A stitch in time...saves me

At the request of Lianne--another one of my good friends I've never met--here are a few pics of some of my favorite quilts.

People ask me when I find time to quilt. The answer is I don't. It's just that quilting is as good a diversion from my real responsibilities such as housework, dishes and the laundry as is blogging.

The other question I get is "Why?" Aside from "Why not?," I would have to say that the reason I love to quilt is because it is the only thing I do in a day that does not get immediately undone. Such is the nature of motherhood.

Seriously.

If it weren't for this little hobby of mine I'd be certifiable by now.

preservation: my friend and I designed this a few years ago when everyone else was still canning bugs

choir of angels: this little Christmas quilt is still hanging up--even though it's the end of July

underground railroad: a gift to my grandmother on her 88th birthday. she loved it, but she never used it--convinced the thin cotton batting wouldn't be warm enough--so I inherited it back early

log cabin crazies by buggy barn

amy mcclellan (of american quilting in orem)'s original design for her first annual saturday sampler

Everybody has a story...

Part I
...now let me tell you why you should be writing down yours.

Several years ago Pioneer Day (Utah holiday) fell on Sunday. For Relief Society (women's auxiliary meeting) we gathered in a circle around a fake campfire and listened to various women tell stories of the pioneer ancestors.

Quaint, I thought. But I like a good story as well as anyone, so I tried to listen attentively. Except it was so hot I started to have a difficult time staying awake. All of a sudden I was startled from my reverie when one of the stories started to sound very familiar. "What a minute," I thought, as one woman read about Henry Chariton Jacobs being born on the banks of the Chariton River. "That's my pioneer story."

Suddenly I couldn't wait for the meeting to end. "How does she know this story I had heard so many times from my grandfather?" I wondered of Charlotte Loveless, whom I had met a few times but didn't know well at all.

After the meeting was over I could barely contain myself. I made my way excitedly toward my suspected "cousin." Turns out that during the years since we had moved into the neighborhood my very own kin lived right around the corner from me. Henry was great grandfather to both of us! Her family came from Henry's first wife, while mine came from the wife he married after his first wife died.

Moral of the story: Family stories are important! They need to be recorded and handed down. Had either one of us never heard the story--or even not heard it often enough to become familiar with it--the connection from past to present would've been missed entirely.


Part II
...why I love reading someone else's story

For some reason this year Pioneer Day got personal for me. I have been rereading excerpts from the book "The Four Zinas" by Martha Sonntag Bradley and Mary Brown Firmage Woodward. It's the story of my great great great and my great great grandmothers--the first two of the four Zinas. The book appeals to me on many fronts, but this time I was contemplating the life of a pioneer and the dawning realization that they didn't make that trek just for themselves. They endured what they did so we could worship God freely, without persecution. That thought really wants to rock me right out of my complacency.

Here are some passages I'm still chewing on:

Zina gave birth to my great grandfather on March 22, 1846. Just two days later the wagons moved on: "Recovering from the birthing, Zina stayed in the wagon on top of their carefully packed lives."

~I am contemplating the significance of carefully packed lives...


"Many women and children had to walk as well, and Zebulon [Zina's firstborn-age 4 at that time] dramatically recalls them "wading through the mud and such, children crying of hunger and fatigue and the aged tottering ready to faint by the way, but not a word of complaint..."

As a mother I ponder what kind of faith it must have taken--not just to make myself embark on such a difficult journey, but to take my children on such a trek and to bear children along the way. How did they bear those cries of hunger?

~I am humbled by the statement not a word of complaint...


Also from Zebulon: "through all the sufferings and trials of the people, the spirit of the [Lord] was with them continually they could dance and sing as though nothing was the matter..."

~I want to learn to dance and sing as though nothing was the matter...

Lazy Saturday

Because I've spent enought time recently dwelling on the dark side, I give you this:


Things by which I am amused...

1). The End's "Brigham Blocks" weekend.

2). This

3). What? "People don't take this costume seriously."

