Grateful Friday

Back on the iPad again…

We are on the 15th floor of a hotel in downtown Seattle, overlooking the city and low hum of the freeway below.  Adam is working and meeting with people, etc.  He asked me a few times if I would be OK alone in the hotel room like we hadn’t met.

He also said, ”I have my iPad.”  So here we are.

It has been such a great trip!  We have enjoyed ourselves.  I have pictures, but can’t add them.  I still don’t know why.

First, I have to backtrack before the trip:  Tuesday we had a lunch at school.  It was top secret and we were told we didn’t want to miss it and we were wary because often times the news we get doesn’t thrill us.

This was not one of those times.  Owala (as in the water bottle company) had sponsored a lunch for us.  Everyone got a new water bottle and insulated lunch bag.  Alyssa was out of town, but Miriam and I sat with our 5th grade teacher besties as well as Megan who is the innovative learning coach and the MVP of all the teachers.  We had a nice lunch and caught up on each others’ summer adventures.  Matt asked me, “Did you hear about your classroom?”

I hadn’t been there yet, so I didn’t know what he meant (immediately wary—public schools will do that to you).  He said that once they replaced the ceiling and HVAC in my room, they realized that the ductwork was unattached.  He said, “So whenever the heat was on, it was only in your room.”

(Friends, I think I noticed that.)

After we ate, the good (good!) people of Owala also gifted us each a basket full of school supplies, three books and a $500 Amazon gift card.  We were shocked in all the happy ways.  They rolled out carts of water bottles and said that every student in the school was also going to be gifted a new water bottle.  I think that was the biggest cheer from the teachers.  Tiffany (who is hands down amazing) immediately said she would make each student a personalized sticker for their bottles.

I report back to school officially in three weeks and I am looking forward to it.  I love that I love my job and I love who I work with.

We flew to Seattle and met up with everyone and went to the Mariner’s game.  It was fun.  I love the convivial atmosphere of a baseball game with everyone in their team colors.  QE was gobsmacked by the spectacle of it all.  Braeden bought her a Mariners hat and she wanted one exactly like his.  After a while she was bored and I was only too happy to take her to the play place so she could run and run with the other Mariners clad children.  She immediately made friends and climbed and scampered and I love how sturdy she is.  She could hold her own.

The rest of the week has been Adam (bless him) working and squeezing in family time and the rest of us just enjoying.  QE has been playing with the ponies that Adam’s sisters had that Emma and her cousins played with.  The pastel gift that keeps giving.  She’s been pushed on the tire swing that we used to push our own children on.  Braeden and Mark went into the woods and came back with a walking stick.  They used their grandpa’s tools and carved their names in it and smoothed and sanded it and I have pictures, but alas.

We went to Silver Lake one day and they didn’t have their suits, but Braeden was up to the hem of his shorts in water in no time and QE was completely submerged.  Geri had brought a towel because of course she did.  We wrapped QE in it and Braeden carried her back to the car and I should have realized that would be part of the trip.  Geri is the iconic grandmother and I am her apprentice, trying to learn her ways.

We went to Costco in search of gluten free pizza, but also an Esprit sweatshirt.  I had heard they were there and like all the Gen Xers I wanted one!  They only had a few and they were XS and I am…not.   I think Adam and our kids thought I was a little crazy, but Janet was also at Costco, in search of an Esprit sweatshirt, so that was validating.  We both wanted the white ones with rainbow lettering, but no dice.

(I went to a different Costco to look for the pizza.  I had given up on the sweatshirt, but they had size small.  I can squeeze myself in.  I owe that to teenage Thelma, I think.)

Last night everyone except me went back to the lake.  I cross-stitched and read and took a nap on the couch and was as happy as I could be.

We came to Seattle and you are up to date.

I am grateful for this time we’ve had.  It is so nice to be with family.  We are looking forward to tomorrow when we will all go to the peninsula for Jackson and Jenna’s wedding.  Last week, I was so grateful for my family and heritage and loved being in that place.  This week I am grateful for family and heritage and love being in this place.

Turnaround

 Yesterday was a busy day.  There was a lot of unpacking, laundry and repacking to do.  I put most of the things away that I got from my mother, but I have a box of things that I want to wait until Emma is here so we can all look at them together.

