En Route to Vegas!

Once upon a time, I loved to write a good passage.  I crafted some blog posts that pleased me in their polished-ness.  Now I can't even string a sentence together without making up words like "polished-ness."  I miss writing, but I can't get it back right now.  There are just too many people with too many demands around me.  Of course, I'd rather have the people, but it's one or the other.  Scott and I clearly didn't think through the idea of having seven kids.  We had no idea that diapers and midnight feedings were the tip of the iceberg.  We pictured ourselves wiping our brows at some point when the last kid was capable of wiping her own bum and saying, "Phew!  We're home free."  Ha ha ha ha!

Obviously, we didn't have in mind the missionary letters or the college move-ins or the individual dates each kid craves or the endless lessons or the mountains of stuff each kid scatters all over the house.  And we certainly didn't dream they'd have the chutzpah to go to Europe and bring home enough kids to double the size of our family, kids whom we love like our own.  When this summer is over, we'll have had 12 kids, one of whom will stay the school year.  Ok, 7 of whom will stay the school year, counting Chu Qi and our 6 who aren't going to Honk Kong.

The thing about having had 12 great kids in the house is that then six or seven doesn't seem like enough.  It's not about the numbers.  It's about the personalities that came, unpacked, and made themselves indispensable to our happiness.  Yet another part of parenting that was invisible to us:  that not only would our children leave someday, but before they did, they would bring us friends we'd love who would also leave.

What was my point?  Oh yeah, that I don't have the time or brain power to write a paragraph.  All I have are all these beautiful memories:

Cove Fort.  When Scott and I started regularly road tripping to California, I always wanted to stop at Cove Fort, the Mormon monument to the early settlers.  It became a joke that we weren't stopping there, until one time we did, and it was great.  It's fun to see, and there are clean bathrooms.  This trip, we'd left home at 6 am, so Cove Fort was an early morning stop.  The sun was shining, and so were our eyes, from the tears of sleepiness.

Next stop, Littlefield, Arizona.  We had an adventurous journey down I-15!  Friends (Nikki and Angela) had told us about this little oasis and we thought, why not?  It's off Arizona Exit 9 as you're cutting across that little corner of Arizona between St. George and Vegas.  You won't see it from the freeway, but it's right under the road.  You'll have to hike down to it through some trash and weeds, a tricky hike, but it's a fun place to stop.  It's a man-made pool with a natural waterfall.

 

I'm so glad Freestone came on this trip with us.  He was going to stay home and babysit, so it complicated things when we convinced him to go with, but it was worth it.  He's fun!

The pool and waterfall were the perfect refreshment to get us through the desert, because man, it was hot! 

 

And finally, we were at our final destination!  Las Vegas!  I lucked out and booked the perfect lodging, the Jockey Club.  It's adjacent to The Cosmopolitan, so the location is perfect, and it's a time-share type deal, so the price is perfect; probably half of what the Cosmopolitan is, and we had a one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and a fold-out couch.  

And this was the view from our room.  Can't beat it!  Upon arrival, I turned the six young'uns loose to do whatever they wanted.  Let's face it: The Strip is one of the safest places on the planet, what with the crowds of tourists, the security cameras and the police presence.  As long as they didn't get drunk and arrested, they'd be fine.  Meanwhile, I put my feet up and opened my book.  It was disorienting not to have any little kids to entertain, but I used the time to hone my rusty relaxation skills while Ruby, Araceli, Freestone, Olympe, Victor and Sofia roamed Sin City late into the night.  Scott was home with the other 45 kids...I mean 4 kids, so I got to miss him a little.  Or a lot!  That's always fun; adds a little variety to the daily mix. :)  Not that variety is hard to come by when you have 12 kids!

Knight in Stainless Steel Armor

We have recently had some beautiful, warm evenings here.  One one such lovely evening, the Dopps were eating pizza for dinner in the front yard when an elderly traveling salesman reached our home.  I had seem him in the neighborhood, knew he was selling knives, and felt rather sorry for him.  I didn't need any overpriced knives, but I also couldn't let him get away without sharing a couple of slices of pizza with us.

