Let Sunday Go

Well, it's 11:19 on a Sunday night, and about 45 minutes ago, I sent an e-mail to Mama telling her that I was going to bed. Such is the self-deception of the night before Monday (though wouldn't it be wonderful if I could somehow hear her voice echoing down the basement stairs, saying, "Sweetie! Time to turn the light off!"). Sunday is almost always the night on which I stay up the latest. I'm waiting for the weekly harvest of family letters, which is a high point in my week and definitely worth waiting up for. So far, Mama, Benjamin, and Rachel have submitted their offerings, along with Dave's parents, as they so faithfully do every week. Daddy's will be coming along soon enough, I'm sure. Rosalynde wrote last week, and she's much more considerate than I am about the degree to which she'll make her siblings and parents read minute accounts of everything that happened in her kids' lives, so I don't expect to hear from her this week. If I'm lucky, Abraham will send a brief epistle which will capture the matter-of-factness, modesty, and goodness of this brother of mine (though he, too, sent a letter just three weeks ago, and he averages once a semester these days). Gabrielle updated her blog last week, and probably will this week, so she's not necessarily tied to the Sunday night filing deadline. I get my Christian-fix from Facebook and on the phone (time for another conversation, Christian!), though I'm not above placing a little guilt trip in his path to get an honest-to-goodness letter every now and then. Christine will often write for her and Brigham, so maybe something from her will appear in my inbox, and send me back to my perennial schemings about how to fit in a trip to Utah over the summer. And, of course, we'll hear from Eva tomorrow, on her P-day in Russia. So within 24 hours, I will again feel connected to this family of origin of mine, and I'll have some wind beneath my wings for the week to come. I'll resolve to work a little harder, like Mama and Daddy and Benjamin. I'll resolve to have more intelligent conversations, like Rachel. I'll resolve to take pictures and post them to my blog, so Gabrielle can see how desperately I need her to take pictures of my family again, since I'm bungling the job famously. (Boston! Less than a month! Pictures of me and Joshey!) And then I'll take a deep breath, and I'll plunge into the week. I think that I let Sundays go with the same reluctance that I leave my parents and my siblings at the end of every family reunion. I know I'll see you again. I know life wouldn't work if it were a non-stop family reunion (or a non-stop Sabbath). But still.

It's 11:41 now. Time to let Sunday go. It will come again next week.

My Book of Life

I've been turning over a pet project in my mind for the past year or so. I would love to chronicle some of the people who have entered into my book of life because of the way their lives have touched mine. My life is abundant with riches and treasures, both tangible and intangible, and all of these treasures, every single one, is a gift from someone. A project of this sort would require some diligence and staying power, and I'm still mastering that skill (though, for the record, I'd like it known that I am unfailingly diligent in the brushing of my teeth and the application of mascara every morning. If only I could be so diligent about saying my morning prayers and reading scriptures!). But Valentine's Week seems a good time to start, even if that start will prove to be inconsistent and fitful. And the first entry in my book of life, of course, belongs to my mother.

I've been telling the story of my mother for my whole life. How she was raised on an Indian reservation (she used to do presentations in my elementary school classrooms wearing her Navajo dress and bringing her papoose carrier and fry bread. No, she's not actually Native American, though you might think that, given her black hair and high cheekbones. My grandpa was a range conservationist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so they moved around from reservation to reservation). How she met my dad in the Honors Reading Room at BYU, and she was everything that he had hoped for in a wife--smart, pretty, musical, hard-working, and a committed disciple to Jesus Christ. How every employer or professor she ever had wanted her to stay on with them and take over their work when they were done. How she bore and raised eleven children instead of running large companies or teaching at universities (though she actually does teach at universities now, as a religious teacher). How she bore and raised these eleven children in expensive Southern California in a one-income family. My mother managed to pay for private piano lessons and instrument lessons for all of us--that's about 100 cumulative years of paying for music lessons, if I'm factoring in all of the variables correctly. We ate a lot of scrambled eggs and pasta and red sauce, and I am so grateful that I have a robust musical education instead of memories of steak and pork chops. There are so many other parts to the story of my mother. She cared for my little brother Jacob during the year and a half that he fought cancer, and when he died at age 5, she spent the next year writing a book about him to try to overcome her grief. Six years later, she lost her last baby, Isaac, when he was born too early. Loss, grief, faith, pressing on, compassion, consecration--in the emotional lexicon of my brain, these words belong to my mother. But then, there's the many memories of seeing her at the kitchen table with the road atlas and a sheet of paper in front of her, carefully plotting out our annual family camping trips--an exhaustive itinerary complete with mile counts and equipment lists. There's the old book of "Having Fun in Southern California for Kids" (I made that title up--can't remember the real one), from which she planned summer and spring break and weekend outings to the California missions, Solvang, Olivera Street, the Central Library, the beach. My mother would claim that she's not good at having fun--and I have to say, you would be hard pressed to find a woman less likely to enjoy a manicure and lunch at a nice restaurant with a group of friends. But she created the conditions for fun and discovery and imagination and wonderment for her kids, and also for herself, I'm sure. Despite the fact that she was always holding a baby and handling a toddler, I know that she loved absorbing the rich history of Southern California, a place that I don't know if she'd even been to before she and my dad moved there after law school.

