Michelle Larson is:  wife, mom to 5, future adopted mom to a child from Ethiopia (waiting for referral), director of a non-profit called Grow.Learn.Give., sister of twenty-six (counting in-laws), daughter to four, teacher of lots of church kids, runner- skier- dancer- writer for herself, health teacher to anyone that will listen, chaeuffer and slave to five little piggies. ….all rolled up into 72 inches.

“I met the greatest guy at the ward service project today….too bad he’s short.” That’s how my love story began circa fall 1992. However, my roommate was the one who said it; she shares not only my Amazon-woman stature, but also my first name. We were the “Shellies,” one with one l-y and the other with two ll-ies. We went through many a date-less weekend together while our smaller-statured, less intimidating (so they say), more dateable roommates painted the Provo town red. Yes, we were tall, loud, opinionated, older (?), busy, and getting masters degrees. I can see why we could scare some folks.I owe my married life to that Shellie with one l-ie. Every love story is a gift, and every love story has an angel. She is ours. She not only befriended my future husband, but she also introduced us and cheered us on when things got rough. How could things get rough for a couple made in heaven? Well, you see, there are four and a half inches of femur bone length that became a real stumbling block in our love story. I like to blame all precedent love stories, not to mention every romantic movie known to mankind. It is just how it is; the boy is taller than the girl. He protects her and shields her and puts his arms around her shoulders as they stand for pictures. He bends down to kiss her and leads her around the dance floor in a flowing waltz. Tall, dark and handsome seems to be the dream of most, and sadly, it was mine.

The love story begins like every love story: flirting and sarcasm and dating each other’s friends. We admired each other so much that we would set each other up with best friends and even siblings. Soon, I noticed that every social engagement I had somehow involved him. The number of friends invited on our “group dates” soon dwindled down to the two of us. The two of us is where we were most comfortable. I suppose it was after I made him an Orange Julius one morning after a bike ride that we decided we could and maybe should be alone. The chemistry was unbearable and yes, we needed to maybe even date. Don’t think this “Orange-Julius” moment was love at first sight—this had been festering for years now.

After that fateful morning I decided that if this is what fate had to deal me then I was going to make my poor lover suffer. I became very hard-to-get, evasive, and downright mean. Insecurities, my insecurities drove this. Can you blame me? I had waited twenty-five years for this guy…and he’s short?!

This is where Shelly with one l-y stepped in to save the day. She was secretly having those “Don’t give up on her, you are meant to be” talks in the Tanner Building during their grueling number-cruncher accounting classes. She reminded him that this girl, yes, the tall one that treated him like dirt, hated numbers, slept too long, spent more than she made, was uncultured, spoke ungrammatically, and was chronically late was the one for him. By some miracle, it was these talks that kept him on my leash.

All the while the she-angel was telling me how wonderful this boy was. She read my Mia Maid list of “Traits of My Future Husband” and pointed out how every trait was covered, except for the shallow things, like tall, broad-shouldered, basketball player, dark skinned, etc. She spent extra time on the traits like loyal, smart, funny, likes vegetables, and extra, extra time on the recent addition of the trait ”loves me.” “He really loves you, Michelle, he really, really loves you.”

An inner-height love story is much the same as any love story. While dating, I grew to love and respect him and yearn for his every breath. I got those same butterflies when he entered the room that all lovers get. We talked and swooned non-stop for months. We used every excuse to be with each other: cleaning, eating, studying, driving, walking, exercising. We knew we couldn’t live apart for one more month, let alone the rest of forever.

We learned to kiss sitting down (or lying down, but don’t tell our kids that), we never danced without laughing, we could trade shoes and most articles of clothing, we took pictures sitting down or on a slope or in soft dirt/sand so I could squish down four inches. We took advantage of curbs to satisfy that need to wrap our arms around each other in the traditional romantic way. We surprised our closest friends and family with our engagement—most people thought we were just best friends. We were and still are.

Fifteen years of a loving and “easy” marriage are a testament to the fact that all good gifts are made in heaven, but sometimes the package is different. Why I came in a six-foot package and my husband a five-foot, eight-inch package, I’ll never know. But, I’ll never doubt the joy the gift of marriage has brought to my life or that the angel (Shellie with one l-y) was directly sent to deliver this gift to me.

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I had hoped, but never thought I’d be one of those people who traveled to exciting places in the world.  I grew up in Los Angeles, traveled the west coast and saw most of what there was to see in California.  I’ve been to all but seven states (driving from California to Boston added some in “the middle” that I probably never would have visited otherwise).  My mom took us to Mexico when we were kids and I went to Canada as a chaperone on a youth Temple trip.

I lucked out with two business trips to Europe while working for a start-up software company.  I had been responsible for running the office (making copies, phone calls, power point slides, etc.) in a window-less hotel room in Boston twice a year for our member meetings.  Then they asked me if I wanted to run the office–in Munich!  Two years later they asked about Brussels!  Both trips lasted two weeks with four days of work and exploring with coworkers and on my own.  I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get to Europe again so I took advantage and saw as much as I could.  From the Sound of Music tour to Neuschwanstein Castle, Hallstatt, Austria, driving on the autobahn, seeing Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower, buying lace in Bruges, riding trains, visiting friends in St. Die, France, seeing the Mona Lisa, eating croissants and wiener schnitzel, drinking soda from a beer mug at the Hofbrauhaus and visiting Olympic villages—both trips were great adventures!

