(Very Important Preface: If your gender happens to be male, you might want to skip this post. Consider yourself warned!)

I think I might be a little bit paranoid, health-wise. I don't want anything big, bad, and/or ugly creeping up on me, so I do all the little medical things you're supposed to do as a woman. You know, the monthly exams in the shower, and making sure to see the gynecologist once a year. Once a year like a freaking calendar. I never miss seeing the GYN. Except last year, it sort of got away from me. And by the time I just very desperately needed to visit mine (which would be, you know, right this second), he was booked out for three weeks. And I couldn't wait for three weeks. So I agreed to see the new doctor in his office. Almost not a big deal, because once you've delivered four babies, pretty much all your modesty about your girly parts has fled.

Or so I thought.

One thing I like about my doctor's practice is that before they ask you to take off all your clothes and replace them with the oh-so-comforting paper gown, you have a little sit-down in the doctor's private office, where he's got photos of his family, and all his medical books carefully arranged on very tasteful and expensive bookshelves, and the other photos give you a hint to his hobbies. Since I've been seeing my doctor for nearly fifteen years now, we're nearly like old friends, but I examined the photos of this new doctor carefully. Hmmmm....he looks vaguely familiar. Huhn.

Then he comes in, we do the little chat, I share my symptoms and other embarrassing body stuff with this complete stranger who looks vaguely familiar, and then I make my way into the other room. The one with the paper gown waiting on the table. I do what I always do: hide my underwear underneath the pile of my clothes, which I fold and carefully place on the leather chair next to the examination table because hello: yeah, the doctor will be seeing me now, but I wouldn't want him to see my underwear. THAT would be embarrassing. The doctor steps in, the nurse steps in, the door is closed, the fun begins. Wheeee! Only this time, due to my symptoms and need to see the doctor right now, I also get the very thrilling experience of a uterine biopsy.

But this is not a post about gynecological thrills and horrors. (I'm certain you're all relieved.) Oh no. It is, as with a good 23% of my blog, a post about high school thrills and horrors. Because as the torture started, I needed a topic to discuss that would take my mind off the internal digging that was happening, so I started talking about running. (Remember: photos in the office give clues to the doctor's hobbies, and he'd had a photo from the St. George Marathon.) Which lead to a discussion of the merits of the half marathon, which led to him telling me his favorite is the Hobble Creek Half, which brought us to the realization that we'd both graduated from the same high school. He was a senior when I was a sophomore, and hello, could it get anymore surreal than that, because now he's digging around in my girly parts, rattling off names of his friends from high school. Names of guys. Guys I knew. But guys who never would have known me. A whole roster of Very Popular Guys.

OK. Could we drop this topic and start discussing something a little less humiliating? Like, how are things going down there where you are?

Because, you know, there were all these clues he was dropping in regards to his position in the high school caste system, and the generally polite thing to do was to start dropping my own hints. Regale him with tales of my cheerleading days at the old alma mater, etc. Rah rah rah. Except for the tiny little fact that none of my tales are worth repeating to a former Popular Guy. Especially one who's digging around in my innards. And any names I could swap with him would be of people who were infamous, not popular. Oh, even better, now he's wondering if I'm going to go to my high school reunion next year. Hey! Do you have a little salt to toss on those wounds you're making down there? Because i think that might be a little less painful than imagining me attending my high school reunion. If, that was, I even got invited to my high school reunions. Which I don't, as I didn't attend my senior year of high school. (My "walk" for graduation amounted to the fifty feet or so between my front door and the mailbox. Throw your hat up in the air for glee!) How might I sum up the three years of high school Iexperienced to someone who doesn't know the redeeming qualities I've managed to accumulate as an adult? What can I say to a former popular guy (who, blessedly, I still don't remember) about my former pathetic-ness?

It's a fairly odd position to be in: dressed in a paper gown, clutching a paper pillow in an attempt to not move while digging ensues, knees flung out to the corners, toes curling over the stirrups, and the roll call of names slicing through nineteen years of living and brings back up to the very forefront of my psyche the teenager I used to be. Awkward and angry and socially inept and very much on the outside of things. My adult persona crumpled underneath my clothes on the leather chair next to the examination table, right next to my underwear. That surge of memories completely undresses me and I find myself naked in front of this doctor in a way he could never imagine. In a way that he, luckily, cannot see.

