"Is there a doctor on board?"

called out the flustered flight attendant from behind the first class divider on our flight out to Boston for my defense/graduation. It may have been the 4am wake-up call combined with the frazzled state of traveling solo with the 2 kids, but I found that incredibly amusing at the time. "He's asking one flight too early," I told the man behind me (who turned out to be a "real"--a.k.a. medical--doctor), as I explained that when I returned, it would hopefully be with the "doctor" title attached. 

Turns out that a man in first class had become unresponsive and needed to be resuscitated by the medical doctor behind me. So, down the plane went for an emergency landing in Souix Falls, South Dakota. The paramedics met the plane, and we waited on the runway for an additional hour while they filled out the paperwork necessary to document the medical emergency. 

The good news is that there were no such medical emergencies on the return flight. And the even better news is that, should there be a rhetorical emergency, I am officially qualified to deal with it. 

I'll leave off with some of my favorite moments from our 2 weeks on the east coast. I don't have pictures of one of my favorites, which actually turned out to be my defense. I was terribly, terribly nervous to defend, but in the end the experience was very positive. I felt prepared, and, thanks to the many people who I enlisted to pray for me, I also felt very calm. It was gratifying to talk for 2-3 hours about the project I had been working on for the past 4 years and to have people who were genuinely interested in and appreciative of my work. Here are some of the other favorite moments. They include finding my family in the graduation crowd, being hooded, having my kids see me graduate, eating at our favorite Italian restaurant in Boston's North End, the beach house, sailing and hiking in Bar Harbor/Acadia Nat'l Park in Maine, and many more!

Mother's Day

I've never been much of a fan of Mother's Day. It started with the days of unsuccessfully trying to conceive and being reminded of my inability to fulfill what it seemed I was created to do. I thought it would change when I did become a mother. But even then, Mother's Day has always seemed to be about holding up the ideal for praise. Either way, a day fraught with sadness/bitterness or some strange kind of guilt. But on my sixth Mother's Day now, I have been less judgmental and expectant about what the day will hold for me. I sat in church, wearing the flower corsage Mister made for me, craning my neck to see them singing "Mother, I Love You," and pasting a smile on my face during the talks. 

Mister and I at his class's Mother's Day tea party, with me, wearing the flower corsage.

I think my history of dislike for the day comes from a sense of the complexity of emotions behind it for so many women--women who have lost their mothers, women who are not mothers and would like to be, women who are trying to come to terms with their own preconceived notions of motherhood versus the sometimes-hard reality of it, women who expect a day devoted to them but don't actually get it, and so on and so on. I like Anna Quinden's take on Mother's Day here:

"Mother's Day is still fraught with strong emotion, if only because each year I feel like a fraud. It is undeniable that I have given birth to two children; I remember both occasions quite vividly. But the orchid corsage, the baby-pink card with the big M in curly script, the burnt toast on a tray in bed--they belong to someone else, some other kind of person, some sort of moral authority. They belong to Mother, and each of us knows quite well who that person is, and always will be. That person is a concept. I suppose that is where it all goes wrong. I know few people who have managed to separate the two. . . . 

That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble.  . . . 

It has to do with Mother with a capital M: someone we are afraid to be and afraid that we can never be. It has to do with a torch being passed, with finding it too hot to hold, with looking up at the person who has given it to you and accepting that, without it, she is no Valkyrie, just a woman muddling through, much like me, much like you."

Despite my feelings about Mother's Day, I am grateful today for the children who are patient with me as I muddle through, and I am grateful for my own mother who persisted in her own muddling through and is still does her very best during all of the many times that I still need her. 

1.  Opportunity, 2.  Children laughing, 3.  An afternoon nap/rest

Wanna see my baby?

Not this one, although he's looking pretty darn cute.

But this one. I mailed it off last week. Instead of 9-10 months of germination, this one took 4 years, and the delivery has been painful but rewarding. As I waited almost 2 hours in Staples for 4 copies to print out, I sat there and got a little emotional thinking about this journey. 

I also tidied up my office, which J has been bugging me about for almost all of those 4 years. The stack on the left is copies of articles I read--just the ones I printed out. The stack on the right is interview transcripts--almost 300 pages of them.