4). A fitness magazine, paid for by my hard-earned insurance-premium-paying money, which concludes all the educational articles regarding HEALTH with a recipe for Raspberry Swirl Squares containing the following ingredients: 3 Tbsp. fat-free tub margarine and 2 cups frozen fat-free or light whipped topping, thawed. (Methinks they need a more enlightened editor. Perhaps Carina?)

5). Little son at breakfast: "Mom, I want you to make this again sometime when no one else eats so I can eat it ALL!"

Me: "You like the farm fresh eggs?"

Little son: "Fresh off a chicken butt?"


Don't laugh. It only encourages him.

"Tina! Bring me the axe!"

Knock. Knock.

Standing at the door is my neighbor, her 10-year-old daughter, and my other friend's 10-year-old daughter.

Pregnant pause (of the early second trimester variety).

My neighbor: "Um. We just thought you might want to know that L~ hurt herself shaving and she'd hiding from you. But she's hurt and we thought you should know." (Read: You must be a real Mommie Dearest that your daughter is hurt but she feels she must hide from you while she bleeds to death.)

Me: "Uh. Thanks."

Pregnant pause (this time of the 42-week variety).

Me again as it starts to sink in: "Um. Shaving? Did you say L~ was shaving?"

My neighbor: "Well, yes. Apparently she's been shaving for some time now."

Me: "OK. Thanks. I'll go see if I can find her." (Read: Thanks for being the one to break it to me that my barely 11-year-old daughter has been shaving her legs behind my back. Are you also going to knock on my door someday and tell me she's been making out with the boy next door?)

So I hunt L~ down, in a very un-Joan Crawford kind of way. There is blood everywhere. I can't find L~, but I did remove a big chunk of flesh in my razor. Suddenly my mental movie references turn to the likes of "Jaws."


Finally I find her. She has more bandaging on her that I did after my ACL surgery. As she removes the bandage I can see why. Her entire shin bone is practically exposed.

OK, I exaggerate. But you know how bad a tiny nick bleeds? Do you remember how BADLY a tiny nick HURTS?

She has stripped off at least a 1/2-inch-wide strip about 4 inches down the middle of her shin.

I kid you not.


I tell her I need to clean it up. (Who knows how long that razor has been sitting in the shower?)

She says, "I already did. I put antiseptic on it."

I wonder about where she would've found antiseptic, but put some Neosporin (the pain relief kind) and bandage her up again. I wonder if she might need some Percocet.

"She must be very brave," I think to myself. (Still very much in my most un-Joan Crawford-like manner.)


~I am a good mom.~


"She will have a scar there for the rest of her life," I realize.


Later that day I go into her bathroom and realize what she'd used for disinfectant.

Skin Prep. (Note the parts that say, "Skin-Prep should only be used on intact skin," and "Do not apply directly to open wounds.") Have you ever used Skin Prep? It burns a little sometimes.


"She is very brave," I say again to myself."


I look ahead and wonder what the next 10 years will bring. What else will she feel the need to try behind my back? Will my neighbors or their daughters always come and reveal to me her secrets? Will she always feel the need to be so stoic?


"I'm going to have to be very brave," I tell myself.

OCDC

So my oldest son leaves in the morning for Havasupai. Already I have listened to him rattle off his itinerary and narrate his menu for the next three days at least ten times. It's not that I'm not interested. It's just that I got it all the first time.

I can't really blame him. His need to play it--or anything else he's preparing for or worrying about--over and over again in his head and to recite it over and over again to me is all my fault. As much as I have lived my life trying to run from the OCD (or, as my mother calls it, OCDC) that flows through my genes, I think it may be time to concede. It is what it is.

I can thank my maternal grandmother. We used to joke that she'd wash the glass you were drinking out of and have it put away before you took your last swallow. We were only partly kidding. This woman--whom I love dearly--kept an immaculate house. In fact she even kept an immaculate garage and shed to go along with it. I still wonder what the carpet cleaners who were hired to come and shampoo the carpet she keeps in her carport to protect her driveway cement from oil spills had to say about that gig.

