Looking back with Lot's Wife

So you want to be a parent? January 26, 2000 “So, really, we just need to remember that this is the worst part, right?” said my son Kenneth as he tried to play cards, cradle the bottle against his chin and feed his three-week-old daughter at the same time. “Yeah, sure, honey. Of course, there’s that whole ‘Dady, I need a drink’ thing coming up.” He laughed. What I thought was Gees, Louise, should I tell him about teething? And those weird fever things they get when they have 102 and it’s always, always, the middle of the night. Should I tell him about becoming a junkie, hooked on good report cards and finding new friends and the feeling you have when they stand up and get an ward. And the amount of work you put into getting them there? And the big lonely hole in the family when someone has their first sleep-over or goes to summer camp. AND how he’s going to feel when she brings home her first prom dress and you realize, my gosh, that strapless gown isn’t going to fall down! I remember ...

January 26, 2000 “So, really, we just need to remember that this is the worst part, right?” said my son Kenneth as he tried to play cards, cradle the bottle against his chin and feed his three-week-old daughter at the same time. “Yeah, sure, honey. Of course, there’s that whole ‘Daddy, I need a drink’ thing coming up.” He laughed. What I thought was, Gees, Louise, should I tell him about teething? And those weird fever things they get where they have 102 and it’s always, always, the middle of the night. Should I tell him about becoming a junkie, hooked on good report cards and finding new friends and the feeling you have when they stand up and get an award. And the amount of work you put into getting them there? And the big lonely hole in the family when someone has their first sleep-over or goes to summer camp. AND how he’s going to feel when she brings home her first prom dress and you realize, my gosh, that strapless gown isn’t going to fall down! I remember how desperate I felt on ...

January 12, 2000 Once upon a time in a kingdom far away, there lived a man named Bill Brown who owned a company called Bill Brown Realty. He had a salesman named Neal Henry whose mom was the Relief Society president when I lived in Denver. When I needed to buy a house in Utah, I called Neal because I knew his mom. Bill Brown is married to Marilyn—who was introduced to her by Neal Henry! TALK ABOUT COINCIDENCES!!! (I thought it was kind of amazing.) So, anyway, Bill Brown moved to Springville and bought the Villa Theater from Don and Jean Harvey, who is my visiting teacher, and spent a ton of money remodeling it and bringing theater to Springville. My son, Clay, was at the bottom of a long list of kids at our house who all had their thing. Some where good students, some were good athletes, and all were older, some much older, than him—and you know how older always looks better when you’re younger. So, one day Claybie read an article in the paper about auditions for “On Golden Pond” and ...

When I had my first child, my normally very reticent mother ran down the hospital corridor with m clothes in her hand yelling, “That’s my daughter” when they wheeled me into the delivery room. I was in labor for days, right before Christmas, walking around department stores with Braxton-Hicks contractions every few minutes, playing board games with my husband for hours, waiting to somehow get to when the pains were steady, countable and strong. Don’t you love to tell your delivery stories? Everyone loves to tell baby delivery stories and they are the greatest when they’re yours because they always seem so interesting. Which says something about how often anything really interesting and unusual happens to most of us. Having a baby is just really the final frontier because its so uncontrollable. Women who wax their floors weekly and scrub their bathrooms daily still cannot organize or plan when their babies are going to come. The most amazing advice I ever heard was from Vicki Curtis dow...

Heroic Housekeeping As of today, Monday, December 13, 1999, I still have pumpkins on my front porch. Along with my bale of straw. No lights. No garland. I’ve taken in the scarecrow that used to adorn the bale, but he’s right by the front door on a chair with the chaffs of wheat that also used to be out front. They are, technically, no longer on public display. We don’t have a tree. The decorations are on the living room couch where they have been for the last two weeks since we got them out in an early unjustified, unsustained burst of enthusiasm for the season. Half the presents for our eight kids are bought, but the missionary in Romania still doesn’t have a box in the mail. And we are almost the only family in the neighborhood with no icicle lights on the eves—in this place which is clearly, however unidentified and unrecognized, the National Capital of Icicle Lights. And, furthermore, I have no idea what I’m going to put in our Christmas letter—unless I send out this column...

Heroic Housekeeping As of today, Monday, December 13, 1999, I still have pumpkins on my front porch. Along with my bale of straw. No lights. No garland. I’ve taken in the scarecrow that used to adorn the bale, but he’s right by the front door on a chair with the chaffs of wheat that also used to be out front. They are, technically, no longer on public display. We don’t have a tree. The decorations are on the living room couch where they have been for the last two weeks since we got them out in an early unjustified, unsustained burst of enthusiasm for the season. Half the presents for our eight kids are bought, but the missionary in Romania still doesn’t have a box in the mail. And we are almost the only family in the neighborhood with no icicle lights on the eves—in this place which is clearly, however unidentified and unrecognized, the National Capital of Icicle Lights. And, furthermore, I have no idea what I’m going to put in our Christmas letter—unless I send out this column...

November 17, 1999 During WWII, Julius Carabello was a young Italian guy who enlisted in the Navy, not because he had to but because he felt like it was what he should do. He grew up hard in Denver. His mom, a single mother with several children, unable to support the family, had had to leave him in an orphanage till she could catch up. He was there for three years. Julius had always wanted to go to Regis College and during high school, he saved up, working where ever he could. He was hoping to get a scholarship as a walk-on in football. He enrolled and walked on but by the time he got there, he found all the scholarships gone and it turned out he couldn’t go to college. So he married his beautiful sweetheart, Lois, and went into a landscaping business with a friend who needed someone with a strong back. He was married when he went into the Navy and his first job was to teach swimming to new recruits so they could at least get far enough from the ship that they wouldn’t be pulled under ...