In 1999 my friend Jennifer called and asked if I had always wanted to go to China.  In my dreams. She invited me to be her guest and travel with six other families for two weeks when they adopted baby girls from Nanning.  She invited me because she said I was (1) good in groups and (2) I wouldn’t tell her what to do with the baby.  We flew from Boston to Detroit (I crossed Michigan off my list of states I hadn’t been to!) to Beijing.  The Detroit to Beijing leg of the trip was 13 ½ hours.   I can’t even remember how many meals and snacks we had on that long, long flight.

China was fascinating– the Great Wall, Beijing, Nanning, Guilin, the Li River, Guangzhou and Hong Kong; and being there when the seven families met their new daughters.  It was a trip filled with emotion, energy, and excitement.  It was memorable being there when the elevator door opened and three orphanage workers, each holding a baby girl, handed them to three of the families.  We toured the Mother’s Love Orphanage in Nanning.  One orphanage worker was feeding two babies in her arms and rocking two more with her feet.  I enjoyed meeting the loving couple who ran the orphanage.  We were not allowed to tour the city orphanage but I did get to attend the meeting where the families paid $3,000 (in brand new one hundred dollar bills) for the adoptions.  We had a national guide with us the entire trip.  Her name was Chen Chen (I called her “Sister Chen”) and a local guide in each city.  All twenty of us traveled in a mini-bus.  We climbed the Great Wall, toured a jade factory, explored museums, parks, and statues.  We shopped in outdoor markets, at tourist stops, and in department stores.  While at the Nanning Department Store the sales clerk used an abacus to calculate my purchase.  We ate course after course of delicious Chinese food (though one of our last meals was at the Hard Rock Café).   I was very careful about (not) drinking the water and only had to use a squat toilet (hole in the ground) a few times (hooray for conventional toilets around the world). I had a stash of pepto-bismol with me and took it every morning.   While in Guilin we went on a boat ride along the Li River.  The scenery was breathtaking.  People were living on the river so you can imagine my surprise when they washed the dishes in which our lunch was cooked in the Li River.  I almost threw up–and thought for sure we would all get sick, but no one did.

A few of the baby girls had been in foster homes so some of us had the chance to visit the homes and meet the foster families.  I was asked to go along to take photographs.  It was intense and emotional.  One of my favorite pictures is of Julia with her foster parents; there is a lot of love in that photo.  The oldest girl (who was about two and a half) had lived in a very primitive foster home.  It was dark, sparse, and had a chicken in a coop inside the house.

Everyone that adopts a child in China goes to Ghangzhou for the babies to get a medical check-up, a passport and a visa.  While the families took care of business, I flew to Hong Kong and reconnected with a friend living there.  I went to Stanley Market, saw the Hong Kong Temple, enjoyed a boat ride, walked all over the city, and tried Peking Duck for the first time.

Traveling in China was an amazing experience that I captured on 45 rolls of film.  I loved walking on the Great Wall.  I loved all the sights and smells and seeing how people lived.  I loved seeing people riding bikes loaded with bundles and dead chickens.  I loved trying new food, meeting new people, experiencing a new place.  I bought a travel journal before I went.  Each day I wrote and glued things in it.  The cover says: I AM NOT THE SAME HAVING SEEN THE MOON SHINE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD.

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Rosalyn Collings Eves is our UP CLOSE Trips and Travels guest author today.  She enjoys traveling, although she hasn’t been able to do nearly as much of this since becoming a mother to two young children: a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl. When not trying to plan and execute child-friendly trips, she plays with her children, teaches the occasional composition class, reads, and writes (not as much as she would like).

I was twenty the first time I went to Europe. It seemed like the height of adventure at the time, navigating different railroad stations with my handy Eurail pass, a single, large, unwieldy backpack on my back. And I was in Europe, a land drenched with history, with old castles rising unexpectedly from hillsides as we sped past on the train, and uneven cobblestone streets branching off of paved modern roads as we walked through towns.
 
I was traveling with an acquaintance of mine, a slim, pretty blond girl who got whistled at constantly when we were in Italy. I say “acquaintance,” because I didn’t know her well when we started: we were coming off of a semester abroad in London where we had been friendly but not exactly friends, and our mothers, fearful of the potential fates awaiting single female travelers, had arranged our airfare together.

At first it was almost idyllic as we made our way through Germany, Bavaria, and Switzerland. And then we went to Budapest. The name itself conjured pure romance for me, although I knew little about the country other than it had been the last bastion to stand between the ravaging Turkish armies and the rest of Europe, and that Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady was thought to be a Hungarian princess because of her impeccable English. Our arrival wasn’t entirely auspicious: we arrived late in the day and were directed to a nearby hostel. We decided later that our guide must have had some kind of financial arrangement with the hostel, because it was so dirty. (We were too scared of the grime to even risk the showers.) At the time, though, that just seemed to be part of the adventure.

I was alone when I set out on my exploration of Budapest; Kirsten had a different agenda for that day. I stopped in a local grocery store to buy a yogurt and some bread. After eating, I brushed the crumbs off my lap and set off across one of the many squares that dotted the city. I held my map in my hands (an obvious tourist, I’m sure), the map itself creased and uneven, the edges beginning to stick slightly to my palms under the warm spring sun.
 
I felt, rather than saw, the shadow in front of me; I looked up to see a stranger looming before me scant seconds before he whacked me in the head with the flat of his hand. He hit me hard enough that I stopped, suddenly, forcing the stream of foot traffic to part around me. I’m still not sure why he hit me, if I was in his way or he was just feeling particularly grouchy about tourists that day. I do know that I was left feeling off-balance, shaky and suddenly unsure of my place.
 
