There Will Be Pie Tonight

I guess the title and the picture already give away the ending (brilliant writing here!), but it's a good story anyway. 

Last fall Olivia turned sixteen.  It was glorious and beautiful. 

With one small snag. 

She failed her driving test.  Three times, actually.  

The first time, I took her to the DMV and five hours later they called her number for the road test.  She bounced out of the room, but returned, downcast and tearful. 

“What happened?” I asked. 

She shrugged, mystified.  “I did so good,” she bawled. 

I retrieved her score sheet, and in addition to missing all her turn signals and coasting through a few stop signs, it said in all caps, “ALMOST HIT A BICYCLIST!!!”  This sentence had been written with such force, there were holes punched in the paper.  I pointed this out to Olivia.  She said, “Oh yeah, but I didn’t see him.”

Oh, okay then.  

No problem.  We believe in second chances.  All I had to do was get up enough love and courage to sit in the waiting room of hell one more time.  I am convinced that hell is exactly patterned after the DMV.   I've really got to be better.  Or do some repenting.  Or both.  Anyway, I girded up my loins and she tried again.  More tears.  Lots of tears.  This time she ran a red light and failed to stay in her lane. 

What?

"Olivia!" I said, completely confounded.

"But, I'm a good driver," she insisted.

I explained that the DMV disagreed.  And theirs is the only opinion that counts.

So then I did what I do to solve all my problems.  I threw money at it.  (David is all too familiar with this problem-solving technique.  The more problems I have, the farther away retirement becomes.  We have no plans for retirement.  Ever.  Because I have problems!)  I hired someone to give her driving lessons.  They drove all over Phoenix.  They drove the freeways, they drove downtown, they drove in traffic, they parallel parked, they practiced stopping and blind spots and staying in the proper lane.  They drove and drove and drove, and she earned top marks.  “She’s a really good driver,” they said.  "She's completely to ready to drive independently."

Ya.  I've heard.

I did then what only true love could make me do and went back to the DMV.  But after another five hours, she failed to yield to oncoming traffic when she was turning left.  Which is an automatic failure.  And scary, too.  The girl administering the road test was clearly shaken.  She said that next time, Olivia could request a different road test administrator.  Please, please ask for a different road test administrator! is what her eyes said.  Olivia was devastated. 

But I was just mad.  I told David I was never going back.  It was his turn.

We let it sit for a couple of months.  Because, really, there is only so much you can take. 

This morning, before it was light, while I was administering cold medicine to Ethan and tucking him back into bed, David and Olivia left the house to stand in line in the cold at the DMV.  David is made for jobs like this.  It requires all the things I don't have:  patience, calmness, tranquility regardless of circumstance, unconditional love.  I don't know why we didn't assign it to him in first place.  Play to your strengths, people!

And wonder of wonders, three hours later I received a text:  She can DRIVE!!!!!!!!  All caps.  Eight exclamation points.

We earned every one.

I spent the rest of the day nursing Ethan and making lemon pie. 

Because it is time for pie.  And I am playing to my strengths.

The Theatrical Aside

Write here...

That is what it says on the screen when I start a blog post.

Write here...

Good idea.  Except that the problem is never really where to write, but what to write.

It is the start of the spring musical season in our house. 

Give me strength.

Auditions and call backs this week.

Oh, the drama!

And then on to rehearsals.

Oh, the commitment!  I am having little heart palpitations every time I think of the strategizing and organizing and troop placement that this will require.

Olivia has been practicing her monologue and requisite sixteen bars for weeks. 

This was to be expected.  Her entire life revolves around the spring musical.  Scratch that.  Her entire life is a spring musical.

But then, out of nowhere, Caleb decided to try out for the lead in his school's spring musical. 

Because he has nothing else to do.  I'll admit I've tried to gently discourage him.  Because I'm a dream killer.  That's right.  A dream killer, who doesn't want her children to succeed or be happy or have any fun.

