Winged Victory of Inmyface

Page, Vance, moi & Paris

Eight years ago when my sister Page was 31 and I was 24 we went to Paris together. On the plane ride over I crowded her with a map of the metropolitan area and started pointing out landmarks we'd be visiting. I think my finger was somewhere between La Défense and the Bois de Boulogne when she flopped her body limp in her seat.

"I don't want to do any of those things." She whined in my ear as I wrestled with the map.

"I am sorry. What did you just say?" I asked with squinted eyes.

"I don't want to do anything but sleep on this trip."

"We aren't going tropical here Page, we're going to Paris."

"I know. But I am tired."

"But it's Paris."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. When Page's husband Vance broke the news to his wife that he'd be in Paris for Valentines Day on business she insisted on going with him. Then she called me up and told me to pack my bags as I was chosen to navigate her around the city with my sharp Quebecois French. I assumed this meant we'd be sight seeing and crepe tasting and art viewing, but now? Sleep walking? What is this?

"I don't really care. I just want to sleep on this trip." She reiterated while adjusting her neck pillow and closing her eyes.

I dropped my head in defeat.

Granted the woman had five children, and lived an incredibly busy lifestyle. For this slight set back, I could allow her a day or two for jet lag, but by day three we needed to be up early spending the morning admiring the Winged Victory of Samothrace, followed by a brisk walk in the Tuileries over to have tea on Rue de Rivoli.

When I lifted my head to finish our conversation she was asleep.


Last week Lucy came to my house.

"What are we going to do when we go to New York?" She asked me while bouncing her baby Betsy.

The Today Show asked our sister Stephanie to fly back to the NBC studios for an interview, and we were in invited to come with our husbands and babies. When we first heard about the offer, I considered not going because I was still quite sick with my pregnancy-inducing fetus. It also sounded like a lot of work to wrangle an eighteen-month-old while keeping up with husband who travels for a living. But then I thought about eating a New York City Reuben sandwich and changed my mind.

"I don't really wanted to do anything but sleep. And eat a Reuben." I said to Lucy as I reclined on the couch.

"What?" She replied with squinty eyes.

"I am so tired." I said, "I just want to use this vacation time to rest."

"We are going to New York City. Don't you want to ride the subway?"

"I don't care, I'll take cabs."

Something about this conversation sounded familiar. Then I did some analysis in my head--because I have talent for that sort of thing--and realized that I am 32 and Lucy is 24 and I am tired and she isn't.

Granted, I am pregnant and my life has quickly gone from bare minimum to maximum in a few short weeks. For this you'd think I could be sanctioned a week of pure lazy endeavors. A week to enjoy maid service, room service and a grandpa willing to take The Chief for walks in Central Park. Just let me have mornings until noon and naptime until dinner. The Statue of Liberty will be there the next time around, besides I've already seen it.

Unfortunately, I now feel Page's weariness. No sight seeing in the nation's greatest city could compare with a morning to snuggle with sleep. It was a full circle, out of body, retro fitting empathetic moment.

But Lucy who has a world class title in eye rolling, did her best to ignore the apathy seated cozy and comfortable on my lap. Which is what I did to my older sister eight years ago when she was my age, and I was Lucy's age.

And when we were eating baguettes in the mosaic recesses of the metro station after an arousing day at the Musee d'Orsay I turned to Page and said,

"Remember when you wanted to just sleep?"

And we laughed so hard one of us lost bladder control.

(The older one, who had five babies.)



Hello New York, here I honk shoo.




p.s.

Cat Do It!

Looking for opinionated people who have something to say about cats.
I explain it all here.

*photo of his daughter's cat Lovebells, by Jed Wells

More than Enough--Post Thought

Last summer, while at a gallery opening I was handed a book called Mormon Women: Portraits and Conversations. It was for me to read and enjoy and maybe . . . possibly . . . if I liked it . . . mention it on my blog(?!)

When I got home, I took off my shoes and put the book in my library of books I hoped to read sometime before Armageddon. If time dripped from the sky I would catch all those minutes in a tin bucket and use them to sit and read. Until then, it will take me a quarter century to get through a book . . . if I like it. I don't read anything that doesn't flirt with me in the first paragraph.