Because I managed to clothe my naked psyche with a few tattered jokes. I managed not to cry at finding my old self in such an odd position. I managed to survive the uterine biopsy andnot melt down completely in front of the doctor. Managed, in fact, to tell him to say hello to his cousin's sister-in-law, who was in my grade. (Not that she'd remember me. Or, not that she'd remember me with any beneficence.) Of course, I did bawl for a few minutes once I got out to the car, wrestling with that feeling: just who, exactly, am I? Uncertain again if I've ever managed to grow up, really, or if deep down I'm still that lonely sixteen-year-old dressed in black clothes and tough boots. If I've ever really fit in anywhere.

What I am certain of, though: Next time, when I need to see the doctor, I'm waiting until I can see my doctor, no matter how desperate I am. Someone else can see the new guy.

Everyone on Kendell's side of our family has blue eyes, even the in-laws. And then there's me, the lone provider of the brown eyes gene. We did get one blue-eyed boy, Nathan, but the other kids have brown. Sometimes Kendell jokes with me that I've polluted their pure gene pool, but as much as I love both Kendell's and Nathan's blue eyes (which still, honestly, surprise me when I look at them), I also love my kids' brown eyes. Each of them have their own hue; Haley's are dark brown, like mine; Jake's are nearly hazel and look almost green in the right light, and Kaleb's are a clear brown, the exact shade of my dad's.

Since Kaleb's first day on earth, he's had expressive eyes. As a newborn, his eyes were always bright and sparkly, except for when he was grumpy, and then they'd try to tell me what was wrong. I never could decipher what his eyes were saying exactly, though, while he wailed and looked at me, so I couldn't wait until he started talking. But, you know, even once words came, he continued to speak with his eyes. When he tells a story, his eyebrows move up and down, and he opens his eyes as wide as he can to punctuate the exciting parts. He still tells me he's unhappy with the expressions his eyes have. And he just has this way of looking at me that makes me melt.

So on Thursday, when I came rushing upstairs to the rallying cry of "Kaleb's hurt bad," and I saw his eye covered in blood, I very nearly panicked, a thing I hardly do anymore at the appearance of blood. As I got closer, though, I could see that it wasn't his eyeball, but his eyelid that was gashed open and gushing blood. A random and very accidentalswing of a piece of re-bar by a neighbor boy and voila: we were off to see the after-hours doctor for stitches. (You know, I have to say: If we must always be rushing in for stitches, couldn't the accidents happen while our very-much-trusted doctor is in? Why is it always after hours?)

Kaleb is not known for his cooperating spirit or his ability to sit still, so I was a little bit nervous about the stitching procedure. But thanks to the modern medical miracle that is that numbing gel they use now? He was so good. Once they finally got around to stitching him up (the gel takes about a half hour to work), he laid down on the paper-covered table and held still. I couldn't believe it. He didn't once squirm or cry or even so much as wiggle. In fact, he didn't even keep his eyes shut, but watched the thread as closely as he could.

Then he sat up and asked if he could go to Wendy's for a chicken sandwich.

Once we were home and the adrenalin drained from my system, I started thinking about what could have happened. What if that re-bar had hit him just a half-inch lower? I don't think there's a whole lot the can do for an eyeball injury. I tossed and turned all night, imagining how horrible it would be to look at Kaleb and not have him look back. And I prayed. I prayed hard, expressing my gratitude. And not just for the contrast between what did happen (three stitches in the eyebrow) and what could have happened (blindness). But for every single day I've looked at him and he's looked back. For every single time any of my kids looked back at me. How have I taken that for granted all these years of being a mother? Just looking at them and having them look back is a miracle.

Today, Kaleb's proud to display his war wounds. He's got a vivid shiner and a constant band aid. Tomorrow morning we'll go get the stitches out, and then start the usual minimize-the-scar process of steri-strips and neosporin. His gash will heal into a scar and a funny story. But I think I won't forget. I think every time he looks at me, I'll remember: it's a blessing.

At least I do it less now than I used to.

You know when there’s something vaguely wrong with one (or each) of your kids? Nothing life-threatening. Nothing dramatic. Just a little owie. And they whine about it. They complain. They might even cry a bit. And you try your hardest. You sooth. You offer a mild medication. You comfort. You rub the offending whatever. You hug.

You take deep breaths.

