Works Without Faith Is Dead

No, you didn't read the post title incorrectly. This was actually said to me many years ago, and a  discussion over at Times and Seasons this morning has brought if forcefully back to me today.

Some context.

I had been a missionary for six months, but I had not seen anyone get baptized yet. Nor had anyone been baptized that I had taught. I had met lots of remarkable people, been in lots of powerful teaching situations and even extended invitations to be baptized. I felt like I was growing personally and that my experience was valuable, but in a culture that (sometimes unfortunately) favors counting converts, I was beginning to feel like a bit of a failure. Even as my reputation for hard work and gifted teaching grew, I questioned my purpose. 

Overlaid with these feelings were other things. I was training a remarkably faithful companion and worried that I was failing her. It was hot and our area was very hilly. We rode bikes daily and I never stopped sweating. My lovely companion's English was not proficient enough to converse easily (and I never learned more than "Called to Serve" in Japanese), and I would some times go hours on end without speaking to anyone. We tracted up to 8 hours a day. I was so stressed on every level that hadn't menstruated in seven months. I felt deep, depressing sorrow for the unwillingness of people to change or even acknowledge the existence of God.

In the midst of all this we held yet another Zone Development Meeting. My feelings about these types of meetings were mixed. Occasionally I would feel the Spirit in a really great discourse, but too often they were merely pep talks for unmotivated missionaries and usually carried an unhealthy obsession with numbers. Elder Wilson, our boyish and smirky ZL spoke from James about how faith without works was dead.

I felt . . . 

Angry.

I was working. I was working so hard that my feet and back ached all the time. I was working so hard that college seemed like a distant vacation. I was desperate and depressed and didn't know how to do anything but work. My homesickness came back in spades as my mind often wandered to the budding romance I'd been involved in the year previously.

I had been told so many times that hard work was the key to success in missionary work, and yet there I was, working as hard as I knew how to work and having no outward sign of what counted for success in missionary work. I tuned out the talk, not listening for any message it, of the ZL might have to teach. No doubt my mind drifted to new places we might still have to tract, or streets we could re-tract or members we might bother about their friends.

At the close of the meeting, the ZL asked if he and his companion could come work in our area the following day. This is kind of a weird mission practice that will probably fade away as more sisters have opportunity for leadership positions. The way this worked in our mission is that leaders would come and visit for the day. They studied with us in the morning and then we would tract together, but nobody was ever quite sure how this was meant to work. This particular leader had us all walk together on one side of the street but three of us would go to the door at a time, to be less intimidating than four of us, I suppose. I really hated it; it made me feel like a Jehovah's Witness or something. Anyway, Elder Wilson and his companion came the next day, a thing I never looked forward to. (Probably because the first time he came he asked why we didn't make them pancakes like the other sisters always used to. I told him that we were too busy doing missionary work to worry about whether or not he'd had breakfast.)

While we were at one of our weird polygamy (one elder, two sisters) door knocks, Elder Wilson told me that he knew the ZDM the day before had been worthless to me. He said that he felt stupid standing up there telling me to work harder when I knew how to work harder than any elder he'd ever met. Then he said this, "But Sister, works without faith is also dead. So I have to ask you. How is your faith?"

I burst into tears.

After I had reinforced to him every stereotype he held about sister missionaries I calmed down enough to tell him that I wasn't even sure what the question meant. That I didn't really even know what faith was. To me, faith meant working and working and working. 

He told me that I had done enough.

I told him that we must not have, because why weren't we seeing more blessings?

He then explained something to me that I have never forgotten. Or at least the essence of it; no doubt the lesson he taught me that day has been colored by my own experience over the years. He told me that by always believing I needed to do more and more, I was putting all the responsibility for conversion squarely on my own shoulders. I needed instead to get on my knees and tell the Lord that we had done all He had asked and now we expected the blessings.

His phrase "expect the blessings," sort of terrified me. I was raised with a deep hatred of any form of entitlement and to my 21 year old self, this "expecting the blessings' is exactly what that looked like. But something about his earnestness, and his insight into my problem, deeply impressed me, and so I tried it.

I got on my knees that night and with many more tears told the Lord I had done all I could and that we expected Him to bless us. 

In the following weeks, everything changed. It wasn't just that there were some baptisms, though there were, by I changed too. I felt more deep and genuine love for the people. I felt excited to get out of bed each morning. I worked as hard as ever, but that weighing weariness wasn't ever-present. I turned more of my sorrow for the sins of the world over to Christ. That spring I sang The Spirit of God with the Saints as we gathered one Sunday. The third verse where it says, "That we through our faith may begin to inherit/the visions and blessings and glories of God" was impossible for me to sing through the deep emotions that filled very part of me. I had caught the barest vision of what faith was. 

You see, I had begun to understand that when my works were performed with the wrong motivation, I didn't allow the Lord to bless me. I had been motivated by some very good things--a heavy sense of responsibility to the Lord for my blessings, a desire to keep my covenants and do my duty, a genuine desire to bring the gospel to others, cultural obligations, etc. etc. But I somehow had it all wrong. The Lord wants to bless us and to give us that peace that passeth all understanding, but He wants us to love Him and to stop trying so hard to do everything ourselves. I still believe that faith VERSUS works is a false dichotomy; and I said as much at Times and Seasons today, but what motivates our work is very important.

Plantboy has been reminding me of this again lately. I am fearful as Jedi Knight prepares for middle school in a few months. I am afraid that we live in the wrong ward . . . or the wrong neighborhood. That we are going to the wrong schools. Etc. Etc. But Plantboy talks instead about having faith and says that we are doing everything we can to keep our covenants, to follow our callings, to show the compassion for others the Lords wants so much, and to truly love the Lord. He looked me in the eye the other night and was blunt, "The Lord doesn't want the boys to fail any more than we do. We must expect Him to bless us."  He is right. I must keep my covenants because I love the Lord and then I must count on Him to take care of the details.

Eleven Years Today

I was gone for a few days. My computer guy* charged me to repair our machine, but then also recommended that we replace the hard drive. I think his official term was "fried." I'm back, but for how long is up to the virus, I suppose.

Anyway, today is our eleventh anniversary. Last year we went on a big trip in the spring and then just celebrated the burrito anniversary at Chipotle. This year will be more low-key overall, but a little nicer on the actual day. We are trying a new restaurant out tonight and Plantboy bought me a very cool hat. If I actually like the way it looks when it makes it to my head then I'll post pictures.

I don't have time to post much today, but I would like to share an anecdote that should illustrate just how wonderful this man is that I married, and how much he loves me.

Early this year I made plans to travel to Utah on my own at the end of April to see my mom and sister and attend Women's Conference. As my few days "off" approached, I could hardly contain my excitement and put all my plans carefully in place. My flight went out on a Wednesday afternoon.

Tuesday night, Plantboy came home from basketball practice with a really bad sprain. I've never seen him in so much pain. I felt bad for him, but I must admit that I was mostly extremely upset about the prospect of canceling my own plans.

Don't worry, the rest of the story will drive home just what selfish beast I am.

Asking me only to run to a medical supply place to rent some crutches and buy an ankle brace, he went to work Wednesday, hopped up on ibuprofen, and kissed me goodbye, reassuring me that he would be fine. I organized the rest of my day the best I could, making sure the cupboard and fridge were well-stocked so that Plantboy wouldn't have to do anything for 3 1/2 days but sit on the couch with plenty of ice. I lectured the kids every three minutes on the importance of being really nice to their dad.