I decided to abandon my exploration of the city itself and headed across one of the suspension bridges that cross the Danube (called the Duna in Hungary) at even intervals. I was heading toward higher ground, toward Gellért Hill (named, I found later, for an early Christian martyr who was put in a barrel and rolled down the hill into the Duna). The figure of a woman upholding a palm frond beckoned enticingly from the base of the hill; ironically enough, she figures prominently in a monument to the Soviet “liberation” of Hungary from the rule of Nazi Germany. (Anyone who knows any Hungarian families who fled Hungary in the 1950s under Soviet rule understands the irony here.)

The initial climb was refreshing; the trail was crisscrossed by the cool, green shadows of a heavily wooded area. Ahead of me I could see a young couple, a few paces behind me a young family. It was only after I’d been climbing for several minutes that I realized that the couple had outpaced me and I had outpaced the family. The only person within eyesight (or earshot) was a young man in his mid-twenties. The only thing I really remember about him was that he had dark hair.

“Excuse me?” He called to me.
 
Surprised to hear English, I stopped and turned to him. I heard the rustle of the wind in the trees and realized, my heart suddenly beating faster, that we were alone on the trail.
 
I don’t remember exactly what he said; I do remember that he offered to show me a part of his anatomy that I had no desire to see. I said (with what seems in retrospect a ridiculous politeness) “No. Thank you.” I put my head down and walked as fast as I could (without actually running) and prayed that he wouldn’t follow me.
 
He didn’t, thankfully. And serendipitously I found my friend Kirsten at the top of the hill, having decided separately to make the same pilgrimage. I was overjoyed to see her; I may have even cried a little. I’m sure she was surprised by both reactions.
 
That night, I wrote in my journal. I thought of the two unfriendly encounters, my futile attempts to order stamps at the post-office or to navigate the metro system (although everywhere else I’d managed just fine), and I wrote, “I don’t understand the language, I don’t understand the culture, I don’t understand the people. This is the first city in Europe where I really feel like an outsider.”
 
Flash forward five months. I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, surrounded by my friends and family. In my hands, I hold a largish envelope with my mission papers. I rip the paper open, scan quickly until I find the important words. “You are hereby called to serve in the Hungary Budapest Mission . . .”
 
I thought back on my negative experience in Hungary and I felt a little afraid. But I went anyway.
 
And you know what? I learned to understand (and speak!) the language (which, by the way, is supposed to be the third hardest language for English speakers to learn, after Finnish and Chinese). I learned that the people were not actually that unfriendly (or that lewd)—that they were, in fact, some of the most generous people I’ve ever known. I fell in love with the country, with the seas of sunflowers stretching for yellow miles, with the intoxicating smell of linden trees in the summer. (Every summer, when the linden trees blossom in late June and early July, I’m transported back.) And that woman holding a peace offering atop the “Statue of Liberty”? The missionaries called her the Pizza Lady.
 
Are there places that (like some people) you found you misjudged on initial acquaintance? How did those places improve with additional exposure? Did you learn anything new about yourself through your changing association with that place?

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Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar

Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah – Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah

Allah is Great, Allah is Great

I bear witness that there is no divinity but Allah

 I experienced my first call to prayer in surround sound. The song burst forth from one mosque and then bounced and echoed from tower to tower in Cairo, the city of a thousand minarets.

 This summer several of my friends traveled to Jerusalem. I, on the other hand, used my hard-earned savings to visit the Muslim world–Egypt and Turkey, to be exact. I fell in love with Islamic art as a humanities major at BYU, and ever since I have longed to see the Shah (Imam) Mosque in Iran . . .or perhaps the more accessible mosques of countries a bit more friendly to Americans. I’ll admit, there were moments in the months leading up to the trip when I felt a bit ashamed of my desire to see the sacred spaces of another religion over the places where my Savior walked and worked miracles. Yet experience has taught me that truth underlies all real beauty.

The Mosque of Sultan Hassan in Cairo is one of the largest mosques in the world. Built on a four-iwan plan, there are four iwans— or niches—surrounding a large, open courtyard. I was there on a hot June afternoon when the mosque was practically empty.  Careful to walk along a worn strip of carpet so as not to scorch my bare feet, I took refuge from the heat in the shade of an iwan and marveled at the scale of the mosque. 

The twenty-foot depth of the niche seemed miniscule in comparison to the expanse of the white marble courtyard, which was blindingly bright under the rays of a two o’clock sun. Above me, lamps hung in straight rows on long chains; I wondered how long it would have taken to light all of them back in the 14^th century, when the mosque was built. I noted with a smile that a small metal water dispenser had been set up for actual use beside one of the pillars of the grand ablution fountain. An example of modern utility over beauty, I guess. Within the main iwan–the one which indicates the direction to Mecca—I identified three of the main characteristics of Islamic art. Muslims do not believe in depicting images of people in their sacred spaces, but the decoration of mosques is highly symbolic. Geometric patterns represent the harmony and order of the universe; arabesque, or patterns of vines and flowers, evoke images of paradise and the infinite nature of God; verses from the Quran are written in artful calligraphy, which Muslims believe to be the literal word of God. I liked the block-like calligraphy, which was different than the more slender, elegant writing that I had seen in other mosques. I felt comfortable in this and all of the mosques that I visited. The open courtyard and heat created an atmosphere of sleepy serenity. The simplicity of the design put me in a contemplative mood; I would liked to have sat and pondered and written for an hour. I had to settle for a leisurely look around and then move on to more sights, tastes, and sounds of Cairo.

