Its Only Been a Month

The last couple years have been hard on my blog.  Its not likely to get a whole lot better the next 18 months.  But then, ah, licensing exam, and a little bit more control over my life again.  Not as much as I'd like in some ways, more than I had hoped in others.

I never meant to be a working mom.  But we started hitting a point where I didn't see any way around it.  And while I love learning and have really been enjoying all the cool stuff I get to do, some part of me (at times tiny, at times all too big) has struggled to be grateful for the opportunities rather than resentful of the need.  I loved being a stay-at-home mom.  There were moments where I didn't like it, but there were never moments where I wanted to be anything else.   It meant making financial sacrifices, of course, but all the flexibility it gave my family (and, yes, me--I have had to learn to be better at saying "no" or at least "not right now") was an advantage that was worth all the trade offs to me.

But then I started school, and suddenly other people had all kinds of control over my schedule and demands on my time that had nothing (directly) to do with my family, and we were still poor but now lacked the flexibility.  I have known all along that that is a temporary circumstance, but it was hard for me to have neither the time I wanted, nor the financial comfort of a second income.  I know, boo hoo.  A lot of couples work a lot more hours and live on less. I know that.  But its been a hard adjustment for me.

The hardest part, in reality, was the shack we've been living in.  Our landlords have been great, but this house is 100 years old and no one has put any significant time or money into it for three decades or so, and it shows.  The layout is awkward, making it feel even smaller than it is, there is no storage and not enough outlets in any room, the kitchen is small and is also the laundry room, the plumbing is only semi-reliable and the heat has had its quirks and down time, too.  The floors aren't even (no, really), the wall paper is pealing or ripped in several places, the floors and carpets are a mess, there is really nothing that could reasonably be called a "yard" (even after hours and hours of work the first two falls and spring we were here, its little more than a 10' x 15' dandelion/rose patch).  To top it all off, it sits in a mostly commercial area, on one of the two main one-way arterial streets in town, directly across the street from a car dealership, and bookended on our side by two bars.  I complained about it too much.  I felt trapped and suffocated by it too often.  I let it have way more control over my mood than I ever should have.  I only ever intended to live here a year, but with the rental market here being almost nonexistent and not wanting (or really being able) to buy a house before I finished school, I had simply resigned myself to starting and probably finishing our third year here.

When I had, after a long battle with myself, finally made peace with being here another 18 months or so, finally felt like I could focus on the copious ways the Lord has blessed us in our time here and be satisfied with it, Doug came home with a key.

An acquaintance was moving on fairly short notice, and had been unable to sell her house quickly.  She knew we had struggled to find housing for our family, Doug had made a favorable impression on her, and she was partial to kids and families, so when she needed a tenant, she came and sought him out.  She didn't require a deposit or last month's rent, just someone trustworthy and reliable who would take good care of the house.  She was only asking enough rent to cover the taxes and save up a bit for some upgrades she'd like to do on the house.  Its a beautiful old craftsman house, on a nice street, a short walk from Doug's office and the kids' schools and several friends' homes.  There is a small vegetable garden, a small garage and car port, a full width corner lot (fairly rare in our old-school industrial town where too many houses tended to be packed on too-small lots).  There's a true master bedroom, a kitchen I won't mind cooking in with the kids, a laundry room, a "kid's living room" upstairs between the kids' bedrooms.  Our dining table and chairs will not constantly be running into our living room couch.

