turbid (tur′•bid)

Perhaps my favorite photo from this summer.  I may have to remove this when its presence becomes known.

Summer is long gone.  Even Indian summer is gone.  As I look out my bedroom window, there are no leaves on the trees in the forest to greet my gaze.  Now there is just a collection of upright sticks.  This change of view has happened fast, so fast that it seems like summer was just yesterday, and the things that were occupying my mind during the “golden season” are still pretty fresh.

We clearly had a great summer—as long as we all acknowledge that “great” is a turbid word.  Turbid means cloudy, or confused.   This is a word that Charles encounters frequently in his work with chemicals.  For certain chemical mixtures there’s a number that indicates the “turbidity” of the solution.  I would guess that for H20 everyone likes as little turbidity as possible.  For other mixtures, like crème rinse or conditioner, turbidity might be desirable because it may give the impression of milkiness.  As I have been thinking back on our summer, it’s apparent to me that our summer experiences were turbid.  In fact, all our experiences as a family are turbid.  Why?  Because a family is nothing more than a collection of individuals, and each individual perceives things differently, enjoys different things and clouds each experience with his or her own values. 

Below is a pictorial example of our summer’s turbidity.  Michigan is the blueberry capital of the world.  Each summer, we go blueberry picking at least twice, scurrying like squirrels to build up a supply for the winter.  Do we enjoy this?  Yes!  It’s great!  As long as we all acknowledge that “great” is a turbid concept.

You can make some of the people happy some of the time.

Some of us enjoyed this day, some were even ecstatic, and some of us complained the whole time.  One of the complainers sat in the car most of the time, as the rest of us did our best to load our buckets with 30 pounds of fresh, sweet berries.  We called out to each other, telling jokes and hucking berries--shooting to kill, or at least permanently stain.  There were a couple of teenagers carrying on a conversation near our family, and as the talking went on, it became more and more profane until just about every other word was filthy.  I found some courage and with a genuine smile on my face asked the teens if they would mind keeping their language clean since I had several young children with me.  They were really cool about it, and actually apologized to me and began to speak in whispers.  Did I feel that the encounter with the teens was a parenting success?  Yes!  As long as we all acknowledge that success is a turbid thing.  Within seconds of my succesful encounter, I beckoned to the son in the car to come on out and join us in picking blueberries.  His response?  He leaned his head out the window and yelled, “Blueberry SUCK SUCK!!”  Now, I don’t know what that phrase means any more than anyone else, but it is not the language of a child who needs to be protected from crudeness. 

Blue shirt, blue eyes, blueberries.

Another fun thing we did this summer was create a slip 'n' slide on the gentle hill in our back yard.  If you were to look at the pictures of the event (see one below) you would surmise that we had a really fun time on our slip 'n' slide.  And did we?  Yes!  As long as you understand that in a family, “fun” is a turbid concept.   We spent an hour or more outside one warm day and the kids laughed and giggled and played.  They also fought and argued and cried.  Two separate time-outs were issued and we ended the activity because, besides being angry, several of the kids had bruised or scraped limbs.

WEEEEEEEEE!!!

Someone asked us to close our eyes and envision heaven today.  This is what came to my mind.  This plus family.

We also spent a lot of time this summer swimming in the pond.  It is beautiful to look at when the sun is shining on it and the wind blowing across its surface.  Friends and family fished and swam with us.  We really love having a pond to swim in and really enjoyed our pond time. Was the enjoyment turbid?  Of course!  There’s algae that grows in the pond, and it sometimes seems to grab at your feet and tickle your legs in a disarming way.  There are also fish that nibble on you when they’re hungry and black flies that bite when you’re out of the water.

Ahhh!  The swimming hole.

We also had a few tornado scares this summer.  One tornado actually touched down just a few miles west of us over Sanford Lake.  Is it scary?  Yes, but scary is a turbid notion as well. We were all enchanted by the frightening funnel cloud that was visible from our front porch, and we headed out to take pictures of that unique thunderstorm color and to listen to the thunder.  Sitting on the front porch, in awe of nature, the kids began to sing “How Great Thou Art.”  Unprompted. Some of my kids are really fine vocalists and have a tremendous gift for harmony.  It wasn’t a concert.  There was no one else around.  It was more of a testimony meeting, with everyone bearing the same testimony of awe, all at the same time.

Can you see the remnants of the funnel cloud?  Wow.

One synonym of turbid is “cloudy.”  Our attempts to take family pictures this summer, then, were uniformly turbid, by definition.  It sounds like exaggeration to say that every time we were all home at the same time to take family pictures and I suggested that we might do so, the clouds rolled in.  It’s not exaggeration.  It’s TRUTH.  Other families took pictures at our house this summer, and all of THEIR pictures are sun-kissed and golden.  Our family pictures look as if they were taken in purgatory, or Forks.  We could NOT get the sun to cooperate.  Was this experience a disappointment?  Yes, but disappointment is. . . well, you know what I’m going to say.  Already I treasure our overcast family pictures, simply because we were all together, all healthy, all happy. 

