exuberance eg•zo͡o ́•ber ənts

I woke up this morning to the sound of my doorbell ringing.

It's Sunday morning, it's blizzarding outside, and I am not dressed or hygienically prepared to entertain.

Nevertheless, I reasoned, since my doorbell is ringing (it has rung twice now in quick succession) under these strange circumstances, it's got to be serious. Someone must have a real need to contact me face to face. So, I roll out of my toasty covers, throw on  a mu'u mu'u (honestly!) and stagger towards the front door.

The view from inside. . . where it's warm!

Before I can get quite get there, I see my visitor has already made his way into my living room.  He is a little boy, MY little boy, already dressed from head to toe to fingertips in his "play in the snow" clothes.  I hadn't known my boys were even awake, and yet they have dressed themselves thoroughly and independently in everything they need to keep warm as they frolic in the first big snow of the season.  George was unable to work the front doorknob with his gloved hands, so has rung the doorbell for help.  He has come inside to find Lewis, who is already snowboarding down the hill in the backyard, rolling snowballs with mittened hands and then either eating them or throwing them.

George and Lewis, snow lovers.

These are the two of my boys that were "Made in Michigan"--and it shows today, as does their youthful exuberance.  Watching them, I feel some of that exuberance spread to my heart, too,  and I remember that the world being transformed overnight from brown/grey to perfect crystalline white should always be regarded as miraculous.

Thanks, boys!

Slippahs

Living the vida local, or, "What 'rubbah slippahs' means to me."

A family friend recently mentioned "rubbah slippahs" on her facebook status.  She was disappointed to hear them called "flip-flops" on the new Hawaii 5-0 TV show,  bummed because anyone who calls Hawaii home does not refer to them as flip-flops.  I think her respect for the authenticity of the show sort of plummeted.

My guess is that the actors and writers of the show may have known that, to be authentically Hawaiian, they should call flip-flops "slippers," or, more accurately, "slippahs."  I bet that they also knew that if they called them by that authentic name, people from the other 49 states and parts of Canada would be really confused, and might mentally lose track of the plot while they were trying to figure out what crime was committed in fleece-lined bedroom footwear.  If you have grown up in the continental United States, you most likely think that's what slippers are.  You might even think a slipper is a fancy dress shoe, like Cinderella's glass slipper.  And, if majority rules, then you are right.  I recognize that comparatively few people define slippers the way us Hawaii folks do.

Not rubbah, but still slippahs.

I must tell you firstly why I think the term flip-flop isn't used in Hawaii.  When worn properly, slippahs are not onomatopoetic (see my post on onomatopoeia from August 9th, 2010) in that way.  Flip-flop is the cutesie, perky sound that slippers make when people who are not comfortable in them, who are not used to them, wear them.  It happens when people use the toe-scrunch method to keep slippers on their feet.  When people do this, it is exhausting to the feet, and entirely against the point of wearing such easy footwear.  It causes an uptight little "flip" sound as the toes scrunch and bring the bottom of the slipper snapping up into the heel.  It is a hallmark of discomfort.  A truly experienced wearer of rubbah slippahs knows that the best way to keep them on is to use the force of friction provided by dragging them against the ground each time you take a step forward.  This is the lazy-foot method.  As I've lived in many places on the U.S. mainland, once in a while I see people who look like they could be from Hawaii.  I'm often tempted to say "Howzit?" or "Aloooha!" but I resist until I have watched them walk in their slippers.  If the person exhibits proper slippah wearing technique, I can both see it and hear it, and know without a doubt that my shaka will be reciprocated.

Having spent the majority of my life in warm Hawaii, and the last few years in cold Michigan, I have noticed that there is an underappreciation of the rubbah slippah here in the midwest.  I would like to speak out boldly about the beauty, utility and symbolism of this footwear.  As you read what I write, you will probably think I am joking.  I won't be!  I'm nothing if not earnest in my love for all that the rubbah slippah represents. As I tell you what "rubbah slippahs" mean to me, don't be surprised if you sense my tears falling, for winter is coming to Michigan and as wonderful as they are, my rubbah slippahs don't keep the snow off my feet and thus will be relegated to back/bottom of the closet until next May.

Rubbah slippahs are the minutemen of footwear.  If you need to go outside, it takes less than a second to slide your feet into the pair closest to you, and you are ready for your trip to the store, the school, the garage, the garden, the neighbors' house, the church building, wherever!  I wore slippahs to a friend's party the other night, and when we had to leave in a hurry to get home to the kids,  I was ready to go in no time.  My hubby, on the other hand, had worn his shoelaced dress shoes.  I stood there for a good 2-3 minutes in the doorway of our friends' home, as Charles did the whole Mr. Rogers routine to get his fancy shoes on, and our hosts felt obligated to stand and watch and make small talk until we were actually out the door.  In case of emergency there's just nothing better.  If a loved one is in trouble, you can slip your slippahs on and be at the ER, the police station, the bus stop, wherever, without wasting a single second on finding socks, deciding which shoes to wear and putting them on.

Rubbah slippahs are smart.  Some people think that such casual footwear is slipshod and lazy.  I have to disagree.  It's so much more efficient to spend less time in shoe putting-on, so that you can actually spend more time doing important work.  And they're so practical!  If your shoes-and-socks shoes are wet, they're going to stay wet for a good long time and may cause you some real problems.  If your closed-toe shoes get a rock in them, you have to stop (the whole group if you're with one), sit down, untie your shoe, dump the rock out, put the shoe back on and tie it up before you can continue.  A wet slippah dries within seconds of continuous wear in dry conditions.  And a rock in your slippah?  It flopped out of the shoe in the very second you noticed you had stepped on it.  I recently read an article about how bare feet are the best athletic shoe.  They did studies and everything.  Guess what?  Rubbah slippahs are the next best thing to bare feet!  Your feet may actually feel better with less molly-coddling instead of more.