I was exhausted the day Doug came home with the key, or I probably would've started jumping.  That afternoon, he'd come home with the bill for yet more car work.  We'd had a lot of that done the last couple of months, a lot of unplanned expense and after he told me the latest amount, neither one of us had any idea how we were going to do Christmas.  We have never done really big or expensive Christmases--the most presents the each kid has ever gotten in any one year from us AND Santa totaled 6, and those usually weren't extravagant gifts--but we really couldn't see how we were going to do anything.  The kids know that that's the case, and happily say they're fine with it because they get to go to California and do all kinds of fun stuff in May, but there's a difference between a kid saying they're OK with it on a random Tuesday in November, and actually being OK with it early Christmas morning when there aren't packages to unwrap.  So as I sulked over our meager Christmas and our always-too-many bills, feeling a bit overwhelmed and bogged down, this giant burst of light broke through my cloud.  And the kids seemed nearly as excited as we are.  They hate that there isn't much space outside for them here, and that they basically are living on top of each other because of the lack/arrangement of inside space.  I think they feel almost as crunched as we do.  When we took them through the new house last Saturday night, they were so excited that they were driving their Dad nuts.  Maybe a nice house and the anticipation of the Fresno Zoo and the Monterey Bay aquarium and all those fun Clark cousins they love so much really will be enough Christmas for them this year.

I know that, my ever-growing amazon wishlist notwithstanding, its definitely enough Christmas for me this year.  I have a full day of clinical tomorrow, for which I haven't completed my drug cards, and a comprehensive exam for pharmacology on Friday that I should probably be studying for, but I just had to take a moment tonight to record how grateful I am for our blessings.  I haven't been as good at seeing them this last year as I should, but the Lord has continued to poor them down anyway. Its been 2 years of living in this shack, and three years since I've been to California and seen most of my friends there, but this year I get a reprieve on both fronts, and I am feeling tremendously blessed for it.  Gifts under the tree or not, that ought to make for quite a wonderful Christmas.

Tender Mercies

I've been feeling bogged down.  A lot.  For a long time.  I catch little glimmers of my old self in good moments, then it disappears in the slogging of our long days.  There are a lot of things in our life that I'm not terribly thrilled about, that I feel like I've been patient about for a long time and just don't want to be patient about anymore.  But patience is required for the only realistic paths over those hurdles.  But some days I fall prey to feeling like not only am I not making headway, but am actually going backwards.  I really hate how much I've allowed circumstances to dictate how I feel, and, even worse, how I treat my husband and kids.

The last couple of weeks, its culminated in resenting how "ugly" the town we live in is, and a terrible, aching homesicknesses for my grandmothers and for my days as a stay-at-home mom.   Life has always had its challenges, but the fact that I was able to be at home full time with my kids balanced out a lot of things for me.  Sending them all off to public school, friends' houses and Head Start so that I can get in to school and labs has been hard for me.

So yesterday morning, I went for a quick jog before school, and a song that always reminds me of my grandma came up on my iPod, and I looked up.  This is what it looked like in front of me:

This is not unusual.  It looks like this here most of the time.  Sure, town looks like an old man with some hard miles on him, but its in a beautiful place.  Clear air, big blue skies, puffy white clouds, conifer trees, a creek or two.  Its gorgeous.

I was cleaning up the back yard, and, buried in the mess of volunteer roses, dandelions and overgrown grass and raspberry bushes that passes for a yard, and in late October over a mile high, I found a little patch of violets.  I hadn't seen any before in the two years we've lived in this rental, but there they were.  When I was little, there were violets all over my Grandma's yard, and Michael and I would pick them by the tiny handfuls for Grandma, and she would indulge us by filling old, cleaned out butter tubs with a little water and we'd stick the violets in them. 

The same day, I got some change at the store, and ended up with a handful of centennial and state quarters--which my other grandma collected.

Normally I get home lateish on Thursday afternoons, but was able to switch my lab time this week so that I was home by lunch today.  On days when I get home early, I try to go spend some time in Keira's Head Start classroom.  The kids were on the playground when I got there, and she immediately ran over and into my arms and said, "I want to go home with you."  When I explained that I was there to spend some time helping in her classroom, she said, "No, I just want to go home with you."  Her teachers said she hadn't been herself all day: she hadn't been singing with them, hadn't been dancing and had generally been quiet.  She said she didn't feel sick and she wasn't warm.  For reference, this is fairly typical Keira:

She's independent and confident, you can almost always see those dimples, she's always laughing and singing and pretending.  She's almost always happy, and you almost always know it.