While I was gone, the reports about the kids were mostly positive, except for the five year-old who also spent a day on the couch throwing up. I enjoyed my trip immensely, knowing in the back of my head that I owed my sweet husband immensely.

I came home to a clean house, a nice supper and a FRESHLY PAINTED BEDROOM. That's right, Plantboy painted my bedroom--a project I had the supplies for but had been putting off for ages. Flabbergasted? Not to be believed.

When I asked him why he was so nice to me, he said, "Don't you know? Because you said yes." "Yes?" I replied. "Yeah," he smiled, "Eleven years ago."

And he says he's the lucky one.




* He isn't exactly MY computer guy. I just like to make it sound like I "have people."

28 Days of L-O-V-E

Day 14

I have to warn you up front: this is a rather shmoopy post about my husband. It is, after all, Valentine's Day. I will relate a story to help you see why I love Plantboy so much, and it is kind of a long story. Hit "next blog" now if you hate this sort of thing.

After breaking up with The Mistake in 1998, I went through a really difficult time. I was living with my grandmother, most of my friends had gotten married and/or finished college while I had taken my hiatus to be a missionary, and I was just a semester from graduation. I was lonely, rather depressed and my confidence was shot. I found a job on campus and one of my fellow-employees was a fabulous friend named Carrie. Though a few years younger than myself, she took me under her wing and helped me to adjust to life after a mission and an engagement gone south. (Quite literally--the girl he got engaged to three weeks after breaking it off with me lived south.) There was an opening in Carrie's apartment that summer, and I jumped at the chance to begin acting like a more normal college student again.

Carrie had a crush on a guy we went to church with that we will call Metal Plate Face Boy. (So named because of an unfortunate accident during an ultimate Frisbee fraternity tournament in which his zygomatic process was crushed and replaced with a steel plate. Really. He wasn't a cyborg-face or anything, it was all under the skin, and you couldn't tell unless you were really close to him. Keep reading to learn why I was privy to this information.) Not just a crush, but the BIG CRUSH. She knew his class schedule and hung on his every word. He seemed nice enough and was pretty good-looking. He was the kind of guy that all of the nice girls in your ward have a crush on at one time or another, but never seems to ask anybody out.

The problem was that Carrie was rather shy, especially around MPFB, and couldn't even speak to him without stammering and blushing. There was a church picnic that summer and I dragged her to his table in an effort to force her to chat naturally with him. It worked a little bit and I managed to get the ball rolling, conversation-wise, for the three of us. Two days later, he called our apartment, Carrie answered the phone (remember when roommates shared land-lines?), and handed it to me. The Man of Steel had called for me.

There followed the five most awkward moments of my life. He re-introduced himself to me, thinking that I wouldn't realize who he was. We talked for a few minutes and the whole time, Carrie is standing there mouthing and whispering, "He is awesome. He likes you. You have to say yes if he asks you out. Don't you dare say no . . . . "

If I was a really good person I probably would have said no, leaving MPFB with little or no explanation to keep my friend's secret, well, secret. But I am not a really good person, and I was incredibly flattered. I'd been out with friends. I'd been out with boys that I had flirted for months to hook up with. I'd made-out off and on that summer with a boy from work that I had no intention of dating. I'd been set up on blind dates. But I never had been asked on a date, out-of-the-blue, by a man clearly nervous about being rejected. It was very appealing.

We started dating. Carrie was such a champ through it all. I still regret ever telling him yes.

That summer, as the pieces of my life began falling in the right places again, I felt like I was finally moving in a positive direction. My cousin, on the other hand, though just a few months older than myself, was finding out that her husband of less than two years was more interested in an tattooed and pierced 18 year-old at work than with her and their baby on the way. She and I had always been very close, and I spent quite a lot of time with her during those devastating months of heartbreak and anger. I could relate on some small level. My Mistake and her Ex could have been brothers. (No denigration here of my cousin's choices; it was, after all, the Mistake that broke up with me, not the other way around. I would have married my charm-boy too if he hadn't been so commitment-phobic. Praise the Heavens for that.)

As MFPB and I dated more, I opened up and told him about my cousin. His response was almost total indifference. Any emotion he showed was probably more along the lines of if-you-are-upset-then-this-probably-means-no-kissing-right? I missed the signs that Metal Boy just wanted to hang out and have fun. It didn't occur to me that a guy might be only attracted to me, as such a phenomenon had never happened before. I thought a handful of dates meant we were on the road to eternal bliss. No doubt he saw that one serious conversation as an attempt for me to get closer than he wanted to be.

He didn't call.

A couple of weeks later, I cooked for him one Sunday afternoon and goaded him into having a DTR (Define the Relationship) conversation. Poor boy. When he asked me out initially I should have told him, "No thanks. I'm on the rebound and I'm likely to be clingy and needy and read too much into your every action. You seem very nice, so I'm just going to spare you that drama right now." I'm not sure why women undermine their relationships, but we do a heck of a job at it. I basically told MFPB that I wanted him to be honest with me. I didn't want to have him say that he was going to call, and me sit by the phone for weeks, only to run into him on campus six months later and he thinks, "Oh, yeah, didn't we go out once?" He looked me right in the eye, no lie, and said so sweetly and sincerely, "I would never do that to you."

I never heard from him again.

Fast forward to late summer. I was commiserating with a fellow-employee (female) about my frustrations with guys in general. You know, the conversation that women in their 20's have every other time they get together. I told her about the last conversation I had with cyborg face and we soundly condemned him, the lame girl he would one day marry*, his children and his convertible Sebring. Plantboy had just begun working with us, and though I didn't realize it at the time, he was listening carefully to every word we said. It was months (years?) later that he told me he wanted to jump over the counter at that moment and promise--for real--that he would never do that to me.

Not too many weeks passed before we began dating, and I really liked him, but then something happened that taught me in a profound and tender way the depth of his unassuming personality. I was unable to go out with him one night because my cousin was on watch for a premature delivery and at the hospital. She was very ill, and despite being more than 25 weeks pregnant, was still losing weight. I explained to Plantboy about my cousin, just waiting for him to shrug with indifference in the manner of Ironman. Men are just like that, right?

Wrong. Plantboy was genuinely distraught. He volunteered to go with me to the hospital and then asked what I was bringing for a gift. The answer was, of course, nothing, as my whole budget for the month had been blown on a case of Ramen noodles. He volunteered to take my cousin a plant from his house (he had several) and chose the nicest one in the prettiest pot. He discreetly stood aside while I conversed for some time with my cousin, not acting with impatience for even a moment.

When we left the hospital, I related more of her story and his gorgeous hazel eyes teared up as he said, "I don't know what I would do if that happened to me. I cannot imagine how awful she must feel." And though it was many weeks before I would admit to it, on that day I began to fall in love with him.

From that day I was touched by his deep compassion and sincerity. His generosity and his selflessness. His tender-heart and doing-hands. I have seen him give his gloves to a homeless man on a freezing cold street. I have seen him drop everything for a month of Saturdays to help other people move. I have seen him react without hesitation to leave at any hour to give a blessing to someone in need. I have heard the tears in his voice as he has blessed each of his young sons to love and learn from their mother. I have cried on his shoulder for an hour or more at a time without any complaint. He has never wanted to change me, but just knowing him has changed me for the better.