And then another kid does something like drop the Crisco on the floor, step in it, and track it all across the kitchen. Someone else spills Berry Colossal Crunch right across the Crisco path. One of them wants juice, the other water, the third a juicy-water combo. In the red cup. The muffins you’re all homemaking-mother-ish trying to make before they have to leave for school are taking way longer than you expected (hence the cold cereal). The phone rings, the kids from down the street knock on then door. And then the kid with the owie starts complaining again, and suddenly: you lose it.

More precisely: I lost it.

My temper, that is. Because Nathan’s foot hurt. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, no swelling or bruising or scrapes or anything. Just a little tweak, I tried to tell him (back when I was in my "comforting" mode). And he chose the exactly wrong moment to complain about it one more time, and whammy: I yelled.

It didn’t help that last night Haley and I also had an argument, and that I stayed up way too late sewing because I was upset. But those are just excuses, and they don’t make it better. I hate it when I lose my temper. I know that harsh words, or even just loud ones, leave a mark. I know that apologizing doesn’t really make it better (even though I did. Apologize, that is.) I hate it that I have it in me to lose my temper at all. Especially when it’s a situation that calls for the exact opposite reaction, compassion instead of annoyance.

Sigh.

I managed to get Nathan to school. Kaleb and his little friend, too. And now I’m at home with a kitchen full of muffins, trying to talk myself down from the comfort-me-with-muffins approach to dealing with feeling guilty.

Being The Mom is hard stuff. And I hate it when I get it wrong.

I've tried writing about romance and Valentine's Day five times now. Five different blog entries that I've started, but can't quite finish or post because I'm afraid of offending someone whose favorite holiday is Valentine's day. If that's you, you might just want to stop reading right now. Because I'm fairly certain I come across as the Valentine's Day Scrooge, only without any hope of ghostly holiday redemption. The Valentine's Day Grinch, only I don't think there'll be any little Who to come along and help me change my ways.

Bah! Humbug! Down with hearts and flowers! Curses upon romantic expectations!

Ah! there it is, exactly that which I don't like: romantic expectations. The idea put forth on Valentine's day by card makers and television shows, fine chocolatiers and florists, that only through chocolate, roses, lingerie, and candle-lit dinners can you show you love your wife. It is the caterwauling that goes among my very own gender as the middle of February approaches: give me chocolate! give me flowers! give me expensive jewelry!

It's the fact that I, too, used to caterwaul on Valentine's day. I used to have expectations. And then I gave them up, because there's also the fact that my husband is not a chocolates-and-flowers kind of guy. Maybe my V-day grinchiness is just a form of self preservation.

Because really, my anti-Valentine's-day persuasions have nothing to do with the childhood experience of the holiday. I have fond memories: converting a shoe box into a placefor other kids to put valentines in. We'd cut a rectangle out of the lid, cover the box with tin foil or white butcher paper and then decorate it with doilies and lace and paper hearts. (They don't do that at my kids' school anymore. Instead they decorate brown paper bags, which doesn't seem quite as fun. There was something satisfyingly artistic about those boxes that brown paper bags just don't hold.) Or pouring a few little candy hearts into the white paper envelope that came with valentines then. (When did the makers of valentines stop including the envelopes? This annoys me every single year.) Or, when I was in the fourth grade, I had an actual admirer. He was an exchange student from Australia and I was fascinated by his accent; I always listened to him when he spoke in class, and honestly: ever since, I've been a sucker for an accent. But when he gave me a sweet little love note and an enormous chocolate heart? I was so embarrassed. I can still remember blushing when he placed it on my desk---too large to slip into the rectangle on the top of my doily-covered box. An actual painful blush. I don't think I ever spoke to him again. I hid the entire thing under my bed and didn't want anyone to know because I was certain my sisters would laugh at me---and they did. Underneath my embarrassment, though, I had a little pleasant spark: hmmmm, someone liked me. In the politics of fourth-grade romance, it was acceptable to acknowledge our mutual discomfort by never speaking again. (I ate the chocolate heart though. And I still have the love note in a box somewhere. I wonder what happened to that Australian boy.)

But as an adult, I have all sorts of troubles with Valentine's day. This morning, when we woke up to a furious snow storm, Kendell offered to drive me to work. "It's Valentine's day anyway!" he said, when I protested. (There is something stifling to me in the idea of not having a car at my disposal, even though I wouldn't go anywhere except home for lunch.) "It would be romantic."

