Last night, one of our neighborhood boys knocked on our door and asked Kendell if he'd pay him to mow our lawn. Kendell was, of course, kind in his rejection of this idea, but I could hear the humor in his voice...why would he pay someone to mow the lawn when his wife adores doing it anyway? Yep, that's right: I'm a lawn-mowing addict. Kendell told the neighborhood boy that I do it for the exercise. This is sort of correct. I do like the extra calories burned on lawn-mowing days (according to this nifty calorie calculator, I burn about 420 calories mowing my lawn). But it's much more than the exercise that makes me love this necessary task.

When I was growing up, I adored flowers. For me, happiness was the hours I spent wandering around the edges of the cornfield behind our house, gazing at morning glories or sunflowers. My grandpa Fuzz was a master flower gardener, and I still very vividly remember watching him pull weeds and deadhead rosebushes in the flowerbeds outside of the apartment where they lived. During the summer I'd walk around our backyard, just looking at flowers. It's hard to translate into my adult mindset the way that flowers moved me as a child. They were magic to me, little scraps of enchantment given flesh and scent.

But for all that flower adoration, I never planted anything, not a seed, not a petunia pushed from a pony pack, not even a bulb. Honestly, I don't think I ever even considered it. Planting the flowers, watering the trees, mowing the lawn: that was work my dad did. I imagine that as the father of four girls, getting outside to mow the lawn was something of an escape for him! He created a backyard that is still full of flowers, trees, and attention-grabbing visuals (like a few antique wagon wheels). A backyard that I loved, but a backyard that was always his.

So, the second Kendell and I decided to build a house, I started planning the flower beds. I knew exactly what I wanted to start with, the Amy Sorensen Garden Requirements (which began with daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips because I love them; sweet William because they remind me of my grandpa Fuzz, petunias, pansies, and violets for Grandma Florence, periwinkle for Grandma Elsie, and iris because in my mind they're the most elegant flower in existence, but which evolved to include plants like foxgloves, hostas, and columbine). Finally I had a little garden spot to make my own. (Stop thinking about Mary in The Secret Garden because honestly, it's hard to be an adult woman who relates so whole-heartedly to a made-up girl in a child's book!)

Gardening really is one of my happiest things. Even if I'm only weeding, being outside surrounded by flowers that I bought, planted, watered, protected, pruned, debugged, admired, and photographed just makes me happy. And mowing the lawn? It's an escape for me, too. It's an hour and a half a week of time just to think. The roar of the mower makes a path my mind wanders down, new thoughts and ideas springing up around unexpected bends. Plus, mowing gives me the chance to visit all my flowers---to notice which daffodils and tulips need to be clipped back, how close the lilac bush is to blooming, that the rosebushes already need to be sprayed for aphids.

I think it bothers some of the women on my street, my lawn-mowing addiction. Several neighborhood husbands have made jokes alluding to their desire to have a lawn-mowing wife. What they don't know is that mowing the lawn isn't, for me, just another household chore. I feel lucky I get to mow; it's a guaranteed pocket of time, every week, just for me. Being a lawn-mowing wife means that weekly I get to find my own internal silence and to be reminded just how much I love this good green earth. I nearly feel guilty for loving it so much. It's definitely one of my life's pleasures.

I have this idea about love stories, and about how the idea of love is presented in movies. I think the reason women love chick flicks is because we also love the feeling of first being in love. Now, it's been a long time for me since I felt that, considering I've been married for 14 years. But I'll readily confess to missing the feeling of falling in love. That feeling at the beginning of a relationship, when everything is new, still to be uncovered. When everything is mysterious because the details of the other person are unknown, as are the unlovely habits or traits he might have, like, say, snoring louder than a lawn mower or an unfortunate tendency for scab-picking. The Romeo/Juliet syndrome, I call this: the absolute, powerful draw of first being in love. After all, Juliet got her perfect first-love love affair, but she never had to wash Romeo's socks, did she? When we watch chick flicks, we remember how that felt. And we---ok, well, me---might just think...umm, wait a minute. Where'd that feeling go? Maybe there's something wrong with my relationship because I don't feel like that anymore.

So, when I started reading this book that my sister Becky recommended, and the first chapter was full of references to old romantic movies I'd never seen before, I admit I felt a bit leery. Oh, jeez, Beck, I thought through the first chapter, I don't need read about the Romeo/Juliet syndrome, too. But luckily I'm a reader who believes in reading past the first chapter, even if the first chapter doesn't grab me. Because I count myself lucky for having read Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos.

