OK, so, honestly: sometimes I feel like I could be replaced with an automaton who, when you pressed a button on her forehead, lifted up a sign reading "the Internet computers are down the stairs and to your left."

But almost every time I go to work, I get at least one experience that gently reminds me how lucky I am to be a librarian. Like the time I helped a very elegant, elderly woman make some photocopies and she was so kindly and graciously grateful all my life's troubles melted away for a few hours. Or the woman whose husband had recently died who only wanted to talk to someone about anything, and our conversation about The Poisonwood Bible seemed to de-lonely her.

Or like a few nights ago, when I helped a woman do some genealogy research using our newspaper database, and she found an obituary she'd been looking for for years. She was so happy she danced, quite literally, her own happy dance. Right there next to the biography shelves.

Sometimes it's when I magically know the title of the book someone's looking for. Or when someone comes back in to tell me that the book I recommended to them has become their new favorite.  Every once in awhile, someone will even say "you're so lucky to work here."

And I just have to agree.

It doesn't hurt that our library is gorgeous. I mean, granted: there's lots of dusty shelves. But our children's section has this fantastic stained glass window, and a puppet stage that's extraordinary. There's a glass-walled bridge, connecting the two wings, overlooking a grassy, tree-filled garden, and when you walk across it, you feel like you are walking through the trees. In the spring, when the flowering pear trees blossom, it's simply amazing. There are balconies to look over, winding staircases, comfy chairs in hidden niches. It's a great library.

And even though tonight ended on a frustrating note ("I want you to tell me what to read." "OK, what do you like to read?" "I don't know." "Fiction or non?" "I don't know." Ummmmmm...maybe just close your eyes and pick one then?), I'm feeling very blessed at where my choices have taken me, career-wise.

I love my job.

to finally see Harry Potter today. I'm not really sure what's wrong with me, as every single other HP movie I've seen on opening day, but this one...I'm totally excited to see, and to be re-immersed in the Hogwarts world, but actually gathering everyone together and, you know, goingto the theater has felt like too much work. And maybe the reviews have tempered my enthusiasm a bit. The most disheartening review was the one that said the movie fails to focus on Harry's relationship with Dumbledore and instead looks at everything through the romance angle. I have this theory that the Harry Potter people are afraid of the Twilight people being more successful so they're trying to appeal to the Twilight crowd. Forgetting that A---Harry Potter is way better than Twilight and B---most Twilight fans are also Harry Potter fans. At least, if the conversations I've had with library patrons are indicative of the rest of the world.

At any rate...we're seeing it today. And hoping we won't be disappointed!

those Costco muffins are big and soft, but they're not quite pillows:

(he's holding part of his muffin in his hand next to his neck. This is the way he holds his Blanket, too.)

When I pried the muffin out of his hand, he had melted chocolate chips in his ear.

for reminding me of what I had forgotten I already knew, and for giving me something concrete to help me not forget again:

I keep moving her around, trying to find the perfect spot. You really brought some brightness to me when I needed it!

ps, maybe in profile.

I think that life continually tries to teach us truths. Believe something and, eventually, life will hold it up for your inspection: do you really believe this? What effect will believing this have in your life? Prove that you believe it by acting on it.

The Incident that let to me writing my last blog post was one of those times. Since The Incident, I've been thinking. Thinking a lot. Roll-around-awake-at-midnight thinking. Thinking about the responses I received from you, and the conversations I had with my sisters. Trying to find answers to my questions. Strangely enough, an image from a line in a Billy Collins poem wrapped itself into all this thinking: "I say drop a mouse into a poem/and watch him probe his way out." Somewhere I realized: this isn't only about my philosophical struggles over how forgiveness might impact me. It's also about me acting on my beliefs. If I believe in forgiveness, and I also believe that forgiveness doesn't take away consequences; if I apply that to my own mistakes, then doesn't it follow that I also have to apply it to other people's mistakes, too?