Happy Feet!

Rubbah slippahs are clean.  Yes, clean!  I know that feet in slippahs may be exposed to more dirt than feet in shoes and socks.  First of all, this is much less true if slippahs are used correctly.  When you use the toe-scrunch method I advised against, you actually tend to scoop dirt up and fling it towards your body.  When you use the lazy foot method, you keep dirt in its place.  Secondly, there's dirt, and then there's dirt.  Slippah-clad feet may be more dusty, it's true, but feet asphyxiated in shoes and socks for any length of time have their own kind of nastiness.  It's that warm, dark environment of the inside of the shoe that invites bacterial growth and odor.

Rubbah slippahs are versatile.  I have seen slippahs on mountain hikes, on motorcycle footrests, on beaches, in stores and other places of business, in church and everywhere else.  Sometimes a slippah will make it to several of these places in a single day.   Slippahs go with shorts, pants, swimsuits, dresses--everything but the ultra formal and ultra fancy.

Rubbah slippahs are humble.  I love this most of all!  If you are wearing them, everyone who encounters you knows that you are not hung up on impressing them, and they can therefore worry not a bit over whether or not they are sartorially up to snuff.  A person wearing rubbah slippahs will never be judging you on the basis of the cost or brand of your clothing or outward appearance, and you can therefore relax in their presence and just be you.  Powerful stuff, right?  And there's more:  Feet are not pretty things, generally speaking.  If you wear slippers, you expose your feet publicly.  It is a great exercise in vanity reduction.  Some people have lovely feet, some people's feet are not as nice to look at.  So?  You learn by being part of a slippah-wearing community that those piddling little details don't matter a bit.   And slippahs are a great equalizer.  The cost difference between the cheapest pair of slippahs and the most expensive pair is very small.  We are all humble when we wear slippahs.  In my current place of residence, there are people who think slippah wearing is disrespectful, but it's exactly the opposite.

Rubbah slippahs symbolize the qualities I love most about life in Hawaii.  They are the same characteristics that are so lovely to encounter in people: being down to earth, unphased by the unimportant,  at ease, warm, open, breathable.

And that's what rubbah slippahs means to me!

Feet on vacation.  Can you count the number of rubbah slippahs in this photo?

ab•late ( ə-blāt ́ )

ABLATE:  to remove or destroy, especially by cutting, abrading or evaporating.

This banana has been ablated, but it's gonna make it.

The clock in the car read 11:27.  Since I knew for a fact that this clock was set 8 minutes fast and that church starts at 11:30 am, we were doing pretty well, time-wise, this particular Sunday morning.  My words to the children as we backed out of the garage were, "We might just make it today, kiddos.  We just might make it if we're lucky."  Well.  We had a certain kind of luck, for sure.

About 500 yards from home, as I was travelling a zippy but not extravagant 70 mph down the empty, ramrod-straight rural road, who on earth should pass me going in the opposite direction but a county sherriff?  You must appreciate the irony of my telling the officer, while he was writing me my speeding ticket, that I was on my way to church. Ha!  The kids took it all in stride:  Abner wrote a song to commemorate the event and the others sang along in harmony for the rest of the drive. (I'm serious!  Harmony!) It is set to the tune of "Oh Tannenbaum," the Christmas song, but the kids sang it like a dirge.  It goes like this:  "Oh officer, oh officer, we accident'ly speeded."

Despite my rush, we arrived 7 minutes late for church.  (The officer was kind enough to expedite the ticketing process, so that I wouldn't be too tardy!)  I looked up at Charles, on the stand, and could not contain an explosive giggle.  He gave me a "what's going on?" look--totally confused, and with good reason.  Most people in the congregation, including me, don't laugh during the sacrament hymn.  Though I couldn't explain it to him at the moment, I hoped he'd be giggling, too, if I somehow could have conveyed the joke.  I pride myself on being a low-maintenance woman.  I don't love to shop.  I buy my cosmetics at WalMart, my clothes from discount stores, I own precious little jewelry, only a few pairs of shoes, most of them quite old, and the last time I bought a handbag for myself was 2004, I think.  So, I don't cost my hardworking husband much money--except in speeding tickets and emergency medical bills!!  Super funny, right?

Not really, I know, but sometimes you have to laugh so that you don't cry.

I made a decision in church that day.  Church is a great place to turn over a new leaf and I did it then and there.  I realized that my choices were as follows:  1) speed to try to get places on time, and risk tickets, points on my license, public humiliation and being a terrible example for my kids,  2)  arrive late to church and other destinations, or 3)  try to control every aspect of everyone's getting ready process to make sure that,  no matter what, everyone is always ready way ahead of time so options 1 and 2 are not options.  Well, you probably have guessed that I don't choose any of those.

Getting somewhere on time can be like preparing for battle. . . .

.  . . . when my goal for my family demeanor looks more like THIS!

I'll have to explain the emergency medical bills thing before I tell you why I reject all three options.

I've always marched to a different drumbeat than normal people.  Though that may be true in the metaphorical sense too, I actually mean it literally, medically.  I have a really irregular heartbeat.  I have heard that most people don't notice their heartbeat unless they concentrate pretty hard.  When I tell people that I'm aware of almost every waking beat of my heart, they are usually incredulous, but I'm not lying or exaggerating.  My heart behaves like it wants my conscious attention by almost never thumping predictably.  I've had lots of tests, and the doctors and technicians have always said, "Yup, it's really irregular, but it's benign."  So, I've never taken any medication or altered my behavior in any way.