The story is something like this: Cornelia might fall in love with the just-off-a-movie-set man, Martin, who walks in to the coffee shop where she works. And Claire, who is eleven and whose mom has a mental breakdown and abandons her, might just need someone to help her. Maybe Claire is really who Cornelia needs. The story comes from two different perspectives, Cornelia (in first) and Claire (in third), so by the time you've finished the book, you see most of the major characters in a sort of stereo light, Claire's perspective and Cornelia's. The story itself---what happens to Claire, what happens to Cornelia---is never boring. The language---the way the words are strung together---is lovely, both sad and funny, and Cornelia's voice is authentic. I mean, listen:

Which is how I ended up in the Twilight Zone---i.e., cooking Christmas dinner in my possibly-soon-to-be-ex possibly-not-boyfriend's missing ex-wife's Main Line restaurant-caliber kitchen with my brother-in-law---God bless him---while my boyfriend (my would-be fiance, actually, although I was quite sure he would not be) and his all-but-estranged and until recently, to my knowledge, nonexistent daughter redecorated my Christmas tree in the right-out-of-The Philadelphia Story missing ex-wife's Main Line living room.

Who couldn't love a book with that sentence in it? But what really pulls this book, what made me feel lucky to read it, was the ideas it presents. It's a book that is "about" friendship, motherhood, finding identity, and love. Cornelia's initial need to find a romance that would fit into an old-fashioned romantic movie underlines, as her needs change to fit her reality, the idea that perfect, movie-style love doesn't exist. As in

We went back to bed. Martin held me. He slept. He was the kind of sleeper you knew he would be: serene, dignified, no snoring, no talking, his profile casting its elegant shadow on the wall, the bed, the woman in his arms. I was the woman in his arms, and all night long I didn't sleep a wink.

Kudos to Becky for recommending this book (she loaned me her library copy, by the way, and continued to renew it for me, and if risking a library fine isn't sisterly love than I don't know what is). Kudos to Marisa de los Santos for writing it. Because it did something for me I didn't know I needed to have done. It reminded me that true love isn't the Romeo/Juliet syndrome. True love is listening to the snoring, ignoring elbow scabs, picking up, washing, drying, sorting, and putting away the socks. It's seeing beyond the mystery, getting past what is new, and loving anyway. "You might think that real life means going after what you want and getting it," Cornelia says. But she figures out that "knowing what you love and why is as real as it gets." Sometimes (or maybe even always) coming to know what---or who---you love is a complicated, messy, embarrassing experience. It's not neatly packaged like a Hollywood movie. It's not thrilling and heart-pounding and it doesn't make your teeth hurt in that good way that the first-being-in-love feeling does. It's hard. But it is the point.

And it's why I'd recommend this book to just about anyone.

Today was the funeral for the little girl I wrote about in my last blog entry. I went to the funeral with Haley, Kendell, and Kaleb (who was supposed to be sleeping peacefully at home with a babysitter but who refused to shut his eyes), and I came completely prepared to cry. And I did. I cried when I saw Chase's mom, who was wearing pink---her daughter's favorite color---instead of the expected black. I cried at the display table they had set out, covered with school projects, photographs, favorite objects, even last year's letter to Santa. I cried when each of Chase's grandparents got up to speak about their granddaughter. I cried when her parents also talked about her; they were so composed that they were even able to laugh as they spoke with joy about their daughter.

But as I cried, off and on through this pink-and-black funeral, I tried to figure out just why it was that I was crying. I knew Chase from church activities and from seeing her playing on our street, but wasn't very close to her. I wondered---why was it so important to me that I attend this funeral? Partly it was because I felt very strongly that a large attendance would speak to this family, would be a visual message that said we are all mourning for you, as if the black-clad shoulders were stepping stones that could carry them across the turbulence of their grief. Partly, I think I wanted so strongly to go because I don't want it to be me having to experience such a thing. Maybe, my subconscious might have said, maybe if you witness someone else experiencing it, you will never have to experience it yourself. It makes me squirm to write that down, like a confession, but I needed to write it. I do think the part who wanted to mourn for that family was stronger. Because a scripture kept running through my mind, over and over.

This scripture comes from the Book of Mormon. As LDS people, we believe that when we are baptized, one of the things that we promise to do is to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort. So as I cried, I tried to offer up my tears as a source of comfort to them. I laughed when they laughed so that one more voice could appreciate what they loved about their daughter and in that sound make her somehow be more remembered. Even my squirmy, honest self-insight I added as extra strength to the stepping stones of mourners' shoulders. But what really made me cry, perhaps because it felt both like a way to give comfort and as a way to receive it, was the song the congregation sang together. It wasn't so much the song (although I'll include the lyrics below). Instead, it was simply the sound of the voices raised together. The sound surrounded all the stepping stone shoulders in a pink mist, and for the minutes of the song, there was nothing but peace and joy in that room. And I felt that the mourning with those who mourn was done both for the family who lost their daughter and for myself. It brought me, for a few moments, to an absolute, rosy stillness within myself. So when I cried, during the song (singing anyway, my voice harsh), I continued to mourn with them---but I also cried with the goodness of that stillness.

