Mowing the Lawn

I know the tradition began earlier, but I associate it with the Carmen Red Oldsmobile station wagon. There was also the Toyota van, but the Oldsmobile days were the magic ones. Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we would literally go. (Also through the valley, past the waterfalls, over the hill, and along the lake.) Neilan family Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The house where my mom was raised, where aunts, uncles, and cousins were just a few houses or blocks away. The two story house where on any ordinary day you entered directly into the kitchen, sat at the kitchen table, and just listened to my mom and her parents talk as an assortment of her brothers would inevitably call or stop by. But on Christmas Eve, the house was already packed to the brim with family, presents, food, and laughter. So much laughter. It was a wonderland as a child to be surrounded by people who loved you and were excited to see you. The house was warm and the large w...

I will wake up tomorrow morning, on Father’s Day, alone in Cheyenne without my family. I say this matter-of-factly. Designated days have only a light hold on me. An unexpected business trip that means being gone on Father’s Day? No problem. I'm not much for ceremony. More than once we have marked Father’s Day by splurging for a hotdog at Costco while filling up the minivan on a road trip. (Surely, Cheyenne has a Costco.) If I wake up emotional tomorrow morning, it's not because I'm alone on Father’s Day. It will be because of the cocktail of emotions I drank today. —— Driving across Wyoming was beautiful. Everything below the horizon looked groomed and green. The grass, the hills. the forests. A sea of green dusted with flecks of distant snowfields and antelope. (So many antelope.) Above the horizon, wild white and stormy black scratched across brilliant blue. The kind of sea and sky that softens your heart and tricks your mind.  I pulled off the highway at Little America f...

It was Thursday night, well past sunset. They had already partaken of the sacrament and sung a hymn when Jesus stepped out of the room and set his feet on the path that would lead first to the garden Gethsemane and before the sun set again to the cruel cross of Calvary. The garden spot was a place well known to the Savior. A place he was accustomed to visiting when in Jerusalem. I wonder if he knew the first time he visited that garden the role it would play in God’s grand design. Perhaps he did. Or perhaps he simply chose it that night because it would provide the peace and solitude he would need to bear the weighty burden that awaited him.  John, his apostle, was with him. But John wrote little about what was about to happen. Only that Jesus, with his disciples, crossed over a brook into the garden. What we do know from John is that in the hours leading up to this moment Christ’s thoughts were on us. He prayed that we would find joy in the world, that we would be with him once ou...