I could tell stories about my mother forever, and I probably will be. Telling stories about her is my way of navigating myself through the waterways of motherhood, as I continue to enter into the phase of life that she was in when I first came to know the world. My little Cici comes and wants to bounce on my crossed ankle as I'm nursing Joshey on the couch, and I remember doing that same thing to my mom as she was nursing Brigham. I find myself irrationally aggravated at Polly when she smears her fingers all over our front plate glass window, and I remember my mother's own battle against smudged windows. I find myself putting on mascara in the morning and putting on jewelry on Sunday, and I wonder if my children will remember me as being as beautiful as I thought Mama was. She defined beauty to me--her dark hair, her slender frame, her collection of Sunday dresses and Sunday shoes in the closet. Snow White couldn't have been more beautiful than my mom, I knew.

I don't mean to idealize my mother (though there would certainly be plenty of grist for that mill). One of the things that I value the most about her is that I've seen her grow and change as she's moved through different periods of life. She wants to keep growing and changing and progressing--she doesn't think she's perfect, and she's not going to stop battling the weaknesses that she feels she has. That is comforting to me, as I am so acutely aware of my own imperfections, even those that I think I should have overcome by now. My mother's greatest gift to me, I think, aside from giving me life, is her ability to see simultaneously my weaknesses and my potential. I know that I can't hide anything from her, no matter how much I might wish that some part of me didn't exist. But I also know that she sees in me infinite potential, infinite capacities for goodness and growth. And because she sees this, I believe it, too. Isn't that an amazing gift for a mother to give her daughter? The sure knowledge that the person who brought you into this life thinks that you will make good of it.

Happy Valentine's Day to the person who taught me first and most about love.

Hibernation

I've been hibernating from the world for the past couple of weeks--hoping, I suppose, that when I poke my head out, both the world and I will be full of springtime warmth and goodness. Well, no luck on the first count, though the weak winter sun is enough to warm our kitchen a bit, even if it can't melt the snow outside. As for the second count, I have learned plenty of times before now that the advent of some anticipated date or event doesn't flip some internal switch that activates the good habits and noble character that are slow to accrue in me. I did not become perfect when I started college. I did not live the flawless life on my mission. I certainly didn't become the ideal student when I started graduate school. And somehow I don't even approximate the discipline and hard work of my mother, now that I am a mother myself. But, in the words of Theodore Roethke, "I learn by going where I need to go." So I can't hibernate forever and hope that I'll wake up as the exemplary person. I'll blunder into a serviceable life if I keep at it. It won't come any other way, at least. All of which reminds me of something that my sister Rachel told me. She learned it from her mission president. "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." The inverse is also true, of course--if something is worth doing, it's certainly worth doing well. But if it's worth doing at all, it's also worth doing badly, partially, start-and-stoppedly until you can do it better. You can't simply not do it until you can do it well, otherwise we wouldn't be able to do anything that doesn't come to us naturally. So I'll do the things that are worth doing in any manner I can, and I'll try to do them frequently enough to get the practice that I need to do them better.

Well, I didn't intend for this to become a cliche-ridden pep talk. What I really wanted was to give some snippets of Sloan life from the past couple of weeks:

Polly has discovered our treasury of "Harold and the Purple Crayon," and she's enjoyed re-enacting some of the stories on our picture wall.

A trip to Olive Garden--it's always important to document the fun things we do, lest our children doubt that we actually did them, don't you agree?

