Summer is Here

And WE, for one, haven’t waded in slowly!

Oh no. Somehow we have managed to cram nearly a whole summer’s worth of experience into six days. We’ve definitely come out swinging.

Pow! Time at the cabin and time eating shakes

Pow! Lot’s of time and lots of stuff and lots of kids in the car.

Pow! Time at the beach.


Pow! Castles made of weird mucky junk that isn’t really sand or mud.

Pow! Swimming lessons, and Visiting family graves, and going for ice cream with cousins, and time at Grandpa’s farm.

And . . . pow . . . ridiculously late bedtimes, and severe asthma attacks and multiple sleepless nights for Jesse and those of us who love him. Sigh.

Whew. And it isn’t even June. In fact we might have come out swinging with a bit too much exuberance. Let’s hope we don’t get knocked right out in round two.

Anywho, that’s all for now I suppose. I’d like to say I’m off to take a long nap, but there is a diaper that needs changing, a baseball game that needs attending, and a whole lot of mess that needs cleaning. (And nobody even mentioned dinner in there . . . and here we are at nearly 6:00 pm. Oh summer.)

Miscellaneous Thoughts Surrounding Baseball Pics

We went to another of Abe’s games the other night.

I really wish I had a good telephoto lens for capturing things like this. I have to crop most of my pictures so he isn’t a small dot of boy lost in baseball field.

There you go again – whining about wanting more expensive camera equipment.

Well sorry. It’s not a cheep hobby (oops . . . I mean cheap . . . Mike has pointed out to me before that the only cheep spelled like that is the cheep little chicks might make). Anyway, fine, sorry for whining. Maybe if I just had a ladder so I could be up above the chain-link line. It gets a little old taking every picture through chain-link.

You do have a ladder.

Yah, but it’s kind of wobbly and I feel nervous standing on it. Besides, think how silly I’d feel standing on a ladder in front of everyone at the game.

So you don’t really want a ladder.

No. No I don’t. . . . Maybe just a big hole in the fence . . . and a telephoto lens.

So we’re back to that are we? Huh. By the by, it’s kind of weird how you’re talking to yourself.

I’m just trying to . . . never mind. I don’t know what I am trying to do. But leave me be. I’ve already disclosed the fact that I have two-way and occasionally three-way conversations with myself.

Perhaps it would be best if we just got back to the game.

Yes. Perhaps it would.


(I think I might be becoming a bit OCDish. The other day I was looking at some wedding pics. All the bridesmaids had matching green dresses, but only one wore a leather belt with hers. As I looked through the pictures, I desperately wanted to have that belt gone – or duplicated on all the other dresses. And every time I look at the above photo, I imagine myself reaching in and placing Abe’s pal Jared’s red hat back on his head.)

The girls came with me to this game. They watched some, but, mostly, Daisy read while Goldie and Penny ran off and made little friends at the nearby park. I love how kids can just be like, “Hey, wanna play with me?” And suddenly they are pals. (Although, sadly, I have a distinct memory of being young and very much not daring to do that very thing. . . . I’m so brave these days compared to poor little-girl me.)

These pictures of Penny reminded me of something cute. The other day she brought home a paper from school for me. She’d drawn the two of us together on it and written: “What I like about mom is . . .” I forget what she liked about me, but I remember what she wrote next: “What I like about me is . . .” and then she wrote, “my beauty spot.” (Though I think beauty was spelled in some awesomely creative way). It reminded me of how my dad used to have us giggling and laughing as he’d say, “Do you know what I love the very most about you?” And he’d search behind our ears, on the insides of our arms, on our palms, etc. until he came upon one small line or freckle, “This,” he’d say, “This right here is what I love best about you.”

Alright. That’s all for now I suppose. Goodbye baseball game.

Jesse. Age 4.

The other day Jesse said, “Mom, I’ve been wondering about if you turn the air conditioner on or if it just comes on.”

Of course he’d been wondering about that.

Bless his wondering little heart.

