Just Swell

It has been too long since I've written, unrusty and well-oiled, to describe what I feel when my body gets near the San Rafael Swell. I think I have tried and I come off sounding somewhere between totally stoned and possibly manic--which, I may say, its probably not a bad place to be. But the land does something prime to me, what I imagine people feel when they "come home". I think about those rocks, deep canyons, empty vistas, strange formations and my inner emotive system become anxious with desire and exhilaration.

I think I might be in love?

When I am not there I'm quite often in bed with a yellow highlighter--tracing all the lines my eyes haven't absorbed in real life. Not just the swell, but the Delta desert, and the carves of the Colorado River, the muddy channels of the inexplicably named Green River, and the high elevations of the Flaming Gorge region. There is so much to do.

And so little time?

I do quite often feel like I am running out of time.

Along that stretch of treeless land from northern Utah into Wyoming on your way to Bear Lake there are historical markers and every time I pass one without stopping in every little town (Woodruff, Randolf, I see you and I love you) I feel an ache. The older I get the hungrier I am to know about places--how the marriage between geology and weather produces a progeny of plants, animals and people.

I have stood in ancient lake beds, sifted sands of a million years, grazed petrified wood, picked shiny black obsidian from pastoral watering holes in the west desert, felt the whoosh of the thin air in the alpine country of my own backyard.

Alone, these adventures are enough, but I get to share them with the man I love and the children we created. And all together, it is more than enough.

Before the Longest Night of the Year

I woke up yesterday to my son touching my arm.

"Will you come and lay down by me?" he asked. The sky was dark and I checked my clock. Early.

Sometimes the earliest mornings are the greatest gifts to an anxious soul. So I took advantage.

"Yes, let me grab my journal and I'll write."

It had been nine months since I had written last. I tried to write everything down I find significant in my life right now. And then I thumbed through the last few years of my life.

2013: I feel a strange loneliness

A strange loneliness indeed. I was born with it and it followed me around like a childhood dog. And here I am, still well-acquainted with this feeling. Comes and goes. I take note of its presence and absence. I'm sure this blog is full of posts about this sentiment, this friend (I guess?) I've carried with me forever.

There is no cure for this--it is what it is. It is me. I think maybe, some of us thinkers think through tunnels so deep that there are few who can understand (at least that's what we think)(I suspect we're just not advanced enough in language to communicate this experience). It's strange to be in those places, and it's lonely. Strange and lonely.

And the loss of light on the earth doesn't help.

But because Anson gave me the gift of an early morning, and after he was settled back down, I took it outside to a still, ashy pre-dawn. I slipped into the hot tub and kept my eye on the white mountains just east of me. In a few moments the top of Cascade Mountain flashed a pinky-orange and clouds moved in trails towards the Wasatch Back. Light from the top of Slate Canyon appeared and the sky turned into a melted pastel Popsicle-yellows, pinks, blues. The pines on Y Mountain appeared like black statues standing watch over the the sunrise. The fir tree to the south filtered in a warm light, past the steel grass and into the hot water where I sat.

Light.

It is a reprieve for the strange loneliness.

And I was grateful for it.

To Erin on Turning Five

Your face when we surprised you on your fifth birthday party will remain in my mental storage for a very long time. You asked for a party with all your friends but we told you because you have that fate (as some humans do) of being born on a rotating holiday (Thanksgiving) we weren't able to do a party this year. "Thanksgiving will be your party this year Squish." It was too easy. Except the part where your face would go long and sad. It was only bearable because secretly dad was scouring pinterest for party games and making TOP SECRET birthday invitations.

I may have been the parent, dressed in pink for your honor, dancing with ten little girls to Katy Perry remixes during Freeze Dance but you should know Dad did a lot of the work. I arranged for Emily, Olivia and Maggie to come and help. They did the nail salon and the candy necklaces. (Grandma woke up super early to stealthily collect a heap of candy with holes at the store!) And of course we had to have the face painter come--you live for a great spray of art on your face. This one was remarkable, transformed you into a blue fairy with jewels and flowers. It could've stayed on your face for days except, well, Thanksgiving dinner the next day required a decorum of sorts.

Your birth and its anniversaries have a curious effect on me, Erin. With every year added to your personal resume, I become more aware of life. By that I mean I feel a sense of awakening--deeper as you grow. It can be both freeing and painful. Freeing because I can peel off layers of shame and expectation that I have heaped upon me in my life. Painful because it can also feel remarkably exposing, raw and lonely. I wish I could explain this better, but maybe you'll read this one day and not need any further explanation, you'll just know how I felt.

And if not, that's ok.

I do want to say something absolute. It's this: you came to earth for a reason...because we wanted you. Your Dad and I wanted to love you. I remember feeling so ornery and tired and I took a pregnancy test in the blueish green bathroom upstairs and when it confirmed that I was pregnant I was so thrilled, I felt buzzy. I took the stick downstairs and tossed at Dad who was sitting crossed legged on the floor with Ever and Anson. He said something like, "Well, there it is."

You'll probably find thousands of reasons why you are alive. Hundreds and thousands of reasons. And they can all be true if you want them to be. If they make you feel strong and purposeful, please gather them up. Have a huge, colorful collection of reasons why you are here, but please don't for get the very first reason: because we wanted you.

Maybe someday you'll also be 39 and you'll be awaking up and fumbling and looking around for clues and searching in science and consciousness and faith to tell you why you are here. And maybe you'll read this and realize the answer is far more simple than you thought.