That changed this summer while I was at girls camp.  On Thursday of camp, I woke up especially early in the morning to teach an aerobics class for the girls and leaders.  It had been a very hot and humid week, I was probably dehydrated and was definitely overtired.  At some point during the workout, my heart started freaking out.  It felt like this:  thump . . . . . .  . . . . . . . (5 second pause) . . . . . . thump. . . . . . a flippity jiggity BAM BAM BAM twiddly diddly whoop-de-do . . . . . . . . . . . thump. . . . . . . . thump--and the pattern would repeat over and over. (I have NO idea of the proper way to convey heartbeat sounds--do you?)  I figured I would walk it off and that it would go away after a while, so I just kept on keepin' on, handing out the morning newspaper, chatting happily with campers and leaders.  After 90 minutes of this crazy heartbeat and the accompanying feelings of mild weakness, dizziness and general strangeness, I was really starting to worry, so I headed to the nurse's cabin and ended up being driven to meet an ambulance.  They hooked me up to an EKG in the back of the ambulance, and I swear  the strip of information they recorded spelled out the word, "HYPOCHONDRIAC."  There was my regular, irregular heartbeat and nothing more.  So, I went back to camp, some wonderful men gave me a blessing, and the beat went on.  (great pun, huh?)

this is not mine, btw.  (it doesn't spell hypochondriac!!)

A couple of weeks ago I found my heart giving me the exact same trouble after I went running on a hot, humid morning.  I called Eric, then called my doctor, and was advised to go straight to the ER.  I didn't want to, though.  I had planned to drive to Ann Arbor that morning with my friend.  I didn't want to be told that I was overreacting and that there was nothing wrong with me. . . . again.  I calculated that I had already spent my share of the family budget on the ambulance run and that an ER bill would only make things worse financially.  I went anyway, thanks to my kind friend who drove me to the hospital instead of driving to pick up a reconditioned tiller from Sears.

At the hospital, I was quickly wheelchaired back to a trauma room and hooked up to monitors.  I watched the anxious faces of the staff and heard statements like, "I'll need a crash cart!" and "Is she in V-fib?"  It was unreal.  And horrifying.  I had only heard those words before on TV.  I've decided that that's where I want them to stay--in make-believe entertainment world, not my world.  They gave me a drug, adenosine, to stop my heart.  They hoped that it would restart correctly.  It didn't work any of the 3 times they tried it.  Finally, my heart "converted" on its own and I was allowed to go home.  Before I left, however, I was lucky enough to have a few minutes with an electrophysiologist--a doctor who specializes in the electric properties of the cardiac system.  She looked at the EKG strip (which did NOT spell hypochondriac this time!) and told me that I should probably get a cardiac ablation.  In this procedure they stick a tube up through an artery in your leg/groin area, wind it up to your heart, find the electrically active areas, the rogue ones, and then ablate them.  I'll probably have that done within the next 6 weeks.

I explain all this not only to satisfy my need to tell my story, but also because I think the two incidents are related.

I am a rusher**.  I arrive everywhere breathless and disheveled.  I must like to be overwhelmed, and I think I dig the adrenaline of the race.  Sometimes I win and I'm on time; sometimes I lose the race and I'm late, but it's always a thrill!

Not anymore now.  I'm determined to ablate that trait.  I will not speed to get places on time.  I will set my car and my personality to cruise control.  If it is a choice between rushing, which turns out to be both unsafe and counterproductive (and expensive!), or being late, then I'll be late.  I figure it's one crime or another, and being late to church or school never cost anyone or hurt anyone.  I'm not just copping out and deciding to be late all the time, either.  I don't want to be late and I don't want to humiliate or curse my kids with chronic tardiness.  It's the middle road I'm going for:  We will calmly try to do the best we can all the time, but we won't rush and stress, because it's obviously not working for us.  And though I will temper my crazy heartbeat surgically, I really think, in my heart of hearts, that ablating the "need for speed," the "rush from the rush," will probably be just as therapeutic.

**when I'm not in a state of languor, of course.

fas•cism (fash′ iz´əm)

I picked this word this week because it was flung like a weapon at me in a facebook battle.  I wasn't prepared to do battle the day the word was placed before me, like a gauntlet being thrown down.  But once it happened, I realized that I needed to understand the word.  (All the better to fight you with, my dear!)

The battle began with my hunger, I'll admit it.  The truth is that when I'm hungry, I can be irritable.  So when an acquaintance posted a Sinclair Lewis quote which said "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible" I was already on edge.  I consider myself a person who could be wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible, so I took it pretty personally.  To be thorough, I would be wrapped in other things and carrying other things, too, lots of them, but my "self-symbolic outfit" would definitely include those two items.  It was not news to me that the politics of the woman who posted the quote were different from mine, and somewhere in my head a timid voice whispered that facebook battles are always, always a waste of valuable time, so I restrained my hands, though they were itching to  input a comment that would be both insightful and personally stinging to her.

Is this the face of a fascist?

"REAL MATURE! " I bet you're thinking, because when I read my own words, I'm thinking the same thing.  My sweet husband, Charles, urged restraint and a 24 hour waiting period, much like the one required when someone purchases a gun.  He's a smart and kind man.

I restrained for a couple of hours, all the way through our family home evening lesson (taught by Charles) about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego.  The thesis of the lesson was that these young men were 1) brave enough to stand up to the king's servant when they were required to do things they had covenanted not to and 2) wise enough to present a solution which would simultaneously   a.benefit the servant, the king and themselves and b.  prove the benefits of their covenant lifestyle.  A great example.

