Identity

I've gone from wife to stay-at-home mom to homeschooler to teacher to empty nester to grandma.  As my identity has shifted and expanded and contracted, I still want to hang onto mother.  It's the identity that feels the most fulfilling to me.

It's hard to have whole months pass when I don't see my children.  I remember fondly our routines and rhythms.  I remember silent reading time and snuggling on the couch while I read aloud to them.  I remember swim lessons and monitoring screen time and chores and having their friends over and calling them to dinner.  I remember nagging them to empty the dishwasher and pick up their socks and whose lego is that?  It wasn't always sunshine and roses, but I loved it.

Yesterday, Mark, who is training online in financial services at WGU, had his first real live call.  He was carefully mentored by someone on the phone who was there to make sure he succeeded.  The problem was complex and the mentor hadn't ever dealt with it before.  The student was upset.  It all lasted an hour and was stressful.  I was just merrily going about my day, unaware of it all.  After the call, Mark came and found me.  He said, "I just had my first call," and hugged me and I hugged him back because I could see he needed bolstering.  He turned on his heel and went back to work.

When it was his break, he came and told me all about it.

It's nice to know that they still occasionally need mothering.

I'm here for it.

P.S.  I am also fond of my teacher identity.  I was starry eyed over the school supplies in Walmart yesterday!

Weekend

Friday:

We had such a good time having the Carlsons over.  Like parents do, we talked about our children.  We talked a lot about Mark and Owen; we talked a lot about Braeden and Anna.  We talked about Eleanor and can all agree that she is the best baby ever born.  We barely mentioned Emma and Natalie and I guess that is just what it is like to be the middle child....

I love getting to be better friends with them.  They are our kind of people.  We sat around the dinner table and then we went outside and sat around the fire pit, but we never did fire it up.  It was just nice to sit in the dusky light and visit.

Saturday:

Mark stayed home, but Adam and I made a quick trip to Nevada.  The foreman at our house was there, so it was good to talk to him and ask questions and give opinions.  We delivered some fixtures we had picked out.  We had lunch with my parents, then they went back over with us and surveyed the progress.  We needed to clear out the store room and there was a mismatch of random stuff there of an indeterminate background.  We saved a bit of it and got rid of the rest.  (I did save a bag full of rubber duckies labeled For Dahl Reunions.)

Someday Eleanor can chase them down the little stream that runs through the yard.

Marianne was sick so we didn't see her, but we went to Olivia and Edgar's.  I kicked off my shoes and got comfortable on their couch in a way you can only do when you're visiting family.  We talked about all the things and I am ready to just move there if it weren't for the small detail of us both having jobs in Utah.

On the way home, we saw the first wildfire of the season (at least around here).  I hate wildfire season.

This is as we were at the Point of the Mountain, looking west

It made for a spectacular sunset, but for all the wrong reasons.

Sunday:

We had our regularly scheduled round of meetings.  We did a FaceTime call with Braeden and Anna and Eleanor.  She is growing and changing and splendid.

Emma came for dinner and we had an OK dinner (all the vegetarian gluten free recipes I find are not necessarily winners) but a pleasant time together.  Later, we had some banana splits.  We had some bananas and strawberries that both needed to be eaten.  Such a delightful way to eat the fruit! Much like Amelia Bedelia, I can salvage things with dessert.

This morning as I'm typing, a bluebird has been on the window sill, looking in the screen at me.  I was too slow with my camera, but it's always nice to have visitors.

Grateful Friday

Yesterday was my Grandma and Grandpa Dahl's birthday.  They share a birthday, just like Adam and I do. (Theirs are five years apart, but Adam and I are the same year too.)

I always think of my grandparents on July 7 because more often than not, it seemed like a holiday when we were growing up.  We'd always have a family party sometime around July 4-July 7.  Often there would be two birthday cakes, one for each grandparent.

I thought about my grandparents yesterday.  I think about them a lot since we bought their house and are renovating it.

Yesterday I was cleaning the laundry room and eyeing a vase that is in the basement.  I wondered how it would look in the house in Starr Valley.  (I seem to mentally parse our belongings into which I want to keep here and which I want to take there.) 

I had the thought, which I often do, wondering what they would think of it all.  Do they approve of us buying the house?  Making it our own?

It could not have been any clearer to me if someone stood next to me and spoke the words:  They don't care.  They just want you to be good.

I felt like crying from the joy of that statement.  Because I knew it was true.

  

It's true about my children and grandchild.  I don't care about much else.  I'm grateful to remember that some things matter more than others.

Book talk

Yesterday I talked to my mom on the phone.  She is working on writing her life story.  We talked about how being an adult is hard.  Also being a parent. You think your parents know everything and feel safe that they are at the helm and at the same time, your parents don't think they know anything and they are making it up as they go along.

My mom said a particular year of her life story, "read like a trashy novel."

I think that is a lot more hyperbole than reality, but if my mom wants her children and grandchildren to read her life story, I think she should stick with that description!

***

I was at the library and a young woman who I didn't recognize at all practically fell out of her chair leaning over to wave enthusiastically at me.  I often recognize people who don't recognize me, not the other way around, so it was strange.

She was too old to be a former student and too young to be a former classmate, or even a former classmate of my children.

No idea.

Adam said, since it was at the library, that maybe "book game knows book game."

