Gratitude, part 7

I was 11 when my first niece came into the world. The event happened while my parents, Amy and I were in Lake Powell. We arrived at Bullfrog Marina, made a phone call, and found out Kayci had arrived. Suddenly, I was an aunt. She looked like this after a few weeks.

Kayci, circa 1986.

The event (becoming an aunt) repeated itself once a year for 4 years (pretty effortlessly on my part, since it was my sisters having children, not me. Becoming an aunt is lots easier than becoming a mom!) We had a collection of little girls ranging from 4 to newborn who frequently came over to our house and made things crazy. One year, one of them spilled gun solvent on her new Christmas outfit (you can partly blame a grandpa who didn’t put stuff away for that one!).

  Kayci and Jacqui, circa 1989

Lyndsay and Britteny, circa 1991

In retrospect, it seemed like the era first four grandkids lasted forever. Kayci, Lyndsay, Jaqui, and Britteny were in countless pictures together, sometimes dressed alike in Christmas swearshirts. They fought, they played, they grew, and etched a permanent place in their youngest aunt’s heart.

The four girls with my mom.

Of course, they were joined by other nieces and later some nephews who also are very dear to me (I love all of you!)

My nieces and oldest nephew, Easter 1996

All my nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and a grandnephew, Christmas 2008 (oh, and two blond boys that belong to me.)

But I have to say that those first few years with the girls were just amazing.

Now the four girls all grown up. They all are getting married and having kids of their own. A new great-nephew joined our family yesterday, thanks to Lyndsay. Britteny and Kayci will have babies in 2010. Jacqui will get married in January (on my 11th wedding anniversary!)

But, no matter how much they have grown, I still remember those little girls playing in my room with my old Barbie dolls, eating tomato macaroni soup on Saturdays, and wearing my old retainer during sleepovers (which is just gross; all I can ask is why?). I am grateful I was able to build so many memories with them as we grew up together.

Thanks, beautiful girls for letting me be your aunt. I love holding your baby boys and girls, I love seeing your older babies playing with my boys, I love the phone calls I get and the Facebook updates I read.  You have all turned out so wonderful. I am grateful for you.

Gratitude, part 6

I can't tell you how excited I am.

Back when I was a teenager and had an awesome older sister who hated it when I went in her room, I used to frequently sneak into said sister's room and listen to her cassette tapes.  She never knew about it until a few months ago, we were talking about old music.  I was trying to think of a band that I loved but had since forgotten the name of.

Oh, the attempts Amy and I made at figuring out this band.  I could remember the feeling of one of the songs, but none of the lyrics (helpful, I know.)  I kept telling her that I thought the band name started with the letter S, but couldn't go any farther.  We have wracked our brains.  She even gifted me a CD from the band Xymox, sure that it would turn out my desired band.  And while I enjoyed the Xymox CD very much, it failed to deliver the song I wanted.

Every now and again, Amy would call me and come up with random band names.  Each time I would have to say no.  I've wracked my brains on this since April.  April!

And now, to my intense pleasure and astonishment, I've had one of those moments.  You know, like the one Elizabeth Smart's sister had when she finally remembered her sister's kidnapper's name. A part of a song came back to me: "Save me, from the cold stone rain." (It should have been "sharp stone rain."  I must have been thinking of ice cream.  Mmmm, Cold Stone....)  I was sitting at work, in my cozy cubicle, and the words just sprung to mind.  I hurried and wrote them down on a piece of paper that I intended to come back to later on.

I recycled the paper when I left work, and never got the words off.  Ah!!

But, I knew that the breakthough had come.  I knew it had to do somehow with the word "stone, " so while on a drive through the neighborhood, the words came back to me, and I left them on Amy's answering machine.  Oh, the satisfaction.  I googled the words to the song, but couldn't find the band name (because of the unfortunate "cold stone"), so I was only partly satisfied.  That is, until today when the name of the band came to me: Vitamin Z.  Vitamin Z released a few albums back in the 80's, one of which my sister (obviously) bought.  I looked through the lyrics, and I found the songs I had been looking for.  Hooray for the internet!

