Charitable Offerings

 In which our Heroine now accepts Money. 

          Finally, I decided to take my Christmas decorations down.  They looked so pretty in my usually bare living room, and I love having the lights on at night.  I’ve never felt this compulsion to leave Christmas hanging around for this long before—and truth to tell, if I wasn’t trying to get my house organized better, I’d probably leave the decorations up until spring.  I really liked finally having my own house to decorate.  Also, Jon and I are getting better at knowing just what our Christmas traditions are, and have enjoyed displaying some of them. 

          Anyway, as I was taking down my ornaments (with Eva's ‘help,’ of course), I came across a simple one shaped like a Christmas tree that some anonymous person gave us this year.  In my opinion, Christmas ornaments are special because there are usually memories attached to them.  On the outside, this particular ornament is simple, small, and unassuming.  But it represents a wealth of generosity and love. 

          It came in a simple envelope with a card, but the card had $200 in it.  Jon and I have been blessed financially through all of this expensive health care.  We weren’t asking for any help.  But I will admit that it was very nice to open this envelope up.  To have $200 that didn’t yet have a purpose or a task to fill in our carefully maintained budget was so great. 

          I scorn those blogs out there that put the little side bar up asking for donations.  Admittedly, some blogs or web pages are created for charitable purposes, but it bothers me to see the money aspect on most.  My blog was created to keep my friends and family informed, to offer me a kind of creative therapy, and to hopefully explain or express some facts and experiences about cancer to those who may have need of it.  Therefore, no solicitation.  I stand by this rule, but I also have to say thanks to my anonymous benefactor. 

          To whom it may concern: I wasn’t sure at first why you bothered to put an ornament in the envelope when the money was clearly enough, but today I began to see that this little piece of ceramic(?) will represent far more when it hangs on my tree each year.  It occurs to me that the real gift is the memory of your charity, imbued in a Christmas ornament, and not the money at all (though I truly appreciate that too).  What a lovely gift. 

Flawed Armor for the Lady

In which our Lady’s Memory falters. 

                First, a tangent: I gave myself a couple of sick days from writing because my whole family came down with the flu.  By the way, whatever happened to the happier sick days of childhood? “Yay, I don’t have to go to school today!—and oh my gosh I suddenly have the energy to play with my toys…It’s like a miracle, mom…”  Now, back to the actual subject of this blog post, in which our protagonist discovers a gaping hole in her armor…

                One thing I may not have told you thus far is that every now and then, I do have memory problems.  It took Jon and me a while to realize this crucial, but quiet truth.  In fact, the doctors and nurses used to ask me all the time right after the surgery how my memory was.  It seemed fine—great even.   I specifically remember Jon saying “sharp as a tack” in response.  It was true too.  I’d be lying in bed with multiple drugs running through my system and someone would come and ask where I kept a certain casserole dish or the checkbook, and I’d know just where to direct them.  I knew the finite details of our schedule, remembered minutiae about Eva’s napping habits, and could have told you what my last emails before the surgery were about.  It all seemed intact. 

                Then one day, Jon asked me for details about something that happened a few weeks after surgery—something not immediately recent, but only a few weeks back at the time.  I had no recollection of the event, or of any discussions about it.  There have been a few other instances too.  I’d like to tell you about them, but I can’t currently remember.  In the end, what I do know is that I’m missing a few memories, and that the only thing filling their place is a sense of uncertainty.  Have I forgotten these things because of the drugs I was on, or from the recent and acute trauma?  Or did the Dr. accidentally suck out a part of my memory complex?  I’ve always had a shoddy long-term memory, but usually anything recent is very clear.  This experience overturned my very familiarity with the way my own head works.

I have this uneasy feeling that holes exist in my history that I just can’t access.  It makes me feel vulnerable in a way I’ve never felt before in my whole life.  Fragile, susceptible, over-exposed.  And it is way too close to Alzheimer’s for comfort, which is one of the most frightening diseases in the history of mankind.  The fact that I’ve waited so long to write about this (at least a month or more) should tell you just how uncomfortable I am with this development.  I don’t particularly want to announce any chinks in my armor, but it has occurred to me that it is only making my life more difficult to not let people know.  Besides, I have to recognize that to a certain extent, I am unreliable. 

