Helping Hand

Maybe Henry Longfellow held hands with his friends but I certainly don't. Except with Michelle.

I'm not sure when it started but it was many moons ago, like beyond ten years. It was probably after Sunday night dominoes while the guys were clanging and clinking the spotted tiles back in their tin. I just remember lamenting my cracked hands and before I could finish my sentence Michelle was squirting carnation pink Mary Kay extra emollient night cream on my knuckles and rubbing it in. I have no personal bubble.

Since that night I've scarcely sat next to Michelle for a visit without her plopping my hand in her lap, slipping off my wedding ring so she can get all the phalanges equally, and helping me unwind with one of her magical hand massages. It's better than Calgon-take-me-away, especially when she uses the Aveda hand cream that sits next to her fridge.

Last week she invited me for homemade paninis (another nearly-sacred tradition begun by imitating the now-extinct Flour Girls and Dough Boys bistro in American Fork) and gave me a valentine with some arrow washi tape in it. Arrows for Archer, of course! We shook our heads at how fast time flies, caught up like old friends do, and laugh-choked our food once or twice. Oh, the things we have seen each other through. Then we went over to her sofa and instead of holding my hand she held my baby. She kissed and cooed while I power vented. I couldn't talk fast enough and she kept up with me. She smoothed my ugly insecurities and softened my knotted frustrations. I pulled out of her driveway with less arthritis in my attitude.

Michelle's Indian name would totally be "Helping Hand" (or "High Heel" or "Big Calf"). Like every woman, Michelle occasionally complains about the piles in her house; laundry piles, paperwork piles, overflowing bags of tomatoes-to-be-canned piles. Let me be clear: she has no people piles. She has no people piles because she gets to people all day long and never lets the other piles stop her. How I love my friend, this woman who puts people above all else.

Michelle Update:

September 10, 2015. I've been calling Michelle a lot because it's canning season. I finally wrote down all the notes about black beans so I don't have to call her every year. Funny thing is...she was canning today and SHE called me. Not with a question; just because she was thinking about me. And if there was ever a day for an old friend to call out of the blue today was the day. Now I don't feel like total crap about my mom skills, wife skills, housekeeping skills, numchuck skills (Napoleon), etc. 

RE pointed out to me the other week how little I would know without Michelle since Michelle taught me how to can, grind wheat, bake bread, blind hem, make a flaky pie crust, and do my eye shadow. She also built the grow boxes in my garden and cut/installed the chair rail in my bedroom with her own compound miter saw. She's a living, breathing Renaissance woman with a finely tuned spiritual ear. Love you, Fell!

Caution: Extra Hot

It's important that I keep a record of the hotness of our Valentine weekend.

Friday I toted Boy around every store in The Meadows, to the bank, the post office, and a fundraising boutique. My efforts scored us necessities like strawberries, dark chocolate melting wafers, dried mangoes, salmon, and a journal made from a French book. The other things I needed were sold out. How could Scattergories and travel-size gel be sold out? Those are not Valentine items. Do you know what else is not a Valentine's item? The new Paper Mate 1.3mm mechanical pencil that is chubby and has a huge eraser. I bought myself a pack of them since I'm the mom, I know how the budget is sitting, and I have the power to make those kind of decisions. I got the front parking spot at Costco. I was literally 17 feet from the automatic doors which means I only had to haul Archer's 32-pound body/car seat combo 17 feet. That's HOT.

We finally made it home and I gave Boy a bottle while I unloaded the pickings and foodsavered our precious New York steaks. I put on a pretty orchid cardigan and the amethyst earrings Greg gave me for Christmas after the failed IVF, buckled Boy back in his blasted car seat, and headed north into the city. I sat in traffic for 45 minutes and finally reached my destination. No, it was not The Copper Onion. It was Larry Miller Honda. Because I booked my sedan a romantic overnight stay with Larry so she could get a spanking new rack and pinion AND lock actuator. Nothing says HOT like a car that doesn't leak power steering fluid and actually locks when I hit the key fob. Manual locks = NOT HOT.

My knight in shining armor arrived in his trusty truck and loaded up the car seat, stroller, diaper bag, alternate diaper bag, my crochet bag, and me. We spent the next 30 minutes going 12 blocks south on State Street. You'd think with love and kisses on everyone's minds it would be easy to use your friendly blinker and move over a lane. Nope. Greg tried to remain lovey dovey by listening to his Dave Ramsey podcast. I found my happy place (a fictional BareMinerals boutique in Paris where I have thousands of dollars of store credit and speak fluent French) while Archer let us know he was poopy, sick of his buckle, sick of traffic, and starving. I used the last ready-made bottle of Enfamil we owned to fill his bottle with greyish, stanky liquid. Stank Juice bought the truck cab five ounces of peace. Peace is HOT. Premixed formula is not. It's the grossest substance on earth. I dare you to smell it.