You know how, when you have a canker, it’s almost impossible to stop rubbing your tongue over it? This week I’ve had a similar metaphorical sore spot I can't quit rubbing over and over, trying to puzzle out how to make myself feel better. Instead, I’ve felt like drawing inward: not talking to anyone, not blogging. Certainly not laughing. More like constant weeping and wishing I were a drinker. Or a drug addict. Or that there were some way to turn off the feelings that I’ve had. And while I can’t write about the details that would help this make more sense, I am left with questions I can’t find answers to, and maybe the questions themselves are worth writing about.

All of this goes back (as, seemingly, everything does lately) to my execrable adolescence and its questionable decisions. Still, there is such a thing as forgiveness, and I had felt, up until this week, that I had attained that. Perhaps I was wrong. I didn’t understand, while I was making those decisions, that I would have to be forgiven by people who weren’t in my life yet, some who didn’t even exist yet. I believe in forgiveness. I believe it can bring you peace. I also believe that it cannot eliminate the consequences of your mistakes. This week has forced me to examine how that concept works within the scope of my life.

Ultimately, here is the question I am left with: if you’ve been forgiven for a mistake, and yet the consequences of the mistake are that you can be reminded of it at any time and that it can continue to affect how people think about you—if, in other words, the mistake continues to haunt you in a worldly sense even though in an eternal sense it has been forgiven—then where does the peace that’s supposed to come with forgiveness figure in? How does forgiveness really help you when you are in the world? It hardly matters that I feel at peace with my mistakes (I understand why I made the choices I did and, if I am being honest, cannot say that I would change many of them because of the things they taught me) when the people I love cannot. Or when my mistakes, whether or not God has forgiven them, can influence someone else to make his or her own bad decisions—how, then, does my claim of being forgiven even matter?

Maybe it is simply that the letters we are branded with in consequences of our mistakes never really fade here on earth. No matter what the scarlet letter is or what sin it signifies, there will always be someone who is able to see it and unafraid to pass judgment. And maybe I am deluded for expecting it to work any other way than that. If you are, say, a thief (choosing a mistake I did not make) for a while in your life, how can you expect people to trust you with the key to their house, even after you stop stealing? What I am left with is one last question: How can forgiveness relieve sorrow for sin when, at any odd and unexpected time, the relentless consequence of how others feel about that sin can push you back into the sorrow?

Today's my little sister's birthday. We weren't always good friends, Becky and I. Truth be told, I was a mean and horrible big sister when we were growing up. She can tell you stories about the horrible-big-sister things I did, some of which I have conveniently blocked from my memory. Still, despite my failures during our early years, I always loved her and we did have some good times together. I hope she knows how glad I am to have her as mysister! So, in lieu of birthday cake, which is fairly difficult to easily transmit via Internet, a random list of stuff you might never need to know about me, Becky, horrible-big-sisterness and grown-up good times:

1. She knows why I cannot be trusted in a McDonald's drive through.

2. The moment I really got over my horrible-big-sisterness happened in the parking lot of a doctor's office after my first-ever visit to a gynecologist. I had to tell her something I didn't want to tell her but had to be told anyway, and you know? She didn't freak out, and we acted like grown ups even though we weren't, yet, really, and things were always better after that.

3. One of my favorite pictures of Becky and me, from Kaleb's blessing day:

4. 
   

5. She used to be afraid of dogs, but maybe she is over that.

6. Runs-From-Dogs Story: Once upon a time, Becky and I were riding bikes. As we came down the hill near our house, some dogs started chasing us. She started screaming and shaking and doing a little I'm-scared-out-of-my-mind dance, having dumped the bike. Then she ran inside a complete stranger's house. I continued riding my bike home. My intentions were to get my mom and/or dad, but until a few months ago she thought I just left her there.

7. Ask each of us what my first floor routine music was and we'll each give a different answer. One day I need to just dig out the tape and figure it out. Except: while I still have the tape of my floor-routine music (thereby keeping any "I'm in the middle of a gymnastics meet and I forgot my floor exercise music" dreams at bay) and could put it into your hands in approximately eight minutes, I no longer have a tape player to play it on.

