Paradigm Shift

Hopefully, one or two of you may have noticed that I have dropped off the face of the planet for more than a week.  For my excuse, I offer the fact that our lives here have been turned inside out and upside down, and it's taken a bit of time to get back on an even keel.

Those of my generation will recall the oh-so-not-politically correct punching clowns we grew up with.  For the rest of you, with a rounded, weighted bottom, these plastic inflatable clowns with squeakers in their noses rocked back when struck but would bob right back up again.  Unless, of course, it got jumped on, used as a Hoppity-Hop, and/or assaulted to uninflatable nonresponsiveness.

That's us, Dallas and me.  We haven't had the pudding knocked out of us yet.  We still bounce back, sooner or later.  Even when struck with such force we fall back clear to the floor (my brothers' favorite trick), give us some time and we're on our feet again.

But, this post isn't about Dallas and I—not really.  It's about how, over the course of a month, we came to grow from two empty-nesters rattling around an empty house, seriously considering downsizing, to a family of seven, bursting at the seams.

Nana's Camp

 I'm just enough younger than my two older sisters that I watched and envied them everything they did growing up.  That hasn't changed much over the past 30+ years of our adulthood.

My sister, Carrie, has spent her time raising ten children, supporting her husband in his successful business ventures, volunteered countless hours to all manner of causes but especially those centered on her faith and her family, mothered and mentored scores of teenagers, and opened her home to any and every stray animal or child to wander up her country lane of a driveway.  She always manages to turn up when I need her the most, bringing sunshine and laughter in her wake.  Her kind, insightful soul has often spoken wisdom, grace and forgiveness when none other could manage a kind word.

Now that her children are grown, my sister delights in entertaining her grandchildren.  Judging from the way my grandchildren attach themselves to her when she breezes into town for a few days now and again, I have a small inkling of the love her own bear for her.

One of the things she does for them is Nana Camp, which consists of a day with just Nana (and, maybe Bapa if he can finagle it) doing all sorts of wonderful things like painting their own aprons and then preparing their own meal, a trip to the movies or the children's museum, the park and the local frozen yogurt shop.  And, because she is a collector of strays, she may have just as many "grandchildren" unrelated to her as her blood kin.  After all, she only has seven grandchildren, the oldest eight.  That's scarcely any at all.

Of all the ways I would like to emulate my sister, Nana's Camp ranks high on the list.  However, I'm not as tireless or capable as she, and not nearly as fun, so I can't fly solo or even with Papa as an erstwhile co-pilot.  Especially with four toddlers ranging in age from 18 to 33 months, my daughters-in-law wisely spell one another to cover my many lapses.

Even so, Ariane gets to attend the temple for a bit and Desiree' runs a few errands unencumbered.  We pick figs off the tree in the backyard (which they've eagly anticipated all spring), swim for an hour or two, eat ramen and watermelon, and have "quiet time" with a movie.  Then, when it's time to load up for home, Abram clings to my leg and whimpers, "I want to stay with Nanny"—the most intelligible thing I've heard him lisp all day.

It's been a good day.  We definitely need to do this again soon.  I just wish Dustin could have been here.

Flash Fiction: Out Back

Flash fiction?  To quote Wikipedia:

Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity.^[1] There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as three hundred words, while others consider stories as long as a thousand words to be flash fiction.

I first learned about flash fiction on writer Laura Besley's blog, and thought I'd give it a go.  Here's my first attempt, Out Back (677 words).

Bobby stood pressed against the wall beside the door, careful not to be seen through the window from the house. Rick filled his pad with the cool stuff Mom banned. Ray always stayed with Rick above the garage whenever he came home from the Army. Rick owed him. Ray softened up the folks and Rick got the benefits.

My Two Dads

Today being Father's Day, I wanted to pay tribute to both my dads.

Les Neves, my step-dad

An unhappy divorce left its mark on my family, but without it, we would have never been blessed with my step-father who made all seven of us his own.  W. Leslie Neves is the "Daddy" of my childhood.  I was four when he and my mother wed.  Gentle, soft-spoken, loving and self-sacrificing, he was the great intercessor whenever I would knock heads with my mother as teenagers are wont to do.  He could always restore peace to our home.

A subset of our family, 1972

Les never owned anything he would not sacrifice for my mother or us children.  After they wed, more were added.  Ultimately, he counted twelve children his own.  He hated his job at the IRS but sacrificed his dreams for us: the law school he had to abandon to care for us, his writing career that always got pushed back for something else.  But most dearly, he sacrificed himself, for his needs always came lowest and last.  We lost him in 1999 to cancer and he has been sorely missed.

Glen Tarbet and my step-mom of 15 years, Ann.