Mike alternates between catering nicely to his son’s near maddening curiosities (letting him help fix broken sprinklers, change light bulbs and batteries; taking him to garage sales and the DI where he can purchase various gadgets to take apart and experiment with) and throwing up his hands in utter exhaustion and frustration over the sheer number of things Jesse has broken in our home. (Jesse’s desire to see inside of everything is near consuming. Messing with something to see how it works is one thing . . . but always there is the question remaining over just why it is working . . . and that is usually best answered with a screw driver and a lot of yanking and pulling to get past the superficially interesting outer layers.)


(trampoline and drill pics compliments of cousin Blaire)

But, I comfort Mike with assurances of all the fixing and helpfulness I see in Jesse’s future. Even now no toy or flashlight remains long in a useless dead-battery state (I swear I will let a toy sit for years before I will change the dead batteries in it – luckily now I merely have to hint to Jesse that something might be going a little slow and he’s unscrewing the little lid and replacing the batteries before my sentence is fully out) and he is often able to figure out how to fix, open or unjam some small thing that has me stumped.

Here he is showing sock monkey’s rather desperate condition to his aunt Leisa.

(monkey pics also courtesy of Blaire)

Jesse and Aunt Leisa are rather good pals. When Leisa is here, Jesse typically does not stop telling her important things for even a fraction of a second, and they occasionally head off – just the two of them – to do “projects” (fix broken toys, change bike tires, etc.)

And here is the GPS (Aunt Leisa bravely let him use) strapped to his “lawn mower” (yes, I know it isn’t a lawn mower, but Mike draws the line when it comes to some things – the lawn mower being one of them – so Jesse is occasionally forced to use his imagination).
(Heaven knows one doesn’t want to get lost while mowing – you could waste a lot of energy on the wrong lawn that way.)

I’m rather fond of the little stinker; even if he locked me out of the bathroom the other day as a punishment for my having taken too long to come help wipe him (it felt more like a reward of course, sadly, it didn’t last long as he soon realized that my “punishment” didn’t leave him in the very best of situations).


He often reminds me happily and confidently that he has a “special talent for figuring things out”. I worry a good deal about doing right by this little soul – giving him the right opportunities, channeling his abilities in directions where they will flourish and thrive and not be squelched. But, worry or not, I love how, more than maybe anyone else, he is teaching me that we humans are not all the same. We view, approach, and understand this world from rather vastly different angles. I am learning that while that truth is a bit frightening and frustrating, it is also amazingly beautiful.

(This picture makes me want to weep. Not because of the subject – though I love him madly – and not because the picture itself is, technically, anything special. It makes me weep simply because it is a picture my camera absolutely could not capture. It was quite dark in Jesse’s room when I peeked in to see if he was staying in his bed like he’d promised. My camera would have needed a flash or demanded such a slow shutter speed that Jesse would have been a blur of motion even with the slightest movement. It simply doesn’t have the ability to gather light that fast. I only caught it because I had stolen Blaire’s camera for the evening. Afterwards, I explained to Mike just why my precious (and well-loved) camera wasn’t quite up to snuff. “Oh, don’t worry,” he consoled me. “We’ll get you that camera someday.” Then, with a sly little smirk he added, “Abe doesn’t need braces.” Haha. Someday though!)

Prompt

Abe is prompt. He can’t bear arriving in an untimely manner and has been known to head off walking to church without us or biking to his grandparents’ house to be on time for a dinner that the rest of us will be late for.

And what could possibly make anyone feel emotional about that, I ask you?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Only, . . . the other day (when I saw him walking through the empty parking lot across the street from us – headed to his first baseball game of the season – water bottle held in his mitt, red cap on his head, socks pulled up tight to meet his baseball pants, and a good 15 minutes to spare before I guessed the coach or any of the other players might possibly be there) I got a little lump in my throat.

