A Perspective in Ash

Today I wish we had television; Comcast cable with 23 different news channels to surf through. It is the first time I have thought such a thing in the 4 years since we abandoned television altogether.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who had never heard of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano before last Thursday. In fact, "hear" may be a loose term in regards to this volcano, as I have only heard one person actually try to say the name. I believe it is more commonly known as the "Icelandic Volcano".

I don't mind. American ears, much less tongues, just don't do well with that many oddly chosen consonants.

So there's the ash.

Then theres 96,000 flights canceled over the last five days.

Then there is me, sitting in front of my computer, checking BBC and CNN for updates every couple hours. My eyes sting. My pregnant body wants a soft chair. In short, I want cable news to pour over me while I lay on the couch stressing over

whether or not we will fly to Manchester England on Friday for Matthew to face the grueling ordeal of defending his doctoral dissertation.

There is a proportionate amount of uncertainty swirling about in the ethos, above our technology dependent heads, companion to those millions of tons of ash being spewed by a heretofore unknown fracture in the Earth's crust. Such dense uncertainty leads to chaos in absolutes.

Absolutely no flights.

Absolutely no way home.

Absolutely no idea in anyone's head when things will change.

All this exported from Iceland.

I liked it better when Iceland was mainly exporting woolen goods.

Had I not spent a good deal of money on plane tickets to England for dates so in danger of being terminally affected by all this, I would have the luxury of being a curious, and slightly sympathetic bystander - as I usually am - in regards to most chaos and catastrophe that comes to me by way of NPR - with variations on my level of sympathy. This time my stomach hurts and my head reels from only the potential effect awaiting me...not to mention my poor, doctoral defense bound husband.

My anxiety and "suffering" is a little bit inconsequential at this point. I am a person, in my home, with my family, enjoying a bed, not yet caught in the web over Europe. Except that web is invisibly large. When considering the domino effect of closing Heathrow Airport the web gains some visibility as a thing that consumes the world. The British Empire may have let go their purchase on many a foreign shore in the last century, but you close down London's airports and it is felt in every far corner of the earth.

Yesterday Caroline stood at my side asking questions about the video clips showing stranded people all over Europe and the UK.

"Where is the ash, Mommy? Are you and Dad going to England today? Where is your airport"

I pulled out our Great Britain Road Atlas A-Z, and showed her Manchester, and the parts of England that might be reopened soon. She flipped through the pages stopping on London.

It looks like this:

"Wow," she said, with appropriate awe. Declaring, "That's the world, kiddo."

That's Caroline calling me kiddo, not me talking to the four-year-old.

And she's got it right. London is THE World. It lies at the center of so much civilization and economy - even today.

But as I put Cecily to bed last night and said a prayer that consisted of just this phrase; "Heavenly Father, thank you for my family," I became so profoundly aware that this little house, with these five people (almost six) is MY world. England is a thing that has contributed in no small way to the development of my world. But it is here, with this family that I find I am untouched by any amount of uncertainty...or ash.

"Friends"...but not "Come-Over-for-Dinner-Friends"

I have a strange relationship with Anna Quindlen.

The first strange thing about it is that she does not participate in our relationship beyond writing for a general audience. This is a somewhat passive role on her part. I don't blame her. I have never called her attention to my existence, so....

Plus, she could hardly be called passive in that writing she does for that general audience. Anna has something to say. In fact, she has many things to say, with vehemence and resolve.

My Aunt, Janice introduced me to Ms. Quindlen in 1999 with One True Thing, a novel that became popular enough to make a movie starring Renee Zellweger. It was in that book I discovered that, like Mark Helprin, Anna Quindlen was an author who would teach me new words.

I love new words.

Then I read Black and Blue.

Then I took a writing class at the Community College back in the long days of acquiring my eight year Associate's Degree. Anna Quindlen wrote an essay featured in my writing textbook in favor of abortion, given as an example of persuasive writing. I was not persuaded.

In fact, it was our first disagreement.

Which didn't amount to much as my novice pen could not begin to offer words in contradiction to one of such craft and intellect. My argument went something like this..."uh-uh" (in the negative, with my head saying "no", and my brows furrowed)...but unvocalized and without any supporting points.

Then I read Blessings.

Then I read How Reading Changed My Life.

Anna and I shared a love of reading from an early age. We even shared some of the same books, characters, magic of literature in the development of self.

But as much as I loved her words - her art, I became increasingly aware that we harbor different world views. Reading has taken us in different directions. This became more obvious when, after my first contribution to National Public Radio, I was offered a token of gratitude by receiving a subscription to NewsWeek. Anna Quindlen had an opinion column published every other week on the last page of the magazine. I read every one.

We disagreed on more than one occasion. But I couldn't give up reading her column. I wanted to know what she had to say about everything because she said it so well. If I had reason and confidence at my command, such as she does, I would write an opinion column too.

Ms. Quindlen is Catholic. Quite thoroughly so, and still practicing. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is impossible to discern if this creates more similarities or differences between us. We both believe in God. This is rather fundamental.

