It's Time to Say Goodbye

A few years after we bought our first house in 1995--so probably around 1998?--we inherited bunkbeds from Brad's mom for Teeny Ben and Not-So-Big Tucker. Money was really tight in those  days, but I wanted them to have matching comforters. My mom was visiting for a week, so I took advantage of her mad quilting skills and planned a quilt-tying project. I took advantage of my best friend, Karen, and enlisted her skills and borrowed her quilt frames. 

Not being able to afford much, I bought four twin-size flannel sheets on clearance, one king-sized bat cut in half, and a skein of red yard--for two quilts I'm sure I spent less than $40 because I remember the sheets were $3.57 apiece. The three of us tied two quilts while six little kiddos (Karen's three and my first three) ran under the quilt, or pretended it was a fort, or cried when we ignored them and quilted for too long. 

What a great memory.

When I woke Hyrum up for scriptures last week, I noticed the state of the last surviving quilt. Its brother was thrown away a few years ago, loved until it was full of holes and threadbare.

It may be time for the surviving quilt to join its brother. And it makes me sad.

Think about how much of my family's life this quilt has seen:

• How many books read with a flashlight beneath it when Mom said, "Lights out!" (This may be the last one.)
• How many forts it created--books precariously stacked on its edges
• How many movie nights
• How many tuck-in times
• How many pretend games of "house" 
• How many legos and Goldfish crackers hidden in its folds
• How many times Mom begged it to be made
• How many bedtime stories
• How many deep talks
• How many adventures on the lawn or at the park
• How many drops from a humidifier or doses of cold medicine 
• How many early morning scripture times it was dragged off a bed because someone needed a few extra minutes of cozy
• How many sleepovers
• How many cold nights backstage at the Easter pageant
• How many tears and snotty noses it's wiped

Seven kids and 22 years.

That's a lot of cozy.

I feel like I owe it a deep Marie Kondo "Thank you for your service" ceremony. If I can bring myself to say goodbye.

Remember 2016

Remember January when I talked about being lost? Rereading that post takes me back to all those lost feelings.

Remember remembering? Rereading this post and rewatching The Lion King--that was such an epiphany moment. The key to improvement in 2016 was reacquainting myself with me.

Remember 365 sunsets? Here are all twelve months, including November's and December's (November was forgotten in the whole Pakistan adventure). I love these. It makes the year more real somehow.

January

February

March

April

May 

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

While I did miss a few sunsets over the year, I captured most of them. 

Idaho

California

DC

Philadelphia

New York City

Abu Dhabi

Pakistan

Circling the globe somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

The cabin

Driving kids

And a majority of them in my own yard

2016 was a mixed bag. I faltered in the last few months, with school sapping my time and my energy, but bringing with it unexpected joy and fulfillment. I removed my necklace for a few days (I can't even remember why now), and when I put it back on, it had a knot in it that I never found the time to untangle. For months now it's hung like this, just not quite right and an outward manifestation of the craziness of my life these days. 

I didn't end 2016 with my strongest resolve, but I do see change. Teaching has been part of the change (remember my first day?). Experience from the year has been part of it as well (remember Lily's life flight?). Most of the change has come from hard work on my part (remember the hike I never finished?). 

I did end 2016 on an unexpected note, literally. Two days after Christmas, an unidentified number lit up my phone. The voice on the other end was familiar, informing me that a friend of mine had passed away on Christmas night. While saddened at the news, I was surprised at the unexpected personal notification of Stan's passing. The voice paused, then stuttered out, "This is awkward for me to ask, but Stan wrote out his funeral program before he died, and he asked that you play the organ and a piano solo at the service. Are you available Friday morning?"

With that, my mind wandered back to moments with Stan Standing, an elderly gentleman (in the truest sense of that word) who used to live around the corner from us. He always had a twinkle in his good eye (the other lost in childhood to disease) and a subtle joke on his lips. He sang in our ward choir, and I was the accompanist at the time. Our conversations were usually short, and once we moved a mile away, our interactions limited to seeing each other at stake conference once or twice a year, if that. He wanted me to play at his funeral? Then play I would.

