Even piano lessons.

Last year I spent just about every afternoon driving little people to various lessons, games, practices and rehearsals. There were the accompanying happy experiences: pride and excitement as my daughter performed onstage for the first time; my sons becoming more flexible and strong through Kung Fu; the sense of accomplishment my oldest two kids felt after finishing well in a golf tournament.

But there was the ugliness of all the extra-curriculars too: the fact that I spent very little after-school time helping kids with homework and just being there; the nagging and quarrelling about practicing, the lack of decent dinners (I always meant to do something in the crock pot, but it just never seemed to happen).

This year instead of becoming more accomplished we are going back to the basics: we will be working on eating good meals together and getting to sleep early. That’s our after-school curriculum now.

If you have school-aged children then you know the pressure to do everything; to try everything. What if you have a future world-class gymnast on your hands or a budding concert violinist?  How will you know unless you expose them to everything, right?  It has finally dawned on me that if I have a world-class anything, I’ll know.  A prodigy’s talents do not hinge on a ballet class taken in first grade.

I’ve had to admit to myself that my children aren’t particularly gifted at any of the activities they have been involved in. And they didn’t really love them. I want them to be passionate about the things they do. I want them to soar and become wonderful. But after a long hard look I realized that most of our activities were just taking up our time and money.

The constant busy-ness has been strangling me. I don’t have a go, go, go personality. I like things calm and unhurried.

There would be lots of tears and complaining, I imagined, when I announced our new plan to not do anything. But no. It seems that we were all pretty fed up with the crazy schedule.

We’ve spent the last two weeks since school began hanging out with each other. I’ve had the time to make a nice meal every night. We’ve enjoyed leisurely dinners together full of laughter and conversation and then gotten to bed at a decent time. The simple life has ended up being pretty lovely.

We still continue to do Scouts and church activities. We’ll probably phase things in slowly. But I plan on keeping the extra-curriculars in check. If a child loves something, that’s fine. But the days of signing kids up just to do something fun are over.

Long live simplicity.

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2. Just Doing my Best
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Was I sad for these women without first names, without things for me to call them? Or was it more a deep respect a la the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Did their lack of moniker and/or our unknowing make them revered? Or were they just ladies with indecipherable birth certificates?

Jude. Did we choose it right? People say to me, “I love that name.” “He’s such a Jude.” I say back, “Really?” and, “Really???” Because I fretted a bit on committing to it. Or even calling him by it for that matter. For the first few weeks, I called him just this: “baby.” How clever and creative of me right? But that’s what he was, that’s all he looked like. Calling him anything would have made his ethereal perfection seem too worldly, and any name was too old, too lawyerish, to actorish, too biblical, too silly, too trendy, too formal…

Do we become our names, or do our names become us? Was it easy for you to name you children? Should whimsy and taste be the only factors taken into consideration, or do we attempt to name the adult we think we’ll raise? What about nicknames? What’s in a name? Or does it really even matter? Is this a silly question only made anxious by aforementioned addled mommy-brain?

But I’m curious, do you love your name?

I do mine. Brooke. And I love Jude’s name too. Now.

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3. The [Mama Trying] on the Mount

Early last Sunday morning I found myself sitting before our stake’s high council. Noticeably the only one dressed in a skirt, I was there to witness the reporting of two recently returned missionaries. One was my own son, just back from the England Manchester Mission; the other was a stranger to me. Both young–so young, barely 21–men had been asked to, by promptings of the spirit, share an experience from their respective missions that had changed lives. They were also asked to bear their respective testimonies.

The stranger went first. I can’t recall his words or even the experience he chose to share. The details are not as relevant here as the spirit that was present.

I was blown away.

Then it was my son’s turn. In some respects, the man who rose to speak before that room was as much of a stranger to me as the first, whom I had never before met. Luke boldly bore witness of the truths he knows–not just believes, but actually knows. He has questioned. His testimony has been tried and tested. (It will continue to be tried and tested–that is part of our earthly experience.) But he knows. The spirit spoke along side Luke and confirmed that what he witnessed of is true.

Again, I was blown away.

This mother had no doubt that these two stripling warriors knew it.

The very next day I received an e-mail from my second-born. Currently serving in Newcastle upon Tyne, he is bravely enduring the almost universal struggles of a new missionary just out in the field. After letting us know that things are still hard, but that he is still seeking to learn from the difficulties he is experiencing, he shared with us a deeply personal and sacred experience he had had that week. Something I cannot share here.