This morning I was driving David to work after we dropped the car in the shop,

This is the second car we've taken to the shop this week.  Have mercy.  It's only eight days in, but I might hate 2015.

and I happened to be venting a bit about all the activities that every one wants to be involved in and how my whole goal going into the new year was to simplify and reduce our commitments and spend more time around our table, and how there was an easier way to live and I was trying to find just that--the easier way--and how I was being sabotaged at every turn. 

Can I get an 'Amen'?

And David asked why any of these things should affect me and my life, that the kids could get themselves to and from all their activities and it shouldn't really make my life any harder.

Give me a minute.

There are so many things wrong with this comment that I sat there blustering about for a minute, trying to explain and get some traction, but finding that I could not adequately explain what it is exactly that I do and what it is that our children's commitments require of me, the mother.  And how every new thing that the kids want to be involved in requires not only chauffeuring but volunteering and scheduling and planning and time and money and trips to the store for stage makeup and jazz shoes and snacks for the cast, not to mention the watching and waiting and rearranging and encouraging and reminding and bolstering and celebrating and worrying and bracing and busting with pride.  Somehow, it all requires my involvement. 

 I told him to get out of the car

It's the safest place.

and go to work.  He has his work.  I have mine.  Perhaps it is enough just to understand that we do that work for each other.  Even if the other has no idea what that means exactly.  We do it for each other.  And for them.  Always and all of it, for them.

This spring Olivia's school is performing "The Addams Family."  Caleb's school is doing "Little Shop of Horrors." 

That's right.  Halloween all around.  It's going to be a spooky spring.  Believe me, I'm already scared.

The Last Week of September, By the Numbers

Oh, September, get going already.

It's no secret that September and I have never gotten along.  And this year was worse than usual.  I think it is no coincidence that September starts with the same letters as Satan and sadistic and stupid and sorrow and self-pity and suck.  So there. 

But the last week of September does have a few redeeming qualities, namely that  one, September is almost over, and, two, that a couple of my children were born at the end of it.  And speaking of numbers, here are a few more: 

1.  At 8:30 last Tuesday night, Olivia told me that she needed a poodle skirt for school the next day.  Trouble was, I didn't happen to have two yards of colored felt on hand and at that time of night I didn't have the heart to face Joann's (which is difficult even when you're feeling 100%, let's be honest).  And so I looked through my cupboards and found what I thought was a decent substitute: quilt batting.  Ahem.  Brilliant, I know.  (I blame it on September.  I told you it was stupid.)  I whipped up a poodle skirt with ric rac and everything.  Trouble was, quilt batting is not actually felt and it also does not possess the same qualities as felt, and so it began to stretch apart when she sat.  I could foresee a tragedy of monumental proportions at school the next day when she stood up after Algebra.  Skirt made of batting x school day = Absolute naked.  So I whipped up another one.  Yes, that's right.  2 poodle skirts in 1 night.  The next morning when David dropped her off at school, Olivia noticed that no one else had dressed up.  Zero high-schoolers thought 50's Day was a good idea.  This had not occurred to Olivia, who thinks everything is a good idea.  She asked David to take her home to change.  He wisely (remembering my two-poodle-skirt-effort the night before) encouraged her out of the car.  I got this picture texted to me later.  Luckily, the cutest guy at school also thought 50's Day was a great idea.

2.  Last week we became a three-car family.  I told David that I thought I'd be old when we had three cars.  He just looked at me.  Because...um...we are old.  Apparently.  David loves having a third car almost more than Caleb does because it has eliminated his 5:30 drive to early morning seminary.  As for me, no one ever told me about the abject, all-consuming fear that would become a permanent part of my life once my children started driving themselves around.   

3.  Ethan turns 10 this week and Olivia turns 15.  There will be 1 chocolate cake and 1 lemon pie and 25 candles.  There will be a camping trip with 1 bonfire, 6 sleeping bags, and a billion stars.  And we will watch the waning moon cross the sky and mark another year on earth with these 2 beautiful children.  I will never get over how fast it really goes.