As the children were consuming their f. h. e. treat, I was already sitting at the computer (WAY before the 24 hour waiting period was up) composing the first of a dozen responses, each one wrong.  I finally came up with one which I thought would work.  It wasn't angry, it wasn't personal, and it probably wasn't very effective.  I typed, "Very hip sentiment, but it sounds like you're saying that patriotic Jews and Christians will be the downfall of America.  Is that what you intended?"

Of course she hadn't intended that, she said.  THAT would have been stupid and offensive.

So what DID she intend?  Now I can't be sure since my final defiant facebook act was to UNFRIEND her.  (Take that, you!)  From the posts I read before my exit from the arena, I gathered that she was mostly reacting to the news about the Restoring Honor Rally which took place on August 28th.  She didn't like it, and didn't like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin.  They come wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible.  Are they fascist?  I don't know!  I don't think she knows, either.  I realized I'd better find out, especially if I was going to answer a claim which caused such a visceral defensiveness in me.

Fascism is defined in the dictionary as "a system of government characterized by dictatorship, belligerent nationalism and racism, militarism, etc."  (etc.?  In a dictionary definition?  It's like Webster is saying, "Why don't you go ahead and fill in the blanks."  What?)   Hitler was a fascist.  Mussolini was a fascist.  Some South American guys appear to be fascist, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.  Apparently lots of other people get called fascists, too. . . Wikipedia had this to say, which I think hit the nail on the head.


 Richard Griffiths argued in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".^[36]

Fascist?  I can't quite get my head around it!

<sup>And,


George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'".[79]</sup>



So maybe she was saying, basically, that patriotic, Bible-toting people are political bullies.  I had to think about that.  I would agree that many on-air personalities are trying to be bullies.  I, too, worry about their rhetoric.  I worry about extremists of all stripes.  (Nothing against striped people!  We're all God's children.) But I worry even more that the rally at the capitol represents the final, gasping breath of the concept that political opinions sprouted from the seeds of religious conviction are legitimate.  Before I responded to the Sinclair Lewis quote, I noticed that my friend's comment had caused several people to click the "like" button.  I looked at their faces as my computer presented them for my view.  All appeared to be college-aged.  Since I was, and still am, quite sure that none of those kids could pin down a definition of "fascism," I assume that they "like" the idea that patriotism and religion are baaaaaaaad.    (bleat this word out, like a goat would.) This is what our young citizens believe.  And it's not only them.  The people planning to attend the rally were instructed NOT to carry political signs of any type.  If this was to be a rally about morality and values, there was no place in it for politics.  That's what even the "extreme" right wingers had accepted as fact.  Does that scare anyone else?

George, being fascist.

George, being fascist.

Here's what Neal A. Maxwell had to say on that topic--in 1978.

"We will see, in our time, a maximum effort made to establish IRreligion as the state religion.  It is actually a new form of paganism which uses the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of western civilization to shrink freedom, even as it rejects the value-essence of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage.  Your discipleship may see the time come when religious convictions are heavily discounted.  A religious conviction is now a second-class conviction, expected to step deferentially to the back of the secular bus and to not get uppity about it.  This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain of people’s opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions. Resistance to abortion will be seen as primitive, concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened.  In its mildest form, irreligion will merely be condescending towards those who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian values.  In its more harsh forms, as is always the case with those whose dogmatism is blinding, the secular church will do what it can to nullify the opinions of those who still worry over standards, such as those in the 10 commandments.  If people, however, are not permitted to advocate, to assert and to bring to bear in every legitimate way, the opinions and views they hold which grow out of their religious convictions, what manner of men and women would we be, anyway?  Our founding fathers did not wish to have a state church established, nor to have a particular religion favored by government.  They wanted religion to be free to make its own way.  But neither did they intend to have irreligion made into a favored state church."

Wow.

All opinions come from deeply held beliefs.  Why on earth would it help any of us to pretend that certain of our opinions are just shallow, surfacey political opinions, not connected with who we really are and really hope to be?  Don't we need people to live by their most important values in every aspect of their lives?

Don't we really need more Daniels--more people committed to holding firmly to what they believe, and working wisely to make it a winning situation for everyone?

There's nothing fascist about that.

res•pite (res′ pit)

I have always been intrigued by near-death experiences.  One common element in the stories of NDEs is the feeling of being outside the body, usually floating above it.  The return to the body, when the person chooses life over death, is notable.  People describe re-entry as being like putting on a "clunky" suit of clothes, heavy and cumbersome, complete with aches and pains and a feeling of immobility.  I have always been able to imagine this re-entry very clearly, and believe there are many similar moments in our lives.  In fact, our family just had one.  It is a pretty common occurrence.  It's called "coming home from vacation."

The time when a person is suspended, outside the body, feeling free and easy and able to see his body and his surroundings from a more objective perspective?   That's respite.

Vacation and respite are similar, but not synonymous.  Respite is more than a scheduled getaway.  It is defined this way by Webster's New World Dictionary:  "delay or postponement, temporary relief, as from pain or work."

I had that clunky re-entry feeling when I woke up the morning after we returned from our weeklong jaunt out west.  Yes, part of that feeling may have been due to the fact that we had pulled into our garage at 4:30 am after a grueling 30 hour drive, absolutely exhausted.  But it was also because while we were away, we not only didn't have any pressing responsibility, but I think we actually FORGOT that we ever HAD any such responsibilities.  May all your vacations be so lovely!

When I describe our week to you, you won't understand why it was respite, probably.  It isn't for everyone; we know this!

