Mowing the Lawn

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...

I have been thinking a lot about my father this week. On Monday I helped Braeden and Anna move all of their belongings out of Deleward and into a moving truck bound for Woodland, CA where Braeden starts graduate school at nearby UC Davis next month. As I walked from the truck parked on 400 East across the lawn and up the stairs, my mind flashed back to 24 years earlier when I was moving out of the same apartment building, walking across the same grass, and loading up my own moving truck with the help of my dad.  Braeden was just eight months old at the time. I can still see him sitting in the grass with my dad, Thelma, and cheap-enough-that-we-could-afford-it pizza and bread sticks from Sounds Easy. It meant everything to have my dad there with me. Looking back on it I realize that Thelma was the real star. I was working right up to the very end. As with all of our moves, she did the bulk of the packing and planning. I was just the muscle. I was nervous about moving from Provo, Uta...

In my last post, I said I'm craving "riding a wave runner until my body aches." I was speaking figuratively, but Braeden didn't get the message. As we were riding on Lake Chelan this weekend, he jumped a wave at about 30 MPH and then skipped into another one sideways. I flew off the back of the wave runner. The ensuing moments are still a bit blurry, but a few highlights stand out. After my third skip across the water I thought, "Wow. Braeden's a long way away already." After my second summersault, I was hoping that I'd tied my shorts. After four seconds or so underwater waiting for my life vest to bring me back to the surface, I realized that every part of me that could hurt did—and still does. At least it is a happy hurt.  

I arrived home from work with just enough daylight and just enough Spring to mow the lawn.  Braeden and I reveled in the straight lines and greening blades.  "It's the awakening," he said. — I sat in the temple and smiled at the sight of Emma and Braeden sitting side by side, quiet and content.  Outside the temple, we stared up at the stained glass, the angel, the glowing walls.  I asked Emma how she felt.  "Light and airy," she replied. — Driving home from the airport, I listened to my mother describe her trip to Disneyland with Megan, Talia and Jackson.  "If your dad were still alive..." she began to say.  For the first time, I smiled and laughed instead of fighting back tears. — Awake. Light. Laugh. Alive. Again. — Everyone is asleep.  I sit down to write.  I don't cry.  I don't turn away.  It's a change.  I can write again, at last.  But it's not the same as Before.  Everything seems differ...

The book is now closed on Day 2 of trying to replace Thelma as homeschooler, mother, confidant, chef, tear dryer, maintainer of sanity, chauffeur, coach... I've earned an F for Failure to Perform, Forgetfulness and Lack of Fortitude. This is hard work.  In years past I would whisk the children from the Woodland Park Zoo to the Ballard Locks to the Vancouver Aquarium to swimming with Grandpa to the library to McDonalds and Alfy's and teriyaki.  It was high energy, but not terribly difficult.  Thelma would come home mildly disappointed to find that life with Dad had been nothing but fun and none of the kids seemed to have missed her. Things have changed.  Our children are older.  They have more commitments.  The school work is harder and can't be left for later.  I actually have to teach school instead of running a three-day stay-cation.  It's not that teaching the subjects is particularly hard.  I like doing math with Brae...

Braeden has been bitten by the family history bug lately.  We spent a few hours this weekend signing him up for and exploring the new Family Search web site .  I haven't had much experience with the old site , but the new one feels fairly slick and isn't too hard to use.  It's a simple premise.  The site sits on top of a massive genealogical index maintained by the LDS Church .  You log into the site and enter your personal information.  Then you start building out your family tree one person and generation at a time.  If the person next in your tree is living, then you enter the personal information you know about that person.  If the person is dead, you search the index for a record of that person.  If you're lucky, the record of your ancestor will already be linked to other ancestors and your family tree will begin to fill in on its own.  You suddenly have access to the work of others and others can benefit from the connections and corrections you make. You will come...