Seventeen Pounds and a Thanksgiving Mercy

“I like turkey better than chicken.”

Ammon, 11, frowned at the frozen bird his dad had scrounged up from the deep freeze. June 2012, read its wing clamp. Triumphant as Daddy appeared, this bird was a chicken. Nobody eats chicken for Thanksgiving.

I understood Ammon’s disappointment. I’m a traditionalist, myself. But where he saw a mistake, I saw a mercy: We had a chicken in our deep freeze.

It’s been a pioneering year—just the kind you would expect initiating an entrepreneurial enterprise. As my husband, his dad, and his brothers put their hands to the NutraTek plow, their womenfolk lightened the loads in the family handcarts. Seventeen pounds per person wasn’t far off, we sometimes felt, as we chucked the nonessentials from the carts. Powdered milk replaced the jugs and saved twenty dollars a week. Bread-baking ousted our trips to McGavin’s, and supper menus centered round the storage shelves’ number-ten cans. Our family piled Subway sandwiches and swimming lessons, book orders and birthday parties, date nights and dollar store sprees on the trailside and travelled on.

Of course, my pioneering metaphor deconstructs with even superficial probing. It reminds me of my first phone conversation with an Ensign editor, who called to discuss my 2500-word treatise on motherhood’s traumas. “It’s overwritten,” he broke it bluntly. “And while I don’t doubt you’ve expressed sincere feeling, it reads as though you’re whining.”

Whining. It’s what I do best. But I meekly bled that baby down to the seventeen-pound blip that the Ensign actually printed four years later.

That editor’s voice in my mind, I recalled my year; and yes, I was whining. Pathetic pioneer that I am, I prayed from the get-go for rescue wagons. They came, too, as little as I deserved them. Easter eggs appeared on our front lawn Easter weekend. A visiting teacher and a Relief Society leader each brought flats of strawberries. People passed on clothing. Neighbors shared produce and baking. A family friend employed our boys to dog-sit. When my oven broke down, another appeared out of nowhere in two days’ time, free for the taking. Our garden grew abundantly, despite hail damage in early June. Business didn’t boom, but neither did our expenses break the bank.

That was just the beginning of God’s rescue. The longer we pursued the trail, the more my perspective widened. I began to see the silver lining in our challenges themselves. Our children were starting to value the good things they possessed. I liked to think they were starting to value people even more than things. I began stretching, increasing my personal capacities to manage and make-do. Had we never commenced the journey, I never would have initiated business ventures of my own. The byproducts? I studied more, talked more, wrote more, thought more. I built new relationships, learned new skills, and (most the time) kicked my self-discipline and personal production to a whole new level.

And now, Thanksgiving morning, God sent another mercy: first a chicken in our deep freeze, and then a revelation.

“It seems like Joseph Smith just lived his entire life in misery,” Ammon mused Thanksgiving morning as we closed our daily devotional with the first four verses of D&C 121. “First he lived in confusion, then in persecution.”

“You seem pretty troubled by that,” I replied to his comment and frown.

Silence.

“Do you think Joseph Smith was always miserable?” I explored.

“Well, I would be! Hiding the plates, leaving state after state, eating poisoned food in prison with the rats and no toilet to pee.”

I nodded but flipped a few sections forward. “Listen to this,” I suggested, and I read from Section 128:

Now, what do we hear in the gospel which we have received? A voice of agladness! A voice of mercy from heaven; and a voice ofbtruth out of the earth; glad tidings for the dead; a voice of gladness for the living and the dead; glad tidings of great cjoy.

Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. aCourage, brethren; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. (vs. 19, 22)

I looked up from my reading. “Does Joseph Smith sound miserable?” I asked.

“No. He sounds elated.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because he knew what he had.”

Sister Carole Stephens’s words from last week’s General Conference fell from my lips and lodged in my heart.

“Do we know what we have?” I quoted Sister Stephens.

We have a chicken in the deep freeze. Despite eight months this year without an income, we still have surplus in our savings. We have each other. We have a prophet. We have answers to our prayers.

We have the priesthood of God to bless us; to seal us; to bind us to belong to each other, to our ancestors, to our posterity, and to Him after death and throughout eternity. We have the Holy Ghost to lead us in the more fertile parts of the wilderness (1 Nephi 16:16); and though worms destroy our bodies, yet in the flesh we shall see God (Job 19:26).

We may have suffered some slight tribulation, this pioneering year. In our feasting today, we may forego turkey for sixteen-month-old chicken. But this Thanksgiving, when I tally our blessings, I thank God for all that we have: seventeen pounds per person of priesthood, perspective, and promise.

So on, on to the victory!

Thank God for His Thanksgiving mercies.

Keeping Childhood

Last week a blog post transformed my heart. This week, I needed the transformation.

