Looking back with Lot's Wife

Trivial Pursuit July 28, 1999 Ok, now you are going to receive a free singing lesson. Stand in front of the mirror and pooch your lips together like they were the top of a present (like a ball) wrapped in tissue paper with a string tied around it. Then take two fingers and place them on either side of your mouth—and blow. That’s right, make that horse whinnying sound, and sing your scales. There. When you are a famous opera singer, you can do this every night to loosen up your lips. I used to always hope that someday I would be an expert at something. Experts say that if a child feels that he can do better than almost everyone, he’ll never have a problem with self-esteem. I have NEVER been that child and I have always had problems with self-esteem. So the experts were right. But I’ve given up on being an expert and I want to SING! I want to rear back and take a deep breath and let ‘er rip! I’ve never been able to sing, with capital letters, because my natural voice sounds like a three-...

July 14, 1999 Having your kids leave home is a lot like being robbed—you read about it in the paper but you don’t think it will ever happen to you. But things do happen, and if you’re lucky, they happen when you’re ready. Like an empty nest. It’s not happening to us yet—our lovely teen-age boy is just gone for a couple of weeks to a camp at BYU. He packed enough stuff to take him to Peru and back—apparently he too is fairly excited to see the last of us for awhile. He’s called home twice for stuff he forgot. Thank goodness. But I remember so well when I first became a mom—back before I was actually old enough to own a new car and barely old enough to vote. I was so much more confident, I can tell you that. I was so close to being a kid myself, that I remembered what it was like and I was NICE to those kids. Those were the first kids when my hormones were strong and the nesting urge overrode everything. And I played like crazy with them. I didn’t mind making a mess because my apartment...

June 16, 1999 Ah spring time—the only pretty ring time! I don’t think enough research is being done on the cyclical nature of our urges. Shakespeare celebrated the desires of lovers in “As You Like It”—spring, ring, it worked for him. For me, I get an uncontrollable urge to garden. I love to root around outside in spring. It rains and automatically I dig, plant, dream and imagine exotic vegetables, colorful bouquets. I design intricate flower beds; I chase those baby weeds as if they were the sins of the past being rooted out of my life. Never, ever, once in my life have I had any desire to weed in July—but in May, it’s a compulsion. In summer I’m seduced into thinking that the grass will always be green, my toes will never be cold, and the long, lazy days will stretch ahead of me forever. Summer is a tall cold glass of lemonade, a hammock, kids at the pool and me with a “beach book.” I can’t imagine working in July—July is vacations. (However, I don’t always tell this to my kids. Summ...

June 2, 1999 “As we parents go forth from this place to serve, we pledge…” I’ve been to three graduations this last two weeks and I’ve felt teary-eyed, fearful, hungry, thirsty, lost, enlightened and bored. I’ve been there as a parent, an aunt and a friend of the newly anointed. I’ve been amazed and humbled by the quality of young people in our society. And I think the thing that confuses me the most is the change in the status quo as each of the graduates steps forward in their new mined glory to assume their place in the world as adults. People suddenly leave my house with no more obligations to meet to be counted as “qualified.” They’re qualified to go to college or get a job and have fifteen kids if they want. My niece is qualified to be a lawyer. A lawyer! She’s qualified to take me, her poor old limping aunt, into court and sue my socks off! Holy cow. But what has their graduation qualified me to do? Can I take out an ad in the Springville Herald that promises that I can nag any...

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 ...