Looking back with Lot's Wife

May 19, 1999 For a few hours, I watched a magpie last February in the pine tree out my bedroom window. How, you may wonder, do I have that kind of time? I’m almost embarrassed to admit to myself that I do—bird watching, day-dreaming, not working, time. I like it—I like watching birds for one thing, not that I know anything about them. This February magpie was huge—confident, fat, sassy. His autonomy astounded me. Hopping from branch to branch he systematically checked the bark for hibernating bugs. I envied his self-absorption which seemed innocent. But then, watching, I remembered bird squabbles I’d seen and I think he must have been pretty mean if another magpie had gotten in his way; mutuality in this corner of the bird kingdom being less an act of generosity than collective opportunism. My daughter just read that, and reminded me of, the undying love and life long mating habits of Canadian geese. But I’m already a Canadian goose with a mate and goslings. I admire the magpie. You d...

May 5, 1999 Lately I’ve been watching MTV with my sixteen-year-old son in an obvious effort to bond in the most simple, non-active way possible. And I think I’m jealous of Cher: how can this be? Cher is a fifty-two year old woman; she used to be Sonny and Cher and now she’s a teen-market star with a successful music video and she can wear those little halter tops that only look really good if you’re 10 or a car hop. Clearly the only halter top anyone’s going to offer me will have a bit and reins. Of course, I’m jealous. I’d redo “young” in a heartbeat if I could keep everything I know now. I don’t envy Cher any of her failed personal life because nobody envies the personal life of a rock star, but I do envy her the energy it takes to continue to pretend to be a virgin. It’s her job, the thing she does instead of going to the office everyday. In the video, she’s wearing this kind of Aztec looking headdress and she’s in some sort of disco with all these nubile young things jumping aroun...

April 21, 1999 The Chinese say there’s a red ribbon that connects us to the hearts that we’re supposed to find when we come to earth. We find them by a process of elimination when we look around—a gleam of recognition in an eye—chance meetings—scrubbed friendships, scuttled ships that suddenly resurface when we least expect it. Memories we can’t shake—people who love helplessly and in unexplainable ways: the red ribbon theory explains them as well as any other. The third grade friend who won’t go away. My husband’s friend Max who showed up fifteen years ago with a wife we liked and a common sense of things that just seemed to fit ours. I call Susan from ’62 and find we’ve led the same life together, apart during all these years—we say yes to our common friendship. Sometimes I’ve tried to deliberately pick friends based on appearances. When I moved to Springville, I sat in our congregation one bright and sunny Sunday and decided who I thought I’d have something in common with based on ...

I thought I would be different! YOU NEED TO BUY THE MALIBU BARBIE SHOWER AND CLUB HOUSE or your little girl will never get in touch with her inner babe, never date, become a dried up scaley old lady with a mustache. (And haven’t we all been there?) I’m in California visiting grandkids—my 18 month old granddaughter in LA and my ten-year-old grandson in Solvang, and I’m finding that nothing has changed for me as a grandparent—I’m the same awful loser I was as a mom. Tell me if this has ever happened to you: you’re in Toys ‘R Us or Walmart, whatever, with the kids, and suddenly you’re overwhelmed by the marketing! You freeze up! You can’t make decisions anymore! What will your kids be like without this stuff!! If the boy doesn’t have the NEWEST PLAY STATION he won’t be aggressive enough, the other boys will stomp him, man, he’ll never get an NBA contract or be a sports lawyer. It gets to look more important than college that they learn how to say “Yo, wha’s up?” I’m a nerd again. I flash ...

Surprised Mom Recounts Experience My fourteen-year-old son, Kenneth, announced one Sunday morning that he was no longer interested in going to church with us. He would be staying home watching the Broncos on TV from now on. “Great. See ya in a couple of hours,” I said as his sister, Maura, and I walked out the door. Ken, now in his thirties, remembers that as a turning point in his life. In a moment of lunacy, I asked my four (two grown, two teen) children what they thought was good, if anything, about the way they’ve been raised. Long a devoted buyer of science sets and encyclopedias, I thought they would perhaps mention the wonderfully rich intellectual climate I provided—although they basically all did their homework while watching TV and used the science sets in definitely unscientific ways. Maybe they’d be grateful for the health food binges we went on, thereby insuring that for all time they would know which is the tabouli and which is the couscous at a salad bar. As I remembered...

The Rules I have three theories of life: 1) Things are always at their worst right before they work out 2) Things that make you sick with dread always turn out to be better than you thought (and conversely, things that you thought were going to be perfect are always horrible) 3) Things always work out for the best My husband doesn’t subscribe to any of these theories. He doesn’t think things ALWAYS work out and he thinks that if something looks terrible, it usually is. So we have a problem and as usual, the problem is that I’m right and he’s wrong. And I can prove it. Take Sunday morning, for example. I have the best/worst job in the church, Primary chorister. There are some problems with me being chorister, not that least of which is that I can’t sing. But the worst part is the doggone visual aids. I just can’t do them. Now the problem with church jobs is that you have to do them mostly in front of everybody else in the ward—which around here usually means your neighborhood. No comfor...

June 5, 1995 A Visit To France France. I am in France and I'm having this incredible Disney experience. I know this can't be real because so much of my life is composed of simulated experiences which are meant to be almost real, that this has left me in a bizarre twilight world in which I expect my guide to show up and direct me to the exit when my time is up. My mind speaks French and English and I can no longer speak comfortably in either language. Someone has very cleverly taken all the signs here and translated them into Franglais. Everything is the same but nothing matches. The "ordinateur" on which I'm typing has some of the letters in the wrong places, upside down. Much of my college French is intact, but I, who never have trouble speaking, have nothing to say with those words. I am traveling with the kids from my kids' school. As we left the U. S. I realized that my children didn't want to be with me, except occasionally for comfort. Did I w...