I was scanning my email last Thursday while scarfing a bite for lunch, knowing my nephews and niece were coming and that I hadn’t yet loaded my dishwasher or put away the Duplos bedecking my carpet. In my scramble, I stumbled upon my cousin Jessica’s blog post almost by accident. Almost. When something moves you that much, it’s rarely really accidental. In the five minutes it took to digest Jessica’s article, God turned my heart from keeping house to keeping kids; and in the five days since I read it, I’ve recognized how deeply children—all children—need that turning.

Living in a Sacred Space. The title itself subdued me. I perused Jessica’s account of the unthinkable: the death in 9/11 of a man from her hometown, Sugar City, Idaho, “Where Nothing Ever Happens. Including Bad Things!”

Like Raymond. Where the Merc and the local Canada Post represent the community social network. Where there are only three Events: Christmas, July First, and Zones. Where there are no strangers, only second cousins thrice removed. Where the Expressions reports quilt raffles, high school football scores, and real estate sales as our only front-page news . . . except, of course, when Kraft Canada comes and Raymond is on TV. Then the whole town shuts down. All thirty-seven hundred of us don red, stampede the rodeo grounds, and abandon our lives to watch a couple of celebrities try to rope calves and race barrels. But once the TV cameras have pulled out of town, what’s left are the kids riding scooters down Broadway, the youth biking from basketball practice to Burger Baron, and the stay-at-home moms who still send homemade cupcakes to elementary school classes for birthday treats.

Jessica juxtaposes this small-town utopia with intrusive and ugly realities. A neighbor’s death in 9/11. A lock-down drill in her nine-year-old’s school. My thoughts race: my kids have lock-down drills. Even in Raymond. And this week, the school announced a revolution: no more parents wandering unchecked through the halls of RES. No grown-ups period without office-issued visitor ID. Doors locked at every entrance save the office after 8:25. A safety initiative. “So some grown-up can’t just come to school and shoot you,” my husband explained to my sons.

So standard procedure in schools across the continent has finally penetrated Raymond. So what? My stomach wrenches as my head computes: so perhaps there really is no such thing as Never-Never Land, not even in Raymond. Perhaps Corrie ten Boom had it dead right when she attested, “There are. . . no places that are safer than other places” (The Hiding Place). And if my children rely on teachers and administrators to lock-out the dangers at school, for what do my children rely on me when they tumble back home to my care?

Jessica sketches her vision:

Around each of my children - and the whole world they inhabit - is the beautiful bright dome of Childhood. That's the world of coloring and swinging and learning and songs, and so, so much laughter . It's a sacred place, and so I feel incredibly blessed to live - most of the time - inside that dome, too. My entire life is better and more beautiful and funnier, and viewed from much closer-up because of these two small people in my care.

But their dome is a fragile one, and it's part of my job as Mama to keep it in place for as long as I can, to keep them safe and carefree and joyful, to keep our life a place of magic and caterpillars and bubble-blowing and refuge. It's the only way the world stands a chance, after all. Those sacred spheres inhabited by children.

Yes, Jessica.

The administrators and the teachers lock my children’s doors at school. They keep my children safe from maniacs and guns. But I lock the doors on my children’s sacred childhood. I do not just keep a house; I keep the laughter, self-worth, trust, security and innocence of every child who enters it. Most compellingly, I keep my children and all children who enter my home safe from me. I lock the doors on my grouchiness, my bad hair days, my insecurities, my fear. I lock the doors on my compulsions for quiet and clean. I lock the doors on my rising voice and rising temper. I lock the doors on my frustrations and I keep their childhood. I keep eyes to see their sorrows and their triumphs as they see them: not as passing insignificance, but as all-important—as my kindergartner expressed when I told him, in attempt at reassurance, that his pooping his pants at school was not a big problem. “It is a big problem to me,” he wept. I keep ears to hear that weeping—ears to listen to their tattling, their prattling, their prayers. I keep lips to kiss their owies. I keep fingers to tickle their tummies. I keep shoulders for them to lean and cry on and arms to encircle them in love.

Small trust, such locking and keeping? Maybe. Or maybe it's more like Scrooge answered that query, delivered by Christmas Past's Ghost, referencing the modest sum Fezziwig spent to supply a staff Christmas party:

‘A small matter,’ said the Ghost, ‘to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.’

‘It isn’t that,’ said Scrooge, heated by the remark. . . . ‘It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then. The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.’ (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 53-54)

Fezziwig’s power is mine for my children, for all children who enter my influence’s sphere. I can render their childhood happy or unhappy, light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. My power lies in words and looks, in locking and in keeping; and I want to keep their childhoods as Fezziwig kept Christmas.

