Tag Archives: Family

Courage at Twilight: Bratwurst and Beans

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“Rog?” Dad called eagerly as he stumbled through the door from mowing up the leaves.  “Have you started cooking dinner yet?”  Remembering a prior conversation about the possibility of spaghetti, I had pulled a package of meatballs from the freezer to thaw.  With two minutes left on my stationary bike ride, I panted, “I got the meatballs out, just in case, but I have not started dinner.”  He told me his idea for dinner, emphasizing it was just an idea—he wanted me to know he was not vested in the idea.  “We could grill bratwurst, and warm a can of pork and beans and a can of stewed whole tomatoes,” he offered.  This particular random combination of dishes had never occurred to me, but I consider that it had not only occurred to him, but sounded good to him.  So, I concurred, suggesting we add steamed spinach to the menu, since we had accidentally added a third bag of spinach to the two bought the week prior.  The brats browned up nicely on the indoor electric grill (with a power cord borrowed from an electric skillet, since my cord was thoroughly grilled with the previous brats).  After asking God to bless the food for our nourishment and strength, we dug into to the eclectic gathering of food.  And I enjoyed it.  Remembering childhood dinners of pork and beans mixed with sliced frankfurters, I sliced my bratwurst into the beans, and felt at home.  “Didn’t we have a great dinner, Lucille?” Dad crowed.  Yes, we did.

(Image by Karl Allen Lugmayer from Pixabay)

Courage at Twilight: Church Christmas Party

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Our church held a neighborhood Christmas party on Friday.  The poster announced the location: Whoville.  The cultural hall (aka full-court gym) had been transformed into the snowy town from which Mr. Grinch had attempted to steal Christmas from the Whos.  The setting including an ice skating rink for kids in stockinged feet (the rink enthralled my two-year-old granddaughter Lila), a genuine snowless alpine sledding slope, the Whoville Charities booth accepting new winter coats, boots, gloves, and hats for the Boys & Girls Club, the Whoville Post Office where visitors could send cards to young people serving church missions abroad, a Who-house chimney into which little Whos tossed wrapped gifts that tumbled down into the house, the Whoville Hair Salon, a cookie decorating station, the Whoville Photo Studio taking pictures of children with the Grinch, and the Whoville Sweet Shop where children lined up for banana and orange and berry cotton candy faster than I could spin it.  Wisps of sugar gossamer tickled my face and clung to my hair and clothing.  Three-year-old Gabe exercised his insider privilege and stood on a chair spinning his own cotton candy, with a little help from me.  Lila, too, helped herself to the sugary puffs.  Mom and Dad brought a large bag with their donations, happy to have helped children who need warm winter clothing.  Mom and Dad sat smiling with mirth as Whoville teamed with happy little Whos running around in their Who pajamas.  Mom declared it to be “the best Christmas party I’ve ever attended.”  Our Mr. Grinch already possessed a big warm throbbing heart, and made friends with all the children.  In fact, the Grinch is Gabe’s new favorite superhero (so long Spiderman).  A framed 8×10 of the duo sits prominently on Gabe’s nightstand.

Pictured above: Gabe and the Grinch

The Whoville Ice Rink

Granddaughter Lila enjoying the rink with her dad

Alpine sledding slope

Where Gabe met Mr. Grinch

Sending Christmas cards to far-flung missionaries

Decorating sugar cookies

Donations to the Boys & Girls Club

Gabe and I spinning his cotton candy

Courage at Twilight: Jordan River Jaunt

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On possibly the last warm day of the quickly-coming winter, the Jordan River tugged at me to bring my kayak and glide.  My solitary jaunts on the Jordan have brought a mystical connection with nature.  On this paddle, my brother Steven joined me, in town for a visit, and we set off with our boats racked on my green Subaru.  Mom and Dad sat in camp chairs in the driveway, wrapped in winter coats, waiving as we pulled away.  Continue reading →

Courage at Twilight: Leaky Toilet

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Though the float was up in the toilet tank, the water kept jetting into the tank and spilling down the overflow tube.  The flapper was fine.  The float was fine.  So, the problem must be the fill valve.  Until we could fix it, though, we would have to turn the water off to the toilet.  But my brother was coming to visit, and the running toilet was in the guest bathroom.  The time to fix it was now.  Lowe’s had a good selection of fill valve assemblies.  I chose the Fluidmaster 400H-002-P10 Universal Fill Valve because the box boasted of a three-minute YouTube video on exactly how to replace this exact part, and I knew I would need that video.  Dad and I watched the video, twice.  I thought maybe I might possibly succeed in replacing the fill valve, guided by both the written instructions and illustrations, and the video.  Like preparing to cook a new recipe, I gathered all my ingredients, or rather parts and tools, and plunged into the project.  To my utter relief, the repair went flawlessly.  Within minutes, the new fill valve was installed and working perfectly.  Why am I always so surprised when I manage to fix something I have never fixed before?  I did fix my own washing machine switch, after all, thanks again to YouTube.  Mom and Dad were pleased that the repair had been so quick (10 minutes) and inexpensive ($14), did not involve an extended delay or a costly plumber, did not prompt any swearing, and that Steve would not have reach behind the bowl to turn the water on and off with every use.

Snuggle Time

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There’s nothing Amy likes more than a snuggle with Sunshine.  I’m thinking he doesn’t mind too much, either.  Sunshine is getting so big, and has beautiful color.  Maybe that comes from the roaches hee-hee.  And look at those cute little toes.

Courage at Twilight: Dishes in the Dishwasher

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At my apartment, my children always asked me after dinner, “Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean or dirty?”  At Mom’s house, that is the wrong question.  Either the dishwasher is empty or dirty.  Clean dishes are never allowed to remain in the appliance.  She empties the dishwasher immediately upon the cycle ending, despite the scalding steamy dishes.  So, when my children asked Mom if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean or dirty, she replies, “If there are dishes in the dishwasher, Dear, they are dirty.”

Courage at Twilight: Giving Tuesday

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An excellent church sermon, on the subject of serving humankind in small and simple ways, prompted me to visit the service clearinghouse JustServe.org.  I browsed through hundreds of worthy service opportunities—everything from being pen pals with prison inmates to assembling hygiene kits to indexing gravestone photographs to tutoring young people in English and Math—and settled on a small and simple project I felt I could handle.  The project was to make greeting cards with the message You Are Loved decorating the inside.  I have made cards from pressed leaves and flower petals since my Grandmother Dorothy taught me decades ago.  Against her office walls leaned four-foot-tall stacks of heavy books pressing thousands of slowly drying leaves and petals.  The card-making process involves gluing pressed flowers and other decorations, like paper butterflies, to wax paper, gluing colored tissue paper to that, drying, ironing to melt the wax into the tissue, cutting, and folding.  Into the card I insert a blank paper bifold, on which I write a personal message for upcoming birthdays and anniversaries.  I love making cards because, while far from being an artist, I can make something beautiful to brighten someone’s day.  Equally important, making cards connects me to memories of my dear grandmother.  (For more photos and detailed instructions, see my essays Cards of Leaves and Petals and Grandma’s Pressed-Leaf Greeting Cards.)  My sisters have supplied me with abundant pressed leaves and flowers (from Carolyn) and paper cutouts of birds and butterflies (from Megan).  At the extended family Thanksgiving celebration, after our dinner, I enlisted family members to decorate the card inserts with colored markers, including the message You Are Loved.  I explained that the cards would be included in kits delivered to refugees around the world.  Upon opening the kits, the recipients will be greeted with the generic but safe and loving message: You Are Loved.  With those refugees in mind, my family members, from my two-year-old granddaughter Lila to my octogenarian parents, enjoyed personalizing their cards.  Only after Mom and I delivered the cards to Lifting Hands International, did I realize that today is Giving Tuesday.  That coincidence brought me happiness.  Thoughts of refugees being cheered, even if momentarily, by a loving personalized artistic message, brought me happiness.  In fact, I find that helping others always brings happiness.  Why don’t I do it more often?  To be sure, our service was among the smallest and simplest—no grant accomplishment.  But every good deed, no matter how miniscule, even when unnoticed, contributes to the world’s goodness, of which there can never be too much.  I wonder what small and simple gift of service you may enjoy offering others?  After making 60 labor-intensive cards, I need a break from card-making.  But I am sure I will make more, maybe for Giving Tuesday 2022.  Perhaps sooner.

