Memorial Day

Memorial Day this year struck me very forcefully with one of those "this time a year ago" feelings. Because it was on Memorial Day -- just last year -- that Mike sent me off (with flowers in a root beer can) to visit my dad's grave all alone . . . at the same time that I was only just experiencing the overwhelming feelings that God was showing me something -- an opportunity -- concerning another child. And I did not feel I could do it. 

I could not make a decision because I was terrified to say yes to trying for another baby when all sense warred against it. But terrified to not do something God might be asking of me (or even offering me). But at the end of three weeks of prayers and fasting and so much opposition, turmoil, and fear, I finally asked myself to conscientiously pick out which times I had felt peace and not fear since the impression had come . . . and to see what course of action was suggested by those feelings. There were three very specific times when I knew I'd felt completely calm and peaceful . . . and each of those times, I had to admit, had been associated with the feeling that I could do this. I could have this child. I wanted this child -- whoever it was. 

One of those moments of peace, amidst the tears and uncertainty and overwhelming realities of my life's demands at that time, came at the cemetery on Memorial Day last year as I sat at my dad's grave and then made my way over to my grandparents' (the ones I'd never known in mortality -- the same ones who had been, in life, a bit concerned over my parents' choice to have so many children) and felt this tremendous feeling of just love and support and confidence from all of them. They were all behind me. And rooting for me. And proud of me. I felt as if they, now seeing things I could not, were lovingly encouraging me and telling me I could do this. 

And now . . . a year later . . . I have! 

I have not only made the choice, but actually already carried and given birth to the very child God was offering me. And praise be to my Heavenly Father and all the angels who encouraged it! And what miraculous things can occur in just a short year's time in this already short mortal life!

But! Back to this Memorial Day. The kids and I all met my mom at the Ogden cemetery where several of my ancestors are buried (I wish more were! As it is in visiting these graves growing up that I have become more familiar with these ancestors than the rest). Anyway, it's always a little wild with all the younger kids trying to climb on stones or run off. But I love this tradition and am glad it worked this year. As usual we got ice-cream at Farrs after (which was the main reason I loved the tradition when I was little). Here are pictures from the day, but first the small snippet I wrote about it on Instagram:

At the graves with my mom. Calling back wandering toddlers. Telling them to put flowers back on the strangers' stones they just took them from. Looking at old black and white photos. Listening to the stories of these people -- family -- who died generations before I came. (Edward Allison alone in the pest house with smallpox. Great grandma Effie hiding in the back of the wagon transporting her newly-married sister and brother-in-law to their honeymoon destination. Thomas Wallace in the Scottish orphanage. And . . . if Joe Wallace's football team lost a player . . . him making sure the other team lost one as well.) Also, just realizing that Starling and I are both tenth children and both share parts of great great grandma Eliza Allison's name in our own (which, I think, more than deserved the only iris that bloomed in our yard this year.)

This last picture was from a day or two after taking the kids to the Ogden Cemetery with my mom. We went on Sunday afternoon to the cemetery where my dad and his parents are buried and lo and behold my brother John and some of his family and my sister Kathy and some of her family all happened to show up at the same time. It was fun to have John and Kathy tell my kids memories of my Allred grandparents since I never knew them. 

Abe's Graduation and Some Sentimental Bits of Writing on My Oldest and Youngest

Abe graduated early last week. He was the 2019 Salutatorian. Not a bad achievement for a graduating class of close to 550. (Though, in truth, he was quite disappointed to not have been selected the Valedictorian. And I think he was truly as deserving.) But! the vice principal gave him a rousing introduction that caused quite a few exclamations and oohs and ahhs at the graduation ceremony and it was a happy thing hearing him recognized for all his drive and discipline (and fun for him to receive all the congratulations that followed).

We failed to get many pictures of him at graduation. We were running behind getting there, they turned their robes in right after getting their diplomas, it was crowded inside and raining outside after, Abe was exhausted from a very long day, and we were trying to get home to celebrate Penny's birthday; . . . so we only got a few from far away at the ceremony, a quick shot after with us, one with his grandparents, and one of him with his twin pals the Hurds (who happened to cross our path on our way to the car). I also made everyone run out when we got home for a fast picture with his siblings.