It begins with the 7 kids (+2 adults)  all piled into the car with pillows, blankets, and a week's supply of clothing and lots of snacks--gear for a 28 hour straight-through drive.

We have reached our destination when we get to the home of our great lifelong friends, who also have 7 children.  There are 18+ people living in their home while we are with them.  Is it chaotic?  Oh my, yes.  Do we look happy?  Rhetorical question.

What kind of people are these amazing friends who readily welcome us into their home, absorbing our chaos and melding it with theirs?  They are, firstly, kind.  They are also fantastic multi-taskers.  Witness the scene above.  There are so many many things going on, ALWAYS!

We have much in common with this family, including a sick love of raw cookie-dough.  Here they are, beginning to consume  Shumway-size servings of the gooey food of the gods.  Kathy didn't finish hers, to tell you the truth, but her son did!  We stayed up way too late each night, just like this, mostly sitting, talking, eating, laughing, and watching impromptu talent shows. (see my post on languor)

Here we are at their son's high school football game.  He scored a touchdown!!!   Included in this picture are my two brothers (although one of them is the photographer) and my sweet sister-in-law.  What a lovely bunch of people--our friends and our family, who will so graciously agree to spend time ALL together, so that we can maximize our short stay!

We said a tearful and joyful farewell to G-ma, who is headed off to Germany for an 18-month mission.  We left at 5:30 am to take her to the airport, thus the jammies on little George.  My brother spent his time with us quizzing the children, giving candy as a reward for a correct answer.  He simultaneously campaigned for "best uncle," made the kids feel smarter, and kept us all entertained.  (See "avuncular" post)

We visited Charles's family, too.  His sister and her daughters always welcome us so warmly.    Her youngest, Kacie, is in a residential facility in a "getting better" phase of her life.  The kids truly enjoyed spending time with her.

We also had to say goodbye to Lola, back for her 2nd year of college.   Escorting her back to school was our excuse for this weeklong odyssey.  I think it may have been harder for me to let her go this year than it was last year!

We ran around the Edwards Stadium field.  Not a single other soul in sight.

Always inspiring to us, the Salt Lake Temple looked so dignified on this brilliant day!

There are lots of others pictures I didn't post.  We had a lovely picnic at the home of the parents of our Michigan friends which we thoroughly enjoyed!  Another friend took time off of work to give us a tour of the Church Office building and Temple Square,  and we then got a tour of their new home and a brief visit.  Such good people! We spent relaxed time with my mom, two of my younger brothers and my sister-in-law, in my brother's home.  We ate together and watched America's Funniest Home Videos, our favorite!

So, it was a week (just one!)  which contained 60 hours in the car, too many people in crowded homes,  juggling time with family and friends, mundane activities like eating and playing around the house, a visit to an ailing relative, and many bittersweet farewells.  We didn't see half of the people we wish we could have seen.  How on earth could this be considered respite?

Well, here it is.  Our friends and family took care of us, in all the important ways.  They spent time with us and seemed to enjoy it.  They laughed at the same old jokes that we laugh at.  We ate good food together.  They listened as we told of our heartaches and achievements, and wanted to share with us some of theirs.  By doing so,  they reminded us who we really are, and what we value.  

It's also important, really important, to acknowledge the elation we feel at being in Utah Valley.  Everywhere you look (with the exception of a few billboards) there are reminders that the majority of people here are trying really hard to be good Mormons:  to raise strong families, to treat everyone with Christlike kindness, to be honest.  They don't always succeed, not any more often than anyone ALWAYS succeeds.  But they're trying, and you can see it everywhere.

On that long drive home, in that suspension between vacation and real life, the kids never fought.  They talked and laughed together.  And my mind was infused with ideas about how wonderful things were going to be back at home.  How much better I am going to be, and exactly how and why I should be better.  I felt like a person suspended above her life, having been given a break from it's clunky and cumbersome aspects, a vision of wonderful things to come, a respite. 

Us, in one last snapshot before we begin our drive home. 

*Next time I'll post Kathy's bread recipe and Jeff's salsa recipe--2 GREAT takeaways from our time with them.

lan•guor (laŋ ́ gər)

What a great word.  Say it out loud, and slowly.  L-A-N-G-U-O-R.  It  LINGERS on the tongue.  When you say it like I told you to, it's almost onomatopoetic (see last post.) 

I'd like to raise an army of languor proponents to defend the honor of languoring, and languorers like myself.  I think the idea doesn't get enough respect.  Unfortunately, it will never happen.  It's possible that as we "speak" all my potential recruits are fully occupied by just existing--unwilling apparently, to lift their backsides off the sofa, listless. 

They sound like a lazy, lousy bunch of people, but I think I'd like them a lot.  And I think they might let me be the general of their "languor army" because I think after some conversation, they'd see that I was the "proponent in chief" and "practitioner in chief" of languor.

Going by Webster's definition, languor is not really something you'd want to have much of in your life: "lack of vigor or vitality, weakness, listlessness."  Pre-18th century, the word languor was used mostly to describe a symptom of those who were ill or diseased.  We use the word "lethargy" in its place today.  It doesn't sound appealing, does it?

I know what they mean with that Webster definition.  It brings to mind a television commercial from the 1990s, I think, which depicted two grown men sitting in a living room, on their duffs, of course, in a haze of smoke which turns out to be marijuana smoke.  Their Mom comes home, they hear her come through the door, and they attempt to cover up the evidence of their crime, trying to fan the smoke out the window.  She hollers to them, "what are you boys doing?"  to which they reply, "Nothing, Ma!"  And that's the punch line.  The moral of the story was that steady marijuana use robbed you of all motivation, so that all you wanted to do was nothing, like these two grown men sitting on their Mom's couch.  That public service announcement was effective, I thought.  I got the message.  And I probably wouldn't recruit those two men for my languor movement, because that's not what I'm talking about. 

