In any case, not all of it would make clear sense here so how much I use my letters as a blog/journal update will likely morph. It may become just bits and pieces, it may be that I'll just start adding them here without concern for the details making sense, or it may be I will find that this isn't really a place for me to keep them at all.
But, for now, a few small snippets taken from various letters that give a small glimpse into . . . what? I don't know . . . his being gone around our house maybe.
Excerpts from letters to Abe:
I’ve heard some moms say they were so sad once their son was gone that they couldn’t even go in their room. But I just open the door and stand there looking in at your room for a minute about every time I pass it (usually after coming out from putting Hansie to bed in his room). I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Or even what I’m thinking. Nothing exactly I suppose. I just stand there and look. Noticing your posters and how clean you left it and just feeling kind of strange.
But speaking of your room. Everyone has been protective of your space. I asked dad if we should get rid of that chair in there and he seemed to think I’d lost my mind. Haha. Also, we plan on setting up Starling’s crib in there until you get back, so I suggested we box up your big shelf stuff and put her crib against that wall. Daisy was aghast and said we should just put Starling’s crib in the middle of your room and leave everything as it is. I think we’ve determined we will just shut your closet doors and put her crib against your closet.
Anyway, it’s interesting to me to think of the contrast in our letters right now. Your job being to fill us in on all the the new and wild and unknown. And my job to update you on all the small and ordinary and familiar. (Although I suppose there’s always the chance that something big or new will happen around here. I guess we will see what two years brings. Hopefully no new broken femurs.) But! I like keeping you updated and a part of all of regular life around here. It makes me feel like I’m keeping you connected to us no matter how far away or how different life might get for you.
We haven’t set Starling’s crib up next to your closet yet, but I set her little bed thing on top of your bed to give her a nap yesterday. It was the first time I’d put her in your room, so as I slowly cracked the door open when I went to check on her later, I suddenly slipped back in time and, for a second, I truly half expected you to leap up out of bed in a blurry, panicked confusion of, “What? Who? I’m up! I’m up! I’m ready!” just like you used to every time I opened that door when you were asleep — no matter how unalarmingly I tried to wake you.
That's often what it's like missing you here though. We miss you in very big ways of course -- feeling a hole in our family, praying and worrying if you are happy and well, etc. But we most often miss you in a million small and unexpected ways -- like when someone opens the front door and for a minute our brains forget you're gone and we think it's you, or like the other night when dad suggested watching Paul Blart: Mall Cop (hahaha) and none of us displayed proper interest and he was sure you would have been on board, or when Anders pulled some of those Jimmy Dean sausage biscuit things out of the freezer yesterday and then grumbled, "Oh great. Who will show me how to make these now?" (And also, if we’re honest, pretty much every time we are trying to lift things or load things. Dad had to make Daisy come with him to get a bunch of dirt for that hole where the basketball standard was. And he had to have Penny help him hang the kayaks in the garage after the priest’s river activity last week. I’m sure it’s building character in all of them. But heaven knows how we’ll manage to get ready for the camping trip dad has planned for August without you here :).)
ANYWAY, all that “missing you” business might give you some slight idea of how anxiously we wait for Saturday's letters and pictures (and a thousand thousand bravos to you for passing your camera off and getting yourself in pics with the people and things you are around like I wanted you to). We were pretty relieved and happy after your first letter . . . that lasted for a day or two . . . and then we began to feel slightly uncomfortable again, and then, by Thursday we were counting down the hours 'til Saturday when we would hear something from you again!
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So the other day, when we'd all made birthday signs for Summer, Daisy was complaining that she didn't have kind of a go-to style for drawing people. And then we said something like, "Yah. Like Abe's stick people. I hope he doesn't lose his marvelous stick-people drawing skills on his mission. We are going to have to tell him to keep those up." And then, lo and behold, your stick people are featured in an email a few days later! I hope they will continue to occasionally show up in emails through out your mission. :)
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This morning before dad left for work, one of the kids said the morning prayer. They prayed for you. But afterwards dad was telling us how he seemed to vaguely remember that when he was little if they forgot to pray for a sibling on a mission then grandma Harris made them re do the prayer. Haha. Maybe we will start that too. But for now you don’t have to worry about that happening! You are on our minds always. I read a scripture today from Mormon to his son Moroni that pretty much summed things up for our thoughts and prayers for you.
Moroni 8:3 I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, through his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end.
I know God hears my prayers for you.
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I was writing in that little five-year journal I have on Saturday and noticed that on that same day, a year ago, you were just returning from King’s Peak. It’s interesting having that journal because every evening when I write in it, I can see exactly what was going on on the same day a year ago or two years ago. It seems extra . . . I don’t know the word exactly . . . but the entries with you in them just jump out at me a lot more because it’s so strange to think that two years ago just last week, you were picking up your new bike rack and, on your own for the first time, driving you and Noah up over the pass for practice. Or that it was almost exactly a year ago that you played pickle ball in the blazing afternoon heat with friends and later went to watch some Jimmer Fridette basketball game at one of their houses. And all that time we hadn’t the slightest clue that you would be in the MTC — preparing to go to El Salvador — on that very day in another two years or another year. I imagine it will get even more strange for me as school starts and I read through things over this coming year — things like you going to dances or being at a track meet etc. and to think what a crazy difference a year can make! And it will be just as fascinating NEXT year — when you are an old pro at mission life — to read about dropping you off at the MTC, etc. It’s always so crazy to me that God sees what’s in store for us, but we just have to watch it unfold never knowing how many big things might come into our life in just one year’s time.
Anyway, moving on. Summer and Mette had the tape measure out last night. They kept pulling it out as far as they could and pointing it upwards in an effort to guess how tall you’d be when you get home. If their predictions are correct, it looks like you’ll grow about two feet on your mission.
I’m in your room a lot these days — putting Starling to bed, etc. I always really like being in there. I was looking around at it the other morning as I got her out of her crib — just noticing all your posters, etc. and thinking how peaceful it feels in your room. I was thinking it was because it is so CLEAN now (what with you having boxed so much up and cleaned your dressers, etc.) but then I realized it was more than that. There’s just a good feeling in that room. It’s as if all your years of reading scriptures out loud over the phone with grandpa in there and studying them on your own and praying have somehow allowed just a goodness and light to soak into the walls themselves.
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