Daisy is on the jumbo tron in the picture above. The school choir sang at graduation. So she was at graduation with us . . . just not with us. (And Goldie was home tending all the other kids [minus Starling who we brought with us] and trying to make the day feel special for Penny while we were gone!)

Our oldest and youngest. And the two causing so much of the wild and contrasting change in our family right now.

This last picture was from seminary graduation a few days earlier. Our bishop and the eight graduates from our ward.

But we did decide, at the eleventh hour, to take a few senior pictures for a graduation announcement to send out to family (and for Abe to give to friends). We took them all -- clothing changes included -- in half an hour; and my sister Amy kindly made them into a card and even got them printed for us, so it wasn't too big of an added stress. And I'm glad to have these pictures of him.

In any case, life is pushing and shoving us towards and through so many endings and so many beginnings on both sides of our family all at once right now that I can hardly make sense of any of it. Most of the time everything I can't process in my mind just ends up sitting in my stomach like a big heavy stone.

Abe is in Moab right now with his two closest friends for a little senior mountain biking trip. He's taking typhoid pills. We just ordered his "10-12 white shirts". He and Mike stopped at a little El Salvadorian place in Logan a few days ago and brought home pupusas. Meanwhile this baby girl Starling of ours is shifting into bigger clothes, beginning to find a schedule and even batting awkwardly and dearly at her little mobile.

And I am growing unquestionably sentimental. No doubt my writings in upcoming days and weeks will reflect it. Just as they have in these two recent offerings:

On Starling:

You won't remember this of course, my little tenth child, but once, you were very very small. And often I held you in my arms for what seemed entire days. (It won't occur to you to wonder how that was possible when I was still making dinner and folding laundry and mothering nine others. But never mind. It wasn't possible. And yet it was so.) I held you and held you. And always the small debate over whether to keep you unswaddled (so your small arms and legs could mold perfectly around me), or swaddle you (so there might be some chance of you staying asleep when I set you down). As I held you, I walked and rocked and soothed, and sometimes wiped counters, and got kids cups of water, and put away clutter (and even vacuumed). And I called you "baby girl" and "my little bird", "littlest baby star" and "my sweet sweet girl"; and I repeated "I love you" so often that I wondered how you'd ever learn any words other than just those three. And I watched your eyes as they dropped half closed then shut all the way then opened wide and fluttered shut again. And sometimes, no matter how tired you were, they wouldn't shut at all (and do you know that babies rarely blink?). I'd stare at you and watch those eyes with irises that seemed to take up the entirety, and I'd wait for you to blink, but you wouldn't. You'd just gaze steadfastly back -- all full of some impossible certainty. And often, the words "I love you", no matter how frequently I felt compelled to exclaim them, couldn't possibly contain all the power and beauty and strength of what I felt for you and so they'd come tumbling out all overflowing with my own tears.

And on Abe: 

And, as we speak, Abe is cleaning out his big, blue backpack. The table is strewn with pencils, and notebooks, his TI calculator and Macbeth. He's emptying binders and sticking them in the cupboard by the kids' coloring books; he's laughing with Daisy over how great his The Scarlet Letter book looks with all the drawings he doodled around each chapter heading; and he has just weighed the stack of used paper from all his binders. (5 1/2 pounds!) And I recognize it's just a backpack. And these things are mostly just bits and pieces -- paraphernalia -- from his senior year. But it feels like there is an elevator just under my ribcage. It's slowly moving. Compacting everything inside of me into one tight mass in my chest. And I'm not quite sure what to do with it or why it's so heavy -- this sudden, fairly simple truth that Abe is done sitting in the chair at the end of the right side of our kitchen table -- with books and binders spread out in front of him, a pencil behind his ear, and that completely-full, blue backpack sitting next to him. 

Although, technically, Jesse is sitting in Abe's official homework spot for a minute in this picture. :) 

Anyway, enough for now. Amidst the stone in my stomach and elevator moving up in my chest feelings I am offering prayers of thanks in acknowledgement that it is a blessing to live these particular mortal experiences and become familiar with the complicated emotions associated with them. The end.