Answer to the Hard Question, Take Two

Image from the Hubble telescope

(I think I will subtitle this one "My Place in the Universe," for no particular reason except that it gives me an excuse to post a cool picture.)

I began writing this blog just over one year ago, partly to exercise my writing muscles and partly to answer what was, for me, a challenging question. After a youth and young adulthood spent building a resume of accomplishments and adventures, I found myself in middle age with increasingly blurred vision. Not only did I require glasses to read anything smaller than about 18 point type, but I had lost sight of myself. When faced with a seemingly innocuous request to describe myself, I froze.

Last week, I asked my early morning seminary students to respond to the question: Who am I? I decided that I should answer the question myself, and for the first time in several years, I found the task surprisingly easy. In no particular order:

I am a writer, or at least I aspire to be a writer. For years, I brought in a pretty good salary writing manuals and proposals, and yet I did not consider myself a writer. Now, my pen brings in absolutely no income at all. All the same, my brain needs to write almost as much as my body needs to eat. I love it when my writing touches someone else, but I would write even without an audience.

I am a teacher. This year, that involves teaching music and scriptures, but frankly, I enjoy teaching just about anything. Sometimes I think I'm pretty talented at teaching. On my better days, I realize my flaws and focus on learning and listening and letting something greater than I do the teaching. That works much better. I do draw the line at opening a preschool or teaching computer skills to octogenarians.  We all have our limits, unreasonable as they may be.

I am a wife and a mother, and I say that with much more meaning now than I did in my twenties when I first took the titles. Life and death, epiphanies in the pit or on the mountaintop, and the plodding pace of daily life have all led me step by step to a much greater understanding of what it means to be married and live in a family.

I am a believer. I have had occasion these past few months to revisit and refresh my beliefs. After an unexpected period of doubt, I pondered back over my own personal experiences with God and with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I cannot explain the experiences of others or events that occurred years ago. On the other hand, neither can I deny the unmistakable answers to prayers, the inspired counsel of leaders, and the direct influence of God in my life and the life of my family. I know God lives and that He communicates not only with me but with His prophet on the earth. Call it simple if you will. I cannot deny what experience has taught me to be true.

How refreshing to discover myself again! I have missed me.

Romance, Corry Style

Elwood

Like many love stories, the story of Florence and Elwood begins with a date, Elwood’s first. To be more precise, the story begins with basketball, hometown rivalry, and the wager of a box of candy. It was a Saturday night in January 1930. Cedar City’s high school basketball team opened its season with a game against rival Parowan High School. Coach Linford’s boys needed to prove themselves, and a win against a strong team like Parowan would set them on solid footing in their quest for the division championship. They had the home court advantage, and Elwood joined his friends to cheer on his team.

Elwood was a senior in high school and, despite a self-professed admiration for girls from about the third grade on, he had always felt too bashful to ask a girl on a date. As luck would have it, he found himself standing next to a pretty Parowan girl during the game. They bantered about whose team would win, and Elwood jokingly said, “Well, I’ll bet you a box of candy that Cedar wins.” Cedar did win. Elwood forgot all about the bet.

A few days later, a box of candy arrived in the mail for Elwood with no return address. He puzzled over the origin of the candy for a few days before the light dawned. All of a sudden, he remembered the bet. He called the pretty Parowan girl and asked her to go to a show and help him eat the box of candy. And that is the story of Elwood’s first date with …Lillian Adams.

Wait! Lillian, you say? I thought this was a love story about Elwood and Florence. Ah, yes. Well, you see, Lillian and Florence were good friends, had been ever since they met in Miss Parry’s 1st grade class. Lillian graduated a year early from high school and went to Cedar to start college while Florence finished her senior year at Parowan High. In Cedar, Lillian ran into Elwood at the aforementioned basketball game. They dated for a while until Elwood decided that perhaps he should avoid going too steady with any one girl before his mission.