I Know Heavenly Father Loves Me

Whenever I hear the song of a bird or look at the blue, blue sky. Whenever I feel the rain on my face or the wind as it rushes by. Whenever I touch a velvet rose or walk by a lilac tree, I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world Heavenly Father created for me.

He gave me my eyes that I might see the color of butterfly wings. He gave me my ears that I might hear the magical sounds of things. He gave me my life, my mind, my heart, I'll thank him reverently for all his creations of which I'm a part, yes I know Heavenly Father loves me.

Last week, a ten-year-old girl in our neighborhood was hit by a car while crossing a busy street. She was a friend of Haley's---someone she played with once in awhile but knew well enough to feel very sad at the news. Me, I'm haunted by it. I can't stop thinking about the dead girl's mother. How do you pick up the pieces after something like that? How do you cope with the day-to-day events when everything would remind you of what you lost? How, for example, does she face doing laundry, washing for the last time the clothes that not so very long ago dressed that body? Or the weekly routine of carpools with, suddenly, not enough places to go?

So, this Easter Sunday, as I prepared our holiday meal (chicken, cheese potatoes, berry jello, Caesar salad, hot biscuits with strawberry jam, and a Mary Ann cake), as I taught a lesson in church, as I watched my kidlets dig through Easter baskets or race through the grass in search of candy-filled eggs, I felt especially grateful. I am reminded---every single day matters. Every one. I made an extra effort to really appreciate my kids, to feel Nathan's fierce, muscly little body gripped around my legs in one of his famous hugs, to savor Jakey's cheek against mine when he told me thank you for dinner, to watch Haley's gorgeous hair twinkle in the last of the sunlight, to catch the whisper of Kaleb's breath against my neck when he slept there. Life is so precious.

Yesterday, my sister Becky sent me an email with this article in it. The article is from Runner's World magazine and is written by Kristen Armstrong, who is the ex-wife of Lance Armstrong. Becky is like me: totally into the running experience. Unlike me, she's successfully run an entire marathon (go little sis!). Also like me, she appreciates something that's well-written. By the end of the article, I had tears rolling down my face---read the article to find out why. It's not very long. But it's good.

Anyway. I keep thinking of this line from the essay: "A true self has to be inhabited, not coerced." I can't get that thought out of my head. I guess it's natural to wonder "who am I?" To wonder if the self I have created is an authentic one, or if it is crafted by expectations---mine, my family's, society's. I do think I have a tendency to try to coerce my true self. Come on, I whisper to her, you're really THIS type of person. The this can be anything---a better mom, a real writer, a successful teacher, a creative person. Those are things I want to be. But are they the things I really am?  A true self has to be inhabited. I want to remember this. I want to remember that I am the person I am, and that coercion shouldn't play a part in discovering it. Acceptance,however, does.

Thanks, Beck!

Sometimes I think I'm the most unproductive mom in the world. Take yesterday, for example. After getting the big kids off to school and Kaleb down for a nap, I took a nap rather than folding laundry. After my little sleep, I got Nathan off to his kindergarten play date. Rather than clean the kitchen, I worked on an essay I am trying to write. Then, when Kaleb woke up, I played with him rather than cleaning the bathrooms. Next, I took a long shower instead of going to the gym. I did make it to the school on time to be the Official Yo Yo Salesperson for the day (don't ask). I did make it to the grocery store and to Haley's soccer game. But---I really didn't get anything done yesterday.

Days like yesterday make me feel guilty because I promised myself, back when I was feeling overworked and anxious as a teacher, that if I ever got to stay home again, I'd do it right. There would never be squabbles between my husband and me because I didn't manage to get the house clean on any given day. There'd be home-cooked meals every night and far less eating at Taco Bell. The reality, though, is that occasionally I really am a lazy woman. My ideal stay-at-home-mom vision is very often clouded by my little failures.

But maybe that's a good thing. Because this morning, I woke up full of energy. I made banana pancakes with strawberry sauce for breakfast and I've already got the kitchen nearly clean. After I finish this blog entry, I'm going to fold that pesky laundry. The gym will definitely receive a visit from me today. And Kendell won't be annoyed when he gets home. But the best thing, really, was this morning. I'd never made these pancakes and the kids thought they were fabulous. The kitchen was fragrant with the scent of strawberries, lemon, banana, vanilla, and the house was warm against the onslaught of wind from yet another spring storm. My kidlets were happy and went to school with a smile on their faces. And that makes for a great morning!

Banana Pancakes

• 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 T baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 very ripe bananas
• 1/2 cup oil
• 2 cups milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla

Mix flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt together. In a separate bowl, mash banana. Beat eggs lightly; add oil, milk, eggs, and vanilla to the bananas. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir till blended. Cook on a hot griddle; serve with strawberry sauce.