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.

The Best and Brightest

"You are a chosen generation," we tell them. "God saved His best and brightest to send down to earth for these winding up scenes." In twenty years of teaching teenagers, I have delivered such lessons dozens of times. We sense, at times, the urgency of our days, the need for strong leaders and noble hearts. We know how much the world requires of our youth, and we attempt to inspire them, to motivate them upward to the great heights we hope they can reach.

And then, almost in the next breath, we take those visions of greatness and sweep them out of reach. We begin to make excuses for the youth, for ourselves. They are so tired. They face such great temptations. Consider the homes in which they live: the physically or emotionally absent fathers, the abuse, the difficult finances. They work so hard to meet the demands of schoolwork, that to expect more out of them would be unfair. You know the routine because you have made those same excuses for your own children and for others.

I do not have the answers. But I know that if we want these youth to reach the heights, we need to set them on the path, and we need to give them the tools to climb. We cannot climb for them and then feed them cookies while we show them photos from the top of the mountain. Nor can we sip our cocoa and shove them out the door to go climb the mountain on their own, only to grumble at their failure when they turn back before they reach the summit.

Yousef Karsh, the famous photographer, started life in Turkish Armenia. When just 14 years old, he fled the Armenian genocide and eventually landed in Canada. He lived with an uncle, who recognized and nurtured his talent. From humble beginnings, Yousef built a successful career photographing influential leaders and celebrities all over the world. His iconic portrait of Winston Churchill glared from the cover of Life Magazine in May 1945, earning him rare praise from the prime minister, who said, "You can make even a roaring lion stand still to be photographed."

One biographer described the 20-something Yousef as "young, talented and hungry." That phrase caught my eye. Hunger, both physical and metaphorical, represented a key ingredient in Yousef's success. I thought of other hungry youth who used their challenges as a motivation to success: Stephen Hawking, Oprah Winfrey and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to name just a few.

Victor and Mildred Goertzel researched hundreds of the world's most influential people for their classic book Cradles of Eminence. Three quarters of their research subjects sprang from troubled childhoods. Over one quarter succeeded despite serious physical handicaps. The Goertzels concluded, among other things, that the drive to compensate for disadvantages actually propelled these individuals to their eventual success. In essence, hunger led to greatness.

How, then, do we recognize and nurture that hunger into a positive force? Even more difficult, how do we awaken motivating hunger in youth stifled by complacency? If our youth are to rise to great heights, they first have to dream. They need a reason to look upward. Clearly, the answer does not lie in manufacturing tragic circumstances for our children. Neither does it lie in shielding them from every difficulty or immediately fixing every problem for them.

We can give them space to design and build, fail and fly. We can cheer their successes and hug them through their failures. We can chase our own dreams and share them. Above all, we can expect much and love much.

Loving Away the Fear

Photo from SodaHead web site.

My children have died a hundred deaths in my imagination, and my heart has broken over and over again. My bank account has run dry; my house has burnt to the ground; my car has careened off cliffs and into trees; intruders invade my home on dark nights. Is it peculiar to women, this almost irresistible tendency to pre-live the possibility of tragedy and lie awake in midnight fear?

I remind myself that worry accomplishes nothing good. Fretting does nothing to prepare me for the actual tragedies of life, big or little, nor does my imagining a scenario provide some sort of mystical immunization against real danger. Quite the opposite, in fact. Worry interrupts my sleep, shifts my focus from matters of greater importance, and wastes hours I could more productively donate to joy.

As I pondered the relationship between worry and fear and our inability to feel love and fear at the same time, I began to chew on the possibility that incorporating greater love into my life could provide an antidote to the worry that gnaws away at my equilibrium. My ponderings led me to the scripture in 1 John 4:18 that reads:

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."

I sensed a key in that verse somewhere and began to study it in context. I discovered a rich lesson on love in 1 John 4. That "perfect love," the love that casts out fear, is the love of Christ. It is not my power or my love that casts out Satan and the fear and worry that he inspires, as if I could love myself up that tower of Babel to reach godly power. Rather, it is the love and power of the Savior Himself. Negativity and fear flee in the face of His spirit and His grace. 


My part, then, is to accept into my life the Spirit and grace that the Savior offers. I bring that Spirit into my life by loving others, by knowing and emulating Jesus Christ, and by trusting God. Believing that He loves me, trusting in that love, gives me the key to casting out fear. That ability to trust, to truly live a Christlike life, takes time and experience, repentance and work. Unfortunately for impatient souls like me, there is no shortcut. I come to know God bit by bit through the years as I study and as I hike the peaks and valleys of life. Fortunately, God possesses an extraordinary abundance of patience and a willingness to shower blessings and peace upon me just as quickly as I can open my heart enough to hold them. 


Ultimately, having the Spirit dwell in me and feeling that trust are gifts of God that I need to prepare to receive. The more I give place for the perfect love of the Savior in my soul, the more fear and worry fade away. As I cease to fear, I can eventually feel the peace of being "made perfect in love." Then what shall I do with those midnight hours? And how will the world spin on its way without my worry to hold it aloft?

A Rebellion in Bloom

The sky threatened rain this morning, or rather promised it, and the wind covered the grass underneath the plum trees with rose petals. It all sounds lovely and romantic, with a scented carpet of yellow and pink. From the road, it looks as if the yellow rosebush fairly exploded with color, spilling sunshine. A closer inspection, however, reveals leaves spotted with holes and blooms past their prime. My rosebushes needed a haircut before the approaching rain left them looking like street beggars in faded rags once vibrant.