4.  Last week I spent 8 hours in the emergency room with a friend who had an ectopic pregnancy.  My own experience, twelve years ago this September, has been on my mind a lot since then.  I have replayed those days and weeks over in my mind and have been left to simply conclude that the preservation of my life was nothing short of miraculous, Ethan's arrival 2 years later was nothing short of divine intervention, and I have been deeply humbled, once again, by the mercy of God.

5.  For the next two weeks, David is the acting CEO at the hospital, while his boss is out of town.  This has not changed any of our lives in any way, but David has been delighted about it.  I told him he should do a performance evaluation on the vice president (David's current job) and give that guy a raise.

6.  When we moved into this house, I moved the girls into a shared queen bed.  Because of the configuration of the room, there just wasn't room for two twin beds.  Two and a half years later and the queen bed just wasn't working.  The girls were uncomfortable, someone was always on someone else's side of the bed, or someone would steal all the covers in the night, or it was always someone else's turn to the make the bed, and on and on and on.  I was determined to find a solution.  We had a conference.  I got opinions from people smarter than me.  We talked about it.  We googled it.  We called in the acting CEO.  We thought about having Ethan switch rooms, we thought about turning the loft into a bedroom, we thought about repainting, rearranging, and, briefly, even about moving.  (I told you September was stupid.)  Finally I decided to make a really tall headboard and cover an outside door.  This made enough wall space to put in two twin beds.  While I was at it, I made a couple of upholstered bed frames to match.  (I don't know how my mother ever did her job without online tutorials.)   Honestly, I feel about as proud about the whole thing as if I had personally separated conjoined twins. 

7.  Lastly and leastly, after months of waiting, we are all happy that season 4 of The Middle starts tonight.  We've had to get by on months of Food Network and netflixing old BBC crime dramas, and are completely delighted that real television is starting again.   

And with that, I am shaking off the shroud of September.  Come, thou Great October, with your promises of Conference weekend, hot chocolate with salted caramel, a BYU homecoming game, spooky movie marathons, homemade donuts and spicy goulash, fall in the mountains, and a little green face paint.

Only five more days, September.  Your number's up.

Something Like Romance

Are you tired of stories about interviews and plane flights and having faith?  Sigh.  Me too.  Believe me, it is even more tiresome to be living them.  (This morning David said, "How do you feel about Waco, Texas?"  Um, yeah, not exactly top on my list.)  This morning then, how about a story of romance?  Don't worry.  There is little or no necking involved.

On Saturday night, Caleb went to Teen Elect.  He dressed in his new suit and his dad's hand-me-down tie, put gel in his hair and let me comb the back down.  I could smell cologne and toothpaste.

Teen Elect is where you learn about manners and dancing and how to make conversation with someone of the opposite sex.  Olivia has been looking forward to it for two years now.

When I dropped Caleb off, he said, "Aren't you going to come in with me?"  I wasn't.  But I parked and led him inside.  He got his nametag, he found out where to go, he gave me a side-shuffling hug, and disappeared into the unknown.

I picked him up three hours later.

"Did you have fun?  How was it?"

"It was interesting."

"How was the dance?"

"Interesting."

"How were the classes?"

"Interesting.  Kind of boring."

"What did they talk about?"

"Wearing deodorant and always having a mint."

"Did you have fun?"

"I'm not sure.  It was interesting.  And awkward.  Very awkward."

Olivia and Savannah were waiting on the couch for us when we got home.  Waiting with bated breath.  They have been waiting for weeks, truth be told.  They were ready for a story of romance, a story of love and lust, of fancy ballrooms and meaningful looks.

"Soooooo, how was it?" 

"Interesting."

"Tell us everything!  Did you dance?" 

"Of course.  They made us."

"Who did you dance with?"

"Lots of people.  We had to."

"Were the girls cute?"

"I don't know."

"What were they wearing?" 

"I don't know."

"What color were their eyes?"

"Oh, come on, Olivia."

And then Olivia sighed hugely, "Oh, it sounds sooo romantic."

I looked at her.  Romantic?  The way Caleb tells it, it was just this side of painful.

And then she said, "I can't wait for teen elect.  My favorite part is the hip part."