"But I hate Valentine's day," I reminded him. When he asked why, I might have caterwauled a little bit, a diatribe that made me late for work: because if you can't be romantic all the time, I don't want the fake romance of chocolate and red roses just because the calendar says so. It's like Melman says, on Madagascar II, to Gloria: "I would find a way, every day, to make you laugh." That's romantic. Hearts and flowers? What does that even mean? The only way I could like Valentine's day, I explained, is if he showed up with jewelry, real jewelry, every single Valentine's day. And then I would only like it because I wanted the jewelry, not because it came on Valentine's day. He gave me a strange look, a hug and a kiss. And a ride to work.

He's not a jewelry kind of guy either.

I guess it all comes down to what your definition of "romance" really is. A few weeks ago, I found myself at Hallmark, looking for Valentine's day cards (yes, yes, I see the irony) to send to a few friends, and there was this guy there, reading card after card after card. He finally turned to me and asked "would you rather get a card that's perfect on the outside but wrong on the inside, or sort of lame on the outside and perfect on the inside? Which is more romantic?" Ummm, really? Do I even need to answer that question? How about a blank card, and you write what you feel? Or maybe you could just get the heck out of Hallmark. There's a jewelry store a couple of doors down. That's what I mean by romantic expectations---the idea that a card from Hallmark might serve to say the unsayable. A bouquet of pastel hyacinths or yellow daffodils on a random Saturday in May? That's closer to my concept of romance than what's supposed to happen on Valentine's Day. Listening to me? Just listening? Even better. Honestly, the longer I'm married, I don't even know what "romance" means. Is it a synonym for love? The things you do to show someone you love them? The butterflies-in-your-belly feeling that love, in its first rush, engenders and that romance novels seek to recreate? Is it what you see in movies? (My own favorite romantic movie moment is the "In Your Eyes" bit of Say Anything.) Look up "romance" and "romantic" in the dictionary and you'll discover words like "tale," "narrative," "imaginary" or, my personal favorite, " something (as an extravagant story or account) that lacks basis in fact."

We all want to be loved. We all hope that the people who say they love us really do. Valentine's day wants to be about reassuring us that love is fact. That our most primal need has been met. But it tries to accomplish that with illusion. With a formula. Red roses + heart-shaped box of chocolates = I really love you. It takes what is mysterious and undefinable, the very nature of who we are as people, and turns it into a riddle. "A mystery is not to be confused with a riddle," the poet Paul Sohar says. "A riddle is only a riddle until it's solved and then it's used up, ready to be thrown away. But mystery calls for awe rather than solution; it cannot be solved, it has to be absorbed, accepted and---most important of all---evoked." Maybe that's why I keep writing about romance, and failing: because love is, at its heart, the greatest mystery. It's hard to put into words how --- and, more importantly, why --- our popular culture's insistence on the importance of Valentine's day continues to irritate me.

And, honestly, maybe it doesn't really have anything to do with pop culture at all. Maybe it just has to do with me. Maybe, in a strange and twisted spirit of magnanimity, I am transferring my annoyance at my husband for not being a chocolate-and-flowers (and especially a jewelry) sort of guy onto Valentine's day itself. Or maybe I'm really annoyed at myself for wanting, in some deep, dumb way, for him to give me what pop culture says he should. After all, a fluency in the traditional Valentine's trappings doesn't prove anything other than a fluency in society. It doesn't prove that he loves me. Giving me a ride to work on a cold and snowy morning gets a little bit closer.

My fingers are hovering over my mouse, ready to click on "post." I'm still not sure I managed to avoid sounding grinchy or scroogy or just downright whiny. At the very least, I know this: I still don't like it, but Valentine's day is almost over for another year, so I can get over being grumpy about it. A couple of friends sent or brought me Valentines, which helps me feel less irritated. I didn't have to clear my car of snow before going home from work today. I know my husband loves me.

And I still wish I had a new and pretty little bit of jewelry.

It's so annoying.

I love argyle and paisley. He likes stripes, solids, and the occasional plaid. I’m a reader while he’s more of a TV-watcher. I’d rather yank off my own toenails than sit through an entire basketball or football game, but he loves watching sports. He likes a clean house, while messy is my comfort zone. He likes seafood, which makes me nauseous; I like steak, which he can barely stomach. He’s a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of guy who can be in and out of a clothing store in twenty minutes without any angst at all. I’m rediscovering my clothing affection, but shopping for just one item still requires hours spent wandering through store after store, analyzing my anxieties by how an item fits and how much it costs. He’d rather pull of his own toenails than carry any sort of debt, while to me, a credit card {was} freedom. He’s all happy and energetic in the morning, while my energy comes at about 10:00 PM. I think video games are the spawn of Satan, but he thinks they’re, well, really pretty fun. Sometimes I feel like there’s nothing I love to do, from quilting to scrapbooking to staying up late just to finish a book, that he understands, and I’d bet he feels the same about my response to his interests.