After graciously accepting my offer for pizza, he said, "But first let me tell you why I'm here."  Long story short, I bought three overpriced knives from an 80-year-old man going door to door, parking his beat-up minivan in an inconspicuous spot as he carefully canvassed each neighborhood.  The knives were only ten bucks each, but still...overpriced.  Nevertheless, I was happy to pay.  The deal closed, our new friend started in on his pizza.  He kept saying, "Oh, this is the best pizza I've ever had.  This is so good.  And I haven't eaten for so long!"  He was so grateful, I very nearly bought the rest of his little red knives.  As we ate, he told us about his wife and their children, lavishing praise on his wife, saying how remarkable she is, and what a good mother.  He told how he once visited his daughter in South Carolina and had a box of knives shipped there beforehand so he could "do a little work" while he was on vacation.

I wish I had kept the business card he gave me, in case any of you were on the market for a cute little wedding gift.  I know it's not much, but I put each knife in a cellophane bag with a note that says, "Pointers on a happy marriage:  Stay sharp, avoid cutting remarks, don't be afraid to live on the edge, steel yourselves for challenges and never let your relationship get dull."

Here's another pointer for a happy marriage, men:  When you're eighty years old, and your marriage has maybe reached the half-century mark and the retirement money isn't what you hoped for, that's when it could be your time to really shine.  Your moment of glory could be carrying a box of paring knives, knocking on doors, telling the world that you are in love with a queen, and that you intend to do right by her no matter what.  No matter what.

Peter Prier Tribute

Graduates of the Violin Making School of America were asked to write a tribute letter to the school and Peter in particular, as part of a 40th anniversary celebration.  I loved my time at the VMS.  Here is my letter.



Nobody has been as influential in my life as my teachers.  I suspect most people would say the same thing.  I have been fortunate to have many great mentors, importantly among them Peter Prier, Charles Woolf, J. P. Lucas and Kory Katseanes.  All four were my teachers at the Violin Making School of America.  I arrived at the school days after graduating from college, fresh from Indiana University with a violin performance degree and a "minor" in stringed instrument technology.  I didn't yet know how much I didn't know.  My teachers did, however.  Nonetheless, they all treated me with respect, and I got right to work.
Despite my many blunders and shortcomings, and maybe even because of them, my teachers always looked out for me, above and beyond teaching and inspiring.  Kory, our violin teacher, allowed me to discuss religion with him during our lessons, rather than play the violin.  I was a disillusioned musician and an inactive Latter-day Saint and I needed the conversation more than I needed the violin instruction.  Kory was my non-judgmental, loving, listening ear at a time when what I was saying must have seemed quite sophomoric to him.  I remember him smiling and nodding, even chuckling and I remember feeling his gentle concern.  He was, to each student, what they needed individually.
J.P. was my varnish teacher during graduation.  He was an excellent instructor, pouring out everything he knew and helping us run with it.  He was enthusiastic and energetic and also very fun.  I had gotten married with a year left to go at the VMS.  I was eight months pregnant with my first child when I did my graduation work.  Yes, that was my plan.  I didn't think through the consequences of having a massive stomach in the way while I was woodworking and varnishing, and my varnished violin was judged unfit for graduation.  I had a week to strip it and re-present it.  While I would have liked to go home and fret all night, feeling overwhelmed, J.P. insisted on helping me strip the violin right then, so that it would be ready to re-varnish the very next day.  Without him, I would not have graduated.
Charlie was my main teacher and I sat a bench or two away from him the whole four years.  I loved arriving at school and chatting with Charlie.  His knowledge about everything was vast, infinite, effortless, and we mined a wide variety of subjects in our conversation.  Charlie always had a violin he was working on, but his students always took first priority.  I can't remember a day when Charlie missed school.  I do remember him caring for our neighbor, George, and visiting him in the hospice center when he was dying.  Charlie inspired respect from his students simply by being quietly excellent and demanding the same from his protégées.  He was always able to take the students’ immaturity and ignorance in stride and teach to the best that was in each person.  He had a profound influence on my life, and I missed him and our workbench banter acutely when I graduated and moved on.
Peter Prier was an authority figure for me long before I became a student at the school.  From childhood, my parents took me to his beautiful shop for my violins, strings and bow rehairs.  Peter's employee, Ray Anderson, chose my violin for me when I was ready for a nice one, and talked my parents into seeing the value of such a nice instrument.  I loved that gorgeous violin.  It inspired me!  But then it needed a case.  It was Christmastime and my mother had a modest budget planned for our family's gifts.  I wanted a Gorge case, and my mom went to Peter.  When he told her the price of the case, she broke down crying.  It was more than her whole holiday budget.  Peter gave her a substantial discount, and absolutely made our Christmas possible.  He may have done it just to get a hysterical woman out of his shop, but I tend to think it was because of his tender heart.
I had seen Peter's tender heart at violin recitals.  His daughter Tammy and I had the same teacher, K.P. Peterson.  On a couple of occasions, Tammy got stage fright and didn't want to play.  Her dad swallowed her up in his big arms and told her she didn't have to, that it was OK.  I experienced Peter's compassion on other occasions, when Peter was there to counsel me with a father's experience, or in his words, as "an old fox."  I was honored, since Peter and I share the same faith, to have him at my wedding in the Salt Lake LDS temple.
 Seeing his face there on that sacred occasion brought home the truth that there is nothing one can do in life that has a greater impact than teaching the rising generation.  I admire Peter for founding the school, and for sharing his hard-won knowledge so widely and completely.  It is entirely safe to say that the Violin Making School of America is responsible for a renaissance in violin making in this country and around the world.  That is not hyperbole; it is the truth.  I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to study there and to come of age in such a unique and thrilling place.  Thank you, Peter, Charlie and all the rest for your standard of excellence and your mentorship. We are all indebted.  Vive la VMSA!