I asked, "What's the hip part?"

"You know, the part when the boy puts his hand on your hip." 

Heaven help us.

The next day we pried a few more details from him.  I asked him if he talked to the girls while he was dancing.

"Of course," he said. "They taught us that."

"What did you talk about?"

"I asked them their favorite color."

"O...kay.  Anything else?"

"One girl asked me what school I go to and I said 'Stapley'."

"But you don't go to Stapley."

"I know, but it seemed easier.  But then she said, 'I go to Stapley.  Why haven't I ever seen you?' and I was like 'Umm, yeah, I lied about that.'"

Olivia gasped, "And then did she slap you?  Oh that sounds soooo romantic."

The View From Space

Last weekend when we went camping, when David and I were the only ones awake in the tent and the night was filled with soft snuffles and deep breathing and a whole lot of quiet, I tried to say how I was feeling.

It was nearly impossible.  (Bear with me.)

I tried.  And said sentences about just how much space was really up there, how up here on this high mountain, spinning around an axis, you could almost catch the breeze of the universe as it spun past.  It was like sticking your head out a car window, but with stars and milky ways and supernovas streaming past.  All that was above us was the deepness and vastness of space!  I felt so exposed and vulnerable. 

And yet at the very same time, I could hear my children breathing beside me, dreaming birthday dreams, melted smores smeared on their cheeks and cool mountain air on their eyelids.  I felt charmed and blessed, I felt endowed with the greatest gifts that vast universe had to offer.  I felt completely known and seen and watched by heaven, like maybe this night with my little family was just what heaven had in mind when they did all the work to create this mountain.  

It was a jumble.  It was a feeling...of being both big and small at once.  I could picture myself from space, our very blessed tent just a tiny dot on a globe turning its way from dark to light, slowly, slowly.  I waved.

David uh-huhhed beside me and put his face in my neck, his way of saying he had no idea what I meant, but he likes my company anyway.

I felt like I was on the very precipice and in the hand of heaven at the very same moment.  I lay there in the dark, feeling the slow rotation of the earth underneath me, unaware of the changes that were just a few rotations away.

Last Saturday, Olivia didn't wear make-up.  This Saturday she wore both mascara and lip gloss and the tiniest bit of light blue eyeshadow.

Last Saturday, Olivia had the hairy, happy legs of a child.  This Saturday she had the smooth, freshly shaved legs of a young woman.

Last weekend, Olivia had never been to a young women's meeting at church.  This weekend, her first beehive activity made it onto her "list of highs" around the dinner table.

Last Friday, David was late getting back from work and so we got a late start and set up our tent in semi-darkness.  This Friday, David and I went to a movie in the middle of day because he had no where else to be.

Last Friday night, we packed the car with the campstove and sleeping bags, and spent the night howling around a campfire.  This Friday night, we cleaned out David's office and loaded the car with ten years of memories and work accumulation, and spent the night sobbing into our Oregano's meatballs and making lists of states we'd always dreamed of living in.  (It was some consolation.) 

Last week, David and I had separate work spaces.  This week, we are sharing.

Last week, David had a job.  This week, he doesn't.

I have had the same feelings that I had that night in the tent.  So acutely aware of the vastness of space...aware of the gaping maw, the loss of the ground under my feet.  And an even deeper awareness of the gracious hand of heaven that is watching over us and providing a new way in the darkness.

One of my very favorite scriptures is in the book of Luke:

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? 

Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts, through the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

 

I have said that to myself a hundred times since last weekend.  Our Father in Heaven does not give evil gifts.  I am a witness to the absolute goodness of his gifts. 

Always.

Brace Yourself

David told me to be sure to take "before" and "after" shots.

As you wish.

Before:

And after:

I'm still reeling.

(Which tends to make me melodramatic.)

David and I stared at each other over dinner, half-bemused at our children trying to navigate new ways for food to move around their mouths and half-confounded that so much life has apparently come and gone. 

Across the table David asked me quietly, "When did we get so old?"