I signed her out and took her to the car, and she had already perked up by the time I strapped her in.  I reminded her that I didn't have school tomorrow (the first week day I haven't been gone in a couple of months) and she lit up.  By the time we got home, she was back to her old self.  She's snuggled up to me, singing along to a favorite movie.

About six more weeks and I'm done with school for a month.  I think that first day after my last final, the kids are all sleeping in, no one is going to school, and we're all going to spend the day watching Christmas movies and making crafts.  Just because we can.

Life is good, and I know that in my head.  I need to take care to feel it in my heart more often.

Missing

"By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last.  I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky.  Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night.  That sorrow will come--I know it. I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears."

                                                              ~Mark Twain

It is a terribly difficult thing, to watch the brightest stars melt.  It is a terrible thing to feel like, no matter how much time one has to soak up their presence, it is somehow never enough.

It is a tremendous thing to know that endings are not our destiny, and that the stars will all be restored to us.  That is an eternal reassurance for which I am ever grateful.

Gifts

A few weeks ago, I was thinking how to best convince my children to love e.e. cummings and Shakespeare, because I love them so much and I'm quite certain my children will encounter neither at school.  And in the midst of my plotting (clearly, it would be best to start Keilana off with "little you-i"--after that, I'm sure she'd be hooked), it occurred to me that no one introduced me to them, at least directly.

I grew up with parents who are teachers, learners, readers.  Our living room had 3-4 sets of overstuffed bookshelves, and the room we all referred to simply as "the office" (a long room at the end of the house that was the full width of my parents' good-sized home) had bookshelves made from plywood boards and bricks that ran the full length of the room, floor to ceiling, and were completely full of books of nearly every kind imaginable--and that's before we got to the books in bedrooms and in piles on the end tables and counters of our living spaces.

The personal library my parents had accumulated in their many years of reading and teaching was my best teacher.  I was free to wander through the shelves at my own speed and indulge whatever title or cover or description sounded interesting.  It wasn't merely the quantity of books available, but the quality and diversity that was truly amazing.  My father had been (and is again) a high school English teacher, and so we were awash in classics:  in high school, I read a good portion of Shakespeare's plays, several Jane Austen novels, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Republic, quite a lot of Dickens, and a tiny bit of Chaucer.  Not because they were assigned, but because they were there and sounded interesting.  There was a seemingly limitless supply of poets (I tended toward Whitman, cummings, and Wordworth).  I read histories by Stephen Ambrose and Wallace Stegnar, I read biographies of Lincoln and Jefferson and Adams, I worked my way through the Federalist Papers, I read about the Civil War and the modern South.  I discovered a love for science I didn't know I had by reading books about trees and flowers, human biology, and ecology that somehow found their way into the collection.  I read fiction of all kinds--historical, sci-fic, chick lit, fantasy.  I discovered Tolkien, and Lewis, and a great love for the kind of fiction that actually taught me things rather than just entertained me.  I read Ender's Game for the first time after picking it off the shelf in the office, and discovered my favorite living writer, and one of my favorite fiction series ever, books that changed and sharpened my own beliefs.

You get the idea.  I have tried to be good at getting the kids to the library often to make up for the fact that we don't have a lot of space in our current house for books.  We have two relatively small bookshelves of adult books, and a small bookshelf full of kids books.  We have boxes and boxes of books in storage, even after getting rid of many through multiple moves, and I hope that in the next few years we are able to get situated to where we can have them out for our teenagers to peruse at random.  We have books on the Kindle and audio books on our mobile devices, but that isn't quite the same as having shelves of actual books to let your fingers wander through.