And I don't want people to languish in the languor army--even though you'd think there wouldn't be a choice.  Bear with me here as I work through this.  To languish is to fail to make progress or be successful.  Even worse, it means to suffer from being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation.  I don't think there's a fate worse than languishing.  Having your flight delayed 20 times and then, finally, cancelled?  That's languishing.  Waiting for someone for hours at the wrong location?  That's languishing, too.  Hoping for your ship to come in, when you wouldn't even know it if you saw it and are miles away from the pier?  That's languishing, and as general of the languor army, I want no part of that for me or my men and women.

But I would want our days to be languid.  Pay attention to THIS portion of the definition of languid:  "displaying or having a disinclination for physical exertion or effort.  Slow and relaxed; pleasantly lazy, peaceful."  The sample sentence below the definition mentioned something about beaches in Italy.  Perfect.

That's what I'm talking about.

I have felt guilty this summer about the languid pace of my days, some of them.  Not all of my days are languid.  Many are frenetically busy.  My brothers tell me that coming to visit our home is like joining a game of double dutch jumprope.  You start hopping and you keep hopping until you leave, breathless and relieved.  I come from a long line of compulsively busy people--on one side of my family, at least.  My Dad, for example, woke up in the pre-dawn darkness and went distance running, compulsively.  His Mom (my grammy) used to tell me in all seriousness that, though she felt poorly, she wasn't going to be sick because "she didn't have time to be sick."   I think that part of being Mormon is to feel that nothing short of beehive-paced busyness will do.  I like busyness too, but our word for TODAY is languor, so let's continue.  After all, I am running for general of the languor proponent army, and I do want the "job."

The languor  I'm talking about is as defined by my desktop dictionary app:  "a state or feeling, often pleasant, of tiredness or inertia."  What I'm talking about is optional languor.  Not an incapability of exertion, but a delicious disinclination to do so.

Have you had that?

I think of Hawaii where I grew up.  The pace of island life is nothing if not languid,  and guess what?  People in Hawaii enjoy a longer life expectancy than most other people.  The people of Samoa are called "the happy people" and Tonga is known as "the friendly Islands."  If you want an auditory descriptor, "Polynesia, the Musical"would be staged with Jack Johnson music.  Languid.

But not vapid.  Not without movement or meaning.  Influential artists and thinkers and writers--known to gather at cafes and do nothing but sit and talk for hours, are an example of important languor.  I think of an example given by a friend of ours who had the opportunity to live in Europe.  When he visited Switzerland, he noticed that every single home was tidy, cords of wood neatly stacked outside, the landscaping picturesque, public spaces pristine.  On the same trip he travelled next door to Italy which, by comparison, seemed chaotic.  The trains there were covered with graffiti, the public spaces seemed to be haphazard and disorganized.  What did such a culture of apparent languor produce?  DaVinci, Michelangelo, Columbus and Galileo (and those are just the ones you can refer to with one name).  "In contrast," he asked, "what is perhaps the most famous contribution to emerge from the tidy culture of the Swiss?  The cuckoo clock!"  

If you want a scriptural understanding of languor, think of the Mary and Martha story.  Martha is running around being busy busy busy.  Mary is disinclined to work in such a way, instead sitting idly at the feet of Jesus.  When Martha complains about Mary's languor, Jesus says, "Martha Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."  Mary gains something from her languor which Martha can never gain through frantic effort, no matter how well-intentioned.  I agree with Jesus, that good listening requires languor.  Every wise parent learns to listen, and wise parents find out sooner or later that critical disclosures of information, or even meandering but relationship-building conversations, do not come on schedule.  They come when a child feels comfortable enough to engage.  That comfort does not happen without a parent sitting still, apparently with nothing better in the whole wide world to do than listen for a long, languid time to a chatting child.  

He wasn't saying very much, but I was listening.

 Meditation?  A languor exercise.  To meditate you must breathe in and out and gently scoff at the urge to do anything or think anything.  For many people, meditation is a spiritually-strengthening exercise.  Reading?  If you want to do it right, you've got to sit still and refuse to do the many chores which are calling your name.  And what about pondering the scriptures?  Meaningful pondering requires an attitude of languor--passive and open reception of spiritual truths.  They cannot be wrested or manhandled.  Stop and smell the roses?  The languorer's creed.  Snuggling?  It's loving languorously.

My bias towards languor comes from my family culture.  Despite the noble examples of some of our busy ancestors, when we get together, the bulk of our time is spent sitting in extremely relaxed postures, talking about whatever comes to mind, and it goes on almost endlessly.  Sometimes eating is a burden.  Getting us all out the door to do something fun and proactive is terribly difficult.  When someone with incredible tenacity (Charles, for example) manages to convince us all to do something active, we enjoy ourselves immensely.  But we always return to our languor as soon as we can.  We like to "be" together. We re-establish our identity as we languor together; we express love; we laugh and laugh; it's wonderful.

No one's rushing to do the dishes.

As I close, I'm guessing that maybe you're thinking,  "Duh!  When you define it like that, of COURSE  languor is a good thing."  Well, that's what I'm talking about.  So will you join my pro-languor movement?  All you have to do is. . . . nothing at all.

(Can I be the general?)

on•o•mat•o•poe•ia ( än ́ō mät ́ ō pē ́ə )

Perhaps this word is already familiar to anyone who's passed high school English--not news at all.



