Spiderweb and Path (near our house)

I DO understand that some people prefer deserts, such as the one I was born in and mostly raised in. I'm actually pretty happy about that fact, because it means that not everyone gets crowded into the places with trees..

These are from a couple of months ago; I just now got around to downloading them. (But it was worth the wait, right?)

A Story from Papa

"I don't even remember what class it was, but I remember the teacher had left. And [another kid, a boy] was kicking and picking on this girl. She was kind of retarded, and certainly not pretty-- certainly the opposite of pretty, I guess, pretty much-- and had always been kind of a despised one. And right now, my time traveling Walter Mitty [daydream] is that I go back and stand up to him. And my guess is that probably if I had hauled off and hit him one, he was into fighting enough that he would have pounded me into a pulp. Which is probably why I was too afraid to fight him then. And it probably wouldn't have hurt that much-- but I was afraid. Maybe if I'd just said something, I'm certain most of the class-- and frankly, especially the pretty girls-- would have been immediately on my side and I would have been much more impressive to them. But instead, I sat like everybody else, and said nothing. And as I think about it, maybe that's part of why I think of all of these issues of our modern society, being afraid of other people is not a good trait. Right is right."

Kitchen Failure at Elijah Kitchen

Erm. A couple of sisters and I decided-- back in March? I think?-- to start a food blog. And we finally got tired of waiting, so it went live on Thanksgiving Day, but I am such a slacker that you didn't find out about it until today.

But! Probably one of the funniest essays I have written in my life goes live today. So.. if you are interested in reading about Kitchen Failure.. go ahead and click through.

Oh. The blog's name is Elijah Kitchen. You know, like the Elijah plate at passover, the extra one you set just in case a miraculous (or even non-miraculous) extra guest happens by? Only, you know, instead of a plate, it's the whole kitchen. We explain it better in the first post, maybe-- you can read about it on the blog.

In Which Cornelia Solves a Logistical Problem For Herself

YOU know how it is, dear reader. You get nominated as tooth fairy. You accept with as much grace as you can muster. You slowly collect your costume: orange slippers (at the request of one of your fairy-ees); one sparkly green and one fancy blue dress (you let the loser-of-the-tooth decide which one you are going to wear when you come over for a sleepover); a wand (gift from a niece who feels that you CANNOT be a proper fairy without a wand); and a light-up tiara (from a roommate who is certain that you have better use for it than she does).

At said sleepover, you exchange gold (= sacajawea dollars) for teeth beneath the pillow of an only nominally asleep child (I decided shortly after starting this job that letting them be awake but making them pretend to be asleep is the most fun, and if you aren't in Tooth Fairying for the fun, I can tell you the teeth just don't-- ahem-- cut it, as far as pay is concerned).

Then, you move away, so that these sorts of sleepovers are no longer possible, but you do what you can: you encourage the neeflings to mail the teeth to you, promising that you will get you them dollars when you can. But here's the problem: I am a forgetful woman, and teeth are not exactly flat-- they are not easy to file or, in short, to keep track of. I found one just the other day that Papa had brought back from his last trip to Utah, and I realized how badly I am falling behind in my duties. I'm really not sure how many dollars I owe to whom; also, I'm not completely sure which of the teeth in my possession have already been paid for

But I came up with a solution: Tooth Receipts. Mailed as postcards.

 I reprinted  the back side  with our "blog names" so that my general readership could see the wording  there, too.

I mailed the first one today. It made me pretty darn happy.

Still fun on the first of November

In case you're still in the mood for carving pumpkins (but don't feel like cleaning up the mess).

Faith, Hope, Love

You are going to laugh at this (or, if you aren't, you should) but Jane and I had "crashed" a funeral just a couple of months before Jane's unexpected death. My reasoning went something like this: Mormon churches, like churches of many other faiths, are basically open to the general public, for whatever functions may be held there. (This would be "church" as in where we meet to worship on the Sabbath, as distinct from "the temple," which is not even open on the Sabbath.) And I was going anyway-- I knew the husband of the woman who had died well enough to feel like I ought to attend the funeral no matter what, so this was really just a matter of whether or not to bring Jane with. And I knew that a good Mormon funeral is actually a great way to get a feel for the best bits of Mormon family life, and I wanted very much for Jane to get that feel-- I felt like she would learn things from attending that funeral that she wouldn't be able to get in any other way.