In May of 1930, Elwood and Florence graduated from their respective high schools, and Florence joined her friend Lillian at the Branch Agricultural College (BAC) in Cedar City. Elwood knew her briefly before he left on his mission to England that October. In fact, he remembers seeing her one day as she walked toward campus and thinking, “I would like to ask that girl for a date sometime.” Then missionary work filled his mind, and he forgot about Florence until he returned home from England.

Florence in 1932

The Christmas holidays of 1932 found Florence in the middle of her sophomore year at BAC. She lived with her sister Fae and kept busy with drama, student government, her sorority, and her work at Cedar Mercantile.

Far from Florence’s thoughts, Elwood sailed home from England at the close of his mission, arriving home on Christmas Day 1932. Lillian, still rather enamored with Elwood, dragged Florence to church to hear Elwood’s homecoming talk. Elwood makes no note of seeing her at his homecoming, but then the returned missionary’s social calendar filled up pretty quickly in those first few weeks home.

In mid-January 1933, Elwood and Florence both found themselves at a party at the home of Bertha Seaman. Elwood arrived alone and saw Florence enter the room. She must have looked particularly striking that evening, because he remembers thinking “here comes the bride” as he watched her. Not realizing that Florence had come to the party as the date of Waldo Adams, Elwood intended to ask her if he could take her home. Either bashfulness or wisdom prevailed. In any event, Elwood left the party alone.

A week or so later, the Cedar Second Ward planned an M.I.A. party. As he hurried out the door to go somewhere with his friend C. J. Parry, Elwood followed an impulse. “Wait,” he called to C.J. “I have to go back in the house for something.” Back inside, he called Florence at her job at Cedar Mercantile and made a date to take her to the party. Thus began a lengthy courtship.

Planning a life together in the midst of the Great Depression often meant delaying marriage for more practical matters. Elwood completed his schooling at BAC and worked the family farm while Florence continued working at Cedar Mercantile. He played tennis, competed on the debate team, and served a term as Student Body President. She kept up with her sorority, continued doing readings, and became involved with the newly formed Business and Professional Women’s Club.

While they waited to build sufficient finances for their marriage, Elwood and Florence watched close friends get married. One of those friends was Lillian Adams. In a speech she gave just months before her death, Florence shared her admiration for Lillian for not letting the love triangle interrupt their friendship.

As two years passed, day-to-day life and increasing responsibilities crowded in. Florence and Elwood each supposed the other had begun to lose interest in the relationship. In the summer of 1934, Elwood accepted a call to serve as Leland Perry’s counselor in the Second Ward bishopric. His bishopric duties sometimes overshadowed romance. Florence recalled sitting in the living room at the Corry home one evening, listening to cries of “horsler” from the kitchen. Elwood had a bishopric meeting and needed someone to take Florence home. In time-honored Corry tradition, the last one to yell “horsler” pulled the short straw and played chauffeur.

But Elwood got a wake-up call one day from his friend Demoin, who announced that Florence was dating someone else. As the story goes, she even kissed the competition, a Swedish fellow named Roy Lundgren. Perhaps that was just the motivation Elwood needed.

Elwood’s personal history mentions nothing about their courtship after the first date until an incident that occurred shortly before the wedding. It was June 1935, and Elwood was putting up hay on the farm with Rex Maxwell. Rex had no idea about the quickly approaching wedding until Elwood casually mentioned that he would be gone for a few days as he “had a little detail to take care of.”

“What detail?” asked Rex.

“Oh, I’m getting married.”

A bit put off by Elwood’s casual approach, Rex raised his voice. “Man, you call that a little detail?” Elwood said Rex went on to lecture him about the importance of the step he was about to take. Apparently, he took the lecture to heart. In any case, the two married on June 21, 1935 in the St. George LDS Temple.