The funeral was small yesterday--less than 100 people to mourn a quiet man of integrity--but I put my whole heart into "Consider the Lilies." I couldn't help tearing up at the end, thinking about Stan and how our lives had intertwined for the last 20 years. As I embraced Judy, his widow, before getting into the car, she squeezed me tight and whispered in my ear, "Thank you. That was perfect. You know Stan really loved you." We never know the impact we leave on someone else's life, do we? What a beautiful way to end 2016.

Tonight marks the last night of 2016. The last sunset. The completion of my goal to document every night of the year. I will miss that fleeting moment each night, and I wonder if I will ever look at sunsets the same again. 

Was 2016 successful? Was my goal to remember all I'd hoped it would be? No. 

But somehow the perfect execution of the goal matters less to me than ever before in my life. And that is the greatest lesson I will take from this year--it was enough.

September: The Month Where I Forgot

September gave me this.

Night after glorious night. 

And how did September go for me?

I forget.

September kicked me hard. All of the ideas and goals I had back in January to remember and change and stuff?

I forgot about almost all of them.

Now it's October and time to reflect on . . . not much. I'm trying not to beat myself up about it. It is the first full month I've worked, and I haven't misplaced any of my students yet or gotten written up, so I guess there's that. But I've stopped journaling like I did earlier in the year, and my exercising and scripture study have been little better than never.

I tried other sources to get the peace I've missed. I actually got a massage for the first time in years, thinking that I must have changed from the first 3-4 times I got one. I need to relax. Brad swears by massages. I need to de-stress. People love them. I will like it this time.

Nope.

Massages stress me out. I must be the only person alive that gets more tense after a massage than before. The 60 minutes I'm supposed to be relaxing are honestly quite stressful for me. I feel my jaw clenching and my shoulders shrink closer to my ears. The masseuse actually recommended that I add aromatherapy next time I come so "you can relax a little bit." Do masseuses really say that to most people--your massage made you more tense? I walked out of there much sorer than I was walking in, and most surprising, I was angry. It was as if the massage had brought all of the toxins out of my skin and all of the repressed fury out of my soul. It took me a good 20 minutes to pinpoint what was happening and why. Good thing most of my family was gone when I got home, or it would have been nasty. I won't be going back for a relaxing rubdown any time soon. The world can't handle that much irritability all at once--it's a much better place to live when I push all the anger down inside. I know--unhealthy.

The thing is this: I know what destresses me. It's meditation. It's prayer and scripture study. It's yoga. It's regular exercise. It's consuming less than my body weight a week in Soda Shop oatmeal cookies and Diet Pepsi. That's what truly makes me happy and not stressed.

I've got to get back to the basics and find time for me, along with my family and school. I keep telling myself that things will settle down after the midterm exam this week, and I hope that's true. I think that's true.

It better be true.

Guess who's job it is to make it true?

Mine.

And I'm not too lost--I still remember my way down the path.

Reboot. Restart.

Three more months of 2016. There's still time.

I'll Always Remember August 2016

Arizona always gifts spectacular sunsets, but she saves her best for August as a birthday gift to me--snapshots of twilight moments attending first concerts and season-opening football games and driving carpool and relaxing at the cabin and a special cotton candy sky on my special day of the year.

Life cycles, and each time it changes, I learn the same lessons through different eyes. Take time for the little things. Watch the rain, hold a child's hand, listen to a friend, pray for someone you love.

August 2016--the moment in my adult life when I joined the workforce. Wow. School kicks my butt every day in ways I never imagined, yet it brings me so much joy. When I toss my leather satchel into my boiling car at the end of 7 1/2 straight hours of teenagers and colonial America and the exhaustion suddenly creeps from where it's been lurking, I catch myself smiling. That's when I think, "They pay me to do this. I can't believe they pay me for this."