I looked at him, at the gray hair at his temples, at the creases across his brow, at this man who was just barely one when I became his wife, and the years we've shared together stretched between us.  A brief moment and an eternity at once.  I just shook my head.

Today I went to the temple.  I needed back-up.  Reinforcement and buttressing.  And a reminder about the promises of forever.  When time feels scarce, views of eternity are required.  While I was there being tended to by a lovely white-haired angel who told me several times how beautiful I am, she asked me if I was a member of a student ward.  She could hardly imagine the truth.

And neither can I.

"I was yesterday," I wanted to say, "Today I am taking three of my four children to the orthodontist.  I can't even think about tomorrow."  Time is a bully.

So I find myself staring at my children.  I am at a loss to do much else, the gorgeous creatures.

And brace myself to be undone by beauty, by brevity, by becoming.

I've shared Mr. Hershon's poem before, and now after, I will share it again.  It is only getting truer.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

by Robert Hershon

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

Killing Off Valdez

Yesterday I woke up early, before the alarm, before David, before Caleb even.

I could hear Olivia breathing from the family room.

It's that time of year again. 

The time when our nebulizer gets put through it's paces and really starts earning its keep.  Last night when I was going to bed the ten o'clock news told me not to worry, because those people who have died from the H1N1 flu all had underlying causes like asthma. 

What?

Lungs are not my family's strong point. 

I am surrounded by Reuben Lands.  I imagine myself as Swede by the way.  Is that reaching?  Oh well.  I can't help myself.  I just about die of love when she starts banging on the walls.  I suppose instead I ought to wish I was Reuben's dad and could produce a miracle whenever I needed one.  It is very likely we may need one before this winter is over.

An Overdue Ode to Olivia, at Eleven

Nearly a week ago we celebrated Olivia's birth with shrimp linguine and lemon cake.  We toasted her eleven years and remembered the early days of her arrival on earth. 

I think she was my hardest baby and toddler (there were days I hardly thought we'd make it to her third birthday), and yet she became my easiest child to raise.  Full of compromise and empathy and peacemaking, she gives easily, repents easily, and mothers everything she can get her hands on.

She started out demanding and turned out soothing.

(Which gives me hope for myself.  Perhaps it is not too late.)

She once told me that she felt different than everyone else in our family.  I told her it was only because she was better than every one of the rest of us.

She has the kindest heart of any one I know.  A few weeks ago we were at the table eating Sunday dinner and discussing what we had learned in church that day.  Olivia told us that her class had learned about Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, about the conditions of the jail, and the prophet's prayers to heaven for help.  She then said incredulously, "And do you know what Heavenly Father said?"  And then, not waiting for an answer and tearing up, "He told Joseph Smith that these things were for his good."  Then she was quiet, and softly said, "I think that was a terrible answer."  She couldn't help herself.  She cannot stand to see suffering and, while we explained and she understood that there were things the prophet had to pass through, she was heartbroken that heaven's help could not be immediately forthcoming. 

That's my girl.

I count it as nothing but privilege to be the mother of such a girl.

 

Olivia and her friends dressed as lovely ladies from Milan, New York and Chicago, respectively. 

Naturally, their dolls were invited as well...

 

I Gave Birth to the Opposite of "Stolid"

Last night Olivia had her first drama class.

She was unusually trepidacious when I dropped her off, brimming with worries.  She confided some of them aloud.  I kissed her and wished her well.  "Trust me," I said.

She was busting when I picked her up.  Grinning and laughing, she gave me a high-velocity, wildly ebullient run-down on the class, her new friends, their plans for the season, and a play-by-play of her first attempts at improv.  The joy was pouring off her.

The girl was in raptures.

At the end of class she said they had to make an alliteration with their name and then act it out.

"For instance," she chattered, "Kaitlyn did 'I'm Kangaroo Kaitlyn' and then she acted like a kangaroo."

I looked at her, waiting for it.

She smiled.  "Mine was a little different."

"What did you do?"

She beamed and raised her hand dramatically in the air, "I'm Obviously-in-love-with-acting Olivia," and then she swooned for the audience.

That's my girl.