Ironically, Glen F. Tarbet, my biological father, is the "Dad" of my adulthood.  Seven hundred miles of desert separated him from six of his seven children, but he performed miracles stretching the dollars to suit the distance at least twice a year.  My childhood is filled with fourteen-hour treks across the great deserts of the Intermountain West, Los Angelas to Salt Lake City and back again.  We would always fist-pump drivers of the big rigs we passed who would obligingly blow their big horns for us.  I can just imagine the sight: six kids piled into a long-finned station wagon, the windows rolled down, the wind ruffling through my sisters' long hair,  the tailgate window hosting two pair of dirty bare feet, each urchin with their nose stuck in a book.

Two Down, One to Go

Wednesday marked another milestone for my family.  My #2 son left college campuses behind him for good, packed up his family and set out into the real world.  With his Master's in mechanical engineering in hand, in another couple of weeks he'll start work with his new employer, Samsung, in a bedroom community of Austin, Texas.

They moved only about 102 miles from their apartment in College Station, but in their change in circumstances, they're moving to the other side of the moon.  Instead of starving students relying on scholarships and student loans to keep body and soul together as they have done for the past four years of their married life, a well-paying job promises comfort, security, and elimination of their debt.  Instead of a two-bedroom apartment growing increasingly smaller the larger their toddler and two cats grow, they are renting a new-ish, clean and well-maintained four-bedroom home with 2½ baths and a two-car garage in a nice neighborhood.  Filling up those rooms with furniture will take some time, but they've already made their first installment with a new flat-pack dining table and chairs.

Gloria Gay Neves Garrard

I wrote about my mother-in-law, Maurine, in this post last week.  Today, I need to talk about my own mother and how her greatest strengths have influenced the person I have become.

Mom & Grandpa Bob

Here's my mom, Gay Garrard, with her husband, Bob.  My mother is amazingly talented and creative.  My memories are packed with vivid images of art she has created, songs she has composed, poems she has penned, clothes she has designed, houses she has decorated, photos she has taken and words she has written.  It seems there is nothing that my mom can't do and do well.

My mom is currently working on a fabulous Book of Mormon novel about the People of Ammon and the 2000 Stripling Warriors.  It's amazing.  The work is scholarly, enlightening, spiritual, and engaging all at once, which, in a nutshell, is my mom.  I truly hope she gets it published and doesn't give up on it.  It's something that needs to see the light of day.

Channeling Maurine

Maurine and Milton Freeman with all their grandchildren
in 1983; seven more would follow

Working in the kitchen, chatting with Desireé.  She's making chocolate chip cookies for Alora's baptism on Saturday.  I'm cutting up a cantaloupe for dinner.  I halve it, clean it, slice it into wedges, then make vertical slices through the flesh, just to the rind but not through it.  Then, I slice off the rind and bite-size pieces of fruit fall into the bowl.  I'm well-practiced.  It's fast work.  Just like my "mom" showed me.

My husband's mother has been gone for more than nine years now.  She hasn't lived with us in twelve, but her presence in this house can be almost palpable.  It happens most when I'm with my daughters-in-law, when we're working together, when we're laughing and chatting, or when I am sharing some skill she taught me.  I want to be for them what Maurine was to me.

The Politics of Hate

I have a confession:  I have precious little patience for politics—American politics as presently constituted, at any rate.

What passes for journalism these days is just one more brand of reality TV.  Entertainment for the angry.  If it bleeds, it leads.  Barring that, if you can get an angry economically disadvantaged person to yell at the camera about the oppression of "the Man", do that.  Anything to tear someone else down.  We buy into the 30-second sound bite with our MTV attention spans and believe we know all the "issues".  We have endowed the roles of judge, jury and executioner all on the 6 o'clock news.

Even "articles" on the Internet and in print lack any substance.  They have degenerated into little more than a headline, a teaser, and a two-paragraph blog post.  McNews—information of the lowest common denominator.

A Change of Pace

"Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty."
— Amy March in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Me (back), my dad, my sister, Carrie, and my Grandma Haskell of the pin-curls 1980

I've always had pretty hair.  I've worn it long most of my life.  Long is easy, and cheap.  And pretty.  Then, more a decade ago, I decided there was nothing sadder than a fat old lady with stringy hair hanging down her back, clinging to the last vestiges of a glory long past—rather like the wisps of hair still clinging to her head.

So, I cut it.  My stylist, Melanie Knapke, suggested a bob.  Long hair and short both at once.  Melanie is very good.  She's also very expensive, so the length of my hair has waxed and waned with my finances.  For a while it was very long again.  I was content.

The other day, Dallas and I went shopping because I had a job interview and my clothes no longer fit.  I knew I have lost quite a bit of weight over the past year or so, but I hadn't gone down a dress size.  I had gone down two.  And, I got into a skirt a size that I haven't been able to wear for nearly 30 years.  I tried it on by mistake, but I even got it buttoned and zipped.  I didn't buy it, but I felt like one of those Progresso soup commercials.  It fits!  It fits!! [happy dance].  I didn't call Progresso.  I just told Desireé.