When I was young I read a lot of fairy tales. When my life didn't look like one of them by the ripe-old-age of 17, I became unfortunately and dramatically bitter about relationships, which were always so hard for me to figure out. I felt like the whole thing was a big game in which I was never privy to the rule book. I never expected to have a love like this. Sometimes reality is better than the fairy tale.

Happy Valentine's Day, Plantboy.



* ChrisW pursued a master's degree a couple of years later. One of her roommates ended up marrying the Cyborg, who, by the way, is a very nice guy named Dave. It wasn't that he couldn't nurture, he just couldn't nurture the lump of need that was me in 1998. Sometimes people prepare you for what you are really waiting for. Thanks, Dave.

28 Days of L-O-V-E

I'm going to get a day ahead here, as there is a ton to do tomorrow and I'm not sure when I'll get around to posting.

Days 12 and 13

I love three-day weekends, but I especially love a husband who will do any project that needs doing and always reassures me that, for him, such householdy projects ARE a day off. But more on Plantboy for Sunday (and a picture of the gorgeous flowers he brought home from work today). For now, let us just say that I love a long weekend, particularly when there is tax return money to spend . . . .

I love dessert. If you don't love dessert, you are, of course, entitled to your (whacked-out) opinion. But I must say WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? Plantboy worries about cholesterol and generally eats healthier than I do, so he encourages me to only do dessert one Sunday a month, and if we have company. I usually stick to this pretty well unless something (anything) comes up: boredom, goodies for somebody else and the extras just happen to hang around here, a school or church function, family home evening, whatever.

For Sunday's Valentine's dinner I'd like to make some kind of dessert we haven't had for a while, but I cannot chose between my three options. This is where you come in.

My 28 Days of Love has garnered few comments (not really surprised, as this is the sort of thing I seldom comment about), but today should be different! I need a good sampling of readers so that I can make a truly scientific decision about Valentine's Day dessert. Its all the men around here are gettin' so it's gotta be good. I've narrowed it down to three, in alphabetical order:

Chocolate Lava Cake: Gorgeous, delicious and fairly easy. My recipe doesn't make more than we can reasonably eat in a single sitting. I've probably made this more frequently than the other two, however; and it is certainly best in moderation.



Red Velvet Cake: I just love this cake, and my mom always used to make if for my birthday, but I probably love it more than everyone else in the family. Plantboy thinks it is a bit funky and my kids are slightly indifferent to cake, being just as satisfied with a bowl of vanilla ice cream. What could be more beautiful at Valentine's Day than a fat slice of red velvet cake. Exactly! Eating it cold for breakfast on Monday morning. That is the problem though. I will eat it the rest of the week, unable to through away a single mouthful.



Trifle: Besides being delicious and relatively easy to make, this would also give me an excuse to buy some cool glass goblets as I'd probably do single servings so everybody gets what they are willing to eat. The negative with trifle is that I much prefer it with fresh fruit and it isn't the best time of year for that.

Conclusions

I actually started this post a couple of weeks ago, but never got around to finishing it. Three things prompted its completion today: finishing a book titled, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, watching the movie Up and a complete lack of desire to clean out the detritus left over after vacation.

My Segullah post was not the only one on LDS sexuality during the month of November. In fact, the first such post received something like 75 comments. My own post was geared as much toward approaching children about this sensitive subject as it was about spousal relationships--a topic not quite as "hot" as sex drive, which is what the first post was about. From the many and varied comments on the posts, some of them surprisingly blunt, as well as the variety of personal e-mails I received, I perceive that I wasn't far off the mark when I implied that in matters of intimacy, LDS women aren't always sure about where they stand and whom to talk to about their difficulties. I think the relatively anonymous nature of blogging makes it easy to open up about things that you might not ever talk about otherwise. Such anonymity allowing us to be open can be both good and bad, but that is another topic.

As I've thought about all I've read in the last couple of months on this subject, I felt like I wanted to draw a few conclusions here about things that have been meaningful to me. Perhaps they will be meaningful to you also. If not, feel free to add your own insights.

The overwhelming theme in the topic responses is that communication is the key to any successful relationship. This is true whether we are talking about husbands and wives or parents and children. It seems that initmacy is nearly impossible for women to enjoy without honesty. I was the most intrigued by the sister who wrote in about her husband finally coming clean about his pornography addiction. Before this happened to her, she would have assumed that nothing would be more damaging to her sex drive than to have this knowledge. However, once her husband admitted to this terrible thing, a huge barrier was removed between them and she found him absolutely attractive in his "naked" honesty. I thought this was fascinating; I also think that with enough work this sister could end up having a very successful marriage, and such open-ness in their relationship will hopefully make it more difficult for her husband to be secretive in the future.

The same applies to our children. Respondents who believed they had the most positive relationship with their own children or parents all said they same thing--they feel like they can talk about anything together. That is very powerful. If my sons believe they can come to me with their problems from skinned knees to hurt feelings to the facts of life to dating relationships then I will have a lot of influence about how they perceive the world. Notice I didn't say "control." Ultimately, only my children will control the decisions they make. Again, another topic worth exploring.

A second conclusion I realized in teaching our children about matters of human intimacy is that it is better to have this discussion late than never. One sister said bluntly that if you had never talked with your children about anything to do with their bodies, and then you try to sit your twelve year old down and explain to her why she is menstruating, it is going to be terribly awkward. Yet, it still should be done. I have to admit that even after I'd been through AP Biology, I would have still appreciated my mom making the effort to help me understand a little bit more about how boys ticked and how she felt about my dad.

This better-late-than-never mantra should apply to spouses also. It is so easy to fall into a routine with those we love the best. Marriages fail for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that they grow stale with routine and low expectations. When Plantboy and I were engaged, we went to see his bishop for a routine "check-up." I only remember one part of the interview. This bishop, a very traditional older brother, said that in forty years of marriage he'd hardly ever seen his wife without her make-up. That she made a point of getting out of bed before he did each morning and at least putting on lipstick before he saw her. My 24 year-old feminist self rebelled against this idea: that his poor wife wouldn't dare appear before him without her best face on! What kind of ogre was he? Now I see this offhand statement for what the bishop probably intended: that his wife loved him so much that she always wanted to look her best for him. Even after 40 years of marriage, his attraction to her was something she valued and cultivated.

I still don't put on make-up before I get out of bed. (Neither should Sister Bishop. I can just see her pink lipstick sneaking out of her natural lips and creeping up the lines around her mouth, but I digress . . . .) But when I get dressed up to go out somewhere, even if I am not going to be with Plantboy, it is his reaction that means the very most to me. And I've learned to never miss a chance to flirt or tease or give a kiss goodbye. I hope I don't forget this lesson, even when I've been married four decades.

As for whether YOU should put on make-up before your husband sees you in the morning, well, that leads into my third conclusion: each relationship is unique. During the comment phase, particularly of the first sexuality post, a lot of people were giving specific ideas about what made an intimate relationship successful. A couple of good sisters went so far as to discuss the merits of vibrators before the moderator cut them off. I'm not sure that any of the really specific advice, particularly in such a large forum, is helpful or appropriate. There is a Woody Allen movie (Annie Hall, I think?) in which he and Diane Keaton (his love interest) are going to therapy as part of the story line. Each character is shown separately with their respective therapist. Each therapist asks the same question, "How is your sex life?" The woman's response is, "Oh! All the time, at least two or three times a week!" The man's? "Hardly ever! Three, maybe four times a week!"

