Looking back with Lot's Wife

October 18, 2000 My heroes haven’t always been cowboys. Growing up my heroine was Queen Elizabeth because my mother, not necessarily in a kindly way, would call me “Queen Elizabeth.” She was referring to my autocratic behavior but I, ever the optimist, took it as a compliment and marched on towards the throne I felt entitled to. One day I read that she (the queen, not my mom) trained herself to remain calm even if a gun went off behind her. This took imagination since my father didn’t hunt and there were no guns within miles of our Denver address. However, I pretended, fervently, and to this day, I think I’m pretty ready for an assassination attempt. My other hero was Roy Rogers. I have to say, not Dale. I liked Dale, I thought she was a good woman, but Roy, Roy was The Hero. I had that great Roy Rogers holster set with the leather fringe on the holsters. And the smell of fired caps! I LOVE the smell of fired caps! And horses—the golden Palomino Trigger. I agree with Roy about stuffin...

September 20, 2000 Cheap, cheap, cheap, go the little birds flying around in our brains. They tell us that somewhere, somewhere I don’t know about, there’s a deal, the deal of the century, just waiting for me. It might be motor oil at 50 cents a quart, or giant bags of cheetos for 10 cents. Somewhere they’re giving away diamonds and furs and buy-one-get-one-free cars, to those who say the ad and got to the store early. We jump through all kinds of hoops to save money. We drive into the special dark and firey place that is saved for those sending in a rebate, complete with the proofs of purchase and circled receipts and stamped self-addressed stamped envelopes, all to get a quarter back in the mail six weeks later. Fastidious, well-dressed women carry around tattered files filled with coupons for diapers. People who can’t find their children at 11 o’clock at night can remember that they have a 23-cent coupon for orange juice that expires on October 30. These aren’t prizes or lottery win...

September 6, 2000 Day One. There is actually room on the dining room table to eat now that the piles of laundry are gone. The computer manuals are finally off the coffee table. There’s room to park the car in the garage. No one will be coming home at 2 in the morning. Excuse me, I think I’m going to bawl again. After the bustle of finding empty boxes, extra hangers, towels, sheets, soap, our last kid has flown the coop, lit out on his own, gone to college. The car is filled with the sound of our quiet sniffles as we drive home from Cedar City. I keep thinking about all the things I thought we were going to do when we were alone: eat salmon (Ew, not fish! The whole house stinks mom”); go to bed early (“I’m sorry to call so late, mom. Did I wake you up? I’ll be home in an hour”); walk around naked in the living room (just kidding.) I want to keep his room as a shrine. If I could find his bed, I’d sit on it and cry. I can’t believe he’s really gone. It’s all over, I’m never going to be an...

August 23, 2000 I feel as nervous as when I was a new mom trying to figure out which end of the baby to diaper. This is my first babysitting job as a new grandma. There is so much to learn and as Ginger Rogers said – she had to do everything Fred Astaire did and do it backwards. That’s what the role of grandma is. You need to do what the parents want you to do – especially if you were a parent like me whose children barely came out of it alive and actually deserve some sort of survival medal. My daughter-in-law is a lot better parent than me. Back in the old days, I was the parent of that three-year-old running around the concessions stand at the Art City Drive-In at 11 at night in a messy diaper. Still sucking on a binky. Still not potty-trained. I barely got my kids trained for kindergarten—I still thank heaven for those half days. I had thumb suckers and tantrum throwers. We ate candy—they got that first sweet taste of Snickers along with mother’s milk. They ate whole corn and fish ...

August 2, 2000 I received a formal invitation to watch my seven-month-old granddaughter take a first swim. My daughter-in-law knows that I will be as thrilled to do this as if I had been invited to Buckingham Palace for high tea. Visiting from California, she must dole out each precious moment between two Springville grandmas, and this special treat happens to be at the other grandma’s house. I race to finish my morning work so that, if necessary, I will have hours to watch this magical creature perform impossible feats. I don’t take my camera because I don’t want to take pictures now, my first time watching. I’m afraid to spoil this moment. I want to enjoy every second this first time. When I arrive, our princess is decked out in a stretchy pink bathing suit that makes her chubby body look like a “love sausage.” My hand itch to hold her and I’m allowed to carry her outside to the waiting plastic pool filled with warmed water. We all stand around watching, all our attention glued to ba...

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...