Current State of Our Union

Nathan and Brent:  The Two Men in My Life
The Center of My Life Now

For the longest time my life was filled with Meg, La, Nate and Brent--and that was about it.  There were so many things going on--just keep up with the laundry, providing meals, cleaning up after meals, changing sheets (I never did require that anyone--including myself--actually MAKE their beds.), getting little and big people where they needed to go, picking little and big people up on time.  Play dates, Church, being a home room mother, volunteering as a tutor at my children's elementary school, making time to play and talk and swing and laugh and listen:  all these things made for rich writing fodder.  

Now I have physical therapy--first to strengthen my core to reduce lower back pain from bulging discs, last September to recuperate from my 4th right shoulder operation, in February I added recuperation and therapy for two torn hamstring muscles in my right leg.  The fact that I am not holding up very well as time goes by isn't really anything that I want to happen to me--much less write about.

Before I realized that I was pregnant with Megan, I was enroll in a gymnastics class at BYU.  As soon as I found out, and then told the instructor, I was banned from the trampoline.  Since I had not been actively bouncing on it for a long time before I got pregnant, I was prohibited from using it at all . . . too much of a chance that I might bring on a miscarriage.  

I was grounded.

Brent carries me on his shoulders again.

From the first months of our marriage, we walked just about everywhere.  On BYU campus, walking to class, Brent would--at unexpected moments--pick me up and swing me up and onto his shoulders.  He would continue walking with me perched securely above the crowd around us--as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have your wife on top your shoulders.  I loved it.   I remember writing about that--and about the fact that my increasing girth made it impossible for Brent to carry me on his shoulders.  

I was grounded.

Having been the eldest, yet the shortest member of my family growing up, I had to endure, every summer, my brothers and sisters the short jokes during the long hours we drove across the country.  Since summer vacation consisted of sleeping on floors in the homes of aunts, uncles and grandparents, I wasn't all that happy to be in the car in the first place.  On Brent's shoulders I was so high that I could see from one end of campus to the other.  I was no longer short--atop my eternal husband, I was taller than I could possibly be alone.  But by my third trimester, Brent could still swing me onto his shoulders--but my stomach was so large that I would fall backwards.

I was grounded.

Something to complain about, which I did, until Meg was actually born.  The magic of her sweet being pushed all of my previous objections completely out of the way.  

Instead of being bound to the earth, I was able to carry about with me a bit of eternal heaven.  This new stage in Brent's life and in mine gave me incredible new things to think and to write about.  

I found this snapshot of me taken about 4 years ago.  Obviously I am at the end of a day spent digging about in the soil of our Palm Beach home.  Again, grounded--but this time quite in love with the process of growing cuttings, sprouting seeds, dividing and then re-planting plants that had overgrown their space.  I loved the fact that an incredible number of the bushes and flowers that covered our gardens were of my own nurture.  I took classes and learned how to fertilize, reproduce, and plant growing things that I had had a hand in reproducing.

These are the blossoms on the star fruit tree that grows in our yard.  The fruit is so tender and sweet--nothing like the waxy, tasteless things the supermarket produce departments are able to supply.

This, too, gave me great numbers of new ideas to latch together and write about.

*******

Today I went to two hours of physical therapy and then came home and washed some dishes, pulled the sheets from our bed and started a load of laundry.

The days are a mix of the things I love doing--like putting together puzzles, walking barefoot in the grass, laying in bed at night next to Brent and hearing him breath, hearing his heart beat--and the things that I don't care much for.  Cleaning out closets, sorting through drawers, culling photographs, scanning others into my computer, washing the floor, making sure that everyone has enough of their kind of milk and their kind of bread:  these tasks I think of as common place, onerous jobs--necessary but tiresome.  And there isn't much I find inspiring--inspiring enough to write about, anyway. 

Perhaps, I need to find the ability to discover wonder and curiosity in the common place and the routine . . . appreciate and write about the ground I work on every day.

Maybe.

One of the roses from the wild rose bushes I planted.  I got the bushes from Palm Beach State College.  The horticultural program there grows plants for the campus and provides a classroom for the students taking classes there.