My mother has uniquely not-so-endearing ways of expressing hers. The latest occurred today. My husband was laying sod at her house while I was at work. She called him this morning in a frenzy requesting that my two children ages 7 and 11 (who are not pigs and who, while they may spend too much time barefoot in the summer, are always encouraged to clean up and put away toys after themselves) not enter her home while she wasn't there, as she was trying to keep it clean for her other grandchildren who are coming to visit next week. I'm trying not to be offended; but part of me is still wrestling with the logic--or lack thereof--of that request.

Those of you who know me or who have been in my house--or who have had to meet me on the front porch because I was too embarrassed to invite you in--might think I must have been adopted. But it's not really true. I have seen the traces of OCD surge in my veins and I fight it vigorously. To a fault. There is a part of me that digs my heels in the floor with the full force of resistance in mortal fear I will start to make things more important than people. Which is how I've always seen it. Afraid I'll be incapable of striking a healthy balance, I hightail it frantically away from any sense of order or perfection.

And so I live in disarray. I don't plan too far ahead, in hopes I'll never be too busy to make myself available for the important things. I don't make lists--unless you count the once in blue moon when I take a minute at the end of the day to write down what I did do in order to feel somewhat decent about myself. And I have a burning testimony of chaos theory.


Things fall apart.


I used to be envious of those couples where at least one of the pair were fastidious. Like they had at least half a chance. But now I've decided that if my husband and I were polar opposites in any one more way there wouldn't be a prayer. We would drive each other absolutely crazy. It just works better this way. If my clothes are on the floor too, then I won't be annoyed by his clothes lying on the floor. Right?

Lorien likes to console me with her take on my disorder (wow! what a deliciously ironic pun). She tells me I am just particular about how I express my OCD. I save it for my quilt points, she likes to tell me. Thanks Lorien. That's what friends are for.

But sometimes I save it for late nights of insomnia worrying about insignificant details of my existence. Or significant details I am powerless to control.


I also used to worry about how I might be ruining my kids by my crazy hodgepodge of a life. But now that I have one Oscar and one Felix--who were both raised the same way in the very same home--I have to wonder if they didn't just come they way they are.

There is a still a part of me that is still just a tad bit envious of orderliness. And sanity. What I wouldn't give for just one hour with absolutely nothing else left to do.

But most of the time I'm too busy running away. Or running here to do this and there to do that. As if I keep running long and hard enough it won't catch up to me.


"We meet at the Sorensen's at 8:00. We start driving up. We drive all day. We stop for lunch and dinner on the way...I need my iPod. I need bug spray. I need $30 for the fee. Are you sure someone will have a water purifier I can use?"

For CJane: When life gives you lemons...

It seems a bit audacious to post a recipe when you all have this and this to browse through for your culinary pleasures. But here it is...

Sour Cream Lemon Pie

9-inch baked pie shell or cookie crust (I usually do a gingersnap or 1/2 graham cracker 1/2 gingersnap crust)

1 c. milk
1 c. sugar
3 Tbsp. cornstarch
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1/4-1/3 c. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 Tbsp. freshly grated lemon peel
1/4 c. butter, cut up
1 c. sour cream


Stir together sugar and cornstarch. Stir in milk. Add egg yolks, lemon juice and lemon peel. Whisk together till smooth. Slowly bring just to a boil over just under medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in butter till melted. Cool to room temperature, then stir in sour cream. Pour into pie shell and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours. Top with fresh whipped cream and serve.


(I would give credit where credit is due, but this is combination of several recipes. I got my start from the version in the "A Taste of Oregon" cookbook.)

Enjoy!

Good-bye to Kate

I'd like you to meet my friend Kate. I want to honor her memory. But I'm afraid my words won't do her justice. It's always difficult to tell a story that doesn't belong to you. But sometimes you just have to try.


I remember--


The day I first really met her. She had just turned twelve. She wasn't sure what she wanted me to call her. Katharine, Katie, Kate. "I'll call her Kate," I thought to myself. She seemed quiet and unsure of herself. I always thought she was so beautiful and kind. Her smile warmed your heart.