I grew up in a small town in rural Montana.  That has many advantages, but it has disadvantages, as well.  It was easy for my parents to instill in us a love of nature and outdoor activities, taking us camping and hiking and berry picking, while teaching us the names of flowers we picked and animals we passed or saw evidence of.  It was easy for them to teach us the value of family, with grandparents  being part of our daily lives, as well as some aunts and uncles and cousins.  It has long impressed me how remarkably good my parents were at overcoming the disadvantages of that environment.  We went to historical museums, art museums, aquariums and zoos, national parks and cities that were within driving distance.  When they took me to Washington, D.C. as a 12-year-old, it was revelatory.  Despite their large family and relatively small budget, I had the opportunity to listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square and the National Symphony Orchestra at the National Cathedral. I got to canoe down portions of the upper Missouri, explore the Seattle Science Center, and take in Renoirs at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  I saw a Sondheim musical at the Kennedy Center, and learned how to sew and raise pigs for 4-H.  They gave us everything they could, and then filled in all the spaces in between with piles and piles of books.  While I'm sure they could see many of my strengths and weaknesses just as I am capable of seeing those of my own children, they never pushed me in any particular direction, nor failed to nudge me forward.  I'm trying to find that balance, to give that gift of limitless options and knowledge to my kids.

They never told me that I could learn or do anything--they just put the tools in reach and expected me to use them, built my confidence and helped me patiently through my struggles, and somewhere along the way I became consciously aware of how much wonder and beauty and good there was in the world.  I sometimes feel like I'm not as good at providing those tools for my kids, but I hope that we can continue to show them how big and full the world is, and how delightful it is to explore, whether in a canoe, a theater seat, or curled up in bed with a book.

First Days

We're all back to school.  We've been struggling to get into a routine.  Part of that is that my schedule has been different every single week so far, so its hard for the kids to get into a groove.  This week we should get closer to that.  I'm in Butte 'til 5pm two days a week, but thankfully "our Katies" have been awesome.  The older kids go to the Laws after school, and the younger ones go to the Postmas, and mama feels much better not sending anyone off to daycare or Boys and Girls Club.  We're all really lucky to have found such kind and generous friends.

The older three started school right after Labor Day, and they were all pretty excited. 

Keilana is in 5th grade this year:

Its crazy how grown up she is.

Independent, enthusiastic, smiley.

She is more horse-obsessed than ever,

and is doing 4H this year,

including a horse project

with riding lessons that started the second week of school.

She's pretty excited about being

in the accelerated math and reading class.

She's either bouncing off the walls

or has her nose buried in a book,

usually fantasy.

She seems intent on striking some precarious balance

with her head in the clouds

and her feet firmly on the ground.

She wore her boots and "riding shirt"

to the first day of school,

and was irritated that she'd left her hat at a friend's house.

Her greatest desire in life

is to be a real cowgirl.

With a touch of veterinarian medicine on the side.

Dylan is a 3rd grader this year:

School is just sort of what happens

around all the other things he's doing.

He's always studying his bird guide book

or memorizing Eye Witness books

about animals

or watching Pokemon

(or enacting fantasy Pokemon battles).

When he isn't reading about wild animals,

he's neck-deep in Legos and K'nex.

He told me he wants to join 4H,

so he can do a robotics project.

Though they can be difficult for others to decipher,

he has systems and orders and rules

by which he mentally organizes his world.

Hopefully, someday his schoolwork

will be a part of that order.

We're working on it.

But he's learning a lot all of the time.

Kylie is in kindergarten this year:

 She is sweet and sensitive,

and assertive and sassy at the same time.

She loves animals and babies

and My Little Pony.

She is obsessed with the idea

that she's a real princess,

and Yaya and I are real queens,

and Daddy and Papa are real kings.

She tells everyone she can.

And she's always delighted

when I tell another little girl

that she's a real princess, too.

She love to help people feel special,

and hugs are often her weapon of choice.

She gives incredible hugs.

She's love frilly dresses

and big bows in her hair

and doesn't let any one,

or any thing,

get in her way.

Keira, well, she's headed off to Head Start:

She's only 3 1/2.

But she's used to keeping pace

with her brother and sisters.

They tell me she's half-tiger.

She smiles all the time,

this huge, cheesy, squinty-eyed smile,

but she also growls and head butts us a lot,

so there may be something to that tiger thing.