Ottoman-style mosques are distinct from others in that they are covered by one or a series of domes. And the interiors are breathtaking. The Sultan Ahmed mosque in Istanbul is also known as the Blue Mosque, for the more than 20,000 blue tiles which adorn the interior. This mosque is an array of color. Surrounded by blue and red and gold, I felt like I was inside a jewel box.

My eyes, and the eyes of the many, many other visitors surrounding me, were lifted up to the heavens by elegant vines and patterns which crawled up the walls to the undersides of the domes. Yet perhaps even more impressive than the colors was the light. During my first visit, at about 10 a.m., I was bathed in light. Each of the domes and half domes is set upon a crown of windows; as the sun rises, glittering light streams through the colored glass. I’m not sure that anyone could be in a space such as this and not think of the divine. Despite its grandeur, and the fact that the space was crowed with tourists, there was a feeling of coziness to this mosque. Perhaps this was due to the feel of the carpet on my bare feet; I think that there was not only symbolism, but a physical reason that God commanded Moses to remove the shoes from his feet. Or maybe the low hanging chandelier created a sense of intimacy, which also served to highlight the smallness of man in this sacred space.

I don’t purport to know the intentions of those who built these mosques. Maybe they were pure in heart and were seeking only to glorify God. Maybe they built these grand structures as monuments to gratify their own ambitions. Perhaps, as is characteristically human, it was a combination of the two. I also can’t make any blanket statements about those who worship in these and other mosques today. Religion and culture in the Muslim world is a tricky thing to separate. But I do know that I met some wonderful people who were kind and helpful and sincerely interested in hearing about what I believe. I also know that despite the difference in religion, these mosques are sacred spaces. 

One day I would like to travel to Jerusalem to see the Western Wall, the Sea of Galilee, and the Garden Tomb. But on my last night in Istanbul, as I sat in front of the Blue Mosque listening to the day’s final call to prayer, I felt grateful for my experience in the Muslim world.

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Heather Olson Beal is guest posting for this week’s UP CLOSE – MAKING MARRIAGE WORK piece.  She is a mom of three kids who sometimes drive her nuts despite being genuinely great.  She lives in deep east Texas and is happy to finally be a professor and no longer a student!  She has a BA in Spanish from BYU, an MA in Spanish from Texas A & M University, and a Ph.D. in education from LSU.  Heather doesn’t cook, bake, sew, can, store, crochet, knit, quilt, garden, stamp or decoupage and doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt about it.

According to the muses at Segullah, marriage is “not all movie moments walking hand-in-hand along the beach to a beautiful sunset.” Their invitation for June guest posts even suggests that marriage is “less about romance and more about work and commitment.”  I’m not a blogger, and I’m not really even a writer, but this invitation spoke to me. You see, my husband and I haven’t been doing a whole lotta hand holding or walking on beaches. We’ve had less romance than usual, had lots of “discussions,” and we’ve done lots of work these last couple years. We seem to have had more than our fair share of crummy days, months–heck, even crummy quarters! So what’s our story? How are we sticking it out? Why are we sticking it out?

In short, we grew up in the Church, met at BYU (cue the cheesy music), got married in the temple, had three kids, served in all sorts of Church callings, and then, well, the crap hit the fan. We’ve been married for 17.5 years (has anyone ever heard of the 15-16-17-year itch?) and we’re not the same people we were. We’ve grown up–a lot. We’ve changed. We believe different things–different from what we used to collectively believe and different from what each of us as individuals used to believe.

Yeah, I’m talking about the Church. I’m talking about testimonies. Commandments. Temple marriage. Tithing. Garments. Priesthood. Polygamy. Big stuff. I could pin it all on my husband (and believe me, I’ve tried): he started it, he has more issues than I do . . . but the truth is, we’re both in this. What’s an otherwise happy Mormon couple to do when the going gets tough? I’ve heard/read of people threatening divorce. Whoa, now. Those are fighting words. That was never on the table for me. I’ve heard/read about people capitulating: the believing spouse stops going to church to keep the peace. Or maybe the no-longer-believing spouse decides to just fake it and go to church and continue to do the whole “Mormon thing,” to keep the peace.

I get that. Marriage is about compromise and negotiation. We don’t always get our way. But this is a crazy kind of peace, if you ask me. I really, really, really don’t want to go down either one of those paths. I need to find a way for both of us to be comfortable in our own skin, to be happy, authentic, and real—with  ourselves, with each other, and with our kids. I don’t want our kids to grow up and find out that one of us was masquerading as someone else. Hiding and pretending and skulking around do not a happy marriage make.

I get mad at my husband as we navigate this new terrain. I get frustrated. I cry. I yell. (Oops—mental to-do list: read The Anger Habit in Relationships.) But here’s what I’m TRYING to do, although I’m not always successful. I’m trying to remember that I married my husband; I didn’t marry the Church. I didn’t marry a gospel principle. I didn’t marry a commandment. I didn’t marry a priesthood holder (well, technically I did, but just stay with me, okay?). I married a man—a good one. A great one. A funny, smart, articulate, ambitious, supportive one. And I had three kids with that great guy. So I’m not going anywhere. I hope he’s telling himself the same thing. I think he is. If he’s not right now, that’s okay. I can wait.