Roger Baker is a career municipal attorney and hobby writer.  He is the author of Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road and A Time and A Season.  Rabbit Lane tells the true life story of an obscure farm road and its power to transform the human spirit.  A Time and A Season gathers Roger’s poems from 2015-2020, together with the stories of their births.  The books are available in print and for Kindle at Amazon.  See Rabbit Lane reviewed in Words and Pictures.

Courage at Twilight: In Which Roger Finds the Courage to Cook Julia Child’s Delectable Boeuf Bourguignon

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Alone with Mom and Dad on Thanksgiving, I determined to make a nice meal (that was not a turkey), and found my courage to try Julia Child’s recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon (beef stewed in red wine).  The recipe had intimidated me for a long time, because of the expensive ingredients (quality cut of beef, bottle of Bordeaux) and the many involved steps that have to come together.  Boil and brown the bacon sticks.  Brown the beef cubes.  Sauté the sliced carrots and onions.  Pour in the red wine and broth.  Simmer in the oven for three hours while sautéing small whole onions and quartered mushrooms to add later.  “Do not crowd the mushrooms,” Julia charged.  The last step was to boil the wine and broth down to a thick gravy to pour over the platter of beef, bacon, onions, carrots, and mushrooms.  To my wonder and delight, the meal was a smashing succulent success.  I felt quite proud of myself as the three of us chewed with delighted mmmms and ahhhhs.  How disappointing to get full so fast!  I will not prepare this dish often, but the four-hour cook time was worth the happy result as we quietly concluded our Thanksgiving Day with our meal of French Boeuf Bourguignon.

Courage at Twilight: A Drive Down Memory Lane

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We took two drives in two days, Mom, Dad, and me—I drove the faithful Suburban.  The first day we drove into the hills, into the gated neighborhoods with the big houses, which grew bigger and fancier with altitude.  Several houses were enormous, of the 20,000 square-foot variety, with turrets and weather vanes and wrought iron fences and security cameras.  One resembled an English country mansion estate.  We felt distinctly uncomfortable at the thought of all the money poured into these lavish houses.  We are not wealthy people, and did not know how to relate to such wealth.  The next day we drove across the valley to find Mom’s maternal grandparents’ house.  We found it in a rundown part of town, with century-old match-box houses, tiny, unkempt, honest, 20 little houses crammed into a single mansion lot.  I remember visiting great-grandpa James Evans—I was four.  He scooped Neapolitan ice cream into cones from his top-loaded deep freeze.  He walked stooped with age, humble but dignified, showing me his little cherry orchard with the concrete ditches ladling irrigation water to each dwarf tree.  More than 50 years after that visit, I snapped a photo of his little old house.  Around the corner was the Pleasant Green church where my grandfather Wallace first met my grandmother Dorothy.  He was a guest minister, and she played the organ.  After church, Wally asked Dorothy if he could drive her home, and she accepted.  After he dropped her off, she got a ride back to the church so she could take her car home.  I snapped a photo of the church, and we drove away from history and memory back into our comfortable present, far across the valley.

Above: the Church where Wally met Dorothy.

 

Monument to the Pleasant Green church.

 

Grandpa Evans’ little old house.

Courage at Twilight: Stringing Christmas Lights

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While I cooked dinner, Dad dressed in his gray winter coat and his pom-pommed snow hat and stumbled outside with a bag of rolled up strings of Christmas lights and a hot glue gun, a bag of glue sticks in his pocket.  The temperature dipped into the low 30s.  I wondered at the hot glue gun, thinking hot glue would not work well in cold temperatures.  After near an hour, I thought I had better check on him, to make sure he wasn’t collapsed and freezing.  But there he was, painstakingly gluing the light string to the brick every six inches.  He was nearly finished, gluing the last six feet to the wall.  “I didn’t think the hot glue would work on cold brick,” I commented.  “Actually, the glue works better in the cold, because it sets faster, and I can move on to the next spot.”  Just then he let out an “Argghh!!” as he pressed a fingertip into a dollop of hot glue.  “I seem to be gluing my fingers as much as the lights!” he cursed.  I reached in and held down each newly glued spot until the glue hardened, while he moved ahead to the next.  I dipped my finger into the hot glue myself, and I rubbed furiously against the cold brick to wipe the burning glue off.  “I see what you mean,” I commiserated.  With the last section in place, we extricated ourselves from the tangled bushes and stood back to observe.  “You did a great job, Dad,” I complimented.  The white LED lights climbed one end of the brick wall, ran along its adorned top, and ended at the base of the other end.  The next day we wrapped red and green and amber lights around the boxwood bushes.  “Let’s get your mom,” Dad enthused as the sun sank and the cold set in.  Mom was duly impressed, “You men did a great job with the lights!”  Every evening, Dad flips a switch by the front door, contended at the cheery beauty at the corner of the front yard.

Courage at Twilight: Moments of Self-Doubt

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In a prolonged moment of self-doubt about my abilities and contributions, I remarked to my brother Steven about my “stupid little blog posts.” He quickly chided me, gently, and urged me to have compassion for myself.  He assured me my stories are beautiful and real, and he loves reading them.  My four sisters have given me similar encouragement.  So, I trek daily ahead.  Mom has commented to me, pleased, but humble, “Your blog posts are kind of like my biography.”  She is right.  In fact, I tag every post with “Memoir.”  I am telling a story, painting vignettes, writing a family memoir, slowly, one day at a time.  All the stories are true and real, and I hope they approach the kind praise of “beautiful.”  Many of the world’s stories are dark and painful—still, they can be instructive and even revelatory.  But, except for confessing my mistakes (like, not investigating a bang! in Mom’s bathroom when she lost consciousness in the shower on a Sunday morning before church), I choose to tell stories that are both real and redeeming.  Steven is right to encourage me to have compassion for my own story.  I wondered today, Why is the First Great Commandment to love God with all our heart?  It cannot be that God needs the fickle adulation of seven billion squabbling humans.  Rather, I believe that by loving God, we discover the capacity and desire to love others, including ourselves.  So, I will try to believe in myself.  I certainly believe in Mom and Dad: their lives and characters make telling heartening stories an easy exercise.  Mom and Dad are endearing in their quotidian lives, smiling at each other across the distance between recliners, patting the backs of each other’s hands, reminding each other to take their medicine and to put in their hearing aids.  They exemplify.  They edify.  They love and they struggle.  They serve with such generosity.  They are virtuous.  They have value, and their stories deserve to be preserved.  I am so grateful for Mom and Dad.  I am telling their stories, and learning to love them more deeply day after day.

Courage at Twilight: Mom’s Needlepoint

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Ready for the day, Mom sits in her bedroom rocking chair working on her latest needlepoint, waiting for Dad to get up, then listening to him talk and talk when he does get up.  His concerns about the family.  His memories of his childhood, his ministry, his career as an international corporate lawyer.  His worries about each member of the family.  She listens and works the needle and listens.  Her needle carries the yarn up through the square and diagonally down into the next square, a hundred thousand times.  Mom’s completed needlepoints hang framed on many walls in the house, and include large florals, aboriginal geometric designs, fall leaves, rustic Brazilian skylines, and, my favorite, Noah’s ark and the world’s animals gathering two by two.  Mom taught me to needlepoint when our family lived in Brazil—I was nine years old.  My first (and only) needlepoint stitched a red cat on a yellow background.  Two colors.  Nothing like the complicated color patterns of a pair of Mallard ducks on a pond, or a sunset over Salvador, or women carrying pots on their heads.  Mom needlepoints as she watches NCIS and PBS and Netflix, and as she waits for Dad to wake up from his night reading to tell her everything he has on his mind.  Three needlepoints lay finished on the dining room table, and I drove Mom to a rundown wood-paneled dry cleaners to have the needlepoints stretched straight and blocked, ready for framing.  “How do you think that young woman learned the skill of stretching and blocking needlepoint?” I asked Mom.  She had no idea, but was glad to have found her.  In two weeks, we’ll pick them up and deliver them to be framed.  I hope she never stops doing needlepoint.

Enjoy these other needlepoints by my mother.

