If I Had Any Trouble with My Mother When I Was Growing Up, It Was in This Area:

Having grown up during the Depression, my mother had learned to save everything. It was instilled within her that anything could be used somehow, sometime, somewhere by somebody. To throw anything away was not only wasteful, but also evil, in my home.

Our house, up until the day my mother died, was rendered useless as a place to live by all the "junk" (my definition) that my mother packed into it. Or, at the very least, it was a very time-consuming place to live. In some of my younger years, after my father built shelves and drawers throughout the house, our junk seemed fairly organized. But it didn’t stay that way for long. Even though I grew up during one of the most prosperous times in our nation’s history (I’m a "Baby Boomer"), I still watched my mother save everything. She may have thought that at the end of the world she could single-handedly save everybody. At any rate, we surely saved more than we could ever use, and slowly, the house filled up entirely. As all the children grew up and moved out, the stuff my mother saved would take over the space each child left.

This was all very frustrating and embarrassing to me growing up. The main problem I had with it was that I didn’t feel comfortable bringing any of my friends to my home. Our house was always a disaster area. I also got in trouble sometimes for ruining her stuff. I remember one time when I was cleaning and relining my parakeet cage, I used some old newspapers that were in a wastebasket in my mother’s sewing room. What I didn’t know was that the wastebasket was where she was storing the newspapers and that she was planning to cut articles out of them to give away to people and to put in her children’s scrapbooks. It was rather ironic, I thought, that I should be punished for using old newspapers from a wastebasket. But, boy, was my mother ever mad at me.

My mother’s obsession spilled over into other areas of conservation as well. She would stop the washing machine after the wash cycle and reuse the water. She would dip out all the wet clothes, put them in a tin pail and then put in the next batch of clothes. She would start with the white clothes, then the colors, then the darks. When the water finally got too dirty to use anymore, she would let the washer drain and then fill itself with clean water. She would go through the same routine to rinse all the clothes – first whites, then colors and darks – and then to spin them damp dry. It was a lot of extra work for a few dollars’ savings. I hesitate to admit that I didn’t know our washer could do it any other way – that if I simply put in clothes and turned it on, it would do all the work itself. Hence the name, Automatic Washer. I was actually in college before I learned how to use a washing machine the way it was intended.

Another example of my mother’s overactive conservation consciousness was the way she taught me to blow my nose. It was wasteful (therefore, evil) to take a tissue, blow your nose and then just throw it away. She taught me to blow my nose at the top of the tissue, fold it over a couple of times and then to use it again. It was a bold step indeed when I started discarding my tissues after only one use. You would have thought money grew on trees, judging by that reckless behavior.

Now, as an adult, I can realize and understand that if a person grows up in scarcity, it is a hard thing to overcome. It becomes one’s whole context for living. It is easy for me, who only knew of the Depression from books and movies, to say, "Come on, now. Get a grip."

I took the day off today. I am planning to savor a little time alone at home and then go to have my hair colored and cut this afternoon. I live a very low key, ordinary life, so writing about what happens to me from day to day is a rather boring read. Just a warning.

There was a huge winter storm here last week and I didn't get to work until about 11:30 a.m. because Chelsee got her car stuck in the driveway. How ridiculous is that? And how often has it happened to our family over the years? Our driveway is a hazard in a winter storm. Anyway, only Kjersti and I were home and neither of us was any use pushing Chelsee's car out of the snow bank, though I did get covered in mud from trying. So because Sassy was stuck behind both Queue and Kjersti's car, we all had to wait for Jay to come home from work before any of us could go anywhere. Two major things that remind me how bloody helpless I am are snow storms and car troubles.

Which brings me to the second "exciting" thing that happened to me in the last week. A few days before the driveway incident, I had been caught in another winter storm. I was in stop and go traffic for about an hour and a half trying to get to work. All the shifting from first to neutral to first to second (maybe once) to first for that long really took a toll on Queue's already distressed clutch. When I took the car in to get the clutch checked, I got an estimated repair cost of $1400. Ouch! My finances are so "on the edge" that anything unexpected like that threatens to put me into bankruptcy, not to mention hysterics. I had to call on Wes to help me and luckily, he was in a position to do so. Otherwise, I might have had to kill myself. And, by the way, it ended up actually costing me $1689.38. Unbelieveable.

I am looking forward to meeting with my Goddess group for lunch on Sunday to celebrate Jannette's birthday. These meetings should really be against the law, they are so fun and funny. Our gaggle of Goddesses provides quite the entertainment or annoyance, whichever, to the people who fortunately or unfortunately get seated around us. We go from laughing our beautiful heads off to crying our lovely eyes out for about three hours once every month or two. For us, it is a much needed release and renewal. We manage to stay friends through it all.

I hope you are all doing well. I love you.

Text Messaging

I heard a program on NPR about how Text Messaging has changed the way people write. The reporter went through a bunch of different abbreviations that have become common, because people have to cut it short on a text message or it takes all day to write a sentence. I see that my children, especially Danae, use some of the abbreviations they talked about on NPR. I know, for example, that LOL means "Laugh Out Loud," and OMG means "OH MY GOD!" (That one, of course, came from Allison.) But Danae, what does LMAO mean? I haven't been able to decipher that one.

Thanks in advance for the translation.

HAPPY 28TH BIRTHDAY, WESLEY!