Then I thought if I put more books in the bathroom maybe I would read faster. Bathroom breaks are priceless to a mother with a constant shadow of one-year-old proportions. I am not too embarrassed to tell Daddy I've got to take a bathroom break-- and hide away in the bathroom for twenty minutes. For all he knows I've got a pregnant system in need of patience in the restroom arena. While really I'm just relieving my bladder for thirty-nine seconds and reading for the remaining 19 minutes, twenty-one seconds.

And that is how I started reading this book.

It is a series of interviews and photographs of Mormon Women who have had remarkable lives and made incredible choices. A book about the most common women having uncommon lives. (Doesn't that explain just about everyone you know?) But it is also an answer to the question that lingers among the members of our church, as well as the non-members of our church: What is it like to be a Mormon woman?

Which was somewhat coincidental you see because I've been wrestling with this whole concept of motherhood as it pertains to being a Mormon. I had hoped to forever hide under the umbrella of being a wife and mother--two roles our church claims as next to divinity--and nothing else. I wasn't interested in being a wife, mother or friend/or a wife, mother and Primary President/or even a wife, mother and blogger (I always said I'd quit blogging when I became a mother). I didn't want anything to complicate what I could control here at home. Besides, these two roles kept be busy enough with questions and quandaries, how was I supposed to gladly add to the confusion by also taking on other relationships/causes that required attention? AND I thought, somewhere in this battle of my brain, the church would surely back me up on this idea--that wife-hood and a motherhood (or the quest to be thereof) were all that was required of a Latter Day Saint woman.*

I skipped the first interview**, then the next and the next until I found the interview of my favorite writer of all time Emma Lou Thayne. Of course so many of her thoughts expressed were translated into my heart, helping me read what I already felt. Mostly about being a wife, mother and a writer. From my interpretations of her chapter, she was saying that all three were connected. Her need to write made her a wife and a mother. Her being a wife and mother made her a writer.

She says, "I never felt like I was neglecting my family. I always said I can love you with all my heart but not with all my time, I've always felt life was a both-end thing rather than either or."

So then I was hooked.

But twenty minute installments haven't pushed me through this book nearly as fast I could hope. It takes me several days to read one interview, because I like to equally think about each life experience. The only common thread made obvious to me so far, regardless of life status--married, single, rich, poor, culture, race--is that each woman has been directed by Heavenly Father to be more. More of what they thought they could be. More of what they thought they had energy or time to be. More than what they thought life would give to them.

It is still uncomfortable for me to open up to the possibility of being more of what Heavenly Father needs me to be. My nature will always wish to live on an emotional farm, one far away from duties outside of wife and mother. (Heck, I'd also like to live on a physical farm too). But then I think about my mother who sits on the city council.
My sister in law Megan who is the PTA president.
My friend Sue who is heading up a civic board for our downtown area.
My friend Laura who runs a boutique.
My best friend Wendy who manages special education at our local middle school.
My neighbor Janna who spends part-time counseling women with severe body issues.
My aunt Judy who helps run a weekly health clinic to the uninsured.
My other sister in law Lisa who performs with a comedy troupe on weekends.

If they can do it . . .

. . . so can I?

Book: Mormon Women: Portraits & Conversations by James N. Kimball & Kent Miles
Get it: Amazon or Deseret Book
Book review: Meridian Magazine


*If you would like to hear what our church leaders have said about motherhood you are welcome to read this talk by Julie B. Beck (a talk I printed out and placed on my night stand for permanent study!)

**The first interview I skipped has been one of my favorite so far--Carol Gray from Sheffield England.

If you end up getting this book email me and let's chat?

Post-Edit:

I have really enjoyed the comments pertaining to this post. I appreciate the thoughtful discussion and despite popular opinion, I like to hear opposing views. It makes me feel like my words are at least worth feeling.

Lucy always tells me to be more bold on this blog and I have yet discovered how to be bold without losing artistic prose, but I do want to explain a little background to this post-something I should've mentioned in the drafting of it. I will try to do so boldly:

I am lazy.
(Or selfish, but let me say lazy because it sounds less depraved.)

I never, ever really believed my church would back me up on the whole being "a mother, wife only" idea because inherently we are asked to do so much more by nature of being covenant women.

Let me be more bold, we are asked to work hard as Mormon women. Hard work is hard for the lazy. I am lazy. So in my laziness, I hoped to be able to twist the ideas I was hearing from the pulpit to back up my "a mother, wife only" idea. But because this was not truth, it hounded me.

Blogging/writing for me is hard work.