                                                    

And three more finished, ready to be stretched, straightened, blocked, and framed.

           

Courage at Twilight: Saturday Morning Mystery Oatmeal

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While cold cereal is the work-week’s morning fare, I enjoy cooking breakfast on Saturday mornings. Nothing fancy or heavy—I usually turn to oatmeal. “I love it when you cook breakfast,” Mom reassured me. She normally eats dry Quaker granola with glasses of milk and mint tea on the side. But she loves my mystery oatmeal. Easily bored with the same old, I improvise, wondering what flavor combinations will set well in the oat stew. Classic apple-cinnamon oatmeal is Dad’s favorite. This morning I tried something new: lavender-banana. My goodness, it was delicious. If you want to try them, here are some simple instructions and tips.

Apple-Cinnamon Oatmeal

Ingredients (4 good servings)
4 cups water
2 cups milk (or 2 more cups water)
3 cups rolled oats (not quick oats—quick oats turn to mush while rolled oats remain soft but pleasantly and chewily textured)
salt to taste (I use ¾-1 tsp)
1-2 diced apples, any variety
1 tsp cinnamon

Instructions
Add diced apples to water-milk mixture, along with cinnamon and salt, and bring to rolling boil. Because of the milk, the liquid will quickly boil over, so watch it carefully. Allow the apples to soften in the boil for 3-5 minutes. Add oats and stir. Lower heat to low boil/simmer, and stir frequently for 5-10 or so minutes until the oats are soft and thicken to desired consistency. Sweeten to taste with sweetener of choice. Brown sugar and honey are both wonderful. Mom prefers white sugar. Dad employs Splenda. I use Stevia extract. A dollop of heavy cream adds a bit of luxury.

Lavender-Banana Oatmeal

Ingredients (4 good servings)
4 cups water
2 cups milk (or 2 more cups water)
3 cups rolled oats (not quick oats—quick oats turn to mush while rolled oats remain soft but pleasantly and chewily textured)
salt to taste (I use ¾-1 tsp)
1-2 ripe bananas
1 tsp lavender flowers, ground (I found these in our neighborhood Smith’s grocery store spice aisle)

Instructions
Add lavender and salt to the water-milk mixture, and bring to rolling boil. Remember, it boils over almost without warning, so watch carefully. Add oats and stir. Lower heat to low boil/simmer, and stir frequently for 5-10 or so minutes until the oats are soft and thicken to desired consistency. Add the sliced bananas only at the very end, when the oatmeal is done, and reduce heat. Adding the bananas late releases the wonderful flavor without turning them to mush. Sweeten to taste.

Option Tip: reduce oats by ½ cup and add ¼ cup cream of wheat for extra creamy thickness.

Courage at Twilight: Visit to the Audiologist

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Dad commented to me that he thought he ought to visit the audiologist, to retune his hearing aids and turn up the volume.  I asked Mom tentatively if she thought she might like to have her hearing checked.  I was relieved with her positive answer, because I had noticed some reduction in her ability to hear.  We have been saying “What?” a little too frequently, and sometimes a little too testily.  Mom drove them to the doctor’s office in her little Subaru.  (I stayed behind, feverish and chilled from the shingles vaccine.)  I chuckled to think of Dad folding himself, grunting, into the low passenger seat.  He managed, apparently.  He generally prefers the faithful Suburban, despite needing to climb up into it, because he can easily slide out.  After returning home, Mom came up to my room with a bowl of hot chicken noodle soup, and reported to me about her visit to the audiologist.  The hearing test showed that she still hears quite well, but is missing out on “the edges of conversations,” making it hard to follow what is being discussed.  Dad got his tune up, and Mom ordered her hearing aids.  “I will have to learn something new,” she sighed, resigned but not defeated.  Learning from life never stops.  I am just glad she will be able to hear better, and in time for the family Thanksgiving gathering.  I think she will find life significantly improved.  Most important, her hearing aids will have rechargeable batteries.  I think Dad might be a little envious.

(Image by Couleur from Pixabay)

Running Late for School!

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Amy and Sunshine both need their early-morning before-school cuddle time.

Which means Amy is sometimes running late for school!

Courage at Twilight: Raking Fall Leaves

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The best leaf rakers Mom and Dad had for our New Jersey yard were us children—six of us.  (Mom and Dad helped, of course.)  With half an acre to rake, we got after it, making huge piles of walnut, willow, oak, sumac, and maple leaves to jump and roll around in, before we piled them in the garden for compost.  These days, Dad does not bother with rakes, except to pull leaves out of the bushes and tight corners.  Instead, he mounts his riding mower and sucks up the maple and sweetgum and beautiful red pear leaves into the two rear-mounted canvas bags.  This technique saves Dad from the impossibly fatiguing task of raking, and gives him the pleasure of riding his mower long into the cold season, when the grass has stopped growing.  With no vegetable garden to nourish, the bagged leaves find their way to the landfill.

Courage at Twilight: Baked Birthday Salmon

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For Mom’s birthday dinner, Dad baked his specialty: salmon.  He lined a baking dish with aluminum foil, sprayed on a little oil, placed the fish, and sprinkled on lemon pepper and salt.  I added a generous dollop of butter on top of each piece.  Into the oven for 45 minutes, and out it came, moist and flaky.  (I’m afraid I tore up one piece checking if it were done.)  He added steamed asparagus with butter and salt, and small potatoes sautéed in more butter and salt, with herbs.  Such a dinner is a sublime end to a long Sabbath fast, a cheerful gathering of parents and child, a turning of the day’s stresses into a satisfied sigh, a triumph of taste, and a happy birthday feast.  As far as I am concerned, Dad can bake salmon any day he likes, birthday or no.

Courage at Twilight: You Are Most Beloved

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The day began with creamy apple cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast, gourmet for Mom’s birthday.  She turned 82 today.  The extended family in Utah gathered for a celebratory dinner.  Cards and gifts piled up on her lap.  “I think about you every day as I go about my day.”  Later came chocolate mousse birthday cake, and candles to blow out.  “I love you with all of my heart.”  So many thanked her for their happy memories: camping trips in the mountains; picking blackberries and wild asparagus; surgically pressing the “record” button on a cassette tape player to sensor the song’s profanity; playing badminton in the back yard; watching for bats at twilight; playing owl calls so the owls would come; teaching us to read; directing the church choir in which we all sang; teaching us the family songs.  “I really like Grandma’s hugs.”  She raised six children and suffered with us and cried and laughed with us.  She served dinner promptly at 6:00 every evening, and drove us to our music lessons and sports practices.  She called a soprano “Yoo-Hoo!!!” when it was time for us to come home.  Her favorite flower is the yellow rose.  “My love always.”

Mom and Dad with me and three sisters on her 82nd birthday.

Courage at Twilight: Late into the Night

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I awoke at 6:30 a.m. to get ready for work.  Noticing the glow from the living room lights, I looked over the railing and saw Dad still in his recliner, covered with a crocheted afghan, still reading his book.  “Hi Dad,” I whispered down to him.  “Are you going to go to bed soon and get some rest?”  He looked at the clock, looked up at me, and nodded a sleepy smile.  To be up all night was unusual.  It must have been a compelling book.  Often, I will awake at 2 or 3 a.m., needing to use the restroom, and Dad will be reading, or sometimes sleeping with the open book on his lap.  As much as he loves reading late into the night, the later he reads the less he sleeps and the worse he feels.  An all-nighter can ruin his energy for all of the next day.  One day when he seemed to feel particularly sick and weary, I asked him, “How do you feel today, Dad?”  “I feel awful,” he said.  “I was bad last night and read until 3:30 before I went upstairs to bed.  Now I’m paying the price.”  I remonstrated with him for associating the word “bad” with an activity he loves, which keeps his mind sharp, which enriches his life.  “There’s nothing bad about it,” I reassured him, adding that the later he read, the more he would need to rest, perhaps.  “What do you think about going to bed before midnight tonight?” I suggested.  “I just can’t do it,” he craved.  “I have to read, or my day will not be complete, and I won’t be able to sleep.”  Read on, Dad.

Courage at Twilight: Veterans Day

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Dad, seated, second from right.