No pesky shadows on our faces.  Thank goodness the sun wasn't shining that day!

I think most of the experiences of family life are like a fresh glass of water.  Straight out of the faucet, water is often turbid.  It’s full of air bubbles and other errant molecules swimming around and obscuring its clarity.  Given some time, however, the water settles, microscopic sediment sinks to the bottom, and you’re left with the stuff that you recognize as the essence and source of life.   So, our summer was turbid.  And though very little time has passed, I can see already that it was, clearly, wonderful.

June |joōn|

"June is Bustin' Out All Over!" is a rousing song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Carousel."


It could also be the totally uncalled for remarks of a very pregnant woman's heel of a husband.  If the woman's name were June, of course.  That was a real stretch, I know, but it's the kind of stretch I LIKE to make, the kind of stretch that leaves stretch marks.  If you'd like to know how FAR I can stretch something, ask me about the French-Chinese version of the old horror movie "The Blob."

In the state of Michigan, the month of June does seem to bust out--all over the place.  All the botanical brilliance that has been hibernating through 6 months of winter comes rushing out into visibility.  Every child's teacher is just itching to schedule a concert, or display all that the kids have been working on throughout the school year.  June is busy and harried--and wonderful for our family.


Below is a photographic definition of June. . . in Midland, Michigan. . . for us.***

It's entitled "June is . . . . "

June is academic advancement assemblies for each child.  This is Scarlett's.

Talk about BUSTIN' OUT ALL OVER!  This tree in the Larsen's front yard is a riot of gorgeous pink blossoms.

June is playing outside--without shoes or coats.  Here's George with his best friend.

June is sunlight on blossoms.  photo by Scarlett

Here's Ethel as Emma Smith for her school's "wax museum."

June is the time for special events which require special hairdos.  Here's Ethel's band concert "up do."

June is Abner singing a solo in the middle school play "Schoolhouse Rock."  Due to inept photography, this picture is of Abner's FRIEND singing a solo.  He was great, too!  We didn't get a good photo of our OWN son.  That's June, too!

June is handsome Abner dressing in a very smart red shirt and black tie (school colors) to play percussion in his band concert.

June is the END of school. It's Pearl's LAST day of public school, and Scarlett's last day before exams begin.  One of them is happy, and one in a state of exhaustion and dread.  You can tell which is which just by looking.

June is Dow High choosing its drum majors for next year--and you're looking at her!  Scarlett is practicing her conducting skills in preparation for her audition.  June is also a friend of your little brother in the background.

June is Lola home from college.

June is SO green it seems impossible.

June is parades in the hot sun.  Scarlett is somewhere in the 3rd line from the left, holding her mellophone.

June is sunburn weather.  Sometimes Michiganders (or their Moms) forget that sunscreen is necessary.  Poor Lewis!!

June is more academic advancement ceremonies.  We're so proud of Abner!

June is a graduation party for 7 awesome young people.

June is high school graduates elatedly singing "I'm a Believer" to a live band at their party. 

June is line dancing to the music of the band at the party.

June is Ethel hanging out with the chickens, giving them a treat of fresh corn.

June is our awesome PEARL--graduating from Dow High with honors!

June is proud parents with their graduate.

June is a fancy graduation dress bought for you by your big sis, and a gorgeous flower lei from your Auntie Nikki.

June is starting off happily on a half marathon with the kindest people in the world accompanying you and cheering you on!

June is Charles's birthday dinner--always the same:  fried chicken, biscuits, salad, corn and chocolate silk pie.

June is Charles getting a practical gift--this time it's a cordless drill.

June is "heavy heavy hangs over" and some cufflinks from Lola.

June is Charles's birthday sign.  

June is so relaxed that you do silly things like pose with the statues in the park.

June is a time for reflection--or at least a picture of your shadow in the river.

June is warm enough to play at the spray park with friends, but so cool that you need to lie down on the sun-heated cement to warm up.  

June is a road trip to Youth Conference at Kirtland, Ohio where Charles served his mission. . . .

. . . and a stop along the shores of Lake Erie.

June is saying goodbye to a good missionary--and houseguests that you wish you could adopt!

June is a friend visiting, and becoming an expert bow-fisherman. 

June is also time to hang out on the dock, fishing pole in hand.

June is a Quidditch match in the backyard.

June is two friends becoming, together, a mean goal-scoring machine!

June is. . . so often the best time of year in Michigan, and we're LOVING it!