He seemed so small heading off in his determined and timely manner to meet whatever might be awaiting him (which . . . in this case . . . was . . . well . . . like I said: a pleasant little baseball game, but . . . you know . . . it might have been anything; anything in the whole world; and there he was – resolutely heading off to meet it . . . and with no intention of keeping it waiting either. Not for a second).

No need to rush, Abe. There’s still plenty of time. Plenty of time for everything. It’s OK if we keep some of it waiting a bit. . . . Isn’t it?



Mike took Daisy to a piano recital that night while I made my way over to the game with the younger kids. Goldie spent most of her time on the playground or scouting out various shady spots, but here are the little folks who, when they weren’t wailing in agony because I had failed to bring them water bottles when it was so hang-your-shoulders-and-moan-and-cry hot, were watching the game (and, in the case of Jesse, heckling the players a bit):

(I know, Anders. That was a shockingly close out. I really couldn’t believe it either.)

And then there’s this . . .

Yesterday I talked about the feelings of worthlessness that occasionally arise from . . . I don’t know . . . things they shouldn’t arise from; things that have no real import or lasting significance; things that should have no real bearing on our confidence.

As I wrote, it occurred to me that sometimes those feelings come from someplace much more troubling. Sometimes they genuinely come from knowing we’ve been weak or unfair. Sometimes they come when we haven’t been true to ourselves or our beliefs. Sometimes they come from failing where it does matter.

Once during college I found myself up in my little bedroom in the top corner of our house (the office across from our attic that my dear dad had temporarily given up so his demanding daughters wouldn’t have to share rooms with each other) crying and wretched. I had shown nothing but pettiness and given nothing but judgment to someone I loved – someone who deserved understanding and a listening ear; someone who deserved loyalty and support as opposed to holier-than-thou standoffishness. I was so disappointed in myself. I was so aware of how . . . terrible I was. I was so ashamed. Fixing it seemed impossible -- all full of my wrongness and burdened with pride as I was. This wasn’t like feeling worthless because you didn’t get a part in the school play or because you were having an acne breakout. This was feeling worthless because you were lacking in your very soul – in the very things that DID matter.

I couldn’t even pray really. I was too embarrassed. Still, in my misery, I think I looked up and muttered a small “help” through my tears (feeling certain I didn’t deserve any). I hesitantly reached for my scriptures and then boldly flipped them open. In that moment it was almost as if someone had rather forcefully (and perhaps with a bit of frustration over how easily I’d given up on myself) grabbed my shoulder, pointed their finger to a verse and demanded, “Here. READ THIS.” I read it and was so shocked that it may as well have slammed into my mind carried by a semi-truck. It came with such force that I literally gasped and slammed the book shut. After a few wide-eyed moments of thinking, “Did that really just happen?” I tentatively opened the book again and leafed through ‘til I found the spot again.

Ether 12:37
“…because thou hast seen thy weakness thou shalt be made strong…”

I occasionally hesitate in sharing things so intimately connected with my faith and beliefs – not wanting to alienate any of my friends who read here and don’t share my same beliefs. I hope though that that isn’t the case. I hope that the things I say make sense even if seen from a different place, even for my friends who place nature or intuition or something else unknown where I squarely place God.

Anyway, at that moment I began to understand something that I have continued to feel more and more certainly as time has gone on. It is simply this: feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness are never the feelings that come from God or any other place true and good.

I don’t mean to suggest that we should go about feeling no sorrow or awareness for wrongs we may have done or weaknesses we may need to change. I don’t mean that at all. It is just that I hear a lot of talk about organized religion and the guilt it seems to heap upon its followers, and I – who come from about as organized of a religion as I suppose there is – believe that is folly from man.

We certainly need to realize our wrongs. We may need a healthy dose of guilt or a bit of chastisement. And humbling ourselves before our Savior is paramount. But I have found, time and again, that when I involve God in my weaknesses, the feelings He gives me are never feelings of trapped worthlessness. They are always feelings of hope. I think it goes against everything He wants for us to stay smashed down when we aren’t strong. Our eternal selves – our value and potential are much too great.