Looking out the window of my home office on Veterans Day 2021, with the American flag waving, I pondered on Dad’s life and military service.  Like many Americans, my ancestors served their country in the major conflicts from the Revolutionary War to World War II.  Dad enlisted and served an eight-year obligation between 1953 and 1962.   His Utah Air National Guard unit was the 130th AC&W Flight Squadron.  His Utah Army National Guard unit was the 142nd Military Intelligence Linguist Company, at Fort Douglas, where he was trained as an Interrogator.  He earned an Army Certificate of Training in 1961 for completing a course in Romanian at the U.S. Army Language School at the Presidio, in Monterey, California.  During a hiatus between his Air Force and Army service, he served a volunteer proselyting mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brazil, where he learned Portuguese.  His marriage to Mom came in 1962, along with his honorable discharge from the Army, and his law school graduations came in 1963 (University of Utah), 1964 (New York University), and 1965 (University of São Paulo).  I came along in 1964, perched upon this legacy of intelligence, service, labor, and dedication.  I am so grateful for that legacy, which has provided the foundation for every opportunity of my life.  I hope I am worthy of that legacy.  I hope I have conveyed virtues and values to my own seven children.  My daughter Erin now serves as an officer in the U.S. Army, and I am very proud of her intelligence, service, labor, and dedication to the United States of America.

Courage at Twilight: Holland Mints (Not)

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I wanted to make a nice dessert for Dad, and settled on a cream cheese tart.  I added fresh guava puree to exotify the pie, and sweetened the filling with Splenda.  I have become proficient at making French tart shells (pie crusts) from Julia Child’s cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.   Dad sat at the island watching me prepare the dough.  “Don’t mix it too much,” he interjected.  I think you mixed it too much.  It needs to be ice cold and barely blended.”  I paid no heed, and placed the wax-paper-wrapped balls of dough in the fridge to chill.  After a few hours, I rolled the dough out and shaped the shell in the spring-form pan.  When I first starting baking, I pressed into the shell a sheet of aluminum foil and poured in a pound of dry black beans, to keep the bottom from bubbling up.  The beans are a cheap but effective substitute for ceramic baking beads, which I only recently bought.  Sitting in a yogurt container, they looked just like Holland mints, round and white.  Dad suddenly picked up a ceramic bead and plopped it into his mouth, thinking it was a mint.  Before I could articulate gentle words, I blurted, “Uh uh uh!” like one would chide a child with its hand in the cookie jar.  I did not mean to treat him like an errant child, but out of instinctual fear I did what I needed to do to stop him before he crunched on the glass bead and broke a took, or swallowed the bead.  He quickly spit it out, and neither of us looked at the other or said a word.  I did not want to shame him anymore than I already had with my tut-tut, and he did not want to acknowledge his gaffe.  We pretended nothing happened.  But later, when the pie came out of the oven looking beautiful, he confessed, as if I hadn’t known, “I almost ate one of those white glass beads.  I thought it was a mint!”  The beads removed, and the guava cream cheese filling poured in to bake, the tart tasted wonderfully delicious.

Courage at Twilight: Leftover Sandwiches

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The Snake River valley from the Sidewinder trail.

I left Mom and Dad for two days while I took my two youngest sons to visit their older brother John in Idaho for his 24th birthday.  We rode the five-mile Sidewinder mountain bike trail, a fast flow trail aptly named, although Hyrum’s chain broke and he coasted and pumped the whole distance down.  We explored a long cavernous lava tube in the sagebrush-covered Idaho wasteland.  We ravaged the local pizza buffet.  And we climbed at the gym where John works as a much-appreciated route-setter and climbing instructor.  I have been watching my children climb in gyms and on real rock, and have belayed them all, for 15 years.  But I myself have never climbed.  Suddenly excited to conquer my fears, I pushed past the panic and scaled a 5.8 climb—my first climb ever—with my three sons cheering their old man on.  We ended the trip with “Happy Birthday” and gifts and games of cards: Golf and SkyJo.  On the windy drive back to Utah, a bike rack strap snapped, and the bikes hung precariously by one strap while I pulled off the highway.  The getaway with my sons was delightful—I appreciated the break—and I was happy to come back to Mom’s and Dad’s house, which they insist is my house, too.  “Welcome home!” Dad cheered when I walked through the door.  “Tell us all about your trip!”  Back to work today, I attended a law training, complete with a sandwich lunch.  After stopping at REI for strong straps to re-strap my bike rack, I arrived home in time to help Dad rake deep red pear leaves out of the bushes and load them into the trash container.  “I am so tired,” he lamented, “I need to sit down.”  I invited him to come into the house for a lunch surprise.  “OK, I am ready for lunch.  Today must be Monday, because I always feel so tired after my Sunday ‘day of rest.’”  Inside, I served Mom and Dad two beautiful sandwiches, one club and one turkey avocado, which they split and shared.  The training organizer had invited me to take the leftover sandwiches for my parents.  “We were going to drive to Arby’s,” Dad said.  “But this is much better,” Mom chimed in.  While they munched sandwiches and chips and sipped Coke (Diet for Dad and Zero for Mom), I re-strapped the bike rack, happy for their lunch enjoyment, and grateful I did not lose the bikes on the Idaho freeway.

The entrance to Civil Defense Caves lava tube.

 

Pizza!

 

The old man’s first climb.

Courage at Twilight: Cold Cereal for Breakfast

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Typically, I turn to cold cereals for breakfast during the work week.  It is fast and easy and delicious, and I am often running late.  But I avoid the high-sugar refined-flour cereals and opt for granolas and whole-grain varieties.  On the weekends, I enjoy cream of wheat or rolled oats or multi-grain hot cereals, sweetened with stevia extract and enriched with cream, raisins, diced apples, or spices (such as, cardamom, fennel, lavender flowers, or ginger).  For Dad, all the grocery-store-shelf cereals are high-sugar, anathema to his diabetes.  Understandably, he sometimes cannot resist, and eats them anyway, aching for something delightful and sweet.  Dad makes sure I shop the cereal aisle at the grocery store, so I have breakfast options.  I have attempted to find lower-sugar cereals for him that still are tasty and interesting.  After I bring the week’s groceries into the house, I carefully open all the box-top flaps, without tearing them, and cut off a corner of all the cereal bags, all this to avoid later finding the box tops destroyed and the bags torn vertically askew.  Wanting to find something Dad could enjoy that would not kill him, I shopped online for sugar-free high-protein cereals, and found some promising candidates, sweetened with stevia and monk fruit.  Of course, most of them exceeded $11 a box—heavy sigh.  I ordered some I found on sale for $7 a box, which seemed a bargain next to $11.  My brother’s cereal of choice is the Ezekiel brand: high in protein and fiber, with zero sugar, which he enhances with frozen blueberries and sweetens with organic stevia extract.  I tried Ezekiel once and liked it well enough when sweetened and soaked in milk for 20 minutes to tenderize the whole rolled grains and flakes.  But Dad thought it akin to shredded cardboard.  We’ll give the HighKey keto protein cereals a chance, and go from there.

Courage at Twilight: Emptying the Grass

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The cut grass and Fall leaves from the riding mower shoots into two rear-mounted canvas bags, which Dad empties into a large plastic can lined with a plastic garbage bag.  He thumbs two holes into the sides of the plastic to vent the vacuum and allow the grass to sink and settle.  Mom ties the handles.  Together they lift the can, heavy and with wet grass clippings, and dump the bag into the large trash container, which goes to the curb on Sunday night for Monday morning pickup.  Several times, I lifted the heavy bag out of the can by myself, not to show off, but just to get it done—and I was strong enough to do it.  In the following weeks, I found Dad bagging the grass himself and wrestling the can up to dump the bag into the trash container.  I felt bad I had done it by myself and made him feel he needed to be able to do it by himself.  When I ask if I can help him, he says, “I got it.”  So, now I ask him to help me hoist the can up so we can share the effort of dumping the bag.  No matter one’s relative personal strength, collaboration is often the best solution for all involved, young and old, and middle-aged.