Clear Blue

I fall into the clearest blue and float, refreshed,
Looking up at the emptiest azure.
Nothing between heaven and earth matters, nothing on the surface of this planet.
I could glide away.

Then I hear a sound like a happy crow.  It is my baby, and it tethers me.
I am newly aware of the earth, my home, and all the detail and significance of it.

I peek.
I see her smile and I am glad to be back.
I like it here.

Prologue

                                                                      
It had been quite some time since Hugo had woken to the sounds of morning. With his internal clock always out of synch with the 24-hour cycle of the day, he more often woke in the still, cold dark of night or the waning heat of late afternoon.
Now, though, the bleaching sky permeated his consciousness along with the first haughty twitters of birds. It wasn't accurate to say that the landscape was just coming alive with the seeping light of dawn. If anything, the forest teemed more with life during the night, when so many nocturnal creatures conducted their business. It was fascinating to Hugo to observe the night-loving animals and insects whose existence he was scarcely cognizant of before, when he was human. Those species were now burrowing in to escape the impending day's heat, just as Hugo focused himself out of the grog of sleep. He listened as every small creature that stirred on the forest floor registered to his senses. Without eyes or ears, Hugo was nevertheless so attuned to his surroundings that such faculties as sight or hearing would have been redundant, even useless.
When Hugo wanted to, he could sense a bee in flight ten miles away and know instantaneously not only the bee's location, but his mission as well.  Hugo normally tuned out such tedious information, preferring to focus inward, straining to identify a sound far more subtle than a bee's vibrating wings. Now, he tried to suppress annoyance at the grating sound of a mother raccoon licking her cubs and the thunderous scratching of a mole, its digging as endless as it was seemingly pointless.
Shutting out external stimuli, he listened for the collective voice of the Great Council. They would tell him when it was finally time to act. Until the voice came, Hugo was rooted in place, quite literally. His will belonged to the Great Council, and his freedom was contingent on their directives. For the time being, Hugo could do little more than stretch his mental muscles to the point of breaking, trying to develop the patience he needed for this mission. Until he heard the voice, Hugo was trapped. Trapped inside a dying, yet majestic Sitka spruce .

Trapped may have been an inadequate description of Hugo's physical state. The reality was that Hugo was an integral part of every fiber, every molecule of the 40-foot Sitka. The reaching branches, two of which housed sparrowhawk nests at that very moment, were less like appendages than they were extensions of Hugo's consciousness. He felt his powerful thought process course through every last needle of the evergreen, especially when he was concentrating on listening for the voice. The tiny nests did little to distract Hugo from his mental exercises. There were far larger animals than sought refuge in his branches, deer and foxes, and even those were acceptable to Hugo's mind, except for all the racket they made.