***

I feel like I'm living in a dystopian novel where the totalitarian thermostat is trying to control me.  Our Nest thermostats, in an effort to promote "energy savings" keep edging up the temperature.  

I would like the Nest thermostat people to know that in July, I'm more interested in not being miserable than in energy savings.  If that is wrong, I don't want to be right.

***

Finally, Anna told me Persuasion is coming to Netflix.  I marked my calendar.

Get yourself a daughter-in-law who knows Persuasion is coming to Netflix!

Thelma's moment of high anxiety

Yesterday I went to find my charger because my computer was dying.  I plugged it in, but it didn't start charging.  

I fiddled with it.

I tried a different outlet.

And a different one.

I took off the extension part and tried the shorter cord.

It wasn't charging and my battery on this well loved nine year old computer was falling fast.

Imagine every TV medical drama you've ever seen, except I wasn't the hero doctor.  I was the orderly they grabbed out of the hall because no one else was available.

I hurried and grabbed the external hard drive that Adam bought for me with instructions to back it up often.  I plugged it into the computer.  It told me the last time I'd backed up was January (!) and it also told me it couldn't find the external hard drive.  I wanted to yell, "It's right here!" like the inexperienced orderly I am, but I just helplessly watched the computer die.

I decided to make a terrarium instead with my air plant.

It was a good distraction from my dead computer.

When Adam got home, he asked, "Did you back it up?"

I explained that I'd tried.

He asked, "When is the last time you backed it up?"

"January."

"Because it wouldn't work?"

"Because I forgot."

Adam seemed concerned.  Don't we just need a new charger?  Maybe, he said.  With Braeden's old computer, it wasn't the charging cord that failed but the part of the computer that received the charge.  Not fixable.

By then Simply Mac and Bad Apple were closing.  We went to Best Buy and bought a new charging cord.

And it worked!

And I backed up my computer!  This time that worked too.  I won't forget!  (I said that in January too.)

P.S.  I finished Gone with the Wind.  It was depressing and maddening because the characters are so misguided at times, but it also felt nostalgic because Olivia and I used to watch the movie.  A lot.

Independence weekend

I watched the enormous flag in the canyon unfurl.  I sat on our front porch.

I took a picture from my office window--through the screen.  (I am not really a good photographer.  Oh, you noticed?)

The flag makes me happy.

So do pictures of Eleanor:

 

On Friday, when I was stressed about Emma making it to her hotel in San Francisco, I painted my nails, so Eleanor wasn't the only one looking festive:

Emma went to San Francisco to visit Freja, and Braeden and Anna and Eleanor went to see them too.  I got pictures from the Golden Gate Bridge (and fingernails I stress painted).

I thought they were cute and everything, but where was Eleanor?

She's the main event.

Adam and Mark and I went to Top Gun Maverick.  It was just as good the second time.

We had burgers (found gluten free buns at Trader Joe's) and pavlova (gluten free strawberry shortcake!) and strawberry lemonade.  

I think it's what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

We got situated on the deck for firework viewing.  Marek came over briefly and watched fireworks, then he went to watch more fireworks with his parents.  (I guess we have to share Marek with his parents.)

It looked like the valley was a roiling boiling pot with fireworks popping on the surface.  Pictures can't capture it (at least pictures taken by me).  Adam took this picture which I liked.

I'm still reading Gone with the Wind.  The messy state of our country back then is depressing but also gives me hope.  Even though we're still struggling with some of the fallout of slavery, things are better.  The country was able to get past the worst polarization we've ever had and everyone gets to vote, so that's something!

Despite the troubling headlines I scroll through, things are going pretty well.  I can live, worship, vote, drive, be educated, participate in educating children, disagree, write my senator and feel pretty safe.  

Also, I can watch an entire valley explode beautiful fireworks I didn't have to pay for.  How's that for freedom? 

Legacy

Yesterday at church a man in our ward, Kevin, bore his testimony.  In it, he talked about a time he had met Stephen Covey.  Stephen Covey asked Kevin what his legacy would be.  Then Kevin talked about a recent fishing trip he'd taken with his grandson.  He'd taken the opportunity to bear his testimony to the grandson.  He asked the grandson to repeat back what he had said.  After the grandson repeated it back, Kevin said, "Good.  Now you can speak at my funeral."

I love Kevin by association because he is my dear friend Marie-Louise's husband.

Also yesterday, I went on Family Search which is my usual Sunday custom.  I started reading my grandma Dahl's life story.  It is in actual book form on my bookshelf, but I read it online anyway.  I love that I can hear her voice when I read it.

My whole life, I have been like the army of Helaman.  I doubt not that my mother (and grandmothers) knew it.  What a blessing that is to me!

This is a picture of a picture of a picture of a picture, but I love it despite the graininess! That's me in the front, between cousins, at my grandma's feet, probably feeling so lucky to be surrounded by all these people where I belonged.  My grandparents lived in Florida then and whenever they came (this time for my aunt Jennifer's wedding reception), it was an exciting time.  

I've been thinking about legacies.  I'm grateful for the legacy of my grandparents who taught my mom and dad to have faith and be good.  I'm grateful for my parents who shared their faith with me.

I think about my own children and our darling Eleanor.

I want them to know, like I know about my mother, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, that their mother knew it.

If anyone doubts that there are prophets, they'd better talk to us.