8. Speaking of gymnastics dreams? We both have them.

9. And. I could call her and say "last Tuesday I dreamed I had a baby" (I did) and she would know exactly how I feel, and the conversation would spin on for hours after that.

10. If I could give her anything for her birthday, it would be her own daughter.

11. She had a really bad club foot as a baby. I remember the day she left with Mom to have a surgery and I was so jealous of her, getting to go to the hospital and whatever else I thought was special about having your leg/calf/ankle sliced open and put back together, that I said something really mean. I can't remember what the mean thing was, but I still remember watching her start to cry, and how I felt less jealous but also considerably more horrid. Told you: horrible big sister.

12. When I was pregnant with Haley, my two older sisters were also pregnant, and I always felt like Becky got left out of the pregnant-with-your-sister thing. Until she was pregnant with her son Ben, and I was pregnant with Kaleb. We got to be pregnant together! I loved being able to commiserate and appreciate pregnancy together.

13. Our youngest sons are about three months apart in age, and whenever Kaleb is listing off his friends (something he does quite often, counting them on his fingers as he names them), he never forgets Ben in his list.

14. Many of my gymnastics memories have her at their fringes. I still feel bad that I, having figured out that the meanness our coach Jack exhibited during our daily workouts---the meanness that terrified her---was nothing more than a training technique, didn't ever clue her in and let her know she didn't have to be afraid of him. He was only trying to scare her into doing her handstands the right way.
15. We both have high foreheads and forehead veins. The veins pulse when we are laughing, happy, stressed, or angry. (Julia Roberts also has a forehead vein, were you curious.)
16. We both have English degrees, only from competing universities (hers is from the University of Utah, mine is from BYU). We graduated in the same year, 1999.
17. I call Haley "Becky" all the time. It's a miracle she doesn't think her name is "Beck-I-Mean-Haley."
18. I once spent a night sleeping on her couch while her cat sat on the back of the couch, hissing at me every time I rolled over. OK, maybe "sleeping" isn't the right word for what happened that night. Still, Becky has gorgeous kitties and I love even the one who hissed at me all night.
19. When we hiked Timp together, we both brought notebooks in our backpacks but both felt sheepish until we each confessed. Then we sat on the top of the mountain and wrote.
20. We shared a bedroom until I was twelve. Or maybe thirteen. At night, while we were trying to fall asleep, we'd play the "I'm her, I get him" game, listing famous women we got to be and famous men we got to get. I totally got the best guys. Because I was mean.
21. One day we were playing in the boat in the garage. I can't remember the entire context of our game, but I told her she needed to go into the house and say this to our mom: "Amy's gone, gone with the wind like Scarlett O'Hara." Except she said "like Scarlett O Well."
22. Once, when we were at Lake Powell, she dropped my favorite pink shirt in the lake and it was lost forever. Mean Big Sister was out in full force that day.
23. She told me a few weeks ago that she used to sneak into my bedroom and listen to my tapes. She had to sneak because I would have killed her otherwise. Now if we could just figure out which song from my music she loved but can't remember, it'd be all good.
24. Sometime I should ask her: Did she hate ringlets as much as I hated ringlets? Because, seriously: I hated ringlets.
26. Once, when Kendell and I were dating, he was teasing Becky. They were outside in our front yard, rough housing and laughing, and a policeman stopped because he thought Kendell was attacking her. This still makes me giggle!
27. Speaking of. Becky is WAY better at keeping a clean house than I am, which makes me think that maybe Kendell chose the wrong Allman girl.
28. When I bought my camera, she bought my old one, and she's first in line for my current camera when I buy a new one.
29. We ran a half marathon together in 2003. She came with me but wasn't really ready yet, especially for an all-downhill course. I don't think her quads have ever forgiven me.
30. My family went to Las Vegas nearly every summer when we were growing up. One of my clearest Vegas memories: going to the water park with Becky. The one that was right on the strip (don't know if it's still there or not). This might have been the first vacation we went on without our two older sisters coming along.
31. Another vacation memory: we drove to northern California the summer after sixth grade. On the way, we stayed the night in Reno, then drove to Lake Tahoe where we were going to eat breakfast. Becky and I both got carsick. Every time Haley starts to feel carsick, I remember sitting in the back seat with Becky on that winding road, trying not to throw up.
32. Becky and I have similar taste in books. Whenever we talk on the phone, one of us will ask what the other is reading.
33. Last Christmas Becky made this gorgeous holiday wall hanging. I am totally borrowing her pattern this fall. We both made a nativity quilt, only they turned out completely different. At least, I think they did...I just realized that I've never seen hers. Obviously we both like to quilt. She's much better at piecing than I am, having managed to perfect the triangle. (My triangles never turn out right.)
34. Becky's dedication to her faith is inspiring to me. She just goes about quietly living it, without being judgmental of anyone. She and I both went through a rebel-against-the-church phase, only hers was much milder and shorter than mine. The wisdom she's gathered since then continues to help me, too.
35. All of our shared history means that we can catch each other's eye at appropriate moments, give a roll or a head shake, and know exactly what the other one is thinking. I didn't know as a child just how blessed I would be to have her as my younger sister, but I am certainly grateful now!