Then, in the midst of our differing faiths and world views, Elder Ballard of The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke the name Anna Quindlen from the pulpit at the Conference Center during General Conference. Speaking about motherhood he quotes Quindlen speaking about her own mothering experience, saying ultimately, "I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less”

She is a generation beyond me, her children are grown, but I found that Elder Ballard's reference to Quindlen as mother created the most enduring link in our relationship thus far. Mothers - the universal sorority that eluded me entirely until I left the hospital with my first baby. Anna can argue with beguiling words in defense of all kinds of things that I work diligently in remaining unbeguiled. I still appreciate her voice.

And yesterday, when I turned the radio on to listen to the Diane Rehm Show, Diane was speaking to a woman I found a bit brash, opinionated, slightly too forward, but still likable. I get a little turned off by guests whose personalities are so commanding that they sort of "steal" Diane's authority. Diane rules.

But in the midst of speaking about whatever new book this bold woman had just published, she stopped the tide of praise in her own direction, and turned the spotlight to Diane in earnest sincerity. She announced to us listeners that our dear Diane has been recently named the recipient of the Peabody award.

It was Anna, whose voice I had never heard, but fit her perfectly in the revelation of her identity.

I would not have wanted to stand opposite her in debate club, but we stand together in our reverence for Diane. We stand together in a love of words. We stand together in a love of God, and an appreciation for motherhood. These are fundamental enough for me to consider us unthreatened friends.

Even if she doesn't know we are friends.

To Become a Person

This is a reminder that there is something beautiful in me.

She is NOT me.

But I made her...partly.

Cecily is number three. She is still baby, still smiles and snuggles, and funny faces. She is 21-month-old-precociousness. Everything she does is the delight of parent who wants to feel responsible for all things good about her. But she is showing signs - signs that while she is flesh of my flesh, she is mind of her mind.

Cecily has two older siblings - four and seven. So with a few more years experience in these two, I begin to wonder how much I am truly responsible for. Children choose their behavior, but is it not formed by what they see? I am afraid to think about what they see. Because it's pretty much all me.

I don't want to take the blame for a good deal of what goes on in my children's behavior. But I want the credit for what is pretty.

There is still a lot of pretty. In all three of them. I should videotape it for happy viewing after non pretty episodes.

With Cecily....I will close my eyes and inhale slowly these last few months of baby. I will miss her, as I miss all my children at every stage. But there is such thrill in meeting them again and again in the unveiling of new character as they become the self that is, eventually, entirely independent of me.

The Happy Prospect of Things

Dust yesterday.

The apocalypse of swirling dirt that filled my eyes, my lungs, my house. Without a car, I walked to to church and back with kids for something of an outing and found the wind had whipped my tresses into unyielding knots all over my head.

Snow today.

The dregs of winter pressing into my spring, leaving a single water droplet on every unopened blossom of the trees in my back garden. Oh that winter will not press so far upon us that those blossoms that would be pears, apples, and plums, will freeze in the womb of each water droplet, leaving us a fruitless summer. My August MUST drip with pear juice, the last delicacy before I bear another child.

In the snow....and in shorts, the postman brought me a passport this morning. In ten years a passport has taken me no further than England. I get on planes and fly back and forth over the vast, dark Atlantic, perfectly content with the thought that every time my passport is stamped it is on English soil. I know there are other treasures of this planet, but I feel so.....magic-wanded to have been given England, even if I am given no other geographic gifts before I die.

So I am a woman with passport in the pocket and babe in the belly - pregnant with possibility.

It is a happy future, so long as spring can hold on to its Fahrenheit tonight.

Here's Hoping

I don't often solicit prayers, in my behalf, from my children. Every once in a while, after I have spoken in not-so-kind ways to them, I fall into a heap of tears and say "Let's say a prayer so Mom can be nicer." I will say a "please help me be patient and kind" sort of prayer. And Jonah will appeal the heavens, specifically The Father of the Heavens, for his Mom "to be a lot nicer, and more calm, and to forgive everyone." I cherish these pleadings for my better self to be revealed. And I believe that, just like I found the very lost book after I prayed for such a discovery, I will someday meet this better self.

I will look in the mirror, and she will be very nearly identical to me.

"Hello, better self."

"Goodbye, lesser self."

And I will bid her adieu with prayed for patience and kindness.

But Jonah's prayers have leant themselves in supplication for other good souls of late. Our little three-year-old friend, Lorelei wasn't feeling well enough to join our pre-school car pool about two weeks ago. She has been several times since, in obvious improved health, but Jonah continues to pray for her to get better every night. Having suffered the ill effects of a nasty cold since Monday, I sheepishly told Jo he was welcome to pray for me to get better after he finished praying for our healthy friend, Lorelei.

"Oh, just a second. I'll say a little one. I'm not finished."

Responding dutifully, yet lovingly to my solicitation he prayed that I would "feel better", and that I would "survive the night."

Which, has this odd way of making me feel that, beyond this pesky cold, something lurks, either within my frail body, or just outside my not-nearly-secure-enough-home that could potentially threaten my ability to "survive the night."

