MY MEMOIRS

MEMORIES

(WRITTEN FOR GIFTS TO MY MOM AND DAD--CHRISTMAS 2013)

SOUNDS

We are reminiscing, Fred and I, and he asks me what my favorite memory is, of our years living on the farm. He wants the first thing that comes to my mind—without any deep pondering. My mind flies quickly back and it is sounds that come immediately into my mind—my little children laughing while they play in the enormous back yard, the lapping water running out of the heavy white irrigation pipes, the thousand voice choir of birds in the branches of the hundred-year-old trees, power tools in the shed that mean Fred is working on another dream project...my dreams. All these happy sounds race through my memory in minutes and then suddenly I have it—the favorite one—and I tell Fred, “It’s my Dad, whistling and singing in the old, white barn, as he prepares for the evening milking. That one sound IS the farm. It is symbolic of all of my memories there, not just with Fred, but as far back as my memories can be awakened. It is contentment and stability—comfort and tranquility. It is peace and joy. It is hard work and honest commitment. It is an end and a beginning. It is hope. There are so many good memories from those farm years that make me smile, but I choose a melodic whistle and the simple song of a farmer as my commemorative hallmark...and then I keep remembering.

DECISIONS

There is a day in 6th grade that I come home with news of a school campout. My mom is wary and protective and will not let me go. I don’t remember the disappointment, but my Mother must have been trying to heal a hurt when she let me skip school for a couple of hours and took me out to lunch at Wendy’s. We rarely went to any restaurants and I remember feeling special, sitting there alone with my Mom, eating salad with whole baby tomatoes that you can’t chew without them squirting seeds. And I remember feeling like my parents are wise when the weekend is over and all of the stories come back of the troubles at the campout. Now, as a mother myself, I appreciate more fully those hard decisions —decisions that sometimes hurt little hearts in order to keep them safe—and I remember how sweet those special one on one times are that are put in place to appease the pain.

GAMES

It is summertime and warm. The wild band of children are intent on a water fight and have an arsenal of empty cattle syringes. We know that if we pick the right time, the right mood, we can coax our Dad, who is in the barn, into battle. It’s a plan fraught with risk, a war we know we can’t win with our little streams of water that have to be continuously refilled from buckets outside, against the array of pressurized hoses at his fingertips, but the trick is to catch him off guard and then run like the dickens. There are two spring-loaded doors between us and him that we count on as shields. But more often than not, our buzz of activity alerts him to our plans and he is waiting, hose in hand when we quietly open up the first door. War won! But even dripping we are persistent and keep attacking and he is patient and lets us pester him.

MORNING

It is early on a school day. There is no central heating in the house and the bedrooms are freezing, literally, with ice creeping up the inside of the outer door and windows. But I know, always, that my dad will have a warm fire blazing in the living room and my mom will have a warm breakfast waiting for me at the table—one ready to warm me from the outside in and the other to warm me from the inside out—both symbols of divine roles fulfilled… providing… protecting...nurturing.

MAGIC

It is Christmastime. My parents have never encouraged a realistic belief in Santa Clause, but we still believe in the best ideal of him—in the spirit of Christmas, which is the spirit of Christ, and we believe in magic. It is a kind of magic that is heightened by the whir of a sewing machine behind closed doors, by kind people who leave packages on doorsteps and disappear into the night, by carolers with nuts and oranges, by our dad scraping the snow off peoples lanes and driveways. It is the magic of being together as a family, of reenacting the nativity to our Dad’s reading of Luke, of our Mom, reciting “The Night Before Christmas” with all the lights but the Christmas tree off, of knowing she’ll be up all night and that we have permission to be (but will never make it). It is the refined Christmas music of my mom and the Sometimes silly music that plays for 36 hours on the radio. It is the magic of healthy imaginations that pretend we hear the jingle of harnesses and the pawing hoofs of reindeer on the roof. It is freshly fallen snow and a morning run in our pajamas because waiting for the milking to be finished and our grandparents to come over is almost too much anticipation to bear. It is handmade dresses and dollhouses and quilts. It is the magic of honesty and simplicity—of selflessness and love.