For Florence and Elwood, the real love story played out over the next 19 years of marriage. Together they weathered the financial devastation of the Great Depression, Elwood’s service in World War II, and the deaths of their remaining parents. Together they raised a family of six children and built an insurance and real estate business. They supported one another in demanding church callings and community activities. And finally, after two decades of laughter and disappointment, hard work and good memories, they supported one another through Florence’s final illness. While perhaps a little short on traditional romance, their romance, Corry style, has inspired generations of their posterity.

(Many thanks to family members for contributing their memories, to the Utah Digital Newspaper project for its online archive of old newspapers, and to Grandpa Corry for recording personal history. Feel free to correct me on details!)

Frederick Moments

Sunday afternoons at our house are sacred. After lazy naps for the older folks and an hour or two of reading and dolls for the younger folks, we gather in the living room for family time. For us, family time usually involves cards of some sort and a giant bowl of popcorn that empties all too quickly.

This weekend, while someone with a better hand than mine sorted through cards and determined strategy, I looked around at my family. My daughter, too young to effectively manage the strategy of bidding, chatted away happily with Grandma on the phone, recounting her first days of kindergarten. Coach Dad and the 11-year old discussed the previous day's surprise win over a rival football team and replayed my son's two fumble recoveries. Our lone teenager laughed at someone's silly joke, and we all joined in, unable to resist his contagious cheeriness. Hundreds of miles away in Texas, our missionary son enjoyed his first Sunday in the field. Mission experiences are the "coolest thing ever" he wrote in his weekly email. It was a Frederick moment, everyone happy and trouble far away.

I still have a copy of my favorite book from childhood. Leo Leonni tells the story of a chatty family of field mice preparing for winter. Four of the mice busily gather corn and nuts, while Frederick sits off by himself. When they chide him for not working, the quiet mouse says, "I do work. I gather sun rays...and colors...and words, for the winter days are long and many."

When the first snow begins to fall, the mice retreat cheerily to their home in the old stone wall. They eat corn and tell stories. But then the food begins to run out, and the cold drags on. "What about your supplies, Frederick?" they ask. Frederick speaks of the sun, and the mice begin to feel warmer. He speaks of colors, and they see them "as clearly as if they had been painted in their minds." Summer has found them.

Like any mother, I lie awake some nights, frozen at the thought of the horrible things that could happen to my children: kidnappings a la Elizabeth Smart, random accidents, a young child lost in the crowd, or the painful consequences of bad choices. Night terrors respond sluggishly to logic. But in the sanity of daylight I remind myself of Frederick and the power his supplies hold for my children.

Every golden hour of family laughter, each hug, the quiet moments when inspiration washes over the seeking mind, the tears of gratitude, story time with Dad and gloriously untidy choruses of "Sweet Violets"...all add up in the storage room of the heart. In times of emotional famine or the bitter winter of adversity, when I cannot reach out to hold my children in my arms, I have to trust that they can bring forth those colors and bask in the warmth of remembered joy and the surety of love.

Soap Operas and Bonbons

With my first conscious thought this morning I pondered a long-forgotten question: What shall I do today? I have had little occasion to ask myself that question in the 23 years since I entered corporate life and then began building my family. I rolled the thought around my mind, tasting the deliciousness of the possibilities. Never mind that the actual play by play of my day reads like a rather mundane "to do" list. The very fact that I decide what makes the list and when I start and stop each task caused me to jump out of bed with a smile.

My youngest started kindergarten this week, darting off to the bus with a nervous grin and eyes sparkling with excitement. She gently but firmly informed us that she did not want us to accompany her to her class on the first day of school. So we took pictures before waving her off, and I returned to the quiet of an empty house.

I love my children, truly I do. And I love my husband. I also love my time alone.

I feel a bit of a kinship with my father this week. I believe he began planning for his retirement from the time he walked off the stage with his doctoral degree in hand. He enjoyed his careers, as far as I could tell, the teaching and speaking, anyway, if not the administrivia. But he had plans for that time when he determined the answer to his own "what shall I do today" question. Now here he is, living in a wonderful log house in a village in the mountains, teaching himself Greek and Hebrew, hiking and biking, volunteering, and (I hope) writing.

