Monte can tell us some of the words of the stories, but when you have pictures paired with words? That is when personal history comes alive. Maybe it will be decades before anyone changes from thinking I'm weird to thinking I was right in persevering with the scrapbooking thing. But one day, someone will want a story and an image; I will be able to give it to them, and that is reason enough to be grateful for scrapbooking.

But there's also this: sometimes I get to influence others, too. So I'm also grateful that I've gotten to be a part of Big Picture Classes since nearly the beginning. I really, really love the philosophy behind BP, because it jives so thoroughly with my own ideas. I still get a happy little thrill when a class of mine starts (like this one); I still happy dance at the thought of helping other scrappers. BP is celebrating its fifth birthday this week, and I got to make a little happy-birthday video. Dare I confess that my compassion for the contestants on ANTM has grown by leaps and bounds? Talking to a camera is hard work, and I don't do it very well, so if you'd like your daily laugh, you should check it out.

Or you could just tell me (because I'm curious): how do YOU feel about scrapbooking?

When someone you love is in the terminal stages of cancer, it is never good to get a phone call at 6:55 in the morning. Before Kendell could roll over and answer his cell, I knew something was wrong; after he answered I could hear his mom crying, without any words. My father-in-law, Kent, is ill with cancer—I cannot even tell you a type, because his body is riddled with it. What Kendell could understand from her phone call is that she couldn't wake him this morning, so he rushed over to help her.

Now, I am waiting to know what is going on. I don't want to call or text because I don't want to interrupt or bother anyone, and I am certain once there is news, Kendell will let me know. Just to make myself feel better, a list of qualities in my father-in-law I love and am grateful for:

• Knowledgeable. Kent is a reader—and not only fiction, like me. He finds a topic he is interested in and then reads about it. Mostly his knowledge focuses on health issues, so I always felt comfortable asking him medical questions. He made sure to share his knowledge, too. When I was pregnant with Kaleb, for example, he tracked me down some ultra-pure (and probably fairly expensive) cod liver oil capsules so I could keep taking it.  That started a Christmas tradition, and almost every year since then he's given me some sort of supplement for Christmas. (My kids think this is a weird gift but I love it!) In fact, you could say he's a...
• Health nut. He's very knowledgeable about homeopathic remedies, natural foods, and other such topics. He's grown his own (pesticide-free) vegetables for years. This makes his recent health downturn even more discouraging.
• Faithful. He lived the gospel all his life and wouldn't ever hesitate to share his testimony or thoughts. One Monday, he and Beth (my mother-in-law) came to our house to have a family-home evening, just so they could share their testimonies with our kids.
• Opinionated. He wouldn't ever hesitate to stand by his opinion. This meant that there were some topics we couldn't talk about (since I tend to be fairly opinionated myself), but it worked. He told Haley once to shape up and be nice to her mother, and I've heard him get on Kendell for being too...Kendell-ish.
• Loving. Family is important to him and he makes sure to show it. During family get-togethers, he is involved—talking to people and being a part of the party.
• Proud. Jake is the grandson who carried on the Sorensen name, and I think Kent is proud of that. He might not be the most involved grandpa, but I know he loves my kids and, what's more, I know they know it.
• Grumpy. Is it weird to be grateful for grumpiness? I don't know. I do know that my own grandpa, whom I loved immensely, was also grumpy, so maybe it just feels right to me, for a grandpa to be grumpy. Not always grumpy, and not mean spirited, but just, you know, occasionally fed up. Perfection is overrated, after all.
• Hard worker. I reap the benefits of this because he taught Kendell to be one, too. Kendell makes sure to get stuff done, and I am certain this is the result of his childhood (they lived on a farm) and his dad's example.

Kendell just called. He helped his dad up and got him back into bed, and now he's working on finding some way for Kent and Beth to have some help at home. I've been imagining the worst all morning, so I am grateful it's not that. More, I'm glad I get to have a great father-in-law.

Sometimes, writing a blog post is like braiding. There are two or three or sometimes four strands I want to weave together, creating something thick and textured and strong in the process. Sometimes the strands come together easily; other posts are more complicated. What I want to express my gratitude for today is complicated. I don't have a word for it, only the strands:

This morning, after dropping Kaleb off at his cousin's house so I could come home and finish the quilt (it's finished! And in the washing machine right now!), I had my random playlist going while I bound the quilt. Alanis Morissette's song, "Thank You," started playing. I sung along as I sewed: thank you frailty, thank you consequence, thank you disillusionment.