Greg dropped me off at Vinh Long Oriental Market so I could bop in for a few cans of coconut milk and a bottle of Tonkatsu sauce. He offered to run in but I was anxious for a break from the poopy and the stank. When an oriental market smells better than your car you're in trouble.

After a short lifetime we made it home. Boy went to bed AFTER crawling up the stairs for the first time and Greg and I made paninis and homemade potato chips. We munched on fused roast beef/apple/horseradish/flagship cheddar and watched House Hunters International, which was set in Paris this episode. You can sure rent some ugly flats in France but luckily the couple chose the authentic Parisian one. We were excited the Paris they showed on TV was familiar to us. We felt cool. Cool is HOT.

Greg left at 10 to pick RE up from her late night and I did all the dishes and washed the 64,783rd bottle of the year. Once they were back we watched Shark Tank, our family show. We love that show because it teaches RE words like "equity" and "perpetuity" and "proprietary." Greg thinks those words are HOT.

I woke up this morning, Valentine morning, to a decorated bathroom. RE set her alarm for 7 and snuck in our room to display her hours on Pinterest and sweet heart combined. I'm saving her little notes and Twix dynamite forever. Greg surprised me with three presents, one of which I've never even heard of, but his best present came after breakfast. I had to make pineapple salsa and there was a ton of stuff to chop. I got a cutting board and chef's knife and then said out loud,

"Wait, I just remembered I have a food processor. Adios, manual labor. I'm in favor of technology."

Greg replied, "You mean you're killing Babe the Blue Ox?"

I answered him in the affirmative and then he broke into song. He flexed his chest and marched around the island singing in his bassest voice, "With my double-bladed axe and my hobnail boots I go where the timber's tall." I'm not going to lie. I was twitterpated. Greg acting like Paul Bunyan is HOT. Sizzle.

Speaking of singing we always sing Sam Cooke's song "Cupid" to Archer but we change the word "cupid" to "Archer." So he's heard a lot of Ar-cher draw back your bow-oh and let your arrow flow-oh in his short lifetime. But today it was appropriate.

Later this afternoon I stuffed Boy in the Ergo carrier and walked on the railroad tracks to Hut8. (No car, remember? It's okay. When I don't have a car I pretend I'm European and happily walk to imaginary Metro stops.) I bought a canvas purse with the gift card my parents gave me for Christmas. Canvas will be great for summer because it breathes and breathing keeps you from being TOO HOT. On the way back I passed this piece of trash on the road by the car wash:

And that is when my day came full circle. Or full heart. Whatever. My heart is hearty. I love and I am loved.

"To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us."  -Timothy Keller

Pass It On

There are two seas in Palestine. One is fresh and fish are in it. Splashes of green adorn its banks. Trees spread their branches over it and stretch out their thirsty roots to sip of its healing waters.   

Along its shores the children play, as children played when He was there. He loved it. He could look across its silver surface when He spoke His parables. And on a rolling plain not far away He fed five thousand people.

The river Jordan makes this sea with sparkling water from the hills. So it laughs in the sunshine. And men build their houses near to it, and birds their nests; and every kind of life is happier because it is there.

The river Jordan flows on south into another sea.

Here is no splash of fish, no fluttering leaf, no song of birds, no children's laughter. Travelers choose another route, unless on urgent business. The air hangs heavy above its water, and neither man nor beast nor fowl will drink.

What makes this mighty difference in these neighbor seas? Not the river Jordan. It empties the same good water into both. Not the soil in which they lie; not in the country round about.

This is the difference:

The Sea of Galilee receives but does not keep the Jordan. For every drop that flows into it another drop flows out. The giving and receiving go on in equal measure.

The other sea is shrewder, hoarding its income jealously. It will not be tempted into any generous impulse. Every drop it gets, it keeps.

The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. This other sea gives nothing. It is named The Dead.

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are two seas in Palestine.

-Bruce Barton

*artwork by Marie Schubert, Health Habits, 1928. Taken from The Happy Book by Welleran Poltarnees. (One of my favorite children's books ever!)

Signature

Bibliophile: a lover of books.

I should have seen it coming. As a young child sitting silently on the church pew I discovered an exposed string on page 17 of my triple combination's Book of Mormon. I continued to flip through the pages and found several more methodically exposed strings. Deep analysis ascertained my book was composed of 21 chunks of folded pages and the strings were dead center in each one. Many years later Chris McAfee, the bookbinding teacher at BYU, taught me those chunks are called signatures. Books are built from signatures.

Elise Lambson, a childhood friend who just wrapped up her Masters in Library and Information Science at Syracuse, posted these pro-book quotes in a Kindle vs. Hardcover facebook battle:

And leafing through old books we sometimes find
A dark, oracular phrase is underlined.
You once were here, but in time out of mind.1

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times? As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells, and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower, both strange and familiar.2

If it's to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible...it should be...smelly.3

I love good books and I love a well-made book. I love a curved spine and Florentine endpapers. I love my first edition I Capture the Castle with its jaggedy, uneven signatures and embossed castle on the cover. (Frenchie scored me that beauty on eBay.) I love the gilded edges of my scriptures. I inhale book glue and I am equal parts entertained and grateful when a permanent ribbon bookmark is discovered post-purchase. It is akin to finding a toy in the bottom of the cereal box. Surprise! 