Silly.....I'm sure.....I think.....

But I welcome the dawn's early light as evidence of his answered prayer.

I Hope to Reconcile With Grape Juice and 7-Up

I had a dream. I have heard it is a tedious thing to have dreams recounted with the expectation they might somehow entertain a person who was not in my head to get the full effect of the unreality-bizarreness of it.

I will share it anyway.

First - this disclaimer - I do not drink beer.

The dream is this:

I am apparently a university student living in a dorm/apartment with two women from my current ward; my relief society president (RSP) who is just a few years younger than me, and my newly called girls camp director who is just a few years older than me.

We are going to eat...off paper plates...on the floor....in a bedroom.

RSP brings her food in and realizes she has nothing to drink. NOTHING. A moment later, after an apparent desperate search of the apartment she comes in with one of those tall cans of Miller Light. As it turns out, I had nothing to drink either. NOTHING. So, when she abandoned a third of her can of Miller Light on the floor and went off to do other post eating things I apparently decided my thirst merited quenching with the dregs of her beer.

I drank. Deeply.

The rest of the dream is me spitting ceaselessly into a garden-size garbage can in someone's garage.

End of dream.

My experience with alcohol is limited, which is to say, I have never tasted any, in all its spectrum of backwoods-toothless-moonshine, to swirl-in-the-goblet-utter-gentility. I've smelled it, I cook with it, but never put it to the lip.

I went to a party once in Boston during my nanny days when a few young fellows insisted relentlessly that I accept the beer they were so generously offering me. After similarly relentless refusals on my part I decided to get them off my back.

University students are poor. Especially students who bring their families into multigenerational debt to attend Boston University. Supplying beer for a Friday night party is no small sacrifice.

I finally accepted the can of beer. In one motion I took the can, stuck my hand out the open window and slowly poured the entire contents down the maze of mortar between the exterior bricks of their brownstone apartment building. No one ever offered me a beer again. They didn't fancy watching their liquid gold end up on the sidewalk without ingesting it first and heaving it up later.

So why was I drinking beer in my dream?

I think it had to do with two things.

One: I drank my own version of "mixed drink" before bed that night. Matt and I both had a tall glass of grape juice and 7-Up.

Two: This is normally a favorite of mine, but I drank it on a pregnant stomach, and... I didn't puke, but my olfactory everything gets really worked over when I'm pregnant. So, what is normally a treat left me with a taste in my mouth so terrible that my brain could only process it by equating it with what I consider one of the worst smells I can imagine...beer.

This leaves the question of why my head chose my dear friend and Relief Society President as the source of the beer. Better left un-pondered, I'm sure. She is above reproach, and I will happily leave her there.

If Monica Had Not Prayed........What Then?

We read.

Such is the education of one Jonah.

Among other scintillating texts this day we read from Trial and Triumph by Richard M. Hannula.

"Monica and Augustine, Christian Mother and Son."

Monica the faithful mother, Augustine the wayward son.

She prays.

He scoffs.

She prays.

He sows iniquity.

She loves.

He gets older.

She waits.

He is enlightened.

She holds her tongue.

He speaks with God.

Monica is mother.

Augustine is son.

They are brother and sister in Christ.

Repentance - the sanguinary made alabaster. Here is a fellow from some year in the fourth century after the birth of Christ. His heart was softened and his ears opened, and in an instant he was changed. No, not "was changed", as though change came at him like a bird. Change came rising up from the center of him - the very core of Augustine woven with the core of the Saviour.

Repentance = Change

This is a concept Jonah is familiar with. Not because he has had such dire need of it in his seven years, but because his Father has made sure he knows that one is the other. And because he has no end to canonical appetite. He has read of more than one sinner's path to repentance...commitment to change.

So he was taken with Augustine. Quite natural. To be expected.

We read on to discover that Augustine devoted his life to God, and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ (such as he knew it). He even wrote a cautionary tale of sorts - St. Augustine's Confessions. You may have heard of it.

I may have heard of it too. In fact a Penguin's Classics, paperback copy of it sits on my shelf from the days of yore when I studied at University and read things meant to enlighten my Christian mind. The scholars would have me take an Augustine's Confessions and balance it in the other hand with something like a Friedrich Nietzsce's Untimely Meditations. Lest we students stray too far from secularism.

I brought the book out to show Jonah. I had him read the title, then read the sentence in the story that told of Augustine writing this book.

Jonah held the book up.

"He wrote this book? This very one? How did you get this? How did we have it already? Does Dad know we have this? We Have to read this, Mom. Dad is going to be so excited. I can't believe we have this book."

And we will....read St. Augustine's Confessions....someday. Probably not in first grade. But I'll find something in there to whet his little excitable appetite. Something to hold him over until he has had enough of the English language that fourth century translation from....Latin?...won't hurt his ears. Something to reinforce his father's declaration that repentance is change. And we can all change.

Again,

Books are beautiful.

I imagine the illustrations for such a claim will mount up, ever higher as my days on this earth pass.

I hope to take note.

And appreciate.