I’m in good company. Harold B. Lee counseled that “the most important of the Lord’s work that you ever do will be the work you do within the walls of your own home” (Ensign, July 1973). Alma preached that “there should be no contention one with another, but that [we] should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having [our] hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another” (Mosiah 18:21). Well, it might seem like we don’t have one faith anymore. But we do have faith in each other. We have faith in our family. In Doctrine & Covenants 45:32, the Lord says, “my disciples shall stand in holy places, and shall not be moved.”

I am a disciple of Christ. My home and my marriage are holy places. I will not be moved.

[P.S. Could somebody please show me this post in a couple weeks? I might have forgotten about this moment of clarity by then.]

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Susan Noyes Anderson has written our UP CLOSE: MARRIAGE MAKING IT WORK post today.  Sue describes herself as a grandma who loves to write and a writer who loves to grandma. She hails from Northern California and is the mother of four grown children and the grandmother of three (who still have a lot of growing to do). If you haven’t seen her blog at Sue’s News, Views ‘n Muse, be sure to visit. 

I met my husband when we were both freshmen at the University of Utah. He was only eighteen years old at the time, and I was even younger–sixteen. We fell for each other pretty hard, but it was four years until we got married. (His idea. He wanted us to graduate first.)

For the first ten years of our marriage, I never even noticed he wasn’t perfect. The next ten years were spent resigning myself to the fact that he wasn’t perfect. The following ten taught me to accept the fact that he wasn’t perfect. And today (eight years into the next ten), I appreciate the fact that he isn’t perfect.

So. We’ve come full circle. Except that this time the “not noticing he isn’t perfect” comes with knowledge and appreciation. I see his imperfections, and I like them. They are familiar, endearing, and they balance out my own. I need that. Working in unison, we bring one another from either extreme toward the center, and both of us come closer to getting it right.

As people, we are still imperfect as can be, but our choice to be together (forever) is not. And that IS perfect.

Not long ago, I ran across a photo of two trees, a photo that reached all the way into my heart and pulled hard. These graceful giants seemed almost to share one trunk, but their upward growth flowed in and out, at times intertwined and at times separate, weaving away then toward each other in a beautiful dance of branch and limb. As always when I am particularly moved, I wrote a poem. One of the first things I did was share it with my husband, because it’s about us.

I’ve always been drawn to visual representations of the tree of life, and I’m delighted to have found what is, for me, a visual representation of the tree of marriage––or my marriage, at least. Acted upon by sun and storm, worn by wind and water, our trunks have stretched and dipped, met and parted. Winding over, under, around, and through each other in ways both sacred and superficial, our boughs have formed shapes and spaces known and understood by only the two of us. From newlywed bliss to the financial woes of a growing family, amidst baby blessings and adolescent acting out, through times of privation and times of plenty, we have stood side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Birth, death, disease, disaster, accomplishment, disillusionment, pain, jubilation, fear–all have left their mark. Life has joined us at the root and made us stronger.

As a young man about to marry the girl whose dreams were straight from a storybook, my husband inscribed the inside of a plain, gold wedding band: “Grow old with me, the best is yet to be.” It may have taken us forty years to figure out what that really means, but he was right. And we are living it.

 union: the nature

©2010 Susan Noyes Anderson

our roots run

together

trunk to trunk

we rise up

bark on bark

we grow

leave knots

love knots

forget-me-knots

knotholes and

arching separations

always winding back

together

bowing

to and fro

as branch in

branch we dance

and struggle

hang low then

stretch high

boughs yearning

reaching turning

tasting bits of

one (the very same)

bright azure sky

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With great pleasure we bring you this post by Deja Earley to kick-off our June UP CLOSE theme of Marriage MAKING IT WORK.  Deja lives outside Boston with her husband and three cats.  Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in places like Arts and Letters, Borderlands, and Poet Lore. She is poetry editor for the handsome little online zine, JuiceBox: A Journal of the Ordinary (

One of the big questions I had when I decided to marry a nonmember was whether or not Sam would support me in my faith. I thought about this a lot, discussed it when it came up with those I sought counsel from, and ultimately had no reason to believe he would be anything but supportive.

And, as I suspected, he has been the model of support. When I’m having a rough time, he gently suggests I attend the temple. Even when it comes to laws that would be hard for someone outside the LDS church to swallow–think tithing–he hasn’t whispered a word of criticism or reservation. He attends sacrament meeting with me about every other week so I won’t have to sit alone. We’ve made friends with other couples in the ward; he’s accepted and fulfilled a calling to teach the teacher prep course (!), and we joined the bishop and his wife for a Thanksgiving Feast last fall. Although he’s always clear (but respectful) about where he differs, he’s allowed himself to be a part of the community. This, I understand perfectly, is out of love for me.

That’s why, several weekends ago, when I realized that I hadn’t been supporting him in his faith, I was devastated. No one asked that question before we married, no one asked if we’d support each other spiritually, and I’m ashamed to say it didn’t once cross my mind. Even in the twenty-one months since we’ve been married, I’ve selfishly lapped up his support and even pouted about having to go alone to meetings. I’ve fretted the details of living my faith while married to someone who doesn’t share it.

Shame on me. Shame on me a thousand times.

In my defense (sort of), Sam’s renewal of faith is fairly recent, really since we went to Notre Dame in Paris last summer. But I’ve had many many months to figure it out. What can I say? I am slow.