A few years later I got to know and love her mother like a sister. And I would hear bits and painful pieces of Kate's story, which parts are not mine to tell. I will just say she struggled and suffered in ways I can't imagine. Except that because I sensed part of her pain was because she didn't feel worthy of the love that surrounded her, I felt like I understood somewhat. My one wish for Kate was the same wish I have for her mother--that she could see herself through the eyes of those who love her.


Kate invited me to her graduation from rehab. I was so honored to be asked to attend. She kept telling me not to come if it was too much trouble. But I wouldn't have missed it.

It was so real. I remember thinking, "I wish we could do this in Relief Society."

My name is Dalene and...

I looked around the room--at broken lives and broken hearts--and willed us all to be better.


I was so proud of Kate.


Kate still struggled, but she was working so hard to choose a better path. The spark was back in her eyes. Her smile was dazzling and her heart was as kind as ever. Every time I saw her I just had to take her in my arms and give her the biggest hugs. But with Kate you always got back so much more than you gave.

I remember one Christmas when she borrowed her mother's credit card to purchase a present for me. A candle, a soothing gel eye mask, and some lovely hand-made soap. Gifts from the heart meant to encourage me to nurture and care for myself. How I hoped she would do the same for herself.


At the beginning of the summer of 2004 I remember one perfect afternoon. Kate--who had recently given me the best haircut I'd ever had--was going to cut my kids' hair. She was at the house with a friend of hers and Emily was there with Danny. Danny played the guitar--taking requests from my kids. Emily was studying for a test. Kate's friend visited with us while she cut hair. "This is so normal," I thought. I kept wishing Mel and Lynda could see this. Lord knows what a blessing an afternoon of normal would be.


July 3, 2004. My family had just endured one more hot patriotic parade. We have been doing this for years--it's tradition. And so we know very well the worst time in the world to go to the arts fair downtown is right after the parade--everyone from the region is there. We never go to the arts fair right after the parade. So we headed our van full of hot, hungry and tired kids toward home. Then, inexplicably, we turned the car around in the midst of all the traffic and drove to the arts fair. No one was having a good time, but we went anyway.

As we stood in the line for the snow cones we saw Kate and a guy she'd been dating. They fell in line behind us and I bought them a snow cone. It was a simple thing, but it brought me pleasure.

Kate and I visited for a minute. She told me of her plans for the future. She was looking ahead with a little uncertainty, but with definite eagerness. She wanted to get prepare herself to go to the temple in time for Brett's wedding. She told my Lindsay she was an angel. I told Kate--as I always did when I saw her--"I love you." She stopped and asked me "Why?" It pained me that she didn't know. So I tried to tell her what a great person she was, what a kind friend, how amazing, beautiful and wonderful. My words were insufficient, but I hoped she was listening to my heart and not my voice. Now I wish I would've simply replied, "Because you're you."

I hugged her once more and we said good-bye.


I was at Melody's when Shane came to get me with the news. My memory of that message stands still-framed in the arch of Melody's doorway. Sometimes I still stop short when I pass through and remember.

I can't even talk about what followed. But it is one of my worst memories. Such unfathomable grief. Still...

The week was a whirlwind. Preparing comfort food for the family that couldn't bring themselves to eat. Trying to find the perfect way to celebrate Kate's life. The exact words to say what was in our hearts. The lingering scent of Patchoulli oil for a bereft sister. A banjo player for Kate. The perfect venue (I kept seeing the place in my head but couldn't remember where it was. Thank heavens--literally--for Lorien). Tears mingled with laughter. Love and loss. Hearts that were broken and yet filled. Floods of memories. Never enough hugs. Heartfelt tributes. Balloons floating skyward. Pleading for peace.

I wanted to embrace the Smith family and give them some comfort. But what could I offer when I was grieving too?


I remember getting my kids ready for the viewing. "We need to say good-bye to Kate." It wasn't till afterwards, when I still felt empty, that it hit me.

We already said good-bye.

Colby said it best...

"On this 4th of July...we said Good-bye...to Kate."


In honor of Kate's memory today, please take a moment and do something to brighten the day or lift the load of someone--anyone--around you. Give them a helping hand, a big hug, a warm smile, or a kind word...