Finishing out 2017

With minutes to spare, here is our family newsletter for the year:

Things that didn't make the cut:
-The mice, still
-School pickup. (side note: It has been so cold and I am dreading it so much now even though I don't even have to do it every day.)
-The names of all the places Kevin went, because it would have been a long and boring list. Long Island, New Orleans, Chicago, New York City a few times, somewhere in Massachusetts, Urbana Champaign, Tel-a-viv, Rockville Maryland, and New Orleans again.
-Every song my kids have been obsessed with
-All of our car misadventures
-All the great pictures I was intending to put in. Turns out Google Docs is not the best place to throw together a Christmas card. Haha!

Here are a few of the favorite things I read:
-Essays by E. B. White. I loved it so much I kept returning it to the library and renewing it (because you can only renew twice) and Kevin just decided to buy it for me for Christmas. White is such an incredible writer. So funny, so insightful, so eloquent, so friendly. Someday I want to write like him.
-Leading LDS -- I kind of roll my eyes at the name, but there are some really valuable interviews here that have helped me a lot in several areas of my life.
-Deep Work --aka the ultimate guilt trip of my life since I can get distracted easily.
-David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism -- I actually think I finished this at the end of 2016 rather than during 2017, but we'll count it here. It was hard to read about church leaders being humans, but it was also incredibly comforting (since turns out I'm human and I work with lots of humans). The minute I read it I knew that, boy or girl, McKay would be part of my next child's name. And it is.
-The Book of Mormon. I have been reading it at a snail's pace, but I'm reading it. I remarked to Kevin that I probably don't have true anxiety if it can just be fixed by reading the Book of Mormon. But man, there have been days where I have just been so worried about everything (just ask my mom), and then the minute I open it up I am filled with peace.
-Luke 2. This is always a wonderful chapter, but it's really special now because our family memorized a lot of it this month. I loved seeing my kids perk up whenever someone quoted it in church.

- Siblings Without Rivalry -- It has reminded me to see my kids for their whole selves, not just how they might differ from each other. Lots of good reminders in there.

It's been a good, hard, growing year. I had a goal of gratitude for the year, and looking back I really have had a lot to be grateful for. Looking forward to 2018!

Fall Practice

This fall hasn't been an easy one. Instagram took the brunt of my woes -- pictures of cars that had been backed into, pictures of cute children captioned with 5 paragraph essays about what had made that particular day hard, even pictures of food because the fact that I was eating lunch was a monumental event.

And you know the list -- 4 business trips, husband working late every night (although at least he was around for dinner and bedtime when he didn't have Young Men's or Yale events), one kid alternating between angelic and surly, another alternating between delightful and explosive, a baby alternating between easy days and days where he couldn't be set down, multiple cosmetic and mechanical issues for both cars, an emotionally taxing calling for me and a meeting-heavy calling for Kevin, earlier sunsets and colder weather, constant teething (complete with eruption cysts), mice defying the exterminator, freezing apartment, runny noses, and just the constant slog of school, cooking, bedtime, and laundry. Especially socks. Why do kids have to wear socks.

During the early part of the fall, I was also burdened with guilt. Why was I taking everything so hard? Pretty much everyone I knew had it harder than me -- saw their husband less, had a harder baby, had morning sickness, or just had a whole lot more on their plates. And yet they seemed so stoic about it all!

Then one day last week while Kevin was in New Orleans and one of my kids was being incredibly difficult, I handled the situation calmly. "A few weeks ago, I might have raised my voice in this instance," I thought to myself. "And back then there was more sunshine, better temperatures, and better sleep, and I still did better this time." The realization that I had improved at something in life relatively quickly boosted my spirits. I didn't quite know if I had the hang of things, but I was doing better than I was before!

And so maybe that's the secret to becoming stoic about life being hard. You just keep living, and gradually you just keep getting better at dealing with things. I think there's always going to be a little bit of processing and mourning every time a new kind of hard things happens, but we really have it in us to adjust to almost anything. Especially when we have supportive friends and family.

We'll make it through the winter.