She's confident.

Ridiculously confident.

She dances and jams like a rock star,

wrestles like she's on WWE.

She alternates between stomping and prancing,

and her imagination knows no bounds.

The afternoons when she's home alone,

she'll set up her Littlest Pet Shop toys,

or her barn and farm animals,

and enact whole story lines,

all by herself.

Its fun to listen to her explore

the limitless world in her own marvelous

little mind.

She's quite certain that the world is her oyster.

And so it is.

This transition has been hard for me.  Every time I feel like school is taking too much of our time, too much of our money, asking too much of our support system, I get a quiet, reassuring prompting that its what we're supposed to be doing right now.  But I struggle with how much time it demands.  I don't mind doing the work--a great deal of it is quite enjoyable to me--but over the course of our family life, we have made sacrifices, happily gone without many of the luxuries and amenities that a lot of people around us enjoy so that we could have the ultimate luxury of one parent at home full-time.  I'm struggling to let go of that ideal we've been able to hold on to for the last decade, despite the ups and downs.  I hate that the last two years my baby is "home", she's actually in Head Start part of most days and I'm out of town 30 hours a week.  Thankfully, our kids are young enough that the extra-curricular activities are still minimal, so if I plan my studying and homework well, we can soak up our time together in the evenings and on weekends, and Keira and I can steal a little time here and there some days, and I'm very grateful for that. I'm grateful that I don't have to have a job while going to school, so that that doesn't compete for time with my husband and kids.  All the decisions we've made since having kids have been based around accomplishing the things we need to for work and church, while still maximizing our time together as a family.  I think we've had some help figuring that out in the phase we're in right now and I'm grateful for that. 

Better than date night. . .

Last night, we did the back-to-school father's blessings.  The kids actually started last week, but after two really full, really draining weeks for which we weren't entirely prepared, we just weren't quite ready.  But this week was Fast Sunday, and we'd had some time to get on routine and catch up, so before bed we gathered our littles in the front room, said a family prayer, and then, starting with the oldest, Daddy gave each unique, wonderful little person we've been blessed with a blessing one at a time, telling them what the Lord wanted them to know for the upcoming year.

I never love my husband more than in moments like this:  moments where his tenderness for his children is evident, where his devotion to passing onto them all the good things with which he's been blessed really shines through.  Their blessings are theirs to keep and treasure and remember, and so I don't share the details with the world.  But there was much talk of reading, loving to read, learning through reading; bravery, courage, determination; and, as always, many reminders of love, and of how well both their earthly father and their Heavenly Father know them, and are paying attention to what they want, what they need, the wonderful strengths they've been blessed with, and the challenges that are their opportunity to work through.

Lastly, Doug laid his hands on my head and gave me a blessing.  I have often felt a bit like I was running on empty lately.  I perpetually feel like I'm playing catch-up, both emotionally and in a practical to-do list kind of way.  My blessing hit on every reassurance I needed, quelled every insecurity about the number of balls I'm trying to keep in the air right now, and put my mind thoroughly at ease over other challenges we know full well are on the very near horizon.  We haven't been on a date in nearly 4 months, and all at once that didn't seem like such a problem.

This year is going to be full of several new adventures, and some new challenges. But I'm grateful to have a companion and children who make me feel confident that we can meet those challenges, rise to the occasion, and keep smiling through it all.

Saying Goodbye to Grandma

Surrounded by a few of her great-granddaughters, all decked out in red lipstick.

I'm all out of grandparents.  My paternal grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago.  I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to be near home for the last few years of her life, and I'm tremendously grateful that my parents chose a life that enabled their kids to build strong relationships with our grandparents.  I can never thank them enough for providing opportunities for closeness with my grandmothers.