So, today I am grateful for the tricks of memory that allow big sisters to come home, and little sisters to get the music they once risked sisterly wrath to listen to.  And I'm grateful I'll see Amy on Thursday, and the listening fest can begin.

So, did you ever sneak into your siblings rooms and do forbidden things?

Book reviews: Year of the Flood and Her Fearful Symmetry

I'm behind on a few book reviews, so, having gotten today's gratitude post written, I'll talk about a couple of the books I couldn't stop squealing over a few weeks ago.

First, I want to talk about Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood. Did you know a few years ago, Amy and I met Margaret Atwood? She came to Salt Lake City, and we listened to her read out of Oryx and Crake. It was so cool. I’m a fan of Margaret Atwood, but Amy absolutely loves her and breathes her books, so it was something we literally could not miss. We each got our copy of Oryx and Crake signed and we went on our way. Fun, fun.

So anyway, back to talking about the actual books. I liked Oryx and Crake, but I absolutely LOVED Year of the Flood. It takes you back to the same setting that populated O&C. Society is hurtling towards an end that promises to be ugly and completely man-made. In the midst, we meet two characters who seem unlikely to survive the storm. My favorite of the two was Brenda. Brenda was in O&C as Snowman’s high school girlfriend, and so we get to see him and Crake from her perspective (she is a far more sympathetic character than either Snowman or Crake). Part of her childhood was spent with a religious group called God’s Gardeners. They try to live as purely as they can within the decadent society that surrounds them. God’s Gardeners is populated with leaders who are all called Adams and Eves, who teach the children and teenagers living among them survival skills. Brenda likes her life with the Gardeners, but she has to leave it when her mom gets fed up with the man she is living with, and goes back to Brenda’s dad. After a few years, Brenda ends up as a trapeze artist in a sex club.

I did not expect to like Brenda. "Why would I like a prostitute?" was my original thinking. But as I got to know her, I loved her. Despite the life she has to lead, she is still the kind girl she was growing up with the Gardeners. It reminded me that no one choses such a life out of desire, but out of necessity. The social commentary that Atwood uses to describe Brenda’s life was what struck me the most. She lives in a world that is driven by science, greed, and lust. To retain a degree of purity in such a world the way Brenda did makes for awesome writing.

Some of the best parts of the book were the sermons given by the main Adam in the God’s Gardeners. Nearly every day for the Gardeners was a day of celebration of some saint. Adam One would give a discourse/sermon on the day’s saint, and at the end, they would sing a song. The songs were hilarious and clever. I shared the one about embracing our inner australopithecus a few entries ago. She cleverly places commentary and judgment on our own society in the songs, which made me love Margaret Atwood even more.

If you haven’t read it, I highly, highly recommend it. I now need to reread Oryx and Crake just so I can find Brenda again through other character’s eyes.

The other book is Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. Now, if you are expecting another experience like The Time Traveler’s Wife, you will be (I almost guarantee it) disappointed. Read this book on its own merits, not the love you may or may not have for TTW. They are vastly different.

That being said, I liked HFS a lot. It tells the story of two sets of twins. The younger set of twins inherits an apartment in London from their aunt (their mother’s twin). In London, they meet the other inhabitants of their apartment, including their dead aunt (I don’t think saying that will spoil a lot. But if it does, I’m sorry!). The interaction between the twins and the aunt (whose name is Elspeth) is interesting, to say the least. Trailing through the story is Highgate Cemetery, an actual cemetery in London that the girl’s apartment is attached to. Throw in an OCD upstairs neighbor, a grieving downstairs neighbor (who was the dead aunt’s lover) and you have quite the cast of characters.