BEAUTY

My mother is always arranging things—an object two inches to the left, then an inch to the right. She calls me up so I can come next door and see or sends me pictures by e-mail when we have moved away. She sees artistry in the pale pink color of a bar of soap and she shows me how “cleanliness is next to Godliness.” She teaches me that “there is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.” (Joseph Addison)

IN TRIBUTE

(WRITTEN FOR  GIFT TO MY MOM —MOTHER’S DAY 2014)

BIPPITY-BOPPITY-BOO 

I had a fairy godmother, and though I dislike the Brothers Grimm, I can relate to the imagery of spinning straw into gold because my mother could Transform bolts of cloth into dreams come true. While my peers were out of town on pre-school weekend shopping trips, I was running through dirt fields and sledding down silage mountains… and my mother was sewing. She stitched “Gunnysack” dresses and piles of shimmering knits in colors of every shade of sherbet. On holidays she designed Easter dresses and Christmas dresses and I remember a special birthday that she sewed a caramel cowl and plum knickers, which I adored. Some of those memories are still tangible and safe inside my treasure chest, and the quilt that looked like cherry chocolates is still pulled out frequently to tuck over a grown child when they come home from college. I never have mastered the artistry of her magic wand, which still waves and produces a beautiful, miniature quilt whenever a new little soul enters our extended family, but because of her example, I learned to sew and a few times have even come close to creating magic, in the eyes of a child.

FORTRESSES

The remembrances of childhood can be humorous or haunting, but time often has a way of putting things into perspective. I love reminiscing with my siblings about the moments of our lives, either embarrassing then or embarrassing now, but which time has made entertaining. Every generation seems to look back, aghast at the fads and fashions imposed upon them by their parents—temporal things are funny that way. Among my sisters, one of our favorite stories involves 3 swimming suits—2 made of polyester double-knit and the coveted third made of silky polyester and a yard long sash—all with 16” zippers, tailored waistlines and mid-thigh pantaloons. These, Mylisa, Lori and I, promenaded, among the store-bought styles of our swimming class peers, attracting the unsolicited spotlight of nonconformity. Those remembrances bring gales of laughter now, especially as we remember other days, when the three of us talked the younger Marg and Liz, into wearing our cousins' wrestling suits—backward—so that we could borrow enough swimsuits from Laura and Mindy for us all to swim in their above ground pool. My mother has her own remembered embarrassments of childhood protections, among which are long wool stockings, and I’m sure my children will have theirs, but even amidst my burbling, I feel cherished to know that I had a dedicated mother with a noble heart, who did things, not always appreciated for their merit, in the attempt to build protective fortresses around purity and virtue. I love her valiance, her determination, and devotion. I see myself sewing my own symbolic suits for my children…and for me…because of her. Not too many years down the road, when my own children sit around reminiscing and find humor in my protection, I hope they also see the mother love.

BOOKS AND STARS

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination and the journey. They are home." (Anna Quindlen) That deep appreciation and affection I learned from my mother. Old novels are her escape and re-commitment—her teachers and her friends. She introduced me, at 14, to Bess Streeter Aldrich and “Song of Years” and Wayne Lockwood. There are different kinds of first love, but 30 years later, that ember and ability to love fictitious characters still warms a special place in my heart and has left an indelible impression of the worth of worn linen covers and thick, uneven pages. I am changed for the better because I knew the Martin’s. Madeleine L’Engle once said, "A book, too, can be a star, 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,' a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe." My mother introduced me to that light and year after year continues to keep sharing those living fires.

GRANDMOTHER GRACE

Everything I know about refinement started with my grandmother’s grace. She was direct and pragmatic, but she was also poised and proper. Her honesty could be blunt but was always soft-spoken. Her style was conservative but she designed fashion and was always well dressed, and fastidiously groomed. She instructed harmonic voice, played Egyptian Ella with elegance and sang with the beautifully tremulant voice of the era. She was like a fine porcelain doll, lovely, though not always touchable. I admired her. She instilled in my mother the love of words and elocution, uplifting music, and meticulous perfection and my mother instilled the love of those in me. I don’t think refined is a characteristic that I have attained...yet, but it is a goal that I want to achieve...because of my mother and my Grandmother Grace.

PEACHES AND PERFECTION

As a young mother, I once bottled peaches for my family at the church cannery. It was more time-efficient and cost-effective. I observed a woman packing bottles for her family with her knuckles “to get more in”. She was kind and offered to help me finish mine when she was done. I graciously declined. The contrasting images of her jars of mangled “jam” and the visions of my mother’s perfect half-moons made me decline. My mother is a perfectionist. She is scrupulous about food preparation and particular about its presentation. I grew up with hundreds of jars of bottled beauty lining the large shelves of our basement “fruit room”—ruby cherries, emerald beans, golden peaches—all perfectly preserved with patient, practiced hands and a paring knife. There was no blanching to help remove the peach skins—that darkened and softened the fruit. It was all done with painstaking precision, and though I’m told we were as poor as paupers, those golden jars, paired with warm, homemade bread were the feast of kings. 