Everywhere I looked was chaos yesterday, but I still found myself on Family Search, looking up about my grandpa's brothers.  Olivia called and I told her I had. to. get. to. work.  She said there were worse vices than Family Search.  Maybe, but I finally got off the computer and got everything tidied and put away and folded eventually.

Today we have a lunch at school for teachers and Matt said there is a big surprise and we "won't want to miss it."  I was texting with my team last night and we can't tell if the hype is sarcastic or not.  There was enough hype that I am going to the lunch--at least for a while-- and then Mark and Adam will pick me up and we will head straight to the airport.  We are flying to Seattle.  We will meet up with Braeden and QE at the Seattle airport and then we'll all go to the Mariner's game!  I am looking forward to family time.  We will celebrate Jackson and Jenna's wedding on Saturday and there is a WGU graduation in Seattle and besides that, just lots and lots of time together.

Weekend

 We convened at my dad's again on Friday.  We didn't finish going through everything, but I don't think any of it is going anywhere.  Later in the afternoon, when he was finished working, Adam and I went to Marianne and Robert's.  I took my mop/vacuum on the road again and I cleaned part of their floor and Marianne did the rest.  After that we visited a while.  We came home and had dinner, then Marianne and Robert and Clarissa came over to play games.  (Olivia and Edgar had gone fishing!)

We played Five Crowns, which is almost entirely luck and I won almost every hand.  If I were a gambler, it would have been a good night to hit a casino.  We enjoyed being together and I was happy that Adam got a tiny bit of leisure time because he hardly ever gets any.

Saturday morning Marianne was busy, but I met Olivia at my dad's for a walk.  My dad and Olivia were whispering in the sun room when I got there because Ammon and his girls were there and sleeping.  Ammon came downstairs and came on our walk with us.  It was nice to have him join.  

My dad had a few things he wanted taken.  Olivia had left by then so I asked Ammon if he wanted any of them.  He took a small framed picture of Grandma Jaynes, but he picked up another frame and asked, "Who is in this picture?"

I was shocked.  It was our Great Grandma and Grandpa Wood.  I remember them so clearly. Ammon looked on Family Search to see when they died.  He was a few months old when Grandpa Wood died and two when Grandma Wood died.   (I was ten and twelve years old so I remember them.) That Ammon is just a young'un!

Mark went to the temple with his cousins and Adam and I decided to go to town to get a few things.  None of it was exactly urgent, but Adam said, "I have time now."  Fair point.

One thing we wanted to do was get a replacement for a bi-fold door that broke a while ago.  I googled it to see if they had it at Home Depot.  I learned that you have to buy two doors and all the hardware (rails, etc.). We only needed one door, because everything else was fine. I saw out the window that my dad had brought Lucette over in his buggy to visit Ammon, who was mowing down by the barn.  I decided to enlist my brain trust and see what they thought about it.

Armed with this picture, I walked down to the barn.

They peered at the picture on my phone, shading the sunlight with their hands.  Ammon described what I could do with a block of wood and glue and clamps.  They came up to the house for further inspection.  My dad looked at it and said, "I can put a piece of steel over it."  I gave him a tape measure and he quickly measured it (didn't write anything down, which impressed me because I would have forgotten).

We went to town to buy the other things we were needing and when we got home, the door was fixed.  My dad is a wonder.  He just had a piece of steel, made it fit, drilled a hole for the pin, attached it.  My entire life, my dad could just fix anything.  I don't know.  Everyone is talented in some way. 

My dad seems extra.

While my dad and Ammon were over, I showed them the latest (three-dimensional this time) installation in the Thelmoma.

We had three chairs in our school room when I homeschooled our kids.  One was blue and two were red.  They had been relegated to the basement, but finally gave up the ghost a few months ago.  They were just falling apart.  Adam was going to get rid of them, but he knows me.  He said, "Do you want to do something with these?"  Homeschooling our kids is one of my favorite things I've ever done.  It was hard and intense at times, but like a lot of parenting, my memories of it are cozy and nostalgic.  I took a side piece of each chair and hung them on the walls.

They make me happy.

Otherwise on Saturday I napped, made gluten free brownies for Sunday for Mark, packed up a lot of stuff to take home and tidied up some.  We were going to make frozen pizza for dinner, but it was hot and I didn't want to turn on the oven.  We had dinner under the bridge as my mom used to call it:  every man for himself.

