When I was a girl, one of my favorite authors was L. M. Montgomery. I read Anne of Green Gables and all the rest of the series at least a dozen times and never got tired of it. I especially enjoyed Anne’s friendship with Diana, and I wished, too, as Anne did, for a real friend, a "really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul." I didn’t find her until I was sixteen, and then I met Chris. I swear there was a nearly-audible click when we shared names: we were instant best friends, kindred spirits. She was my one friend who I could trust absolutely, and she remains the friend I could ask to do almost anything, and if she could she’d do it. We don’t get to see each other as often as either of us would like—work and husbands and kids and mortgages get in the way. But when we do get together, we click; we’re teenagers again. Well, minus the short black skirts, big hair, and dubious activities.

Chris’s mom died when Chris was about four, and her dad was not a shining beacon of goodness (to put it mildly). So she spent a lot of time living with her grandma Avera, her mom’s mom. By the time I became friends with Chris, Avera was in her seventies. But she was the most amazing woman you can imagine. She didn’t seem hampered by her age at all, but still took care of Chris and her younger sister, took care of her yard, helped her husband take care of the horses. Looking back now, I’m not sure how she managed to be so consistently friendly and welcoming to the gang of us showing up at her house. How does a woman born in 1912 deal with four or five girls dangling suede tassels, weird crystal jewelry, and bitter attitudes? But she really was always welcoming. Even with the deep anger I lived in during that time, I responded to her kind spirit. In fact, she was the one person I was willing to dial back my intensity for. In her house, I never swore or said anything mean, and I became a little softer; hers was a home wherein I could let down my guard. I didn’t recognize it then, but I can see now: she was teaching me the value of simply loving someone, despite all their flaws, as well as the strength of kindness.

In a sort of random occurrence, when my sister-in-law Cindy began working as a nurse this spring, the assisted living center she chose was the one where Avera was living. She wasn’t ill, but just needed a little bit of help and couldn’t live on her own anymore. A few weeks ago, Kendell needed to pick something up from Cindy while she was at work, so I ran in to get it and to say hello to Avera. She was sitting in her room with a quilt on her lap, reading. My perspective about older people has become skewed to expect everyone to be like my dad, confused and silent. But not Avera. She looked up at me and immediately knew exactly who I was, even though we’d not seen each other since Collin’s blessing. We chatted for about twenty minutes, about everything from her soon-to-be-born twelfth and thirteenth great grandchildren, to Chris, to Chris’s sisters and their families. We even giggled a bit about the old days. Then she sighed. "I’m not sure why I’m struggling so hard to stay here when I am so ready to go," she said. "I am ready to go." I hugged her and told her that her family still needed her, but then I patted her hand and told her I also understood. "You’ve had a wonderful life," I said. "You’ve done so much, I understand being tired." And I knew as I patted that soft old hand that I was saying goodbye—that all the seeming-randomness that brought me to her room was a blessing and an opportunity for me to see her and to say goodbye. I suddenly remembered the last time I went to her old house in Pleasant Grove, the summer I was 18 and having this experience that was one of my life’s most painful. It was no one’s fault but mine that I was in the circumstances I was, and she very well could have been disdainful. But she wasn’t. She just hugged me and told me I would be OK and that I was stronger than I thought. Those words were a comfort to me for a long time.

So that last moment in her room at the assisted living center, while I patted her hand and filled up with the sense of goodbye, I tried to say something that would comfort her. I don’t know if they did. But I discovered this morning that I was right in my feelings of goodbye, as Avera passed away late Tuesday night. I saw her picture on the obituary page and my body responded in a very physical way, as it does in the first moments of grief: hard shaking, a pounding heart, that hot rush of tears. It took the shock of seeing Avera’s obituary to realize: Chris wasn’t my only kindred spirit. Avera was one, too. There was never any hesitation to the odd, half-formed friendship we had; if I didn’t see her for years, she still knew me and we could still start talking and giggling like we’d just seen each other yesterday. I am grateful for Avera that her spirit is able to be peaceful now, free of earthly aches, seeing her husband and the three children she lost. I hope she knows, somehow, the influence she had on me. She made me a kinder person, and I am stronger for it.

