A Good Seed

There is a story of an old emperor who was trying to select a replacement by giving the youth in his village each a seed. They were to grow the seed as best they could and report back in a year. A young boy named Ling received a seed, which he took home and planted. Each day he would water the seed and watch for growth but nothing happened. The other youth in the village soon bragged about how well their seeds were growing but Ling still saw no growth.

After a year, the youth of the village brought their plants to the emperor. Ling had nothing, but the other youth had wonderful trees and bushes of various sizes and shapes. The emperor explained he gave each of them a boiled seed, which would not grow, but all of them except Ling had replaced it with a different seed. Apparently only one young person among the group had the integrity to abide by the rules even though it made them look like a failure. Ling was chosen as the new emperor.

I know a Ling and her name is Aurora Jayne Lawson. She won’t log on with your username, she won’t take more than one free sample, she waited to get a Gmail until she was 13, and she made Online P.E. (a cake class) an AP-caliber credit by repeatedly redoing 40-minute fitness assignments because her heart rate dipped to 168 instead of the required 170. She found a $5 bill on the floor of the bus and turned it in to the driver (who gave it to her two weeks later because no one claimed it) and then donated it to a kid doing a humanitarian project.

My favorite honesty story is when she stayed after school to talk to a 10th grade teacher she had “lied” to. She had asked to be excused to use the restroom but didn’t technically use the restroom, she only blew her nose. She blew her nose in the restroom because she was recovering from a turbinoplasty and had huge scabby chunks coming out of her sinuses and was embarrassed to blow them out in class. So she confessed to her teacher. The teacher hardly knew what to say.

I’m thankful for my Ling Lawson who only sees in black and white. She loves the Lord too much to cheat Him in any shape or form. I trust her implicitly. If she says she’s doing it, she will do it. She’s one in a million and I needed the reminder because I want to scream at her seven nights a week when she stalls at going to bed. I should be more thankful she wants to watch TV with us, play a board game with us, or brush her wet hair while she talks to us. Greg and I may never have couple time again because our trio was her norm for so long.

RE has always been my peer, not my daughter. My equal, not my assignment. My boys will probably require intentional parenting but RE came out like a wise old soul with a brass compass hard-wired to her OCD heart.  

It’s been a hard year, a year her seed was definitely boiled. I know she doesn’t think she has much to show in the ways of exotic trees and bushes but as her mother I’m so proud of her nothing. Her nothing is the result of many behind-the-scenes somethings. She is becoming an empress. She is one good seed.

Story recited by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in a message titled "Integrity" at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, on May 7, 2010.

Imagine my delight as a mother when RE's former teacher, Ashley Langston Oney, told this story in her Relief Society lesson on honesty: "I have a unique way of testing my students. If they receive a 100% on every weekly quiz they get an automatic 100% on the final and don't have to take it. I had a student who had received 100% on every quiz and this day was the last quiz. One perfect test meant no final for her. However, she came up to me after class and confessed that she had seen another student's answer before she answered her own question. She said she would have answered the question the same way but just felt like it was cheating, so to not give her the 100. Never in my years of teaching have I had a student tell the truth like this, especially when it meant she'd have to take the final. I'll never forget her."

I also found this little snippet in my journal: Today I dropped Ari and her friends off at the Sticky Shoe with two friends to see a movie. They bought a brownie at Dough Boys beforehand, and then the movies had a sign posted that said NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR DRINK. So she threw hers away (after trying to hide it in a bush). She told me she was sad she wasted a dollar but was glad she was honest. November 23, 2013

mwah

 

 

The Irony of Greg’s New Year’s Resolution:

Every January 1 Greg creates an Excel file with his SMARTER goals and 2017 was no exception. He set a goal in 2017 to “passionately kiss his wife daily”. We must be getting old because there are lots of days we forget/are too tired to kiss like we did at BYU. Sigh.

Fast forward to Valentine’s Day. Greg flew home from a Vegas business trip with the worst head cold. I also had a head cold for the first time in years. We were turning the bed down, he glanced at his spreadsheet on the nightstand, and gave me the quizzical eyebrow. Two head shakes. We popped some Advil Cold & Sinus side by side and restlessly smothered body pillows all snore-filled night.

Two Funny Things Greg Has Said Lately:

1. “Tired is the new refreshed.” He was mimicking all the orange is the new pink and 40 is the new 30 and sitting is the new smoking types of phrases one hears these days. He was also dead on since we seldom feel rested anymore, although Everett finally decided to sleep like a rock star and things are looking up if I could just tuck myself in before 1 in the morning. Both boys were crying before church, which I call “crying in surround sound”. Greg happily announced, “Music to my ears.” Despite our tiredness we’re not too tired to have forgotten our miracles.
2. “This book was designed in RGB but printed in CMYK,” he whispered in my ear during church. He was right. All the things that should have been blue were purplish. A million years ago, when we printed our very first Oreck catalog at the presses, we made the same mistake and our blue vacuum came out purple. It’s a mistake you only make once but notice forever after.