A few weeks ago I went to my Ward’s Young Women class as a show of support for the new presidency (I currently have a Stake calling as the YW Secretary).  They asked me to make an announcement, which would usually be an easy task.  Although I could remember the meeting I’d been at and some of the details, when I went rummaging around in my memory for more, I found only a big blank spot.  Also, I looked at the wrong page in my calendar.  What culminated was a ridiculously off announcement that probably did more harm than good.  One of the ladies, who clearly had no idea what has been going on in my life, looked at me like I was a complete idiot.  Unfortunately, I was acting like one.  Worst YW Secretary ever.  All I could do was apologize for my disorganization.  (Yes, my disorganization is usually a problem, but is one that I manage to obfuscate because of my usually excellent short-term memory).

On the other hand, the times when other people know about my humbling disabilities are when things get much easier to deal with.  For instance, on Saturday night Jon and I were having one of those oft-held discussions: “no, you said this… and it happened this way…”  “what are you talking about? I never said that…”  After only a few rounds, I had to stop and concede the point, saying, “Then again, I guess I’m not exactly the one to ask…” I hate losing an argument/discussion, but it was nice to just let it go and know that it was okay because I couldn’t do any better. 

I have no idea when the Lord will stop humbling me, but may it happen soon.  Losing a few memories is on its own a small thing, but the feelings of vulnerability that accompany it are devastating. 

The Cellar

In which our Young Heroine escapes Death (long before cancer). 

There was an old potato cellar a quarter of a mile down the road from my house as I was growing up.  In the halcyon days of the Scott family farm, it may have actually stored potatoes, but in my day it had long been converted into an overly large trash bin.  Potatoes like sandy soil best (I think) and we had heavy clay.  I will say that “The Cellar,” as it came to be called, was long in disuse, but not long abandoned because it was the best place ever for a kid to play. The family adults tended to use it as a junk yard for various items that they either were too lazy to get rid of properly or for which they still had some strange affinity (a couple of old beloved cars, for instance, minus the glass, engine, and back seat, but with important things like a stick shift and gas pedal).    The junky area was known to be dangerous, but to an 8 or a 10 year old looking for the perfect spot for her imagination to run rampant, safety is overrated.

The cellar looked like a long low triangle running back from the road between fields.  It had some (I think) useful farm equipment parked in the one safe end near the road and then yards of interesting garbage scattered throughout the end you would normally store potatoes.  It was cool and shady inside.  Where the roof was falling apart, great beams of sunlight would slice down to the earth, illuminating dusty motes as they swirled around in front of you and creating great lines from the shadowy wooden slats still intact above.  I am sure that my older brothers and cousins have great tales of daring adventure there at the cellar because every now and then I would find the strangest collection of unrelated junk propped together to make a rocket ship, or a cockpit there on the floor.  These mounds of garbage held memories. None of the following images are the actually cellar, but will hopefully illustrate what I’m talking about:

There was an old potato harvester machine that sat a little out from the open side of the cellar.  It was the best toy yet.  It had metal stairs that led to a “front door” that led to a “hallway” with “rooms” off the side.  When I first began playing there I found some junk (old music keyboard, etc) that seemed to indicate some kind of control center here.  My brother Todd later told me it was a space ship with a tone in his voice that said “if you weren’t a girl, you’d know that”.  Another room was deemed the “kitchen” by me.  It had a rubber counter top (where potatoes once rolled) and what looked to me to be a large window just above the sink.  If you crawled onto the “counter-top” and out the window, you could then mount some rubber “stairs” that led up the “second story.”  It was trickier here though because there was no floor.  You had to balance on the thin pieces of metal that acted as upper perimeter to the “rooms” below.   An old friend and distant cousin named B.J. helped me lay some found wood down to make a floor once, but we knew it was old and rotting, so we still didn’t step on it (much).  {Death-defying miracle 1} Below: Again, not the actual machinery.  Picture the arm close to the side of the harvester rather than sticking out and no cabin for a driver as it was pulled behind a tractor:

Closer to the cellar itself, there was also an old piece of equipment, nameless to me, that had razor-sharp discs on one side and an old seat with holes in it on the back.  Sometimes I would try to balance like a gymnast on the metal bits poking out from the side of the discs.  Dangerous, but delightful.  {Death-defying miracle 2} Right next to it were some old metal barrels and drums.  Complete with a few other found objects, it made the best and loudest drum set ever.  Clash! Clang! And Ding! Sounds that vibrated over the quiet afternoon desert on a regular basis.   