I think this is the thing with Niffenegger’s books: you have to suspend a part of reality (time travel in TTW, ghosts who play with kittens in HFS) to enjoy the book. If you can do that, you can enjoy her novels. When I try too hard to figure out how Henry didn’t know he would end up in the cage during that one scene in TTW, it makes my brain hurt. When I think of the idea that a person could wake up after having recently died, and become aware of herself and her apartment and the knowledge that she is stuck, stuck, stuck in that reality, I get uncomfortable. But, suspending that part of myself, I can appreciate the way Niffenegger sets up the worlds in her books. There are laws, and time and space apply in her worlds. Elspeth cannot leave the bounds of her apartment. She can blow up light bulbs with energy, but she can’t open a book. It works.

I think the strongest character in the book was the OCD neighbor, Martin. The bounds of his life which he has meticulously created are so poignant. He wants so badly to leave his life and join his estranged wife, whom he loves, but he simply can’t. The love that is shown between him and his wife has echoes of Henry and Clare. I was extremely happy for Martin in the end.

I will say this: HFS is a lot cleaner than TTW. I didn’t, don’t, and will never mind the blatant sexuality that is TTW, but it is problematic when recommending it to others. But HFS also lacks some critical element that TTW had. The characters are compelling, but I didn’t want to crawl into their lives the way I did with Henry and Clare. I also realize they are different novels, different stories, and set out to fulfill different intentions. So I’m okay with HFS not being another version of TTW. I kind of have the opinion that many authors have one book that they are destined to write. For Barbara Kingsolver, it was Poisonwood Bible. For Anita Diamont, it was The Red Tent. For Larry McMurtry, it was Lonesome Dove (in my opinion; I hated Terms of Endearment). They told THAT story, the one that kept them up at night for years for the want of telling it. I think that Time Traveler’s Wife was that book for Niffenegger. She definitely hasn’t lost her ability for achingly beautiful prose, or the talent to write about relationships that tear at your heart.

Gratitude, part 5

It's a little like camping.

You know how it is. You go to the mountains/beach/desert, and set up your tent. The canvas, poles, and stakes combine to make a little home-away-from-home. You move your stuff in, and then look around at the other campers. Maybe your best friend's tent is a few trees away, so you visit their tent. A kind of canvas neighborhood is established, and good feelings abound.

This is how I feel about my neighborhood. It took a few years for us to have good neighbor-neighbors (like the ones that live right next door, or across the street) but it happened. My house is in the midst of other houses with people who I appreciate and love so much.

Neighbors are who you call when your kid is sick and you have a meeting at work that you can't get out of. They check him out of school for you (because neighbors are always on the "safe" list of other people who can check out your children), bring him home, and get him set up to wait until you can arrive. They feed your cats for you when you go on vacation. They are always there in a pinch when you need a can of beans to finish dinner, or a random spice for a new recipe. They are who you see when you go to Kohls at 9pm to do some Christmas shopping; they find the bliss of quiet, kid-free browsing as therapeutic as you do. And when you see them 15 minutes later talking to another more distant neighbor, you aren't surprised. They become friends who are indispensible. Their kids are your kids, and vice-versa.

I love my neighbors, and neighborhood. Sure there are things I could complain about (like entire packages of raw hot dogs thrown over my fence in 100+ degree weather, only to be found a week later while mowing; blech!), but the good things about the people I live near outweigh the bad. It is satisfying to walk across the street in my pajamas to have a good chat. I can't count how many barbecues, game nights, visits to the park, and plates of cookies I've enjoyed in the 10 years we have lived here. I just know how happy I am for the families who live near me, and grateful that I get to associate with them on a day-to-day, year-after-year basis.

So, as I sit in my kitchen and look outside my "tent" window at all the other "tents" lining my street, I'm glad we are all wound up in the same windy, hilly, out-of-the-way campground. The camping is pretty good around here.

Gratitude, part 4.

(Can I first say that the new editor on blogspot has an undo button, but no spell check? What the???)

I'm kind of a nerd (news, I know!). When I was 14, my mom and sister would drive up to Salt Lake City to get their hair cut, and my mom would drop me off at the genealogy library. I would spend a few hours, printing family group sheets and pedigree charts and whatnot. It was seriously something I loved doing and looked forward to. (Yeah, my gymnastics years took me a back a few social levels, obviously.)