Hm . . . .

Communication problem indeed. I sometimes find myself thinking, "What is normal?" But perhaps a better question is, "What is normal and comfortable FOR US." Such a question can only be answered if you hold a conversation with your loved one, holding nothing back, and set reasonable expectations on your partner. There was another sister who wrote in that, at first, for a woman who is a virgin, hardly anything will seem comfortable and that to hold yourself to THAT standard is to deny a lot of pleasure and happiness. While her point is valid and interesting, I still maintain that sex should be something enjoyed by both partners. Something that crosses the comfort line one day, may not the next. Again, you have to speak up.

And yet, you might be in a marriage and have a personality where you feel more comfortable just not talking about it at all. As hard as that is for me to imagine, again, your relationship is uniquely yours and you know better what it needed than anyone. This is especially true when we expand this individuality to your children. Just as your marriage is unlike anybody else's, so is your precise relationship with each child. Books and advice are helpful, but ultimately you have to decide the best time, age and circumstances to approach your children about intimacy. I think listening to the Spirit is a big thing here.

It was Mike (the lone male willing to show his face on the subject, though Plantboy and I talked over nearly every comment together) who really got me thinking about my last conclusion on the subject. Discussions about sexuality need to be approached with values at the forefront, but also facts. While necessary between spouses (one sister indicated how valuable a book on female anatomy had been), such fact-based discussion is perhaps even more important with our children. From the young man who feels intense guilt over uncontrolled dream-fantasies after being told in a fireside that even sinful thoughts make you evil to the young woman who innocently sits on her boyfriend's lap while wearing a mini-skirt, a basic understanding of the biology involved is as necessary as a standards talk.

The problem, too often, is just that as we perceive a person's spiritual nature as completely different from and even opposed to their sensual nature, we also look at science and religion as dichotomies. This is a mistake. ALL learning can be for our good, particularly if we strive to understand just how important it is to our Heavenly Father that we have a body AND a spirit. Striving to defeat the natural man is not about learning to hate your physical body. It is about learning that there is a time and a place for certain behaviors, that self-mastery is the key to being filled with the pure love of Christ. A young man with self-control and integrity is still going to have wet dreams regularly. A young woman who dresses modestly still has to be careful about what she says to a young man or how she kisses him for BOTH their sakes. A husband who has a hard time helping his wife at home will find an uninterested lover. A wife, on the other hand, will nearly ALWAYS find an interested lover, so it is important that she not lead her man on too far without intentions to act on her teasing.

Being human is both complicated and wonderful. Perhaps the key with any struggle is to recognize that our Father created us the way we are for a reason. The spirit and the flesh.

As for why my entertainment selections of the last week prompted this post, The Memory Keeper's Daughter was one of the most depressing novels I've read this year. I didn't really like or identify with any of the characters, and I especially disliked the author's portrayal of marriage. In fact, my favorite character, was the Memory Keeper himself who gave his daughter away in a moment of supreme need to control the outcome of a difficult situation. I'm not sure if this says something disastrous about me, or is a tribute to just how unlikeable the characters in this story are. The movie Up, though I cried for nearly the entire length of the film, is probably one of the sweetest movies I've ever seen. It showed me that you can't just keep sitting around and waiting for life to happen. You have to seize the big opportunities when you get them sure, but you also have realize before it is too late that the real adventure is in living quiet, everyday moments with the ones you love best. Memories of a life are built as powerfully in simple things as in grand adventure. Ellie's message from the grave to her crotchety husband is that she didn't regret a thing. I don't want to regret a thing.

I'm thankful for my life, and for the love that Plantboy and I have worked so hard to cultivate. We have lived for some time now in relative ease and comfort, temporarily immune from the deep and difficult trials so many seem to be faced with right now. I hope that this season of joy hasn't made me complacent to my many blessings, or calloused toward those with greater struggles. As the holiday season moves into full swing this year, I pray that I will put off some of the frivolity in exchange for more meaningful thoughts and friendships. That I will decorate less and serve more. That I will fill my scrapbook with more memories and fewer unfulfilled promises.

Happy December-ing.

It's Called GOING OUT, People!

I remember my parents going out on dates regularly when we were kids. When I was younger we had sitters, when we were older we WERE the sitters. We did a great job too, I can tell you. One time, my sister and I in a frenzy of fighting, chasing, yelling and screaming slammed a door so hard that the mirror on the back of it fell to the ground and shattered in approximately 4.3 billion pieces. We bawled, apologized to one another and cleaned up the mess. The whole rest of the time my sister and I lived under the same roof, my parents weren't able to keep a door- hanging mirror more than a year or two--each one of them broke at the slightest bump. The point is, that regardless of what was going on at home, my parents took the time to regularly go out.

My sharpest memories of the going out are those that involve my mom getting "gussied up" to leave the house. My parents very seldom veered from two or three restaraunt picks, and their dates were nearly always either going to the temple or going out to dinner. Still, Mom always took pains to dress up. After putting on her prettiest clothes, she sprayed her neck with Beautiful by Estee Lauder--my dad's favorite scent and the one he gives her nearly every year for Christmas. She would spend time on her hair and make-up and clothes. Going out meant going all out.

When I was a little bit older, my parents occasionally took us out with them. This was a great treat. We usually went to Maddox steak house in Brigham City after especially good report cards. It was a huge event for us; my sister and always always followed Mom's cue in getting decked out to go out, primping right up until the moment that dad was growling for us to get in the car. During the winter of my junior year in high school I spent a week and a half in London. I was shocked to go to the theatre and find people in jeans and tee shirts. I was more shocked when some of our group, after a week of theatre-going deteriorated into the same sloppy dress. I had not come that many thousand miles to wear trainers and a parka to Miss Saigon, thank you very much.

I don't really consider myself a high maintenance person. Many days, "combing my hair" consists of putting it in a ponytail without the benefit of a brush. Make-up manages to catch me every third or fourth day. Jeans and tee shirts are the clothing choice as soon as I remember to switch from flannel pants some time in the mid-morning. But when it is time to go out . . . .

Friday we went to Outback. I'm not a big fan of paying $25 for a plate of meat and vegetables werein "vegetables" consist of onions. (I also think Outback is entirely ridiculous as there isn't a single actual Australian thing on the menu other than Foster's Beer. But that is beside the point.) Still, we had a gift card and a volunteer babysitter so we would have been crazy to pass up the chance. I did wear jeans, but I also wore heels, an awesome orange jacket (partly awesome because it was a steal at $4 from the Goodwill), and a scarf. I actually curled my hair and wore eyeliner.

As we waited for a table, I noticed several families with children. The kids all looked so sloppy! One girl had on over-sized pink sweatpants and (just-shoot-me-now) Ugg boots take-offs that looked like sloppy slippers. Her hair was in a half pulled-through pony and she wore a ratty hoody and starlet sunglasses. Did she think she was J-Lo? Atrocious. Another kid was wearing ill-fitting gym clothes with long white socks and sandals. This unfortunate social butterfly also brought a 500 page fantasy novel with him. Apparently he had no plans for talking with his parents, or going out for expensive dinners is such a regular experience for him that he was completely indifferent to being "treated." Mom jeans and Hawaiian tee shirts seem to have made a comeback among the Friday-night-Outback-Steakhouse crowd.

