Journal Entries

A couple of months ago we lost C-Nut’s “Baby.” It’s a little pink plush doll with a rattle inside that Grandma W. gave her, and which she’s loved and slept with since she was an infant. I was surprised how much I missed Baby; PDaniel too. I had a distinct feeling of loss those days, almost as if we’d lost CN’s twin, or at least as if some part of CN had been lost forever. A cloud descended over the household, and we were all a little depressed. I’ve never mourned another inanimate object more than I mourned baby for those few days, as we searched the house and the car (the only places Baby is allowed to go) over and over.

CN’s face shone like a light when we found Baby. I was talking to PDan in the kids’ room when I noticed the underwear-and-sock hanging bag in DB’s closet had fallen down. I reached down to pick it up and reattach it to the pole, when I heard something rattle. Could it be?? It was! Stuffed in with DB’s socks was Baby! I vaguely remembered putting socks away a couple of days ago—I must have accidentally put Baby away too. Hallelujah! A weight lifted from all of us and all was right with the world again.

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Last night I had a dream that I was riding to a music recital. On the back of a cow. Down a road choked with humongously overgrown tree roots.

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PDan and I have been reading the first Harry Potter book to DB and he LOVES it. So much more than I thought he would. He knows all the characters, keeps track of their names. It’s so fun to share this with him--PDan and I are having a great time doing all the accents and voices as we read, or trying to—and I’m proud of the fact that he has an attention span long enough to sit through whole chapters at a time. I’m glad his imagination is in such good working order. I see kids in his class that are excellent readers, have great handwriting, play the cello…but I am so proud that my child has a love for stories. Those other things are good too, but I’d rather this, if I had to choose.

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Saturday afternoon, I lost C-Nut. DB and C-Nut had both had a boring day and were begging to go outside, so we finally tried to go on a walk. But they were being so awful—complaining about the direction we were going, the lack of food, everything. At first I was trying to be accommodating but finally gave up and said we were going home. We’d barely made it around the corner of our apartment! DB planted himself on the sidewalk and said he wasn’t going anywhere, while C-Nut was dying to go home. So I looked CN in the eye (she was sitting in her stroller) and told her not to move, while I went to get DB, who was maybe 10 yards away. CN nodded seriously. But when I turned around, the stroller was empty.

I wasn’t too worried initially, because I figured she’d just gone home. But I looked there, and she hadn’t. Then I looked around some more…no CN. I’d thought Peter had gone to priesthood, but he’d felt like he should stay home and help me with the kids, so he came out when he heard me calling for her and started looking. Esther came out of her apartment too. I wasn’t sure if I should start running somewhere to look, or if I should just look behind bushes and stuff; maybe she was hiding. I felt kind of paralyzed, so I just stayed where I was and kept calling her name. Minutes passed…no CN. Peter said later that at that point he said a desperate prayer, and felt that it would be all right, but started running down the hill. On the way down, he met our friend Madelyn, coming up to the playground with her kids. She was holding CN’s hand. CN had run all the way down the sidewalk, across the parking lot, down the “bunny hill,” and across the street, when Madelyn had found her and brought her back up. Thank goodness. PDaniel and I each made CN cry, getting her in trouble. CN felt terrible. Good…I hope she never runs away again. PDan and I were so distraught we were in no mood to cook dinner and went to In-N-Out for drive-thru burgers. (I hope CN doesn’t think it was some kind of reward).

Water and Sleep

At ol' Ricks College, in the Collegiate Singers, we once performed an arrangement of Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal, a 19th-century Southern song with a good tempo for rocking a chair, or maybe rowing a boat:

Hark, I hear the harps eternal

Ringing on the farther shore,

As I near those swollen waters

With their deep and solemn roar.

And my soul, though stained with sorrow,

Fading as the light of day,

Passes swiftly o’er those waters,

To the city far away.

Souls have crossed before me, saintly,

To that land of perfect rest;

And I hear them singing faintly

In the mansions of the blest.

Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, praise the lamb!
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Glory to the great I AM!

The song is about, on one level, crossing over; as in crossing over to the afterlife. I can't relate to that meaning yet, on a personal level, though I suppose I will someday. But I used to hum this tune as I did baptisms for the dead--I like the baptismal image of water, like to think that this song might be sung from the point of view of one waiting for on the other side for the ordinance to be performed for them. More recently, I've come to think of these crossing the waters in the song as crossing over into sleep, and I sing this to DB quite often. Some of these old hymns are so rich--this one touches me on rather a mystical level.