It turned out that I was right. The funeral WAS wonderful-- I nearly blogged about it as "the best funeral I have ever attended," but I wanted to respect the privacy of the family, and decided against it. I will say this much: it was the funeral of a woman who had lived approximately twenty years beyond expectation: she had been diagnosed with a disease, shortly after the birth of her first (and, as it happened, only) child, and she had been told that the disease could take her life within that year. But it did not. Though she was not able to have more children, and from that time forward lived in nearly constant, severe pain, she was able to live long enough to raise her son, see him graduate from high school, and send him on a mission. He was not at the funeral-- he was in his assigned field of labor-- but as it happened, the assigned field of labor was very close to his mother's ancestral home (where she was buried), and he received special permission to go to her grave site and be the one to dedicate the grave.

And the words spoken at her funeral! Her mother spoke-- she spoke too long, and had to be asked to sit down, but it turned out OK. Her sister spoke, describing a sister-mother who had sacrificed much for her. Her husband spoke, and this was one of the most moving talks I have ever been witness to. He quoted poetry, first in German and then in English, and he wept as he described how their "dream deferred" of having a large family had caused a sadness between them-- but how in the end they decided (somehow-- I'm describing this badly) to let the sadness go, and let hope flare up again.

The funeral went a little long, and as I drove her home, Jane was on the phone with a friend of hers whose daughter was having difficulty, and whom Jane was trying to help out. She was still on the phone as she was getting out of the car. I asked: how was it? She told her friend on the phone to wait a minute as she talked to me. "I want a man who loves me like that," she said. I agreed, and agree.




There is a part of me that wants to shout: But what happened? The man who killed you-- why did you let him back into your house, into your life? Why didn't you tell me you had a restraining order against him, way back last spring when you first mentioned him to me? Was it too embarrassing? Was I-- was my manner such that you just couldn't, that I was judgmental, that I'm just not a person who can handle that information? Dear God, O God, how I wish I could turn back time and look into your eyes again and say one more time: you are worth being treated well. You are worthy of love, even unemployed, even dark-black as you sometimes thought so poorly of yourself for being, even with imperfect children and an imperfect church attendance record and with so many people surrounding you who questioned your every decision.

Oh, how I miss you. I have been buoyed up by the love of God in a remarkable way which is far above and beyond anything I have ever experienced in my life before, and I know that it has been in direct response to my need for comfort over your death-- but, beloved sister, I wish every day, EVERY DAY, that you were not dead. I miss you terribly. The girls miss you terribly. Your baby-- I pray for all of your family, but I pray especially for him. No seven-year-old should have to bear the burdens he is compelled to bear. And when I keep thinking in a loop about how I wish I could do over-- wish I could persuade more persuasively, ask peskier questions, something-- the one thing I never regret is listening to every inclination to be friends with you. What a comfort you were to me, what a true friend.

Setting for the Eulogy, Part the First

Miss Ruby said it best, and she said something like this: "I don't want to be racist or anything, but I'm going to say it how it was. All of us-- all of Jane's friends and family who were at the funeral-- we're black. And it's at this white [as in the race of the majority of the congregation is white] church, and we're thinking: can they deliver like we're used to being delivered to [in, say, a Black church]?"

I felt that. I was aware that the congregation was going to be mostly black, and I think that I was a little less shocked than, say, Bishop Smith, at how large that congregation was; I had been a regular visitor at Jane's house and had seen first hand how many people besides me loved to be near her. The ward had run off 150 programs on the nice, colored paper; then, when they saw so many people there, 75 more on the black-and-white copier available at the church. By the bishop's estimation, there were about three hundred people in attendance. The members of the ward who came sat mostly in the seats in the back section of the chapel; the front of the chapel was full of black, black, wherever the eye turned, and-- as Miss Ruby so candidly put it-- they were wondering (as was I, quite frankly) if the funeral speakers could "deliver".

There were a few things on my side. First and foremost is my love for Jane, my feeling I've had since I first began visiting her that she is truly my sister, that it is a privilege to have known her. Also, there is the fact that absolutely everyone in that congregation was praying for me, as were more people than I've ever been aware of before, in other locations. It didn't hurt at all that, for me, black people I don't know are much safer, emotionally, than white people I don't know; this is residual from my having attended Jr. High in Alabama, where the black kids were just much, much kinder to me than were the white kids, on average. Then there is the fact that somehow, the way I get nervous when I'm speaking sometimes comes across as being confident and collected to the people I am addressing, whether that is at an oral linguistics final or giving a talk at a Black Mormon Funeral.

Most of all, it is my opinion that it was simply the will of God for it to go well. When Miss Ruby started out by saying that they weren't sure if we could deliver, I said, "I was worried..." and she interrupted: "But you showed us you didn't have to deliver how we are used to. You captured her essence-- it was just so beautiful."

"Well, I prayed," I said, "and I think that God helped me."

"God was with you."

Which was a beautiful compliment, and symbolic of how I've taken all of the compliments (of which there have been many) so far: they are a validation, not that I of myself did such a great job, but that I was able to follow the Holy Ghost and do what was expected of me.