Adam and I went over to my dad's and visited with him and Ammon and Melanee (who had arrived by then).  Olivia came for a little while and it is just nice to be close and be able to drop in and out of each other's homes so easily.

Sunday was such a nice day.  Marianne and Robert spoke in church (and Omar was the youth speaker).  Also, Clarissa and Hyrum sang "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go."  I had this image pop in my head of me walking into the Utah Cancer Specialists.  Heavenly Father has a plan for each of us, the point is what we do with the path before us.

Sacrament meeting was so good.  I felt inspired and a desire to be better.  I don't know what else you could ask for.

We went home and got our house all packed up.  It is more of a process in winter, but it is also a process in summer.  We stripped the beds and gathered up all the towels/laundry.  We packed our bags and cleaned out the fridge and cupboards.  We covered all the furniture and replaced the mousetraps.

Marianne hosted about 70 people at her house, like you do.  Of course she did it with aplomb and everyone was happy and well fed.  I enjoyed visiting with people and had a really interesting conversation with my aunt Olivia and asked her about her experience being a teenager when my grandparents were mission leaders.  She also told me about a time she borrowed a car from a stranger who wasn't home but left the keys in it!

One really delightful thing that happened on Sunday was meeting our second cousin Ken.  (Ken Dahl, which is also delightful.)  Marianne and I knew his brother and sister Harvey and Amanda when we were in college.  Marianne has connected more with Amanda since then and they are Facebook friends so Amanda knew about Marianne and Robert's homecoming.  I guess she told Ken and Ken came.  He brought two of his children (Mark and Emmeline).  Another Mark Dahl!  They live in Springville and I enjoyed talking to them and getting to know them a little.  When he found out we had bought my grandparents house, he asked, "Harvey and Margaret's house?!?"  I said yes and I offered to show him around before he left.

Adam and I drove over and they followed in their car.  He looked around and said, "I remember this!"  He told me about a time at a reunion that there was a snake and my grandma killed it with a shovel and he was in awe.  I told him I possibly threw crabapples at him at a reunion because Lincoln had deputized all of us and we climbed the Big Tree House.  We pulled up the ladder so no second cousins could join us and then we threw crabapples at them.  Ken seemed to forgive me.

We talked about the brick house and I showed him a picture.  He told me that he and his wife had decided to name their oldest son Alexander at a reunion there when someone told a story about Alexander Dahl immigrating from Norway to Salt Lake City.  He got emotional telling me about being there and singing "Families Can Be Together Forever" as a big group.  He pointed to the spot under the trees and said, "Right there."  He remembered he was standing right next to his dad and hearing him sing.  (His dad passed away around the same time as our mom.)  He said, "This has been really healing for me."

I loved it.  I love connecting with family and sharing happy memories (crabapple throwing notwithstanding) of a place and heritage that matters to us.  He put a pin on his phone for where it is.  (He said, "I would never be able to find this again!")  I told him to come again and bring his other kids.  I said, "Mow the lawn when you stop by."

I am grateful that that sacred place, where I feel so grounded and like I know my place in the world, is still in our family.  "Harvey and Margaret's house" means something to a lot of people, because they mean something to a lot of people.

Grateful Friday

Adam and Mark are here!  They got here in the middle of the night and I am grateful they made it and so glad to have them aboard.  I hate how much Adam and I are apart lately.  I like that guy and I want to be in the same place as him.

Mark brought my backpack!  So I am typing on my laptop and I can add pictures:

Here is the latest installation for what Emma calls the Thelmoma (Thelma + Museum of Modern Art).

I saw a picture online that I used as inspiration, but mine is slightly different.  

I told my dad maybe someday I will take a painting class so my skill can match my enthusiasm.

Here's my grandma's praying statue.  (Did everyone's grandma have one of these in the 80s?)

Should have moved those candlesticks that aren't usually there before taking the picture, but alas.

I also got this figurine:

It is pretty, but I mostly selected it off the table because of the story behind it.  I can't remember if it originally belonged to my Great Grandma Wood, or my Great Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom.  There were two of them, one blue and one yellow.  The blue one was named Mary and this one, Coralie (spelled different than my mom's name, Coralee, but no one is too picky).

The Mary figurine was supposed to go to my aunt Mary, the Coralie was supposed to go to my mom.  At the passing of whoever they belonged to originally, my grandma decided my mom's house wasn't nice enough for the figurine so she kept it.  When my grandma died, my mom finally got her statue.