HONOR THY FATHER

(WRITTEN FOR  GIFT TO MY DAD—FATHER’S DAY 2014)

FATHER, PAPA, DAD

I was asked once, in much earnestness, how it was being raised by a father who was so serious and strict. By that time, I was all grown up and images came to mind of my Dad, with his hair askew and his face contorted, spastically bouncing a basketball in his best imitation of Jerry Lewis. I pictured him falling down the spiral staircase and being bumped and bruised for a week, just to get a laugh. I remembered our Family Home Evening relays and the marble game with no rules. I recollected original stories, in front of the flickering fire, starring the politically incorrect Carlos, who broke our crayons and the gopher who was allergic to salt and pepper. I thought of the Saturday morning work charts with the silly caricatures of us standing on our heads or doing cartwheels. I recalled playing bucking bronco and sitting on my daddy’s feet, high up in the air., terrified and trusting. I could hear the echoes of our childish laughter while my mother scolded my father’s nonsense. All of these reflections flashed through my mind in seconds and as I looked at the pensive, disillusioned face of the questioner, who knew only one side of my dad, I laughed.

DIRT

From the beginning of time, there has been a kind of romance in owning the land, a mysterious peace associated with the soil. I understand the passion, the rooting—I am a farmer’s daughter. I have long been convinced that my father has particles of that rich, black loam coursing through his veins. Maybe it’s inherited, maybe it’s learned, but it’s manifest in the very young...this love of dirt. For my Dad, his kind of Utopia is time with a shovel, a tractor, a loader, or ditch digger—anything with which to move the earth. There is a favorite saying attributed to Napoleon that says, “There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep, for when he wakes he will move mountains.” I imagine those thoughts have crossed my mother’s mind, during the ranch years because moving mountains just happens to be my father’s favorite past time—that’s what giants do.

THE STUDY

Growing up, the summons, “Dad wants you in the study”, could evoke anxiety more quickly than almost any other “invitation”. That room—with its intimate square footage made for only two, its curtained, glass door and the tick, tick-tock of time passing—was my father’s citadel—our bastille. Even our friends learned to panic at its mention. Its walls held discourses, interrogation and soul searching. Within them goals were scrutinized, secrets were shared, confidences kept. Its confines, void of frivolity, encompassed listening and learning, patience and prayer, and all matters of the mind and heart. In short, they held, between their walls, a laborious kind of love. Now, whenever the topic of spiritual armament is raised and the list of obvious answers is being listed, I always raise my hand and add, “the study”.

BLESSED WITH WORK

While the market magicians are intent on advertising their big-ticket toys and vacation destinations, with promises of freedom, fun, and relaxation, my dad, aloof to all those claims, is pursuing a different kind of thrill. He calls it work, but there is irony in that definition, for he finds pleasure in the ponderous miles that he walks, looking, not very far, for the things that need his strong, labor-intensive hands, for creation or repair. He feels exhilaration in the exertion of a healthy anatomy made of God-given muscles and sinews, performing needful tasks, even in a body that is no longer as agile as it used to be. Often, caught up in this amusement, which forgets to be a chore, he, like a little child busy at his play, fails to stop to eat or rest. There have been times, when others working with him, without the pause for a break, call this work another name. But even in his final hours, I expect my dad will have his boots on and be reveling in the gratitude that he is blessed with work. David O. McKay once said, "Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, that love of work is success." My dad is the most successful man I know! A prophet told me so.

BE STILL, AND KNOW

Sometimes, when he thinks that no one else is looking, my dad will sit on his back porch and watch the world with awe and wonder. It’s rare, this sitting still in the middle of the day— repose is usually reserved for darker hours when physical idleness is not so welcoming of guilt, but once in a while he can’t help but take a moment to let it all sink in—the beauty and the bounty and the bliss. I think it is because he feels the psalm inside him to “be still and know that I am God.”

LEAD ME, GUIDE ME

He asked me to take a walk with him. It was late, it was dark and I was cross and tired. I resisted, but he persisted. We walked to the back fields that were his kingdom, and he stopped and asked me to go on alone. I was afraid...of the dark, the danger, the unknown. He knew I would be—it’s what he wanted. He prodded until I clung to him and cried. And then he asked if I would feel safe if he went with me, lead the way. I said I would,—he had always kept me safe before. And then he talked of other darkness, other dangers, far more black and perilous. And because he had listened first, to the promptings from a father that knew me better, this time I listened too. I don’t remember consciously setting my feet on another path that night,—often we don’t see things clearly in the fog, but I’m told that night that, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, took the one less traveled by.”

TO BE CONTINUED...