ox xoxo

My Spring Break has been painting, more painting, wallpapering, and additional painting. Painting is tedious. My angled Purdy and I can only have so many mental conversations before I get twitchy and need background noise. I turned on Sabrina with Julia Ormond despite the fact that aged, mumbling Harrison Ford loving her is neither apparent nor believable. Poor, desperate Sabrina up in a tree watching the man she thought she loved. Sometime during the 3rd coat of edging I recalled that I was no less pathetic my freshman year of college.

There was a boy and I thought we were a thing but he had stopped returning my calls. Later that semester I went to Mama's Cafe to support Brett Spackman's drumming career and was startled to see that boy with a beautiful blonde. I walked 12 blocks to his apartment complex, climbed the big tree in the courtyard and waited like a spider for him to come home with or without that girl. I was going to get to the bottom of this unrequited love story. Sadly, trees are not comfortable even when spying on lost flames and I jumped down after an uneventful hour. I focused on my forest green suede Chuck Taylors the length of the long, dark walk back to the dorms.

I was married two years later to a man that returned my calls and prefers brunettes.

Joni Mitchell said,

I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

When Greg and I set up home we had very little. His belongings fit in a small cardboard box: a wood veneer clock radio, two J.Crew flannel shirts purchased at a warehouse sale, a striped sweater, a few pair of Levi's Silvertab Baggy jeans, DEP level 3 hair gel, and a monkey bank fashioned from a coconut. I was slightly more blessed but everything we owned fit in one truckload. I realize now that we also set up home as a pair of oxen.

President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, once attended an ox pulling contest. In his words:

"A wooden sledge was weighted with ten thousand pounds of cement blocks. The object was for the oxen to move the sledge three feet. I noticed a well-matched pair of very large, brindled, blue-gray animals…the big blue oxen of seasons past.

 “Teams were eliminated one by one. The big blue oxen didn’t even place! A small, nondescript pair of animals, not very well matched for size, moved the sledge all three times.

 “The big blues were larger and stronger and better matched for size than the other team. But the little oxen had better teamwork and coordination. They hit the yoke together. Both animals jerked forward at exactly the same time and the force moved the load.”

It's been nearly 17 years since we unpacked Greg's cardboard box. He is still rocking the Silvertab Baggys (only available on Amazon) and fishing in those two flannel shirts with gelled hair. Some things never change. More importantly, Greg is still my mismatched, stout ox partner that knows when to pull.

Lots of things in marriage don't warrant joint-effort pulling. I don't have to watch the Broncos and he doesn't have to scrapbook. I don't like talking on the phone and he could care less about canning black beans. But hanging wallpaper for six hours so the nursery can move forward and my anxiety can decrease? We pull. Skipping my swim class to design his ad that needs to go to press in an hour? We pull. Sitting in the hail during RE's track meet to show support? We pull. Physical, emotional, financial hardships? We pull. Temple covenants? We pull hard.

Maybe we aren't the prettiest pair. Maybe our size doesn't scare anyone.* Don't count us out. There isn't a cement-laden sledge life has chained to our yoke that we haven't moved if we wanted to. Together we can pull anything.

*Greg has gained 8 lbs of pure muscle in anticipation of becoming a father again at age 40...just sayin'. In fact, he might be soon mistaken for Paul Bunyan rather than my ox.

“Equally Yoked Together,” address delivered at regional representatives’ seminar, Apr. 3, 1975; in Teaching Seminary: Preservice Readings [2004], 30, quoted by Elder Edward Dube, "Look Ahead and Believe," Ensign, November 2013. I share a birthday with Elder Dube.

Photo of my "lipstick kleenex" I keep in my purse for blotting. It's one of those deluxe printed kleenexes that comes in a small purse pack and is too pretty to blow my nose on. All my kisses are for Greg.