Pink Wink

January has never been in my black book but this year it tempted me. Don't get me wrong, I saw two good movies at the theater, rang in Chinese New Year with old friends that cook well, and ate Harmon's gelato with my aunt. I found an anthropologie blazer at the thrift store for $18 with the tags still on it and Everett gained two pounds of cute. Archer loves letter M because it is for Mom and RE was Student of the Week at her new school. Good things happen regularly, even daily. Life is so good. But January has been unusually...white. The colorful kaleidoscope of December whizzed by in the blink of an eye yet January stuck around for 78 days of blah. That's how it felt to me, anyway. The phrase that comes to mind is in the bleak midwinter. Longest. Month. Ever.

An inversion dripped like heavy molasses over the valley causing days of dingy gray suffocation. Then it snowed, snowed more, and snowed again. The few times I drove to New House the wind was howling and the drifts were huge. It was icy and foreign; perhaps I was on the moon. People worked on our house less than a week this month. At this rate we’ll have to extend our construction loan. Oh wait, we already did that. White.

It snowed every day I was supposed to buy groceries which led to many a brinner (breakfast dinner). I tried to compensate for the inversion with an excess of Kodiak protein pancakes cooked in bacon grease but no go. January has not felt like a carb celebration, even with empty cans of Reddi Whip lining my trash can. White.

As Greg would say, “I don’t love January but I like it as a friend.” I feel like all seven brides and the other seven brothers as I wait for the pass to melt. This pale, pasty mom has cabin fever. The singular day I went outside was yesterday: I taught Archer how to ice melt the driveway/catch icicle drips in his dollar store bucket. I’ve been inside cleaning white bathtubs, washing white sheets and white plates, scrubbing my white sink, and eating a lot of Sunchips (which don’t actually have Vitamin D in them). White.

Lowlight. Maybe this is what The Bangles were singing about in "Hazy Shade of Winter". Lucy only found a handful of sunshine streaks to nap in all month. My aunt flew out from sunny California to help me pick my paint colors and we had ten minutes of sun the whole weekend. The paint swatches were entitled “Variations on a Theme of White”. I painted nine foam boards with whites. It was exciting to pick my paint, but it was nonetheless more of the same: White.

Oh, for a beaker full of the warm south. –John Keats

Amen. I’d go tanning if I didn’t love my white skin so much.

Last night I fell asleep anxious because a babysitter was coming in the morning and my house looked “pre-Huggies box”. (J, you get me?) It’s code for MY HOUSE WAS TRASHED. No matter how hard I clean it never looks like a museum anymore, unless you mean Night at the Museum. And I sit on our freezing sofa next to the freezing window every midnight, pumping white breastmilk and surveying the damage with the whites of my stinging eyes, unable to do a thing. My time is limited like never before and it’s humbling. Honestly, five years ago I visited friends’ homes and glossed over their “my-kids-did-this-to-our-house” apologies. I may have cruelly quipped to myself It’s called a toy box, people or Teach your kids to clean one game up before they start another. Karma is real because two of my kids might be OCD and the other can't move yet I just found our jar of Nutella behind the sofa cushion and no matter how many bins I buy all the toys that belong in them are simultaneously ROFL at me. Or mocking me. I can’t quite tell.

Falling asleep to simple worries snowballed into supersized self-criticism. Which means I tossed all night and woke up saying, “It's still January? Duuuuude! I AM SO SICK OF THIS STINKING MONTH!”

Everett had six month shots for breakfast, I had half a shower and used half a can of dry shampoo, and my angel sitter arrived with the gift of precious alone time. At precisely 12:15 I was inside the temple walking in a white dress down a white hallway to a white room. Suddenly the sun beamed through a thin stained glass stripe and magenta rectangles hovered over the white carpet. I gasped. I really did. Then I looked around. No one else was freaking out. I slowed down, smiled, and rerouted, carefully stepping on each punch of chroma. I thought about those pink rectangles for the next two hours.

I'm inside the advancing light, my hands are hungry, the world beautiful. -Nazim Hikmet

You know, I always pray to learn something when I go to the temple. Today I learned the Lord has an infinite skill set for showing his love to an individual. He reached me with color in a place that is basically bleached. He knew I needed a pink wink after a month-long whiteout. 