My niece and two nephews arrived before I loaded the dishwasher or picked up the Duplos. I didn’t care. They constructed MegaBlock jails, and I gave them obsolete vehicle keys to lock them. When they got tired, they cuddled near me on the couch. My niece snuggled right inside my lap. My own sons hovered over my shoulder atop the couch, and we read Franklin and The Thunderstorm and Franklin Goes to School. I fed them crackers and grapes and carrots. They fed me plastic pizza.

They live in little Raymond where nothing ever happens but where teachers now lock doors in case it does. But more importantly, they live within the clasp of my arms, within the sphere of my love. Father, help me lock my worries and my weakness. Help me keep their laughter. Help me keep their trust. Help me keep the fragile, sacred spaces of their childhood.

Bad Mom, Good Mom: A Sketch

Monday. Seven o’clock. Half an hour late—as usual, and we’re nowhere near ready for Family Home Evening. Tostito crumbs, overturned tomatoes, spinach stems and pilfered peppers litter table, chairs, and floor. Boy 5 squeezes Ranch into the salsa bottle while Boy 2 hollers and slugs him: family law enforcement at its finest.

“Family Teamwork time!” I intervene, scooping tomato-smothered Baby (Boy 6) in one arm and howling Boy 5 in the other. Daddy, in our bedroom, abandons his attempt to reduce Mt. Laundry Heap and instead rallies our Teamwork Troops as I retreat with our two youngest to the bathtub.

It’s an average Monday night.

I scrub some No More Tears into Boy 5’s hair. He grimaces. “You a bad mom,” he accuses, his pout pulling down his dimpled, three-year-old mouth.

I feel like a bad mom. “I’m being the best mom I can be,” I reply and tip him over to rinse his bubbly blonde head. Baby splashes water into Boy 5’s eyes, and Boy 5 swats at Baby. I pull the plug, lift both boys from the tub, and wrap them in towels against their protests.

Diapered and dressed, only a breast can soothe Baby; so I nurse while I diaper Boy 5.

“Not that sleepa,” he grumbles at the one I produce. “My Bob the Builda ‘jamas! They back he-ya.” And, sure enough, he tugs the crumpled Bob bottoms from his drawer’s deepest niche. Of course, the top is nonexistent.

“How about a t-shirt?” I suggest.

Wrong. Again. “Not a t-shut!” he insists. “A nighta shut!”

“A nighter shirt. Let’s see if we can find one in Laundry Mountain.”

Still nursing Baby, I lead Boy 5 to Mt. Laundry Heap atop my bed. I rifle one-handed through Fruit of the Loom, Joe Boxers, and Levis; Boy 5 essays ascent. Better than any autumn leaf pile, Mt. Laundry Heap tantalizes Boy 5’s dare-devil spirit. Jump in me. Jump in me. Jump in me, it taunts; and Boy 5 hardly hesitates.

Whatever, I resign myself. Why stifle his fun?

Neither of us accounts for the crib’s oak sideboard adjacent Laundry Mountain. The heap obscures the crib’s outcropping enough to mask its danger but not enough to cushion its blow to Boy 5’s forehead.

He shrieks. My gut convulses. Now I really feel like a bad mom, but I quickly forget about me. I clutch Boy 5 with the arm not holding Baby. As he wails, his forehead’s welt swells to Easter-egg size.

“Ice!” I order Team Kitchen Patrol; but to Boy 5 I speak soothingly. I stroke his hair and press his face to my chest, and his wailing turns to whimpering as he escapes into my embrace.

Daddy brings a frozen zucchini compress and relieves me of Baby. I rock Boy 5 and tell him the story of Boy 2’s cracking open his head in his toddlerhood. Immediately, Boy 5’s eyes open wide, his whimpers subside, his breathing calms.

“While we waited for the doctor to stitch him up,” I recount, “I rocked our Boy and held him close; and before I knew it, he fell asleep. Heavenly Father blessed him to sleep all through the stitches. Heavenly Father made that miracle because He loves Boy 2. He loves you, too. Do you think He can help you?”

His lower lip trembles. Tears well in his long-lashed eyes. I hold him close. “He can,” I testify. “Shall we ask Him?”

In the living room, Daddy’s tenor leads Boys 1-4 in singing. “Keep the commandments,” they chorus, a youthful unison. “Keep the commandments, in this there is safety and peace.”

I cradle Boy 5. Our center cushion is open and waiting on the big couch. Daddy calls on Boy 4 to open Home Evening with prayer. “Remember to ask Heavenly Father to bless Boy 5 and his hurt.”

Boy 5 cuddles close. “You a good mom,” he whispers.

Mt. Laundry Heap still bedecks my bed. My kitchen is still strewn with taco salad. My toddler bears a battle wound. But somehow, I feel like a good mom.

It’s an average Monday night.

I cuddle him back and kiss his welt and close my eyes for prayer.