So, maybe your eyes won't POP when you read this; this post is not going to make a big SPLASH; it won't have the same SIZZLE as some others, maybe, but it's a great way to introduce what I really want to blog about--my Ethel.  She turned 10 yesterday.  Her laughter is the sweet sound of a BABBLING brook, honestly.  I've always thought so, even before I began a blog about interesting words.

My sweet Ethel

The clock is TICKING, so I'd better get busy telling you about her.  I'll use onomatopoetic words--words that, when you say them, sound like the thing they describe.

Her birthday sign--a family tradition

CLUCK, MEOW, BARK--Ethel is our resident zoologist.  At least that's her title.  She's the fifth child, but she's the first to have a real pet requiring real responsibility.  Though Lola did have a fish once, before we moved to the homestead (not a real pet, since there's not much to clean up after) , Ethel had primary responsibility for that animal, too. She has a gift.  She likes the animals and they like her.  Our cat is hers; our chickens are "hers" and Abner complains that his dog likes her better.


GIGGLE, TWITTER, CACKLE, FLUTTER, SNORT--in that order.  Ethel loves to laugh.  And she has quite a memorable laugh.  It sounds like fresh water over mossy mountain rocks as it begins.  As it intensifies, Ethel's laughter becomes silent, signified by the fluttering of her nostrils in and out.  And of course, as we notice her nostrils doing their thing, we laugh and point and she laughs all the harder.  Her nostrils are quite amazing, actually.  Their flexibility is evident not only in moments of hilarity, but also when she needs to carry something, such as two coins!  When she was in kindergarten her nostrils could accommodate two pennies.  Last week she was able to carry quarters in them.  OUCH!

In kindergarten it was pennies. . .

. . . now she's up to quarters!

SMACK, SQUEEZE, THUMP, WHISPER--Ethel is the most affectionate child I know.  Each night before she goes to bed, and each morning before she leaves for school there are multiple expressions of love and tenderness.  Kisses, hugs, "pound-its" and a whispered, "Always love you!"  are her trademark expressions.  She will repeat these expressions until she knows that you know that she means it.  Sometimes Charles and I get a little exasperated at her persistence.  When it's past bedtime and the kids are not close to being asleep, Ethel will worry that she hasn't said good night appropriately, even though we've heard "Always love you!" twice already that evening; so she proceeds to repeat it.  I understand, though, her insistence on taking care of the most important business there is.  She doesn't want to worry that the people she loves don't know it.  And Ethel loves a lot of people.  I've never seen a person make friends so easily and reliably.  She is always, always kind.

DING, CLANG, TWANG, LA LA LA LA, HUM--These are clumsy words to describe Ethel's voice.  She is a gifted singer.  She's currently taking voice lessons and I hope she will learn to master her voice eventually, and make it do what she wants.  As it is now, she seems almost at the mercy of her voice as she sings.  Luckily, it's a gracious master.  Ethel's voice at age 10 has a beautiful vibrato, and a lovely "catch and cry" quality that marks it as special.

She's truly an amazing girl, my Ethel.  She isn't perfect.  Sometimes she WHINEs.  She has been known to CHATTER in primary class, and when she reads it's like the words RATTLE around in her head a little and sometimes she BLURTS out the wrong one.  None of that matters.  I adore her.

Always love you, Eth darling!  SMOOCH!!

vul•pine (vul ́ pīn)

We adopted eight laying hens from our friends when they moved to Thailand.  (Yah, Thailand!  I know!)  A few nights ago when I went out to shut the chicken coop door, I only counted seven.  But that's happened before, and on that other occasion I figured one of our hens was sleeping around, and I was right; by the following evening, there were 8 again.

Unfortunately, now there are only 7, officially.  And now we think we know why.

Our chickens do beautiful work.

Yesterday as I was preparing to back out of the garage, I glanced over my shoulder and my 9 year old, Ethel, was standing next to the car, mouth open, hand covering mouth, a shocked and terrified look on her face.

"What's the matter, Ethel?"

"Mom!  I've never seen chickens running so fast!"

Our fox looked a little like this guy.

When the other 7 of us hustled out of the car to look, we saw a large, beautiful adult fox staring back at us, in broad daylight, and looking tentative.  I assume he was debating.  Within just a few feet of him were several chubby, well-fed hens.  "Raw KFC!"  I bet he was thinking, and I could totally empathize with his craving, except for the raw part.  However, a few feet beyond the chickens was us--7 large humans, looking a lot like the Cullens from the Twilight saga, protecting their family members from the Volturi.  (I just wrote that sentence for my own entertainment.  Us?  Looking like the Cullens?!  hahahahahahahaha!)  He was trying to decide if the meal would be worth the risk of tangling with a bunch of humans.

I ran toward the fox, and he only hesitated for a second before turning tail and loping off into the tall meadow grass.  We were all stunned, and in awe.  Most of us had not ever seen a fox before, except in Disney movies.  It was a strange mixture of emotion, being impressed and maybe even moved by the fox while feeling the need to treat it like a feared invader.

I, for one, wasn't sure that he was a fox at all, and wondered if he might be a coyote.  After all, a fox wouldn't inspire the level of fear we all felt, would it?

Vulpine means "of or like a fox; cunning."

And speaking of fear levels, our congregation has been on red alert for about a week.  Charles is bishop of our congregation, which means that the buck stops with him on ward issues.  Last Saturday night, he received a phone call telling him that a sweet 80-something sister in our ward might, in the near future, be the next victim of an arsonist/thief.  The alleged perpetrator is a mentally unstable former ward member with a police record, who had allegedly broken into the neighboring town's meeting house, twice, and burned down the house of one friend and the barn of another friend from that neighboring congregation in the weeks before this phone call.  Everyone in the other ward seemed sure she was guilty of committing these crimes, though the police had yet to find a single piece of solid evidence to tie her to them.  In her latest alleged burglary, she had made off with the ward directory for our own congregation, igniting panic amongst the members.