We've had some little babies in our house recently, and Joshey has been very drawn to them. If I could handle it, would 12 months be the perfect sibling interval? (TOTALLY facetious question, since the first condition in that question would never be met)

A couple of weeks ago, we spent a VERY long afternoon traipsing from car dealership to car dealership trying to resolve some minor issues with our minivan. The kids were truly phenomenal over the course of the 6-hour adventure. As were the other customers who didn't mind the occasional preschooler sprawled out over the floor.

My Eva

Yesterday was my little sister Eva's 20th birthday. If she were within calling distance of me, I would tell her what my best friend told me when I turned 20:

When you're 20, you're perfect. You're not 19 anymore, so you're not a teenager, but you're not yet 21, so you're not an adult. You're nobody, and everybody knows that nobody is perfect.

A year of being perfect, that's what my Eva has. And since she's a missionary in Russia, it will be the best kind of perfect. Not necessarily straight-A's and dreamy boyfriends, but the year that will be perfect for her. My mission was perfect for me. What could be more perfect for an insecure girl who grew up in affluent Southern California, who didn't know how to talk to boys, and who thought that being smart(er than other people) was the most important thing than going to Romania where people earning $20 a week insisted on treating me to pastries and coca-cola and where I got to work with 19-year-old missionaries who taught me that there was DEFINITELY nothing to be scared of in talking to boys. Oh, and where I learned that loving people is more important that being smarter than them. I don't know how my Eva's year of being a missionary will change her, but I am excited to be a witness to it.

From the Kitchen

Peaceful naptime on a Thursday afternoon. Just a few days ago, Dave pulled out the electric drill and put up a kitchen shelf that is going to and already has changed my life. It's my media center--out of reach of the children, but big enough for a laptop, a small speaker, our phone and answering machine (yes, we actually have an old fashioned answering machine), and my cell phone. Above it, I've hung my faithful little whiteboard that Dave and I conscientiously populate each Sunday night with the schedule for the coming week. So now, when I think of the most brilliant Facebook status update while elbow-deep in dishwater--voila, I can turn around, dry my hands, and impress the world :).

The shelf itself gave Dave some trouble. He found it for $6 at Goodwill (which is the right price and the right retail outlet for us at this point :), but it needed a fresh coat of paint and a little bit of sanding. So Dave took it out to our screened-in porch underneath the deck and worked on it a few nights last week. Well, it was FREEZING (actually, below freezing), and it turns out that spray paint doesn't apply so well in sub-zero temperatures. So a once-over turned into a thrice-over or more before Dave finally brought it inside and just slapped on a coat of acrylic white. He wasn't satisfied with the somewhat blotchy result, but I'm too impatient to be a perfectionist. And the sentimental part of me looks at the somewhat uneven finish as evidence that my husband loves me enough to spend not one, not two, but three freezing nights outside with the sander and the paintbrush, just so my life in my warm kitchen can be a little bit better.

And now, for your reading pleasure, a transcription of the song Polly was making up while I was writing this! (she has My Little Ponies on the brain)  

Even though I love the pony,
Walked and walked and ate the marshmallows!
These are all the places that I love!
When my sister was a little girl,
Princess Luna wasn't my friend anymore.

Not sure how to interpret this, but it's sure fun to listen to!

Happy Birthday, Joshey-Mosh!!!

So Joshua is officially one year old. The calendar cooperated nicely with us this year, giving Dave the day off for Martin Luther King Day. We celebrated by going to Chick-fil-A for lunch (always a grand treat), where I was that pushy mother who told the circulating serving staff that it was my son't birthday, so they brought him some free ice cream and sang Happy Birthday to the packed lunchtime crowd. I love making an exhibition of myself and the people I love :). In the afternoon, Polly went with Dave to pick out a Dollar Store present (a little clapping toy--perfect for Joshey, who loves to shake things and make noise), and I made a cake. Nothing fancy, just an old Halloween confetti cake mix that I'd stocked up on when the price went down to 25 cents per box at the beginning of November. Hope my kids like it, because we have about 15 of those boxes down in our food storage! Polly helped me decorate it with vanilla pudding, two tiaras, a bracelet, and Twilight Sparkle. Oh, what a boyhood Joshey has in store, with these two older sisters. Then we tried to wrangle the kids for some birthday games (roll the ball, tag with party blowers), and when it became apparent that the balance was tipping toward chaos, we shipped everyone off to bed. And thus begins our birthday year! Polly and Cici will be turning 5 and 3 in just a month, and we'll be spending a couple of days in Morgantown to celebrate (and for Dave to give a talk at WVU). I'm excited for that. But mostly I'm excited to have my little grinning, shrieking, walking, wrestling, exploring, climbing, 5-toothed 1-year-old!