Yet again, I was blown away.

Shall the youth of Zion falter?

I believe the answer is “No!”

Some will struggle. Some will take other paths. And some may wander those paths far further and far longer than we can comfortably stand. But I believe–I hope with all my heart–they will come home. They will come back to that iron rod and grasp even more firmly this time.

They were certainly two different paths that brought my boys to stand together at the entrance of the Preston England Temple.

And a good number of them will simply go and do and be better and stronger than I or my generation could have dreamed of being. They are not just worlds ahead of where we were as youth, but in some respects, they seem worlds ahead of where I am even now.

They have to be.

While we know the pow’rs of darkness
Seek to thwart the work of God,
Shall the children of the promise
Cease to grasp the iron rod? No!
True to the faith that our parents have cherished,
True to the truth for which martyrs have perished,
To God’s command,
Soul, heart, and hand,
Faithful and true we will ever stand.

I see examples of the strength of the youth around me almost every day. I see this even in the kids whose steps are, at the moment, far less sure than those of the two young men who boldly stood before the high council and bore witness.

There is goodness.

There is kindness.

There is love.

We, as adults, need to call them out for it. We need to catch them being good.

What examples of goodness and faith and standing for truth and righteousness do you witness in the youth around you?

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And today I’m weary and overwhelmed with the work I need to do and completely unable to write an inspiring post. So how about this? Let’s talk about presents.

My friends gifted my son with an incredibly thoughtful freshman survival kit: laundry bag, vitamins, shoe polish kit, air freshener, apron, Kleenex, gum, Gatorade, Cliff Bars, a USB drive, Shout wipes, a piggy bank with “Mission Fund” on one side and “Dating Fund” on the other, lots of other things I’ve forgotten and best of all a homemade cookbook filled with Kit’s best recipes. Ben and I were both overwhelmed with their generosity. “I just can’t believe they went to all this work just for me.” he repeated over and over.

So tell me please about a spectacular gift that you’ve given or received. What made it meaningful? Was it for a birthday, Christmas or a life event? Do you aspire to be an excellent gift giver (I do!)? Have you ever invested a lot of time in a gift and had it flop?

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She just turned twelve last Thursday. In fact, today she starts junior high and my next-youngest child—my blond-haired boy who just yesterday, I swear, was starting kindergarten—starts high school. I still can’t figure out how we got here: one minute I was nursing newborns and changing diapers and watching wispy-haired one-year-olds take their first steps; the next I’m sending lanky adolescents out the door to junior high and high school. Even more unfathomable to me is that this past Sunday morning—the same day that my youngest graduated from Primary—my second-born, my eighteen-year-old son, had his final pre-mission interview with the stake president (his final pre-mission interview!) and moved into his freshman dorm on Sunday night. He’s off to BYU for a semester before leaving on a mission, hopefully right after the Christmas holidays.

My son is right where I want him to be at this stage of his life, and I couldn’t be prouder of the fine young man he has grown up to be. And he’s eager for this next phase of his life to begin: on Saturday, when he was packing up his clothes and books and dishes and bedding and loading everything into the car, he strode through the house, whistling, all smiles and cheerful confidence. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Yet, these past few nights I’ve found myself stopping at the top of the stairs and staring at his empty bed, my throat tight. I already miss the sound of him practicing his trumpet, and the way he stoops down to hug me goodnight. And though my son assured me, on his last night at home, “I’ll just be five minutes away,” having already sent a daughter off to college—who will be going to graduate school next fall—I know that though he’ll be back on weekends and holidays and drop by for the occasional dinner or to do his laundry, he’ll never really come home again.

But up until last Sunday I hadn’t had time to think about it. These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of back-to-school preparations and pre-mission doctor visits and other appointments and shopping for dorm supplies and putting together a recipe book for my son and overseeing my daughter’s birthday celebrations. I’ve been so busy that I’ve only given my son’s leaving a few cursory thoughts at night after dropping into bed, exhausted, when I’ve fretted over where he might be sent on his mission, or worried that he won’t separate his whites from his colors when he does his laundry.