Recently, Sam has mentioned he’d like me to come to mass with him now and again, and I confess I hesitated. But a few Sundays ago, when I entered a time warp in the hour before my church meeting and realized when I went to leave that I was so late I’d surely miss the sacrament (has that ever happened to you?), I opted for a later meeting and went with Sam to his. I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t even understand everything that happened. But there was incense and music and a beautiful message, and when Sam introduced me to the priest, Father F. was so kind and glad to see me. But mostly, more powerful than all of that, was to realize what I had been missing, and, more significantly, what I had been denying Sam. He was clearly so happy to have me there, so happy to share it with me, so glad I wanted to learn the songs and figure out when I was supposed to sit and stand. We talked about getting more involved in that community, staying after for the social gathering, meeting people, making friends.

Afterwards we sat in my car, parked in front of our apartment. In the last few weeks the trees have burst into pink blossoms, and the petals are just beginning to fall. There was a breeze, and as I apologized for my lack of support and wept a little, we both watched these delicate pale pink raindrops flutter down and pool in the street and on the sidewalks. It’s shocking to me how much falling blossoms act like water, how they really do rain and puddle. And it’s even more shocking to me that Sam forgave me, said we were learning and figuring things out, and that it was okay.

It made me feel again what I felt when I was in the very depths of the decision of whether or not to marry Sam. I was staying at my parents’ house in Utah, running the quiet, ordered streets of their neighborhood, and listening to an interview with Eboo Patel, who was talking about his book Acts of Faith. Patel advocates the power and necessity of Religious Pluralism, which focuses on overlaps between faiths, uses the overlaps and differences to create meaningful communities and to effect change. And I stopped, put my hands on my knees, and was overwhelmed by a sort of vision of what my and Sam’s marriage could be. That maybe it wouldn’t be what I had planned when I was a little girl, that maybe it wouldn’t look like my friends’ marriages, but that maybe, just maybe, there was something we could do together, something important, something powerful, something that could only come when a little Mormon girl and a witty Catholic boy got together and were brave enough to stay together and raise a family in that overlap.

And I can say this for that ideal: I don’t know if we’re there yet; I don’t think we’re yet “powerful,” but I have been astonished to find that, although we’ve had our rough spots in the last few years, exactly none of those rough spots have been related to our differing faiths. That aspect of our relationship, the part where we don’t agree on every point of doctrine, has been nothing but intellectually and spiritually enlarging.

At least it has for me. And for Sam, well, I hope to show him I can be as unswervingly supportive as he’s been to me. I’m grateful he’s shown me how to do it.

Related posts:

1. A Moment of Clarity
2. He and Me – Can We Be (Just) Friends?
3. a different sort of happily-ever-after

We’re happy to tell you that we’ve managed to sneak in one last UP CLOSE motherhood post by Eliana Osborn.  Eliana worships the sun in the desert southwest.  She spends her days teaching her two young Jedi masters to only use the force for good, as well as at Arizona Western College.  She has published in Budget Travel magazine and Literary Mama, with upcoming work in The Friend and San Diego Family Magazine.

“Right this way folks, circle around the Picasso on the left.”

 I’m surrounded by a group of tourists holding museum brochures and looking anxiously up at the large painting of a blue man mournfully playing his guitar. The cold Chicago wind is far away from our entourage deep inside the Art Institute.

“As you can see, this is from the Blue period. Can anyone tell me how this is different from his later works?”

A sudden crash brings me back to the family room, where I’m building the world’s largest two-car garage out of nothing more than wooden blocks.

“The dinosaur got it, Mommy! Do it again!”

The hours of the day spread before me, endless repetitions of songs and books and ball throwing. I start to stack blocks again, this time with a plan: I’ll only use the triangle ones. My son is enchanted by patterns and it’s as though I have invented a whole new style of architecture.

The sand is blowing, scorching my face. I wipe a slow moving drop of sweat from between my breasts and try to focus on what is before me. Something is coming into focus after hours of careful excavation. I’m just using my horsehair brush now, sweeping the last bits of dirt away. The hieroglyphics are carved into the top of the casket. I take a quick photo before trying to decipher the message. We’ve been searching the area for months, looking for more than a few pottery shards. I call for my assistant, who scurries over, loudly popping gum. When she sees the massive find in front of me, her mouth drops open and stays that way. Though most of the color has faded, bits of lapis and ochre stand out in contrast to the beige everything.

  Feeling the engraved text with my finger, I begin to translate each glyph aloud.

“Mama! You didn’t say it right. You skipped a page.” Cole’s entreaties bring me back to the family room, where we’re sitting on the couch, reading about a monkey with endless curiosity. It is hot; the air conditioning hasn’t turned on. Or maybe I’m sweating because this little person is less than an inch away from me. 

We start the book again. George begins his adventure on a ship while we’re stuck here looking at the pictures of it. I glance at my son’s face while turning the page—he’s gleefully unaware of my boredom, caught up wondering what will come next for his furry little friend. With a deep breath I smile and make a suitably serious voice for The Man in the Yellow Hat.

 Cole’s down for his nap without a fuss and I pop some taquitos into the toaster oven. I flip through the latest Newsweek at the dining room table while I wait.

“Up next, women’s uneven bars.”

My hands are moist as I rub chalk on them and try to ignore the flashing cameras all around the stadium. Coach slaps me on the back with a last, “Be sure to stick your landing,” and then it is my turn. In my red, white, and blue leotard I throw my shoulders back, run, and leap up to grab the high bar. The crowd goes wild–if I do well, Team America will snatch the gold medal from the Chinese.

Spinning and snapping, I am back and forth, legs and arms switching places in an endless series of twists and turns. This is it! I nailed it! Not a single mistake. I spin around one last time before dismounting, and leap.

