On Aging

At the Canyons for a weekend retreat last Friday!

Well, here it is; the big day. I just turned 26. Twenty-three minutes ago. For some reason this particular number is hitting me hard. I'm closer to 30 than I am to 20. I am actually starting to see myself age: a couple wrinkles, two gray hairs--REAL gray hairs. (I don't want this to be a complaining blog, but these are just my honest thoughts about my birthday.) This means that in my life, I got gray hair before becoming pregnant. (Which I am not, by the way.)

I think, growing up, I had an idealized version of my coping and adapting capabilities. I imagined myself as a perfectly balanced woman who would dance naturally from one phase of life to the next. I repeated thoughts and phrases, like, "I'm going to have long, gray hair and never dye it! I want to be all-natural as I age! La-di-da look at me." Pfft. Screw that. Professional hair colorings, botox, and eyelash extensions here I come.

My family has always been very youthful, spunky and--it seems to me--ageless. They all age well. I am feeling a bit left out of that trend on this birthday. I have no idea how old my aunts and uncles are and usually just imagine they are all around 25 (even though that would make them younger than me...) My grandma in particular has very good genes when it comes to aging. I shan't reveal ages, but for a grandma of grandma age, she's looking pretty fine.

A couple years back:

Now:

Absolutely stunning. She and my grandpa are serving a mission for the LDS Church right now, and up until that point, my grandpa worked every day on his beloved ranch. He even recently hiked the High Uintas with my brother and their trusty horses.

I have no doubt he will do it again when he returns. And this time my hair dye and I will be going along, trying to keep up ;)

Happy Birthday to me! Now that I am feeling better, I need to go get my beauty rest. I need it more than ever!

Source: makeitmyown.blogspot.com via Adri on Pinterest

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUSBAND! (It was yesterday, Wednesday Apr. 13)

LUIS

This is your birthday tribute. 

   I never thought I would find someone with whom I could spend days on end with and still want more. I saw a saying the other day that said, "You know you married the right person when eternity isn't long enough." Exactly how I feel. We have had our own share of difficulties early on and Like Browning, I can honestly say, "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.

You are:

*diligent

*handsome

*intense

*curious

*understanding

*funny

*tender

*genius

*hard-working

*ambitious

*you take me seriously when I want to be 

*willing to change and improve--by far the most important quality to me.

Thank you for being my partner in this life and throughout the next. I love being on your arm. You are everything I could have ever imagined and more. I love you.

(All pictures taken by Michelle. Check out her blog: chellesandcheese.blogspot.com)

 

Quarters for Ricardo

Remember the worth of souls.  

   Ricardo is a first-grader I have been working with throughout the entire school year. He is way behind his peers in reading. When I first started working with him, he got on my nerves. He seemed to always be talking, moving, knocking something over, jumping down on the floor, or just being little-kid-annoying in general. He has a large scar on the side of his head, behind his ear. His teacher told me he had been in a car accident. I knew this, but he still frustrated me sometimes. I'm sure the injury contributed to problems in perception and processing.
   But I realized something a few weeks ago--he has made incredible and undeniable progress. he can now get through an easy reader book with minimal help. It has been slow-trudging through minute after agonizing minute, so I guess I didn't realize it was happening. It dawned on me today that he is my absolute favorite student. He is sweet, pleasant and helpful; he obeys and communicates with me intuitively. The second he sees me come in his class he tucks in his chair and rushes up to me, standing at attention with his arms tightly crossed and his eyes glued on me. I give him "Eagle Coins" (our school's reward tokens), quite liberally in fact, and he just keeps getting better and better.
    This morning we were reading a book called The Lost Tooth, where some forest creature loses his tooth and can't find it and then the other forest creatures find it for him and he eventually gets 5 cents from the tooth fairy. In the middle of the book I asked him if he knew what the tooth fairy was (a lot of the kids I work with don't know about stuff we would find obvious). He said no but proceeded to show me some of the spaces in his mouth were teeth have come out.
     I said, "Oh the Tooth Fairy will give you money for your teeth if you put them under your pillow. Do you still have your tooth?"
   "No," He replied. He went on to tell me about "why" he lost it, which started with his parents fighting and then something about his aunt and then ended with him not being able to find the tooth again. I didn't follow, but I figured those facts were connected in his mind somehow.
   I remembered I had a quarter in my pocket. Would a quarter be that exciting for a kid nowadays? I thought.  Oh well, it can't hurt. I sneakily pulled the quarter out and when the story ended. I said, "You know, I used to get quarters for my teeth when I was little. Just like....this one!" And I pulled the "quarter behind the ear" trick (I've been practicing). "You can have it," I said.
   "For me?" His eyes lit up. Such a simple thing but it worked! The trick actually worked perfectly. He giggled happily. We were sitting side by side and he reached his arm out, patted my back, and rested his head on my shoulder for a minute saying, "Thank you," sighing as if relieved, like he was thinking, Finally someone acknowledged my tooth!

   His tender little hug buoyed me up for the rest of the day and I marveled at how something so small to me could be so big to him. He's still behind his peers academically--a fact he's aware of--but he presses on, slowly reading book after book, and I want him to know and remember, that it will pay off. His hard work will always pay off.

