Preserving the Ideal: Mason Jar Memories

For years I kept a dusty Mason jar, filled with home-bottled cherries, on my kitchen shelf. I have no idea how the jar arrived in my kitchen. I do know that I have never bottled cherries, and I know that my family would never eat the fruit. And yet, the jar presided over years of holiday meals and fresh bread, hurried breakfasts and midnight snacks. Perhaps I hoped that it would lend a sense of pioneer wholesomeness and a promise of home-cooked love that would settle over my family.

For me, personally, the cherries brought a touch of my childhood to my adult life. Growing up, canning season was a bustling reality at our house, following on the heels of gardening season. As autumn approached, Mother alternated between sewing our school clothes and minding the jars rumbling away in the canner on the stove. She bottled applesauce, pears, pickles, peaches, tomatoes, and whatever fruit was native to the area we called “home” that year. When our travels took us out West to visit family, we gathered cherries from the orchards in central Utah. I never liked the taste of the cherries as much as I liked the chunky applesauce and the bread and butter pickles, but I loved the way they looked with the rich burgundy of the cherry juice. And I loved the vacation memories they brought.

As my children grow older and my confidence in my nurturing skills dwindles, my own mother rises higher and higher on the pedestal of ideal motherhood. I struggle with the daily grind of cooking and remember family dinners and trays of fanciful holiday treats on New Year’s Eve. I sigh impatiently when my younger children want to play a made-up game, and I remember Mother playing ball with me in the park and making a special tent to go over the card table. I explain to my teenager that I cannot possibly manage all of his activities along with my own, and I remember how Mother used to drive me across town for ballet three times a week.

I will never be the mother to my own children that my mother was to me, just as I will never eat that dusty bottle of cherries. But the ideal still presides over my kitchen thoughts and colors my dreams.

Remembering

Brady...back in triathlon days

20 years ago this week, I lost my husband. Silly phrase, that. I didn't "lose" Brady, of course. I knew exactly where he was. He lay on the bed in front of me. After hours in a coma, heart racing and breathing ragged, he opened his eyes briefly, as if to note that the important people had gathered for his transition moment. We had--most of us, anyway. His cousin and close friend did not hear the news in time, but Brady could wait no longer. He closed his eyes, drew one last breath and crossed a bridge, out of our sight for a time.

My father gave me a priesthood blessing that night. He blessed me, among other things, with the ability to do what I needed to do to wrap things up and leave my relationship with Brady behind until the eternities. At the same time, he reminded me that a closeness would continue and that Brady would always remain near, would always care.

I had forgotten the specifics of that blessing until I read my journal just now. Looking back with the perspective of time and experience, I see inspiration in my father's words. Brady and I shared just three years together as husband and wife. We were young and stupid, trying to be grownups and, more often than not, falling short.

Just two months after Brady died, I moved cross country, seeking fresh air and a chance to remember how to be young. I married again, a year and a half later. I have always wondered what Brady thought about that. Even though I knew without a doubt that I did the right thing, for a long time I still felt a twinge of guilt, a sense that I had betrayed Brady somehow, or at least that I had betrayed the sensibilities of his family.

I have visited his grave over the years, reporting in. "Devin is growing tall, Brady. He's smart and handsome. You would be so proud." And later, pleading, "Please help me raise your son. I'm trying my best, but he's struggling, and I feel so inadequate." Then, just a year ago, I sat in the Salt Lake temple with Devin for the first time. I prayed fervently that Brady could share in that moment somehow, that he could watch his son prepare to serve a mission, that he could see the fine man Devin had become.

Devin and others have sensed Brady's presence over the years. I never felt I deserved that experience. But I find myself, all these years later, wondering what it will be like to see him again. I hope we can be friends. I hope we can sit down and compare stories over a cup of hot chocolate. I hope we can take our grandchildren (or great-grandchildren) for walks in the clouds and argue about whether they inherited their intellect and talent from Grandma or from Grandpa.

In those early years, I wanted to wield my pen to write a stunning tribute to Brady. I soon realized how very little I knew him, that I would do better to raise his son well than to try and create a life that Brady himself had not yet lived. Now I find that I have nothing profound to say. In some way and in his own time, Brady will find a way to tell his own story. I don't pretend to understand eternity, and I cannot paint heaven. But I do know that Brady lives on. I know I will see him again, and I think he will smile when he sees me. I hope he does.

Until then, I will simply live my life. Now and then I will look up and wink at the sky. I will hear a snatch of a song or catch a glimpse of a Rocky Mountain sunset, and I will remember a life I had the honor to share just briefly.

Olympics of the Heart

I had an Olympic moment this morning--a throwback to the 2010 Olympics, actually. Alec's CD blared kd lang when I turned on the truck this morning, and it took me back to the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics, to a moment that for some reason struck me to the core. Even if kd lang leaves you a little flat, stay with me. This post is really much more about love than music. I wrote this two years ago, but the feelings still hit me every time I hear "Hallelujah."


I love the Olympics, from the record-breaking runs to the heart-breaking spills. For the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, however, the defining moment for me came in the opening ceremonies, when kd lang sang the anthem “Hallelujah.” I sat still, electrified, from the opening notes of the song. I don’t really know what it was, precisely, that held me mesmerized. As Alec says, “She’s got some pipes.” But it wasn’t just the amazing voice. The magical marriage of kd lang’s voice with Leonard Cohen’s poetry produced something greater than either of them.

Alec downloaded the song to his ipod recently, and more often than not he plays it during our pre-dawn drive to seminary. At the opening chords, we fall silent, listening, drinking in the music as it sinks and swells inside the car. I think of King David, baffled that he can please the Lord despite his fall from grace, baffled that the love of God reaches his broken soul. I think of Samson, blind and disgraced but strong again, pulling down the arches in a last heroic act.

I think, too, about love. We use the same word for such widely disparate and often conflicting emotions and actions. We grow up talking about our “God of love,” and then we experience the tawdriness of human love, and somehow God falls in our eyes. Our anthems of praise fall flat because we don’t believe them anymore, because in our failures we cannot raise our eyes to find the divine. We lose confidence in our ability to please God. Then, as we look to the ground, our shoulders hunched and our hearts broken with the effort of trying and failing, we mumble our own version of “hallelujah.” Perhaps it’s a simple prayer of sorrow or a finally genuine plea for help. Perhaps it’s a kind act toward some other damned soul crouched far from the victory arch.

And then, in the depths, we feel it. Somehow our “cold and broken hallelujah” stumbled up to heaven. God’s voice reached down to meet it, and the resulting chord begins to grow. The heart still stained and tattered by our attempts to find love here on earth gathers strength, and hope swells a “hallelujah” finally acceptable to a God who loves us despite our failures. Perhaps God loves us because when our failures broke us, we still tried to sing.