It is true that there were a few groups of people who looked like they had taken pains to look their best; there was even a group of high school kids at one table who were probably on a Homecoming date. Either that or the girls had all just come from the lingerie store and run into a a group of friends leaving the Men's Wearhouse. (Don't get me started on THAT unfortunate spelling.)

The next mistake is my own. To be seated a few minutes faster we agreed to sit in the bar, where there were actually "tables." I use the term loosely because it was too small for all of our food and drinks at the same time. The chairs were so high that my feet couldn't quite reach the top rung. Of course, as soon as we sat, I realized there were four enormous televisions in the bar area. One in each corner. Plantboy knows how I feel about non-stop sports at restaurants, or anywhere else, and graciously volunteered to sit with his back to one, though it just meant he was full-on facing another. *sigh* Plantboy laughed at the situation, "You know this place is packed because of the meat-fest and the football. It might be the only way to get men out of the house."

But there were other annoyances, besides college football and sloppy clothes, that occupied my thoughts Friday night: the sound on the TV was entirely down, but between the motion and the scroll bar, there was plenty to keep the eyes busy. The radio was playing in the background, causing people at each table to raise their voices quite high. My meal was excellent, but the headache I took with my Chocolate Thunder From Down Under nearly ruined my meal.

Why is it so hard to find a nice, quiet, affordable place to go out? All of the chain restaurants are a cacophony of visual and auditory over-stimulation. In the past 18 months I've only been to two places that were a peaceful dining experience with unique food and a relaxed non-TV atmosphere. The bill at each spot nearly caused a gag reflex. Maybe it is worth it if we only go out every few months instead of trying to do something more regularly?

But I do know this: The most pleasant part of the entire evening was in the quiet of our car ride home. Plantboy and I held hands. We talked about covenants and sacrifice. We expressed with joy some of the love-lessons we've learned in the past decade. Maybe getting dressed up to go out is worth it after all.

Because the Tenth Anniversary is the Burrito Anniversary

The trip we took in April was supposed to cover some weeks of gift-giving family holidays: Valentine's Day, Plantboy's birthday in March, Mother's Day, my birthday in May, our anniversary last week and Father's Day. The idea, of course, being that we'd rather do one big cool thing than have a lot of lame-ish smaller presents.

This is such an awesome idea. In theory.

In practice it is a little bit dodgier. I did give everyone something (tiny) for Valentine's Day. As for Plantboy's birthday, well, there was just a shirt. And a CD. During Elder Scott's talk in conference ("I love you, but we can't afford it") Plantboy 'fessed up: Jerry Seinfeld was coming to town just a week after my birthday and he bought tickets nearly two months ahead to surprise me but now he felt guilty because they were expensive and on the credit card and should he try to sell them?

No. He should not. I also pointed out that now I felt guilty about them too instead of just pleasantly surprised. It's a good thing we had nearly two months to get over it, and to pay for them. (The Jerry was fantastic, by the way.)

Our vacation was, of course, wonderful but we did a very poor job of the just stick to one souvenir apiece plan. I hope by now you are starting to get a sense of how exceptionally well-disciplined Mr. Plantboy and I are. We could probably make it on one income if we could both stick to our guns and/or live like hermits.

We almost didn't do anything for my birthday or Mother's Day. Almost. Oh, yeah, the Seinfeld tickets. But they didn't really count, did they? After all, we bought them weeks in advance.
Our anniversary approached; we reminded one another daily that we were not doing anything (else) for it. Besides, the ward was doing a fathers and sons camp out that night. That was all the anniversary present I needed!

Then, Plantboy came home with the news that the Chipotle scheduled to open here in town was on time, and that opening day was our anniversary. Does this not seem like that big of a deal to you? Well, then, clearly, you are not married to Plantboy.

Plantboy lived in Denver when the first few of these restaurants opened in the mid-nineties. One of them was right down the street from the Denver temple where he worked during the summer. It would be pushing it to say they ate there every day, but probably twice a week.

Then he married me, and we spent our first summer in Denver. I was shocked that he'd been previously going out to lunch daily, and buying $5 burritos two or three times week. I insisted on him packing the lunch nearly every day, giving the kitchen pass to go out only once a week or every other week. Then he TOOK me to Chipotle.

I wasn't so harsh about him packing lunch after that. I cautioned moderation, of course; it can't be good for you to eat a 10,000 calorie burrito every day for lunch, but I didn't fault his taste any more. We love everything about Chipotle.

We love the cool design of each store.

We love their corrugated metal decor and Aztec art.

We love their catch slogans and ad campaigns. (All time favorite: Usually When You Roll Something This Good, It's Illegal.)

We love their fresh ingredients, and that you can stuff anything that will fit into a HUGE tortilla and still be charged just $6. (The price has gone up a bit from the old Denver days, and yes, we know that guacamole is extra.) We love the cilantro lime rice so much that we've tried to re-create it here at home for years.

But mostly, oh, mostly, we just love their food.

One of the hardest things to say goodbye to in Texas was the Chipotle they'd built just a year before we left. Did you know that branch gave you and a friend a free meal on your birthday? And firemen and cops were always free. The nearest Chipotle to where we lived in Utah was two hours. TWO HOURS! We love it, but two hours was really pushing it.

The nearest franchise to us until Friday was about a mile from the Portland temple. I suppose it is no secret where we ate each time we went. I have sometimes even wondered a bit about my darling spouse's motivation for attending the temple . . . .

But not anymore. This newest addition to the Chipotle family is just three minutes from Plantboy's office. Yes, I foresee that this could be a bad thing. But it was sure fun on Friday. We came just after they opened and got the free tee shirts being given to the first 100 in the door. We sat near the lady handing out the free stuff and also got a squeezie burrito stress toy, a couple of free meals, free lip guac (read: chapstick), a pen and a couple of coupons for free guac and chips next time we go. She told us that on Thursday, when they'd given out free burritos all day, they had given away over $14,000 in food. (We tried twice to wait, but the line was over 100 people long and it went around the building. In a town primarily populated by vagrants and college students, this should come as no surprise.)

My friend watched my little ones for a couple of hours while Plantboy and I did this silly and fun thing that made us really feel like part of the community. When Plantboy admitted to the promotional-girl that he'd written the company three times to suggest Eugene locations for the burrito-goodness, she saw that we were the true superfans and is going to send us a bunch more coupons and tee-shirts. We will officially be enrolled as Chipotle Ambassadors.

Really.

How am I doing so far?

Lilacs in the Rain Just Before Dawn

Perhaps because of my discovery of Facebook some time ago, I've spent the last few months thinking a lot about memories and how they help create who we become. I've made some marvelous connections with old, cherished friends who helped mold me into the person I am; friends whose ideas, laughter, borrowed courage, and love are still a part of me. I've been able to send some long overdue thankyous to a few of these important people. Such connections have given me roots, even though I've spent much of the last fifteen years feeling like a perpetual transplant.

Very early this morning, I had a memory that sprang from a smell rather than a person. A smell that I only enjoy for a week or two each spring, but it is a smell that whispers the promise of warmer weather, birthday gifts and change: the heady scent of lilac caught me in full force as I delivered a newspaper to somebody's porch. It had been raining, so the scent was particularly pronounced, and sure enough, just a few feet to my right was an enormous tree in full blossom. How lovely and surprising to smell it before I could even see it.