The feelings I get from Him are the same feelings I got that night – not that my actions are all equally fine and good, but that, when they have been poor, I need to recognize that that is not who I want to be. Not who I am. He gives me hope that it is not where I somehow deserve to remain; certainty that I can improve and that I need not see myself as permanently tainted by my mistakes. We are human. We will make mistakes. Lots of them. But we also have the power to rise above them. If you believe in Christ at all, you must believe it is why he came – so that a full price was paid; so that we could keep rising – Phoenix like – from our places of darkness to something cleaner and brighter and better.

The failings I experienced on that night so many years ago? They are strengths now. Truly. I love to see that I am a wholly different person when it comes to those attributes. I think that it is rather easy to feel completely small and hardly worthwhile when we see our follies, but I also believe there is no good that comes in chaining ourselves to them or in falsely believing we have lost our value.

And because that was a LOT of words, let’s at least end with a small picture break.

And now, after all my philosophizing, I am off to plant flowers while the little fellow pictured above is safely napping in his crib.

The End

Worth

I felt several moments of consuming . . . worthlessness the other day. It washed over me like a wave of nausea – strong and painful, and, thankfully, fairly short lived.

I had been out running errands – wrestling with a vague unhappiness – when I forced myself to dig inward a bit and search out the root of my unsettled feelings. I’ve discovered that often, when I’m feeling agitated, if I pry about inside myself for a moment, I can actually pinpoint the cause of my distress. It’s generally surprising – sometimes as simple as something I had forgotten to do. What I found this time was utterly ridiculous. The things that were pulling me down to a sense of insignificance were so small and unimportant, so trivial, that I was a bit disgusted to find them residing inside of me – setting off feelings of discontent, spasms of uselessness.

A very serious and no nonsense side of me gave a stern lecture to the other moping and miserable side of me. She said all the sensible things about who I am and about what truly matters in an individual. She said how absolutely absurd it was to believe, even for a minute, that the things I was carrying on about had any bearing on my worth.

Still, I didn’t immediately believe. It was a sickness that couldn’t be eradicated that quickly.

I seem to be capable of many points of feeling and thought at once (perhaps I have several multiple personalities tucked nicely away inside of me) because during this little two-way conversation, I am quite sure a third me was busy analyzing it all – seeing how the sensible me was not getting through with all her reasoning to the abject me – and this third me was concerned by this for a very different reason. She was nervously thinking thoughts along the lines of, “Oh no! So good sense and showing someone truth doesn’t always immediately fix it? What about when my kids are feeling worthless because they didn’t get asked to the school dance, or failed a math exam? Are they not going to believe when I tell them what really matters?”

With that, the three of us merged slowly back into one. The fever broke. And I didn’t just see, but knew and felt things more clearly.

There are moments when some small failing, some desire be a certain thing, to have a certain skill, or be better than I currently am with a skill I do have, makes me feel utterly lacking in confidence – as if somehow all my worth hinges on . . . whatever it might be that day – how minimal my running has gotten due to injuries, how much better I would like my writing to be, etc.

But truly, I do know, once I come back around to it, what gives me confidence. I know how to bolster my feelings of worth. When I open myself up to increased compassion and understanding, when I try – truly try – to be patient with my kids, when I do kind and helpful things for others, when I study the scriptures and listen to the spirit, when I exercise faith amidst difficulty and, mostly, when I am constantly saying prayers of gratitude for the people and things I have in my life, my confidence soars. I seem to pull the veil of forgetfulness (that I believe covered our minds when we came to earth for this test of agency) slightly aside. I swear I get small glimpses – bits of remembrance that say, “Yes! This is who you are, Nancy! This is what you wanted! This is why you came! This is what you wanted to gain! These were the things you hoped to become.” I feel certain, in those moments, that who I am is not comprised solely of the traits I have been developing for 36 years of mortal existence. I feel confident that I am someone who was existing and learning and improving for years upon years before ever coming here. It gives me such hope to see small increases in kindness or wisdom – knowing that I fought for the chance to come here and develop those things; feeling certain that before I came here I wanted to develop these traits – understanding that some things could never reach their full potential in me were they not developed amidst the struggles of mortal life and a mortal mind and body.