I have no aspirations to teach myself Greek and Hebrew. I do, however, have a book patiently waiting for me to write it and a blog suffering atrophy from my shameful neglect. I have Old Testament lessons to prepare for early morning seminary and muscles begging for regular exercise. I may even treat myself to a little non-required reading now and again. We all have our guilty pleasures, after all.

In the short term, when yet another person cheerfully asks what I plan to do with my newfound freedom, I will simply smile and say, "Soap operas and bonbons, of course."

A Moment Captured

I have a favorite picture of my grandmother, Florence. In the picture, a little girl with serious dark eyes and loose brown curls perches on a wrought iron chair. She looks slightly unsure, but not frightened, with perhaps the hint of a smile. Those same eyes, searching yet steady, show in photos of Florence as a teenager and a woman. Here, they gaze out over the chubby cheeks of a five-year old.

She clasps her hands lightly on the skirt of her white embroidery dress, a matching ribbon tied in a bow around her left wrist. She loved that dress, although looking back as an adult she thought the heavy black play shoes and dark stockings made for a hideous picture. Virgil loved the Sunday curls in her hair. Even moreso, he adored his half sister. Everyone loved Florence, from Virgil--home from college and about to get married--on down to the toddler, Woodrow.

Perhaps Florence, with her winning combination of determination and sweetness, reminded the family of all that was still good in a world gone wrong. With World War I in full swing, and brothers Virgil and Alvin waiting to be called up, even the sheltered Southern Utah town of Parowan needed the innocence of a cherub in white embroidery and black stockings.

And so Virgil whisked Florence to the town photographer to capture the beauty of Sunday curls and dainty dresses. Never mind the clunky shoes. Parowan finally boasted a town photographer, and children grew up all too soon in those days.

Florence herself met the world in short order. Three years passed in the warmth of summer rides on the hay wagon, evenings spent listening to Mamma (Harriet) reading poetry, and family singalongs at the organ. Then came what Florence later referred to, rather euphemistically, as "the Delta adventure." Father (Mahonri) sold their beautiful home and uprooted the family to Delta to seek their fortune. The business venture failed, and before the year was out, they returned to Parowan, penniless.

Delta claimed not only the family's pride but also the life of baby brother Homer. His death dealt a blow to Harriet's already frail health. Diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis while still in Delta, she willed her way through another eight years, finally dying in the middle of Florence's sophomore year of high school. The oldest child at home by this time, Florence shouldered much of the burden of those last years with her mother and essentially raised her younger brothers after Harriet's death.

The loss of her mother and the heaviness of the years after Delta left its mark on Florence and all of the children. But the warmth of those dark eyes prevailed. Inheriting her father's tenacity and her mother's grace, infused with her own remarkable compassion and capacity for joy, Florence never quite lost sight of the little girl in white with the steady gaze.

Happy Scars

I am building a new crop of scars as I write--a half moon on my inside left calf, with a series of oozing constellations mirrored on both legs. Poison ivy designed the scene, aided and abetted by my eventual inability to resist the overwhelming urge to apply long fingernails to the blisters. I have rarely felt anything as glorious as those brief seconds of relief from the infernal itching! Besides, since I encountered the ivy to begin with in the midst of an absolutely perfect family vacation, I can hardly complain. I scar easily, it seems, and the scars leave a map of my life on my skin, prompting memories, odd snapshots of random moments frozen in time.

Not far from the emerging constellations rests the scar of a small hole in my shin. I was five, running down the street with my friend Jenny in Vermilion, South Dakota. Jenny was my first best friend, and we played together whenever our mothers met for church functions. That day, while our mothers chatted or baked bread or planned some now long-forgotten event, we took Jenny's little sister for a dash in her stroller. The stroller hit a bump, stopped dead, and up in the air I flew, only to land quite precisely on a small, pointy rock. Jenny moved a year or two later, but I think of her now and again and wonder what sidewalks she has jogged since that 1970s summer afternoon.