• • •

Two Saturdays ago, I talked to Becky while I folded laundry. We talked for over an hour, long enough for me to fold two loads and sort all of the socks. Our conversation turned to events that happened twenty years ago; she found and then read to me her journal from those days. I had forgotten what I was like, and how I have changed. Not forgotten is what made me change, but the painful process of it: I had lost the memory of that feeling, and her words brought it back. Her perspective of the things that happened gave me back that important October. I wept silently so she wouldn't know that her decades-old words were washing over me, scalding and healing all at once.

• • •

On Friday, I went to dinner with Chris. We don't get to see each other as often as we should, but only because life gets in the way. When we're together, we pick up the threads of each others' lives, talking and laughing as we knit our stories back together. We ate, and shopped for bras and walked through the mall like teenagers, drinking beverages and pointing out cute outfits in windows. Only better than adolescence, since we each had our own purchasing power in our purses. Then we sat in the car and talked some more. That night—a simple thing—brought me back to myself a bit. There is something magical in being with a friend who knows everything about you, the way you can talk in code without explaining anything, how all the implications of certain stories, or even individual words, are already known. It is a deep, clean breath, a relieved sigh, a letting go of the weight of the unsaid because it says itself without a word.

• • •

Those are the strands: the song, the phone call, the dinner. The weaving is this understanding that glimmers just past the end of my fingertips. Who ever thinks, when they are in the grips of whatever sorrow has her at the time, that one day she will be grateful for it? Yet I find myself thinking thank you. For all those sorrows, the ones Chris lived through with me and the ones she didn't. For the teenaged angst of boys and unreliable friends and shaky self-worth and for the ways I didn't—and did—deal with it all. For Jeramy who changed everything. For arguments and for hating being married and for this current damage of parenting teenagers. And for the people who have been with me anyway, who have been shoulders and memory and refuge in the place of unbearability. Also for laughter that came in spite of it. For the weaving of heartache and bitterness and glinting stories and words, which are solace; for all the matter than has found its way into the rope woman I am now:

Thank you.

Last week, I was talking to Haley in the car about something. "You know what it reminds me of?" I said. "That scene in Return of the King when the Mouth of Sauron comes and talks to Aragorn, and there's that ooze dripping down his teeth."

We were in the car for this conversation, and it was dark, but I could still tell, as I stopped talking, that she had no idea what I was talking about. Dead, questioning silence for a few seconds, and then she started laughing. "Mom! I have no idea what you're talking about!" I laughed along with her, because it's true: I am sort of a LoTR nerd. That's OK. It's part of what makes me who I am.

But not all of what makes me me. That conversation, and a book I recently finished—Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi—worked together to create this gratitude. The book is a dystopia, set in the future when global warming has wrecked havoc on the planet, and plenty of people are suffering, living with only meager possessions, grateful for rats and snakes to eat. It made me think (dystopias tend to spark thinking for me!) about how much I take for granted. So today I'm writing down the stuff that makes me who I am right now, the stuff that I'm exceedingly grateful to have, even though I don't say so.

