Looking back with Lot's Wife

If I hadn’t talked to other people, if I didn’t know that we weren’t unusual, or, heaven forbid, bad parents, I wouldn’t be writing this. I would go to my grace in silence. Respectful silence. However, I must say that the first couple of days of the first “yours, mine and ours,” family-wide Elder Reunion were a night-mare. I uttered those immortal words, the motto of every over-indulgent, hysterical, “we will all be happy because I said so, crazed mom since the beginning of time.” I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN IF I LIVE TO BE A MILLION YEARS OLD! I had planned it all out. We were going to a dude ranch in Southern Utah with all eight of our kids for a four-day holiday that would last from Thursday through Sunday. Everyone seemed excited. A couple of the kids couldn’t come, but most would be there bright and ready to go Thursday at noon. We had to be on time because the ranch had a camp counselor to make plans with Horseback riding. Ten a.m. Friday morning, line dancing. Five-thirty Saturda...

July 19, 2000 Hellos and good-byes are very dramatic moments for me. All my emotions surge to the front and I’m sometimes just overwhelmed. Of course, this doesn’t count in the grocery store and I can pretty much buy gas and see people in the laundromat—our dryer is broken—and leave and not choke up. But when I say good-bye at the end of a good conversation with a friend, I feel a wonderful synthesis where all the parts of our friendship come together and we put a seal on it and make a commitment to remember this moment and remember what happens when we’re together. It’s a bit much but it’s okay. A good conversation is like this wonderful work of art that you make with someone and your good-bye is its only obituary, its only marker. A good conversation makes me feel I understand the world a little better, that I’ve corrected somewhere where I was going wrong and learned a little more about love. Talking freely about life and feeling an atmosphere where that can happen is my favorite e...

July 12, 2000 My mother was a hypochondriac and while there are some sad and awful things about someone being a hypochondriac, I loved it. The best part was staying home from school—staying home was nice. On a snowy day, after looking out the kitchen window for a while, I would open the oven door and prop my feet up, watching the flames lick the gas grill while I fell asleep. Staying home sick from school meant grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and tomato soup. My mom simply didn’t believe in the modern world. So, among our luxuries, we didn’t have a toaster. We toasted our bread in the oven so it was hard and then we had cold butter chunks on it because, she said, “I don’t like rancid butter.” I thought that was swell—the burst of flavor when you hit a cold chunk of butter. My “Mama,” as we sometimes called her, believed that when you felt bad, you stayed home and you were sick and being sick was a pleasure and an honor. You were sanctified when you got sick. Illness was a special s...