The notebooks are full of fieldnotes and revision notes. The middle stack are drafts of various chapters, 2 of which didn't end up in the final product. The stack on the right are my typed up notes on books and articles I read. 

It's kind of fun to see some visual representations of the work put into this. Unfortunately, I'm not quite done. I could use all the prayers I can get when I fly east a week from Monday to defend it. 

1. Reaching a long-awaited goal, 2. Feeling peace about the journey, 3. Cleaning up my office and knowing it might actually stay that way for longer than a day.

Easter

Better late than never, right?

Oh, What Do You Do in the Winter time . . .

This post is in honor of my family members who groan, "How can you stand it?" after asking how hot it is here in July. It is also in honor of the author of the Primary song and the author of all of the family magazines ever published who all seem to think that every place in the world has four traditional seasons. (As the lyrics say, "Oh what do you do in the summer time when all the world is green.") Excuse me? All the world? Come now. And I have to say, it chaps my hide a bit to get my Family Fun magazine's endless winter articles about fun in the snow and endless summer articles about things to do outside. Here in the great desert of the southwest, in the Valley of the [eternal] Sun, we do not go outside in the summer unless we are swimming. So I think all of that justifies a little rubbing-in-your-face when I hear reports that it is snowing in Utah in April. Right? So here we go . . . 

Oh what do we do in the winter time when our part of the world is green?

We picnic each day, We go to the park to play, without a cloud in the sky.

If that's not what you do, please don't cry. 

Oh what do we do in the winter time when our part of the world is green?

We drink fresh lemonade, that we ourselves made, from the lemons on the tree up high.

If that's not what you do, please don't cry.

Oh what do we do in the winter time when our part of the world is green?

We go to the zoo and eat fresh citrus too that we don't even have to buy.

If that's not what you do, please don't cry.

Oh what do we do in the winter time when our part of the world is green? (or maybe not-so-green as these pics show!)

We go on a hike, and we all ride our bikes until the sun has gone down in the sky.

If that's not what you do, please don't cry. 

 

And that signals the end of my creative juices for the night. And don't worry, come September, I'll be the one crying. But right now, we're loving the months of 75 degrees.

Easter Week Plans for Teaching my Kids

 

Last year we followed this plan the week of Easter to try to make it more Christ-centered, and I loved how it changed the kids' focus and the feeling in our home that week. It's geared towards kids 5 and under, really, so I tried to add in some elements of fun (making some things, looking for eggs with the symbols). I decided to share it here in case anyone else besides me just barely realized that Easter is coming soon. . . .

Easter Week Plans
[Note: the event each day doesn’t correspond exactly with what happened that day for Jesus—some of the events I’ve combined or split for emphasis when teaching young kids.] 

Preparation for Week in General

* Make Map of Jerusalem for the wall by the kitchen table to mark each day where Jesus went the last week of his life. Or, download one from the church’s web site (in the Old Testament manual, pg 24).
*Also make faces attached to Popsicle sticks for them to use when we tell parts of the story:  happy, sad, surprised, angry, scared.

Monday
Triumphal Entry, GAK (Gospel Art Kit) 223

• Hide plastic egg w/little donkey figurine in it and hide picture of the Triumphal Entry. Have the kids each look for one.
• Read Mark 11:7-9. Tell them the story. Have them hold up faces for how they would feel. Summarize that after coming into Jerusalem, Jesus cleansed the temple and taught the people many things.
• Make big palm leaves out of paper and wave them and shout “Hosanna!” OR break a donkey piñata if the party store/dollar store has one for a good price.

Tuesday
Passover/Last Supper

• Hide plastic egg w/sacrament cup in it. Hide picture of Jesus washing apostles feet and picture of Last Supper.
• Read John 13: 4-5, 14-15 (Jesus washing feet). Have them hold up faces for how they would feel. Read Matthew 26:26-28 (sacrament).
• Dress up in sheets, like New Testament days. Sit around ottoman on the floor and eat bread, raisins, grape juice.
• Paste pictures of Jesus cut out of the Friend into a book to look at during the sacrament.