Grandma was feisty, which was probably evident in the bright red lipstick and auburnish curls before you ever heard hear speak.  And then she spoke.  She talked too fast, enunciated poorly, exclaimed frequently, and made snap judgments unapologetically.  She could have a quick temper.  About 2/3 of her wardrobe was bright red.  All of that was simply part of her passionate nature.  She loved to dance, she played the violin beautifully, and spent a good chunk of her life elbow-deep in fabric and batting, creating quilt after quilt for kids and grandkids.  With Grandma, you always knew where she stood and where you stood with her.  She always called it like she saw it and you never had to wonder what she was thinking.

My childhood memories of Grandma are all happy ones: delivering Meals on Wheels, running her Saturday errands with her hair in curlers so she'd look nice for church on Sunday, working the concession stand at the movie theater, playing Chinese checkers or making popsicle stick towers on her living room floor while she watched Matlock or Highway to Heaven, giggling at the way she'd pop her dentures in and out a bit during conversations, employing the treadmill in her spare bedroom as an amusement ride of sorts: Michael and I would turn it on and then sit or stand and ride off the end of it, hitting the floor or occasionally the wall, and Grandma would laugh and we'd do it again.  Mostly, that's what I remember:  we were very free to be kids with Grandma.  I never remember hearing a "don't do that" or "don't play with that"--it seemed like just about anything was fair game, and nearly any activity acceptable, and she seemed to have as much fun watching us be rambunctious as we had in being rambunctious.  A lifetime of near-poverty (and perhaps just innate personality) had made her something of a squirrel, always collecting supplies, not often getting rid of things, but she never seemed particularly attached to the stuff--it was there in case it might be needed, but it was just stuff.  She never seemed to worry much about anything be broken or worn out.  As long as we were having a good time, she seemed to be happy.

When I was about 16, I'd been bugging her to teach me how to make all of the treats for which she was well-known, so she told me to come on up and we'd make them all.  I drove to Ronan and spent all day with her, making fudge, popcorn balls, and angel food cake with 7-minute frosting and red sprinkles.  Our conversation ranged all over the place--as it did for the rest of her life--and we laughed a lot.  Much of the conversation was, always, centered around her kids and other grandkids.  She'd say something like, "He's so stubborn, has such a temper," about one, and I'd laugh and respond, "I wonder where he gets that from, Grandma!" And she'd laugh knowingly and say, "Well, I just can't imagine!"  She'd update me on cousins I was in contact with far too infrequently, and talk with excitement about any soon-to-arrive grandkids or great grandkids. When I came home with my haul after a full day of cooking and talking, mom laughed and said, "Is it any wonder she's your diabetic grandma?"  Grandma thrived on many of lives simplest, most delightful pleasures, whether that was a popcorn ball, a blackened marshmallow (the experience really isn't complete unless there is marshmallow all over your hands and face), or rocking a baby.

Grandma loved to rock babies, feed babies, snuggle babies.  Of all the things that Grandma passed on to me, I think my favorites are my dimples, and a feeling that life is good when you're holding a baby.  I often watched her visibly relax and delight with each of my own babies in her arms, and was delighted by the joy of knowing that she loved my children, and that they were cradled gently in arms that once lovingly rocked me.  Grandma's whole life happily and contentedly revolved around kids--her kids, her grandkids, her great-grandkids.  The most joy I ever heard from her came in talking about how great her kids are, and the most worry and concern I ever heard from her was in expressing concern that one of them didn't seem happy.  She wanted them to be happy.

She had various jobs over the years--the movie theater, in-home daycare, etc--but never really had a career.  She was mostly poor most of her life.  She had no significant worldly accomplishments.  And she didn't care about any of it.  At the end of the day, the only things that mattered to her were whether her kids were happy, and if she was fulfilling her calling.

I have never, to this day (and I've now known a few stake presidents, temple presidents and such), known anyone who took their calling--every calling--as seriously as Grandma.  Whether it was Primary secretary, ward librarian, ward chorister, or anything else, it was her job, and she was going to prepare, show up and do it right.