Hugo knew precisely how his spirit had taken over the tree. The second his human body had died, he was filled with a complete knowledge of what was happening.   He just didn't know why. During that split second when his spirit left his human body and was forcefully taken by the Great Council, Hugo understood vastly more than his brain had been able to process when he was human. There was absolutely nothing in his new store of knowledge that his religious upbringing had taught him to expect. Becoming one with a spruce was never an option any of his Sunday School teachers mentioned. Hugo wasn't sure there was a religious tradition on earth that would have predicted his fate. He had a weak recollection of a Native American tradition he'd heard about in a freshman class at U. of M. Hugo had taken the class for the easy A its reputation promised. Listening closely wasn't something he was in the habit of doing during the Monday morning class. Now, he berated his former self for his lack of interest in the class. If only he could recall the Native American beliefs he had heard about, he had a desperate hope the information could help him somehow. The Sioux Indians believed there was a small part of the Great Spirit in every rock, tree and blade of grass. Every seemingly inanimate object in nature was a vessel for life. For the so-called life of him, Hugo couldn't recall whether the professor had said anything about how the spirit got INTO the rocks and trees. He understood that this tree would keep his spirit intact until the mission could be completed. Even with his improved mental facility, Hugo could not know anything the Great Council wanted to keep from him. The time had not come for Hugo to understand the mission. Hugo sighed at the thought.

Just then, the sun overpowered the thin cloud cover. Hugo felt nourishment touching each of his millions of needles, pushing itself downward into his branches and trunk. A flawless system, Hugo reflected. Trees never have heart attacks. They never willingly take in food that will harm them, clogging their systems, like humans were wont to do. Trees were never clumsy. They never lost their footing...

Human fallibility must be reserved strictly for humans, Hugo thought with a mental smirk. Even as he amused himself with this irony, Hugo felt a sharp prick of remorse, of regret, remembering the moment he ceased being human. He had lost so much more than his lean, muscular 18-year-old body at that moment when his hiking boot slipped.  He had failed her. He had left her without a good-bye. Why hadn't he been stronger, more careful, less fallible? Another ironic thought twisted Hugo's mind: Why couldn't he have been just a little less human that last day?

Just a Sandwich

Everyone knows that Scott is amazing.  You know I love him, Felshaw, Bruce and all our brothers and uncles, and that they are all 100 kinds of perfect.  For Fathers Day I will tell you a story about another father whom I admire.

I remembered this man recently when we had a little incident with a lunch lady.  One of my kids acted disrespectfully and I was disappointed.  I started telling the kids about how hard it is for teachers and school workers.  One teacher came to mind and I was crying by the middle of the story, much to my kids' horror and delight.

At my junior high, we had the choice of an entree or a hot ham sandwich.  Everybody thought the sandwiches were gross and people would hurl them across the room, or just toss them in the trash.  One particular teacher was always on lunch duty and he would humbly ask students for their sandwiches.  I remember him putting them in a plastic bag.  We knew he had a ridiculous number of kids, maybe five or six, and those sandwiches went home and were eaten for dinner by all those kids.  You would think that knowledge would sober the junior high kids and make them a little more respectful of the teacher.  Unfortunately, kids that age sometimes have no regard for the feelings of others.  The teacher was ridiculed to no end for saving those sandwiches.  I can only imagine it from the teacher's point of view:  all those immature, nasty, zit-faced know-it-alls mocking him for his efforts to provide for his family.

It can't have been easy, raising a family on a teacher's salary.  I imagine this guy scrimping and budgeting, never having quite enough for food.  Certainly never having enough for the luxuries some of his students enjoyed.  Let's face it, kids who were so cavalier about throwing away good food must have lived in the land of plenty when they got home from school.

I admire a man who was willing, day after day, to be the object of derision, to put aside his pride, to humble himself before such an unworthy crowd, simply to provide for his children.  He did whatever it took, and he put food on their table.  In a world of entitlement, this teacher only asked for what others would throw away.

I hope that when he walked away from the junior high each day with his bag of sandwiches, he went home to a happy place where he was admired for his efforts.  I hope his children grew up to possess the same strength of character as their dad.  I bet they did.

Here's to all the dads who are making unnoticed sacrifices because they know what's trash and what's not, what's just a sandwich and what's much more.