7

Just a few minutes after midnight on February 18, 2006, this little baby made his entrance in San Luis Obispo, California:

There was snow on the hilltops in San Luis that night.  Unusual.  The world wasn't completely different, utterly changed.  But it seemed to have noticed.

And this little guy

loves snow to this day.

So maybe its good that we left California and headed north.

He's a sometimes-frustrating, sometimes hilarious combination

of laser-focused, determined and unbendable

and then infinitely distractible 

and lazy.

But I guess even super heros get tired sometimes.

Maybe he needs to balance out all that intense, focused energy

with some distractions and lazing, 

so that he doesn't burn out.

He's my one little boy, surrounded by girls.  He's a good brother.  At home, he spars and spats with them, but when we go out in the world, he very much sees himself as the protector of his little sisters (he seems to believe Keilana can fend for herself, and that's probably because she refuses any other scenario--she's not much of a damsel-in-distress).  He is their personal superhero.  

But he needs them to make him brave.  

He is socially and intellectually confident.  He will walk right up to any kid or adult, no matter how new the circumstances or their appearance, and strike up a new friendship. He loves to Know Things, and he spends lots of time learning things, from books, TV shows, and the internet, and has a remarkable memory for all the little details of the things that interest him: machines, cars, animals of every kind, and superhero stories.  He loves to share his knowledge with anyone who will give him the time.

But he is physically cautious.  He is not a risk taker--almost to the point of being a wimp sometimes.  If he sees something as a controlled risk, he's all in.  But if the danger factor is beyond his control, he panics and refuses.  So, since he is confident in his physical abilities, he will climb to the top of virtually anything, and hop on a 4-wheeler and cruise.  But if you try to put him on a kids' fair ride, he can barely contain his panic.  Too many factors out of his control. 

It is important to him to control his own world as much as possible, but he has no interest in controlling anyone else.  While he always has a plan, and loves to share it and have others join him, he rarely tells anyone else what to do.  In fact, he excels at meeting people at their level, whatever it may be.  He is wonderful at teaching and playing with younger kids, because he has a gift for intuitively understanding what they need from him and meeting that need.  He thrives in one-on-one instruction, both as teacher and student.

It important to him to be Right; not in a prideful, arrogant way, but simply in that knowing what it good and right helps him to order his world in the way that is so pleasing and soothing to him.  He is happy to learn things, and loves to put in the effort when he thinks something is worthwhile, but he sees no point in learning something unless you learn it correctly and well.

He has always been remarkably self-contained.  He doesn't need a lot of attention or affection, and so it has always been wonderful to see how he notices how much his attention and affection can mean to others, and how freely and happily he gives it.  Which is probably because he is, at heart, quite a sensitive little soul.

He is serious-minded, but playful and lighthearted.  Just like a super hero should be.

For my mom

Its my mom's birthday today.  She's. . .older than she was last year.  This is one of my very favorite pictures, because it is of two of my very favorite people, in a very ordinary moment that helps me feel connected to them and the lives that they chose.  This is my mom, and her mom.  What mom hasn't had this moment--trying to wrangle clothes on to her busy toddler--a thousand times?  I have this moment daily in my life right now.

I always thought of my mom and my grandma as being very different because. . .well, mostly because one was my mom and one was my grandma, I guess.  And in many ways they are very different, but as I've gotten older I've started to recognize, and appreciate, the ways in which they are similar.

They both chose lives immersed in children, and always made their own children a priority while somehow managing to serve their extended families and their communities wonderfully at the same time.  Its impossible to recount all the ways that that has blessed my life.

For most of my married life and my time as a mother, I have lived quite a distance from my mom, but she always made it a time and financial priority to visit me and my children as often as possible.  We were her winter vacation every year--she chose to spend that time with us.