We’re a study in "opposites attract." A yin-and-yang couple. After all, he was the high school quarterback. The golden boy, well-liked by everyone. And he still has that quality—he can make a new friend anywhere we go. He’s confident and not afraid to be himself. While I am—well, not. Not any of those things. We’d have hated each other in high school.

And sometimes I wonder. If we’ve ever agreed on anything. If marriage was designed by a torture artist. If either one of us is happy. If there even is such a thing as a happy marriage.

Because we argue.

We argue a lot.

But then, I always remember the other side, too. Usually something small, like seeing his crooked finger or sharing some weird library story with him. Lately it’s just seeing him walk, or sit with his legs crossed. Some small thing, but it helps me remember: I do love him, even though. We are, after all, both stubborn in our own ways. We’re both passionate. And that’s not the only thing we have in common. Neither of us ever want to own a dog. We both love hiking. We both appreciate a good meal (as long as steak or seafood don’t end up on the wrong plate). The need for the latest and greatest, camera-wise? We both totally get that. I know every single one of the skeletons in his closet, and he knows mine—we even share a few. We both like a pretty yard with lots of trees. We both like flannel sheets (even in summer), well-built furniture, white cars, leather coats.

And it’s more than just commonalities. Even though he doesn’t get quilting, for example, he still bought me a sewing machine; he’s built me shelves for my scrapping supplies and for my books even though he thinks they’re both fairly silly. He supports me when I do crazy things like decide to run half marathons. And speaking of crazy, when I get truly frantic about something, he can generally talk me down from the edge. And we’ve got history that binds us, the births of babies, unemployment, bad financial decisions—family vacations, funerals, home improvements.

We make each other laugh.

We’ve been together for a long time—we met 18 years ago, and today we’ve been married for 17. That’s a lot of days I’ve spent mingling my identity with his. A lot of weeks and months when I’ve been a part of something, however flawed and painful, a part of a couple. Half of it. We’ve been Kendell-and-Amy so long that I wouldn’t know who I was without him. He’s not perfect but, then, neither am I. And even when I’m so mad at him I turn into a raving lunatic — I still love him.

Cherry Heaven      by  L.J. Adlington

One of my favorite lessons I taught my English students was the one on dystopias. It's a genre that's fascinated me since I read Fahrenheit 451 back in the autumn of eleventh grade. It's the futuristic, forward-looking, showing-us-what-we're-doing-wrong-right-now part of science fiction. It shows how the mistakes we're making, as a society, might impact life in the future and as such is a warning for us right now. I developed this series of lessons when I was student teaching and was assigned to teach Brave New World; when I taught for real it went along with the novel Anthem. I think my students enjoyed that lesson, too, because it made them think: what really is a perfect society? Is it even possible? Who decides what "perfect" is, anyway? It always generated a ton of discussion and left me feeling like I'd really taught something. (I think that tonight, especially, when I'm feeling severely discouraged about the state of our education system, I needed to mentally revisit that little success. Anyway.)

I think that a dystopian novel's success rests on how real the seemingly-perfect society comes across to the reader, how plausible the solutions are to our old social problems, and how dark or menacing the underlying imperfections are. In Cherry Heaven, the "perfect" part of society is that war has been eliminated. Humans have evolved into amphibian-esque creatures (we live on land but have gills, so swimming is an entirely different experience that produces a state of bliss) left our old, polluted earth, traveled to a new planet, and, on one continent, begun building cities and fighting wars based on genetic profiles. However, on a different continent, the cold, wet Santanna, there are no wars; electricity comes from a massive dam, and seemingly-endless water is supplied by Blue Mountain. It's that dam, and the water itself, that's key in preventing war.

The story is told from alternating perspectives, that of  Bottle Seal 55, who works at the Blue Mountain water factory (sealing water bottles, obviously) and that of Kat, who's just left the war-ravaged continent for Santana with her sister Tanka and her wealthy and high-positioned (read: the "best" gene type) foster parents. They move into the mythical Cherry Heaven, a now-defunct cherry orchard with a big, beautiful home owned by the company that also owns Blue Mountain. The sisters discover things are different in their new home: there's not much genetic discrimination, for one thing; there's no social strife and everyone has what they need. The contrast between Bottle's situation---the child labor at the factory, the terrifying things she experiences after she escapes, her memories of working on the dam construction---and the sisters' is stark, which is the point: you start to guess at the menace that's underneath all that perfection.