There is a lot of scientific research about the connection between memories and smells, but there is still much about the mechanism of the linking that remains unknown. Like most things to do with the brain, neurologists have barely scratched the surface for how it all works. I'm just glad that it does. Lilacs remind me of growing up in Utah because there was an enormous hedge of them on the border between our house and our neighbor's house when I was a child. They bloomed every spring right around the time of my birthday and mother's day. Their lovely scent makes me think of old-fashioned things, a grandfather I have only a single memory of, and the promised renewal of life each spring.

When Plantboy and I hadn't been married long he unpacked a box that contained several books from his mission. They were warped and water stained. The mildew-smell coming from the box was strong, though the books had long dried out. Plantboy grinned and inhaled deeply, "Ah! It smells just like Brazil!" Even bad smells, when attached to fond memories, can make us smile.

I have other favorite smells.

I smelled wisteria for the first time on my mission. It doesn't grow in Utah, but in Australia many people put it on arbors in their yards where it blooms prolifically in September and October. It was intoxicating to walk under these trellises on the way to knock on a door. It was a companion from New Zealand who identified it for me. I have since seen its popularity in both Oregon and Texas, but it always reminds me of Australia.

Eucalyptus reminds me of Australia too. There are tons of eucalyptus trees in the great south land--they call them gum trees. Just before the rain, the change in pressure causes the oils in the leaves to be released, filling the air with the most amazing smell. But watch out for the rain: as soon as you smell the gum trees it is too late to run for cover.

Fresh-mowed grass reminds me of hard-work and order. Mowing lawns was the first chore I could get more than a few cents for. Mowed lawns are so tidy and organized. Even the most beautiful yards look shabby when the lawns get over-long. The only scent that says summertime to me more than cut grass is grape taffy. I think the grape taffy must be a holdover from all of the ballgames we watched my dad play in when I was a child.

There was (and maybe still is?) a patch of wild roses in one of the beds near the east fountain at the Houston Temple. Most roses people want in their gardens are bred for huge blooms and lovely colors, but their wild cousins aren't much to look at. They were wild and thorny with tiny flowers and lots of leaves. But the smell? Oh. Wow. If you are lucky, you can find wild roses while you are hiking, and wild rose hips make the most interesting and fragrant ice cream you have ever eaten.

Before all you allergy-prone people start sneezing from just reading about all the outside smells that I love, there are inside smells I love too.

Cinnamon and cloves make me think of Christmastime, even more than the smell of pine. I also think of Christmas when I smell my mother's gingerbread--full of yummy spices and molasses. It is the coziest smell in the world.

Any decadent thing baking my oven--cakes, cookies, sweetbread and the like--reminds me of good times. You don't bake treats unless there is money and time for a little bit of frivolity, or an important event coming up.

When my house is freshly cleaned and there is a combination of lemon and disinfectant in the air, I feel so organized and together. I am reminded of Saturday mornings as a kid when we'd all work together in the house for a couple of hours to have the house spic and span before we started each new week.

Then there are the people smells! Now, granted, many of the people smells are not so great, and we go to great lengths to cover them up, but here are a few I love.

When I thought of baby smells before I had children, I mostly thought of Baby Magic lotion or Johnson's baby oil. When my own firstborn turned out to have such sensitive skin that no products whatsoever could be used on his skin, I realized that he had a luscious scent all of his own. Just a good, clean, baby smell. I could smell it the strongest around the soft spot on his gorgeous little head and it made me want to bury my head in his neck and and just kiss him all the time. Baby number two didn't have this smell so much, but baby number three did.

As for covering up smells . . . when I met Plantboy he wore an Abercrombie and Fitch cologne called "Woods." Hubba-hubba. At the time, Eternity was so popular among college and high school guys alike that I felt like that sickly sweet aroma was nearly constantly in my nostrils. Plantboy's chosen cologne was so much more subtle and earthy. Also, he didn't bathe in it, which is helpful. (He recently found an Axe brand shower gel that smells similar. He said he is planning on writing the company to get his money back for false advertising, however. Apparently he expected to see dozens of panting women just outside the bathroom when he finished showering with it, as per the commercials.)

Remember in the mid-90's when all those Victoria's Secret lotions came out? The classics--Pear, Vanilla, Tranquil Breezes--you remember. My second year in college, everyone went crazy with this stuff. The boys would sit in class, hardly able to concentrate on a word being said. A friend turned to Pocohantas one day in class and nearly yelled, "You two smell good enough to eat! You're driving me crazy!" I still can't use any vanilla lotion without thinking about that comment. But sometimes, driving her man crazy is just what a girl needs. Maybe it is time to get back out the vanilla lotion and make more unforgettable moments . . .

And Memory

My trip memories need to be preserved today, but this morning a news report triggered another memory. One much less pleasant, but which has had a powerful impact on my life.

I had been teaching school at my first job for just 3 1/2 months when I got a message over the intercom to go and pick up the phone immediately. This in itself was strange, but when the secretary said that the phone call was from my aunt, the weird meter hit the roof. Was something wrong with my grandmother? My parents? I hurried to the phone in an adjoining teacher's supply room. My aunt proceeded to tell me a story about teenage-gunmen, a hostage situation, SWAT teams, the Trenchcoat Mafia and pipe bombs at a school in south Denver. She wondered if I knew what high school my Colorado cousins attended; she had been unable to reach their dad and I was the next best person to know. Somehow I pulled a memory out of nowhere, "No, I think they go to a Denver school that has an Indian-sounding name."

I was right. My cousins were at Arapaho. Not Columbine. Neighboring schools, same community, same demographic.

I walked back to my students in a daze, repeating what I had heard to them. One student laughed out loud; I looked at him in surprise. He was an extremely nice kid. He backpedaled, "I mean; it just sounds so weird! They must be joking, right? It must all be a big hoax!"

The next day he apologized profusely for his cavalier attitude. Within the week, our school counselor asked us to have a conversation in each class about what had happened. Some classes wanted to talk a lot; other groups brushed it off and wanted to move on. One student, whom I'd never noticed anything strange from, said, "Those jocks got exactly what they deserved." I knew then that the counselor had asked us to talk about it in class both to help the kids work through emotions they might be having, but also to identify those who might sympathize with the perpetrators.

Public schools entered a new era, a post-Columbine era. Teachers, counselors, administration and communities approach bullying differently now. The school safety plan and classroom evacuation procedures are given as much weight as lesson plans. And our trust has eroded just a little bit further. I didn't know that a columbine was a flower until I married my Colorado boy. They grow wild in the Rockies; the ones you buy and plant as perennials in your garden have hardly been engineered at all, and look much the same as the ones you find in unexpected places in the Colorado Fourteeners in the middle of summer. I love these hardy and beautiful flowers. I never seen one now without thinking of that school. Those kids held graduation just a month and a half later: to show they world that they could not be defeated. Those there that day would never to be the same again--in the summer of 1999 I worked at a tutoring center in Denver just after Plantboy and I got married. One of my colleagues was a history teacher at Columbine. He was there that day. He wouldn't talk about it. No doubt the memories were too fresh and painful. Maybe they always will be.

Memories don't always come from things we anticipate. Maybe the most powerful memories are things that surprise us for good or ill. Things that throw us off balance so much that we never look at our lives the same again.