But its no secret where she learned that.  I had many opportunities to get to know most of my aunts and uncles and many of my cousins because I was very close to my grandma, and she often let (*encouraged*) me to tag along as she visited her adult children and grandchildren--even when that meant hauling a couple of 7-year-olds 3,000 miles or so in the back of her little Toyota station wagon.  Even as an 80-something, my grandma still regularly checked in on her kids and grandkids who lived close, and visited the ones who lived farther as often as she could.

My grandma was 68 by the time I came into the world, so all of my memories of her are in her 70s and 80s.  In those decades, when most people are moving pretty slow, she was overhauling the local food pantry, seeking assistance from local merchants in obtaining decent property to house it, writing grants to secure funding, recruiting members of her women's club and senior center to work handing out food, and rounding up grandkids to help unload trucks and stock shelves.  In her 80s, she volunteered to be the daily care provider for her great-grandson, while his young mother went to work.  She not only watched him, but delighted in doing it.  Most 80-year-olds wouldn't have much interest in, let alone energy for, watching a toddler every day. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest joys of her final years.

My mom is a lot like her mom in that sense--she always busily engaged in serving her family and her community, and it is consistently amazing to me how cheerfully and humbly she does it.  When we were kids, she had 5 of us at home, taught elementary school all day (with related tasks often taking up many hours during her evenings and nights), often was responding to ambulance calls in the middle of the night (for which she wasn't paid), and welcomed many foster kids into our home over the years.  Somehow, in the middle of all that, she managed to make it to most of the football, volleyball, and softball games, academic bowls, band concerts, and plays.  She usually managed to keep her self in pretty good shape in the midst of all that, too: often getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go jogging, always out the door for work looking lovely and put together.  Now that I have four young kids at home and don't even have to go to work, I am more convinced than ever that she is a super hero.

With all the wonderful things there are about these two women, the thing that always sticks out to me about both my mom and my grandma is that they did all these things, constantly surrounded by children, and I cannot think of a single instance where I felt like they were tired of me or didn't want me around.  My mom has often told me that I was an easy kid, which was good because I was impossible to discipline.  I didn't take criticism or direction well as a child, and I still often don't.  I was blessed with four strong-willed, outspoken children, and raising them has made me appreciate more than I ever thought possible the tremendous patience and gentleness that my mother always showed to me.  I lose my patience too frequenty with my kids, but often in those moments I take a deep breath, and think of my mom and grandma.  I remind myself that when I did need correction, I was willing to listen not because of any great obedience or humility on my part, but because I always felt very loved, always comforted by the kindness still present even in their firm correction.  The security of that certainty of their affection made it easier to listen, to trust them.  Remembering that makes me a better mother.

I probably earned most of my faults myself.  But I owe a great many of my best traits and habits to the woman who raised me, and to the woman who raised her.

Economics

Kylie and I were sitting at the kitchen table this afternoon putting the finishing touches on the Valentines Keilana made her class, which involved putting Hershey's Kisses "ear buds" on the conversation heart box "iPods" that she had made, and Kylie has gathered all the leftover Kisses into a pile.  She looked at the gleaming silver treasure and said, "Can I have all of these?"

I didn't look up from my glue gun, but just replied, rather flatly, "No."

She looked at me with a knit brow and tense jaw and said, "I mean all of it besides your mommy tax."

We try to teach them the facts of life young.

Life and Chocolate

So I was reading about chocolate the other day (it started with reading about how much chocolate is consumed in the month of February, and sort of spiraled from there), and it turns out that the vast majority of dark chocolate items in the world are consumed by women--especially the very dark, bittersweet chocolate.

Statistically speaking, the young (and men in general, at any age), are more likely to much prefer milk chocolate and its much higher sugar level.  The sweetness and ease of consumption was more important to them than the richness of the flavor.

It is largely old women who enjoy the rich, deep flavor of the dark chocolate, bitterness and all.

I've never heard a food fact that translates so readily and so accurately to a metaphor for life.

I am a milk chocolate lover.  Don't care much for dark chocolate, and until the last few years I couldn't even eat it.  Still learning to enjoy the rich flavor that comes with the dark and bitter parts of the journey.