One book beats all. 

The Book of My Life rested wide open at the end of a chapter for years and years. And then more years. I maxed that chapter out. I scribbled notes in every margin, highlighted special words and broke them into bits of etymology, and memorized each new paragraph's indent. The last page of that chapter began to smell musty. I was getting old and the page was growing mildew spots.

Then Archer came. Holding him in my arms with curled hair, dewy makeup, and a pain-free lower half was a hallucination, a dream, the footage of someone else's home movie. It wasn't real.

[one day later]

At four o'clock in the morning my drafty hospital gown and I hobbled into the bathroom to change the mini mattress I had been sitting on. Archer was strengthening his lungs in his plastic box a few feet away because the nursery was full and I insisted he not partake of a binky. He was screaming bloody murder, my locks were lopsided and mostly flattened, and I was blinking mascara flakes onto my unwashed face as I squinted under one horrid florescent light. Sleepy, weepy, and acutely aware of my seventeen stitches was the exact moment I felt the page finally turn in my book. I was in new territory. I had not read this part. It was real. I dog-eared it.

Good thing I crimped that corner because it's so far back now. The pages are a blurred express.

Dizzy whizzing of text and images; high contrast moving too fast to focus on. RE leaves home in four years. Archer is already crawling. How long will my parents be alive? We will pack up and leave this house for another. Comings and goings, lovings and losings. The sprawling motion of time literally flying by.

This chapter smells divine, like the heavy air in a greenhouse. Whiffs of baby shampoo, teenage bronzer, and bergamot scent the pages. I love this chapter but it's going too fast. Do I savor it or do I study it? It will kill me if I don't remember this beautiful chunk. I want to underline it all but can't find the time so I press a baby sock and a note from RE between two pages. Stay safe, symbols. Preserve me.

Life is fleeting and darting every which way; I don't know how to leave my mark on it. I don't know how to put my signature on this signature. 

1 quoted in Inkdeath from "Improvisations of the Caprisian Winter" by Rainer Maria Rilke

2 Mo in Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke)

3 the words of Rupert Giles (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame)

Crewel

I contracted mono my first month of college.

Mere moments after declaring my permanent independence I was bedridden and lifeless with a throat so swollen my parents couldn't understand what I was saying when I called them collect. Having never been sick away from home it was an understatement to say I wanted my mommy. Alas, mommy was a zillion miles away in Missouri. I wore my puffiest, snuggliest fleece pullover Mom had bought me from Express my senior year and called its comfort the best I could do. I wore that cream and brown hoodie the duration of my two week sickness. I wrapped the brown pull string methodically around my finger until I ran out of slack and hit the bronze bead at the end, released the string, and started over. I did that about a thousand times while I lay in bed absorbing the fact that I was flunking college and it wasn't even Thanksgiving yet. Mommy. Far away.

That pullover earned itself the nickname "The Mono Sweater." It died an ignominious, pill-laden death in the early 2000s and left a sick sweater vacancy. That vacancy was filled Monday by a newer, creamer, cozier Mono Sweater incarnate.

Last Sunday in my bedtime prayer I distinctly remember thanking the Lord for my kids and telling Him how I was excited to be their mom the next day. I have never said something like that in a prior prayer. I guess my cup was just running over because Archer is sitting on his own and fits on my lap just so and RE got her expander removed and can eat orzo and lettuce without complaining. Life is so good. We runneth over.

Eight hours after that prayer I woke up to drizzle rap-tap-tapping on the roof. Yee haw! My favorite weather! From my cold bathroom window I watched Duck Soup* fill up with raindrops and mallards. I put on my chunky cream cable knit sweater with brown leather elbow patches my mom bought me at the thrift store after Archer was born. I don't know why but that sweater can take a beating and look just fine. I stretch it, I dry it in the dryer, I wipe my cooking hands on it, I continually act like it's not worth caring for because it was $6 and it continues to outshine every other garment I own. If Pottery Barn made a sweater this would be it.

I put that cream and brown sweater on and proceeded to spend the next eight days Florence Nightingaling my kids back to health. Archer only got a fever for two days but RE...poor, poor RE. It was bad. She missed six days of school and had to go to a specialist for infectious diseases. That's never good. My adrenaline wore off sometime around Thursday at which point I worried myself sick and enjoyed the flu over the weekend.

No Mommy. My Mommy is still in stinking Missouri, a sad phone call and too many miles away. So I wore Mono Sweater 2.0 all week, lay in bed, and wondered for the life of me why some things never change.

*DUCK SOUP is a small inlet of the pond behind our house. It is directly underneath RE's tree house and essentially a duck hot tub. Seriously. It's where all the cool ducks play, especially when the rain or runoff make it deeper than normal.

Photo quote from The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo