Mom served Dad his can-of-soup lunch at 2:53 p.m., and he said hopefully that he hoped they didn’t have to watch the last seven minutes of Family Feud. “I don’t care what you want!” she snarled, hoping precisely to watch the last seven minutes of Family Feud.  At the kitchen sink, I turned to look at her in disbelief, raising my shoulders and hands in a What was that? gesture of irritated incomprehension.  None of us said a word, but she had seen me, and turned on Dr. Pol.  I guess she is done being bossed by the boss, the man of the house.  And now she possesses the marvelous power of the TV remote.  That morning, I had driven to a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a beautiful edifice, a place apart from the cares and worries of the world, where we dress in the symbolic equality and purity of all-white, and learn about God’s plan for humanity and about our place in the vast universe, our origin and destiny, and we make promises to be good and chaste and generous and faithful to the faith and to the Church and to our God and to each other.  In the temples, we act as proxies for the departed, being baptized on their behalf, and linking them together for eternity (if they wish it) in their mortal family units as couples and as parents and children.  I had come for peace, for inspiration, for answers, for a settling of the spirit.  But sitting in the bright room with chiseled carpets and gold leaf wall accents and gorgeously upholstered chairs and elegant inlaid wood tables and brilliantly colored stained glass and tinkling sparkling crystal chandeliers, sitting and seeking some peace, all I could hear in my head was Dad repeating his ruminations: “I’m worried about…” (insert the name of any one of his two dozen grandchildren, of any one of his dozen CNAs, of any one of his six children, etc.) hour after hour after day after week after month, endless cogitations about endless worries, repeated to me daily, and I let his rueful expression worm into my head and crowd my heart, and I let all the worries follow me into that quiet holy place, unworthy stowaways into the temple, to churn and swirl and tense my neck and back and distract me from the hopeful joyous prayers and promises, and fill me instead with dread and angst.  And when I came home and he began again with “I’m worried about…” I changed the subject, I interrupted, I dodged and demurred, I pretended I had not heard him, and I launched into another subject, a small subject, a brief subject, then made the excuse of having work to do upstairs.

(Pictured: mountain stream in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah.)