In fact, in true dystopian style, it's the people who seem to be ensuring the peaceful conditions who are responsible for the dark things that hide underneath. That makes it a little bit easy to guess who is responsible, but the playing out of how everything is revealed makes the book worth reading. The characters are well-drawn; you feel for poor Bottle, and Tanka and Kat both go through some experiences that teen readers will relate to. The only thing I didn't like is the bit about the human gills. It seemed pointless: the novel would have been just fine without the hopped-up bliss that comes from swimming. It felt almost like the author included it simply because dystopian novels are supposed to have some kind of drug, and swimming-bliss seemed more teen-friendly than, say, soma . Except, there are happy pills, too, called peps.

Aside from that little annoyance, though, I think this is a book almost anyone would enjoy. Like any good dystopia, it makes you start to think and question. Namely, here, about who is really calling the shots, and the power that big corporations have over our thinking and our buying habits (iPod, anyone?), the morality of revenge, the power that just one person might have. There's romance, adventure, torture, cool technology, field trips, and a satisfying-yet-not-really-happy ending. Plus a cat. Cats always make books better, right?

One of my goals this year is to write more about the books I've read. With that in mind:

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson  

At work I've been busy putting together a science fiction reading list for teens. This task has reminded me (yet again) of just how much I enjoy this genre. I think that people who don't like science fiction feel that way because they think of space battles and freaky aliens, but the "science" in the genre isn't just of the astronomy sort. Technology, medicine, genetics, biology---social sciences, too---all fall under that "science fiction" idea. Really, though, the genre isn't really "about" any of the sciences. Instead, it's looking at the impact of science. Pick any sort of science you can think of, any theory or application; imagine that we take it to its furthest implications. What might we gain, and what might we lose? How far is too far? How might it affect the world? Humanity? One specific individual? It's the examination of as-yet-developed science, of any sort, on an individual life that creates such gripping reads, because seeing the impact play out forces the reader to question the ethics behind an idea.

Well, at least: the good science fiction does that, and I'd say that The Adoration of Jenna Fox is pretty darn good. I finished it almost two weeks ago but I continue to think about it, which is the mark of good books in my mind. In the novel, Jenna slowly discovers the truths behind her year-long coma and the medical care she received after a car accident. You figure out fairly quickly that she's the living result of her father's experiments with Bio Gel, a technology originally developed for people who needed replacement organs. She has to dig out the answers, as her parents don't want her to know much because A---they'd like her to not freak out and B---what they've done is highly illegal. The novel explores the social ramifications of medical technology. Just what is it that makes us human? And how much of our humanity is connected to our physical bodies?

One of the pleasures of reading young adult literature is that it's all, in a way, bildungsroman-esque. It's all about coming of age, and as you progress through any (well-written) YA novel, you watch the process of self-development. The experiences the characters go through are what teach them about life and help them to grow up. Here, Jenna's coming-of-age comes through both the decisions she's forced to make and the questions she has about her identity. Just what exactly is it that makes us who we are? What creates identity? Is it memory? The biology of the brain? The soul? The sum total of life experiences, goals for the future, personality? I wouldn't say that Jenna finds an answer, but she does come to make a sort of peace with her questions, which maybe is all that anyone can ask for.

I loved Jenna---loved her ability to push back at life, to not be satisfied with pat answers, to find what she needed despite her parents' wishes to stop her. She has spunk, but she's also able to look at herself with a slightly critical eye, so that she can start to see herself beyond the idealized vision her parents have of her. But my favorite character is her grandmother. Before her accident, Jenna's relationship with her grandmother was perhaps her most stable one---a person she could turn to without the expectation of perfection she gets from her parents---but after, her grandmother does not like her. As you come to understand why, you start to think about why you love the people you love. This hit home especially hard for me: having someone who looks like the person you knew and loved standing before you, coupled with the feeling that while they look the same, they aren't. Sound familiar?

If you think you don't like science fiction, well, then, I think you should try this book. Maybe you'll discover you do like SF after all!