Wednesday
Gethsemane

• Hide plastic egg w/ a white cloth in it that I’ve colored w/red marker on or dyed w/red food coloring. Hide picture of Jesus praying in Gethsemene.
• Read Luke 22:41-46.  Rephrase. Have them hold up faces for how they would feel.

Thursday
Betrayal/Trial

• Hide eggs w/3 dimes in one and a thorn in another. Hide picture of the betrayal of Jesus.
• Read Matthew 26: 47-50; Matthew 37: 28-29; Luke 22: 63-67, 70
• Talk about friendship and loyalty: How is Jesus loyal to us, how can we be loyal to him? How can we be loyal and true friends to each other? Play friendship matching game: http://www.mormonshare.com/node/975

Friday
Cruxification/Burial

• Hide eggs w/nail, white cloth, bay leaf seasoning, and stone. Hide pictures of the Crucifixion and Jesus’s tomb.
• Read Luke 23: 33-36. Use flannel board figures to help tell the story. Have them hold up faces for how they would feel. http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Liahona/1978.htm/the%20friend%20april%201978.htm/flannel%20board%20color%20page%20he%20is%20risen.htm?fn=document-frameset.htm$f=templates$3.0
• Make edible tombs. What I need for this:  paper plates, choc frosting, cupcake (or Hostess snowball or rice crispy treats to shape into empty tombs), vanilla wafers (for the rock), little He Has Risen signs stuck in a gumball. They can eat it after they tell us the story using the flannel board figures.

Saturday
Night of Darkness

• Hide egg w/mini-flashlight and black piece of construction paper.
• Turn out all the lights in the basement and tell about what happened in 3 Nephi chapters 8-10. Have them hold up faces for how they would feel. Shine a flashlight on picture of Jesus appearing to the Nephites at the temple. Have them hold up faces for how they would feel.

Sunday
Resurrection Day

• Hide empty egg and pictures of Resurrected Jesus.
• Read Matthew 28:26. Have them hold up faces for how they would feel.
• Make Easter Story booklet http://www.sugardoodle.net/Easter%20Ideas/easterstory.pdf and He Lives Pop-up Craft after church
• Make resurrection rolls. http://www.sugardoodle.net/Easter%20Ideas/Resurrection%20Rolls.shtml What I need for this:  crescent rolls, large marshmallows, butter, cinnamon, sugar, cupcake/muffin wrappers

Poem of the Month: "On Nest Building"

When we lived in Massachusetts and I was taking courses towards my Ph.D., we were also struggling with infertility and with a series of failed infertility treatments. (I'll spare you the details!) Nobody knew about it but my parents, 2 of my siblings, and one very close friend. It was a very private matter for me and a very emotional matter.  I had an excellent visiting teacher at the time--Christy--who came one month when the message was on motherhood. But instead of giving the message, she brought this poem and told me that she thought what I was doing at the time--going to school--was preparing me for the mothering that would come in my future. I've loved this poem ever since. 

And I've been thinking about this poem a lot the past 6 months as my school demands have grown very large in proportion to what I feel I should be doing with my mothering as well. I've thought about it to remind myself that what I take on in addition to "Mom" can and should improve the nest that I am building here at home. I have been thinking about what I will do after the next couple of months when getting my Ph.D. will be a past tense project and how I can incorporate into my nest-building what I have learned and who I have become as a result of it. I do know now, with the blessing of hindsight, that Christy was absolutely right. The process of "reaching," of becoming "filled . . . from God's and man's very best" doesn't have to happen through a Ph.D. but however it does happen is crucial to my self-building and my nest-building.

"On Nest Building"

by Carol Lyn Pearson

Mud is not bad for nest building.
Mud and sticks
And a fallen feather or two will do
And require no reaching.
I could rest there, with my tiny ones,
Sound for the season, at least.
But—
If I may fly awhile—
If I may cut through a sunset going out
And a rainbow coming back,
Color upon color sealed in my eyes—
If I may have the unboundaried skies
For my study,
Clouds, cities, rivers for my rooms—
If I may search the centuries
For melody and meaning—
If I may try for the sun—

I shall come back
Bearing such beauties
Gleaned from God’s and man’s very best.
I shall come filled.

And then—
Oh, the nest that I can build!