This last week was especially difficult as I learned how hard it is to grade 128 essay tests in 29 hours, plus find time to sleep, shower, mother, and eat--one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. With 18 essays to go, I wanted to give up. My hand ached and my neck ached and my back ached and my butt ached, but I soldiered on.

I think I can do this.
I think I will do this.
I think I'm pretty good at this.

While August was far from perfect, I loved August. This new chapter in my life brings new yet familiar challenges--finding balance, learning patience, tackling new experiences. And they haven't fired me yet, so I'll be at it again for September.

Wow. I can't believe my life.

My People

I will look back on July as the month I spent with my people.

At the cabin. At the beach. At dive meets. In the car. In Idaho and Utah (briefly).

July was a break from most things--house cleaning, school stress, cooking, whatever. We took time to be with our family in some way for most of the month. And I remembered something really important.

I love my people. The little people and the big people. The young people and the old people. And everyone in between.

Life is going to be very different around here starting next week. I'm trying to wrap my mind around it and organize for it and prepare for it and steel myself for it, but I have no real clue how things will change once I'm . . . working.

So weird.

But I hope the lesson of July will stick with me, and that I will remember how important my people are to me.

Thanks, July. You gave me gorgeous sunsets in the mountains, on the beach, and in my backyard. You gave me precious moments with those I love the most.

And I'll try to remember.

To read about my goal to remember in 2016, click here.

Remembering . . . and Forgetting

To reread my post about my goal to remember this year, click here.

My kids frequently ask me why I take so many pictures of the sunset. "You have a million pictures of the sunset! Why take more?"

I've come to cherish that singular moment every evening when I capture the sky and my place on the planet. Just a quick snapshot of a fleeting moment that will be gone a moment later. But it's a moment frozen in the timeline of my life, and when I compile them at the end of each month, I'm reminded of where I was and what I was doing on that day. And it never fails to make me smile and enjoy it one more time.

My kids asked me this month if I've missed any sunsets yet. The answer is yes. At first that "incomplete-ness" of my goal really bothered me. I set out to take a sunset shot every day, and I had failed in my goal. I guess that's one thing I'll always remember about 2016--I finally learned how to give myself permission to fail, then start again and keep going without beating myself up for falling short. That sounds strange, and I don't expect most people to understand. I've always been an "all or nothing" girl. Give it my all or give it nothing, with no space in between for half-baked nonsense or mediocrity. 

If I had given up the first time I forgot to capture a sunset, I would have missed remembering singularly ordinary moments like these:

a beautiful Phoenix night

or how the sky looked the night Brad and I celebrated our 27th anniversary at Cheesecake Factory then hit the "Going Out of Business" sale at Sports Authority and on a whim bought five boogie boards for our family vacation in California because they were on sale

or the Family Home Evening we spent setting up the new pool basketball hoop and the boys swam until way past dark shooting hoops and laughing and fighting and enjoying a 118-degree day's cooler night

or the drive home from our family reunion when the changing sky followed us across the northern Arizona reservation as I read A Lincoln out loud to Brad for hours while the three kids watched Zootopia in the back seat

All these moments that have passed but will never completely leave me

As Lily and her friend and I sat in the theatre last night, waiting for a production of Hairspray to begin, I cringed a little that I wouldn't have a picture to remember my last night of June 2016--how heavy the sky was with monsoon clouds and high humidity, how excited Lily was to see the show, how Sam was being a good sport but enjoyed himself a little more than he thought he would (or probably would like to admit), and how much joy I felt being in that moment. Instead, I opened the playbill and began reading the actors' bios. A little regret and then it was gone.

I've learned to let that little bit of regret go and enjoy the moment. And we did enjoy it.

I never imagined six months ago that sunset photographs would sync so perfectly with my goal to remember.

We Do Not Remember Days. We Remember Moments

Something is up with my computer today, and I can't access entire files of images. This post may not be exactly what I imagine, but for today, I'm just winging it.

To reread my post about my goal for 2016 to remember, click here.

Life has changed for me.

Days whirr past now. I remember few of them, but I do remember the moments that made them.