(And, if you know Becky, or even if you are just mildly curious, you could visit her blog to wish her a happy birthday!) 

Tonight I have been reading poems and thinking about my dad who didn't, as far as I know, read very much poetry. Still, sometimes a poem reminds me of him by the act of capturing some facet of him, even though the poet (obviously) never knew him. It is one of the magics of poems, how someone can write about death, and then when I read the poem I don't think so much of dying but of how my dad liked going arrowhead hunting in southern Utah. He'd go with one of my sister's husbands, or with his brother, and once he had gathered enough, after many, many trips, he'd assemble all the arrowheads together on a rustic board, with buckskin braid and maybe feathers. When he went on these trips, I always thought it was a little strange, and maybe even questionable. Where'd he find the arrowheads? Was taking them from where ever he found them a sort of grave robbery? Or just something that some people do?

Now that it's too late, though, I wish I would have talked to him about his trips. I wish I knew where he'd go, and how he'd find them. I wish I knew which were his favorites, what were his motivations, how he thought about his finds. Did he think what I do, when I hold one of those chipped, triangular stones, of the person who shaped it, wondering how he lived or what he killed, imagining a sort of connection between my modern-day self and that long-ago person? Or something else? Was the arrowhead hunting about connection, or about discovery, or about the rugged beauty of a perfectly-shaped spear point? Or simply the wild peacefulness of being in the desert, the stone a way of carrying home sky, heat, dry bushes, sere stone?

He is not dead, but he (the dad I knew) is gone. I still love the silent, confused man who needs help sliding his feet into his shoes, who seemed baffled by the bright sun at our last visit. We sat together on a park bench, and I told him how my kids are, how my last run went, what book I was reading. He didn't answer, of course, and I wonder: what does it feel like to be him? Where did the dad I knew go to? Is he lost somewhere in the dark, a chipped stone I could find if I knew the path through his personal landscape? Or perhaps he is a million little stones, scattered in earth, and I will never, no matter how much I search, put all his pieces back together. The arrowhead trips are just one stone, just one facet of what is lost and I am again left with the same heartache, the same regret of not asking, of not telling, of thinking I had as much time as I needed, of not knowing how much I didn't know. Not guessing that, one day soon, he would be curled in the dark of his mind, needless artifacts scattered around him; that I would need to become an archaeologist, sifting through time's refuse, to know anything much at all about him.

"Every Dying Man"

is a child:
in trenches, in bed, on a throne, at a loom,
we are tiny and helpless
when black velvet bows our eyes
and the letters slide from the pages.
Earth lets nobody loose: it all
has to be given back — breath, eyes, memory.
We are children when the earth
turns with us through the night toward morning
where there are no voices, no ears, no light, no door,
only darkness and movement
in the soil and its thousands
of mouths, chins, jaws, and limbs
dividing everything so that
no names and no thoughts remain
in the one who is silent lying in the dark
on his right side, head upon knees.
Beside him, his spear, his knife
and his bracelet, and a broken pot.

~Jaan Kaplinski