Courage at Twilight: Food Storage

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For over a century the leaders of my church have urged members to prepare for times of future trouble by saving a supply of food for at least one year, which we call “food storage.”  Not out of a sense of doom so much as of prudence and preparedness and the principle of self-reliance.  Frequent earthquakes, forest fires, hurricanes, and a pandemic have proven repeatedly the wisdom in this counsel.  Growing up in New Jersey, semi-trucks unloaded whole pallets piled with sacks of wheat and beans and dried milk in my driveway.  Us kids helped stack them in the garage, and members of congregation came to pick up what they had ordered.  A large room in our basement was filled with hundreds of 50-pound sacks of this and that, which we carried down the narrow stairwell one sack at a time.  Mom mixed milk in the blender at least once a day, and I actually liked it.  I do not recall having milk from a jug until after I graduated from high school.  And most winter mornings Mom ladled hot whole wheat cereal made from the wheat she ground the week before.  When Mom and Dad retired 20 years ago, they gave their food storage to fellow church members and moved to Utah, where they began again.  In recent Church conferences, leaders have again exhorted members to have a supply of stored food. With these exhortations, Dad indicated we had better heed the prophetic counsel and make sure their food storage was in order, and he asked me to prepare an inventory.  The process took me several hours of moving heavy boxes and cans, writing down items and quantities, container sizes and dates, then preparing a spreadsheet.  We were all impressed with what they had built up since their retirement, including 20 five-gallon buckets of hard white wheat and numerous #10 cans of powdered milk, potato pearls, rice, macaroni, freeze-dried fruit, split peas, dried beans, rolled oats, sugar, salt, hot cocoa, and many other foodstuffs.  This time they had included not just foods that would keep them alive in an extended emergency, but foods they would actually enjoy.  The inventory complete, our next task is to counsel about what is missing, and then to fill the gaps.

Courage at Twilight: Dad’s Secret Chili Recipe

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We drove around the block to the church at 5:30 p.m. for the annual pot luck Chili Chocolate party. I had assumed we would not go, what with the difficulty of walking, etc.  But Dad had announced the day before that he was making a crock pot full of chili, and reminded us the party started at 5:30.  I placed the chili crock pot and the chocolate pudding cake in the back of the faithful Suburban and drove the short distance.  The church cultural hall was already crowded with smiling costumed families.  Several long tables boasted two dozen pots of all variety of chilis and chowders, with another table for corn breads and several more for chocolate desserts.  I met a few more neighbors, including Kolani, Joshua, Lacey, Heidi, and Zane.  I fit six sampler cups on my plate and filled them with six soups.  My favorite was the creamy salmon chowder with potatoes and corn.  A neighbor did what Dad did not want me to do: she brought him a plate with filled sampler cups.  When I thanked her, she quipped with a grin, “I just decided to barge in and bring him a plate.”   Carolyn, sitting next to us, asked me to dish up a cup of Dad’s chili for her.  I found the crock pot empty and announced that Dad’s chili apparently was very popular—it was all gone.  Dad was obviously pleased, both that he had brought the chili and that people liked it.  As usual, I ate a bit too much and felt very full.  And I was powerless at the chocolate table, although I only nibbled at the six desserts I crammed onto my plate.  As I retrieved our empty crock pot, Rick asked me if I had brought the chili in our crock pot.  “Nelson did,” I answered.  “It was my favorite chili of all,” he enthused, “just like my mom used to make.”  I reported that to Dad, too.  Mom said gratefully, “Thanks, Nelson, for making the chili and taking us there tonight.  I enjoyed myself!”

Courage at Twilight: Handicapped Parking

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What a blessing is the handicapped placard hanging from the rearview mirror of the faithful Suburban.  I tend to quick judgment when I see someone my age and looking just as healthy occupying a handicapped parking stall.  But I try to turn that emotion into gratitude that I can park close to the store for Mom and Dad.  With me driving, they scan the parking lot for the nearest best blue-signed pole.  On our first grocery store outing, I pulled neatly into the stall, the passenger tires perfectly parallel and close to the cart-return curb.  But the car was so close to the curb that Dad couldn’t get out and nearly fell.  So now I look for the van accessible stall and turn wide into it, the driver tires in the hatched lines, with plenty of room for Dad and his shopping cart to maneuver.  The three of us form a slow-moving line crossing the drive lane into the store, me in the front waving thanks to the patient cars, and Mom and Dad following—a kind of gaggle in reverse, with the gosling in the lead.

 

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Courage at Twilight: Recommended to the Temple

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Salt Lake Temple

On a Sunday afternoon, I took Mom and Dad to see their church leaders to renew their temple recommends. This document allows them admittance to the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The Church has 265 temples worldwide in operation or at some stage of construction.  They are magnificent buildings, and we consider them a House of God on earth.  Temples are not for regular weekly worship services, but for ceremonies in which we covenant with God to obey his commandments, to be moral and chaste, to contribute our time and means to the Church, and to love and serve one another.  We are instructed on the purpose of existence and the nature of God and his Son.  And couples are married and families sealed together not just until death but for eternity.   We change into white clothing as an aspirational symbol of purity and cleanliness, and of having left the world outside.  Mom and Dad do not visit the temples anymore due to age and infirmity, but visited temples monthly during the previous decades.  Even not attending, to them it is important to be worthy to attend.  So, they cheerfully waited in the church meetinghouse foyer for their interviews, making pleasant small talk with the other temple-goers.  I waited for them as they each had their turn, knowing the questions they would be asked, including: Do you have faith in God the Eternal Father and in his Son Jesus Christ?  Do you believe in Jesus and his role as your Savior and Redeemer?  Do you strive for moral cleanliness, and are you chaste?  Are you a tithe payer?  Do you abstain from consuming harmful substances?  Do you believe in the truthfulness of the Church, and support its Prophet and Apostles?  Are you honest in all that you do?  Mom and Dad each emerged from their brief interview with humble smiles, the smiles of peace from living lives of faith and good works.

 

Pictured above: Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah (where I live), dedicated in 1898.

Some Church temples around the world:

Washington D.C. Temple

Washington, D.C.

 

Laie Hawaii Temple

Hawaii, Laie

 

Hong Kong China Temple

Hong Kong

 

Accra Ghana Temple

Ghana, Accra

 

Lisbon Portugal Temple

Portugal, Lisbon

 

Oakland California Temple

California, Oakland

 

Sao Paulo Brazil Temple

Brazil, Sao Paulo

Courage at Twilight: Railings and Stairs

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My siblings and I had begun to notice how ascending the stairs had grown more difficult for Mom and Dad.  They huffed and wheezed and groaned.  A wear pattern emerged on the wall where hands had sought some added traction and stability.  My sister Sarah arranged for a company to install a railing on the wall side of the stairs, at equal height with the wood banister.  Now it is much easier for them to push and pull their way up, using all four limbs, and to lean forward as they descend, easing the arthritis pains in their knees.  I will not lie: I use the railing, too.

Courage at Twilight: The Hated Walker

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Dad loathes his walker. His walker is a royal blue, heavy-duty model, quite nice looking, I think.  I kept it for weeks in the back of the faithful Suburban, then moved it to a corner of the garage, and finally retired it to the basement.  Dad simply refuses to use it, and scowls at even a hint of a suggestion that he ought to use it.  Hatred is not too strong a word for his feelings for that walker.  On the other hand, Dad loves his garden tools, of which he has dozens of all shapes and varieties.  I have tried to cast his walker as simply another tool for him to use for specific tasks, when only that tool will do.  He was not persuaded.  And I have not pressed the point.  I think he feels embarrassed that even the simple act of walking is almost too hard for him, when he once ran marathons (yes, the 26.2-mile kind, 13 of them).  He did remark to me recently, “I know a wheelchair is in my not-too-distant future, Rog.”  I thought admitting that eventuality was remarkably brave of him.  I hope before then the dreaded walker will become his fast and long-term friend.

Courage at Twilight: Forbidden Fritters

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Following our routine after selecting the week’s produce, Dad waited in the deli area while I finished the grocery shopping.  My cart heavy-laden, I circled back to gather Dad and his cart and to head together to the register.  As we passed slowly by a stack of boxed pastries, Dad picked up the top box and looked longingly at the apple fritters.  “I sure would like to have an apple fritter,” he lamented, teetering on temptation’s edge.  I understood the angst with which he contemplated the moist deep-fried fritters covered with white sugar icing: I, too, ached for a bite of blissful sweetness.  We stood in silent solidarity, Dad with his fear of diabetes and me with my fear of being fat.  He put the box down with genuine sadness.  We squared our shoulders and walked toward the register, leaving desire behind us.  “When we get home,” I offered, “I’ll make us some French crêpes rolled around sliced fresh bananas, peaches, and strawberries, with dollops of stevia-sweetened whipped cream.”  “That sounds wonderful,” Dad said.  “Let’s do it.”