Anyway, I totally had the genealogy bug. You could ask me anything about anyone within a few generations and I could tell you about them. I compiled all my stuff into a binder and added to it whenever I could. It kept me entertained for a while until I had actual friends. Ahem.

So, I don't spend a lot of time doing genealogy these days. But, due to a lesson last week at church, I found myself googling some names of those long-remembered but neglected names I learned in my teens. Google is the coolest (my husband can spend hours singing its praises. I'm learning, honey, I'm learning.) Did you know you can google an ancestor's name and all sorts of information about them will come up? Ok, sure, some of isn't relevant, but a lot of it is. I found out a lot of cool stuff about some people who previously had just been names on a pretty pedigree chart.

One of the cool stories was about a grandfather on my mom's side. I had been interested in his wife ever since I learned her name (Elizabeth), but I didn't know much about his family except that they settled Santaquin, Utah. I found out that his family (mother, father, and six or so brothers and sisters) came from England on a ship called the Horizon. They arrived in America only to hook up with the Martin Handcart Company. Now, any mormon knows that real, authentic, dyed-in-the-wool mormons are related to people in the handcart companies. I've always sort of tolerated stories about these companies (is this terrible of me to admit!!!???) because, while the stories are sad and faith-building and all of the rest of it, they weren't personal. I wasn't the one in sacrament meeting talking about great Aunt Sally and her sister, pushing the handcart. But suddenly, with the help of a little googling, I discovered I should sit up and pay a little more attention to such stories. They suddenly are personal to me. Me, a heathen by all accounts, has ancestors in the mother lode of pioneer lore. Who knew?

Actually, it's pretty amazing. My grandfather's brother wrote a daily journal from the time they left England to when they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, six months later. I haven't finished reading the whole account, but what I've read has left me a little in awe of this branch of the family. They left their ancestral home to journey to a place far, far away, suffering horrible tribulations along the way, all because of their faith. I found out another grandfather received his endowment in the Nauvoo Temple in January of 1846, a few months or weeks before he would uproot his family and jaunt across the plains with his family.

The whole experience has got me thinking of all the people who have lived before me. They weren't any better or worse than me (okay, they probably were a lot better, but you know what I mean.) They lived, married, had a few children who lived and those children repeated the cycle down the ages until I showed up. And here I am, following suit. I like to think of the symmetry of our lives; we are the singular grain of sand, suspended in the center point of the hourglass. Above us is our past, our ancestors who made their choices, making our lives possible. Pouring down away from us are our own children, and their children, and so on, who will exist because of us. Even though we are all moving in different directions, we all are held together by the hourglass itself, until we all end up together at the bottom, a sea of individuals with collective bonds.

So today, I'm pretty grateful for ancestors, and their stories that make them real.

Gratitude, Part 3

Today, I'm grateful for bonds.

I've always thought people are connected by invisible strands. Like those times when you know you need to call your sister, despite the fact that you just talked to her the day before and everything was fine. Like the way you just know that your boss, who usually arrives after you, is already at work, and you are late. When you feel the mischievousness of your husband, who is stalking you with a cup of cold water to dump onto you while you shower. Call it bonds, call it the Holy Ghost, call it ESP: they are there.

Yesterday I visited my dad. I don't go see him as often as I should. After a few weeks, it starts to wear on me. I'll end up thinking about him at night, when I'm in my cozy bed, and I wish he was in his own cozy bed at home, the home where he lived for over 30 years. My visits are usually short; it's hard to keep up a one-sided conversation for too long. But I try to visit.

It's always a little nerve-wracking when I arrive. If Dad is in his room, there is no telling what sort of state he will be in. So I always hope he's in the TV room, and that is where I found him yesterday. It's amazing to me to watch him see me. I wonder if he will recognize me: he always does. Even though his face doesn't light up, there is an expectation there in his face that I am there for him. We left the crowded TV room for a quiet, empty patient room. I sat next to him on the couch and showed him videos from our San Diego trip. I don't know if he knew who we were, but he seemed to enjoy the images of his grandsons playing in the sand and dodging waves at the beach.