And anticipation doesn't always lead to great memories, nor does anticipation and planning necessarily mean that snafus will not occur. If this doesn't sound like an exactly promising start to a post about a vacation, well, there is reason for that. We knew we should take care of a muffler issue on our family car before heading out of town. We did not. When we DID get it to a shop near my parents' house before heading to Dixie, the mechanic told Plantboy that we were lucky not to have blown ourselves up; the burning smell that had plagued us all the way from Oregon was melting plastic and carpet fibers--from a big hole just inches under our luggage. We got rid of the burning smell only to spill a gallon of water into said carpet from a container with a slow leak. It was too cold in Southern Utah for the car to ever properly dry out and mildew was a constant and aromatic companion for the duration. (I know--it is an enigma. Too cold to dry out and yet warm enough to grow mold.)

As we headed south, the weather seemed to actually get colder. Because of the car issue we were way behind schedule and I called our bed and breakfast at the mouth of Zion Canyon to find out I'd made my booking a week late and there were no vacancies. Thinking that it MUST be their mistake, I called to confirm our second bed and breakfast. Oh, it was actually MY mistake. I booked both places for a week that we would not actually BE in Utah. Perfect. When we stopped to take our first hike, there was about four inches of uber-sticky red mud at the trailhead.


We drove (at least) two hours out of the way in a snowstorm to attend a session at the Manti Temple, which we have never done before. When we pulled up to the temple, the parking lot was practically deserted and the workmen at the front who were dismantling the doors informed us that the temple was on shutdown. This two week hiatus for deep cleaning and noisy and/or messy repairs is generally done in February and again in July. No, the engineer, informed us, with so many temples now in operation, the shutdown periods are staggered.

In ten days we drove 2000 miles. This car-time has been so kind to my back that I think it is finally time to break down and find a chiropractor here in my fair city. The mountain of laundry in the hallway does not rival Mt. Everest, but it probably gets at least K2 status. Today I have two kids with croupy coughs. It is like living with seals.
And yet . . .
We had a wonderful time.
I'll spare you the travel log, and instead I will just show some of my favorite pictures from the trip. I'll try to keep the commentary brief. (After all, brevity is my strong point.) They are not in any particular order. It is hard to say on how many levels I hate the way blogger loads pictures and I just don't have the patience to arrange them chronologically today.


This is the view just outside Capitol Reef National Park. Yes, this is outside the park. I loved this park--in part because I've never been there before and it was cool to try something new. It reminded me a lot of Lake Powell. The south end of CRNP actually touches the Glen Canyon area, which is where Lake Powell is. The mountains all around our bed and breakfast looked just like this. Amazing.

This is Torrey Pines Bed and Breakfast, which is just outside Torrey, Utah to the east a little bit. Because we were a week early, the proprietress wasn't there; it was just her husband. He took excellent care of us, including biscuits and gravy with fruit on a very pretty table setting for breakfast. He also gave us a recommendation for a fantastic restaurant. Eldon said that the county Torrey sits in has the cleanest air rating in the entire country. I believe it. Even with the clouds we could see for hundreds of miles at any vantage point between Bryce and Capitol Reef.

If you ever find yourself in Torrey, sans children, you must eat at this restaurant. It is probably our most mediocre photo from the entire trip, but I did find a picture of Planboy's meal on their website.

What do you think it is? Here are your choices:

a) Turnip ribbons on lamb chops

b) Radish shreds over fried potatoes and pork roast

c) Baby back pork ribs, slow roasted in chipotle, molasses & rum glaze, squash & zucchini, with mashed sweet potatoes

d) Not food at all. A centerpiece.

These are Anasazi wall carvings found in CRNP. The Mormon pioneers settled the area not long after arriving in Utah, like many communities in the western US. When they arrived in the Fremont River valley, they found lush grasses growing along the river's edge, a micro-climate perfect for growing fruit trees, and thousand year old irrigation ditches. They built their own community the same place the Indians had generations and generations earlier. Like the Indians, the fickle river eventually flooded out the Mormon pioneers and a permanent community was never established right on the river. The surviving area is called "Fruita" and has been a part of the park for decades. In the summer you can camp in the park and pick seasonal fruit for about a dollar a pound. Bargain.

This was the only view we got of the Fruita orchards with any sun in the background. We had clouds and wind that entire day. When the sun peaked out for a moment, Plantboy got the above shot.

These close up shots are Plantboy's speciality. I think his plant pictures are always so amazing because something about him speaks to the soul of a plant. They show their beauty to him in a way they don't reveal to me.

This tree was at the top of a hike to a bridge called Hickman Bridge. Plantboy found a place to scramble up about two stories of rock which came out to a plateau that connected the bridge. Initially he was hoping to cross the bridge, but there was a gap too wide and too narrow to safely cross. He backpedaled and saw this tree on the other side of a wash through a slot canyon. I walked down the bridge and waited and saw him pop his head out of a small divet to the side of the arch, 200 feet above the ground. He called, "I guess this way doesn't go out!" Uh, no. His voice echoing all around the wash under the bridge. My heart nearly stopped at how close he was to the edge.

I didn't hear an all-clear from him for several minutes and began to have visions of Sevier County Search and Rescue pulling my husband's half-dead frostbitten body from the top of a cliff when I finally heard him coming back. He presented me with a tiny twig with one of these lovely pink flowers on it, apologized, and said that the tree made him do it. How could I stay upset?

This is my tiny self dwarfed under the bridge referenced above. There is still fifty or hundred feet of ground below the picture, the niche that Plantboy hovered in was to the right of the arch, just out of the picture. This was a fantastic hike and the arch was amazing. Not quite as picturesque as Delicate Arch, but I think I enjoyed the hike more. There were a lot fewer people also and the arch was just enormous. The rocks I'm sitting on fell to form part of the arch.

This cool wash was on the way up to the bridge. If you look past Plantboy, there was a whole room in there. We scrambled around a little bit and explored both the inside and got up on top of it. When I see such amazing places it is no wonder to me that the Native Americans so resented the encroachment of the whites. No doubt, such natural retreats were sacred to them. It must have been like bile for them to watch each place systematically desecrated both literally and figuratively with our indifference. I'm immensely grateful to the presidents and politicians in the early part of the 1900's who insisted that some places be set aside.

Oh look! A little chair, just my size.

Look at those natural steps. How convenient! Okay, not really, but I love groomed trails that have attempted to become such a part of the landscape. I think they are beautiful. It also keeps you from straying off the path when you see how hard they worked to make a path for you. I don't mind trailblazing; it is actually pretty fun, but if everyone takes that attitude, then eventually the thing that was once so lovely becomes ruined.

Remember those views I talked about? Seeing for hundreds of miles, even on a cloudy day? Well, the best place for such views is the highway between Bryce and Capitol Reef. In a very controversial move in the last month of his presidency, Clinton designated thousands of square miles in southern Utah as a national monument. The environmentalists were pleased--the move effectively kept oil and gas and shale exploration OUT of that region. The locals were furious. The cattle and sheep grazers who have used those public lands for generations were no longer allowed in, and the future revenue from the jobs and taxes brought in my oil companies was lost. It sure is pretty country.