In response to this fear, home teachers stayed up all night as guards, parked outside the 80-something's  home, the night of the warning phone call.  A family from the neighboring congregation slept every night for the prior month fully dressed, all in one room, even wearing shoes to bed, out of fear that they'd have to escape from their burning house in the middle of the night.  Another woman, whose name had been mentioned by the crazed woman during one phone call, packed up all her important papers and took them to a friend's basement for safekeeping against the day that her house would be burned down by this former acquaintance.  Our own Lola, 19 years old, didn't sleep a wink for days, freaked out by suspicious sounds and shadows moving outside.

I was worried that the neighboring congregation was on a witch hunt, and that they were trying to spread it to us.  You know the Arthur Miller play "The Crucible?" It all sounded a lot like a conversation from that play: "I distinctly heard the devil mention the name of Goody Proctor!"(all the townspeople now scream and cower in fear, as Goody Proctor is taken off to be hanged.) 

I decided to try to look up the alleged criminal woman on facebook, since I had learned her name.  To my surprise, her profile was available for public viewing.  And you know what?  She looked exactly like you would expect a married, conservative, midwestern, country-dwelling housewife to look.  She wasn't scary; her bespectacled face was almost comforting.  The photos of grandchildren posted on her profile made them look happy and well-adjusted.

A while later an acquaintance informed me that she's 55 years old and overweight.

How vulpine IS this matronly woman?

I am 40 years old, and in pretty good shape, yet my joints often hurt when I move after sitting for a while; I forget where I put things, and have a hard time keeping all life's details in my head.  How on earth is this lumpy 55-year-old Grandma managing to "Angelina Jolie" her way into people's homes--slithering through cut screens, digging through drywall into safes, setting fires so violent that there's no trace of their origin, and managing to do all of this without leaving the tiniest shard of evidence that she's been there?

No one knows yet.  But we may find out pretty soon.  She was arrested a couple of days ago, in the very act of burglarizing someone's house, or burning someone's house, the gossip has been unclear on this point.

I've got to stop blogging now.  It's time to shut the chicken coop for the night.  I'm hoping all 7 hens have made it safely in, and that our vulpine predator won't be bothering us for a while.

a•vun•cu•lar (ə vuŋ ́ kyōō lər)

"Of or like an uncle" is the definition of this word.

Hmmm.

So the word avuncular means "of-uncle-ar?"  What a tricky trick, to create a word which at first seems to be powerful and strange, but which really means something so mundane and family-ar.  I feel like laughing.  When my second oldest, Pearl, looked up the word for me and reported on her findings, I accused her of fibbing to me.  It seemed that ridiculous.

And what on earth does "of or like an uncle" really mean?  Surely this word has no universal application.  Most of my uncles are mysteries to me--people whom I have spent just a wee bit of time with in my whole life.  So for me, avuncular would mostly mean "mysteriously absent."

It makes me wonder about the word sisterly, too, and brotherly.  I wonder if everyone in Philadelphia--the city of brotherly love--spends their time hearing off-color jokes and getting punched in the upper arm, and reminded of embarrassing moments from their past.  Now THAT's brotherly love.

Which is not to say that my brothers, my kids' uncles, are not the best in the world.  I'm sure that the feeling that comes to mind for my children when they hear "avuncular" is something akin to joy.  Their uncles call them on their birthdays, think of them tenderly and often, and make them laugh hysterically, even when the jokes are off-color.  Avuncular jokes are some of their favorites!

My two youngest boys are well on their way to becoming avuncular themselves.  Below is a conversation we recently had which demonstrates my point.

George (5):  Mom!  Lewis said my head is up an elephant's butt!!

Mom (21):  Is it true, George?  (my standard response to tattle tales like this.)

Lewis (7, stepping in):  No, it's not true.

Mom (21):  Is it true, George?

George (5):  No.

Mom (21):  Has it ever been true, George?

George (5):  Yes.

Mom:  George?

George:  Well, it's true for my imaginary friend.   He's had his head up an elephant's butt.  Well, he thought it was, but actually it was the trunk.

Mom:  George, I think that if it were me, I would resign as your imaginary friend.

Lewis, George, and one of the avuncular men in their lives.

My children's uncles are clever, quick and kind in addition to being generally off-color most of the time.  I wish everyone could like the word avuncular as well as my kids will.

in•cip•i•ent (in sip ́ ē ənt)

According to Webster, incipient means "just beginning to exist or appear."  That describes my life as a blogger--the spinner of a single strand on the worldwideweb--don't you think?

A few years ago my children started shouting, "WFTD!" when I would use a word in conversation that had been one of their daily vocabulary words at middle school.  WFTD stood for "Word for the Day."  In order to continue that word-learning habit at home, I started fridge-posting new and strange words taken from books I was reading.  They got a star next to their names if they could spell and define the word for me.  I figured I was being the most fantastic Mom in the world by introducing them to new concepts and simultaneously preparing them to ace their ACTs.  It's strange how once you "own" a word, you start to see it everywhere, or see opportunities to use it everywhere.  (Kind of like how I would see pregnant women everywhere when I was expecting.) So, if you are in the mood to learn new words (new to me, anyway) and see how these words apply in a REAL life--my real life--then tune in.

By the way, being incipient. . . ?

It's a little nervewracking. . . and a little exciting.

  

this summer's vocabulary list