Justin Plays With a Marshmallow

The Last Week or Two in Review

I apologize in advance for the super grainy pictures and videos. Better camera in the near future.
The last couple of weeks, Luis and I have been able to do some fun stuff. With the warmer weather it seems we are much more social. Luis has been active in a lot of clubs at BYU and on top of it, my mom's German Shepherd puppies were born! (Pictures coming soon!)

First, we took my two cousins, Christopher and Logan, to the Western/Magic Show/Hamburger/Free Book party at the Provo Library. Not until we were on our way did I realize that this is probably an activity for just dads and sons. Oops. Oh well... we had fun anyway!

We went to a screening of the Butler/UCONN game at Sundance, sponsored by Deloitte Accounting Firm. My brother Andrew and his wife Courtney came with us. It was a delicious dinner: smoky barbecue chicken, beans, coleslaw, potato salad, and the most epic rice krispy treats you have ever seen. Here's Andrew and I while Luis was off "networking."

 

Notice Andrew's name tag....

Luis's parents and brother are in Paris this week, so we have the house to ourselves and have been spending a lot of quality time with Justin. Here he is going crazy over a dog treat: (this isn't even that crazy compared to other times.) It gets a little boring at 46 seconds, but I needed practice uploading a video so here you go:

 

This evening we went on a lovely walk after we dropped off a car to Luis's sister. She is a barrista at Juice and Java and makes us gourmet hot chocolate.

 

So apparently Provo has a Greyhound Bus Station. Did not know this.

 

Justin hates crunchy dog treats. He just carries them around in his mouth like a cigar and then drops them discreetly.

Good night.

PASSION!

Passion is a good thing. 

A few things it doesn't hurt to be passionate about:

Someone or Something to take care of. A plant, an animal, a family member. Right now, my husband is sick and I find much passion and fulfillment in watching over him. making someone or something else  "better," is I believe, one of the deepest and most primal passions. This is a bad picture, (better camera coming someday), but nevertheless, this Luis pleading (in the depths of a hallucinatory flu) to BYU during their game against Florida yesterday. "Please win for me....please Jimmer....I'm sick..." Well, we all know how that turned out.

He usually doesn't look like this. He can actually be QUITE perky. As he is here, at a business school party:

Ha ha. I have a feeling he's going to looooove this blog.

And this is one of Luis's passions, Justin, the sweetest tough-guy you ever met. I think he deserves an award for saddest-looking-dog. Those eyes! Don't mind the messy nightstand. We have a sick husband in the house so we get a free pass.

The Original Little Mermaid. She is... the best. All the vulnerability, tragedy, and heartache of a good tear-jerker. I recommend everyone read the original, or at least watch a film adaptation closer to the original fairy tale by H.C. Anderson. This is a small replica we saw in the Carribean, on St. Thomas Island. I was so touched to find a replica of this daughter of the sea so far from her home.

One more for today: Tomatoes. They are coming soon. Not the grainy winter tomatoes in the Sizzler salad bar, but the bursting, crimson, thin-skinned, dirt-flavored candy that pops up from the dry sandy soil in my mom's garden. I can still taste that sweet-tart, faintly dusty goo from last July...

When Our Hearts Are Full

I'm attracted to the dichotomies and paradoxes of life. Lately, it's been to emptiness and fullness.

1. I have no doubt battled feelings of emptiness. Were some of us born with an original emptiness, and the accompanying need to search, find and fill? Poets and crooners alike have lamented that ache, that hole, that space. Not that it's all that bad; it's just the diametric, corresponding feeling for fullness.

Ray Lamontagne's song, "Empty," is one of the my favorites. The lyrics are so rich with the bleak, heaviness of feeling "this way." When you're down, you see the cold, abandoning side of everything. (And while we're on the subject, it's interesting how we describe it as "empty," yet there is a weight.)

Ray wonders:

And of these cut-throat busted sunsets,

these cold and damp white mornings

I have grown weary.

If through my cracked and dusted dime-store lips

I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me?

2. But I have also felt that swelling in the heart, that grows and glows and electrifies with exuberant, swirling warmth. There are decidedly less songs and poems about the warm fuzzy stuff. A line from "You, Me and the Bourgeoisie" by The Submarines is a helpful one for me (the rest of the song is more of a commentary on consumerism but this part is nice):

Love can free us from all excess

From our deepest debts

Cause when our hearts are full we need much less.

Every day I wake up

I choose love

I choose light

And I try, it's too easy just to fall apart

The last line speaks to the inevitable entropy of all that stands still. As we go into dark or depressed times, we sink, we disassemble, we estrange ourselves. Our senses dull and we don't enjoy life anymore.

A daily mantra: Choose love, choose light, be full. My friend Michelle took this picture of beautiful BLOSSOMS  last Spring!

Out of that Rut

This blog's intended usefulness lies in providing a space to wake myself up, pull myself up and over the muddy ridges of life's ruts; to share poems, pleasures and delights, both Earthly and Heavenly.

Ruts are part of life, a trail hazard at all stages of the journey. They show up where paths diverge, or are trodden and wet. But sometimes we create them ourselves with a wrong turn or a prolonged inattention.

Here I go. Heave ho.

Enough of the life=a trail metaphor.

Oops, one more: Happy Trails.