My grandma is one of the best people I know.  I am honored to be named after her.  She was righteous, faithful, generous, fun to be around and an incredibly hard worker.

She was also a little bit of a snob and I love her for it.  (No one likes someone who is perfect in every way.)

I am grateful I got to go to the temple yesterday with my sisters, Edgar, Ruben and our dad.  I rode with the Cobians and Edgar hopped in the back with Ruben and Olivia and I sat in the front which was so kind of him.  (I get carsick.). We met up with everyone for either a really late lunch or really early dinner at 3:00.  We ordered our food then all got up and walked two doors down to look at Marianne and Robert's business.  It is very impressive.  I wondered what people thought as we all trooped back into the restaurant about the time our food was ready.

After lupper (lunch + supper) we went to the temple.  The Elko temple is tiny, but I still get turned around in there.  One of my mom's best friends, Laurel, was working there and she guided me at every turn.  It was so nice to be at the temple with that group.  The temple magnifies my love for my family and it magnifies my feeling of belonging in the world.

When I'm there, I feel a deeper sense of who I am and whose I am and what matters most.

I walked with my sisters this morning and we met at our dad's house.  He had this set aside for me to take:

I painted it in 1987 and it is so bad.  Only a mother would keep something like that for almost 40 years.  I asked my dad if he was sure he didn't want to keep it.  "It might be valuable someday."  (Ha ha.)

Olivia has been helping my dad add pictures to the life history my mom wrote.  She asked me for pictures of Braeden and Emma when they were young.  I found two with my mom.  The one with Braeden is kind of blurry, but it was the late 90s/early 2000s and we were doing our best.

Seeing her shine in her role as grandmother makes me grateful.  On my birthday, my mom used to tell me she was glad I stood in her line in heaven.

I am glad I did too!

Stalwart and brave

I just got back from a walk with Marianne (Olivia was busy).  We saw Hannah and Aunt Olivia and hugged and chatted a minute.  I have run out of ways to say how much I love it here.

Yesterday Marianne and Olivia and I walked on the bridle path along Boulder Creek.  We were talking about rings and I mentioned the ring my dad had made me on the occasion of my first date. Olivia said, “What?!?  He didn’t make me anything for my first date!”  

Marianne said, “He made me a necklace for my first date.”

Olivia said, “What?!?”

I said, “I guess you’re not his favorite like you always think you are.”

We stopped at my dad’s because I had to use the bathroom.  We walked in the door and I called, “Hi Daddy!  I need to use the bathroom and Olivia has a bone to pick with you.”

When I came out of the bathroom, Olivia was sketching on a piece of paper how she wants my dad to fashion her ring, which broke, into a pendant for a necklace.  She said that would make up for not getting first date jewelry.

I know my dad loves us, but collectively, we are kind of a lot.

My phone has ceased to get along with Adam’s iPad so I can’t add a picture of the statue I got from my mother.  It had been my grandma’s. (On the bottom, my grandma had written Coralee so that it got to its rightful place.) It is a statue of a woman kneeling in prayer.   Both of my grandmas actually used to have the exact same statue (my Aunt Olivia has Grandma Dahl’s).  

 I love the statue because it reminds me of my childhood and visiting my faithful grandmothers.  They were women who prayed.  I love that the statue was passed to my mom and then to me.  My grandma taught my mom to pray and she passed that to me.

Firm as the mountains around us, stalwart and brave they stand on the rock our [mothers] planted for us in the goodly land.

I have been feeling incredibly grateful for my life and all the blessings I have because my grandparents taught my parents and they taught me.  I don’t deserve any of it, but I feel very lucky to have landed where I did.  I feel motivated to follow the examples they left.  I don’t want to let them down.  I don’t want to live below their expectations.

I also miss my mom so much it hurts.  Going through her things is like reopening a wound.  There is also a sting of finality about it.  We have questions.  We want to know more about everything she knew about.  I don’t know what to do about the questions.  Where did you get this?  What is the story behind that?

I was looking at the things I brought home yesterday.  There are valuable pieces of jewelry that were my grandma’s, there are beautiful silver pieces my dad engraved, there are all sorts of things anyone would treasure as well as things that are treasures to only us.

