Books

For a while after Wayne died--don't know how long, but it seems a long time--I couldn't read anything. Friends, family, acquaintances recommended books and some sent books for me. But I could not read them, especially those about grieving or coping with death.

I do read now, but I have reached a place where I can quit a book if I don't like it and not feel guilty. Well, almost.

Here's what I've read this summer.

Second Wind, Tom Plummer
The Lifted Veil, George Eliot
The Saint, Oliver Broudy
Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Rules for Aging: A Wry and Witty Guide to Life, Roger Rosenblatt
How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, Peter Robinson
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
A Companion to Your Study of the New Testament, Daniel Ludlow
Making Sense of the New Testament, Richard Holzapfel and Thomas Wayment
The New Testament Made Easier, two volumes, David Ridges
The New Testament

Books I Started and gave up on.
Hamlet's Blackberry, William Powers (coulda been and shoulda been a pamplet)
A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins (failed to live up to the promise in the title)
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (again, but I'll keep trying)

Books I'm in the middle of.
A Light in the Wilderness, M. Catherine Thomas
Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz
Letters of a Woman Homesteader, Elinore Pruitt Stewart (this one I'm sure to finish)

Technology World

Some time in the late 1990s or early 2000s I bought two cell phones and set Wayne and me up with a cell phone company. I don't remember which one. Actually, I believe it was a 15-day free trial. I went for it because I thought it would be a handy thing for us.

But Wayne wanted nothing to do with a cell phone. Not sure why, maybe he didn't want to deal with learning the technology involved. Whatever the reason, he refused to use it, even once.

He was not a telephone person anyway.

So I took them both back. Hmm. Today I'd have to pay a $350 fee for stopping service early. Cell phone use for me had to wait a while. His never came.

I thought of this as I saw a young man walking along carrying his two pieces of essential technology: a cell phone in one hand and probably an iPod in the other. He had pockets in his shorts, but he carried these items in his hands. I suppose he would put one in a pocket when he needed to text someone. I use the word "needed" on purpose here and the word "essential" earlier because that is the way it is.

Digital, electronic, and probably newer terms I don't even know, these words and the things they represent have become essential to us. We need them, and some of us need to text someone at least 100 times a day.

I'm not poking fun, you know, although I do not text--or at least I have not as yet. I'm just saying it is the truth, because I have to admit that being without my cell phone service for 24+ hours was beyond inconvenient. It was the eve of my birthday and my actual birthday--and I had no phone. Couldn't make calls, couldn't receive calls. Therefore, I missed calls. Bummer.

I used to say I'd like to go back to the time when you left your house and thought absolutely nothing of leaving your phone in it. If someone called, you missed it. No big deal.

Today is different.

Wayne, however, never knew about it. He died in 2003, before this enormous techno takeover.

Poem

If I posted this before, hold up two fingers, and then, I guess, you'd better tell me.

Not Forever

Carol Schiess

The sky was dark and clear

this morning as I walked,

stars bright and white,

like on a winter night

when the moon and stars

seem fixed

in a blue-black sea of air,

never to move or fade,

always to blink out their lights,

always to be up there as surety and comfort

for sailing ships and airplanes,

for walkers in the early morning dark,

but, of course, we know they won’t.

They’ll dim, fade,

disappear, like first love,

like my mother

when she died.

On My Mind

The last time my mother, and father, came to my home in Idaho (722 N Georgia, Caldwell) was just after Christmas 1978. Mama played for me and my friend Joyce to sing at a two-stake holiday dance at the Caldwell Stake Center. The evening was kind of a big deal. But we were pretty much a big deal, too, when we sang.

Whenever we practiced, my mother thought I took the tempo too fast--on just about everything--and she told me so, of course. She tried to slow us down, and, if you knew my mother, you would know she slowed us down. Some, anyway. My mother was the very best accompanist I've ever known, by the way, and I was so glad to have her play for us. She made that trip up to Idaho just for me.

It was very cold that year, and my dad didn't do well in the cold. Very cold. He was a worry to my mother, but she was the one who died nine months later.

I watched her as she sat in my house, folding my laundry. At least that's what I wrote in a poem about her dying. She was folding socks.

I saw how tired she looked. Or I like to think I did. But I was likely just like my dad, who did not see it, I suppose. Whatever he needed from her, she gave. As always. You can tell I'm feeling critical of him about it, but I know I shouldn't. Besides, she loved him.

I went down to Utah three times the next year, 1979, the year of my last pregnancy. My journal tells of a busy year for me, six children, singing here and there, teaching at church, going to school, and running every chance I got for as long as I could do it. Not always feeling good.