I don't know how it happened, but I found myself next to Dad, telling him how much he still means to me. He started to cry. It wasn't a cry like you would expect, more of a sob that escaped the bonds that keep him from talking. It made me cry, and before I knew it, I was telling him all the things I could fit in, because I knew that for once, he was listening. He was there in the most powerful way he has been in over a year. He couldn't talk back to me, but I think he felt relief (hope, grief?) that someone knew he was in there, aware. We both sat there with tears running down our faces, wishing the moment could stretch on forever. I didn't want to keep making him sad, but some of the things I said I had wanted to say for a long time, and I did not regret them.

At one point, he was looking at me, and I could see him in his brown eyes. The person I knew before was there. He was right there, and I almost thought he was going to break through the sticky layers of proteins that keep him from us. It was so close, but in the end, he was too enmeshed to break out. The moment passed, and he went back to closing his eyes and clasping his hands. But the bond was there. I felt his love, even if he couldn't express it in words.

I doubt I could ever duplicate the visit. I was powerfully reminded of the Holy Ghost, and I felt that even in his condition, the Spirit hasn't forgotten my dad. Just as a blanket brings warmth, the Spirit continues to comfort him. I know that was what allowed my dad to be there for me yesterday, that the feeling of love I felt was helped along by the Spirit. How grateful I am for that, for the bonds that made that moment and expression possible. It is one of the tender mercies I will be able to take with me, one last expression of love from my dad. I will always be grateful for that visit.

Gratitude, part 2

When I first read the book Possession by AS Byatt, I didn't finish it. I read part of it, enjoying it all the while, but for some reason it got put by the wayside and I didn't finish it. It wasn't until I was talking with Amy a few years later when she mentioned it. I vaguely recalled it, and I went back to the library soon after and restarted it, promptly finished it, and loved every overly detailed moment.

I've looked forward to so many books that came out this fall, one of them being AS Byatt's new novel, The Children's Book. After reading (and loving) Catching Fire, Year of the Flood, and Her Fearful Symmetry, I eagerly went on to The Children's Book. It had me for a few pages, and then I started feeling a strange sense of deja vu. Unfortunately, I wasn't being reminded of Possession, but another AS Byatt I'd read called The Virgin in the Garden. I hated Virgin. I read all of it's 400+ pages because I wanted to be smart enough to read an AS Byatt novel that wasn't Possession. But big deal. I didn't feel smarter after I read it, just relieved that it was over.

Last week read a few reviews of The Children's Book. I found out that she has said that she wrote Possession in an attempt to "show off," (the exact quote from Barnes & Noble is this: "I knew people would like it," Byatt told The New York Times. "It's the only one I've written to be liked, and I did it partly to show off.").

How does that make me feel as a reader? Pretty crappy, actually. It makes me resent her for throwing off amazing, Booker-prize winning books like they don't matter, just to show that she can. Am I jealous? Of course. But is that the kind of author I want to read? Not so much. I'm not saying she has to write a book that will appeal to every style of reader; every author fills a niche somewhere for someone. That's why we have Dan Brown books and Danielle Steel books and Steven King books, right?

So somewhere, there is a niche for overly-erudite books like Virgin and Children's Book, and people to fill it. But I don't fit into that niche. Does that make me dumb? Maybe. Probably. But I figure there are enough writers out there who would give their blood, sweat, and tears to write a book like Possession, without resenting the fact that they wrote a book that people liked. Perish the thought.

So, tonight I'm grateful for two things: for the authors I love, who write me a story that I can wrap myself in. That teach me a lesson from their words, that build me a world that I crawl into during my breaks and lunches, that use language to build a reality that enriches my world.

And, I'm grateful I don't have to finish a book just because I started it. The library return slot doesn't know the difference.