But on Sunday, as I watched my daughter receive her Faith in God Award and noticed that she is now almost as tall as the Primary president (granted, the Primary president is short, but still), I realized—really realized—that for the very first time in nearly twenty years I will no longer have any children in Primary. My baby is twelve. My son is off to college and will be on his mission in four short months. And as the children sang, “If you’ll miss her and you know it, wave good-bye” and we all waved, I suddenly found myself weeping, wiping my eyes for real. And on Sunday night after I went to bed, I wept again.

When my son left for his dorm Sunday night he smiled as he hugged me and said, “Bye Mom, I’m going off to college now.”

I smiled as I watched him go, my heart in my throat. And inwardly I waved good-bye.

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I went by myself, which enabled me to look at each face as long as I wanted. The diversity astounded me, especially given the limited constraints of space and subject. The images were all facing forward—there was no variety even in angle or posture—yet each had a unique mood and feel.

It got me wondering if I could do something similar in my own medium of writing. Each artistic field is weighted differently, and I wasn’t sure if the concept of playing with color, light, and line could really translate to language. For instance, there’s no direct linguistic equivalent to the feeling of blue. But writing has the advantage of being able to employ multiple senses, even if indirectly—temperature, texture, taste, sound, smell.

Would it be possible for me to take one subject, something even as simple as a tree or rock, and find forty ways to write about it? How could I convey the warmth of amber or the energy of impasto with my words? How would my writing change if I wrote about something I loved—my family or my faith?

One of my favorite writing exercises at the Segullah retreat was reaching into a bag (with eyes closed), feeling various random objects, choosing one, and working through a series of questions about how we might write about the object. What did it feel like? What color might it be? What memories and places do you associate with it? What other perspectives might you view this object from (what does it look like from the sky, from the ground)? What might this object symbolize in your life? It made me begin to realize the depth of simple things once we apply our own experience to them and the power of being willing to plumb those depths.

As I wandered among the many faces of Christ, almost featureless yet distinct, I wondered about the various ways we communicate, the potential of a single word to have multiple layers, the feelings of color and light.

I wondered about how to write like a painter.

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It’s been a tough afternoon, and all of the post ideas I had floating around in my mind seem flat and unimportant. Ironic, because to most people the death of a pet sounds flat and unimportant.

But here in the four walls of our universe, it’s our own small tragedy. We got him for Christmas, so we’ve had him for almost eight months. We watched him grow from a tiny fluff ball into a big fluff ball. We loved it when he did a “binky”—a random, springy jump that is a rabbit expression of joy.

Last night he was fine. This morning he was sick. This afternoon he died.

The kids are teary, becoming raw with the question “why?” It’s their first time through the valley of the shadow. The idea that sometimes there is no “why” feels like a hollow outrage and hurts almost as much as the loss itself.

I’m feeling jarred by the image of our little pet being laid into the dirt—the familiar fur looking strange on the stiff, unanimated body. The empty corner in the kitchen has left a dull sort of awe at the fragility of life and an almost panic at the thought of losing more than a pet.

I know that we will all heal, that in a few weeks (or months) the memory of our pet will be happy. But tonight, when our hearts are sore and void in a space that didn’t even exist eight months ago, I wonder about that old cliché that it’s better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all.

I really do.

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I am always surprised when my garden yields something. The beans surprised me this year, because every other year when I’ve planted beans they got eaten by bugs before they had a chance to grow. This year I planted two packages of seeds, inside my garden beds and also in the dirt along the edge. I planted beans along my outside fence too, even though I knew they would be overshadowed by the vines that grow there.

I’ve never really liked fresh beans. I hate the way they squeak against my teeth, and I hate their rubbery texture. But beans had never grown in my garden before, so I wasn’t worried.

Except this year, they actually did. The picking I did yesterday was the third picking, and there are still more beans out there, thin curled ones waiting to plump up, white flowers waiting to ripen into fruit. I have discovered that if I overcook beans, so they are tender and nonsqueaky, I don’t dislike them so much, so I’ve cooked and frozen them in anticipation of a beanless winter. But I am still baffled by abundance. Why is it that some plants grow wildly, and the tomatoes I nursed through late frosts have a few anemic fruit, but nothing like the swollen baskets I picked last year?

I’m sure there are gardening answers for my questions, the first one being that my little garden is an afterthought, and I don’t invest the time in it that I could. If I were out there every day, I would know the plants better. I would see what’s been eating my cabbage, I would notice that the pumpkin vine needed to be trained back inside the fence. I know the garden would be better if I gave it more.