Other waters: my parents came to visit this week, and we went to Laguna Beach on Thursday, to one of our favorite places for tidepools. It was so windy and cold--high wave advisories and all--we didn't think we'd have any fun. But the huge waves had brought in all sorts of beautiful shells and creatures--live clams and barnacles and brittle stars, sea urchins and spiny hermit crabs that played peek-a-boo with Dangerboy, made him belly laugh. I took this tidepool picture of a tiny shell like a cornucopia filled with pieces of tinier shells and sea dust. It was like a tidepool within a tidepool--makes you wonder how far down it goes? (Is it turtles all the way?) (Does anyone know that joke?)

The top picture is The Tetons: Snake River by Ansel Adams. Love the photograph--love the place.

Back from Broadway

So, last night was the final performance of "George," as it's affectionately called by those in the know. It was fun, but I'm glad it's over. Finishing work at 11:00 is no fun when you know your day starts at 6:00 or 7:00. When I'd come home from work, I couldn't wind down quick enough to get to bed in time, and I began to get very sleepy.

After several nights of this (and the acquisition of a nasty cold), my mind forgot how to sleep. Sounds like something out of A Thousand Years of Solitude, right? (In that one, I think a whole town forgot how to sleep, and then they forgot everything they knew. I think.) It was bizarre--I was so tired, but my mind just kept working until one night it didn't stop. I took some medication, but all it did was make me not care that I couldn't sleep. I went into the living room to sleep, where I heard a ticking clock, and with each tick, I heard a measure of music from the musical, over and over and over. It was like torture (I removed the clock's battery). After a while, the birds started singing and the sun came up and I got up with Dangerboy. It was so strange to have lived consciously and unwillingly through one-half rotation of the earth, one I'm never witness to. What was even stranger was that I was able to function the next day, and play two shows, though it took a lot of concentration not to miss my cues.

DB news: Church is social time. We walk into the chapel, having prepped him with whispery voices to let him know that we whisper at church, and as soon as we walk in, it's, "SHAW!! MILES!! HARRY!!"--he doesn't even have to see them to know they're there. He saw his friend's father passing the sacrament and knew she must be there somewhere too, and yelled, "GWEN!! GWEN!! GWEN!!" until we took him out. He also lets us know when the hymns are finished, in that silence after the organ has faded: "ALL DONE!!!!"

He comes to me to kiss his owchies, which is wonderful.

I reprimanded him for whacking me in the chest the other day with a quick (dare I say thoughtless?) "Don't whack Mommy's boobs, please." Now when he whacks them, he says "A Bood, A Bood." I know, should have ignored him.

Dream Theory

So today, on a walk with P. and Dangerboy, I came up with a brilliant new theory about dreams. Everyone, I postulated, has a recurring guilt dream, and a recurring insecurity dream. My guilt dream is that I am again a missionary in Japan, and that I'm hanging out in my apartment all day doing nothing. My insecurity dream is that I'm on stage, starring in a play I have never rehearsed or even read. I know P.'s insecurity dream (but I'll be kind and not write it). I speculated that his guilt dreams must be the recurring dreams he has that I'm mad at him. (This hinged on the assumption that, even in his dream arguments, he's wrong). I shared my theory with P., but he said that he doesn't actually feel guilty in those dreams, so maybe I'm wrong. He did say, however, that he has lots of dreams that he's fighting bad guys. Guess I'll have to keep thinking.

In the news: yesterday we had friends over for dinner, and learned that french toast and bacon, while delicious, is a pain to cook for a crowd, since it has to be done in batches, which is not conducive to conversation. Small children, also, are not conducive to conversation...next time maybe we'll put on a movie.

Today we had a nice (for me) breakfast with friends Cherie and her new-ish boyfriend (have high hopes for hose two!). We went to Ruby's--P. spent most of the time chasing DB. Any other President's Day plans we had were foiled for various reasons. :(

Cute stuff: DB spent some time chasing J., a 5-year-old neighbor girl, around the playground. Every time he caught he he's give her a huge hug. He was screeching and laughing like crazy. He is very liberal with hugs these days, which is lots of fun.