I am sure I was excited to experience much that mortality has to offer – running and talent developing included – but it is in expanding who I am on a more spiritual level that I find worth. I sometimes think about Solomon – the Lord appearing to him in a vision and asking what he would like given to him. Of all the things he could have asked for, he asked for wisdom and an understanding heart. I love that that was his biggest desire, and, while my desires would be slightly different, I feel confident they are connected to the person I am on a more eternal scale.

I suppose I won’t always be able to toss out “worthless” or “inconsequential” with a word – particularly when helping my children, but I know ways of getting there. I know how much more satisfying and bolstering it is to feed the eternal you than to pander to whims or base your value on fading glories. That is what I will keep working on in myself, and that is what I will try and teach my children.

Someday

Someday I won’t look at the fridge door and wonder how on earth it became covered in small foot prints; I won’t find droplets of milk here and there on the tile where a small child walked carrying an upside down sippy-cup; and I won’t plan every single thing – doctor appointments, exercise, errands, yard work – based on what will be done with my kids.

Someday, I will throw away the cardboard rings from paper-towel rolls without a guilty pause – knowing that someone in my home always wants them to make telescopes. Someday I will drive past a large field and exclaim, “Look at all those cows!” – only to realize, sheepishly, that there is nobody sitting in the back seat desperately interested in a field of cows.

Someday.


But not today.

And not for a long while yet.

Mornings

This morning I woke before my alarm clock. Penny had come in our room (as she often does) – requesting a little bed on the floor next to us. I spread out a blanket and grabbed her a pillow, all the while keeping my eyes averted from the clock. It was light already. I knew I had little sleep time remaining, but I preferred ignorance and the chance it gave me to at least imagine up a lengthy block of sleep still ahead.

My imagination must be weak however because I stayed half awake for the remaining time – acutely aware of all the morning-is-here light streaming through the windows, and tensely waiting on the sound of my phone’s alarm.

Waking is always hard. The actual getting out of bed stiff and groggy and wrong.

But, once I am up and going the light seems happy, and I typically enjoy the newness of a day up and going: the first load of laundry swishing in the washing machine; bagels and Eggos popping up in the toaster; some sleepy-headed blondes stumbling confusedly to the couch where they wrap themselves in special blankets and put off the inevitable, while others move about with more bustling purpose – checking backpacks and pouring cereal, tying shoes and choosing jackets. I like little lunch boxes packed; and messy, tangled hair smoothed into braids and pony-tails; Abe pulling open the sliding back door – letting in a draft of cold morning air – to go feed the chickens; Daisy doing one of her timed reading minutes out loud while Goldie checks for mistakes; and carrying a tired, warm, little Anders down the stairs so he’ll have time for a diaper change and breakfast before we drive the kids to school.

We have a rhythm and routine about our weekday mornings that is predictable and somehow reassuring.

In a few small weeks, that routine will change quite drastically with the onset of summer. Kids will wake at different times. There will be no rush about getting ready – mismatched outfits will be chosen late in the day and hair will be brushed even later . . . if at all. I will wake slowly and easily to the sounds of kids whisper-fighting over who should choose the day’s cartoon. It will become its own routine with its own very different rhythm; one that will leave us wondering how we were ready and out the door at such an early hour only a month before.

I don’t know which is better. And, I don’t even know why I’m writing this particularly. I suppose the usual reasons for me writing any thing here – to freeze things; to put them down where they can be picked apart and looked at from someplace outside of myself.

And, here it is, all laid out on paper and wondering what is to be done with itself now. It’s kind of nice, really -- just writing something with out having to take it anywhere or bring it around to some ultimate truth or final conclusion.

Farewell little post about mornings. Just stay safely here. We might not have made much of you, but you will be appreciated upon later reads all the same.