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