***Some of the events pictured may technically have taken place at the end of May.

egotist |ēˈ●gə●tist|

"Are you an egotist?!"

The man barking the words at Charles looked to be nearly 90.  He had sparse wisps of white hair not really covering his scalp.  They were supposed to form a combover, but the wind had blown them loose and they did not conceal the top of his head which was so transparent it couldn't hide large numbers of bulging blue veins.  He was wearing loose-fitting wool slacks, a red cardigan and old-man athletic shoes:  sturdy, earth-toned and with very substantial soles.  He drove a clean and new-looking mini-SUV type car.  It was safe and stylish, but modestly conservative.

We had just pulled up to a gas pump outside of Costco.  Charles had gotten in line behind one set of pumps when he noticed another pump that was free, so he quickly maneuvered our little Honda into place next to the open pump.  The whole time he was doing so, we could hear a car approaching with its horn blaring.  The driver had lain on the horn at the entrance to the gas station, and the sound continued almost until he pulled up next to us, at another just-vacated pump.  The older man had apparently spotted OUR newly available pump at about the same moment we did, and had had his eye on it from 100 feet away.  He was yelling at Charles with the window down as he approached.  Charles was already out of the car swiping our cards in the process of filling our tank when the older man pulled up.  I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car and I could see the faces of all the other customers and the attendant.  They had been startled and bothered by the sound of the horn, were watching the hostile old man make his approach, were watching Charles fill our tank, and were nervously wondering if they were about to witness an ugly confrontation. They had their heads mostly down, but they were peering up through their eyelashes, furtively, too embarrassed to look straight on but unable to look away.

The man didn't hear Charles's first words because he was still hollering out his window.  Charles had said, "Sorry about that.  You having a bad day?"

I didn't hear the old man's response, but I heard the attendant say quietly to Charles, "You're a way nicer man than I am."

Out of his car now, he continued to holler angrily, "You're not 18!  Stop driving so impulsively!  You're dangerous!"  The old man was not softening a bit, even though Charles, dressed in his suit--fresh from a visit to the temple, approached him with apologetic words, spoken in a soft voice.

Charles  in his suit.

Charles noticed a tag on his shirt that said something about "oncology" as he talked to the man, and he figured it indicated that he was in cancer treatment, or that perhaps someone he loved was in treatment.

I still couldn't hear anything Charles said, but I watched the other drivers shaking their heads at the behavior of the man.  They finished their transactions and drove off, sensing that there wasn't going to be an altercation.

We finished pumping our gas, joked with the attendant about quittin' time, and headed home.  The older gentleman was still there, filling his tank and muttering under his breath.  As we neared the exit, I noticed a woman driving toward us who had been ahead of us at the pump.  She had exited the parking lot and decided to do a 180 and pull back in.  She was rolling her window down and slowing as she approached.  Charles rolled our window down to hear what she had to say.

"I just wanted to say thank you for how you handled that.  That was so nice of you.  People just don't do that anymore.  Really."

Charles said, "I'll probably be just like that in a few years.  I hope people will be nice to me!"

As we rehashed the incident on the way home, Charles asked, "What's an egotist?"

"I have a guess," I said, "but I've only heard that word used in black and white movies, so I'm not positive.  Let's look it up when we get home!"

It turns out that an egotist is someone who talks and thinks about himself excessively because of an undue sense of self-importance.

Is Charles an egotist?  I'll answer that.

No.

I'm so proud of him.

unctuous (ˈəng(k)choōəs)

My daughter Lola recommended that I write a new post, and I requested that she provide a WFTD (Word For The Day, remember?)  for me to blog about.  She couldn't think of one, but in that same facebook conversation a friend suggested the word "unctuous."  I committed to blogging about it, so here we are.  I've looked it up, and unctuousness is not a good thing.  I truly hope that my facebook friend did not suggest the word as a way to inform me about one of my many faults. 

 (I don't think that's the case, though, because this friend of mine is too astoundingly, amazingly nice to do that.  If you needed it, he'd give you the shirt off his back, and then get another shirt on so he could offer to give you THAT shirt, too!  He's so amazing that I think they should give him the Medal of Honor for general niceness, or the Nobel Peace Prize.  Actually, I bet he's already won those awards.)

Unctuous means excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily. I really hope I don't come across that way to my friends and family.

