Looking back with Lot's Wife

My granddaughter Madden asked me where Jesus was today, and to my eternal embarrassment (pun intended), I didn’t know. We had been reading a church magazine and there were pictures of the apostles and prophets, all the people who worked for the Savior, but no picture of Him. And she wanted to see what He looked like. We used to have a picture of the Savior in the kitchen but with the new paint job and the kids moving out and me updating things, it had migrated. There’s an “Out of Africa” look going on in that kitchen corner now. I suddenly realized I had no idea where our picture was. Now, we’re Mormons, but even if we weren’t, we would be the kind of people who have a religious picture somewhere prominent. It could be the Pope, or the Dalai Lama, or Buddha, but it would be a picture of who or what we believed in. It would be there to teach our kids and to let people to know who we were and what our beliefs were. We would especially want it if the Mormon missionaries came by so...

I have this weird thing I like to do when I’m tired or just have a minute. I like to take a snapshot in my head of where I am. I look around at what I’m doing and think about all the implications of it, where it stands in my life. I take a sensory inventory of everything I can see or smell or feel: the air temperature, the season, the color of the sky. I try to take about five minutes to soak it all in. Then I frame it as a picture and hope I can call it up again some day. I actually can recall many of my snapshots, partly because I’m self-conscious about doing it and partly because they seem to stay longer than other memories. I started doing this a few years ago when for some reason, I was having vivid dreams about the house I grew up in. My mom told me once that as she got older, she forgot some of the things that had happened to her as an adult, but that the memories of her childhood became more alive. She especially remembered the house she grew up in. She told me this a y...

Halloween was the only holiday my mom really got into because she didn’t have to cook, it involved chocolate, and it was an easy way to actually make kids happy. I really like Halloween. We had a gate up to our front porch and to my horror, my dad propped it open one year with my entire collection of Nancy Drew books, which were stolen. But in spite of that, I still love Halloween. My dad would swing the front door open and the light would flood out on the porch. He smoked a cigar and he was tall and loud and jovial. Little kids would cower in fear, but he gave full size candy bars, so it was okay. The crunch of leaves underfoot as kids in crazy outfits wandered around with their dad after dark, meeting the neighbors under different, new, exotic circumstances. The magic of the warm, spooky glow of houses half hidden in the shadows, not completely lit by the porch lights. I loved the thrill of getting a peek inside people’s living rooms when they invited you in to pick your can...

Richt now, I'm sitting on our front sidewalk trying to write because my two-year-old granddaughter, Madden, has just told me that the two rocking chairs on the porch are "MINE!" Okay, go ahead and be snotty and criticize, but I've been babysitting since eight this morning and I no longer remember what is normal for me and what isn't. There are tiny plastic farm animals all over the kitchen floor, which you know I'm going to step right on that pad under my toes where it really kills; and most of the petals are off the three flowers we had left in the front. We've had poppy diapers, which I stuck my finger in, and the only thing I've been able to get her to eat is a leftover packet of roasted almonds from a Wendy's salad bowl. Let's just say she's two and let it go at that. Being a babysitting grandma is a hydra-headed monster--one minute everything seems so circle of life, and the next, it all feels like a babysitting job when you were 13 an...

First cruise, first group tour--I'm officially retired now. They even serve custard and stewed prunes on the cruise ship! The average age for our group is OLD. "A community of active seniors." The Grey Rangers.. If you're gloating because you're younger, remember, as Mark Twain said, it's not bad considering the alternative. I need to give you a primer for your first cruise, not that I'm an expert. Maybe you'll never go one one, or maybe, like some of the people I've met, you'll go on six or seven trips. China, Israel, Nauvoo, the Carribean, these are the places people go. Thousands of them are being herded across continents to The Great Wall, Christ's tomb, the Kirtland temple, and the Vatican. All of them getting their pictures taken countless times, their half-smiles growing dimmer and dimmer. Obviously, you must first pack. Here are your choices: Choice #1) Exactly what you wear at home, including the Sherwin-Williams T-shir...

What I want to know is: how do you remember all of it? To start at the beginning, our, my, canary died this week. And, as it is when a pet dies, even though you’ve often wondered why you bought it in the first place, it leaves a hole in your life, always a bigger hole than you thought. This little piece of life turns out to have been your best friend and confidante and you never realized it until they were gone. Our canary, Bright, was a baldheaded piece of yellow fluff that had lived through everything—cat attacking, air conditioner, people forgetting to feed her. She was so determined to succeed that she continuously laid eggs, but they never hatched. We finally bought tiny soft blue plastic ones so she would stop before she drained herself dry of whatever they make eggs from. When her mate died, we got another bird because we couldn’t stand watching her be what we assumed must be lonely. I got another female. At the time, I just thought she’d like to relax and talk to another woman....

So, what do you think about being fat? It’s in the news all the time lately. By the way, the next time someone tells you that all Utahns are fat, you might want to remind them that Utah is the ninth slimmest state in the Union according to the Center for Disease Control. Anyway, the New York Times just had a huge article in it’s weekly magazine about school lunches and obesity in kids. There are schools in San Francisco where the kids eat only organic foods and grow their own gardens during class time so that they’ll feel connected to the earth. It probably is a good idea, but doesn’t it have that touchy-feely, typical California over-reaction thing going on? Organic is a big issue but also low fat. The kids in my Sunday School class are of the opinion that they would eat school lunch if it was nutritious, a salad bar, for example. At least they were enthusiastic for a minute, and then they remembered that it was geeky to eat school lunch and changed their minds. Therein lies one...