• Bath & Body's Midnight Pomegranate shower gel and lotion. Though I buy other scents here and there—most notably Twilight Woods, which I'll start using again in January—I always come back to this one. It is the perfect scent for me, fruity but not too sweet, with an underlying tone of something that's almost piny.
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Books or movie, it hardly matters. I think about the story and the words a lot. Sometimes when I'm teaching my teenaged Sunday-School class, I have to refrain myself from pointing out how Biblical language is so similar to some of Tolkien's work. I quote bits & pieces from the story. (Jake and Nathan will join me, every time we make potatoes: "What's 'taters,' precious?") Luckily Nathan loves this just as much as I do, so we hang out on his bed and watch them quite often. It never gets old for me!
• Olay Regenerist Regenerating Serum. It's sort of embarrassing to cop to using Olay products. Aren't they for old ladies? Still, I love this stuff. It's very non-greasy so it doesn't make me shiny, but it keeps my face smooth and even. The way I can tell that it really does work is how my skin feels when I run out—rough and dull. I also use this on my neck (which I've obsessed about since I read Nora Ephron's book) and, recently, after someone told me I have "old lady hands" and someone else confirmed it with a "yeah, Mom, you sorta do," on my hands.
• Book piles everywhere. For every book I manage to finish, there are probably eight or nine that I checked out with equally good intentions. Then I return them when they're nearly overdue. There are always piles of books everywhere at our house, and honestly: I wouldn't feel comfortable if there weren't. This makes Kendell a little bit nuts, but I always tell him it's the price he has to pay to be blessed with my presence.
• Speaking of good intentions: I really am full of them. I find them every time I clean out my fridge, moldering in the vegetable bin. Yesterday I had to throw away an entire package of chicken I'd left for more than a week in the fridge. I am always intendingon homemade meals every night. Sometimes my work schedule and end-of-day exhaustion get to me, though, and we end up with cereal, or butter-and-Parmesan noodles, or quesadillas instead of something wonderful. In fact, I really wish my family would fall in love with soup, so I could open a few cans of Campbell's or Progresso for dinner, just every once in awhile. Still, I suppose it's good that I at least try, yes?
• Poetry, essays, and other weird stuff no one reads. I just ordered a few collections of essays and poetry anthologies from Amazon—used, of course. One of the perks of reading stuff no one else reads is that you can find them for cheap. I used to think buying used books was weird, but once I started I discovered it's awesome. Not weird.
• Toothbrush, toothpaste, tooth floss, and Listerine. I can't imagine how people survived before the invention of the toothbrush. I'm sort of OCD about my teeth (even though with all that brushing and flossing and swishing I still get cavities).
• Random spurts of energy. I'm sort of a lazy housekeeper. I mean, my house is clean, but it tends to get a little bit cluttery. Every once in awhile, though—maybe once a week—I'll get a burst of "I must clean this up right now" energy, and then I get tons of stuff done. Yesterday I had one of those, and I got all the bathroom drawers cleaned out, the silverware drawer reorganized and de-crumbed, the blades on the fans vacuumed, andthe edges of the hall carpet. (While I love the empty-the-canister feature of my Dyson, I wish Mr. I-Engineer-Suction would have made that sucky power go all the way to the edge of the vacuum. It totally misses edges no matter how close to the wall you get.) I'm always grateful for those spurts of ambition and only wish they'd come more often. (Kendell wishes that too.)
• My new jeans. I bought these in July at Nordstrom, after getting approximately 827 opinions from my daughter, my mom, my nieces, my sister, my sales lady, and random strangers about the size I should get. I went with the smaller ones and am glad I did; my only regret is that I didn't buy two or three pair, because I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these jeans. I love them so much I am willing to overlook the stupid spelling (kut from the kloth; this always annoys me; why switch the C for a K?) They fit well and don't do that annoying thing that makes you hitch them back up every few minutes. Plus I can wear them with my boots and they're not too short!
• My Dr. Martens boots. These have been "making me me" for a long time—I bought them at Dillard's New Year's Day sale in 2003! I've been wearing them for seven years! I got them for a ridiculously great price ($25!) so I bought the black pair AND the brown pair. They are heavy and chunky and probably completely out of style, but I don't care. I love my boots! The black ones are coming unstitched and I am all tithery about what to do about that!
• Scarves. I discovered a couple of years ago that scarves are awesome. Before that, I'd never even owned one. I know! Now I am always looking for my next favorite scarf. They are the perfect warm thing, the last little thing that makes me feel cozy. I'm discovering that the older I get, the less able I am to deal with being cold. I HATE being cold. A scarf makes me feel much less cold.

What stuff helps make you you?

I think I've probably said this before: fall is my favorite season. The changing trees, the gorgeous colors, that chilly-warm thing the weather does and the blue the sky turns. The scorching days are past, but there are still flowers; we hike and rake leaves and go on random walks, just to get outside. Plus, it's full of anticipation, and in some sense anticipating the Big Three holidays is better than the actually holidays themselves. Plato suggested that we only desire what we don't have—once it arrives, we have it, so we don't need to desire it anymore. But there's something about that desire, that looking forward, that tingles autumn for me.

This autumn has been especially perfect—nearly too perfect. Indian summer for weeks, golden afternoons that were perfect for running through. A few big rainstorms, and then the warm days came back.

 
In fact, it was such a temperate fall that my sycamores, which usually just turn bronze (euphemistic for "boring brown"), turned dark yellow, the leaves edged with sienna and burnt umber. They've never turned this color before.

I'm grateful to live where there are seasons. I know that the places where it's eternally summer are desirable by lots of people, but not me. When the world is always changing, you notice the world. I am happy here, in this landscape, with its inconsistencies and changing temperament. I am grateful that fall exists and that I get to experience it by walking through the world.

"In Heaven it is Always Autumn" ~John Donne
      by Elizabeth Spires

In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near
to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking
heaven's paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.
Safe in heaven's calm, they take each other's arm,
the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.
But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept
as Eden would be with the walls knocked down, the paths littered
with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes
for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling
the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.
The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,
like listeners listening to all that's said, to ask,
What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?
What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?
What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?
Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,
if we were roses too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,
tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.
It is the last of many last days. Is it enough?
To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?
To watch the lineaments of a world passing?
To feel the metal of a black iron bench, cool and eternal
press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds pass
overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?
And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun shining brightly
as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure
leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.
My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.
To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence
where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.
The light is gold. And while we're here, I think it must be heaven.

What is your favorite season?