Carol Holman Hill

Just wanted to let you know that I sent a packet of family history information (finally) to Carol Holman Hill.

Chores

I've been thinking about you shoveling snow. I wish I could help you with it, but I'm afraid it's something you're just going to have to go ahead and do. I know you'll be fine. When you get determined about something, it gets done. It made me think of when I first took over the lawn-mowing chore here at 916, when Joe and I separated in June 1993. I wrote about mowing the lawns for one of my thesis pages, and I thought you would enjoy reading it:

            The only time I had mowed a lawn before that summer was in the tiny yard of our last house in Los Angeles, during the summer of 1979, when I mowed our handkerchief-sized lawn a few times with the electric mower. From then until the summer of 1993, I had avoided mowing with the excuse that my duties with the children prevented me from tackling lawns.

            That summer, the grass kept growing, and I made it my personal mission to keep it under control. David was only 10, too young to carry the burden of nearly ½ acre of lawn, the girls were squeamish about mowing, and I couldn’t afford to pay someone for yard work.

            The yard had a lot more barriers in it then, and it took a good three hours to mow the entire property, so I generally undertook the chore in chunks: front yard, back yard, behind the barn, orchard. I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed the mowing. Hiking snob that I was, mowing had seemed too mundane to capture my interest, but I found the chore’s rhythms soothing. There was a certain challenge to navigating all the crannies and bumps of my yard, and the exercise felt good. I took ownership of mowing my property that summer, a sense of title, which I have never entirely relinquished since.

            Oh, that mower. It has long since been retired, replaced with a self-propelled little hottie that whips around the yard, dragging me along behind. The mower of ’93, though, was a beast with a tendency to clog when the grass was long and damp. One had to push it, of course, but on the days when the dew still clung to the grass stems, a certain humping motion was required. Push the mower forward a foot or two, pause and lift the front two wheels by about six inches, like a bronco strutting his stuff, to encourage the sticky wet grass to whirl out to the side rather than clump around the blade, let the front wheels down again and push forward another foot or two. Sometimes it took a while to get even one section whacked back into submission.

            Zooming the mower towards clustered thickets of dandelions gave a particular rush of mingled pleasure and vengeance. Off with their heads! Their persistently cheerful presence in the lawn inspired both aggravation and admiration; dandelions dominated several of the poems I wrote that summer.

            Prior to taking over the mowing of my own yard, I had not known the meditative qualities of mowing. During every other chore I performed, indoors or out, I was available to the children. Mowing enveloped me in a bubble of noise and flying, stinging grass: I was unapproachable. A child could snag my attention by standing outside the range of grass flying from the mower’s blades, dancing and waving until I turned the mower off; in the sudden silence I would realize that they had been yelling, too, futile above the mower’s roar, but that was rare; they generally took phone messages for me and settled their own squabbles until I had come back inside, sweaty and tired and ready to be a mom again. The children were intimidated by the mower’s risk and roar, but I, alone inside that throaty, whirling grassy vortex, could think and wonder for a while; the stresses and tensions inside the house would have to wait, and they did.

            The summer of 1993, I didn’t miss Joe, but I did miss the intimacy of a man in my life. Mowing took on a certain sensuality; it had always been a man’s labor before, but now I owned the task, began to actually anticipate the surrender to the sweat and sound and scent and hard push of the muscles working to control, wresting the machine’s power, the vibrations carrying the pulse of the engine deep within me. On hot summer afternoons when the orchard beckoned—after all, it was at the back of the property, and ringed by unruly blackberry vines along the chain-link fence—I yanked the mower to life half naked, clothed in only a bathing suit.

Bring a Torch

Mom, I thought you would enjoy this Christmas song by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir:




They recorded this in 2006, when Angela and Tim lived in Salt Lake City for his internship, and she is one of the dancers in this video. She's wearing  a blue dress - hard to tell which one she is for sure, but it's sure fun to watch and listen to.

Mark and I were in the audience one of the nights. It was wonderful!

And here's a photo of Angela and Tim with Audrey and Sam that Christmas.

Keep Your Feet Above Your Head, Granddad

Dear Great-Granddad,

We know you get bored easily, and you'd like to be sitting up and having more fun...

...but you need to keep your feet higher than your heart--like this--if you want the swelling in that leg to heal!

Or if you really want to speed up the healing...

Try a headstand or two!

We love you! Get well soon! Love Josh, Kat, and Sarah

Man Cold

Here's the link to Bridgette's blog, with the video near the bottom about "The Man Cold." Be sure to read the little explanation beneath the video, which explains a couple of the lines that are hard to understand. I think you and Dad will get a kick out of it.

A Nice Recognition

The principal asked me to go to the school board meeting this evening, so they could publicly recognize me  for the National Board Certified Teacher re-certification.

It was a nice meeting. The principal gave me a very complementary introduction, and then they gave me an opportunity to say a little something, so I told the school board that the work we are doing now in the district with Professional Learning Teams (we meet every Wednesday for an hour in teaching teams) and other interventions really goes hand-in-hand with National Board Certification.

Mark came along to give me moral support, and it was a little date for us. We went to Shari's afterwards and had a piece of pie. Now we're back home and I need to get my lesson planned for tomorrow.

Another thought...

Gosh, it was so nice to have the world be lighter this morning on the way to work! That's one of the advantages of coming off Daylight Savings Time, although it certainly got dark early this afternoon. :)

I'm still a little tired from the time switch. My body clock says it's later than the wall clock says. I'm sure I'll adjust in a day or so.

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

Tonight, in their family prayer before the kids left to go back home, Joshua prayed that "Granddad would heal and have patience."

Haha! A good prayer.

Good wishes from Jill Foge Barnier

This came in an email today:

Hi Kathy ~

     I just read on your blog (which I'm still enjoying regularly!) about your dad's open heart surgery. Please give my "other father" of high school years my love and best wishes. I hope all has gone well!

Jill

Prayer Roll

Mom and Dad, I called and put both your names on the prayer roll at the temple this evening. Now you have a couple of weeks of several thousand Mormon prayers for health and strength according to your needs. Just so you know.