I want to hide from it sometimes. I ask Heavenly Father if there is something else I can do for Him instead. He lets me know in resolute terms to keep going. Blogging/writing is my more.

Let me be more bold, I am not currently asking Heavenly Father to give me more, but to help me be open to what is already being asked. I can wish all the responsibility away, but publishing my thoughts (as uncultivated as they sometimes are) and being a wife and mother is what is being asked of my time and talents right now. Reading this book helped me to identify similar patterns in other women's lives--many of them just as skeptical as I am.

I say skeptical, but also I am lazy/selfish.

In listing the ladies in this post who are also doing more, I meant to illustrate their inspiration to me.

Let me be bold: I was not comparing myself to them, I was showing my appreciation for their willingness to heed to personal revelation. I do not endorse comparisons.

They received their calling, and I must to. So if I don't fight it, my byline looks like this:
Wife, mother and blogger/writer.
And if, on a gray day in January I pray and find out it is no longer my calling, I have to be willing to let it go.

Let me be more bold: every woman has something more to them. Even if they fight it like I do. And if they fight it like I do, they are in for a world of frustration. Like I was, before I read this book.

But I will say this, when I write posts like this and listen to other's voices and ideas. I really, really, really love blogging/writing. And it is so worth it.

So thank you.

p.s. I think Sister Beck's talk was mostly aimed at me, Mothers Who Don't Know Because They Are Lazy. If her sentiments didn't sit well with you, perhaps you are already a Mother Who Already Knows--I think that is plausible.

Writing On the Wall

"Do you see what The Chief is doing?" asked Chup as we readied ourselves for church this morning.

"Yes and I love it."

"Love it?" Chup asked with the tone that reads: what is wrong with you?

With his favorite green highlighter clutched in his manic fist, while balancing on my green wooden chair, The Chief was producing installation art all over my office wall. He would extend his arm high and draw lazy lines back-and-forth then follow up with frantic scribbles reaching from my desk to the doorway. Jackson Pollock's little apprentice. I couldn't be more proud.

What is wrong with me?

When I was five years old I colored on the basement wall. I thought the white washed plastered canvas was simply void of artistic impression and so I took to the task with my set of markers. My mother however, thought otherwise and failed to applaud my project. In fact, she expressed to me in a very firm statement her disappointment and asked the question every parent has asked since the whole Adam, Eve and Cain debacle, "What were you thinking?"

With my fragile artist feelings shattered about me, I decided I could no longer live at home. Not after what was said, not after was done. So I emptied my brown-floral pillow case of my pillow, filled it instead with a couple shirts, shorts, underwear, a package of Zesta crackers, a red apple and hit the road.

I got as far down as one block away and wondered what to do next. This was my first attempt at being a runaway and I wasn't very clear about the conditions. Where was I supposed to runaway to? Where could I find materials to build a leaky shack? And how long would it take for someone to notice I was gone? I needed tears, hugging and a mother's begging apology. Those were my terms. Until then, my absence was my ransom and retaliation.

So I sat on my neighbor's lawn for awhile. Long enough to realize it would take a mealtime--or maybe even bedtime--until someone noticed I wasn't around. I was a middle child in a huge family, I was just stuffing between the eldest and the youngest. A filler, if you will. This runaway business was never going to have the effect I needed it to, and in my heart I knew it. Darn it.

Slowly I wandered back home with my pillow case heavily slung behind my shoulder. I slipped in the front door without being noticed--no one yelled "Courtney? Is that you? We've been looking all over . . . just about to call the authorities!" I put away my clothes. I ate a few crackers. I sighed. Sorry about this ending.

Then years later, when my brothers were old enough to be teenagers, they took over the basement with their indoor basketball hoops. They wasted no time using the basement walls to write blatant messages to each other about who can dunk over who and who has a better three-point shot.

No one seemed to care then? Did they?

But my five-year-old self did. She risked her life (!) for artistic freedom only to see the sports world take over like some cheap franchise. This opened the way for hundreds of visitors flocking to our basement to leave their personal mark--a tribute to themselves (or their crush) written in graffiti. My walls littered with other people's junky proclamations. To the tune of this:

Have you seen enough?


Oh no you haven't.

What is wrong with me?

I say let the child express himself.

Our Latest Family Portrait:

left to right: Chup, c jane, The Chief

*via The Chief's fine selection of random stuffed stuff