One thing I have is a little tool my mom used for quilting.  I picked it up off the table when it was my turn to pick something.  

I would give anything to spend an afternoon quilting with my mom.

My sisters

 Yesterday morning I took a walk with Marianne.  (The three of us can walk together, we proved it Monday evening with a walk.). We talked and cried and laughed and explained and walked.  When the three of us were growing up and getting ready for school, we would ask each other.  “Does this look OK?”  “Does this work?”  “How about this?”

We could count on each other to tell the truth.

Now we do a version of the same thing.  When we talk, we reveal our worries and fears.  “Am I OK?”  “Is what I’m doing working?” “How about this?”

We still tell each other the truth.  And the truth is a version of, “You’ve got this and you are doing great.”

We convened at our dad’s again yesterday and went through our mother’s drawers.  More sorting and contemplating.  We moved to the kitchen table with the jewelry.  There were many things that our dad had made our mom over the years.  There was also a bracelet he gave her when they were high school sweethearts and a few other sentimental pieces our dad kept.  We selected some things for our sisters-in-law and made a granddaughter pile.  We divided the rest.  Marianne made a system (of course she did—we need her).  We each got a little stack of treasures; some had been our grandma’s and some our dear mother’s.

Olivia was crying at the end when she was boxing up stuff.  Our dad said, “Are you up for this?”

She said she was.  We are, even though we aren’t.  It is a paradox that this is too hard, but since we’re together, we can.

Marianne and Olivia came over for lunch and then a little later in the afternoon, our mom’s friend Merry and Demar’s wife, our aunt Lora, came because they wanted to visit and talk to us about our mom.  It was lovely.  They wanted to hear about our memories of her as a mother, if we were like her, what we’d learned from her and about her marriage to our dad.  I loved talking about it all and I loved that Olivia recorded what we were saying too.  Merry and Lora are two women my mom loved so much and it was good for all of us to connect and remember.

We all wish we were more like our mother.  Olivia and I were talking last night and decided that maybe (maybe) the three of us combined on our best day could come close.

We miss her

 Yesterday I told my dad I was trying to figure out why we don’t live here all the time.  I really love it.  

Olivia and I took an early walk and I went outside to wait for Olivia and our Aunt Olivia and cousin Hannah were walking by.  We stopped to chat and Hannah told me about the encounter they’d just had with a badger.  (More specifically it was an encounter one of their dogs had with the badger.). Hannah said it was “enough drama for the week.”

Olivia and I walked around the circle and she told me about her job and I told her about the dust bowl (I am seriously fascinated and it’s probably a good thing that I forgot my backpack with that book in it or I would keep telling everyone all about it).

Later my sisters and I met up at my dad’s to start the process of going through my mom’s things.  We didn’t know what my dad would want to do and I know we all wish she was here and we didn’t have to think about it.  We decided to start with the clothes, which was a lot.  Maybe we should have started with something less emotional, but we dove in.  

We laughed and cried a little more than we laughed.

There were certain clothes that we’d pull out that just reminded us so much of her and we’d weep.  We each took at least one sentimental shirt that we’ll never wear, but we will always treasure.  We made a huge pile of clothes for our sisters-in-law and daughters and nieces to consider (we’ll donate anything they don’t want) and we picked some clothes we wanted too.  Some of the clothes smelled just like her and we passed them around, inhaling and crying.

There were some clothes in a bin that had been our grandma’s.  I claimed a raincoat and it smelled like her house.  I wish someone could figure out how to bottle up scents like your grandma’s house or your mom.

My mom’s purse was in the bottom of the closet and I opened it and it was just 100% my mom’s purse.  The contents would have been the same when I was ten years old.  There is just something so comforting and familiar about your mom’s purse.  There were a lot of pens.  She was always ready with a pen.  There was a Reader’s Digest magazine, because she was never without reading material.  There were emery boards, keys, her wallet.  All the things.  I handed my dad the wallet and he pulled out her temple recommend and we cried fresh tears.  It was a prized possession of hers.

When everything was sorted and folded and contained, I came back to our house and cried.  I felt somehow like I’d lost my mother all over again.  I really don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get over and I guess I’m glad about that.

I am a lucky girl to be her daughter.

I am also so grateful for our good dad who hugs us when we cry together and is as ever, the steady in any storm.  I’m grateful for my sisters.  I’m glad we can be together.