Among other things, I have been neglecting my blog lately. So if you've been wondering why I've not updated in a while, perhaps there is comfort to be taken in the fact that it's not just blogging I'm neglecting. Take my mom, for instance. She was more than a little bit annoyed with me for taking way too long to call her last week after she moved Dad into the rest home. I really meant to call her. I just didn't manage it until Thursday night. She is struggling with my dad being gone, missing him in ways that are surprising her. Maybe being annoyed with me at least helped take her mind off her other woes a little bit. I can't blame her for feeling that way---I'm annoyed at myself, frankly. Not just because I didn't call my mom, but because I didn't ________________ (insert any one of the many items on my impossibly long list of stuff I just haven't managed to accomplish). And it's not just the mundane stuff (like laundry or sweeping the kitchen floor) I am not managing to do. It's stuff I want to do, too, like talking to friends or my sisters on the phone, answering emails, reading anything more than the newspaper headlines, going to the museum exhibit I really, really wanted to see (Renoirs, Van Goghs, and other cool stuff at the University of Utah). Let's not even think about how much scrapbooking and quilting I want to do but am not.

In an attempt to justify my failures, I've considered the things I do manage to fit in. Monday morning until Wednesday night, I am going non-stop, in between taking care of the kids, getting to work, dropping kids off here and there, making dinner, going to young women, and other stuff. The 36 hours or so between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday when I fall into bed are particularly brutal, since Tuesday I don't get home until 9:30, and then I go back to work on Wednesday morning, and then Wednesday night is scouts and young women. It takes all of Thursday to recuperate! Throw in a few runs, and nightly thigh-and-hip massages for Kendell into the mix. Plus I think I have been successful enough at the best part of mothering, which is talking to my kids, hearing about their days, encouraging them in their efforts (like Haley, who tried out for the school play) and comforting them (Haley again, who didn't get the part). I even managed a few non-cold-cereal breakfast (pumpkin waffles, if you were curious, and raspberry muffins this morning).

I guess that I am trying to adjust to being a works-outside-of-the-home kind of mom. (Which will forever be dubbed WOOTH from now on in my blog!) In my head, it's not really been a big deal. I only work twenty hours a week, which is absolutely nothing compared to how much I worked as a teacher. But I am finding that those twenty hours still have a huge impact on what I manage to accomplish. I keep thinking of a play I read back in college, Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles, which is partly about the idea of women being able to "have it all"---great career, great husband, great home, great kids. Heidi ends up realizing that you really can't have everything (she gives up on the idea of a husband at all, adopts a child, and scales back her work). The crux of the play is that question: what are you willing to give up in exchange for what you get? I think that is exactly what I'm struggling with: balancing my family with my job with my husband with my home with myself. When I read that play, I was pregnant with my second child, and I still thought of myself as a stay-at-home mom, even though I was going to school full time. My concept then of "having it all" was still very conceptual, based in ideas rather than in reality. What I have learned since then is that it's not always what you are willing to exchange for whatever else you get. Usually, it is just what you give away. And for me, lately, what I have given away in exchange for my twenty hours as a librarian is my "me" time. As hard as I try to get everything done, there's always something I fail at.

What is bothering me isn't really the messy house so much as it is the messy relationships. My concept of "having it all" doesn't really include a company-clean house. It does include living a life that allows other people to know how I feel about them, but my actions lately haven't managed to convey that. I know several other women who manage the wooth thing way better than I do. Their houses are clean, they read books, their friends know they like them, they manage to fit in some personal time, and their mothers are not annoyed. Maybe with practice I will get better. But right now, I'm guilty of personal failure. So! If I owe you a phone call: I'm sorry for not calling. If I owe you an email: I apologize. If I forgot for then tenth time to buy you at bike lock when I went to Target: please forgive me. If I didn't manage to wash your favorite jeans, your most beloved socks, or the only shorts that don't bug your incisions: my bad. I know I'm not managing things very well. But not out of disinterest or apathy. Just out of lack of time.

Hopefully I'll get better at this soon.

He still answers the phone with the word "hello." But the voice he uses is no longer his; it is the voice, simultaneously, of an old man and a three-year-old. The "hello" is a question: what is it I am supposed to do with this ringing thing? I know there is something? Hello?

I try to say something he will understand. "Hi, Dad" or "It’s Amy," my voice reassuring and calm, trying to sooth him. Sometimes I start the awkward, one-sided conversation with "it’s OK, it’s OK." As if anything I could say would help him understand. What does the concept "dad" mean to him at this point, anyway? Or "Amy"? I try to carry on talking to him over the phone, my voice getting louder and louder, my subconscious thinking it must be volume that’s the problem, until he answers: "OK."