(Of course, my friends and family are so a-MAZE-ing, that I know they wouldn't ever think that of me, even if it were true.  They are so incredibly and awesomely fantastic that if I needed money, they would ask how much I needed and then give me THREE TIMES that amount!)
My hope is that I come across as someone who is brave and smart--willing to take a stand for important things. Unfortunately,  in actuality I'm more of the 'Fraidy-cat type.  Not only am I too passive to take a stand in important matters, but I'm also too scared to let my voice be heard in UNimportant matters.  Case in point:  I have a secret desire to be a vandal.  I don't really want to destroy property, I want to improve it--bring a little sunshine to others like myself who spend hours each day in their cars, and who are forced to look at the same signage around town over and over again.  I have wanted, for years, to sneak out in the night, "creatively alter" the signs in my neighborhood, and unleash my worldview on the whole town . . . . but I can't!  

  

These signs are all over the place.  I want to spray paint an angry "GRRRRRRR!" sort of face on each one to show how frustrated these signs are that they have NO OUTLET --for their creativity, their passion, their talents, their opinions!  They are totally oppressed!!  

I'm too chicken, and I have legitimate reasons for being so.  Allow me to tell a background story.  When I was 17 years old, a few friends wanted to go toilet papering and they wanted to include me.  It shouldn't have been a big deal!  Toilet papering is not really even mean-spirited; it's just youthful hilarity.  However, I told them that they shouldn't invite me along because (I swear I actually said this) if I went, we would all get busted.  Well, well, well, wouldn't you know we DID get busted!  A sharp-eyed young man (with a crush on the girl whose house we were TP-ing) saw us and called the "police" in our town.  In the process of the shakedown, one of my friends actually got belted across the face by one of the "officers" who thought my friend was being a smart aleck. 
(Now, of course, the handsome, astute and swarthy young security officer was doing his duty--a man of nobility and grace, to be sure!)
It was an ugly situation, and it illustrates why I am such a goody-goody.  If I ever attempt to step off the straight and narrow, something seems to scream out to the powers that be, "LOOK AT ME!  I'M DOING SOMETHING NAUGHTY!  COME CATCH ME IN THE ACT AND INFLICT PUNISHMENT UPON ME!"
Indulge me, please, as I give one more brief background story.  It involves someone very close to me who will probably wish to remain anonymous.  So, for the sake of preserving her dignity, I'll call her "Mom."

I would love to climb up on this billboard, paint a Groucho Marx schnozz on the man and change the last word from "HONOR" to "HUMOR."  The sign would then read, "Dedicated to a sense OF HUMOR."  Honor and humor are not mutually exclusive! Every soldier I know is hilarious, making the statement so true!  ***see disclaimer, below

I was probably 10 or 11 years old and was sitting in my living room watching TV one evening.  "Mom" came into the room and told me to turn off the TV and go to bed.  For some reason, that command was the straw that broke the camel's back.  In that moment, the injustice of my life rose up inside me and I was filled with a fearful rage against the force that had compelled me, every night for as long as I could remember, to stop doing what I wanted to be doing and go to bed. With a fury I could scarcely control, I turned to "Mom" and said these words:  "Who put YOU in charge?  Why do YOU always get  to BOSS EVERYONE AROUND!"  
It was interesting, because the wrath that had seemed so unstoppable just split seconds before had already left me by the time I finished my sentence.  It left me, and jumped very quickly into "Mom."  As I watched the rage contort her face (all this in 2-3 seconds, mind you) I wished with all my quivering heart that I could grab those words out of the air and shove them back in my mouth.  Such was not to be.  Instead, "Mom" marched straight towards me, stood me up by my hair, dragged me down the hall and deposited me in my bedroom.  All the while I'm screaming,
 "I'msorry! I'msorry! I'msorry! I takeitback! I takeitbaaaaaaaack!!
I was absolutely pathetic at civil disobedience, and I have remained so to this day.
(This Mom character, though, she's GREAT at civil disobedience!  She's great at everything and I mean everything.  There's not a thing you could name that she isn't great at.  She could seriously win awards in every single kind of category there is.  Especially forgiveness of her children when they tell unflattering tales.  She's fantastic at that!)
I'm telling you all this "background" so you'll know why the signs in my town have nothing to fear from me.  Though I wish, every single time I see them, that I could deface them in my own uplifting way, it will never happen. 

Someone has already done the dirty work for me, here.  Each day I drive past four cars in this used car lot, each with one letter of the word "SALE' in its open mouth.  I always want to ask to test drive one of those specific cars, just to make it  say "ALE" or "SAL" for an hour or two. 

Now that I've read over this post, I realize that I haven't blogged about the word unctuous at ALL, really.  I apologize from the bottom of my heart.

 ( But knowing the kind of blog-readers you are--sophisticated,  intelligent, insightful, charismatic, beautiful and just all-around excellent in every way, much like how I imagine royalty would be--I'm sure you'll be good enough to overlook that little fact.)

*** my desire to vandalize the military recruitment billboard has everything to do with how easily the words "sense of honor" could be changed into the phrase "sense of humor" and does not in any way indicate disrespect for the honorable servicemen and women of our country.