Accordingly, I put the dog out on her chain for her morning sniff and forage and gathered my clippers from the tool chest. Much to the consternation of Emily Post or the mothers of random southern debutantes or whoever really cares about such things, I padded around to the flower garden in my pajamas to gather spent blooms and attempt to tidy up my rather messy garden.

I know little about gardening, from the perspective of either aesthetics or horticulture. The first year in our new home, the day lilies timidly hugged the side of the garage, leaving plenty of space for rosebushes and a small, unassuming black-eyed Susan plant. But the day lilies have now thrown away any pretense at timidity, flinging their skinny green arms wide and boldly claiming new territory. From a distance I fail to distinguish the yellow lilies from the roses they overshadow. Not content with their own debauchery, the lilies have corrupted the black-eyed Susans and they, too, have wilfully chosen to ignore their boundaries.

Amid the rebellion of the garden stand four rose bushes: one staunchly white, one sunny yellow, one white edged in pink, and one that blooms pink and fades to lavender. The roses love sunshine and heat. When I wilt in the 90 degree weather, they burst forth in an untidy profusion of dozens of blooms. I cut a bouquet of garden flowers over the weekend, arranging them in a vase on the dining room table. Away from the blue sky and fresh air, however, the blooms paled sadly and drooped a bit, no longer confident in the absence of sunshine.

I grew up with roses on the south side of the house. Mother tested new roses for Jackson and Perkins in those days, flowers with names like Snowfire and Yankee Doodle. I remember the white boxes arriving in the mail and scrawny bushes soaking in the bathtub before Mother planted them in her garden alongside the driveway. She planted hybrid teas, mostly, elegant flowers that would never explode willy-nilly in quite the way mine do. Roses like the ones in my childhood memories belong in orderly gardens, well spaced and well tended.

My roses have neither the beauty of the hybrid teas, nor the freedom of the day lilies. Their blooms lack polish and proper balance. They fail to present as well in a vase as they do out in the sunshine. At the same time, try as they will, they cannot reach thorny branches as wide as they would like. I trim the bushes a little each time I cut a drooping bloom, and I cut them back to almost nothing in the winter, leaving naked stumps to weather out the frost and snow.

I have been thinking lately about gardens, about living somewhere in the netherzone between elegance and freedom. I remember a few hybrid tea days, when my resume brimmed with promise. But the days I miss are the lily days, those years when I flung my arms wide and thoroughly enjoyed life. I traveled. I explored intellectual landscapes and watched the world open up before me. I recognized only those boundaries I chose to accept.

I no longer feel the freedom of the lily days. The modesty of my bank account, combined with the responsibilities that tend to accompany middle age, keep that kind of freedom tantalizingly out of range. Cornfields out my kitchen window lack the breathtaking quality of Alaskan summers or the wonder of a full moon through the steam of a geyser.

And yet, maybe the simple lilies still have lessons to teach me. They create free space between the garage and the bricks, ignoring artificial boundaries, thriving in the heat and soaking up the rain. They even handle the occasional frost, cheerfully rebounding with blossom after blossom. I think maybe I can find some lily days again. I just have to remember how to stretch my arms and twirl.

Life in the News Feed

Because this just begs for a FB post...

I went for a bike ride the other day and, as often happens when I ride alone without music in my ear, I found myself composing my morning in the form of a Facebook status. I condensed my glorious ride amid the cornfields into various haikus extolling the wonders of birdsong and the relative merits of prairie wind and New England hills in building strong lungs and muscles. Pure poetry, I tell you. I almost never post my mid-exercise poetic ramblings for public consumption (or, rather, the consumption of those lucky 308 people subjected occasionally to my mutterings on their news feed). However, I find it amusing that I think of my life in those terms.

A friend of mine once found herself in the uncomfortable spotlight of an ongoing news event. As the spokesperson for one side of a political issue, she saw her views reduced to 10-second sound bytes. She would respond to interview questions thoughtfully, only to discover hours later that the sound byte that made the evening news gave a distressingly skewed vision of her stance.

I find the Facebook news feed somewhat akin to the 10-second sound byte: life condensed into a phrase or two. However, in social media I retain control over my 10 seconds of fame (unless, of course, my teenage son sneaks onto my account). Control is a wonderful thing, though with the control comes also the necessity of taking responsibility for that passionate comment posted in the heat of the moment. Oops.

The sociolinguist in me loves the alternately fascinating and annoying window into a filtered world that social media provides. I have a host of people from various phases of my life that I now recognize in snippets, like the vision of a party illuminated in the pulse of a strobe light. Mark builds a marvelous collection of photos from his daily commute into Boston. A host of friends poke fun at life with a sardonic wit that leaves me laughing to myself in an empty house in the middle of the morning.  A former student of mine sailed around the world this spring and posted pictures that inspire me with possibilities.

On the other hand…well, I will spare you my diatribe against emotional exhibitionism, unresearched political scare tactics, the endless minutiae of health woes, and those awful “copy this into your status if you want to end world hunger/support abused children/tell your mother you love her” statuses that leave you feeling like a heartless guttersnipe for scoffing and refusing to re-post. Men and women have died for the right to freedom of speech. Who am I to trample on that freedom just because my news feed occasionally makes me cringe and wish for the days of stone tablets?

I suppose that in the short term, until social media gives way to another cultural phase, I will continue to frame my life in random chunks of thought. This week’s snapshot, for instance? “Strawberry picking with my fellow crazy ladies. Laughter and freezer jam cure a multitude of ills.”