My ring finger sports a battle scar from a round lost to a small pot of startlingly hot tea water. College summers found me working in some of America's most beautiful vacation spots. I cooked Rocky Mountain oysters for drunken lodge guests near Yellowstone, brewed endless pots of coffee to welcome wealthy fisherfolk to the brilliance of early June mornings in the Alaskan bush, and served tea to the more sedate guests at a Vermont country inn on the lakeshore. Truth be told, I was a rather terrible waitress. Still, I loved the scenery and the people I met. On misty mornings, Brenda and I brewed our own steaming cups of herb tea and settled into Adirondack chairs on the wide porch to contemplate the waves lapping the beach and the splendid freedom of the early blush of adult life.

Other scars tell perfectly mundane stories of trays of chocolate chip cookies placed a little too close to the top rack of the oven or the new (to us) television Brad and I carried up a flight of stairs. Only a few scars, like the white cross on my forehead, bring the memory of pain. The rest remind me of a rich life filled with the laughter of family game nights, breathtaking discoveries of beauty, and the warmth of friendships. I thank God for the sweet memories, made all the sweeter by lessons of the white cross.

Backward Glancing

The upcoming weekend finds me traveling back to Vermont for the first time since we moved to the Midwest two years ago. My somewhat nomadic lifestyle left me in Vermont far longer than any other place I have called "home" over the years. I left readily; Lot's wife and I have little in common. And yet, the thought of New England air sends me looking back fondly.

I picture rolling green hills and lakes clean enough for swimming. I feel the magnetic pull of the stretch of meadow at Fays Corner in Richmond and the early morning mist over Lake Champlain. My feet itch for a walk along Burlington's Church Street, past the usual crowd of 21st century New England hippies. We will have just missed the Jazz Festival on the waterfront, but perhaps we can stop by the Ben & Jerry's scoop shop for a double scoop of Chocolate Fudge Brownie and Cherry Garcia (frozen yogurt if I feel like being healthy, ice cream if I feel like walking on the wild side).

I find myself picturing favorite spots with layers of memories. For instance, I remember shopping on Church Street 25 years ago. I was a young college student, playing my way through the summer as the maitre d' at a country inn on North Hero Island. With a day off and my roommate's car, I drove in to Burlington to soak up the summer crowds along the cobblestone street of the marketplace.

Seven years later, I returned to Church Street. I bypassed What Ale's You and the Skirack this time in favor of street vendors and the Discovery Channel Store. Along with my two-year-old son, we embraced life with gusto. Devin turned heads with his blond curls, his movie star sunglasses, and a heart-stopping smile. We paused to climb every boulder between the Unitarian Church at the head of Church Street to Sweetwater's Restaurant near the bottom.

Over the next eighteen years, we returned to the cobblestones on frigid New Year's Eves for the annual First Night Dancing Dragons Parade, on humid summer afternoons for Italian sausage from Bookie's street cart, and occasionally for sumptuous desserts at Leunig's Bistro.

I miss the feel of Vermont, from the taste of the air on the first full-blown summer day in June to the unapologetically tree-hugging politics. I miss the bluntness of native Vermonters (although one has to search harder and harder to find them these days) and the eccentricities of my fellow church members there. I miss the music, from Mozart on the shores of Lake Champlain to the hot summer day we spent at the Vermont Reggae Festival in a rolling meadow up north. I dream of a day beginning on the Sunset Ridge trail on Mount Mansfield and ending in the charm of a tiny theatre in Waitsfield.

July will find me once again contentedly roaring past endless cornfields on the motorcycle and anticipating the glory of Friday night football underneath the lights. For this slice of early summer, however, my heart returns to an earlier home.