These and other wonders spilled out the open back of the cellar around a large colony of beehives—not wild, but set there on purpose to feast on the clover-like blossoms that grow on alfalfa hay.  The hives looked like a scuffed-up version of the thin, white dresser drawers sold at Walmart.  The people in my home town always had free honey from similar hives.  In front of the long side of the cellar, dirt had been mounded up here and there.  Earlier children of the Scott lineage—massive in number—had created a bike path of sorts throughout the dirt mounds.   It was great legacy of bike-riding territory, as long as you were good at avoiding all the darkly menacing badger holes.  Unfortunately, the last big hill of dirt on the path led straight through the bees, probably because the path pre-dated the bees themselves.  I had two bikes: an odd-looking and girly turquoise banana-seat bike and also an ancient but sturdy blue dirt-bike—a hand-me-down from my unwitting brothers. 

I always chose the dirt bike on those dare-devil days.  It had thick tires with rubbery nubs sticking out of them that would clench onto the loose soil on the way up the hills.  Down was always exhilarating.  On the last hill, sometimes I would pause and shade my eyes with my open hand, the other hand still on the bumpy and permanently dirty grip, and stare penetratingly into the distant mirages.  Then my eyes would move closer to the beehives, directly on the trail in front of me.  Only one more danger to live through to prove I was AWESOME!  Deep breath, and then down the steep incline fast—so fast that I almost couldn’t maneuver the bike in and out of the hives.  The sound of bees filled my ears, and then I was out and free.  And somehow, still alive to tell the tale.  {Death-defying miracle 3}

Memories of Spring Wheat

In which Our Lady relishes in a good Memory.

            I thought briefly about saving this memory for a spring day, or even just a really wintery one so I could be thinking spring-like thoughts.  But it is too good to wait and I really can’t think of a good autumnal anecdote just now.  I don’t remember how old I was, but I think it must have been junior-high or high school age and it was evening on my step-dad’s farm.  He was a good man, but one that I often misunderstood.  Here I pay tribute to him and transport you into one of my memories Harry-Potter-style to share a bit of his wisdom. 

                As a background, my mother and my step-dad married when I was six.  Of their courtship, I remember him being very charming to a little girl as we all sat in our living room.  I liked him.  He played fun games with me and teased me when he came to visit.  I really had no idea there was someone he was kind of trying to replace, so to me it was just fun and games.  I still have the sense that my mother was more skittish than an unbroken colt, so he must have had to work really hard to get her. 

My next solid memory skips to the chilly morning of their honeymoon in November.  They were driving me to my grandmother’s house for babysitting.  I did not attend the marriage, as it was in the temple, and I was not invited.  I asked them where “we” were going on our honeymoon.  Of course, they laughed heartily at that, and I got a big shock when I found I was not invited to this either.  Well, so much for the threesome-ness of our courtship.  

His name was Glade, and I always called him by his given name.  He was a good father to me, and passed away about five years ago after an old age lived young via his step-daughter.  He would delight me and my friends with his terrible but hilarious table manners and his “punny” jokes.  He liked those hokey Hawaiian tunes that the women of the buoyantly-curled hair would sing on the Lawrence Welk show, as well as Hugh Nibley, and Johnny Cash.  I’m sure each of them was a great influence to his personal work.  You judge.  Here is my favorite poem of his, composed carefully:

I once had a pig with a nose that could dig,

All around, in the ground, in the dirt.

It didn’t look hard, so I tried it in my yard.

I did it all right, but boy did it hurt!     

                The opening of the memory I’d like to focus on finds the two of us suddenly standing at the edge of one of his wheat fields in the spring, me with my spare teen body, and he with his trucker hat, blue button down shirt, blue jeans, and brown work boots, which always smelled of earth.  I would contrast his slow and maddeningly methodical manner with my own youthful impatience.  I remember being ready to move onto the next subject, whatever that was, and feeling an indefinable irritation at standing there just staring out across the land.  The sun was setting low in the sky, putting out golden light sideways onto the bright green wheat shoots, most only inches high, yet sending out shadows two feet in length.  There were long furrows of these shoots spread out horizontally across the distance almost as far as I could see. 

“Look at that!” he said ecstatically.  At this point, you should imagine someone from what you would assume is my grandparent’s generation saying these words, as he was quite a bit older than my mom.  Think Lawrence Welk.  Again: “Just look at that!” said with genuine marvel and a shake of the head.  “I am amazed every time they come out of the ground like this in the spring. It’s a miracle.”  At first all l I could think of was just how many springs that had been.  He seemed truly amazed and grateful that each little seedling had decided to grace us with its presence, though there were hundreds.  I felt a question, nothing specific, form in my mind and opened my eyes a little wider to see what he was seeing.  He was right.  It was a miracle.  And the evening was beautiful in a way that few evenings ever are.