Balance

My two-year-old girl loves super heroes 

(especially Spiderman), 

and is always happiest 

wearing a tutu and sparkly shoes.

She asks for bows for her hair,

and snuggles on the floor with her big dog.

She loves to cuddle and kiss

but has no trouble landing a strong punch 

if she needs to

(and she's the youngest of 4.

Sometimes she needs to).

She loves to be a ballerina 

with her big sister

and wrestle with her big brother.

Its unreal how much she makes me smile.

Exceptional

What makes you "except"ional?  And by that, I don't mean what are your gifts, talents, special skills, etc.  I meant what is your "We should obey the commandments, except me, with this one here, where I've developed a great self-justification or believe I am the exception to the rule?" We all do it, at times, so examples large and small abound.

Honor the Sabbath day, use it as a time to be with your family and your ward, to read and talk and ponder on sacred, holy things.  Except if your kid is, like, super-dooper good at soccer.  Or football. Or basketball.  Then, by all means, travel and attend clinics and games and tournaments on Sunday.  It will teach him commitment and follow-through and team building.  He'd never learn that from, say, honoring his commitment to use the power and authority of the Priesthood to prepare and administer ordinances of salvation to his ward members, with his fellow quorum members.

Don't put off marriage and family.  Except if you've got a lot of years of grad school ahead of you, or you'd rather be in your own home first, or you really need some "couple" years before you have babies.  How could you possibly focus on the right things if you have a family distracting you from your secular education?  How could you possibly grow close and get to know each other and love and appreciate each other better if you're raising a baby together?

Don't watch R-rated movies.  Except if they have a lot of really good, redeeming qualities or a meaningful story mixed in with the foul language or gratuitous violence.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  We all think (or behave as though we think) we are the exception to the rules.  We rob ourselves when we do that.

But here's the flip side: sometimes, in some circumstances with some rules, there are exceptions.  The Lord commanded Nephi to slay Laban, after all.  He didn't tell him to defend himself with lethal force against man lunging at him with a sword or a gun.  He commanded Nephi to slay a blacked-out drunk--a momentarily vulnerable, defenseless man.  He made a very big exception to a very important rule in order to fulfill his righteous purposes.  Laban had plenty of chances to do the right thing, but he didn't, so the Lord told Nephi, essentially, we need to make an exception here.  Do you think that if someone else had been watching down the street and saw what Nephi did they'd believe him if he said, "The Lord told me to"?

So you don't get to play judge and jury with who is or isn't the exception (or come down hard on someone because you think the rule they break is more important that the ones you break).  Probably not as many people are an exception to the rule as think they are.  But that is between them and the Lord, not you and them.  The Lord doesn't tell you whether or not they are the exception, he tells you whether or not you are.  Focus on the places where you are behaving as though you are the exception to the rule.  Obedience to the law is what our blessings are predicated upon, so if you think you're the exception to the rule, make sure that you're as certain as Nephi was.

Thoughts on the role of women

One of the most difficult things for me to face about our society is that there is very little understanding in the world about different forms of power and strength--we have been steadily erasing the vital and eternal roles--and differences--assigned to us in favor of a more superficial and, ultimately, destructive "equality".

I took my kids to see Brave this summer, and I loved it.  It hit home with me, as a brown-haired, relatively-mild-mannered-but-sometimes-still-prideful mother to two wild-haired, independent, willful and high-spirited red-headed Scottish daughters.  The thing about the movie I loved the very best, however, was how the men were all good-hearted but still barely civilized ruffians, who devolved to competition and then battle nearly any time they were left alone.  But the second a woman walked into the midst of their contentions, they immediately froze.  The battle stopped.  Too few people understand anymore why these men would've reacted this way, and why that division of and respect for the differing roles of men and women are vital to the success and health of communities and civilizations.  Sometimes it is very literally true that women can, by properly embracing the roles given to them by a wise Heavenly Father, and making righteous use of the power inherent in those roles, stop the bullets from flying.  My father shared this story on Facebook last week:

"In Gulag, Solzhenitsyn noted that when trains bearing prisoners to Siberia stopped in small towns to get water for the steam engines, guards were posted to prevent any contact between locals and the thirsty prisoners in the cattle guards. It was always old women who ignored the soldiers and their guns and did what they always did--responded to immediate human needs--,who took water and food to the prisoners.