I didn't know until this trip that the reason this region is called the Grand Staircase is because, geologically speaking, the bottom layer of Bryce is the top layer of Zion and the bottom layer of Zion is the top layer of the Grand Canyon. Seeing a cross section of the parks lined up on a poster with one another was fascinating. It made me wish for a moment that I was teaching 8th grade science again. It also convinced me that if I had to kidnap them to do it, I'm taking my Young Women hiking this summer. (I might have to. My 16 year-old neice said of their own trip to the parks, as we were showing our pictures around, "That was the worst vacation ever!" She did not just say it once. )

This is Bryce Canyon near sunset. We were going to head out earlier that afternoon, but the sunrise had been so amazing that we decided to have one day that we didn't drive at all and wait for the sun to go down. Alas, after a gorgous morning, the clouds rolled in that afternoon and we didn't see anything more interesting than a wonderful couple from New Zealand. It was our day in Bryce that really convinced me not to miss the kids--sunrise hike, late breakfast, a rigorous mid-morning hike, afternoon nap and a very late supper after more hiking. One day, when the kids don't need their routines and hovering parents quite so much, this will be exactly the vacation that we'll take. It will be a few years.

It is so easy to photoshop things now that if I hadn't been there that day to witness it myself, I would be absolutely convinced that these photos from mid-morning in Bryce Canyon had been doctored up to make the sky that color of blue. They have not been. It really was that blue. I've never seen anything like it. The clarity it gave me was equally sublime. Several of these shots are from a hike called the Navajo Trail. Plantboy once had a backpacking magazine that ranked it on a list of 100 best hikes in the US, with some contributors arguing that it was the BEST hike in the entire continental US. They may be right.

More from the Navajo Trail. It wasn't until that day that I understood why The North Face called the color of my jacket Sky Blue.

We hiked portions of the Rim Trail at Bryce several times in a 24 hour period: our camp site was just fifty yards down from it. Before sunset we hiked almost as high as inspiration point then hoofed it back down just in time to see clouds instead of any kind of sunset. This is such a cool shot with the hoodoo formations in the background and those tree roots surviving against all practical chances.

We were there early enough in the season that you can still see ice forming in the mud. The tracks above are ice patterns in the soft, red earth. It is a micorcausm of the millions of years of freeze and thaw that have created the amazing landscape at Bryce Canyon. No wonder early man went to the tops of the mountains to commune with God.

A tree with a second tree growing out of it in the slot canyon at the bottom of the Navajo Trail: Sunset Point side.

Again, real sky. In many places we could still see quite a lot of snow too. I've never seen such vibrate colors--blue, white, orange, green--in a natural place before.

Natural arch over the switchbacks on the Navajo Trail. I was so short I didn't even have to duck going through it.

I just love the late sunrise light on this shot.

Again, cool lighting. I think Plantboy plans to mimic this very tree in his next Bonsai creation. We'll see!

Sunrise. Wow. The wind was very cold that morning and at one point I realized that tears were just spilling out of my eyes. At first I credited the wind entirely, but then I knew that no breeze could make me feel so emotional inside as well. I stood on the lookout listening to the soft cacophony of foreign voices around me and felt such a deep love and connection to all living things that I wept for the beauty of it. Every setback, expense and difficulty was worth that ONE moment. For all the years I've been told that you-have-to-see-Bryce-Canyon-at-sunrise, I'm glad I've never done it before now, and that I was with just Plantboy. He understands things like this; he understands this deep and beauty-loving part of me in a way that nobody I've ever met understands it. He and I are different in many ways, but all of those differences pale compared to being able to feel this way and not having to explain it. It was a glorious morning.

This is at the top of Emerald Pools in Zion National Park. (The third pool.) It was a great hike, moderately strenuous; I imagine it would be quite brutal in July, but the coolness of the water was nice. If we'd had two days I think I would have attemtped Angel's Landing, but I'm glad we picked this instead. Not as scary.

At the mouth of the narrows, a very large blue heron was looking for a meal just a few yards away from where I sat on a rock. This was about the only shot we got and it really doesn't do it justice; the light was fading. The reality is that he was gorgeous and had a huge wingspan.

Plantboy and I waded in the frigid water while he stared longingly up the too-deep Narrows and dreamed, no doubt, of a time in the future when he'll bring his three adventurous boys back to this spot and keep going right up the creek. I think Mom will come too.

A shot at Zion Park. We were constantly shedding and adding layers throughout the day, never quite sure if we were warm or cold.

The top fall at Emerald Pools.

I'm such a geology freak, and the ripples in the stone at the bottom of this waterfall just made me so happy. I love seeing natural processes of the past and speculating about what the geologic footprint of similar processes would look like. I think this one is proof.

This shot, no doubt, is how emerald pools got its name.

When I realized the mistake at our first bed and breakfast, we saw this charming place off the side of the road in Rockville, a very small town just before Springdale (at the mouth of Zion Canyon). On a whim, we whipped into it and sure enough, she had plenty of rooms. She was waiting only on a German couple (who were about our age and very cool; we ran into them at Bryce two days later also) and threw in a free room upgrade because of our bad luck and long day. Breakfast was fantastic and generous and her decorating was amazing. In the summer, the Desert Thistle has a pool with a ton of deck furniture as well. Yes, I'm making a plug for them. When you go, tell them we sent you; she said she'd give you a 10% discount. They lived their lives in the airforce and she is from Scotland. They were full of fascinating and hilarious stories.

No pictures of the inside, but you can link to their site to see more. Absolutely charming.

These pictures are from Kolob Canyons, which is the northwest entrance of ZNP. Nobody really goes there and it is very remote. I'd love to go back when it is a little bit drier and earlier in the day and go in a couple of miles deeper. It was getting dark and fairly chilly on us and so we didn't go in as far as we would have liked. Apparently there are a couple of arches up there and some really great slot canyons. It is just south of Cedar City and only a few minutes off the highway. A great day trip.

Bryce again, in the late afternoon. This is a bit out of place from where the others were, but it is just too gorgeous to leave out.

These are some shots of my adorable children in the new clothes grandma bought for them (not the baby--he is in his grubbies) just before we loaded up to come home and at a really nice state park we found in Idaho to picnic at.

A last word on memory: eleven years ago, I was trying desperately to get a fresh start and was helping my mom with some spring cleaning. I pulled tons of junk out of my room that had all been moved when my parents moved, but between college and mission I hadn't taken time to really decide what needed keeping and what needed tossing. There was a stack of letters from someone I had once loved in the pile of things-I-didn't-quite-know-what-to-do-with. They were tied with a silk ribbon. I held the stack in my hands for a long time.

Then I took the whole pile and threw them in the trash. No soul-cleansing bonfire, no keeping them for a good laugh some five or ten or twenty years later, no re-reading them and breaking down into a storm of weeping. I just threw them out.

Poignant memories, I quickly learned, are not so easily discarded. The letters were gone, but my heart was still tender. Just five months later I met Plantboy and began making memories to help heal. I was pleasantly surprised to feel less pain about the old memories, even as new ones too their place. There were times I could even look back on the good days and genuinely smile. My last trip to southern Utah was with that someone-I-once-loved. How grateful I was this week for the chance to form new and happier connections to such beautiful places.

Our last alone-vacation spot was at the Timpanogas temple. The snowstorm and side-trip to Manti had set us back timewise and Plantboy and I decided to do proxy sealings instead of an entire endowment session. As he and I knelt on behalf of others, I felt the power of those covenants that he and I made nearly ten years ago. The workers at the temple were so kind and congratulatory over our ten measley years--there were enough gray-hairs in the room that we were, no doubt, in the presence of decades upon decades of covenant marriages--that it gave me immense hope for the future. There are unlimited numbers of memories yet to make.