School's out for the summer, and I already feel like I'm going to waste the summer. How can I feel like that?

I found more happiness in May than I've had in a long time. Relief from worry. Answers to prayers. Direction and purpose to life.

I think the rest of 2016 will be trying to hold onto the personal growth I've experienced this far and not lapsing back into the person I was a few months ago.

Nothing really profound today.

Just a few random thoughts I want to remember about May.

It's hitting 118 this weekend. Now there's that to look forward to.

Waiting On and On

To review my 2016 goal, click here. January's post is here, February's is here, and March is here.

That was my entire April--holding on. Asking God for guidance and patience and understanding every single day.

It would have been much easier to quit trying or to quit believing or to move on to something new. I felt like cracking apart almost every day, but one morning I got my favorite bowl out of the dishwasher to make muffins.

Each time I place it on the counter, I wonder if this will be the last time we work together, this bowl and I. 

I don't know what is holding it together. It's cracked completely through in places, but even when I use the hand mixer and rattle the beaters around inside, the bowl stays in one piece. I know it has limited use left, but I cheer for it every time it weathers a mixing experience. Such tenacity. Such willpower.

And that morning I thought, "If the bowl can hold it together one more day, then so can I."

Weird life metaphor moment, right? My brain works like that.

Each day all month I would wake up and think, "Today. Today is the day I will get an answer. Today is the day I will stop stressing about what I can't control. Today is the day I will be patient. Today is the day none of this will matter and I will be at peace."

With the setting of the sun each day I would think, "Nope. No answer today. Maybe tomorrow."

And finally, by the end of the month, seven weeks of (im)patiently waiting for an answer ended.

In retrospect, I didn't handle waiting and holding on very well. But just like my favorite bowl, I held it together, even if the cracks and chips in my psyche sometimes showed.

Seven weeks later, I can now look back and see some of the lessons I learned. 

• God is in charge. 
• Worrying about what we can't control is not only unproductive but it can also be destructive if we let it.
•  I have more patience than I ever thought. 
• I need more patience than I have. 
• Prayers are heard, even if they aren't immediately answered. 
• And most important . . . Nothing is too small for God. If it's important to us, it's important to Him.

I will rely on the lessons of April 2016 forever. I will remember it as the month that I learned this about myself:

I really can wait. I just don't like to.

Freeze the Moments

To review my 2016 goal, click here. January's post is here, and February's is here.

March blurred by.

March was nearly perfect.

If I could Groundhog Day a time in my life, I might choose March 2016.

Sure. There were days that were hard, and if I look back at my journal entries for the month, I remember those struggles. I remember one day where I was so sick I couldn't get off the couch. Other days, I worried or overreacted or didn't get enough sleep or questioned my journey or just had a bad day.

But as I look back on March 2016, I will remember the moments--golden moments spent in costume with my family close, walking around the temple grounds and listening to the story of Jesus Christ's life told over and over again.

I took hundreds of pictures during the Easter pageant, and these are the only two pictures I took of our entire family in costume. The lens piece had fallen off my camera, so my old lady eyes didn't focus correctly. As sad as I am about that, I cherish this picture.

 And these people.

Words fail me. When I set the goal to remember back in January, I had no idea what incredible moments were coming in March.

 Precious moments. 

 Tender mercies. 

Answered prayers.

 Miracles big and not so big.

Unlike February, my skin started fitting again. Easter and Jesus Christ and time on the temple grounds with my family reacquainted my spirit with my soul. Instead of warily sizing each other up from corners of a boxing ring like strangers, Spirit and Soul first shook hands and then lovingly embraced as old friends. Slowly, bit by bit and day by day, I'm remembering who I am, reconciling who I used to be with who I am now and working toward who I want to be in the future.

I still have few answers and too many questions. I still worry too often about what is around the corner. I still fight to develop patience in others and in God's timing. 

March 2016 was a gift to me, straight from heaven, of the most important things in life--family and faith. Lessons about love and trust and patience and prayer and questions and answers. 

March was memories I will open again and again all year. And for the rest of my life.