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to head up a discussion group about personal history for my ward (church group). Since I have such a strong belief that everyone should be writing down the details of their lives, I was thrilled about the possibility. For our first meeting, I put together a few handouts---I made one with general writing ideas, one with suggestions for topics, and one with hundreds of idea starters (the sort that you can cut apart and put into a journaling jar). I think the meeting went well, even though there were only three other people.

I've been thinking a lot, since then, about my own personal history. I write down a lot of things in a lot of different places---blog, journal, scrapbooks, writer's notebooks, an Amy-Rosenthal-style index I add random stuff to. But I think there's a big difference between those things and a personal history. Looking backward gives you a perspective you don't have when something is happening; it also helps you to question what you don't know about your life so that you can (hopefully) still ask the people who would know. (For example: what do you know about the details of your birth? Aside from the fact that my dad went home during my mom's long (36+ hours) labor so he could make a cake, and my obviously superior manual dexterity which manifested itself just minutes after my birth when I pulled the oxygen tube out of my mother's nose, I don't know much.) I've also been reading Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away. Well, re-reading. I've been thinking about the way I write things down, and the power inherent in story. I've been thinking: I need to start writing down my stories.

Then, today, I had the opportunity of going to the Winter Storytelling Festival . I listened to the keynote presentation by Syd Lieberman Syd Lieberman, and I have to say: I wish every single one of my personal history group (all three of them!) could have come along too. Speaking about the things he's learned as a storyteller, he talked about a variety of topics: the journals of WWI air force pilots, the men who engineered the Mars rover, the Johnstown flood, the Holocaust. He used those topics, and the interactions he's had with them as a storyteller, to relate some ideas that I think apply equally as well to writing your personal history.

The first thing that storytelling does is capture life. Discover what is miraculous, what is wonderful; capture both the joy and the sadness in your life. He spoke about his daughter, who's expecting his first grandson, how he listened to the baby's heartbeat and how miraculous that sound was to him, listening to a person who "wasn't there a few weeks before. And then he was." (I can so relate: isn't that a magical experience?)

Storytelling is an act of celebration. Even writing or telling the sadness is a celebration. It is a way of communicating with another person, of asking someone else, "look, do you see what life is like?" and believing that they will shake their head and say "yes, I know."

History is real---real stories about real people who died. When you write your own personal history, you also end up telling other people's stories. This is a way of being a witness: that person existed, his/her experiences are worth remembering. Otherwise, their stories are lost, too. Historical stories and personal stories always interact---they are the same thing.

When you delve into the history of a life---yours or someone else's---you aren't just telling stories. You're witnessing for yourself. The process teaches you something about yourself, and so is always worth the effort.

Sometimes it seems like subjects converge in your life: you find pieces of a certain idea here, and here, and there and there, and suddenly it means something. "Personal history" seems to be what life is telling me. "Write down your stories." And I don't think I am meant to do this in the half-baked, raw, unedited format of my journals and blog. Instead, I want to make my experiences just that: stories, with all the impact they hold.

What stories have you not told?

"I know it would be totally expensive," our friend Steve asked us a few weeks ago, "but if you had the chance, would you see U2 in concert?"

I didn't hesitate with my answer. "Only if they agreed to only play music they wrote before 1990. Nothing that came after 'Achtung Baby.'" Because old U2? SO GOOD. The new U2? I can't stand it. I mean---I love that they have transcended their 80s fan base, that twenty years later they're still going strong. I think Bono's great and it does cheer me up to hear his voice on the radio, even if I hate the song. The U2 concept? Great stuff.

But the new music?

Stinks, in my opinion. It all sounds the same. Big arena rock. No longer intimate. But I thought about Steve's question, and I've been trying. I've been listening to their newer CDs. I have developed an affection for some of the songs. "Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own" and "Miracle Drug" are OK. "Walk On" is good, and I can confess to loving "In A Little While." (Who couldn't love a lyric that goes "when the night takes a deep breath, and the daylight has no end"?)

I think a large chunk of my resistance is the emotional connection I have to the old U2 songs. They're not just songs; they're an aural representation of my feelings. I don't just listen to them, I feel them. (And, less I sound like an absolute U2 fanatic, it's not just U2's music that holds those feelings for me.) At the senior end of my 30somethings, I don't define myself with music quite so much anymore. I've moved beyond the days when a song's lyrics were all I needed to explain how I felt. So it's probably not about the quality of the new U2 music. It's probably more about me.