(Image by pixel1 from Pixabay.)

Courage at Twilight: In the Resurrection

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Dad wants to be buried by his father, Owen. Owen died of heart disease at the age of 59, a sad separation of father and son.  Dad harbors a secure faith in the resurrection and afterlife.  He is not concerned with the mechanics of how our bodies will be rebuilt and immortalized—God knows how to work all that out.  In the next life, each person will receive the divine inheritance they craved and strove for during this mortality.  The character we forged here will be our character there.  How could it be any different?  Did we think we could spend our life injuring others and suddenly, in the next sphere, be transformed into benevolence?  No, the universe doesn’t work that way.  Dad shared with me that when he awakens in the resurrection, next to his father, who will likewise resurrect, he intends to exclaim, “Father!  I am so happy to see you!  I love you!”  And Owen will rejoin, “Son!  I am so pleased to see you!  I have missed you!  I love you!”  Now, that is a hope and faith I can subscribe to.

Courage at Twilight: Mom’s Rag Rugs

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When Dorothy Lucille (aka Mom, b. 1939) was a child, perhaps age 6 or 7, she accompanied her mother Dorothy Erma (b. 1915) and her grandmother Dorothy Ellen (b. 1895) to visit her great-grandmother Elizabeth Esther (b. 1875).  Grandma Elizabeth was crocheting an oval rug from strips of cloth cut from old clothing.  Mom liked that Grandma was making something so beautiful from practically nothing: rags.  Mom’s matriarchs encouraged her interest with strips of cloth rolled into balls.  Grandpa James Edmond carved for her a large oak crochet hook.  Mom’s mother taught her the crochet stitch.  After marrying Dad, Mom began her serious crocheting of rag rugs—they had no carpet or rugs in their first home.  For her first project, in 1962, she sat on the floor and crocheted an enormous round area rug, one small stitch at a time.  After Dad retired and the family moved back to Utah, Mom began crocheting again in earnest.  She finds her sheets at the Deseret Industries thrift store.  She washes and irons them, cuts them into strips with a cutting wheel, and rolls the strips into balls, which she crochets while sitting in her recliner.  Her rugs can be found throughout her home and the homes of her children and grandchildren.  When I come home from work, or when we watch movies or crime shows (she loves N.C.I.S.), Mom quickly and deftly winds the crochet stitch into a growing oval with multi-colored and patterned sheets.  Each rug is unique, some understated and plain, others blaring and fun.  Mom taught my daughter Hannah and me the rug crochet stitch, and we have made several rugs.  Hannah’s rugs represent a humble work of art six generations in the making.

Here is a sampling of Mom’s rag rugs:

Courage at Twilight: Lasagna for Dinner

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Dad told me he would cook dinner tonight.  We would have lasagna with meat sauce, plus steamed vegetables.  I told him that sounded wonderful.  When I arrived home from work, he took the lasagna out of the box and slid it frozen into the hot oven.  An hour later he emptied a bag of frozen lima beans into a pan, and shucked fresh sweet corn on the cob.  Stouffer’s makes such yummy lasagna—thank goodness for the occasional frozen dinner.  Stuffed and satisfied, I thanked Dad for making dinner.

Courage at Twilight: Sunday Afternoon Drive

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Mom asked me almost sheepishly after church, “Do you think, perhaps, we could take a drive today? I would so like to see the old Bawden home my grandparents built.”  “Of course!” I answered.  “I’m sorry the thought did not occur to me before.”  Dad’s faithful Suburban lead us by the back roads across the Salt Lake valley to historic Granger, my mother’s hometown.  We noted fondly the orange-dotted pumpkin farms and horse corrals and vegetable gardens, and commented on the architectural eras of the homes—1930s bungalow was our favorite.  Mom suggested we drive by the house where Dad lived from 15 to 26, from junior high school to his 1962 marriage to Mom.  “I moved here 70 years ago,” he observed flatly.  Many of those years were unhappy and traumatic for Dad and his siblings due to trouble at home.  But Dad was blessed by the influences of Isabelle Bangerter, Grant Bangerter, and Ella Bennion, all of whom built him up, treated him kindly and with respect, nudged him toward a path of personal fulfillment, and influenced his concepts of self-worth and the life worth living.  The tension and sadness I felt in the car evaporated as I drove away.  A few miles away, there sat the old Bawden house, strong and modest and pretty, built by the family in the late 1800s.  I met my great-grandparents there when I was a little boy as the family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner.  In the 1930s, Mom’s father Wallace built a bungalow nearby, for his new wife’s wedding gift, and there Mom grew up, in the new Bawden bungalow near the old Bawden homestead.  Granger was all farmland then, with homes separated by miles of farms.  Now it is deteriorating strip mall suburbia.  I spent many days in Mom’s childhood home, roaming the empty dusty old chicken coops, breathing the soothing old smell of the oil-and-dust garage, pumping the hand well, hunting giant night-crawler earthworms for trout fishing, and roasting hot dogs on the outdoor cinderblock grill at family parties.  When my grandma lived in a nursing home in her mid-90s, the family sold the house to the car dealer next door, who razed the prime half-acre and put in a parking lot.  I can’t help thinking of Joni Mitchell’s famous Big Yellow Taxi from 1970: “They paved paradise, Put up a parking lot.”  I feel grateful I have memories and photographs of that old paradise.

My great-grandparents’ home in Granger, Utah.

Courage at Twilight: Mother’s Orders

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Unlike Dad, Mom seems pleased with a little pampering. She does not feel threatened by being helped.  During her recent illness, she was not reluctant to tell me what she wanted and needed.  And I enjoyed doing it.  “Would you get the mail from the mailbox?”  “Will you dish up my dinner? Do you mind bringing it to me in my chair?”  “I’ll have mango juice, please.”  “Thank you, sweetie—I’m just bossing you around, aren’t I?”  I felt happy to be of good utility.  And she was sweet and grateful.  But now that she is recovering, she treks to the mailbox for the mail and dumps the recyclables into the green container, with no need of assistance from me.

Courage at Twilight: The Doorbell

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From my home office window, I saw the USPS mail truck drive by.  A few minutes later the doorbell rang.  I ran down the stairs and opened the front door to find no one there and no packages on the porch and no mail on the javelina snout.  Huh, I wondered and literally scratched my bald head.  Mom was sitting calmly at the kitchen table.  “Mom, I heard the doorbell ring, but nobody’s there.”  She allowed a sheepish grin and told me it was she that had rung the bell.  At my quizzical look, she confided that the doorbell is a kind of intercom message from her to help Dad get up and get moving into the day.

Courage at Twilight: Don’t Hover

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“I don’t want you to pamper me!” Dad barked.  I thought I was just being courteous, delivering his dinner, carting off his dirty dishes.  “I can do it myself.”  Watching him do it himself is painful for me because it is painful for him.  The effort to do the simplest things is enormous and exhausting.  But I respect his desire to not want paternalistic pampering.  I respect that he does not want to feel old and feeble, that he does want to feel strong and capable, despite knowing that “I’m going downhill fast, Rog.”  My opportunity is to affirm him discreetly, to help him with subtlety, to step quietly in without implying my help is needed.  So, when Dad is ready for seconds, I get up from the dinner table for an ice cube or the salt, and say with nonchalance, “I’m already up, so can I bring you something?”

