Looking back with Lot's Wife

These are the things a spouse must go through to become part of a family. You have to hear the family stories enough that they become your stories—so that your family stories become so mixed together that you sometimes get them confused. “Was that my aunt of yours that scared off the bear?” Sunday my husband and I escaped, without kids, to Trout Creek, a small stream that empties into Strawberry Reservoir. My gosh, the feelings of guilt that swept over us, taking off in the middle of a day to spend six hours alone. It was pretty dang delicious. We’ve been working way too hard this summer. Too much responsibility was making this Jack and Jill embittered old cronies. But this is our annual trek. Sometimes we don’t make it until late into autumn but we struggle to be there, to go over the history. This is where “our family” moved in the thirties and cut timber and milled lumber. In the early years of our marriage, I hated this trip to Trout Creek because of the stories: his mother making ...

You and the little man have planned your first vacation alone in the entire 35 years of your marriage. You will not be visiting your old Aunt Suzie because she needs John to fix her screens; you’re not taking a single kid or grandkid and you’re leaving the dog. No Disneyland for you—you’re going straight to Hawaii and laying your fat little body on the beach in a full coverage suit from Dahle’s and hoping like heck that you don’t see anyone from Springville for an entire 10 days! Suddenly, the day before you leave, the water main breaks in the front yard and your grass is now a rice paddy and you’re waiting for the water police to come by and take you to jail. The dog gets run over by the ice cream truck and the vet wants $600 just to look at his bloody back leg and your daughter calls and says she wants to move back home because she and Whatzhisname are thinking about an open marriage and maybe she just wants a divorce. Is this a sign? Are you just not supposed to go on this trip? Is ...

You know the story of the Princess and the Pea? The queen wants to find a true princess for her adorable son so she puts a pea under a stack of 20 mattresses and invites all the most beautiful young ladies to come spend the night at their house—sort of like President Clinton did—but non of them discovered the pea. One cold, dark rainy night a bedraggled young woman comes to the door and begs a room and the queen, completely worn out from houseguests, says, “Oh just let here stay in the Pea Room.” The next morning the young woman comes down to breakfast and she’s exhausted. “I tossed all night long, madam. There were boulders in that mattress!” And the queen knew that she had found the true princess and that her son would have someone who whould nag him to death after she was gone. Is this a houseguest, or what? In our little haven away from the world, to continue the fairy tale theme, there are two people the mommy and the daddy, better known as, respectively, the happy cheerful, lovin...