I ask him to put Mom on the phone. (Who is she to him now, my mother who helps him eat and tries to shave him, who has to teach him every time he showers how to wash himself? Who bugs him about leaving used Kleenex in piles on the floor? "Wife," too, must be an unfathomable concept now.) Sometimes he says "OK" and hangs up the phone; others I hear him wandering through the house, calling for her. When I do manage to talk to her, that conversation is stilted too, a different sort of awkward. I can no longer pay the emotional currency of "what are your plans?" and "how can I help?" now that all those conversations have ended in procrastination. I am emotionally spent on the topic; all my words of advice are gone. Instead, I keep the conversation neutral, asking about Dad’s health and about hers, telling her about a new quilting project, talking about work. Although neither one of us has Alzheimer’s, it still diseases us.

"He told me today that he doesn’t want to get the paper anymore, because it is too hard to read," she says. This makes me cringe—Dad reading the newspaper is a quintessential bit of home for me. Things slough away every day, but the concept of him not being able to read hurts me most. And there is the worry, too. What if he falls down the stairs while Mom is at work, breaks something, and cannot get help until she gets home? What if he lights something on fire? What if he wanders away and we can’t find him? Burn, pain, cold, lost: more concepts his mind can’t understand anymore.

I don’t know what the spark was. The newspaper? His recent fall down a shopping-mall escalator? The way time seems to not mean anything to him, so that thirty minutes after he gets dressed, he wants to take his clothes off and go to bed? Something pushed her past her procrastination. Today, she didn’t use the phone. Instead, she stopped by my house, Dad in tow, to tell me that tomorrow she is putting him in a rest home.

It’s a sudden move, an abrupt decision. Probably the quickness is a good thing for Dad, whose random-rewind mind tonight stuck on one concept: I don’t want to go there. In his old-man-little-boy voice: Can’t I stay home? "Home" is one concept he still understands; what it really means to him is another thing entirely. Is it home because it has sheltered him for thirty years, because he painted its walls, repaired its roof, buried mourned-for cats in its deepest dirts? Is it home because of his possessions, the flannel quilt my mom made for him, his closetful of books, the arrowhead displays he made and hung? Or maybe it is home because in the corners and the window ledges, little bits of memory have floated down like dust, the years of Christmases and holidays, the echoes of old arguments and crazy daughters, laughter and crying and how many meals. Maybe what I’ve always believed—that home is something you carry with you when you leave a place—isn’t true at all. Maybe he will never feel at home again.

The concept of something is always different than the reality. I’ve been trying to convince Mom that Dad needs to be in a rest home for six months, but tomorrow it changes. Tomorrow it is real. Maybe it is harder for the rest of us than it is for him. Maybe with his quilt and a shelf full of books, maybe with his arrowhead display on the wall and visits from Mom, he’ll be OK. How much does he really understand, by now, of any of this? Despite that trace of old man in his voice on the phone, he is more child now, and what he needs, like any child, is to feel loved. We can love him anywhere, and it seems that loving us back is one of the other concepts he still gets. Because he never fails to hug everyone before he leaves a place. His hugs are sincere, void of pretense; they mean, somehow, more than a hug. He cannot tell me what it is he’s trying to say, and I cannot fully read his meaning. But I always hug him back. I always end the quick embrace feeling like it was his last parental thing he can do—that it is his way of saying "it will all be OK. Don’t worry." For a second, I feel I have a father again, a concept I wish I could hold on to.

First off, a great big, huge, gynormous, gigantic, colossal
THANK YOU!
for all your kind words, thoughts, and prayers. They have been more helpful and encouraging than I can say!

Sometimes I carry a blog post around in my head for too long.

Usually, it’s simply a matter of time that keeps it in my head, although sometimes it is an inability to get my thoughts into words, or it’s because I am afraid a post might offend or annoy someone. Whatever the reason, though, it starts out fresh and lovely and sparkly. But then as I think and think and think, my idea starts to bloat. And then it collapses under its own weight. Quite often, I let those posts just decompose in my brain. But I really  need to write this one, so that I can get to all those other thoughts—the fresh ones—before they, too, have been thought about too much.

At about 7:00 pm on Monday, the day my father-in-law Kent had his accident, I realized that I had to mow the lawn. Had Kendell been home, he would have reminded me of that far before it was nearly too late to start. But as I skipped mowing last week, and as the green waste guy comes bright and early on Tuesday morning, I didn’t really have a choice. So I dragged out the mower and got started. I finished the last half of the lawn in the dark, and my kids were starving; no one had finished their homework yet, and Kaleb desperately needed a bath. But I was grateful that I’d mowed, despite all the resulting dramas, because it gave me a chance to put the accident into perspective.

OSHA and the police department and other organizations are still investigating the explosion; no one is certain, yet, what happened at the dental lab. What we do know now: he lost part of his middle finger, most of his index, and all of his thumb. We are grateful he was wearing glasses, because his face, chest, and shoulders are covered with small wounds from shrapnel, and the lenses were damaged, too; losing fingers hardly compares to losing eyes.