Polly loves having me snap pictures of her but apparently hates actually looking up for them. No mind, she has a lovely profile, doesn't she?

The exact time that Joshey was born! (more or less--might have been 6:18 pm)

Pancakes and fresh pineapple for dinner.

Polly, again, not wanting her face captured on camera.This picture is so typical of so many things about our family :).

And the handsome little birthday boy himself.

'Twas the Night Before Joshey

Tomorrow is Joshey's birthday, which means that precisely one year ago today, I was home on a Saturday evening, straightening up the house after the girls went to bed. Dave was at the lab, slaving over another do-or-die experiment, and Joshey's due date was a couple of days away. After I got the house in decent shape, I eased my pregnant body into bed, and then I felt the tell-tale rush of fluid signalling that my water had ruptured. I was scared. I had known, of course, that labor and delivery was imminent, within the next week, but it's one thing to feel like something hard is a day or two away, after another full night of sleep, after another normal day perhaps, and it's something very different to realize that the hard thing has just started at that very moment. You've made it to the top of the water slide, and there's no one left in front of you in line. You sit down, and the only way out is through that dark, fast, frightening tunnel. I'd like to think that I knelt down and said a prayer first, and I probably did. Those are generally my instincts. Then I called Dave, who was slipping into the "die" part of the do-or-die experiment and was very willing to manfully set aside the possibility of his boss's wrath and come home to his laboring wife. Then I called my midwife, and then I called my dear friend Candida, who was my babysitter-on-call. I didn't know how fast labor would progress, and Candida assured me that she was ready to come over and stay with the girls no matter what hour of day or night. So I found my guided imagery labor-and-delivery CD (yes, I placed FULL trust in this soothing voice to get me through this difficult, scary thing), and I listened to it over and over as I was packing my hospital bag and working through the irregular, minor contractions that were developing. Oh, and I ate a big bowl of oatmeal, because I knew that as soon as I went to the hospital, all eating would cease. Then--nothing happened. I went to bed, I counted contractions, I slept, and by morning, productive labor hadn't started. But since my water had ruptured, I needed to go in to the hospital, so we dropped off the girls at Candida's house, took a few pictures, and were off to Mon General with the giddy excitement of going on a very long date without the kids (that giddyness didn't last too long). I won't recount the full birth story, which probably isn't entirely suited for a public audience anyway, since it ends with my shrieking like a banshee as Joshey finally emerged at 6:20 pm that night. But I find myself dwelling on that night before Joshey's birth. It feels heavy, solemn, even dark in my memory. Dave was unhappy at work, and we had recently realized that this meant a major divergence in his career path, with all of the accompanying financial and family insecurity and uncertainty. I was quite concerned about my little Cici, whose speech was very noticeably delayed by that point. It was the middle of a long, cold winter, and I knew that I was embarking on the fatigue of mothering an infant. It just seemed like a stark realization of all of the heaviness and difficulty that was awaiting us without that emboldening joy that comes from holding a newborn and seeing how little everything else matters in comparison. Now we are here, a year later, with a chubby, dapper little toddler enthroned as the reigning baby in our house. He charms everyone he sees, and he beams light out at the world. He is as strong and as good as his name. The year of uncertainty and fear and darkness and heaviness, the year of long, tense conversations late into the night and grim calculations of our savings account, the year of unpaid internships and job applications, the year of packing up and saying goodbye and then unpacking and saying hello--that year has ended now. I was making the very unremarkable observation to Dave that the first year of Polly's life seemed like FOREVER, and the first year of Cici's life seemed quite long, but the first year of Joshey's life flashed by. I really do feel like our family was scooped up by a kind, protective, wise hand and placed down in a new and more sure place. Polly was my Tuesday child ("Tuesday's child is full of grace"), Cici was my Monday child ("Monday's child is fair in face"), and Joshey is my Sunday child ("But the one who is born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blithe and good and gay").