But I'm not 100% on that last statement, either. U2 just isn't an edgy band anymore. (Ironic, yes, considering they still have their Edge?) They're not angry and victorious and torn apart anymore. They're not raw. And I suppose it's unfair of me to expect my favorite bands to remain rooted in rawness while I settle for middle-aged complacency. But I won't stop wishing Bono et all could still write songs like "Bad" and "In God's Country," "One Tree Hill" and "Dancing Barefoot." "Spanish Eyes." "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Not to mention my personal favorite U2 song, "Running to Stand Still," which I loved even before life taught me exactly what it meant.

"But you went to The Police concert last summer," Steve argued back. He's right. But I wouldn't have gone to a Sting concert. I went to The Police because it was The Police, in all their moody 80s glory. A little spot of time travel. They wouldn't play any of their new stuff because they don't have any new stuff. I went to reconnect, which I couldn't do at a U2 concert.

Unless they promised to play "Running." I think I'd still pay to see that one performed live. Maybe.

(And now I'm going to quit hesitating over the "save" button, and just post this thing. I'm not sure if it will make sense to anyone but me! But...if you, too, are a U2 fan---what's your favorite?)

I was  going to blog about romance today.

But I am having a morning.

It started out when I woke up and realized that, yet again, Kaleb had gotten into my bed sometime during the night and fallen back asleep on his favorite spot in the world: my pillow-arm. OK, that doesn't paint a very flattering picture of my arm, does it? Well, the point is, when he's in my bed he likes to sleep on my arm. He's got a very strategic place to put his head, too, which is comfortable for him but highly unfortunate for the nerves in my arm. The rest of my body wakes up but my wrist and hand, which are numb for the next 45 minutes or so, and then my hands are stiff all morning.

I feel like an arthritic old woman.

Then it continued. Jacob was nothappy about getting up this morning, and acted like a, well, like a dang pre-pubescent boy. A little hint of what's coming down his hormonal pipeline, I suppose. Is it wrong of me that I would prefer my children, if they have to stop being newborns, to remain ten years old forever? His morning attitude sent me on a little crying spree, curled up in fetal position in my bed, sobbing to Kendell about how everyone is going to grow up and move away and I'm going to be all alone. With only my husband for company.

Someone shoot me now!

If it could go wrong, it did. Cream of wheat boiled over on the stove, the kids thought that watching TV (which they know we don't do in the morning) definitely took precedence over things like, you know, getting ready. I spilled 32 ounces of hot, soapy water all over the counter and it ran right into the new roll of paper towels I just opened. Shoes were not to be found, backpacks were missing, and yes, for the 1 millionth time, you do have to brush your teeth before school! And, i swear: if I have to convince Kaleb that he cannot wear his pajamas to school one more time, I might make pajamas illegal in our house. I went to grab Kaleb's package of cookies for preschool (each kid brings a package of cookies at the beginning of each month, and then they get to pass out their cookies one day, a practice established upon the idea of teaching them to share but which still slightly annoys me because I'm thinking that tuition should include snacks, but whatever, I'm grumpy this morning, don't listen to me) and discovered that someone had opened them. And eaten four. Jake and Nathan were late getting ready (happens when you watch TV instead of finding your backpack like I told you), so I had to drop them off at school, then run to Target for cookies.

Once I got home, I sat in the driveway for THREE minutes waiting for the garage door, which apparently has issues, to slowly raise. Now I'm trying to talk myself down from liquid comfort. You know, like a big hot chocolate, or some caramel apple cider from Starbucks. A giant Pepsi. Beer. Mornings like these help me understand binge drinking.

Am I sounding crazy yet?

I did get cheered out of my weeping-on-the-bed thing by a few blogs. Wendy had some Superbowl commercials (the potato head one is my favorite, and if you've ever been in the car with Kendell when there's traffic you'll know why I now sort of wish we were both ppotato heads; I'd definitely put his mouth in my purse), Chris had this funny post about how spoiled kids are now (which made me think I should blog about my brief affection for playing Asteroids on the Atari), and my sister Becky had this sweet post that made me cry in a good way (check it out if you were ever curious about what I looked like when I was five. Have I ever told you how much I HATED ringlets?).

I've convinced myself that a trip out for donuts and Starbucks isn't a good option (the garage door might not open again anyway) and am making do with some leftover gingerbread tea. And some of those cookies. But I'm really, really hoping the crazy has worked its way out of my morning, and the rest of the day will be calmer.