Still, it seems pretty significant for a 75-year-old man to lose any part of his body. Really, it’s just odd: a little piece went on ahead of the rest of him. The ten or fifteen or even twenty years he has left here don’t seem long enough to adjust to that sort of loss. Before we knew the details, I kept thinking I hope the damage is on his left hand. Because, how do you write if your right fingers are gone? Just before I started mowing, Kendell called me to update me. He let me know it was the left hand (thank goodness) and told me that his dad wouldn’t take any pain meds (stubborn old farmer-stock of a guy). The hand surgeon, who had been working on someone else, was supposed to show up at any second. Eventually he did; they operated to clean up the amputation spots and did a skin graft to reconstruct as much of the middle finger as possible. The surgery went well and Kent is home again.

But as I mowed, I couldn’t stop thinking, letting my internal thoughts work until I felt more peaceful about the experience. Is it strange that my first thought was what if he can’t write anymore? I guess it is natural to try to put yourself into someone else’s shoes, and writing is something I hope I never can’t do. Suddenly—and throughout all the following days—I realized something. Perhaps it could be called "taking stuff for granted." I mean, really, how often do you think "I’m grateful to have all my fingers"? But I am. Because without fingers, I could hardly be myself. No writing, true. But also no quilting. No scrapbooking—definitely none of the highly-efficient mental therapy I find in hand-cutting letters or designs. No picking up a phone and dialing my sister to cry or complain or to tell her I found just what she needs for the quilt she’s working on. No digging in the dirt—no planting flowers or funneling out the deep roots of dandelions; life without fingers would be a lifetime bereft of dirt under my fingernails. Never helping Haley blow her hair dry, or putting on makeup, or scratching my own itches.

Never holding any of my kids’ hands again.

This holy-cow-I’m-grateful-for-fingers feeling made me think about the other things that make me me—every last one of them something I take for granted. Take running, for example. Do you know I’ve been running fairly consistently since the summer of 2000? But there are a ton of things that go into me being able to run. Running shoes, exercise clothes, my favorite Mizuno socks that keep my plantar muscles happy and my feet free of blisters. Healthy almost everything: heart, lungs, quads, glutes, triceps (you’d be surprised at how much running you do with your arms); strong bones, functional feet. Living somewhere I feel safe enough to run around without worrying that someone might bother me.

And that’s just one aspect of my personality. Everything that makes up who I am is a blessing. Mountains that made me a hiker, a past that made me into who I am now, the circuitous route I took to finding my camera and becoming a photographer of sorts. Children who made me a mother—children who made me a mother.

In the aftermath of Kent’s experiences, I have found within me a sense of wonder again. Everything, if you trace it back far enough, is a miracle. Nothing should be taken for granted. Every moment is precious. Who knows when the next unexpected detonation will take something important away? In this moment, though, nothing’s exploding. And I am savoring it.

My father-in-law was injured in an explosion this morning at his work. (He works at a dental lab.) The details are very sketchy so far, but we do know that he lost several fingers. He's in surgery as I write this, and Kendell and his mom and sisters are driving to the hospital right now. You can read a very few details here 

I am having many thoughts about this (especially how, oddly enough, I was speaking to a newly-wed coworker this morning about in-laws, and about how I have developed a true affection for mine over the years), but nothing that I can put into words yet, except for hoping that he will be OK.

As I was getting Kaleb down for his nap a few minutes ago, he said "Mom, I want to fold arms with Daddy for Grandpa." It took me a second to figure out that he meant he wanted to say a prayer for his grandpa. Of course, we prayed together immediately. Such a strange day.

This was going to be an entry about ah-ha moments. Like the one I had this morning when I was running; I realized that I was causing the persistent IT-band ache I’ve been having on my left knee, because for whatever reason I hold my left leg a little bit stiffly in my gait. I focused on stretching the leg out in the back half of my step, and the ache started to work its way out. Plus, I was able to run faster.

There was also the ah-ha moment I had this afternoon. Kendell is forever mentioning that I should keep the house cleaner because someone might stop by. I’ve never really bought into this reason for cleaning house as it is very, very rare that someone just "stops by" to see me. My friends are all busy with their own kids and complicated schedules; my sisters are either busy with school or too far away to show up without making a plan. My visiting teachers always make an appointment, and while there are random visits from neighbors (proffering zucchini or hand-me-downs, say, or borrowing sugar), they always happen at the front door, and at least my front room is clean about 97% of the time.