Oh yes, and a husband. Once I wrote of how kind he was to me. Thank goodness I wrote it.

The last of those three visits was on my birthday. From my journal:
2 September 1979, my birthday. Am spending it in Bountiful with my parents. My mother had a heart attack several weeks ago, and I have wanted to come down to see her & my dad. Wayne's parents bought a plane ticket for me. I left all my kids at home with their dad. So this visit is a quiet one. My mother is not very well, but it is hard to make her stay inactive--and Daddy makes it impossible. She is giving a party tomorrow for my birthday. I wish she weren't--but she is.

That was the last time I saw her alive. I remember we went to Dick's market together, probably the day before the party. I expected she would walk around with me, using the grocery cart to lean on. She didn't. She sat down on some bags of salt or dog food and waited. Not like her.

She took me to dinner one night. And she did not eat. Not like her.

Clearly, she was not doing well. I could see it. I remember thinking about it. And yet I did not expect her to die.

It's coming up on 32 years now.

There's This

The time when we invited my friend's kids, only three at that time, I think, to dinner. The three corresponded in age to three of mine, and they were friends, too.

My friend's son Joe, I'll call him, was adopted. I had told my children, but Joe's parents had not told him. Which means he did not know. By the time he left our house, he knew. Actually, by mid-dinner he knew. We may all have finished eating. All except me and maybe Joe. I don't remember that part.

Of course, the whole thing was my doing, my fault. I had neglected to warn my children against telling him. I had neglected to tell them he didn't know. I was immediately sorry for what I had told my children and for what I had neglected to tell them.

Joe's response to the information he received in my dining room--information his parents had the right to withhold or reveal as they desired--was bewilderment, disbelief, utter disbelief. I can see him now, looking around at all who were there, looking to me for confirmation or denial. It was a terrible moment.

I don't remember which of my children spoke the life-changing words, but I knew it was without guile, with no harm intended. Innocent it was. But its effect was profound.

I left the table and called his mother, confessed what had happened, and apologized abjectly. I was truly and deeply sorry. I think I was also worried about our friendship.

Of course, I knew that the apology was inadequate, but there was nothing else I could do. She did not yell at me or call me stupid or curse my children, any of which she might have done. She was kind, understanding, forgiving. At least, over the phone. I have wondered if that is how she really felt.

I don't know how Joe's parents had planned to spend their evening. Plans changed, no doubt. They had until I brought their kids home to figure out what they would say to Joe. I had until I was able to forgive myself to get over it.

I think of it now because I just heard something stunning on the radio as I drove home from Nampa. It came from a woman who was adopted as a child. She said that she has never known who she is. That is a stunning, sad admission. One I have never been forced to make, have never even needed to think about.

No need to talk about the loving people who adopted and raised her. That was not the issue she spoke of.

She simply does not know who she really is. She knows that her mother was 17 and that her father was "passing through." And that is all she knows.

Joe's parents, the ones who adopted him, knew much more than that about his "real" parents, and I suppose they told him all they knew. Showed him documents, names, places.

We have read and seen depicted that desire adopted people have to know, to find their real roots, their real parents. And so I wonder if Joe wanted to find his people. I do not know if Joe ever did that, if his parents encouraged it. I have never asked. I did not want to be trusted with any more information on the matter.

Various

Today I applied Scott's Turf Builder to my lawns.
Of course, I'm hoping it will build turf. I'm really hoping it can build turf where there isn't any.
What do you think?

Took some food out to Neide again today. She's doing fine. Healing well after back surgery.

I lost 2.2 pounds in the last week. Hope I don't find them again. Life shouldn't have to be a constant inner debate--eating vs . . . whatever. But it is.

About a week after Wayne's funeral I was at Costco. Someone I knew from years before in Middleton came up to me. I couldn't even think of her name. She put her arm around me and said, "He's better off." Oh yeah? Why would you say that? And how would you know? Maybe it was true. Maybe. Probably she just wanted to say the right thing. And I know people mean well. But the right thing is actually not to say anything. The arm around me would have been more comfort without any words. In fact, her words felt like a slap in the face.

Why do I remember this just now? Because.

Yes, Indeed

My grandson spent a good portion of last night here.

Two brief notes about the evening:

1. I fixed him a peanut butter and honey sandwich. He chose it. He also chose to drink the smoothie I had made in the morning. And he chose to have Cheetos on the side. Or I thought on the side. Turns out he dipped Cheetos in smoothie. "Yes, it's good." And he pulled the sandwich apart to lay Cheetos inside."Really good."
   
2. He asked a blessing on his food and included this extra part straight from his heart. "Heavenly Father, my dad is coming tomorrow, and that is awesome."