Courage at Twilight: Stopping the Spread

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Living now with my parents, I cannot fathom the reality that we had no family gatherings with Mom and Dad for 18 months due to Covid-19. My sister Sarah grocery shopped for them every Saturday during those months.  I cooked for them on occasion.  We always wore masks and washed and sanitized our hands and kept our distance—no hugs (except for “air hugs”).  My siblings called Mom and Dad frequently, sometimes daily.  Sarah, as a speech pathologist, works at a critical care facility with people who suffer from conditions affecting their communication and swallowing.  While donning head-to-toe personal protective equipment, she watched Covid rage through her patients, ending the lives of too many.  My siblings and I all understood and respected that if Mom and Dad contracted Covid in their aged and weakened conditions, we likely would lose them, as so many thousands lost members of their families.  To keep them safe, we did our little part to stop the spread, following all the recommended precautions, putting philosophy and politics aside in the interest of safety.  Mom and Dad received their first Pfizer vaccine at a huge convention center.  Hundreds of old and infirm people stood for hours in long lines, walking from station to station around the entire perimeter of the hall—fully a mile.  Dad thought his cane would do, but shortly into the ordeal he confided to me, “I don’t think I’m going to make it.”  I had him sit down while I ran for a wheelchair.  They received their third shot this week at a local health department facility, walking 20 feet past the front door to their seats, with no wait.  What a difference between the two experiences!  But in all three cases, the nursing staff were so kind and pleasant and helpful.  After all the family members were fully vaccinated, we began to visit again.  My sister Jeanette recently came to visit from Arizona for a week.  We cooked together and played Scattergories and drove to see the fall leaves in the mountain forests.  And we broke out the fall crafts: wood pumpkins, a harvest-themed wreath, and a tall scarecrow.  My niece Amy joined in, painting the eyes black and the nose orange.  How grateful we are to be safe, healthy, and together again.

My first ever attempt at a wreath.

Courage at Twilight: The Spanish Word for Pain

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“I wish I could do more for you,” Mom lamented one recent afternoon.  “I am so sorry for all the mistakes I made as a mother.”  For a moment I stood stunned at the revelation of my 82-year-old mother’s insecurity, especially as incongruous as it was with my memory of reality.  Mom gave her whole soul to being a mother.  Hot whole-wheat gruel steamed on the table before school, and she served a delicious dinner at precisely 6:00 p.m., every day.  She washed by basketball socks and took me to buy my first pair of Levi’s.  She gathered us every Sunday afternoon to play games—PIT was a favorite, with six kids clamoring cacophonously for “wheat!” and “rye!” and “barley!”  The family car ran night and morning with rides to and from marching band practice, piano lessons, and early morning Bible class.  I sat at the kitchen table one evening struggling with my homework, trying to remember the Spanish word for pain—dolor.  She surprised me by bursting out protectively, “You know: dolor, just like Delores!” referring to my painfully unrequited infatuation for a girl at church.  I never again forgot that word!  She nursed me through dozens of ear infections and serious injuries followed by surgeries and staff.  She organized a family vacation to the magical woods of Maine, and I have loved loons since.  She even gave me an enema (my most embarrassing life memory) when I writhed from what the doctor arrogantly insisted was constipation but was in truth an appendix about to burst.  And at 82 she says good-bye with “I can’t wait to see you when you come home!” and greets me after work with “There’s my boy!”  Once again she is providing a safe and comfortable home for me, and listens without upbraid to her children in all their multitudinous troubles.  “What mistakes?” I asked her sincerely.  “I cannot remember any.”  Even were they present, and I presume they were, they are long forgotten.  We six siblings, and our numerous offspring, all cherish her.  It is our turn now to wish we could do more for her.

Courage at Twilight: Sacramental Emblems

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Sunday church services focus on what we call “the sacrament” in my Church.  The sacrament consists of small pieces of bread and small cups of water, one of which we each eat and drink in remembrance of Jesus.  After Covid-19 forced churches to close, Church leaders authorized the men of the Church to use their priesthood authority to provide the sacrament at home to their families and others.  While the church buildings are again open for in-person attendance, Mom and Dad have been too weak to go.  How pleased and privileged I felt to use priesthood authority to prepare the bread and water, to kneel and offer the prescribed prayers, and to distribute the sacramental emblems to Mom and Dad.  After we partook, Mom looked up at me from her chair and said sweetly, “Thank you so much.  That was very special.”  As a threesome, we discussed how the sacrament serves several purposes.  We remember Jesus, his infinite loving sacrifice for us, and his ongoing atonement.  We covenant anew to obey God’s commandments, and to love and serve our neighbor.  We recommit to repent and to strive to be our best selves.  And we express our gratitude for our life and blessings.  After our intimate church service, we broke our fast and enjoyed leftover creamy vegetable soup and toasted ciabatta.

Courage at Twilight: Such a Faithful Car

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The Suburban key would not come out of the ignition.  It was soundly stuck.  And the gear shift handle flopped around incongruously, like an odd-angled broken arm.  The accident in 2018 had totaled Dad’s beloved Suburban, 20 years old, and had just about totaled him.  The force of the collision snapped his scapula clean in half—an excruciating injury with a long and painful recovery.  Once he began to heal, he joked with his grandchildren that he had broken his “spatula.”  Dad could not bear to say good-bye to “my faithful Suburban,” which had crossed the country and pulled trailers and carried the family and the kayaks and the spring-bar tents to extended family reunions.  So, he kept and fixed his car, which is as good as new.  Almost.  With the key now stuck in the ignition, the battery drained and died.  We tried the lawn mower battery charger, to avoid a tow to the dealer.  Eight hours later the large car battery still had zero charge.  Our neighbor, Terry, hooked up his 15-amp charger, which zapped the Suburban battery to 100% in 30 minutes.  Dad’s first Lyft took him home from the dealer while the car was being fixed.  The repairs accomplished, his faithful Suburban once again sits in the garage, ready for grocery shopping, hauling bags of bark chips, and taking a Sunday drive to see the reddening leaves of Fall.

Courage at Twilight: Walking to the Mailbox

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“Mom,” I whispered to the cute lady napping in the plush recliner.  Would you like to come get the mail with me?”  “Sure,” she nodded groggily, such a good sport.  We small-stepped arm-in-arm out the front door, past the pumpkins and mums, and toward the brick mailbox.  Almost there, I suggested, “What do you say we first walk to the corner?”  She would rather have not, but came along without protest.  At the corner, I ventured, “Should we walk to the next corner, or turn around?”  We had done what we both knew was helpful and enough, so we turned around, my arm crooked to fit hers, and tottered together to get the Church News, the bills, and the junk mail.  Having exercised, we were ready for a French soup of pureed potatoes, carrots, and onions, mixed with chopped spinach and mushrooms sautéed in butter and salt, enriched with heavy cream, rosemary, salt, pepper, and a bit more butter.  Très délicieux!

Courage at Twilight: Gender Reveal

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I had never heard of a “gender reveal” before, and I confess my first involuntary horrid absurd notion was of holding aloft a naked infant for the invited guests to gawk at. Instead, I learned, a gender reveal is a party at which the soon-to-be parents and their guests learn from a trusted person the sex of the coming child, followed by balloons and confetti and thick-frosted cake, colored blue or pink, boy or girl.  At John’s and Alleigh’s invitation, family and friends from Utah and Idaho gathered to Mom’s and Dad’s house for the celebration, happy to see each other, pumping hands and exchanging embraces, catching up on news and activities, eating chicken salad croissants, everyone eager for cupcakes with swirled pink and blue icing.  Mom and Dad added little cups of deluxe mixed nuts and candy corn.  We played cornhole, the always popular bean bag toss game.  Then it was time for the revelation (or is it “the reveal”?).  John and Alleigh each grasped a cardboard cannon, cameras whirring.  On “3!” they pulled the cannon strings and out exploded clouds of blue confetti—and then the whoops and screams of delight.  Their first child will be a boy!  His two-year-old cousin, Lila, gathered up little fists-full of confetti and announced, “fireworks!”  They had been equally contended with the thought of either sex.  Their exuberance was not over the baby’s gender, but over the ever-more-real fact that their baby is coming, soon—the  happiest of all possible news.