At any rate, my ah-ha was this: I might not have people just stop by to visit me, but Kendell does. Since his surgery, people from work, old friends, and neighbors show up at random times, just to see how he is doing. This reminds me of how different our personalities are when it comes to making friends. Kendell can find a new friend anywhere. One of our oldest friends is the guy he bought his Jetta from back in 1991. (He came to our wedding and everything.) It’s harder for me. This difference in personalities creates a difference in perspectives, and that was my ah-ha. Now I get why my lack of concern for a company-clean house bugs him! Because in his world there actually is company. Ah-ha!

This was what I was thinking about while I cleaned my kitchen this afternoon. Then the doorbell rang, and guess what? It was someone, just stopping by. More specifically, it was Jake’s cub scout master. (Well, it’s a woman; does that make her a cub scout mistress?) She has been working with Jake to help him get caught up on his Bear part of cub scouts (which he should have finished in January). She stopped by to tell me, though, that despite his recent flurry of activities, he couldn’t be awarded his Bear. The committee decided it was way too late.

It’s a little bit tempting to make excuses for this failure of mine. His Bear leaders were...well, just not very successful at leading the troop. (Read: nothing got accomplished all year.) Scouting feels a little bit foreign to me. I grew up with three sisters, remember? I haven’t quite caught the scouting vision. But really, it is no one’s fault but my own. This was something that Jake really wanted to do, something he could have done (we had everything finished, just not signed off), if I hadn’t simply dropped the ball. I just didn’t take the time to help him work on it.

I was certain that Jake would be upset about this, and I was right; he was heartbroken for about twenty minutes. Then he asked me "does this mean that I can’t get my Webelos, either? Or the Arrow of Light?" And when I assured him that it didn’t, and he could still accomplish those, he felt better. More determined, in fact, to do what needed to be done. I did, too.

But that is why I was in a bad mood, why I continue to feel grumpy. Because I know I can do better than this; I know I should be better. I’m left feeling so annoyed with myself. Am I really this mom, the ball-dropping mom? The one woman I know who can’t manage scouts? I wonder if there’s a belt loop or badge for "worst scouting mom." I have definitely earned that one.

I guess this post ended up being about ah-ha moments after all. As I think about this experience tonight, after I have calmed down a bit, I am sensing a subtle shift if myself. I can glance around and see the evidence of all the other things I have failed at doing. But, instead of being filled with that deadening sense of "so much failure, why bother to try?" that is my first response, I find a little bit of determination. Life, lately, has been teaching much about change, how it happens, how it doesn’t happen; how miring yourself in indecision is the worst possible response. To change requires more action, less thought. And that is my day’s last ah-ha: my failure at helping Jake get his Bear is also a new place to start from.

Three years ago today, he looked like this:

I confess: I miss those baby days with a soft and persistent ache that I don't think will ever go away. I loved having babies in my house, loved being able to scoop them up from where ever they were sleeping just to hold and cuddle and kiss. If I could always have a baby, I would.

Of course, they always grow up, and as I go through Kaleb's growing-up days---my life's last raising-a-little-one days, as Kaleb is almost certainly my last---I try to find ways to enjoy this day instead of being sad because yesterday is gone. So, here he is, headed off to preschool yesterday:

And I also have to confess: I love this stage, too. Love that he talks to me and tells me funny things, love the sound of his voice, love that he's taken to spontaneously telling me he loves me, 15 or 20 times a day, and you know, I never get tired of hearing it. He loves his new school shoes and his new backpack and going to school---such big things for my baby to love. But, he's still got his little side, too, like how he was in tears before we left for school the first day, because the pebble he put in the toilet actually vanishedwhen he flushed it (imagine that!), or how he still wants his juice in a sippy cup, still refuses to be separated from his white blankie.

I was talking to a neighbor the other day who also has a three-year-old. She was saying she couldn't bear the thought of sending her daughter to preschool, because then she would grow up too fast. I considered my own feelings---the feelings I have always had about preschool: while I don't really look forward to my kids growing up, I also tend to look forward to the day they start preschool. I look forward to watching Kaleb's mind develop, to seeing him take his first steps in his academic progress. I think it is good for them to start learning how to get along with others, how to listen to the teacher and to share. For Kaleb especially, who is in some aspects like a single child, I think it's especially important that he has time to be with kids his own age. And, I also have to confess: the four hours a week of solitude that preschool will give me? I won't complain about those.

And, you know, I can also confess this: he's off to preschool, starting to learn. And here I am, his thirty-something mother. You'd think after four kids, I'd feel like I'd experienced everything. But I don't. I'm still learning, too. And many of my lessons are coming from him.