Smack, my butt hits the floor. The oven timer sounds and I look around confused. This is not a stadium. This is my dining room. I did not botch my landing; I just fell off my chair. 

It’s not every day I fantasize about alternate lives. Some days it is constant, especially when my toddler is feeling needy. Apparently, growing up is harsher than it looks and he needs periodic comfort. As we sit, endlessly sit, with him on my lap and nothing but soothing sounds needed from me, my mind wanders. Not to laundry or groceries or even my unfinished library books. 

 
In the quiet moments of sameness I transcend everything I actually know. I don’t imagine different selves, I become them. Better than a movie or book, my daydreams encompass me, however briefly. Perhaps I have an overactive imagination or am struggling with the change of pace that being a stay-at-home mom entails. But I think my active dream world is a bit more. It is the way I balance the many sides of myself. And for now, at least, it’s working.

Related posts:

1. You Are Welcome
2. Olympic love
3. The Witching Hour

Natasha Loewen’s mothering post wraps up the UP CLOSE topic of motherhood for May.  Natasha lives in central Alberta with her husband, four children, and a large yellow lab. She is starting a 4-year B.A. in English this fall, after a 10-year period of full-time mothering. She recently achieved a goal to have a poem published in a literary journal, and she writes online at BecomingSomething.com. She longs to save Dr. House’s soul and believes she could if he’d just give her the chance.

As a child I once fantasized that my mother, at eighteen, was secretly the town whore. I hoped for men sprinkled throughout the world, all possible sperm donors, and that one day my real father would reveal himself from among them. He would be rich–rich enough to afford a McDonald’s birthday party and dance classes for me. He would be overjoyed to know me. He would have abandoned me by accident, not by choice.

For about two years I suspected that my mother was really my aunt, raising me because she was the oldest of five girls, and the youngest, my real mother, could not bear the responsibility. But, I do have a photo, printed long before PhotoShop, of her swelled belly framed by the cliché red and white, polka-dotted, baby-shower bikini. That’s standard evidence, right? And as I age more rapidly than my age should allow, there’s no mistaking her face on mine.

Only these physical similarities convince me that she is my mother and, to this day, I still hold out hope that my biological father is not really my father (though she assures me he’s the only possible candidate). I have no blood siblings.

She raised me alone on welfare, not including the spring break and summer holidays when she farmed me out to relatives who had no business caring for plants, much less children. We never owned a car. We never traveled anywhere. There were no playdates or piano lessons. We welfare children of teen single moms ran feral, finding fun in the large dumpsters aside our apartment complex, and picking berries in the grassy hill across the street.

 All my mother hoped for was a man. All I hoped for was a mother. And so we pretended. We pretended that our insecurities didn’t hurt. She pretended through late-night V.C. Andrews and Stephen King, causing her to sleep away the rest of the day; through television, alcohol, cigarettes, and occasional pot. I pretended as best I could through schooling, friends, and my little red copy of the New Testament that was distributed at school by a local church.

Like all young children, as a young child I adored my mother. She would sing me to sleep and we would argue about who loved the other more. Of course she would always manage to convince me that mothers love their children more than children could ever love their mothers. However, by age six, I doubted, lacking evidence.

My memory is probably selective. I was well-fed, clothed, and housed, but a restful sleep without a drug party booming in the living room was not a guarantee. I don’t remember any cuddly comforts when I fought with my friends or had other insecurities: “Well, I’m not surprised you and Amanda aren’t friends again. I don’t know why anyone would be friends with you.” I remember not one encouragement to higher learning or career aspirations: “Just tell your teacher to f*** off.” I cannot recall lessons about morality–honesty, generosity, service, kindness: “I’m going to steal this and put it in your pocket. That way, if they catch you, they won’t do anything because you’re a kid.”

From about age six on, I mostly only remember bad things. I remember vividly with tastes, and smells, and black, black shadows. I remember thousands of little hurts embedded in my skin and organs, aging me, and embedded in my heart and mind, disabling me in ways that will demand many self-help books and angelic friends.

Now I am the mother. I thought it would be so easy to learn from her mistakes. I had my babies and nursed them from my breasts as much as they sought. I walked them for hours and held them in the shower, skin-to-skin. They slept with me. I poured upon them gentleness and adoration. I taught them to read. I readied them for school and then… they disappeared. And in their places appeared little Natashas who know these elementary school ages so well. I cannot look in their eyes and believe that they love me, and because they don’t love me, because I did not love my mother, I cannot hug them. I am afraid of them, even. How can I trust in something I’ve never experienced?

Then, “the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,” and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I look at my young, brilliant daughter, for example, so like me in appearance and personality; she seems so far away, writing her own story. I have the power to change the story, but I’m stuck here. Sometimes I do break through the barrier of who-knows-what, this intricate mixture of anxiety and inability to believe in something I’ve never felt, and I take the pen with which she writes and swallow it. I pick her up and dance with her. She beams. And for a moment, I can believe she loves me. For a moment, peace and trust punctuate the thick veil of diffidence and fear that separates us because of me, because of my mother.
It starts with me. Every day is like a new art project. I may have created other paintings in the past that please me, but each time I put brush to canvas I am awash with anxiety and disbelief. I’m no painter. I’ve taken no lessons. So many are better than me. They have natural talent that was nurtured in them. What am I doing? So, after a few feeble efforts, I put away the canvas, ashamed at myself for giving up and yet unable to produce something from nothing. A few months later, I might try again.