I reminded James Billington of that story once after he told me about being in Moscow when the Soviet regime collapsed. He said that as the Soviet army surrounded the Kremlin with its tanks, no one knew how the story would end. He said that what really happened, that went unreported, was that the Russian babushkas, the grandmothers, went out among the tanks and told the young men to 'go home.' He said, "a different moral order asserted itself and the crisis passed.'"

These women did not defend their homeland with tanks and guns--they prevented battle altogether by properly using the moral authority inherent in their roles as mothers and grandmothers.  Women, who pass through the valley of the shadow of death to bring souls through the veil into this world, who expend so much of their time and energy and focus on protecting and comforting and nurturing those lives,  women who are required to bear so much of the brunt of the spiritual battle for the welfare of those souls, should not be asked to go to physical battle to see those lives cut short. Women should not be asked to see those bodies that they, with God's assistance, created from their own bodies, fed from their own bodies, mangled and mutilated.  Men should not be asked to train out of themselves their natural and good instinct to provide protection to the women around them first;  men should not be asked to extinguish the natural deference he has toward women, the natural inclination to see in all women the tenderness and nurturing that he has received at the hands of his mother, his wife, his sisters--he should have the privilege, especially in the ugliness of battle, to be able to see in women the loving glances and warm embraces of his beloved daughters.  As they return from battle, men must be met at the home front with softness and nurturing, to remember why they are fighting--the role of women needs to be preserved not as fellow soldier on the field, but as a reminder of all the good and gentle things for which they fight.  Otherwise, men who are asked to battle often turn from soldiers into monsters.  When men are trained to see women no differently than they see men in the most stressful and ugly and surreal circumstances in this world, the consequences for civilizations are grave. 

A few years ago, I was talking with my husband and several of his coworkers and friends discussing recent events in our community which had caused considerable stress and concern for all of us, and a couple of the men, in the course of the conversation, used a few vulgar swear words.  Almost immediately they caught themselves and turned to me--the only woman present--and apologized for their language.  I know many women who would've been offended or amused by that action, which seems quaint by many people's standards today.  I certainly did not expect it, but I was grateful for it.  I had worked with all these men myself, and had great affection for them.  I knew their characters well, and had no doubt of their respect for my intelligence and capabilities.  They did not show they respected me by treating me like "one of the guys", they showed that they respected me by remembering that I wasn't.

I have never believed that having different, but complementary, roles makes men and women unequal.  The sad reality of our times is that in attempting to make themselves "equal" to men, many women have in fact been seeking to make women "the same" as men, and in so doing have made themselves less powerful, less effective.  There are many women who are physically stronger than many men, and that is true of nearly every "manly" characteristic you could substitute into that sentence, but the characteristics and capabilities of men in general and women in general are different, and with good reason.  Women, in seeking to be powerful or strong in the same ways as men, have failed to recognize the incredible power and strength inherent in their female nature, and, in so doing, have weakened both themselves and men.  I'm not optimistic that that his a trend we can reverse, but I think it is one that could have some of the most dramatic effects on our society.

As a woman, the power rests largely with you to create.  It is largely the power of your body that creates new life.  It is largely your influence that shapes the character and decisions of those souls you bring into this world.  It is the result of that nurturing and those many years of sacrifice and service and love that gives you the power to step up to a man with a machine gun and a tank and tell him, "Go home" and have him listen.  Do not abandon that power for lesser things, for poorly defined ideas of "equality".  There is unspeakable strength and power, sisters, in the roles the Lord has given you as wives and mothers and sisters and daughters--as creators and nurturers.  Do not sell that marvelous birthright for a mess of porridge.