My cousin Annie, Grandma's first grandchild, shared a brief story at her funeral that so perfectly captured who Grandma was.  Annie had come up to visit, and Sunday morning she found Grandma on the floor of her bedroom.  She asked her what she was doing there, and Grandma responded that she had fallen.  And then, with typical Grandma-style feistiness, said, "Well, help me up so I can get going!"  She had so many health problems the last few years, even struggling to get out of bed without falling, but she was ready to get up off that floor and get to Church.  It was important.  And Grandma didn't neglect the truly important things--she gave them every priority.  She had weaknesses and took some falls, but she picked herself up and kept going every time, because she knew where she should be, she was unwaveringly certain of the direction she should be heading, and come what may she was going to keep heading that way.

My grandparents divorced when I was a young toddler, so I have no memories of them as a married couple.  I had heard a few stories over the years that had made me believe that they made each other crazy (though, notably, throughout most of my childhood, they were both usually at our family gatherings, and that never seemed to be an issue).  My grandma had chosen to marry a man who wasn't a member of the Church she so dearly loved, and he had challenges that she struggled with.  Their respective challenges and weaknesses and frustrations seem to have led to a marriage that was often difficult.  Despite all the stories I had heard, I didn't understand entirely what had happened until my Grandma shared a story with me when I was a young women, just after she served as my escort when I received my Endowment.  She expressed joy and pride in my decision, and gratitude that I'd found a good man to be there with me.  She didn't receive her own Endowment until she was middle-aged, and she had been feeling prompted for some time before she took that step that it was time to go to the temple.  So, even though Grandpa didn't seem any closer to accepting the Gospel, she went to the temple, and felt overwhelmingly that she was where she was supposed to be, doing what the Lord wanted her to do, but in that moment she realized that "all the steps I took to get closer to the Lord took me a few steps farther from Lamar, and he didn't want to come with me".  She told me that 20 years after that experience, and how much that realization broke her heart was still evident.

Grandma is simple in many ways--she speaks unequivocally in black and white.  Sometimes I think that because of that, she wasn't given enough credit for how thoughtful she was in much of what she did.  I can't comment on the rightness or wrongness of her decisions relating to her marriage, but I do know that everything she told me spoke of her great desire--despite her admitted stubbornness and reactiveness--to be obedient to what she believed to be true, and to set an example of obedience to her children.  Sometimes that required sacrifices and even heartbreak--but she trusted the Lord.  Throughout my years in California, as our new, young family faced many diverse challenges and leapt hurdles and went through growing pains, she called me often to check in and was a wonderful source of encouragement, always reminding me that I was trying hard to be a good mom and to raise my kids with good things, and I had a good husband who was teaching them and supporting us, so the Lord would take notice and take care of us.  She reminded me frequently that there was never going to be a better time in my life than right then, snuggling babies, watching toddlers explore and growing with my family.  She expressed gratitude all the time for finally having a companion that she trusted to be at her side and support her.  She clearly was so happy to finally have some of her children sealed to her, and to feel more confident than ever that she would get to be with them and hug them again.

Grandma's life was successful.  She made mistakes, she had imperfections, but as her mortal life was drawing to a close, she was so peaceful.  She had no regrets, no feelings that she had neglected anything important.  Because she hadn't.  She had focused with nearly all her energy for nearly all her  life on the only things that ever actually mattered.  Its impossible to overstate how much her firm determination influenced and shaped my own testimony, especially in my young adult years.  I will be eternally grateful to her, the woman who made it feel like it was OK that sometimes I talk too fast or giggle too much.  My enthusiasm for the things I enjoy, which sometimes can seem a bit over the top to some people, Grandma just embraced with her own enthusiasm.  Besides, when we get excited, you can see the dimples more.  How can you not love a good set of dimples?

She rocked me as a baby, she encouraged my creativity and playfulness as a child, she helped me hone my math skills working concessions stands at the movie theater as a tween, she escorted me through the temple as a young woman, and bore her testimony to me often as an adult and talked and laughed me through some of my most pull-my-hair-out type days as a young mom.  Its hard to ask for a better grandma than that.

I miss her already.  But I've never been more confident that I'll see her again.