And the truth is: you're even better than I could've imagined. I am so glad you came.

Just Before I Vote

It would be really weird if, in twenty years or so, my posterity reads my blog and wonders why in the world I didn't write one post about this election.

So here it is.

In about an hour Chup and I are going to take our Erin and Iris to the Rec Center so we can vote early. Voting early is on my list of life hacks.

This is the first time Utah is considered a "swing state" although it's not really. It will go GOP whether that's Trump or Evan McMullin. Even still, we've had flirting from the DNC and that feels good. And weird. And exciting.

Because of this election I got to chat with Scott Simon on NPR and talk to NYC Mag's The Cut about being a Mormon feminist. I also got to host an intimate chat with Ann Holton, married to Tim Kaine--Hillary's pick for VP. And that was lovely. In a sunny room off of capitol hill in SLC, we chatted about life and work balance, faith and Hillary Clinton's platform for women.

Oh yes, that's right, I'm with her.

Being with her in a state that has an unwritten pledge to hate all things Hillary Clinton means that you are in jeopardy of losing your social status in certain circles. I have sort of approached everything with a "burn in all to the ground" attitude. Sexism does that to me. Maybe it's my approaching 40th birthday and lifelong frustration with patriarchy, but this election has made me pretty bold.

I know she's a flawed candidate. I can see how people don't trust her. I get that she's not likeable (in the way you want women to be likeable). But her fight feels so personal to me. She's had to fight like hell and she's still standing--and that's important to me because I've never seen it done before. And I need to see it done. What will we gain from a nation full of women who fight and stay strong and don't give up until their voices are heard from the very, very top? We don't know. But I am willing to bet it's going to be radical, transformative and ultimately healing.

She understands women's health (in all its complications and strata) and children's justice, and cares about taking care of the earth. Those are my three things-women's bodies (all women, all consent, all bodily autonomy, all mental wellness, all body acceptance, but especially women who are marginalized, silenced, unseen and unprotected), children's access to resources (but especially children who don't have resources), and the earth.

Of course there are more, but everything pretty much boils down to those three things.

It's been lonely. I have a few dear friends, and a few family members here in Utah who I have been able to reach out to when things have gotten rough. Many times Mormonism has mingled with the political and that brings on a tidal wave of frustration for me. The sexism has been awful. The sexual assault stories have been hard to read (but important) because they reach for memories I've tried to leave behind.

It's time to look at our sexism, America. Time to stop defending patriarchal practices. Time to usher in the season of equality. Time to examine the racism and ableism we were all baptized in from generations before us.

I am going to vote for Hillary today,  but I am not ignorant of what that means. It means it's about to get messy in America. On top of the racial tensions burning already, we're about to add gallons of misogyny. And if we don't come out better and on top of all this, then maybe we really aren't the special country we always believed we were.

But I am a believer. I believe. And I am going to vote like a believer today.

And then I am going to get to work.

School Lunch

In my determination to write more (and subsequently stay sane) I have joined author Ann Dee Ellis in a memoir writing group. 3 days a week she gives prompts and then for 8 minutes we write. Please feel free to join in! Here's my eight minute attempt today:
 
Christopher and I have this deal for the mornings: I make the breakfast, he makes the kid's school lunches. I guess you could say that's the MO of our marriage--trades and negotiations. For instance, last night I wanted a back rub so I traded one-for-one. I got a ten minute back rub and gave Christopher a ten minute back rub. You might think this paragraph gets saucy at this point, but instead I'll disappoint you by saying it was not a fair deal. In a marriage where one partner consistently does things far better than the other, I have found sadly, that my few winning strengths includes a good back rub.

I give a better back rub.

This does not benefit me much.

At first when we struck this breakfast/school lunch deal I was a bit disappointed in myself for not campaigning harder for the school lunch duty. I can cook, in fact, I am not a bad cook, but hot griddles and gooey messes are not always kind. For instance, I have never made an egg I was proud of. But I have found a bit of creative pursuit in my morning breakfast adventure. Yesterday I made cheese and herb biscuits with a side of scrambled eggs (like yellow lumps of coddled dairy, but still edible) and it was a big hit with the second grader.

Are these essays the reasons why people keep unsubscribing to my blog?

(Just 4 people have unsubscribed since I started writing again, but I'm sensitive that way.)

In the afternoons when the kids come home I always make a first responder's effort to dig into their backpacks for traces of their day. An art project, a wadded flier about a pumpkin maze, a trinket or rock usually, homework, books and their lunch box. I spill the contents of their lunch box out on the kitchen counter every day and examine the evidence. Sandwiches are sometimes intact, untouched. Grapes are missing one or two off their vines. The treats bags are always vacant except that one time CK proudly admitted his homemade brownie. And then I feel a wave of frustration. Why aren't these kids eating their lunches? What kind of trade deals are going down on the floor of the school's kitchen cafeteria? Are my children, (oh please say no) asking other kids if they can have their lunch stuffs?

We let them dictate what they want in their lunches. We ask for details. So the uneaten portions of their meals are perhaps more of a mental mystery than a one of sensitive palate.

After I comb through the evidence I report my findings to CK. And then I don't worry about it after that because I have breakfast to make the next morning.

I was never really great at solving mysteries. Or making eggs.

But you should feel the way my can thumbs penetrate the base of the neck in circular motions.

Seriously.