Courage at Twilight: Time for a New Roof

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After the big rains, a prodigious paint bulge in the vaulted ceiling plus rain gutters filled with shingle grit prompted a roof inspection, and revealed the need for a new roof. A herd of elephants, it seemed, started tromping overhead at 6:00 a.m., shoveling the 25-year-old shingles to the ground and driveway dumpster below.  Somehow Dad managed to sleep through the racket—not Mom and me.  The crew covered the curtilage with tarps, protecting the bushes and shrubs, and catching shingles and nails.  The sun heated the tarps to such a degree that they burnt to brown the tops of every bush—Dad cut off the dead tops with his electric hedge trimmer.  Mom and Dad instructed the roofers remove the old, ineffectual attic vents and fan, which they replaced with a ridgeline vent that looks like thicker shingles.  The job was done in a single long day.  The vent requires cutting an inch or two in the ridgeline plywood—the vent would not work without it.  I poked my head into the attic to verify the cut was there—it was.  Not thinking to wear a mask, my throat scratched for hours with insulation dust.  Years before, Dad had installed a heat cable to prevent ice buildup on the eves.  The roofers tore off and threw away the heat cable with the old shingles, except for two downspout heating elements left dangling from their outlets.  The roofing company manager said he would have a new cable installed before Dad paid the bill.  I was worried about the company taking advantage of my elderly parents, but the cost was in line with what the neighbors paid for their new roof.  Now we can get the paint bubble repaired.  Mom and Dad are proud of their home and have worked hard to keep it in excellent condition.  They have faced life together in this home, and overcome.  Here they have gathered their posterity to celebrate and mourn and strengthen.  Sometimes, in the evening, we dawdle around to admire the beautiful yard.  Sometimes we sit in the driveway watching the sun set and waving at the neighbors walking by with their dogs.  Sometimes we sit on the back patio and stare at the imposing Wasatch mountains, where the mountain maple and gambel oak leaves are turning red.  And we listen to the crimson-headed finches sing.

Courage at Twilight: Thoughts about Marriage

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I have been thinking about marriage, that it is perhaps the most challenging of all human relationships.  There is so much at stake, from our personal happiness, our financial security, our sense of place and purpose in the world, to our having a posterity to love and be loved by.  Marriage is at once difficult and instructional.  Marriage requires consecration and sacrifice, a constant negotiation toward a healthy and fluid balance of power, a vigilance for the welfare of another over the self, and a give-all commitment by both partners to the covenantal promise.  I have been thinking that no relationship will teach us more about how to be human, and how to be divine.  In marriage is the likelihood of experiencing life’s greatest pains of spirit and mind, and the possibility of life’s greatest joys, and very probably both.  I think marriage generally works either to wonderful or to catastrophic effect.  I have observed many successful and failed marriages, but none so carefully as Mom’s and Dad’s marriage, now in its 60th year.  They shoulder every burden together.  They discuss every problem and plan and posterity.  They cry and plan and laugh and laugh.  They are not two identical halves, by any means, but two congruent complementary components forming an entity complete.  Dad does most of the talking, and Mom all the needlepoint.  Dad calls “Lucille” throughout the day, telling her his every thought and impression.  Mom at times snaps in exasperation, then rebounds with affectionate pats on his hand.  Though my own marriage experience cannot emulate theirs, still I feel proud of my parents for sticking with it, for keeping the covenant, for showing the way.  For my own part, the continuing opportunity is to keep my covenant with God, with my children, and with the broader family, and to lead a purposeful, contributing life.  That is sufficient.

Courage at Twilight: Block Party

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Mom’s and Dad’s neighbor stopped by Sunday afternoon with an invitation to a block party at his house later in the week. Hamburgers and hot dogs plus pot luck salads and desserts.  I decided to go—he is my neighbor now, too.  Mom and Dad decided it would be too difficult for them to go, so I walked over alone.  They thought it would be bad form for me to bring them food from a party they did not attend or contribute to.  I understood, but explained that if Darrell offered, I would accept.  I received a warm welcome, which was nice since I felt a bit awkward as an older single man in a crowd of contended couples.  I met several families: Valentine, Liu, Antonelli, Back, Lundgren, Jarvis, Breen, Callister, Taylor.  Nice people all.  I fought off creeping distress after learning four names, fearing I would forget them all upon hearing a fifth.  Many of them inquired after Mom’s and Dad’s welfare.  Fixings for the hamburgers included crisp bacon, grilled onions, and over-medium eggs, and I confess to enjoying my burger very much.  The donuts I brought were popular, disappearing as fast as the burgers.  Mary Ann asked if I would like to take some food home for Mom and Dad.  “Well,” I responded, “I have been instructed neither to request nor refuse.”  “Well, then, load up a plate!” she ordered.  Dad relished his “most excellent” hamburger, and Mom her blackened all-beef franks.

Courage at Twilight: Supraventricular Tachycardia

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During gym class, playing volleyball—that’s when it happened. My heart started to flutter and I became weak and light-headed.  Sitting on the sidelines with my fingers pressed to my jugular, I managed to count 300 beats in a minute.  Then it stopped, and I was fine.  I was 17.  My doctor trained me to stop the runaway heart-beat using vagal maneuvers, bearing down while holding my breath.  Normally, lying on my back was all it took to slow the beat.  Fully 40 years later, the vagals would not work, and my friend took me to the emergency room after two hours at 180 bpm.  My cardiologist explained SVT—supraventricular tachycardia—a condition in which the electric circuitry of the heart becomes confused momentarily and takes an unintended and incorrect short cut, sending the heart racing.  He thought low-dose Metoprolol would do the trick, and it did.

The roofing inspector had come to examine the 25-year-old shingles, and Mom watched from the back yard, seated on the rock wall.  She began to feel funny in her eyes and head, stood up, became dizzy, and collapsed.  The mortified inspector helped Mom to a chair.  Her lip had glanced on a rock and was swollen and red.  A brain MRI showed no stroke, no tumor, no inflammation, nothing but a very healthy brain.  But the halter heart monitor revealed repeated episodes of rapid heart rate.  Mom’s doctor, a neighbor, called me to explain the test results, the textbook symptoms, and the treatment.  Knowing all about SVT, I jumped in to inform him of my condition and treatment.  We chuckled in astonishment and excitement at the genetic coincidence.  “Looks we know now where you got it from,” he said, amused.  Chuckling felt appropriate, because Mom’s condition is not a heart defect, just a minor electrical short, and easily treatable, and because after four weeks of tests and consultations and worry, we both felt so relieved to have the answer, and such a positive one.  Mom took her first dose tonight, and is already back on the stationary bicycle, albeit slowly and carefully, her fear ebbing, on her way to renewed strength.

Courage at Twilight: Sugar-Free

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Mom texted me to see if I would take her and Dad to Walgreen’s when I got home from work.  The object of the outing: sugar-free chocolate candy for Dad.  Mom gave me careful directions to the store, and in and around the parking lot.  She stayed in the car, but encouraged Dad sweetly with, “Get lots and lots, Nelson.”  And we did.  Hershey’s and Russel Stover’s, more than a dozen bags in many varieties.  “This will last me for six months,” Dad beamed.  Along with mixed nuts and popcorn, he likes to munch a candy here and there while reading in his rocking chair late into the night.  His only disappointment at the store was the absence of sugar-free chocolate truffles.  We stared dejectedly at all the many kinds of chocolate truffles he could not eat.  I reassured him I would order some immediately from Amazon when we got home.  It’s time to go keep that promise.

Courage at Twilight: Pumpkins on the Porch

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Dad suggested we bring home Café Rio for dinner.  I suggested we pick up some pumpkins on the way.  He protested that it was too early in the season, that they would just rot if we bought them now.  I countered that if we bought them in a month they would have sat at the store for that month instead of prettily on their porch, and opined that the pumpkins would not rot until after the first hard freeze.  He conceded the point.  I parked at Lowes in a handicapped stall with direct line-of-sight to the pumpkin boxes, holding the pumpkins up one by one for Mom and Dad to give me the thumbs up or down for each.  We left with four: traditional orange, wrinkled red, white with cream cycle splotches, and a deep green with skin lobed like a brain.  At Café Rio, I stood Mom’s four-footed cane in the line.  Mom and Dad sat at a table near the menu so I could explain their dinner options.  The lady ahead of us moved the cane with her as the long line progressed, to keep our spot.  Mom chose the roast beef burrito, and Dad the roast beef salad.  Mom hinted she would like a tres leches for dessert, and Dad entreated for a key lime pie (diabetes be damned).  “I’m worn out just from sitting there waiting,” Dad sighed as we walked slowly to the car.  He had forgotten his cane, and so leaned on my shoulder instead.  Back at home, Mom and I arranged the pumpkins festively on the front porch before settling into TexMex and Netflix.