But I’m still astonished by what it yields in spite of my benign neglect, in spite of the way I plant the seeds, turn on the automatic watering system, and then forget about them. Not enough to live through a winter, but enough to enjoy now, and enough to bring the taste of August to my January dinners.

How’s your garden this summer? How does random abundance surprise you? What in your life yields more than you imagined it would?

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After I finished my master’s degree and before entering my doctoral program, I taught for two years full-time at BYU as a “visiting instructor.” The position was a new one, and the 5-interview process of being hired seemed grueling to me. My second-to-last interview was with a vice president at BYU, who was wary of past BYU English professors’ liberalism. He noticed on my curriculum vitae that some of my conference presentations incorporated feminist and Marxist theories applied to literature.

“Do you consider yourself a feminist?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I told him. “I enjoy studying feminist theory.”
“How do you balance being a feminist and being a Mormon?” he questioned.

I responded that there had come a time when I had to decide that I am first and foremost an LDS woman. That my religious identity gets precedence over others. So, I do my best to look at feminist theory from the perspective of my base identity as an LDS woman, rather than focusing on what my religion looks like from my feminist identity.

This morning I was remembering that conversation in light of my shifting roles. Last night, I had prepared for the day as a mother, who was getting ready to step more fully into my professor identity. But this morning, I had to put my professor role aside for the responsibilities of my current base identity as a mother of a sick little boy.

This jostling of identities often doesn’t feel entirely comfortable when the choice about which to step into isn’t as clear as it was for me this morning. There’s guilt associated with identity shifts. And self-doubt. I remember going back to a major conference after my daughter was born and feeling like a big, fat fraud sitting there with people who eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff while I could only devote naptimes to my study. But a few years later, I’m getting more comfortable with my shifting identities and more confident in my choices.

What about you? What identities are you juggling currently (mother, wife, daughter, sister, ward member, friend, employee, etc.) and which has priority right now in your life? How do you personally balance your roles?

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This post is mistitled. It should read The Privilege of Being a Middle Class (American-Mormon) Married Woman. I admit that up front.

We marry. We have a baby. We breastfeed them and change diapers. We potty train them and squish play dough. Then we walk them to school, and drive them to lessons. We usually have more than one baby. And the routine is more or less the same. Soon the last baby is no longer potty training or squishing play dough. And we walk him or her to school. And then we have, time.  It’s like air at the top of an hourglass, gradually increasing, letting us breath deeper and deeper as time runs out with our children. The time creeping up on us, the time that is ours.

 It’s not that I feel entitled, exactly. I have grand goals. I want to pay for college educations, support my aging parents, take care of myself in old age, assist those around me, and serve missions with my husband. I want to pick up my kids at the close of their missions. I want to be the grandma always available to help my daughter and daughter-in-laws when they have babies.  When my husband goes somewhere, I want to go with him. I want to go to conferences that interest me on a whim.  I want to go see my sisters, and my children and their children. I want to traipse around the English countryside and explore parrish records where my ancestors were christened, married and buried. And I don’t want the hour glass overturned again, sand taking up my air.

We live a privileged life. We have a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, food on our table. Our tanks are full of gas. I pay for things like swim lessons in the summer and piano lessons in the fall.  My family goes skiing every winter. But while I don’t need to work, given my goals I do feel the need to eventually add to our income. However, I’ve come to the realization that I don’t want to work full time, to have to be on a clock constantly, always building a schedule around my job. I realize this is selfish, that my goals too, ultimately are selfish.

 “Motherhood is being the queen bee! The Queen! You get to sit home and run the show, shielded and protected by the worker bee,” are the words my young women leader engraved into the moral judgment center of my brain. So that’s what I expected. It’s what I planned for. It’s what I got. I felt entitled as a woman to not have to work, at least not for money. Women have claim on their husbands for their maintenance, after all.  

Ultimately it’s up to my husband and me to find the balance in our lives.  Crossroads are like that, finding the road that is best for you be it paved highway or country road, or blazing a new one.

The time creeps up on you. As a mother, how do you plan to spend your time when the children are older? Do you have any plans? Is it fair to plan to not work? Even if your own pursuits won’t incur additional expenses, should you feel obligated to supplement the family income?

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