With Kjersti and Danae each expecting her firstborn child, my mind has often gone back to the time when I was expecting Wesley. At that time, they didn't have ultrasound, so I didn't have the advantage of knowing whether I was carrying a boy or a girl. But I did feel all the same excitement, as well as the dread, of being pregnant for the first time. Unlike either of them, however, I have felt the sublime happiness that comes with the birth of my first child.

That happiness has continued throughout Wesley's life. Each of his new experiences was a new experience for me as well, from the perspective of being his mother. I remember, for example, pulling him in the wagon when I would walk into downtown Provo. A complete stranger stopped me one day and pointed out to me how absolutely straight and proudly he held his back when he was sitting in the wagon. Another neighbor said to me, "You are pulling a million dollars behind you there." And I was.

I remember how hard it was for me on his first day of school -- sending my precious son out into that cold world where I knew other children could be so cruel, where I knew other people would not see him as I saw him. I felt so protective of him, not wanting him to be hurt or rejected as I was. I wanted only the best things for him, but as he grew up, it was more and more out of my power to control how he was treated or what happened to him.

I remember Wesley and Jason Brown building a fort in the trees in our back yard. What a great time they had. It took me a while to realize that the fun of it for them was in the actual building of it, not in the having it finished. They had no more finished building it than they had it torn down again to make improvements in it. Jason was a good friend to Wesley.

When Wes and I moved our little family into the house on Mill Street, there was one night when Wesley was in another room watching the movie, "Superman." He had such a tender heart that he came crying through the house, calling, "The baby, the baby!" We finally understood that Wesley was distressed for the Baby Superman, who was being put into the capsule which brought him to Earth. Wesley was afraid they were hurting the baby. I also think about the picture I have of Wesley lying asleep on the floor next to his dad. They are stretched out side by side, legs crossed at the ankles, and although Wesley is only about half as tall as his father, he is mimicking his dad in every detail. As a child, Wesley adored his dad.

I was frightened beyond words when we found out that Wesley had a rare kidney disease and again when we discovered he had a rare form of cancer. Wesley hated needles, but went through blood tests and a biopsy with his kidney disease when he was nine, and then again went through blood tests, a biopsy and surgery with his cancer when he was fourteen. Even though I would have gladly suffered these things for him if I could have, I was proud of him for the courage he showed. During the time we were all worrying and wondering about his cancer and seeing him through the surgery, he was still able to earn his Eagle Scout Award. It was perhaps because of these experiences that he had the courage to live and teach in China and to live and work in Alaska. He has learned to face the unknown with strength and confidence.

I loved watching Wesley in concerts and plays when he was in high school. He participated with such talent, enthusiasm and good nature. I can imagine him in his most recent role in the Little Shop of Horrors. I only wish I could have seen him perform. I know he was the Best One.

So now, at 28, Wesley is an accomplished writer who has an open, rational mind. He is not afraid to try new things or to think for himself. I still love him as much as I ever did, but now I can also respect and look up to him for the fine man he has become.

I love you, Wesley. Have a wonderful birthday and much success and satisfaction in the coming year.

What I Admired About My Father:

My father was a perfectionist. He may have carried it a bit too far in some aspects and not far enough in others, but I did admire his organizational skills, his careful attention to details and the absolutely accurate way he handled his finances.

It may seem a contradiction. If you had seen my home during my growing up years, “organized” would certainly not be an adjective that would have come to mind to describe it. But if you were to visit my father’s home office, you would find everything in order to a fault. My father had everything filed and find-able. Even the instructions for the electric can opener were in my father’s files. His music was catalogued under both title of song and the artist. He kept records back to the dinosaur age. When things would get too piled up and uncontrollable, my father built drawers and shelves throughout the house to bring order back into the chaos. At one point, he was made the executive secretary to the Stake President and that office had never before been so well run and efficient. Everything he did, he did with excellence. One time when I came home from college for a visit, he showed me his financial records and said, “I can tell you how much money I have in my wallet by looking at my books.” He proceeded to show me how much his ledger said he should have, then took out his wallet and counted out that exact amount. He was amazing.

As a child, I loved to watch him build things. He was a good carpenter and, with his brothers, built the house that our family lived in from about 1956 to the time my mother died. My favorite thing that he built was a miniature table and chairs that were just right for a little girl. I spent many hours playing at that table.

Even though I can’t say that my father and I were very close, I adored him. He wasn’t home much when I was growing up. He worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was out of town probably three weeks out of every four. But when he was home, I felt safe. I knew everything was under control again.

He called me into his office one time when I was in first grade. He had received my report card on which were four E’s. (In my grade school, “E” was for “Excellent,” “S” was for “Satisfactory,” and “N” was for “Needs to Improve.”) He paid me 25 cents for each of my “E’s” and that small token of his approval motivated me throughout the rest of my school days to do the best I could. This was his way of teaching me to value my education. He continued to pay me for my good grades. When I went to college (which he paid for, but for which he required us to pay him back), he would offset my debt to him by crediting my good grades in his books. By the time I graduated from Brigham Young University with a 3.71 GPA, he said I owed him nothing.

My father loved airplanes. One of his favorite things to do whenever he was in Salt Lake City, was to drive out to the airport and watch the airplanes take off and land. He had been flying a few times in small aircraft, but had never been on a commercial jet. When Wes and I were first married and had a double reception with Dariece and Don in California, we bought tickets for my parents to fly there for it. That was one of the most enjoyable things I ever got to do for my father and my thanks to Wes for making it possible.