As my four children grow, I will no longer see myself in them. I’m experiencing this now with my son. This is the blessing in being essentially orphaned at age twelve, or, as my husband says, in becoming a refugee. While I would have preferred a Claire Huxtable mom, lacking a mom at all is better than trauma after trauma affecting the relationships between my children and me. My story with her as my pretending mother stops at twelve and she becomes just a woman in my life to whom I occasionally speak. The projection onto my children of a scorned and resentful child-version of me will disappear. I will look at them and, seeing only them, I’ll know: Oh, I love them so much! There will be no intricate lines and numbers obstructing my creativity; this mothering is no paint-by-number objective. I will have a clean canvas again, with no memories from which to rebel or model. They will love me, as they always have, but this time I will believe it. Of course, I will always love them more than they love me–real mothers always do.

I am creating my life’s first real mother:  me.

Related posts:

1. Because this is what I’m really thinking about this morning:
2. A Mother’s Gift
3. Afternoons of Nothing, part. 2

Today’s post is by Catherine Kemeny Gambrell.   This piece on motherhood adds to a popular UP CLOSE segment for May.  Catherine is an anything-but-stay-at-home mom to the world’s two most beautiful, entertaining, and sleepless children! She currently lives in northern Utah with her seminary teacher husband of 8 years. Together they enjoy hiking, camping, backpacking, cycling, and basically every other outdoor activity. Alone, Catherine hypothetically enjoys reading, writing, dancing, cooking, and showering, though her children make sure she is never alone so she usually has a companion or two joining her in these endeavors. Catherine has a BS in Sociology from Brigham Young University, which she occasionally uses to stir up controversy among her friends and acquaintances… Catherine blogs at yourfireyoursoul.blogspot.com

As I think back to my first child’s infancy, it is funny to me how much I dwelt on sleep, or more appropriately, the lack of sleep. At the time, I was sure no baby could be as poor a sleeper as my son. At the time, I knew if I could just get some sleep life would be perfect. At the time, the sleep deprivation felt like the hardest thing in the world.

How I sometimes wish for those days back.

My son woke frequently to nurse at night for his first year and a half of life. But he went promptly, and deeply, back to sleep until the next time he woke to nurse. I never had to rock him for hours at night. He never woke up, suddenly aware and angry that I had placed him in his crib, just as I settled back to sleep. After his newborn days, I never had to change diapers in the middle of the night. He slept in until at least 10:00 every morning, and he took predictable long naps two times a day. He fell asleep nursing every night without a fight.

I miss the days when I could sleep in. I miss the days when I could take a nap to catch up on lost sleep. I miss the days when I had only had one child to take care of.

I wish I could have appreciated how much simpler life was with only one child.

Of course, at the time, it didn’t feel like life was simple. It felt like more than I could handle. Just like even though I am sure having only two children is infinitely easier than having more, right now it feels like more than I can handle.

As with all things in life, just because it could get worse in the future doesn’t make it any easier to deal with NOW.

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is what I call “one-uppers.” People who just have to “one-up” all your trials (or successes). They’re the ones who say to you, “You think you have it hard, with one kid who doesn’t sleep, and a husband who is in school? Just you wait. Just you wait until you have 4 (or 6. Or 14.)kids, and your husband is the bishop in your ward, and your left leg falls off, and your house burns down, and…” blah blahblah. Understandably, there are people in the world whose lives are a whole lot harder than mine. But that doesn’t negate the fact that my life does sometimes overwhelm me, stress me out, make me feel inadequate, or lonely, or desperate.

When my son wasn’t sleeping well, it DID feel like the end of my world. Even though, as I now know, it could have been a lot worse.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past few weeks, as my daughter’s poor sleeping habits have now far surpassed my son’s. I found myself telling my husband recently that I wished our daughter could be as good a sleeper as our son was. Did I ever think those words would have come out of my mouth, about 2-3 years ago, when I was in the midst of all my troubles with our son not sleeping? Never in a million years.

My perspective has totally changed.

Or is it just that I have grown as a mother, and am continuing to grow, line upon line, precept on precept? I think Heavenly Father is wise. He wants us to succeed. He pushes us to (what we feel is) our absolute limit, and then as we learn and grow and our limit changes, he pushes us to our new absolute limit, over and over again, until we are handling things far beyond what we ever imagined we would be able to.

Motherhood is my“refiner’s fire.”My children challenge me in ways I never could have foreseen. It may seem trivial to some, but there are times, in my constant haze of sleeplessness, when it feels like I just can’t handle any more. I can’t stay awake another minute with a baby who refuses to sleep for the fourth straight hour of the night. I can’t deal with another preschooler tantrum about what we eat for breakfast. I can’t tell my 3-year-old not to squeeze his sister one more time. I must constantly keep my anger in check with my children, my greatest joys, my greatest trials. As I am met with the challenges of motherhood (which, I have to be honest, have taken me by surprise), I am presented with great opportunities for growth.

I just hope I have the strength (and energy) to allow this fire to refine me, and to allow “the insignificant and the unimportant in [my life to] melt away like dross and make [my] faith bright, intact, and strong” (James E. Faust, “The Refiner’s Fire,” Ensign, May 1979, 53).

 What challenges in your life have served as “refiner’s fires?” Are there any trials in your life that seem easier in retrospect? Do you think this is because your perspective has changed, or do you feel you are now just better equipped (through experience) to handle those challenges?What are the challenges of motherhood that have most surprised you? Do you have any “one-uppers” in your life?

Related posts:

1. To Sleep. Perchance.
2. Another One (Bites My Bust?)
3. My Vacation From Vacation