Photo quote from North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Love the book and the movie, but the third disc is the "January" of the set...just skip it. Everyone dies or gets sick or leaves. Dang industrial revolution pollution!

(I did snap this photo one January afternoon when the kids and I drove to the top of Suncrest to explore. It was pretty phenomenal up there; blue skies, sparkling snow, still. Makes up for the magnified precipitation and gale force winds!)

boy oh boys

Everett motionless

in his crib

neck curved like a raptor

sound machine on high

Archer motionless

mattress on floor

stolen blankie in criminal fist

purring toddler snore

boy oh boys three feet apart

beginning to share a room

a life

a brotherhood

inversion fog behind roman shade

I rock between them

pairing baby socks

toes and stripes so small my heart rips

fumbling

with miniature buttons on Sunday shirts

my fingers hardly work

but I work them hard

tiny hangars

proudly display my collections

I collect boys

rare first and second editions

boy oh boys

snatch me with eyebrow raise and dimple

I cross twisted fingers and hope this cluster

remains

Nightlight

Did you know if you turn down the lights, light a match, hold it close to a flat surface (like the wall) and have someone else shine a bright light on it you will reveal a great truth about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ? I did this object lesson on Christmas Eve for our family devotional and afterward RE said, “Mom, you blew my mind. That is the kind of stuff you should be teaching me every day.” I take no credit; I found it on the internet. But this is what it looks like:

 

And this is the verse of scripture we read after I had RE examine the match and its shadow:

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. –1 John 1:5

If you look closely you will see the matchstick has a shadow but the flame does not. Light has no darkness! Light casts no shadow.

Christ often referred to himself as “the Way, the Truth, and the Light.” They are synonymous. Truth, therefore, also has no darkness. To first discover and then obey truth is tantamount to happiness. As a family we focused all December on our church’s #LightTheWorld initiative; each day increasing a trait or behavior the Savior embodied. It was deLightful. Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “Since Christ is the light of the world we should see everything in His light.”

One of the best things I ever learned about light was from Emily Watts at Time Out For Women in 2014. She recounted the Exodus account of the ten plagues Moses cast on the Egyptians. Frogs. Lice. Flies. Dead cattle. Boils and blains. (A blain is a skin ailment.) Hail and fire. Locusts. And then darkness. Darkness was 9th, only followed by the slain firstborn of every Egyptian home. One might read the chronological advancement of the plagues and say, “Phew, darkness! An easy plague!”

The closest I ever came to a plague was in a Vermont vacation home my parents rented in on the banks of Lake Champlain. A summer storm was brewing and something with the barometric pressure caused about seven zillion moths to infest the rental. I remember trying to watch the NBA Finals on TV but the whole screen was covered with moth mobs. Clouds of moths swarmed all over the house. Greg a.k.a. Vacuum King tried to capture them out of thin air but the rental’s cheap Dirt Devil canister had a full bag and no suction. Greg and I were sharing a twin bed (newlyweds, we didn’t care) and we had to pull the sheet over our heads to try and fall asleep while kamikaze moths dive-bombed into our faces all night. It was creepy. Thankfully it rained and the moths flew on to torture other unsuspecting vacationers.

Why was darkness such a punishment? Why was it cursed enough to achieve Plague Status? I’m not sure, but the scriptures say the Lord told Moses to stretch out his hand and cause a darkness that could be felt. Like strangulation. A darkness so dark no one “rose from their place” for three days, which sounds like no one got out of bed to move. Paralyzing darkness. The silver lining:

…but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. -Exodus 10:23

In a blackout they were promised light through obedience. No matter how dark the world gets, no matter who is pharaoh, or how many frogs and lice and dead cows and skin sores you have to endure in life (and I could write a novel about my skin ailments) it is possible to have a illuminated home. Protect your home and lock its doors; it is your sphere to control and your right to control it. Fill your personal life and lamps with light and truth. Teach your children truth; give them nightlights for their own dark rooms and their own dark spaces. Truth has no darkness, Truth will cast out the shadows.

Photo lyric: "Cast No Shadow" by Oasis (spelling changed). That song that will forever remind me of DurkoHawaii 1996. My parents had shopped for cuff links and rings showcasing Australian opals and it was time to drive home. Nightfall, all seven of us in the car, waves crashing beside us, siblings singing Oasis and Alanis Morrisette at the top of our lungs, shaking the car as we danced to the William Tell Overture. Thank you, mom and dad, for enduring a mainland mix tape that snuck in the luggage!

"Sometimes in the deepest darkness there is no external light-only an inner light to guide and to reassure." -Elder Neal A. Maxwell