Cows and Land

When I was 13 we stopped by Bryce Canyon for a quick visit on the way back from my grandma's house in Kansas. As we looked over Inspiration Point, I read a sign about the history of Bryce Canyon. There was a quote from a Mormon farmer back in the late 1800s where he described Bryce Canyon as a "helluva place to lose a cow."

I looked at my mom in shock. "He's Mormon and he swore!" I said.

"He was a farmer. Farmers just swear sometimes," my mom said.

I was still floored by his language and her nonchalant acceptance of it. Still, it was pretty funny to think of cows wandering around among those hoodoos.

***

A few years later, I hiked the Wellsvilles with my friends. We went up the Deep Canyon way but since we hiked to Wellsville Cone it made sense to go down the Coldwater Canyon route. As we went down the trail, I noticed more and more cow manure. Coldwater Lake was near the end of the trail, and it didn't live up to its name. It seemed more like a tepid, slimy pond that belonged to cows. I couldn't believe that they were allowed to graze up here where we were hiking.

***

Then that summer we went down to Escalante as a family. There were a lot of beautiful slot canyons that we eagerly frolicked through. There was Lower Calf Creek. But there was also a lot of nothing. A lot of nothing.

"This doesn't all have to be National Monument," my mom would say as we drove through the nothing. One night we ate at a local diner. We had learned by then to eat early since everything, even grocery stores, closed by 7 or 8. The owner was really friendly and talked about life in Escalante. The high school had 114 kids grades 7-12. They had done well in 1A basketball that year. A girl in the town was at a treatment center in St. George. since she had gone blind due to anorexia, but she would be okay. There wasn't much fun to do there. My dad thought that was strange since we had driven hours to have fun there.

***

My dad is a connoisseur of small towns in Utah. His favorite is Panguitch, where everything is orderly and friendly. "You know how you come into towns, and the outskirts are just sort of unkempt? Panguitch isn't like that," he explained. There are many other beautiful towns in rural Utah he has a soft spot for. Teasdale. Fountain Green. Elsinore. And I know what he means -- when you drive through the farmland there in early summer and your lungs are filled with the scent of sprinklers and soil, you feel like you could stay forever.

But as I talk to friends from such towns, I hear of quirks. "All they like to do in [some town in Sanpete County] is blowing stuff up and fornicating!" someone from a nearby larger town told me indignantly. Friends talked of friends going to prom with married polygamists. Kids are addicted to their phones there, too. Rural Utah does not seem as idyllic when you think of raising kids there, or going to the doctor.

***

 "You know, ranchers care about conservation too," my mother-in-law remarked once as we drove back from Rock Creek. "We have to treat the land right, rotate things, put the right nutrients into it so we can use it year after year. We're invested in it." As we drove, we would cross cattle guards, and the brief rattling would exacerbate my carsickness. It always seemed strange to me that cattle guards were everywhere -- in the Uintas, in Logan Canyon, in Provo Canyon. I guess cows were just everywhere.

That was when I finally figured out what most of Utah was made up of. All those remote places I had gone growing up -- sand dunes, geode beds, salt flats -- were BLM land. Some BLM land was leased out to farmers and ranchers. Some land was owned outright by the farmers and ranchers. Native American reservations spanned swaths of arid land in Eastern Utah, a small remnant of what they used to have. But every single acre of Utah land belonged to somebody. Mostly to the federal government.

***

Many times when I've gone to Duchesne, I've heard the same sentiments. "People from the East Coast just don't get it. They think land is where you go play. For us, it's where you work, where you live." My experience with land has been primarily playing -- hopping around slot canyons, posing at National Parks, and swimming in lakes. Kevin grew up with land as work -- moving sprinkler pipe, going on cattle drives, and baling hay. And then there are Native Americans for whom land is worship, where they receive spiritual sustenance and connection with their ancestors.

We rely on land for so many of our needs -- for food, for fuel, for sacred space, for recreation, for our homes. And I think the land can provide all of that, as long as we are willing to use it wisely, and as long as we listen together.